Isabel, like all her descendants upon the throne, set a high standard of regal dignity, and in all her public appearances assumed a demeanour of impassive serenity and gorgeousness which became traditional at a later period; but she could be playful and jocose in her family circle, as her nicknames for her children prove. Her eldest girl, Isabel, who married the King of Portugal, bore a great resemblance to the Portuguese mother of Isabel herself, and the latter always called her child ‘mother,’ whilst her son Juan to her was always the ‘angel,’ from his beautiful fair face. She could joke, too, on occasion, though the specimens of her wit cited by Father Florez are a little outspoken for the present day; and her contemporary chroniclers tell many instances of her keen caustic wit. Her tireless and often indiscreet zeal for the spread of the faith has been mentioned several times in these pages; but submissive as she was to the clergy, she was keenly alive even to their defects, and the laxity of the regular orders, which had grown to be a scandal, was reformed by her with ruthless severity. Her principal instrument, perhaps the initiator, of this work was the most remarkable ecclesiastical statesman of his time, and one of the greatest Spaniards who ever lived, Alfonso Jimenez de Cisneros.
A humble Franciscan friar of over fifty, living as an anchorite in a grot belonging to the monastery of Castañar, near Toledo, after a laborious life as a secular priest and vicar-general of a diocese, would seem the last man in the world to become the arbiter of a nation’s destinies; and yet this was the strange fate of Jimenez. When Talavera was created Bishop of Granada, Isabel needed a new principal confessor; and, as usual in such matters, consulted the Cardinal Primate of Spain, Mendoza, who years before had been Bishop of Sigüenza, and had made Father Jimenez his chaplain and vicar-general, because his rival archbishop, that stout old rebel Carrillo, had persecuted the lowly priest. Mendoza knew that his former vicar-general had retired from the world, and was living in self-inflicted suffering and mortification; and he was wont to say that such a man was born to rule, and not to hide himself as an anchorite in a cloister. When, after the surrender of Granada, a new royal confessor was required, Jimenez, greatly to his dismay, real or assumed, was at the instance of the Cardinal summoned to see the Queen. Austere and poorly clad, he stood before the sovereign whom he was afterwards to rule, and fervently begged her to save him from the threatened honour. In vain he urged his unfitness for the life of a court, his want of cultivation and the arts of the world; his humility was to Isabel a further recommendation, and she would take no denial.
Thenceforward the pale emaciated figure, in a frayed and soiled Franciscan frock, stalked like a spectre amidst the splendours that surrounded the Queen; feared for his stern rectitude and his iron strength of will. His mind was full, even then, of great plans to reform the order of Saint Francis, corrupted as he had seen it was in the cloisters; and when the office of Provincial of the Order became vacant soon afterwards the new Confessor accepted it eagerly. Through all Castile, to every monastery of the Order, Jimenez rode on a poor mule with one attendant and no luggage; living mostly upon herbs and roots by the way. When, at last, Isabel recalled him peremptorily to her side, he painted to her so black a picture of the shameful licence and luxury of the friars, that the Queen, horrified at such impiety, vowed to sustain her Confessor in the work of reform. It was a hard fought battle; for the Priors were rich and powerful, and in many cases were strongly supported from Rome. All sorts of influences were brought to bear. Ferdinand was besought to mitigate the reforming zeal of Isabel and Jimenez, and did his best to do so. The Prior of the Holy Ghost in Segovia boldly took Isabel to task personally, and told her that her Confessor was unfit for his post. When Isabel asked the insolent friar whether he knew what he was talking about he replied, ‘Yes, and I know that I am speaking to Queen Isabel, who is dust and ashes as I am.’ But all was unavailing, the broom wielded by Jimenez and the Queen swept through every monastery and convent in the land; the Queen herself taking the nunneries in hand, and with gentle firmness examining for herself the circumstances in every case before compelling a rigid adherence to the conventual vows. When Mendoza died in January 1495, the greatest ecclesiastical benefice in the world after the papacy, the Archbishopric of Toledo, became vacant. Ferdinand wanted it for his illegitimate son, Alfonso of Aragon, aged twenty-four, who had been Archbishop of Saragossa since he was six. But Toledo was in the Queen’s gift, and to her husband’s indignation she insisted upon appointing Jimenez. The Pope, Alexander VI., who had just conferred the title of ‘Catholic’ upon the Spanish sovereigns, was by birth a Valencian subject of Ferdinand; and there was a race of the rival Spanish claimants to win the support of Rome. But Castile had right as well as might on his side this time, and, again to his expressed displeasure, Jimenez became primate of Spain, and the greatest man in the land after the King who distrusted him.[[68]]
From their births Ferdinand had destined his children to be instruments in his great scheme for humbling France for the benefit of Aragon; and Isabel, in this respect, appears usually to have let him have his way. It was a complicated and tortuous way, which, in a history of the Queen, cannot be fully described. Suffice it to say that when Ferdinand found himself by the fall of Granada free to take his own affairs seriously in hand, he had for years been intriguing for political marriage for his children. First he had endeavoured to capture the young King of France, Charles VIII., on his accession in 1483, by a marriage with Isabel, the eldest daughter of Spain. Charles VIII. was already betrothed to Margaret of Burgundy, but Anne of Brittany, with her French dominion, was preferred to either, and then (1488) Ferdinand, finding himself forestalled, betrothed his youngest daughter, Katharine, to Arthur, Prince of Wales, to win the support of Henry Tudor in a war against France,[[69]] to prevent the absorption of Brittany. All parties were dishonest; but Ferdinand outwitted allies and rivals alike. Henry VII. of England was cajoled into invading France; whilst Ferdinand, instead of making war on his side as arranged, quietly extorted from the fears of Charles VIII. an offensive and defensive alliance against the world, with the retrocession to Aragon of the counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne; and England was left in the lurch.
There is no doubt that the object of the King of France in signing such a treaty was to buy the implied acquiescence of Ferdinand in making good his shadowy claims to the kingdom of Naples, then ruled by the unpopular kinsman of Ferdinand himself. As was proved soon afterwards, nothing was further from Ferdinand’s thoughts than thus to aid the ambition of the shallow, vain King of France in the precise direction where he wished to check it. But in appearance the great festivities held in Barcelona on the signature of the treaty in January 1493, heralded a cordial settlement of the long-standing enmity between the two rivals. Isabel took her share in the rejoicings; and rigid bigots appear to have written to her late Confessor, Archbishop Talavera, an exaggerated account of her participation in the gaiety. Isabel, in answer to the letter of reprimand he sent her, defended herself with spirit and dignity, after a preface expressing humble submission. ‘You say that some danced who ought not to have danced; but if that is intended to convey that I danced, I can only say that it is not true; I have little custom of dancing, and I had no thought of such a thing.... The new masks you complain of were worn neither by me nor by my ladies; and not one dress was put on that had not been worn ever since we came to Aragon. The only dress I wore had, indeed, been seen by the Frenchmen before, and was my silk one with three bands of gold, made as plainly as possible. This was all my part of the festivity. Of the grand array and showy garments you speak of, I saw nothing and knew nothing until I read your letter. The visitors who came may have worn such fine things when they appeared; but I know of no others. As for the French people supping with the ladies at table, that is a thing they are accustomed to do. They do not get the custom from us; but when their great guests dine with sovereigns, the others in their train dine at tables in the hall with the ladies and gentlemen; and there are no separate tables for ladies. The Burgundians, the English and the Portuguese, also follow this custom; and we on similar occasions to this. So there is no more evil in it, nor bad repute, than in asking guests to your own table. I say this, that you may see that there was no innovation in what we did; nor did we think we were doing anything wrong in it.... But if it be found wrong after the inquiry I will make, it will be better to discontinue it in future. The dresses of the gentlemen were truly very costly, and I did not commend them, and, indeed, moderated them as much as I could, and advised them not to have such garments made. As for the Bull feasts, I feel, with you, though perhaps not quite so strongly. But after I had consented to them, I had the fullest determination never to attend them again in my life, nor to be where they were held. I do not say that I can of myself abolish them; for that does not appertain to me alone, nor do I defend them, for I have never found pleasure in them.[[70]] When you know the truth of what really took place, you may determine whether it be evil, in which case it had better be discontinued. For my part all excess is distasteful to me, and I am wearied with all festivity, as I have written you in a long letter, which I have not sent, nor will I do so, until I know whether, by God’s grace, you are coming to meet us in Castile.’[[71]]
This letter gives a good idea of Isabel’s submission to her spiritual advisers, as well as of her own good sense and moderation, which prevented her from giving blind obedience to them. Another instance of this is seen by Isabel’s attitude towards the chapter of Toledo Cathedral after the death of her friend Cardinal Mendoza (January 1495), the third King of Spain, as he had been called. The Queen travelled from Madrid to Guadalajara to be with him at his death, and tended him to the last, promising, personally, to act as his executor, and to see that all his testamentary wishes were fulfilled. Amongst these was the desire of the prelate to be buried in a certain spot in the chancel of the cathedral. To this the chapter had readily assented in the life of the archbishop, but when he had died they refused to allow the structural alterations necessary, and the matter was carried to the tribunals, which decided in favour of the executors. The chapter still stood firm in their refusal, and then the Queen, as chief executrix, took the matter in her own hands, and herself superintended the necessary demolition of the wall of the chapel at night, to the surprise and dismay of the chapter, who no longer dared to interfere.[[72]]
On leaving Aragon after the signature of the hollow Treaty of Barcelona (1493), Isabel and her husband took up their residence in the Alcazar of Madrid, where, with short intervals, they remained in residence for the next six years. During this period, spent, as will be told by Ferdinand, in almost constant struggle for his own objects in Italy and elsewhere, Isabel was tireless in her efforts for domestic reform. The purification of the monasteries and convents went on continually under the zealous incentive of the new Archbishop of Toledo, Jimenez: the roads and water-sources throughout Castile were improved; the municipal authorities, corrupt as they had become by the introduction of the purchase of offices, and the effects of noble intrigue, were brought under royal inspection and control; and this, though it improved the government of the towns, further sapped their independence and legislative power. The Universities and high schools, which had shared in the universal decadence, were overhauled, and a higher standard of graduation enforced: the coinage, which had become hopelessly debased, in consequence of the vast number of noble and municipal mints in existence, was unified and rehabilitated: sumptuary pragmatics, mistaken as they appear to us now, but well-intentioned at the time, endeavoured to restrain extravagance and idle vanity: measures for promoting agriculture, the great cloth industry of Segovia and oversea commerce, and a score of other similar enactments during these years, from 1494 to the end of the century, show how catholic and patriotic was Isabel’s activity at the time that Ferdinand was busy with his own Aragonese plans. The annals of Madrid at this period give a curious account of Isabel’s prowess in another direction. The neighbourhood of the capital was infested with bears, and one particular animal, of special size and ferocity, had committed much damage. By order of the Queen a special battue was organised, and the bear was killed by a javelin in the hands of Isabel herself, upon the spot where now stands the hermitage of St. Isidore, the patron of Madrid.[[73]]
Ferdinand’s marvellous political perspicacity, and the far-reaching combinations he had formed, now began to produce some of the international results for which he had worked. The Treaty of Barcelona had bound Ferdinand to friendship with France, and abstention from marrying his children in England, Germany or Naples, and implied the leaving to Charles VIII. of a free hand in Italy: but no sooner had Ferdinand received his reward by the retrocession of Roussillon and Cerdagne to him, than he broke all his obligations under the treaty. Charles VIII. had marched through Italy, to the intense anger of the native princes, and took possession of Naples, and then Ferdinand, in coalition with the Valencian Pope, Alexander VI., formed the combination of Venice, and Spanish troops under the great Castilian, Gonzalo de Cordova, expelled the French from Naples, and set up the deposed Aragonese-Neapolitan king, until it should please, as it soon did, Ferdinand to seize the realm for himself.
This war was an awakening to all Europe that a new fighting nation had entered into the arena. Already the proud spirit of superiority by divine selection was being felt by Spaniards as a result of the religious persecution of the minority, and the devotional exaltation inspired by the example of the Queen: and under so great a commander as Gonzalo de Cordova Spanish troops for the first time now showed the qualities which, for a century at least, made them invincible.[[74]] Whilst this result attended the policy of Isabel and her husband in religious affairs, their action in another direction simultaneously, whilst for the moment seeming to give to Ferdinand the hegemony of Europe, really wrought the ruin of Spain by bringing her into the vortex of central European politics, and burdening her with the championship of an impossible cause under impossible conditions.