Ferdinand V

I

Introduction

Ferdinand V (1452-1516), King of Castile (1474-1504); as Ferdinand II he was also King of Sicily (1468-1516) and of Aragón (1479-1516), and as Ferdinand III, King of Naples (1504-1516). He was called El Católico (“The Catholic”), and with his wife, Isabella I of Castile, he united the Spanish kingdoms into one state and initiated its colonial expansion in the New World.

II

Early Life

Ferdinand was born in Sos, Aragón, on March 10, 1452, the son of John II of Aragón and Juana Enriquez, both of Castilian descent. At the age of nine he was named by John as his heir. In 1466, after seeing military service in the Catalan Civil War (1462-1472)—also known as the War of the Remences, a remenca (serf) revolt in Catalonia (united with Aragón since 1137) against excessive seigniorial demands—Ferdinand became governor-general of Aragón, and in 1468 he was named by his father as king of Sicily (it had previously been ruled by a branch of the Aragonese dynasty). In October of the following year, in Valladolid, Ferdinand married his cousin, Princess Isabella, sister of Henry IV of Castile. It was a politically motivated marriage supported by his father, who sought a return to and alliance with the Court of Castile, a larger and richer kingdom than Aragón. In addition, John realized that Isabella needed support to take the Castilian throne; the claim of her brother’s daughter, Juana la Beltraneja, to the throne was supported by Alfonso V of Portugal.

III

King of Castile

In December 1474 Ferdinand acceded to the Castilian throne when Isabella proclaimed herself queen of Castile upon the death of her brother. By his marriage Ferdinand had hoped to obtain the Castilian crown for himself, but Isabella firmly retained sovereign authority in her own realm. The succession was contested by Alfonso V, but in the subsequent War of the Castilian Succession his army was defeated at Toro, in Castile, in 1476. Ferdinand was with Isabella throughout the war, and the Treaty of Alcáçovas in September 1479, which ended the war, affirmed both Isabella’s rule in Castile and the royal couple’s acceptance by the Castilian nobility.

IV

Kingdoms United

In January 1479 Ferdinand became king of Aragón upon the death of his father, John II. Just as Ferdinand had become king of Castile with Isabella’s succession, so she became queen of Aragón with his, heralding a political union that became the basis of modern Spain. However, there was no actual union of the two kingdoms, and Ferdinand and Isabella each exercised sovereign power in their own realm only, with their respective governmental institutions kept apart. Yet the political outlooks of the two rulers were so similar that in both kingdoms ambitious measures were introduced to strengthen the power of the monarchy while weakening that of the nobles, who had previously usurped many Crown rights and activities.

In 1480 Isabella called a Cortes (parliament) at Toledo, the capital of Castile, to lay the legislative and administrative basis for royal absolutism there, creating a modern, centralized state. Although Aragón tended to be neglected by a union that focused attention on strengthening royal authority in the stronger Castile, Ferdinand was still able to govern his kingdom without the need to call a Cortes. The reforms he did initiate included introducing elected officials to the institutions of government, while protectionist measures in commerce and industry were designed to stimulate the economy. More significantly, after a new remenca insurrection in 1485, Ferdinand, who sympathized with its struggle against the nobles, agreed to the Sentencia Arbitral de Guadalupe of 1486, which outlawed the more severe seigniorial abuses and allowed individual remences (serfdoms) to be redeemed by payment. It left Aragón as a rural society that was still feudal in character, but significantly reformed and centralized.

Universal adherence to the Roman Catholic religion in both kingdoms was an essential element of Ferdinand and Isabella’s determination to unite Spain. In 1476 Ferdinand organized the Santa Hermandad, or Holy Brotherhood, a type of national military police, and in 1478 a bull issued by Pope Sixtus IV allowed Ferdinand and Isabella to appoint three inquisitors to deal with heretics and other offenders against the Church. This marked the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition, and although it was founded for religious purposes, and was originally directed mainly against Conversos (Jews who had converted) and Marranos (Jews who had insincerely converted), it soon became a political instrument of the absolute monarchy, weakening further the position of the nobles.

The most significant events of Ferdinand’s reign, however, came in 1492, a year that opened with the conquest of Granada and ended with a united Spain taking the first steps towards creating a truly global empire. The campaign against Granada, an independent Muslim state and the last Moorish stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula, had begun in 1482, and stemmed from Ferdinand and Isabella’s drive to create a united Christian nation. Although the greater population and economic strength of Castile saw it play a dominant role, Ferdinand’s military and political leadership proved outstanding in a series of victories that culminated in the capture of Granada on January 2, 1492, and the completion of the Reconquista. Soon after, Tomás de Torquemada, the inquisitor-general of Castile, was able to convince Ferdinand of the need to forcibly convert or expel the Jews from the newly unified country, and about 150,000 Jews were forced to move abroad. Initially, the Muslims of the newly conquered Granada were granted religious freedom, but pressure to convert to Christianity soon increased, and they too found themselves on the receiving end of a policy of forced expulsion or conversion (those who remained and converted to Christianity were known as Moriscos). So successful at enforcing the purity of the faith were Ferdinand and Isabella that in December 1496 Pope Alexander VI granted them the title “The Catholic Kings”.

The final momentous event of 1492 occurred in August when an expedition led by Christopher Columbus to find a westward route to the Indies, sponsored by both Ferdinand and Isabella, set sail from the small Spanish seaport of Palos on an epoch-making voyage to America that initiated the first steps in the creation of a Spanish overseas empire (see Spanish Empire). In Europe too the policy became one of attaining major power status. To achieve this, Ferdinand strove for good relations with Portugal and the isolation of France through alliances with England and the Austrian Habsburg Empire, countries hostile to France. The marriages of his and Isabella’s five children were arranged to meet this goal: Isabella to Alfonso, Crown Prince of Portugal, in 1490, and then, after his death in 1491, to Emanuel of Portugal in 1497; John to Margaret, the daughter of the Habsburg emperor, Maximilian I, in 1497; Joanna to Philip, duke of Burgundy, and son of Maximilian I, in 1496; Maria to Emanuel of Portugal, after her sister Isabella’s death in 1498; and Catherine to Henry VIII of England in 1509.

Another foreign policy success for Ferdinand came in 1493 when, by the terms of a treaty between Spain and France, he recovered from Charles VIII the ancient province of Roussillon (now forming the French department of the Pyrénées-Orientales), which Ferdinand’s father had mortgaged to Louis XI. Ferdinand also gained territory in Italy, thus reinforcing the Spanish presence in the western Mediterranean. After Charles VIII invaded Italy and expelled Ferdinand’s cousin, Alfonso II, from the throne of Naples, Ferdinand helped expel the French by 1496 and install Alfonso’s son, Ferdinand, on the Neapolitan throne. In 1501, following the latter’s death, Ferdinand agreed with Charles to partition Naples between them. The agreement soon fell apart, but by 1504 Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba had succeeded in conquering Naples on behalf of Ferdinand, who soon after accepted its throne.