Constance of Aragon, Regent of Sicily

Constance of Aragon, queen of Hungary, regent of Sicily, and Holy Roman Empress (crowned queen of Sicily 15 August 1209)

Constance of Aragon was the eldest daughter of King Alfonso II of Aragon and his queen, Sancha of Castile, though the year of her birth is not certain, with sources ranging from 1179 to 1184.

The fabulous crown of
Constance of Aragon,
Holy Roman empress,
photo by José Luiz Bernardes Ribeir 

After Alfonso's death in 1196, his eldest son, Pedro, succeeded him on the throne of Aragon. It was Pedro II who arranged his sister's marriage to Emeric, the king of Hungary, to whom Constance was wed about the year 1198.

The marriage had been promoted by Pope Innocent III--Emeric sought an alliance that would strengthen him against his younger brother Andrew's efforts to gain the crown of Hungary for himself. Pedro had been crowned in Rome by Innocent, and after swearing to defend the faith, was known as "Pedro, the Catholic," but it's not clear (at least to me) what he got out of the alliance with Hungary.

In any event, Constance's marriage to the king of Hungary did not last long. She gave birth to a son and heir, Ladislaus, probably in the year 1200, but by 1204, Emeric was dead.

While he lay dying, and in order to ensure his son's succession, Emeric had arranged for the boy's coronation, but the king made the colossal mistake of deciding that his brother, Andrew, would be a good regent for the child--despite the fact that he had imprisoned Andrew, who had continued his efforts to gain the crown of Hungary for himself. Emeric only released Andrew from confinement so that he could be his son's guardian and protect the kingdom for him. Right.

After Emeric's death and fearing for the safety of her son, Constance escaped from Hungary, taking Ladislas with her. She took refuge with Leopold of Vienna, her husband's cousin, who agreed to shelter her and the boy, despite Andrew's threats of invasion. But within months, Ladislas, the "king" of Hungary, was dead.*

Now in undisputed control of the crown, Andrew demanded the body of Ladislas be returned to Hungary. The boy was buried in the basilica at Székesfehérvár, and Duke Leopold sent Constance, the dowager queen, back to Aragon. Upon her return, Constance joined her mother the convent of St. Sigena, where she would remain for the next five years.

In 1208, King Pedro arranged a second marriage for his sister, this one to Frederick, who had been crowned king of Sicily when he was just three years old. Like all royal marriages, this one had political advantages for all parties as well--except, perhaps, for Constance.

Constance of Aragon's second husband was the son of Henry VI, Holy Roman emperor, and the Empress Constance, queen of Sicily in her own right. But since both of his parents were dead, Frederick, still a minor, was then in the guardianship of Innocent III. The pope hoped not only to promote the boy's interests but also to secure an alliance against a too-powerful empire.

Frederick needed powerful assistance in asserting his rights in southern Italy and, eventually, in securing the title of Holy Roman emperor for himself. An alliance with Pedro of Aragon would provide this support in the form of 500 knights to fight for Frederick in Sicily.

For his part, Pedro II of Aragon wanted the pope to annul his marriage to Marie of Montpellier so he could marry Maria of Montferrat, queen of Jerusalem. Thus the king of Aragon was once again eager to agree to a proposal made by Innocent III.**

And so off the dowager queen of Hungary went to Sicily. On 15 August 1209, Constance, then between twenty-five and thirty years old, was married to the fourteen-year-old Frederick, king of Sicily and would-be emperor. Now queen of Sicily, Constance gave birth to a son, Henry, in 1211. 

Meanwhile, Otto IV, the current Holy Roman Emperor, had invaded Italy and been excommunicated by Innocent III. A rebellious group of German princes then elected Frederick as king of the Germans, and he headed off to war on the continent, leaving Constance as regent of Sicily. (She does appear to have joined her husband briefly in 1216.)

Although he was crowned as king in 1212, Frederick did not have widespread support until after Otto's defeat in 1214, and so he was elected king of Germans for a second time in 1215 and crowned in Aachen. Otto IV, the excommunicated emperor, died in 1218, and negotiations following his death--and the death of Innocent III--meant that Frederick did not become Holy Roman emperor until 1220.

During the years of her regency in Sicily, Constance defended the interests of her husband and son, working with the pope and supporting her brother's effort to extend his influence in the area that is now southwestern France. She confronted rebels, invaders, and the Muslim population.

When her husband was crowned Holy Roman emperor in Rome by the new pope, Honorius III, Constance was also crowned empress. Frederick returned to Germany while the new empress remained behind. Although Frederick was again in Sicily in 1222, he was occupied by a conflict with the saraceni della Sicilia and did not see Constance before she died in May of that year. 

Constance of Aragon, regent of Sicily and Holy Roman empress, is buried in the cathedral of Palermo.

The tomb of Constance of Aragon,
Cathedral of Palermo,
photo by José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro

The most easily accessible account of Constance of Aragon's life is by Norbert Kamp in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, available online by clicking here. (The same source includes a biographical essay on Frederick, so a few details of Constance of Aragon's life also appear there.) 

You might also be interested in Christopher Mielke's analysis of the elaborate jeweled regalia buried with Constance--his essay, "From Her Head to Her Toes: Gender-Bending Regalia in the Tomb of Constance of Aragon, Queen of Hungary and Sicily," is available by clicking here.

*Since he had been crowned on 26 August 1204 and died on 7 May 1205, Ladislas "ruled" as king of Hungary for six months and five days.

**Marie of Montpellier fought back against her husband's efforts to annul her marriage, and--despite Pedro's efforts--Innocent III ultimately refused to grant the annulment. But on her way back to Aragon in 1213, Marie, still queen of Aragon, died. Pedro II died a few months later, succeeded as king of Aragon by Jaume, his son with Marie of Montpellier.

Urraca Alfonso, Queen of Navarre and Regent of Asturias

Urraca Alfonso, queen of Navarre and regent of Asturias (married 24 June 1144)

Urraca Alfonso was the daughter of Alfonso VII of León (the son of a woman whom we have met before, Queen Urraca of Castile and León) and Gontrodo Pérez, member of a noble Asturian family, which accounts for the name by which her daughter is also know, La Asturiana.*

Gontrodo was the wife of a feudal lord (tenente), Gutierre Sebastiániz, at the time of her relationship with King Alfonso, whom she seems to have met when he was in Asturias to quell a rebellion.

Urraca Alfonsa's tomb in the cathedral of Palencia
(with a questionable date of death)

At the time of Urraca Alfonso's birth, Alfonso VII's queen and wife was Berengaria of Barcelona, to whom he had been married in 1128, when she was just twelve years old--the first of their seven children would be born in 1134.

(After the death of Queen Berengaria in 1149, King Alfonso would go on to marry Richeza of Poland in 1152, with whom he would have two more legitimate children, one of whom was Sancha of Castile, queen of Aragon.) 

A contemporary life of King Alfonso, the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, notes that Gontrodo was "extremely beautiful and of the highest nobility." But historical judgments differ. About this relationship, the nineteenth-century historian of Spanish queens, Anita George, concludes that, while the king "loved [Gontrodo] with the most ardent passion," she was a "worthless" rival.

Worthless or not, Gontrodo gave birth to Urraca in 1133, making her the king's first-born child. According to a seventeenth-century Jesuit historian of Asturia, Alfonso treated this daughter as he did his legitimate children, in particular his sons--he awarded her land and titles and arranged for her to be educated, along with his other children, by his sister, Sancha Raimúndez of León. 

The king also secured a significant marriage for Urraca Alfonso—to García Ramírez, king of Navarre, on 24 June 1144. The twelfth-century chronicle of Alfonso contains a lengthy account of this politically expedient decision and of the lavish marriage ceremonies that celebrated the match. (Urraca Alfonso's half-sister, Sancha of Castile--one of Alfonso VII's daughters with Berengaria--would marry King García Ramírez's son in 1153. Another interesting example of "traditional marriage"--half sisters marrying a father and a son. And yes—Alfonso VII has two daughters named Sancha of Castile, one born to each of his two wives. No wonder this gets confusing!)

After the death of the king of Navarre in 1150, Urraca, now dowager queen, was sent to Asturias by her father. There she took up residence in Ovieda, where King Alfonso allowed his daughter to retain her title of "queen" and entrusted her with the administration of the province. 

In 1153, she confirmed the charter of the Monastery of Santa María de la Vega, her mother's foundation. After the death of King Alfonso VII in 1157, Urraca's half-brother, Fernando II, continued to allow her to administer Asturias, although he himself returned to Oviedo and ruled as king of "Galicia and León"--Asturias was a province of Galicia.

Urraca Alfonso, dowager queen of Navarre, remarried in 1163. A charter from that year indicates that the Urraca and her second husband, Álvaro Rodríguez de Castro, were now managing Asturias together: "Alvaro Rodríguez with his wife Urraca governing Asturias" (Alvaro Roderici cum uxore sua regina Urraca Asturias imperante).

At some point in early 1164, the two were involved in an uprising in Asturias, a rebellion that was crushed by her half-brother, now king of León. 

Urraca Alfonso gave birth to two children. Her daughter Sancha was born in 1148, while Urraca Alfonso was queen of Navarre. During her second marriage, she gave birth to a son, Sancho Álvarez de Castro, in 1164. Like his mother, he would eventually control Asturias, a chronicle noting, "Sancho Álvarez [was] governing Asturias" and describing him as "the son of Queen Urraca" (Dominante Asturias Sancius Alvari filius regina Urrace).

There is some dispute about the year of Urraca Alfonso's death--the Oviedo Enciclopedia cites her date of death as 1164. This date is also accepted by the online biographical dictionary of the Real Academia de la Historia, which notes that Urraca Alfonso's second husband, Álvaro Rodríguez de Castro, was free to remarry in that year, since Urraca had died. Finally, the notes to the twelfth-century chronicle of Alfonso VII indicate that Urraca Alfonso died "after" 1164. 

However, a document from the Monastery of Villaverde de Sandoval records a gift made by "La infanta Urraca, hija de Alfonso VII" of significant property in 1178.** The donation is made for for songs to be sung for her soul and that of her father (Hace la donación para que en el cabildo del monasterio, en el que desea ser enterrada, se cante un aniversario por su alma y la de su padre el día de San Juan Bautista). This date may be confused, however--in his edition of the chronicle of Alfonso, Glenn Edward Lipskey notes "References to dates will follow the original manuscripts of the chronicle which utilize the calendar of the Spanish Era. Thirty-eight years must be subtracted in order to arrive at the corresponding year within the Christian calendar." Could the 1178 year in the original document be in the old-style calendar? 

Finally, to further confuse matters, Urraca Alfonso's tomb in the chapel of Santa María Magdalena in the Cathedral of Palencia, though constructed later, gives her year of death as 1189. (Urraca was buried in the Romanesque cathedral at the time of her death, but it was rebuilt in the fourteenth century in the Gothic style.)

So this breathtaking gap--Urraca Alfonso may have died in 1164 or as late as 1189--is just another indication of the failure of documentation for many historical women's lives. 

*There are variant spellings for Gontrodo's name (she is also at times known as Gontrodo Petri), and some discussion about exactly how noble her family was. Born about the year 1105 or 1106, she had three children with her husband. After 1137, the name of her husband, Gutierre Sebastiániz, disappears from the records. Gontrodo's name appears only sporadically in the records, and the evidence suggests that she retired to a convent after her liaison with Alfonso VII--she donates an inheritance to the Monastery of San Vicente in 1141, and several years later, property that had been given to her by Alfonso VII. But the twelfth-century Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris claims that, after her daughter's marriage, Gontrodo became a nun:

Now Guntroda, King García's mother-in-law, recognized the enormous honor paid to her daughter who had become a queen. . . . Even though she possessed many worldly desires, Guntroda looked eagerly to spiritual matters as much as she could. She consecrated herself to God and remained in his service. Accordingly, she became a nun in Oviedo. There she joined a religious community in the church of Saint Mary. She felt that with help from the Mother of God she certainly would be able to discover some joy in life. She would appease God by praising him continually through the Divine Office. She would then await the glorious end of her life persevering in this devout practice. Praying constantly in a true spirit of sincerity, she would repent for all of her sins. 

In 1153, Gontrodo founded the Monastery of Santa María de la Vega in Oviedo, where she became a nun, dying there on 26 June 1186. Online information is available online at the Oviedo Enciclopedia.

Alfonso VII would also have a daughter with a another woman named Urraca, Urraca Fernández de Castro, widow of a Leonese nobleman, Rodrigo Fernández. The date of Stephanie Alfonso's birth isn't clear, but her mother seems to have begun her relationship with the king in 1139, after her husband's death. Between that date and 1148, the king awarded property and privileges to Urraca Fernández and Stephanie Alfonso.

A twelfth-century manuscript drawing of
Urraca Fernández (right) and her husband, Rodrigo Martínez

After Alfonso VII's death in 1157, his son, Fernando II, now king, arranged for the marriage between his half-sister and the head of his household, Fernando Rodríguez de Castro. In 1180, Stephanie's husband murdered her--he stabbed her to death. He suspected his wife was unfaithful to him . . .  But, oops, maybe not. Whatever the case (and there is a dramatic, romanticized story that he realized he was wrong and was sorry afterwards), King Fernando forgave him for having murdered his half-sister . . . Which is why Stephanie is also known as Stephanie the Unfortunate (Estefanía la Desdichada).

Stephanie was buried near her grandmother, Queen Urraca of Castile and León. Her epitaph makes no mention of the circumstances of her "unfortunate" death: 

Here lies the Infanta Doña Estefanía, daughter of Emperor Alfonso, wife of the powerful Fernán Ruiz, mother of Pedro Fernández Castellano, who died on July 1, 1180. 

(The Latin inscription reads: HR INFANTISSA DOMINA STEPHANIA, FILIA IMPERATORIS ADEFONSI, CONJUX FERDINANDI RODERICI POTENTISSIMI BARONIS, MATER PETRI FERDINANDI CASTELLANI, QUAE OBIIT WAS MCCXVIII. KAL. JULII.)

**Document 10, dated 10 February 1178. Scroll down to find it. And thank you, Internet Archive, for preserving access to COLECCIÓN DOCUMENTAL DEL MONASTERIO DE VILLAVERDE DE SANDOVAL (1132-1500). 

 

Isabella I of Castile, "the Servant of God"

Isabella I of Castile, queen regent of Castile and León, queen consort of Aragon (crowned 13 December 1474)

Isabella of Castile,
a portrait now in Windsor Castle

Isabella of Castile has figured in many of my posts this year, including the one just two days ago on Juana of Castile, her niece (the daughter of Isabella's half-brother, King Enrique IV) and "rival" for the throne of Castile and León.* 

And, next to the Tudor queens, the queen of Castile is probably the most familiar early-modern queen for American readers today--if for no other reason than her association with Christopher Columbus. 

Rather than rehearsing her biography here, I thought I'd write a bit about her crowning, which may be a less familiar story. 

As I wrote in my post on Juana of Castile, when Enrique IV died in December of 1474, the question of who would succeed him was not altogether clear.

When his daughter Juana was born in 1462, both the king and the Cortes had recognized her status as his heir, successor to the crown of Castile if no son were to be born. But in crisis and under duress, the king had been persuaded to name his half-sister as his heir and successor in 1468, disinheriting his daughter. 

Although Isabella had agreed that she would not marry without Enrique's permission, she did so anyway. She wrote to Enrique announcing her intention and seeking his permission. She began by reminding him of their agreement: "I agreed to submit to your wishes . . . in which it was agreed that the true succession of these said your kingdoms would belong to me as your legitimate heir and successor." Then she sought his permission for her proposal, asking that "Your Highness would . . . consent to the marriage with the . . . prince of Aragon." 

Despite the fact that Enrique's permission was not forthcoming, Isabella and Ferdinand were married on 18 October 1469. The terms of the marriage contract ensured Isabella's rights and her independence: Ferdinand would be prince-consort of Castile, not its king. Ferdinand had to promise "virtual obedience" to Isabella; among other "capitulations," he agreed to live in Castile, to seek permission before leaving the kingdom and before taking any children they might have out of the kingdom, to renew none of his father's claims to Castilian possessions, and to make no government appointments without Isabella's consent. Further, he agreed to provide Isabella a sizeable marriage gift and to serve as her military defender. 

By February 1470, Isabella was pregnant. At last, on 26 October, more than a year after his half-sister's marriage, Enrique replied. Declaring Isabella could no longer be considered his heir, he decided Juana was--once more--his legitimate daughter and, therefore, his heir. But, despite Enrique's assertions of Juana's legitimacy, the succession question had not been settled when the king died on 11 December 1474. 

Two days later, on 13 December 1474, Isabella was proclaimed "Queen Proprietess" of Castile. Ferdinand, "as her legitimate husband," was recognized as king. At the church of San Miguel in Segovia, the royal standard raised above her, Isabella took up an unsheathed lance, a symbol of sovereign authority; in the procession that followed, she was proceeded by a rider carrying an upraised naked sword, a symbol of royal justice. Neither ceremony had ever been performed by and for a queen. 

Ferdinand, meanwhile, was in Aragon. On 16 December he received a letter from Isabella telling him of Enrique's death but not of her coronation. The chronicler Alonso Palencia was with Ferdinand when he received a letter three days later, on 19 December, describing his wife's coronation and the ceremonies. 

According to Palencia, Ferdinand was surprised--"I have never heard of a queen who usurped this male privilege." His secretary Gonzalez registered more than surprise, shocked not only by Isabella's "insolent action" but by her appropriation of male symbols. He wondered aloud if there were "in antiquity" any "precedent for a queen to be proceeded by this symbol." "Everyone knows that these are conceded to kings," he continued," "but never was known a queen who had usurped this masculine attribute."

Isabella of Castile,

portrait by Antonio del Rincón

Ferdinand was nevertheless confident that he could assert his rights as king. Palencia wrote that Ferdinand felt he would conquer Isabella "with patience"; he "felt certain he would triumph through satisfying assiduously the demands of conjugal love, with which he could easily soften the intransigence that bad advisors had planted in his wife's mind." Speaking for himself, Palencia judged that Isabella was "after all, a woman." His reading of Castilian law led him to conclude that "in the marriage of a crown heiress, even though the husband be of inferior lineage, he must enjoy the scepter and the title of him together with her as well as all the other priorities accorded to males all over the world." 

Despite Ferdinand's hopes and Palencia's reading of the laws of succession, Isabella and the Castilian nobility persisted in asserting her role as queen regnant and Ferdinand's as king-consort. Isabella herself announced her position in a letter of 16 December to the towns of Castile, "inviting" them to recognize her as "natural queen" and Ferdinand as "the very illustrious and most powerful Prince . . . , [her] lord, . . . [her] legitimate husband." 

Fernando del Pulgar, the queen's secretary and chronicler, assembled historical support for Isabella's succession, citing the precedents of a number of queens regent, including Sancha of León (d. 1067), the wife of Ferdinand I of Castile, who became queen of León in her own right after the death of her father Alfonso V in 1037; Sancha's daughter Urraca of Zamora (1033-1101), who inherited absolute sovereignty over the city of Zamora and the title of "queen" (click here and scroll to the bottom); Urraca, queen of León, Castile, and Galicia (1079-1126), about whom I posted earlier this year; and Berenguela of Castile (1179-1246), who was regent of Castile for her brother, and then succeeded him as queen regent after his death in 1217.

Ferdinand and his allies in Aragon and in Castile, on the other hand, argued that natural and divine law gave precedence to a man over a woman; while law and custom might not exclude women from a throne, in practice, when a woman succeeded, it was her husband who ruled. They also argued that Ferdinand's independent claims to the throne of Castile gave him precedence over Isabella: Ferdinand was the nearest male descendant in the Trastamara line. 

There matters stood, unresolved even when Ferdinand joined Isabella in Segovia on 2 January. The king-consort was further provoked by learning that, should the queen predecease him, the Castilian throne would pass not to him but to their daughter Isabel, who had been born in 1470. Despite Isabella's efforts at conciliation, Ferdinand threatened to return to Aragon. At last the matter was placed before a council in Segovia on 15 January. About this confrontation Isabella's biographer Nancy Rubin writes: "That meeting proved to be one of the most extraordinary examinations of female inheritance rights in prefeminist Europe, one whose highly emotional tone would finally be resolved by Isabella's cool logic."

The subject of the succession, Isabella began, addressing Ferdinand,  "need never to have been discussed because where there is such union as by the grace of God exists between you and me, there can be no difference."  As her husband, Ferdinand was king of Castile: "Already, as my husband, you are king of Castile, and your orders have to be obeyed here. . . . But since it has pleased these knights to open this discussion, perhaps it is just as well that any doubt they have be clarified, as the law of our kingdoms provide[s]." 

Isabella of Castile,
portrait by Jan Flanders

As she reminded him, Castilian law preferred the inheritance of legitimate daughter in the direct line to a male in a collateral line. And beyond law, Isabella also reminded Ferdinand of the vagaries of male inheritance. If Ferdinand were to die, another, more distant, male relative might claim Castile if women were excluded from succession.

In the end, Ferdinand accepted Isabella's arguments, their agreement reflected in the motto, now famous, which they adopted: "Tanto monta, monta tanto, Isabel como Fernando--To stand as high, as high to stand, Isabella as Ferdinand." That he agreed is clear. Why he agreed is another matter. 

Motivated by self-interest, fear, or, perhaps, love, Ferdinand accepted the terms Isabella offered, and the two thus established what historian Rafael Altamira calls a "diarchy," a "joint government by two monarchs." There is a qualification to their shared arrangement, however. As Altamira notes, this equality "existed between husband and wife with regard to the Crown's government of Castile. That co-participation was in no wise reflected in the government of Aragon, which was exclusively Ferdinand's prerogative." 

But, while no similar shared rule was negotiated in Ferdinand's kingdom, he ultimately named Isabella his co-regent in Aragon.

. . . . 

Isabella and Ferdinand, the great monarchs, who succeeded in uniting Spain, were not very successful in their offspring. Isabella and Ferdinand did have one son, Juan, but he died before succeeding his parents on their combined Spanish throne. 

I've already mentioned Isabella's daughters on occasion throughout this daybook, none of whom had a particularly happy or successful life (click the labels below to read more). Their eldest daughter, Isabel, princess of Asturias, was married first to Afonso of Portugal and then, after his death, was forced into a marriage with Afonso's uncle, Manuel of Portugal. Born in 1470, Isabel died in 1496, just twenty-seven years old. 

The Spanish monarchs' second daughter, Maria of Aragon, was married to her dead sister's widower, Manuel of Portugal, in 1500. Born in 1482, she gave birth to ten children (eight of whom survived infancy) before dying in 1517, at the age of thirty-four.

The story of Catalina--Catherine--of Aragon is well known and hardly a happy one. Born in 1485, she married, first, Arthur of England, and then, after his death, Henry VIII. She gave birth to at least six children (and may have suffered miscarriagaes), but only one daughter, Mary, survived. Abandoned by her husband, her marriage disolved, Catherine of Aragon died in 1536, just fifty years old.

I've written a lengthy post here about Juana of Castile, whose bizarre and tragic life was certainly long--she died at the age of seventy-five--but not at all happy. 

I've also written here about Isabella of Castile's daughter-in-law, Margaret of Austria, Prince Juan's wife. His life was short--he died at age nineteen. The formidable Margaret lived a full, successful, and remarkable life, the only one of Isabella's "daughters" who seemed to profit from the model of Isabella of Castile.

. . . . 

Isabella of Castile was a formidable queen, though not entirely an admirable one, at least from a twenty-first century perspective. On 31 March 1492 she issued the Alhambra Decree, an edict of expulsion to be carried out against Spanish Jews, who were accused of posing a great danger to Christians: a "great harm" is enacted on Christians because of the "contact, intercourse and communication which they have with the Jews, who always attempt in various ways to seduce faithful Christians from our Holy Catholic Faith."

Jews were given four months to convert to Christianity or to leave the country; if they left, they necessarily had to leave behind all their property, though they were allowed to take with them what they could carry--except, of course, for gold, silver, or "minted money." The numbers of Jews forced to leave Spain was considerable, though estimates vary from 130,000 to 800,000. For those who "converted," between 50,000 and 70,000, the Inquisition was a constant danger. Added suspicions of the Jewish conversos was an ever-more-rigid view of the "purity" or "cleanliness" of Spanish--that is, not Jewish Spanish--blood.

While the terms of the 1491 Treaty of Granada, ending the Reconquista, had guaranteed rights and religious tolerance to the surrending Moors, there were increasing pressures on the Moors to convert. Revolts in 1499 and 1500 led to a change in policy, with the Spanish Moors, too, forced either to convert to Christianity or to face expulsion. Those who converted and remained in Spain, the moriscos, also faced the persecutions of the Inquisition. (In 1609, Philip III of Spain issued a final expulsion order for all moriscos.)

Despite these unpleasant realities, in 1958, a process of canonization was started for Isabella of Castile. In 1970 the commission of experts examining the case reported that "A Canonical process for the canonization of Isabella the Catholic could be undertaken with a sense of security since there was not found one single act, public or private, of Queen Isabella that was not inspired by Christian and evangelical criteria; moreover there was a 'reputation of sanctity' uninterrupted for five centuries and as the investigation was progressing, it was more accentuated."

In 1972, her case was submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Isabella of Castile was awarded the title "Servant of God" in 1974. (This title represents the first stage in the canonization process, followed by "venerable," "beatified," and, finally, "saint.")

*Parts of this post have been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan).