Ferdinand and Isabella

Covering a couple rather than a single, dominant ruler, Ferdinand and Isabella looks at the issue of gender and the dynamics of marriage over thirty-five years, as well as the practice of monarchical power.  The book covers Ferdinand''s and Isabella’s struggle to establish their regime and then work out an elaborate reform programme in Church and state.  It sees them fight a ‘total war’ by fifteenth century standards, against Muslim Granada, and an equally ‘total war’ through the Inquisition and the Church in general to convert Spanish Jews and Muslims to Christianity.

Suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students of spanish history.

This book is about a couple, not a single, dominant ruler. Thus it raises issues of gender, and the dynamics of a marriage over thirty-five years, as well as the practice of monarchical power. The reader sees Ferdinand and Isabella struggle to establish their regime, and then work out an elaborate reform programme in Church and State. It sees them fight a ‘total war’, by fifteenth-century standards, against Muslim Granada, leading to that kingdom’s conquest, and an equally ‘total’ war, through the Inquisition and the Church in general, to convert Spanish Jews and Muslims to Christianity, and to reform and purify the religious and social lives of the established Christians themselves.  For readers interested in Early European History.