FERDINAND AND ISABELLA: THE CATHOLIC SOVEREIGNS 41
became a remarkable career of domestic progress
and imperial expansion.
Ferdinand and Isabella:
The Catholic Sovereigns
RESTORATION OF ORDER
The young monarchs faced an urgent problem of
restoring peace and order in their respective king-
doms. Catalonia was still troubled by struggles be-
tween feudal lords and serfs who were determined
to end their legal servitude. Ferdinand intervened
and proposed a solution that was relatively fa-
vorable to the peasantry. His ruling of Guadalupe
(1486)ended serfdom in Catalonia and enabled
fi fty thousand peasants to become small landown-
ers. He made no effort, however, to reform Aragón’s
archaic constitutional system, which set strict lim-
its on royal power. As a result, Castile and Aragón,
despite their newfound unity, continued to move
along divergent political courses.
The task of restoring order was greater in
Castile. The age of anarchy under Henry IV had
transformed cities into battlefi elds and parts of the
countryside into a desert. To eradicate the evils
of banditry and feudal violence, Isabella counted
above all on the support of the towns and the mid-
dle classes. The Cortes of Madrigal (1476) forged
a solid alliance between the crown and the towns
for the suppression of disorder. Their instrument
was the Santa Hermandad, a police force paid for
and manned principally by the towns but under
the direct control of the crown. The effi ciency of
this force and the severe and prompt punishments
meted out by its tribunals gradually restored peace
in Castile.
But Isabella’s program went beyond this im-
mediate goal. She proposed to bend to the royal
will all the great institutions of medieval Castile:
the nobility, the church, and the towns themselves.
The Cortes of Toledo of 1480 reduced the power of
the grandees (nobles of the fi rst rank) in various
ways. An Act of Resumption compelled them to
return to the crown about half the revenues they
had usurped since 1464. Another reform reorgan-
ized the Council of Castile, the central governing
agency of the kingdom. This reform reduced the
grandees who had dominated the old royal council
to holders of empty dignities. It vested effective re-
sponsibility and power in letrados (offi cials usually
possessed of legal training), who were drawn from
the lower nobility, the middle class, and conversos
(converted Jews).
The same end of curbing aristocratic power
was served by the establishment of a hierarchy
of courts and magistrates that ascended from the
corregidor(the royal offi cer who watched over the
affairs of a municipality) through the cancillerías
(the high law courts of Castile) up to the Council of
Castile, both the highest court and the supreme ad-
ministrative body of the country. At all levels, the
crown asserted its judicial primacy, including the
right of intervention in the feudal jurisdiction of
the nobility. However, lasting success in these en-
deavors required the crown to rely on more than its
coercive power, which alone could never secure its
borders or sustain its authority over a recalcitrant
population. As historian Jack Owens impressively
argues, aristocrats and commoners alike only rec-
ognized the crown’s “absolute royal authority”
when they believed that its judicial institutions
rendered fair judgments.
The vast wealth of the military orders made
them veritable states within the Castilian state,
and the crown was determined to weaken their
power by gaining control of them. When the grand
mastership of Santiago fell vacant in 1476, Isa-
bella personally appeared before the dignitaries of
the order to insist that they confer the headship
on her husband; they meekly assented. When the
grand masterships of Calatrava and Alcántara fell
vacant, they too were duly conferred on Ferdinand.
By these moves, the crown gained new sources of
revenue and patronage.
The towns had served the crown well in the
struggle against anarchy, but in the past two cen-
turies, their democratic traditions had declined,
and many had fallen under the control of selfi sh
oligarchies. Some, like Seville, had become bat-
tlefi elds of aristocratic factions. These disorders
provided Isabella with pretexts for resuming the
policy, which her predecessors had initiated, of
intervening in municipal affairs by introducing