Isabella of Castile saintly or satanic? Part Two: A “second Joan of Arc”

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

“Joan [of Arc]'s life was being reconceived, reengineered,

as an acceptable role a woman could play in warfare”.

 

Kirstin Downey

 

 

Around and around it goes. Joan of Arc was widely regarded as having been a “second Judith”. See e.g. my article:

 

Judith of Bethulia and Joan of Arc

 

https://www.academia.edu/8815175/Judith_of_Bethulia_and_Joan_of_Arc

 

in which I wrote, for instance:

 

Donald Spoto in Joan. The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint (Harper, 2007) has a chapter five on Joan of Arc that he entitles “The New Deborah”. And Joan has also been described as a “second Judith”. Both Deborah and Judith were celebrated Old Testament women who had provided military assistance to Israel. ….

 

And the enigmatic Queen Isabella of Castile, variously described as being “a cruel villain” (Lisa J. Yarde) and a candidate for beatification:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/1428205/Spain-seeks-sainthood-for-Isabella.html has, for her part, been labelled a second Joan of Arc, or “Spain’s Joan of Arc”: http://www.nobility.org/2013/05/20/isabella-the-catholic-spains-joan-of-arc/

 

Isabella the Catholic: Spain’s Joan of Arc”

 

She pounced upon her advantage with all the energy of an awakening genius. Tireless, seemingly ubiquitous, she was almost constantly on horseback, going from one end of the kingdom to the other, making speeches, holding conferences, sitting up all night dictating letters to her secretaries, holding court all morning to sentence a few thieves and murderers to be hanged, riding a hundred miles or two, over cold mountain passes to plead with some lukewarm nobleman for five hundred soldiers. She knew and understood the word NECESSITY. She did not yet know the meaning of the word IMPOSSIBLE. All things were possible to God, and God was on her side. If she suffered from certain physical miseries, that was only to be expected; the work had to be done, it was necessary. Wherever she went the common people cheered her….

….

Moved to tears by her exhortations, the people believed her words, because it was obvious that she herself believed them with the irresistible sincerity of a child. Thanks to her skill…the end of June saw a considerable mobilization of hidalgos and the proletariat at several points. Isabel herself took command of several thousand men at Toledo, rode among them in armor, like Jeanne d’Arc; gave commands, organized, exhorted. ….

 

Or was Queen Isabella, perhaps, more of ‘an armchair warrior’ who read about Joan of Arc?

https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/isabella-castile-europe-greatest-queen-spain-who-was-she-what-famous-for-columbus/

 

Isabella, a self-taught Latin speaker who made sure her four daughters and one son were properly educated by Italian humanists, kept the story of Joan of Arc on her bookshelf. She was no frontline warrior herself – as a traditionalist, she saw that as man’s work – but she enjoyed the challenges of warfare and became her own army’s quartermaster-general and armourer, plotting campaigns alongside Ferdinand. She built up a contingent of artillery so powerful that it turned the art of medieval warfare on its head. Thick castle walls, previously a guarantee of safety, crumbled before her cannon. ….

 

Kirstin Downey has also, in her book Isabella: The Warrior Queen – that I am currently reading – recognised Queen Isabella as being somewhat in the mould of (or moulded by teachers to be) Joan of Arc: “The goal of those circulating these stories may have been to influence Isabella and bring her to see herself as a second Joan of Arc”.

Firstly, in a review of her book we read:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-isabella-the-warrior-queenby-kirstin-downey/2014/11/21/26b97730-4426-11e4-b47c-f5889e061e5f_story.html

 

Her realization that Isabella’s “meteoric rise to power” occurred at a moment in history when women seldom wielded monarchical authority provided an additional inspiration for this work, whereas her apparent admiration for the queen’s equestrian skills and reported presence on various battlefields seemingly contributed to Downey’s decision to label Isabella a “warrior queen,” Spain’s equivalent of France’s legendary Joan of Arc.

 

 

‘Isabella: The Warrior Queen’ by Kirstin Downey (Nan A. Talese)

 

Otherwise, Downey’s Isabella is pious, a loyal and forgiving wife, and a devoted and loving mother. But the author takes issue — and this is the central theme of the book — with the tendency of historians, “blinded by their own sexisim,” to portray Isabella merely as Ferdinand’s sidekick. Instead Downey represents Ferdinand as a corrupt, feckless ruler more interested in attending to his libido than to the business of state, and Isabella as the living embodiment of the medieval tradition of the “ideal prince.”

 

Kirstin Downey herself has written about Isabella (pp. 40-42):

 

Fascinating news came from France when Isabella was about five. Europe was engaged in an intense reevaluation of the role of Joan of Arc, the French teenager who had organized her countrymen around a religious banner to eject a foreign invader.

…. Joan's experience and sacrifice was a story that many men and women of a spiritual bent found mesmerizing in these last days of the medieval era. People everywhere debated what role God had played in helping Joan achieve her signal victories.

….

Some of the people who were educating Isabella had been much taken with Joan and her military successes. Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo, one of the clerics associated with the Castilian court, had been living in France during Joan's meteoric career and was a fervent admirer of hers. Gonzalo Chacón, head of their household staff and the husband of Isabella's governess, shared his recollections of how Isabella's father had welcomed Joan's envoys with great respect. He carried about with him a letter purportedly from Joan herself and displayed it like a holy relic. He is believed to have been the author who wrote about a character like Joan in an anonymous chronicle, saying that God alone had inspired her. …. Some versions of that chronicle, the book known as La Poncella de Francia, were explicitly dedicated to Princess Isabella. In this version of the tale, the young woman called La Poncella did not die but rode off happily into the sunset. ….

 

Some of the people around Isabella may have been presenting Joan of Arc's life as an ideal that Isabella could emulate, as a “heaven-sent” woman who could “save the realm” from an outside invader. …. Joan's life was being reconceived, reengineered, as an acceptable role a woman could play in warfare. The goal of those circulating these stories may have been to influence Isabella and bring her to see herself as a second Joan of Arc. In any case, whether the idea was impressed upon her or she came up with it herself, it found fertile ground in Isabella's imagination, because she already had a tendency to view herself as something of martyr for a cause and she had the kind of romantic temperament that appreciated people who made great sacrifices in pursuit of a common good. Moreover, she had a deep and fervent belief in miracles and signs from God. Soon she would seek out people to work with her who viewed the world in the same way. ….