Isabella: The Warrior Queen by Kirstin Downey

Author:Kirstin Downey
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780385534123
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-10-27T23:00:00+00:00

Despite these differences, Isabella was not looking for a showdown. She had some important business to conduct with the pope, and for now, points of contention were set aside. As soon as she received word from Columbus about his discoveries, she set out to make certain that she would have sole right to whatever had been found. She forwarded Columbus’s letter to the pope, asking for a determination on the ownership of these islands, even before the Genoese arrived in her court. Isabella must have sent her request to the pope by swift messengers as soon as she got word of Columbus’s discoveries.

The astute pope immediately understood, as Isabella had, the significance of the discoveries and the need for prompt action. He also understood that he owed much to the Spaniards, and particularly to Ferdinand. In addition to the political cover and support they afforded him, Ferdinand had allowed Cardinal Borgia, before becoming pope, to hold three lucrative Aragonese bishoprics at the same time, had provided a document that legitimized the pope’s son Cesare, and had nominated young Cesare to the bishoprics of Pamplona and Valencia. Ferdinand then agreed to permit the teenager to further rise to the rank of archbishop in Valencia.

In 1493, early in his tenure, Pope Alexander was eager to similarly accommodate Isabella and promptly issued four bulls on the New World. (Bulls were legal documents stamped with a seal of lead, or bulla, giving them special authenticity and significance.) All four gave Isabella exactly what she had asked. According to the twentieth-century historian Samuel Eliot Morison:

Eager to square himself with his royal patrons, he practically let them dictate a series of papal bulls on the new discoveries, without considering the just claims of Portugal. These four bulls were not arbitrary decisions. They were acts of papal sovereignty in favor of Castile based on the Holy Father’s presumed right to dispose of newly discovered lands and heathen peoples not hitherto possessed or governed by any Christian princes.12

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