Isabella la Catolica

Abstract

Grasping the leadership of Castile following 50 years of civil strife, political fragmentation and weak kingship, Isabella of Castile in the late fifteenth century imposed on her subjects her vision of a unified and powerful Castilian state propagating a pure, fundamental Christianity. While this vision produced one of the most cruel and enduring religious persecutions of Western history, any scruples she may have had ‘were subsumed by a greater duty … [her] commitment to make Castile one nation united by the purity of the Christian faith’, in the words of Nancy Rubin (Rubin, 1991: 303).