Catholic Monarchs Research Articles

History, Persecution, and Protest: Fernando de Pulgar and the Conversos

Abstract: This article explores the tension between Fernando de Pulgar's personal identity as a converso and his official role as the royal chronicler of the Catholic Monarchs during the earliest stages of the Spanish Inquisition. It argues that, in addition to supporting most of the political positions of the Catholic Monarchs, Pulgar also developed a defense of the converso community within his personal letters, literary works, and official history. The presence of this argument within the last text is particularly significant. By embedding a protest of the Inquisition into his Crónica de los reyes católicos , Pulgar subverted the genre of official history—normally used to support and justify the actions of the monarchy—to articulate a defense of a marginalized and persecuted community. In doing so, this article claims that Pulgar gave a voice to a converso community that had been forcibly silenced by the Spanish Inquisition and the Catholic Monarchs.

El Libro de los pensamientos variables como ejemplo de utopía y disidencia en el siglo xv

This paper provides an analysis of an intriguing work entitled Libro de los pensamientos variables, a mixture of prose and verse written between 1488 and 1492, or perphaps a little later, around 1495. It is contained within a single manuscript, housed in the Biblioteca Nacional de España (MSS/6442). After a brief description of its content and its literary style, Pedro de Gracia Dei is pointed as the possible author hidden behind the anonymity of this book. Furthermore, the paper describes how some literary and artistic ingredients of the plot make this work worthy of being considered a sort of fifteenth-century antecedent of utopian literature. This is especially visible in some little nuances of political dissidence that have been bravely preserved, despite the risks of censorship and royal punishments endured by poets and writers during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs.

The Rabbi Frain’s Be-longings, Spain 1492–93: Things and Theory, History and Fabulation

On the 31st of March 1492, the Catholic monarchs Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Aragon and Castile issued the Edict of Expulsion. The Edict ordered that Spain’s Jews depart from Spanish lands. Before his enforced migration to Portugal, Rabbi Frain of Burgos left a small collection of items with his friend Doña Isabel Osorio. In May 1493 a further royal decree ordered that all Jewish goods which were in the possession of Spanish citizens should be handed over to the Crown in order to fund Christopher Columbus’ second journey to the Americas. Rabbi Frain’s belongings were thus sequestered and sold. This article contemplates the Rabbi Frain’s belongings through a theoretical lens, specifically, the work of Jane Bennett and Graham Harman, asking whether history can be told from the perspective of things and objects. The article ends with fabulation, reimagining the trauma of departure, when the borders between things and humans disappear.

“If He Is Converted”: A New Spanish Featherwork Ecce Homo in Southeastern Africa

In recent years, scholars have paid increasing attention to the material, spiritual, and collecting histories of both pre-invasion and colonial New Spanish (Mexican) featherworks. Rapidly and globally disseminated through religious and family networks, these objects traveled from Mexico to Spain, and other locations, before the end of the sixteenth century. This article explores the little-known history of a devotional featherwork Ecce Homo sent from Portugal to southeastern Africa in 1569. Originally a gift to Sebastian I of Portugal sent from the Spanish-colonized Americas, the Ecce Homo later entered the collection of Catherine of Austria, Sebastian’s grandmother. Catherine presented it to the Jesuits accompanying the Portuguese evangelizing and gold-seeking mission to Mutapa, a vast kingdom that encompassed parts of present-day Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Its intended recipient was the Mutapa emperor. However, this was not a gift meant to grease the wheels of diplomacy, nor was it designated as a tool for conversion: it was, instead, meant for the Mutapa emperor “se se convertese”—if he is converted. That is, it was conceived as a gift from one Catholic monarch to another, for use in personal devotion. The perceived spiritual efficacy of these feather images —themselves recently assimilated to Catholic Iberia from polytheistic Mesomerica—thus extended well beyond the transatlantic Iberian realms.

Nominatissima urbs Granate: The Cultural Clash between Islam and Christianity after the Capitulation of the Nasrid Kingdom and Its Repercussions on the Arts

This essay offers a general overview of some of the main artistic, liturgical and musical works inspired by the Capitulation of Granada in favor of the Catholic Monarchs and related to the patronage of Cardinal Pedro González de Mendoza, Cardinal Bernardino López de Carvajal, Archbishop Fray Hernando de Talavera and his circle. Particular attention is paid to the composition of the well-known Oficios de la Toma de Granada (Offices of the Capitulation of Granada). Granada is conceived therein as a New Jerusalem, the center of a mono-religious but multicultural providentialist discourse identified with the Crown of Castile. Such convergent discourses in music, liturgy and the arts, both at the peninsular and European levels, helped turn the nominatissima urbs Granate after the fall of the Nasrid Kingdom in 1492 into an enduring symbol of Hispanic culture.

Project-based Learning: A Case Studying the Catholic Monarchs in Elementary Education

Project-based Learning: A Case Studying the Catholic Monarchs in Elementary Education

Extension of a Royal House: Servants of the Last <em>Trastámara</em>. The <em>Infants</em> of Castile and Aragon (1470-1504)

The reign of the Catholic Monarchs is possibly the most important reign and, therefore, the most studied in the history of our country. However, this reign had a defect in the form of its offspring, not because of the absence of children but because of their tragic end. The lives of the children of Catholic Monarchs were studied to an unequal extent, with Juana and Prince Juan being the characters who have most attracted the attention of historians. This article examines how the house of each of the last Trastámaras infants was created, what the composition of their house was, and who their servants were. In so doing, we can understand what led the Catholic Monarchs to build their children’s houses in a particular way and why the monarchs educated their eldest children more lavishly and publicly than they did their little brothers. Finally, we will answer the following question: what happened to the servants of infants who died when they were young? In this case, the examples of the deaths of the eldest daughter Isabel and Prince Juan are essential to solving this question. As an epilogue, we will recount how Juana once again had the same servants of her childhood in her house when she settled down in Tordesillas in 1509.

The price of the throne. Public finances in Portugal and Castile and the War of the Castilian Succession (1475–9)

ABSTRACT The reign of Henry IV of Castile ended without a clear heir to the throne, triggering a military conflict between the candidates, Isabella and Ferdinand – the future Catholic Monarchs – and Joanna and Afonso V of Portugal. Ultimately, what was at stake was the balance of power not only in the Iberian Peninsula, but in Western Europe more broadly. The conflict transcended the military field and tested the strength and adaptability of two precocious and dynamic state financial structures. The aim of this article is to compare the way both public finance systems coped with this conflict and responded to a challenge that was to shape their future evolution.

El sufrimiento del pueblo morisco en el siglo XVI, la decisión de expulsarlo definitivamente en 1609

Through this research we have briefly shed light on the historical events that caused the suffering of the Moorish Andalusian people, beginning with the events that forced the last king of Bani al-Ahmar, Abu Abdullah al-Saghir, to make the decision to hand over the city of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs Fernando and Isabel in 1492 AD. Going through the most important events that followed, including the establishment of the Inquisition, which committed the most heinous massacres against the Moors and forced them to convert to Christianity, after which the people of Granada and the surrounding area declared themselves in revolution and rebellion. He highlighted the name of the leader, Ibn Humaya, who was able to liberate several towns and plans to restore Granada, but in the end all these revolutions failed for various reasons. In the end, the Spanish authorities, headed by King Felipe III, made the decision in 1909 to definitively expel the Moriscos from Spain. Thus ended the Islamic presence in Spain

Charles I of Spain and the Defense of Christianity in Europe: Scope and Perception in the 21st Century

By conquering the Iberian Peninsula in the 3rd century, the Romans enriched it with their economic policy and land management. Also, the contribution of religious culture was important because it left traces until today. They entered first with their religious beliefs which they progressively abandoned in favor of Christianity in 313. But, if the peninsulars accepted this religion, it was confronted respectively from the 5th and 8th centuries to the Visigoth and Arab invasions. These situations of invasions have stopped its expansion. In 1492, after the Reconquest of territories by the Catholic Monarchs, they restored and defended it. Charles I of Spain (1500-1558) in turn consolidated this religion and defended it at the universal level to establish its power. But he was confronted with nascent Protestantism and the Turks he had to eradicate so as not to harm Christianity. From a historical perspective, in this analysis, it will be a question of showing the impact of religion; how religion was yesterday an instrument of domination and can still be today.

Midwives in Health Sciences as a Sociocultural Phenomenon: Legislation, Training and Health (XV-XVIII Centuries).

Background and Objectives: The first inquisitorial processes were developed against Muslims and Jews. Then, they focused on women, especially those dedicated to care. Progressively, they were linked to witchcraft and sorcery due to their great assistance, generational and empirical knowledge. The health historiography of the 15th–18th centuries still has important bibliographic and interpretive gaps in the care provided by women. The main objective was to analyse the care provided by midwives in the legislative and socio-sanitary context of New Castile, in the inquisitorial Spain of the 15th–18th centuries. Materials and Methods: A historical review was conducted, following the Dialectical Structural Model of Care. Historical manuals, articles and databases were analysed. Results: The Catholic Monarchs established health profession regulations in 1477, including midwives. However, all legislations were annulled by Felipe II in 1576. These were not resumed until 1750. Midwives assumed a huge range of functions in their care commitment (teaching, care and religion) and were valued in opposing ways. However, many of them were persecuted and condemned by the Inquisition. They used to accompany therapeutic action with prayers and charms. Midwives were usually women in a social vulnerability situation, who did not comply with social stereotypes. Conclusions: Midwives, forerunners of current nursing and health sciences, overcame sociocultural difficulties, although they were condemned for it. Midwives achieved an accredited title, which was taken from them for two centuries. They acted as health agents in a society that demanded them while participating in a “witch hunt”.

¿Los Gitanos, un pueblo marginado en España?

The Gypsies, an Indian people, emigrated to Spain. On their arrival, they first lived in harmony with the Spanish until the Reconquest of the territories under Muslim occupation, a reconquest carried out by the Catholic Monarchs. From 1499 onwards, they passed laws to force the Gypsies to abandon their nomadic lifestyle and adopt a settled life. From that period onwards, the life of the Gypsies would be made of problems with the monarchs who succeeded each other on the Spanish throne from the Golden Age until the vote of 1978 Constitution, which recognised rights and freedoms of the Gypsy people. These rights will be extended by those of the European Union, which is engaged in a tremendous struggle for the respect of human rights and the social integration of minorities.

Female political leaders in Spanish popular culture: Institutionalized feminism in Isabel (TVE1, 2012–14)

A successful Spanish TV show, Isabel (three seasons, 2012–14; broadcasted through the national TV channel La 1) recovers an important female political figure in Spanish history, Isabella I of Castile – the Catholic monarch – as a powerful leader who achieved the unification of Spain and the expansion of a true empire during the fifteenth century. This recovery is not naïve, but fully charged with ideological positions that are played out in Spain’s current context. By virtue of being a woman – in fact, one of the most formidable female figures in Spanish history – the show brings to the fore questions regarding the relationship between gender and power both in the past and present history of Spain. Reference to her government allows drawing connections with the current state of affairs, most notoriously the mainstreaming of a Spanish gender agenda. It is our contention that the show’s chronological progression from a life devoted to attaining and consolidating power to the aspiration of having love and family, as well as the casting choices and characterization of the main protagonist, reveal ongoing political debates regarding the Spanish institutionalization of feminism and the prevalence of an understanding of feminism in line with a neo-liberal logic.

Six by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss

Reviewed by: Sixby Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss Horacio Sierra SIX. By Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss. Directed by Lucy Moss and Jamie Armitage. Brooks Atkinson Theatre, New York City. October 9, 2021. In a theatrical landscape regularly awash with jukebox musicals that cull the catalogs of big-name pop artists such as ABBA, Alanis Morrissette, Gloria Estefan, the Go-Gos, and more, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss's Sixarrived on Broadway with an original score of radio-friendly hooks, TikTok-ready dance moves, and a racially diverse cast of tabloid-worthy divas that gave legitimate pop stars a run for their money. The musical's selling point is that its supersonic score takes inspiration from King Henry VIII's six wives as much as it does the pop sirens of the last twenty years. This dynamic combination gave the audience the chance to veer from silently thanking their high school history teachers for giving them the ability to laugh at puns about the Protestant Reformation to priding themselves for recognizing choreography indebted to Beyoncé's "Formation." By amalgamating the academic humor of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)with the rhetoric of superficial third-wave feminist pop stars, Sixcreated a frothy but provocative musical that offered bespoke narratives for sixteenth-century women whose travails are all the more relevant in the #MeToo era. Whether on London's West End or the various cruise ships where Sixwas staged before it debuted on Broadway, its creators proved that they found a formula that caters to an audience of pop music–loving millennials and Generation Zers who, in a post-Madonna cultural landscape, are liable to see Catherine of Aragon, Gloria Steinem, and Selena Gomez as equals in the feminist canon. Like a Black Pink music video, Six's plot was threadbare but straightforward enough: the women form a girl group and each one is competing to become the sextet's lead singer. The sole criterion for becoming the leader is winning the audience's applause by proving they suffered the most during their marriage to King Henry VIII. The competition format is more akin to the messy politics of twenty-first-century reality TV shows that pit women against one another rather than the sororal communities portrayed in actual early modern literary works such as Christine de Pizan's City of Ladies(1405), María de Zayas's Desenagños amorosos(1647), and Margaret Cavendish's The Convent of Pleasure(1688). The show's earnest though superficial take on feminist discourse attempts to mirror Zayas's work wherein a safe space is created for women to be candid about the ways in which men belittle, deceive, and murder them without repercussions in a patriarchal society. Six's opening number, "Ex-Wives," encapsulates how the show borrows from the historical lore of England, Broadway, and pop music. Each character is given a verse to flesh out the details of the dreary-but-catchy refrain of "divorced, beheaded, died / divorced, beheaded, survived" à la the imprisoned women of Chicagoin "Cell Block Tango." But unlike the "merry murderesses of the Cook County Jail," these women were unable to exact revenge on their husband. Catherine of Aragon's (Adrianna Hicks) stature as a regal Queen Bee was solidified with its keen homage to Beyoncé at her peak with the fist-pumping "No Way." But more could have been made of how Earth-shattering her divorce was. As the daughter of Europe's most powerful royals, Spain's Catholic monarchs Fernando and Isabel, Catherine was a queen among queens. Her fierce devotion to the Roman Catholic Church and twenty-four-year marriage to the king proved her as a loyal steward of traditional monarchies. Henry's divorce from Catherine ensured that England, Europe, and the world would never be the same as the Reformation ushered in religious wars, geopolitical standoffs, and a refreshing stream of liberal intellectual discourse. Anne Boleyn, played by the addictively charming Andrea Macasaet, garnered hearty laughter every [End Page 77]time she reminded the other wives and audience about the horrors of being beheaded. Lily Allenesque lines such as "The rules were so outdated / Us two wanted...

Iberia - Iconosphere of Religious Otherness: The “Sodomitic Moor” in 16th-Century Spanish Painting

This text proposes a genealogy of the trope of the “Sodomitic Moor” in medieval Iberian culture and its consolidation from the Modern Age onwards, coinciding with the imperialist/colonialist expansion towards America. The object of the study are the literary sources that describe the martyrdom of Saint Pelagius in the 10th century (Raguel and Rosvita of Gandersheim) and the visual representations of the same subject in the 16th-century Spanish painting, specifically the images that make up the altarpiece of Saint Pelagius painted by Master of Becerril, which is now in Malaga’s Cathedral. The analysis of the sources will be carried out considering the contributions of queer theory to the study of medieval Iberian cultures through authors such as Mark Jordan or Gregory Hutchenson. As for the visual analysis, the text reviews the historiography of Spanish art history on the images that make up this altarpiece, as well as other contributions such as Francisco de Holanda’s theory of painting, the persecutions for sodomy that were consolidated at the end of the 15th century with the approval of the Pragmatic against Sodomy by the Catholic monarchs, or the principle of ‘interconnected Otherness’ defined by Victor Stoichita, which allows us to understand how the Muslim religious Other is interconnected with the racialized Indian Other from the end of the 15th century onwards.

«Mammón en la frontera»: la codicia y la avaricia en la cronística castellana sobre la Guerra de Granada

Greed and Avarice represents a recurring topic in the castilian chronicles, specially in the late medieval cycle about the Catholic Monarchs and the War of Granada (1482-1492). A detailed analysis of this set of chronicles reveals the double standards of the authors and, above all, the arbitrary use of the accusation of greed, a resource that is only used to high- light the vileness of certain historical figures and, in another cases, when it is necessary to shore up the tone providentialist of the story associating the setbacks of war to the sins of the combatants.

Distinción, elegancia y luto en la moda virreinal: el uso de la indumentaria negra

Since ancient times, the wear of black garments as a sign of mourning for the loss of a loved one has been related to night and darkness, and also to the fear of the unknown and death. Although there is no continuous line about the use of black to demonstrate mourning, in the case of Spain and its overseas kingdoms, its use is directly related to the promulgation of the “Pragmatic of mourning and wax” (1502), following the death of the prince Juan de Castilla in 1497, son of the Catholic Monarchs, which prescribed austerity in the celebration of funerals. This pragmatic was in force until it was modified by the Council of Toledo during the reign of Felipe V, in the first third of the 18th century. In addition, since the reign of Philip II, in the mid-sixteenth century, dressing “Spanish style”, that is, in black, became synonymous with prestige and elegance, since the king adopted black for his closet and turned it into the color of the court and a symbol of power and glory, thanks to the arrival in Spain of the Campeche wood, originally from the Yucatan peninsula, and its commercial monopoly. The palo de Campeche was highly valued because it produces an intense and stable black dye, characteristics that had not been achieved with the European dyeing techniques of the time. The use of black clothing spread from Spain and significantly affected fashion in both Europe and America. As can be seen, the implications of wearing black garments have been economic, political, and social. The paper seeks to demonstrate the importance attributed to black clothing in two different contexts in the viceroyalty of Peru.

Why Did Everything Go Wrong? Some Notes on Hispano-Algerian Diplomatic Misunderstanding from a Study of a Letter of Beylerbeyi Hasan Pasha (1545-51)

The Spanish Monarchy became used to negotiating with Algerians in the final decades of the fifteenth centuries, when the Catholic Monarchs began reaching commercial and political agreements with many North African harbours. However, once the Ghazi corsairs from the Levant —Oruç and Hayreddin Barbarossa— conquered Algiers in the late 1510s, Spanish relationships with this harbour completely changed. From that moment on, Algiers tuned into an Ottoman possession subordinated to the House of Osman, posing a real threat to the Spanish Habsburgs’ Mediterranean estates. Although the Spanish Monarchy sent several military expeditions to recover Algiers, none of these attempts was successful. At the same time, Spaniards also considered diplomacy as a useful means of maintaining a channel of communication with Algerians open. Hence, this article focuses on the first half of the sixteenth century and aims to explore the evolution of Spanish diplomacy with Ottoman Algiers to find out why these inter-policy contacts did not achieve the purposes hoped for by the government of the Spanish Monarchy. For that reason, after defining the diplomatic model deployed to negotiate with the Algerians and its goals, I shall explore how the Spanish Monarchy regarded the Ottoman governors of Algiers by studying a letter that beylerbeyi Hasan Pasha sent to the Genoese Admiral Andrea Doria in the summer of 1548. This letter, which is conserved in the Archivo General de Simancas, presents us with a great opportunity to note that the socio-political consideration granted by the Spaniards to their North African interlocutors had considerable influence on the results of diplomatic missions conducted in Algiers.

To Africanize Spain: Twentieth-Century Spanish Poetry and the Persistent Forms of al-Andalus

To Africanize Spain: Twentieth-Century Spanish Poetry and the Persistent Forms of al-Andalus

McTague, John. Things That Didn’t Happen: Writing, Politics and the Counterhistorical, 1678–1743.

McTague, John. <i>Things That Didn’t Happen: Writing, Politics and the Counterhistorical, 1678–1743</i>.