The Death of Queen Isabella - Isabella: The Warrior Queen

On October 12, 1504, Queen Isabella I of Spain signed her testament. From the article:

"The Death of Queen Isabella
Between 1502 and 1504, there was no masking Isabella’s decline in health, and it was limiting what she could accomplish. She had good days and bad, and she couldn’t predict when they would occur. She explained this to her son-in-law, King Manuel, in a letter of November 21, 1502:

I received your letter brought by Juan de Ferreyra, your ambassador. And I much wanted to dispatch to you [an answer] before now [but could not] because of my bad condition. Then I felt better, but I had two relapses and I am unable to write by hand.… Thanks be to God, I am doing better but still am not able to do it.… Serene and excellent king, my very dear and very beloved son, may God have you in his special guard and protection.1

But in October 1504, Isabella’s health suddenly took a turn for the worse. She was swollen with dropsy, burning with fever, gasping for breath, desperately thirsty but unable to eat. Tumors and lumps were visible under her skin. The physicians attending the queen gave up any hope for a possible cure. Queen Isabella, almost completely bedridden, used the final reserves of her strength to compose her last will and testament.

The Castilian court grew hushed and fearful, worried for her but also increasingly worried for itself. The succession seemed troublingly uncertain with Juana and Philip far away in Flanders and King Ferdinand’s position uncertain. Everyone was wrestling with the need to pick sides in the coming conflict. “Woe to all Spain!” wrote Peter Martyr to his friends Hernán de Talavera and the Count of Tendilla, describing the queen’s worsening symptoms. “… We see the faces of the King and the internal servants cloudy. It is already murmured what will come to pass if she departs.”2

They were fearful about the future of Spain, because Isabella had dispelled the chaos of the past and nobody was certain whether the transfer of power would occur peacefully or through violence. Many Spaniards had come to believe that Isabella alone was the bulwark that kept mayhem at bay, that she had brought peace to a tortured land. Martyr wrote to another courtier:

You inquired yesterday when we sat together sorrowful in the palace what I think of the sinking Queen. I dread lest virtue and religion should desert us with her. It is to be desired that where she herself goes, we when called from earth may depart to the same place. She has lived having surpassed every human height so that she cannot die; she will finish her mortality with death, not die. Therefore we must grieve but she is to be envied for she will enjoy a double life. For she will leave the world adorned with [her] perpetual fame, but she herself will live for ever with God in heaven.3

All over Spain, people went to church to pray for Queen Isabella’s survival, pledging to do penance or to make pilgrimages if she were to be spared. They read doom from dark portents—an earthquake that had hit in the spring had caused walls and towers to tumble and crushed people in debris; freakish bad weather that struck unexpectedly in Andalusia, causing famine and then disease. Spaniards had time to weigh all such omens, for Isabella had been sick since 1502 but grew progressively weaker and weaker over about a three-month period in the fall of 1504.

In England Catherine, waiting anxiously for word about her mother’s health, wrote to ask how she was doing. Catherine said she had been encouraged to hear from her sister Juana that her mother’s attacks of ague were lessening, and she was hoping her mother was improving. She told Isabella to write back soon, because she could not be “satisfied or cheerful” until she received a letter from her letting her know that she had recovered.4 Frantic for word, she sent multiple copies of the letter on November 26, just to make sure one of them reached her mother.

Queen Isabella, meanwhile, was hanging on, waiting for a particular document to arrive—the dispensation that would allow Catherine to marry Prince Henry. A copy of it was sent to her ahead of its formal release and under a “seal of secrecy,” the English bishop of Worcester told King Henry VII, “for her consolation, when on her deathbed.”5

When that arrived, her work was finished. At last the time came when the queen saw the end was drawing near, and she asked that last rites be administered to her. The Holy Sacraments were performed, including a ceremonial anointing of her eyes, ears, nose, lips, and hands with holy oil blessed by the priest, and with the doctors, family, and close friends gathered round saying prayers.

Ferdinand was there, and Isabella’s childhood friend Beatriz de Bobadilla, as well as her confessor Cisneros, the archbishop of Toledo.

She asked King Ferdinand to promise not to marry again. This request may have come from jealousy of a future bride, but it also may have reflected her desire to discourage Ferdinand from remarrying so that their children’s inheritances would be protected. Ferdinand swore he would not, according to Zurita, who said that “several people affirmed” that that pledge had been made.6

Normally the sacrament of Extreme Unction involved anointing the feet of the person who was dying, but Queen Isabella would not allow anyone in the room to see her feet except the priest, an odd action that chroniclers attributed to her modesty and chastity.

Isabella’s last recorded action was making the sign of the cross with her hand across her chest as the priests finished their prayers. She died about noon on November 26, 1504, the same day Catherine was writing to her so frantically. Isabella was fifty-three years old.

“And so ended the days of the Most Excellent Queen Doña Isabella, honor of the Spains and mirror of all women, in Medina del Campo,” Santa Cruz wrote. There was a spontaneous outpouring of grief “at the court and in all the cities, and with great reason, for they had lost a queen of such a kind that nature had never before made such a person ever before to rule over a nation.”7

The sky itself seemed to be weeping, as the most tremendous storms in living memory broke loose from the clouds. King Ferdinand notified rulers throughout Europe of her death and ordered her body transported to Granada, though he did not accompany it himself. And so the entourage, including the loyal Peter Martyr, set out for Andalusia.

The word went out everywhere, and Isabella’s passing was deeply grieved in many places. “In all the realms,” wrote the historian Jerónimo Zurita,

her death was mourned with such great pain and sentiment, not just by her subjects and countrymen, but commonly by all, that the least of the praise was that she had been the most excellent and valiant woman seen, not just in her time but for many centuries. This very Christian queen took great account of sacred things and to increasing our Holy Catholic faith, and she did it with such study and care that it served to the advantage of everyone who reigns in all Christendom.8

In the Book of the Courtier, the Italian Baldessare Castiglione, who had lived in Spain, called Isabella one of the greatest rulers of Europe in recent memory.

Unless the people of Spain—lords and commoners, men and women, poor and rich—have all conspired to lie in praising her, there has not been in our time anywhere on earth a more shining example of true goodness, of greatness of spirit, of prudence, of piety, of chastity, of courtesy, of liberality—in short of every virtue—than Queen Isabella; and although the fame of that lady is very great everywhere and among all nations, those who lived in her company and who personally witnessed her actions, all affirm that this fame sprang from her virtue and merits. And whoever considers her deeds will easily see that such is the truth. For, leaving beside countless things that bear witness to this, and that could be recounted if it were to our purpose, everyone knows that, when she came to rule, she found the greater part of Castile held by the grandees; nevertheless, she recovered the whole with such justice and in such manner that the very men who were deprived of it remained greatly devoted to her and content to give up what they possessed. Another notable thing is the courage and wisdom she always showed in defending her realms against very powerful enemies; and in such a long and hard war against obstinate enemies—who were fighting for property, for life, for religion, and (to their way of thinking) for God—she always showed, both in her counsel and in her very person, such ability that perhaps few princes in our time have dared, I will not say to imitate her, but even to envy her.9

Castiglione said she had set a new standard for behavior in Spain:

There arose thus among the people a very great veneration for her, comprised of love and fear, and a veneration still so fixed in the minds of all that it almost seems that they expect her to be watching them from heaven, and think she might praise or blame them from up there; and so those realms are still governed by her fame and by the methods instituted by her, so that, although her life is ended, her authority lives on—like a wheel which, when spun a long while by force, continues to turn by itself for a good space, even though no one impels it any more.10

Even her enemies in other countries recognized her merits. Isabella was “by report, one of the wisest and most honourable persons in the world,” wrote the Frenchman Philippe de Commynes.11

She had spent the last two months of her life writing and rewriting her will, which she left as a blueprint for what she wished to happen in Spain after her death. She was farsighted in seeing what was likely to go wrong.

She ordered that the succession go to her daughter, the Princess Juana, as “Queen Proprietress of these my said Realms, lands and lordships, whom God has allowed me to name head of the kingdom.”12 The crown was to go directly to Juana. But Isabella added this caveat: that if Juana were absent or “should prove unwilling or unable to govern,” then Ferdinand should serve as regent until Prince Charles, Juana’s oldest son, was twenty years old and could assume the throne. Isabella specifically urged Juana and Philip to be “very obedient” to Ferdinand because of his “eminent virtues.” She pointedly excluded Archduke Philip from any specific role in ruling Spain, a conscious decision on her part.

Isabella made sure to provide comfortably for Ferdinand by ensuring that he would receive the lucrative masterships of the three religious military orders, as well as half the income each year that came to the throne from the discoveries in the Americas. In her will, she praised him effusively. The vast wealth she was leaving to him was, she said, “less than I could wish and far less than he deserves considering the eminent services he has rendered the state.”13

She expressed her deep attachment to her husband in words that far exceed the typical pleasantries of legal documents. She was leaving him her jewels “so that, seeing them, he may be reminded of the singular love I always bore him while living, and that I am waiting for him in a better world; by which remembrance he may be encouraged to live the more justly and holy in this.”14

She asked that the dowries for Catherine and María be paid in full, under the terms of the agreements made for each marriage. This would allow the young women to move ahead in their marriages without financial quarrels.

She asked to be buried in the place that marked her greatest victory—in Granada, in the Church of San Francisco in the Alhambra. People should not wear mourning clothing but instead use the money that would have been spent on such clothes as gifts for the poor. She asked that her debts be paid.

She ordered large sums for charity, including 2 million maravedis to give dowries to poor girls so they could marry or enter religious vocations. She asked that money be provided to buy the freedom of two hundred captives who were being held by what she called the infidels. The money for these bequests should come from selling her personal possessions.

She asked that the kingdom appreciate the valuable contribution made by Andrés de Cabrera and his wife, Beatriz de Bobadilla, so that they would hold their posts as Marqués and Marquesa of Moya for all time, as would their descendants. She also singled out for specific praise Gonzalo Chacón, her childhood tutor and mentor, and Garcilasso de la Vega, who had served as her ambassador to the Vatican. Chacón was one of the men who had impressed upon her the possibility of a female role model in Joan of Arc, all those years ago, back in Arévalo. Garcilasso de la Vega was the courtier who had battled on her behalf with Pope Alexander VI about his corruption.

Her religious principles remained at the forefront of her thoughts. Queen Isabella sought to impress upon her children and grandchildren their obligation to protect and advance the Christian faith, instructing them to follow the commandments of the church and to maintain the Inquisition. She told them to never give up Gibraltar, the rocky outcrop where the North Africans had staged their invasion of Spain back in 711, saying that the city and area should be permanent properties of the crown and part of the royal patrimony.

One of her most interesting gestures was toward her brother Enrique, the king with whom she had so dramatically differed when she married Ferdinand and took the throne. As though to make amends with him, Isabella left her single most valued possession, arelic that she believed to have been owned by Jesus Christ and that she believed had healing powers, to his beloved Church of San Antonio, on the edge of Segovia. The relic was a small piece of bloodied cloth said to be a remnant of Christ’s seamless tunic, worn on the day of his crucifixion.

San Antonio, Enrique’s boyhood home, had been converted into a monastery and later, under Isabella’s reign, into a convent of the Clarissa order. There the nuns performed spiritual and community outreach to workers who eked out their livings scrubbing woolskins under Segovia’s Roman aqueduct. In the convent the nuns cared for the infants whose mothers were unable to support them, either because of poverty or illegitimacy.

Living in a cloistered order, the nuns kept the tiny piece of cloth as a sacred object and believed it to have miraculous powers in healing female ailments and diseases. A wisdom tooth was attached to it. The nuns believed the tooth belonged to Isabella, and she left it there so something of herself would always remain in Segovia and would rest next to something that had once belonged to Jesus Christ.

Moreover, Isabella ordered that if it was impossible to transport her body to her intended burial spot in Granada, she should be placed at rest instead in that convent, or at the monastery and church she had ordered built in Toledo called San Juan de los Reyes.

She asked to be buried in a Franciscan habit, with her beloved daughter Princess Isabel brought to rest by her side. She wanted a simple stone to mark her grave, level with the ground.

She later added a codicil that included a number of small items she had overlooked and that set out two more instructions. Both reflected her awareness of the coming ecclesiastical and imperial challenges that her nation would face. She asked that the reform of the monasteries continue, “to avoid damages and scandals.” And she specified that the “principal intention” of the discoveries of the new lands across the Atlantic had been “the evangelization and conversion of the natives to the Catholic faith,” and the residents of the New World should not be injured but instead should be “justly treated.”15

After Isabella died, King Ferdinand announced her death to the public and sent out messengers across Spain with the news. He reported that Juana was queen and that he would help her rule. He took responsibility for administration of the government, because Juana was not there. She would need to travel to Spain, and it would take a while.

Ferdinand ordered the funeral cortege to set out for Granada right away. It was pouring rain, and people wondered whether to wait a while for a break in the weather, but Ferdinand insisted, and nobody wanted to question the king. He sent them on their way, hauling the coffin, but did not accompany the casket himself. Peter Martyr was part of the funeral procession, which he recalled later as a terrible ordeal: “We seemed driven by the storms of the sea.… We crossed through the valleys and plains, almost swimming, we had perpetual pools and lakes in the way. We were overwhelmed with clay and mud everywhere.”16

They passed through Isabella’s childhood home of Arévalo and continued south. The leaders frequently took counsel among themselves, wondering if it made sense to continue to travel in such difficult conditions. In Toledo they seriously considered stopping until the weather improved, but they were afraid of angering Ferdinand and kept moving forward, slipping, sliding, straining through the freezing rain and mud. People died on the trip, swept away by flood-swollen rivers, and pack animals drowned. “Nothing more dreadful ever happened to me,” Martyr wrote. “… We did not progress even one mile in which we were safe from the face of death.”17

At last, after weeks of travel, they reached Granada and placed Isabella’s body in a church of the Alhambra, until a more suitable resting place could be constructed.

It was almost as though she was never really destined to be buried in Granada, and that all nature was conspiring to block her passage there. It would have been so much simpler to keep her remains in Segovia, the beautiful city that she and her brother Enrique had loved, but the attendants were fearful of displeasing Ferdinand, and so they had struggled through the mud and mire for weeks until they arrived at the former capital of the Nasrid dynasty. Somehow getting to Granada always turned out to be a terrible and unforgettable ordeal.

She first was buried, in accordance with her instructions, in an austere chapel in a former palace of the Nasrid dynasty that had been converted into a Franciscan convent.18

Later, in 1521, Isabella was moved once again: her body was placed beneath an imposing marble effigy in a sumptuous cathedral that was constructed in the center of Granada. She had wanted a simple grave, with a marker level with the ground. She had wanted to be buried next to Princess Isabel, but her daughter’s body was never brought there. She lies surrounded by religious symbols, in the same way the Muslims had inscribed ONLY GOD IS VICTORIOUS, over and over, on the walls of the Alhambra."