Catholic Monarchs: Foreign and Internal Policies
Foreign Policy of the Catholic Monarchs
They had two main strategies:
Political marriages of their children with heirs of monarchs in European courts.
Military interventions of conquest in the Mediterranean, especially in the Italian peninsula and North Africa by Aragon.
Marriages of their children:
Elizabeth married Prince Alfonso of Portugal, and later Manuel I of Portugal, her first cousin.
John was very sick, but they married him to Margarita, the daughter of the King of Austria. He died at age 18.
Juana (la Loca) married Philip (the Fair), grandson of Emperor Maximilian I of Austria.
Mary married Manuel I of Portugal, after the death of her sister Isabel.
Catherine married Arthur, the Crown Prince of England, who died prematurely, and later married his brother, Henry VIII of England.
Elizabeth II: She married the heir to the Portuguese crown, Manuel I, the Fortunate. They had a son, Miguel. The mother died in childbirth, so he was the heir to the crowns of all the Iberian Peninsula. However, he died two years later. After Manuel the Fortunate married Mary (daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella), their son inherited the crown of Portugal.
Juana the Mad: Married to the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Philip the Handsome, son of the German Emperor Maximilian of Austria. Their child was Charles, who inherited all the mainland territories, Austrian, German… Charles V of Spain and Germany.
Catherine: She married the King of England, Henry VIII. He had previously been married to her brother. Henry VIII had six marriages; with Catherine, he had a daughter named Mary, who was queen and persecuted all Protestants, hence being known as Bloody Mary. Henry VIII asked the Pope for a divorce from Catherine to marry another, but Ferdinand II of Aragon told the Pope that if he did, he would attack Rome, so the divorce was denied.
Therefore, Henry separated the Church of England, and Anglicanism emerged. He declared himself head of Anglicanism and granted himself a divorce. In his other marriages, he was accused of killing or betrayal, which was not the case with Catherine; he also allowed her to retain the title of queen.
Internal Politics of the Catholic Monarchs (Religious Uniformity)
The Tribunal of the Holy Inquisition was established by papal authority in the thirteenth century to repress heresy and other acts considered crimes against the Christian faith, such as superstition or witchcraft.
The Catholic Monarchs first reinforced it in Aragon and then spread it to the rest of the territory.
The Inquisition was independent of the Holy See, a secular court funded and directed by the monarchy. Religious unity was achieved to combat the threat of heresy and the large mass of converted Jews (conversos) felt by the Catholic Monarchs.
Torture and executions were common, often by burning at the stake (hoguera) in a crowded place. (In Palma, Plaza Gomila was used.)
They would not expel Jews who converted to Catholicism. It began in 1482 in Andalusia, although it was not approved until the expulsion on March 31, 1492. 150,000 Jews left the peninsula, representing the loss of a laborious and entrepreneurial minority that later affected the economy.