THE V\'ESTERN MEDITERRANEAN KINGDOMS 1200-1500that Muslims were interfering with new conversions, promp-
ted Charles V (Carlos I of Spain) to order the mass baptism
of the mudijares of Valencia and Aragon. Even then the prac-
tice of Islam continued in secret until the early seventeenth
century, when renewed rebellion resulted in a mass expulsion
of the people who were now known as the Moriscos.^33
The Christianisation of Spain was, to Isabella at least, a
moral issue. Attempts were also made to enforce dracon-
ian legislation against homosexuals, who in the most severe
cases might face castration and execution. Since Henry IV of
Castile was strongly suspected of sodomy, this policy had a
political message also: the recovery of her kingdom from the
chaos of Henry's reign could be achieved by the purification
of Spain, with the Inquisition as the single tool which could
reach into the furthest corners of Castile, Aragon and even
the as yet unconquered Navarre, which expelled its own Jews
in 1498. It remains an open question whether Ferdinand,
who certainly liked to take credit for expelling Spain's Jews,
had the same priorities. When he conquered Naples he
allowed the richer Jews to remain behind, a reminder that
(as with the Valencian Muslims) there were always financial
dimensions to Ferdinand's approach to moral questions.
The imponderable question was where the marriage of the
two monarchs would actually lead. The failure of Ferdinand
and Isabella to provide a surviving male heir to their crowns
resulted in a succession of expedients to find a future king:
the Infante John died in 1497. A contemporary Jewish view
was that these problems were the judgement of God against
two rulers who were seen as persecutors of Israel. For a brief
moment new hopes of a male succession arose out of the
decision to create warmer ties with Portugal, whose king mar-
ried Isabella's daughter; in 1498 she gave birth to a son who
was therefore heir to all of Castile, Aragon and Portugal.
The personal union achieved by Ferdinand and Isabella was
surely about to be deepened and extended with the eventual
succession of a single ruler. But the infant soon died. It now
seemed likely that the succession would devolve on another
- S. Haliczer, Inquisition and society in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478-1834
(Berkeley /Los Angeles, 1990); W. Monter, Frontiers of heresy. The Span-
ish Inquisition from the Basque lands to Sicily (Cambridge, 1990); A.
Chejne, Islam and the West: the Moriscos. A cultural and social history
(Albany, NY, 1983).