AboutMax Kimball Expertise I'll be glad to answer any question related to Medieval Europe, the Byzantine Empire, and the rise of Islam and Christianity during the period 300-1500.
Experience I've studies history for nearly 20 years. I'm currently also volunteering in the US and European history catergories.
Expert: Max Kimball Date: 2/23/2007 Subject: Isabel of Castile
Question While I've read much about the children of Isabel and Ferdinand, Isabel herself remains something of an enigma. I've read that she was considered an equal to her husband while she was alive, her daughters (particularly Juana and Catalina, later Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England) were schooled to be rather submissive women as was required of the Catholic dogma of the day.
How do we reconcile the relative "liberation" of Isabel to the more conservative upbringing of her daughters and ultimately her granddaughter Mary I of England. (Mary's tutor Vives actually taught her that women were the one and only imperfect thing in God's creation!)
Answer Hi LJ,
I'll be glad to help with your question.
You're exactly right that Queen Isabella was considered equal to Ferdinand during their marriage. That equality was based on her status as sovereign of Castile, rather than on novel feminist ideas that she may have espoused.
Yet, her personality was crucial in ensuring that her royal status was respected. If she hadn't been intelligent, self-confident, and assertive, she could have been dominated by her husband. But her royal birthright was a prerequisite to her having an egalitarian marriage. Without that, she simply would have been Ferdinand's wife. That doesn't mean she would have been a nonentity. But it means that her influence would have depended on Ferdinand's allowance of it, not Isabella's personal power, as was the case.
To consider Isabella "liberated" may be a mischaracterization, LJ. She didn't rebel, or even question, the predominating assumptions about gender relations, marital relations, or child-rearing. She was a strict Catholic, after all, and rigidly adhered to Catholic doctrine, which wasn't exactly libertine.
Isabella represents that rare person who deviated from social conventions, without rejecting them. In that she was intent on retaining her royal prerogatives as Queen, and maintained a marriage of equals, she deviated from the norm. But she didn't try to dominate her husband, didn't liberalize society by deed or example, and didn't promote liberal ideas among her people or her family, showing she didn't reject convention. Examples of similar women are Eleanor of Aquataine, Queen Elizabeth I, and Theodora, wife of Byzantine Emperor Justinian. These women were unconventional in certain ways, but didn't reject the values of their times, as demonstrated by their overall behavior.
Isabella intended, and succeeded, in using the force of her personality to retain and use the power and status with which she was born. She wasn't, however, a social revolutionary who harbored ideas about female equality. She was ultimately a conservative Catholic monarch, who didn't see marriage and exercising her royal powers as mutually-exclusive.
I hope this is helpful, LJ. Please let me know if you have further questions.
