Ferdinand and Isabella

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 âtotal warâ by fifteenth-century standards against Muslim Granada leading to that kingdomâs conquest and an equally âtotalâ 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. . Language: English