Ferdinand II (King of Aragon)

He was the son of King Aragon Juan and his second wife, Juana Enriques . In 1461, after the death of his older brother Carlos, he became the heir to the crown, was appointed chief governor of Catalonia (1462) and in 1468 the king of Sicily . During the Catalan Civil War in which he took an active part, met with the state administration of his father.

After the death of King Alfonso of Castile in 1468, most of the nobility of Castile recognized his sister (second cousin Fernando) Isabel as the heir to his king. King Juan II made efforts to ensure that a marriage took place between her and his son, which happened on October 19, 1469. The bridegroom came to Castile for an incognito wedding, according to legend - disguised as a simple mule driver. The marriage was secretly signed by King Enrique, because he did not want the wedding of his half-sister and the heiress of the crown with the Prince of Aragon, but subsequently approved this union. At the same time, before the wedding, the papal bull , allowing the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella as relatives, was fabricated, and the true permission of the new Pope Sixtus IV for marriage was obtained only retroactively in 1471 by the Valencian Cardinal Borgia , the future pope (in exchange for the Valencian duchy of Gandia , given in 1483 to his illegitimate son Pedro Luis) ^[1] .

After the death of King Enrique and the imminent proclamation of Isabel as Queen of Castile, a civil war broke out in Castile between supporters of Isabel and supporters of the daughter of King Juana , which grew into a war with Portugal . Ferdinand, at the time of Enrique's death, who was in Aragon, was proclaimed in Castile simply the queen's spouse, but not the king.

After difficult negotiations, Ferdinand with his wife and Castilian nobility concluded the Segovian treaty in 1475, giving him the title of King of Castile ( Fernando V) and extensive rights, but the treasury and army of Castile and Leon still remained at the exclusive disposal of Isabella.

Fernando took an active part in the war with Portugal , leading the army and leading it at the Battle of Toro , as well as in clashes with the rebel feudal lords. The struggle ended in 1479 with the decisive defeat of Juana and the signing of the Alkasovash peace with Portugal . In the same year, Fernando succeeded his father, Juan II, becoming the sovereign king of Aragon.

In an age of almost complete absence of professional police in most European countries, Ferdinand was able to organize a whole police army, perfectly coping with all kinds of separatist and heretical movements.

This was the so-called “Holy Hermandad” ( Spanish Santa Hermandad ), which arose in the XIII century , mainly in Castilian cities. The “Brotherhood” then called itself a saint on the grounds that the townspeople who made it up and replenished its ranks with mercenaries set themselves the goal of fighting against robbers and robbing knights . There was a special tax for this purpose. Reliable (that is, not robbing) knights were often invited to serve in the city ermandadas, as people who were used to military enterprises. Ferdinand very skillfully took advantage of this institution to form a special police militia subordinate exclusively to the king. At first (in 1476 ) he made ermandad obligatory even where it was not; from Castile, the "brotherhood" was soon extended to Aragon. Ermandada Ferdinand took advantage of the struggle with the feudal lords , who for a long time did not want to recognize the royal city police, but in the end submitted. Since 1498, Ferdinand finally banished all traces of former elected city posts from ermandada and subordinated it directly to the central government; the tax that ensured the existence of the "brotherhood" remained in full force. Roads became safer, which immediately affected trade relations. Subsequently, Hermandade contributed to the fall of the Cortes , who had been growing fat under Ferdinand and who died in the 16th century.

Ferdinand and Isabella managed to finish the business, which their predecessors had already unsuccessfully embarked on several times. Papal treasury and private individuals willingly donated money when they learned that Ferdinand was going to go against the Moors , who still held the kingdom of Granada in the south of the peninsula. New taxes, specially created for this purpose, further strengthened the royal treasury, and in 1482 it was possible to start a war facilitated by dynastic strife between the heirs of the emirate. This war lasted ten years and made Ferdinand unusually popular even in those places of Castile where they could look at him as a tyrant and usurper . In 1492, Granada surrendered.

This success gave the Spaniards additional economic resources in the form of lands with developed agriculture, made it possible to gain the fighting experience of the Spanish troops, which they later showed in Italy, and Ferdinand and Isabella received the title of Catholic kings from Pope Innocent VIII , confirmed in 1496 and the next pope, Alexander VI .

The Inquisition existed in Spain before Ferdinand; bishops back in the 14th century they did a spiritual investigation, trial, and reprisal against heretics , but this trial was not consolidated and settled. Ferdinand and Isabella made the Inquisition a leveling force, which was to convert all of their subjects into a “single flock” in religious terms, just as the royal power equalized everyone in relation to the political. The right to appoint and remove the Inquisitors was entrusted by Pope Sixtus IV Bulla of November 1, 1478 to the Spanish monarchs themselves ^[2] . In 1483, Ferdinand appointed Thomas de Torquemada the general inquisitor of most of Spain.

In Spain, the first victims of the Inquisition were mostly converted to Christianity Jews, who were suspected of secretly returning to the old faith ^[3] . Later - Muslims who fictitiously converted to Christianity, and Spanish Christians accused of deviation from the faith. Repeat defendants were sentenced to death, but most escaped with milder sentences - sentences for large and small fines, confiscation of property (but it was necessary to establish the time the crime was committed and confiscate the money acquired since that moment), imprisonment, or imposed a post and penance or obligated a certain period to wear penitential clothes (sanbenito) ^[4] .

The exact number executed by the Spanish Inquisition caused controversy. One of the first historians of the Inquisition, Juan Llorente, suggested at the beginning of the XIX century that during the first 15 years of her work, about 8 800 people were burned, also about 6500 executed by asphyxiation, and there were about 30 thousand executed in several centuries of the organization’s history ^[5] . Modern experts call much smaller numbers, for example, G. Keyman believes that the total number of executed for the almost 20-year rule of Torquemada (the bloodiest period in the organization’s history) is about one and a half thousand people (and about the same for the next 300 years) ^{[4 ]} , prof. T. Madden writes about two thousand executed over the years of the work of Torquemada ^[3] . By 1500, mass hysteria about Jewish crosses who secretly returned to Judaism was on the decline ^[3] . Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros, the new general inquisitor, reformed the Inquisition, giving lay tribunals to each tribunal.

Ferdinand widely used for his purposes the confiscation of heretics ’property - he received a third of the fines and confiscated property by law and usually almost as much by the right of a strong one, because the three inquisitors appointed by him did not dare to protest against the violation of the privileges of the Papal See and the Inquisition, which the law was to go to the remaining two-thirds.

On March 31, 1492, in the Granada Palace of the Alhambra , amid the joy of the victory over the Moors, the Catholic kings Ferdinand and Isabella signed a decree on the expulsion of Jews from the territory of their kingdoms : they were ordered to either be baptized or leave Spain. After the death of Isabella in 1504, religious persecution did not stop completely, the Inquisition had already firmly established itself in all the possessions of the Spanish kings.

The Catholic kings violated one of the points of the Granada surrender , which ensured freedom of religion for Muslims. Although initially a surrender agreement guaranteed loyalty to the vanquished, the Spaniards soon began to oppress the Muslims. In 1502, they were ordered to either be baptized or leave Spain. Some of the Moors left their homeland, most were baptized; however, the baptized Moors ( Moriski ) did not get rid of the persecution and, finally, after a suppressed riot, they were expelled from Spain by King Philip III .

The Catholic kings sent Christopher Columbus expedition in search of a way to India. In 1493, two months after the return of Columbus, Castile and Portugal received from Alexander VI the bull Inter caetera , according to which the land to the west and south of the line, which runs a hundred leagues west and south of any of the islands of the Azores or the islands of Cape Verde belonged to Castile. A new agreement of the countries was reached in 1494 (Treaty of Tordesillas ), according to which Portugal “received” all the lands east of the line that runs 270 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands , while the Spaniards received all the lands west (as it turned out later, they included the entire western part of the American continent and the Pacific islands).

Characteristically, Ferdinand looked at the discovery of America as a fact of lesser importance than the almost simultaneous accession of Roussillon to Aragon. When the Portuguese Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India in 1499, the Portuguese were jealous of the Portuguese; all the more so since Columbus never reached India, the gold reserves in the first Spanish possessions on the islands of the Caribbean turned out to be scanty and generally at the beginning of the 16th century. possessions in the New World have not yet given much income. However, the heirs of Ferdinand could already verify the vastness of the material means that were endowed by Spain with the discovery of Christopher Columbus ^[6] .

Soon after the fall of Granada, Ferdinand succeeded under the Barcelona Treaty return Roussillon to the Aragonese crown and other border northern areas that were in the hands of Charles VIII , king of France . Two years after the Turks-Barcelona treaty, the condition of which was Ferdinand’s non-interference in the war of Carl in Italy , the treaty was violated by both parties and Ferdinand sent troops to Italy, declaring war invading Carl. So all of Karl’s initial successes on the Apennine Peninsula were lost.

In 1500, Charles's successor, Louis XII , concluded an agreement with Ferdinand for the joint conquest of Naples . The conquest took place, however, the two kings quarreled over prey: Ferdinand demanded that he be recognized as king of both Sicily and Naples, which led to the war between France and Castile-Aragon. After the army of Ferdinand under the command of Gonzalo de Cordoba defeated the French at the Battle of Cherinol and the Battle of Garigliano (1503), Louis had to return to Lombardy.

The successes of Ferdinand in Italy continued until the end of his reign. He first entered the league against Venice , then cheated on the French, for which he demanded and received several cities on the Adriatic Sea . Ferdinand's daughter, Catherine , was married to the heir to the English throne, Henry , but Ferdinand did not finish the promised dowry , and before receiving it Henry VII did not want to marry his son. When he died in 1509 , the new king Henry VIII married without waiting for payment, and Ferdinand immediately began to draw him into an alliance with himself, Pope Julius II and Venice against France . The expulsion of the French from Italy was one of the main motives for Ferdinand's entire diplomatic activity; he constantly returned to this idea, after more or less random deviations. The alliance with Henry allowed him to successfully fight with Louis and take part of Navarre from her king Jean d'Albre .

Having deceived Henry VIII, his father-in-law called on the British troops not to the north of France, as England claimed, but to the south, to Gascony , which Ferdinand needed. As a result, the whole burden of the war fell on Henry, and all the benefits in Italy and on the Iberian border remained with Ferdinand.

Along with these successes in Europe, Ferdinand completed the conquest of the North African Berberian possessions, which had begun under the leadership of Jimenez since 1505, begun in the last decade of the 15th century.

In 1506, Ferdinand took political advantage of his widowhood : he married the young Germaine de Foix , niece of King Louis XII . Having become close to Louis, Ferdinand began intrigues against his brother-in-law Philip , the husband of Juana Madly , whom her mother Isabella bequeathed to Castile so that Ferdinand would remain the regent of the country in case of her incapacity. Juan was mentally unstable during Isabella's life, and Ferdinand, taking advantage of his daughter's emotional instability, tried his best to remove from the government and Philip, her husband. To succeed in this venture, he needed the support of Louis of France. After a series of unsuccessful intrigues in 1506, between Ferdinand and his son-in-law, a Villafafil agreement was concluded, according to which Philip was officially recognized as the king of Castile, and Juan the Mad was actually removed from power. But after the sudden sudden death of Philip, the regency on behalf of his daughter passed to Ferdinand.

In 1515, the king became seriously ill, and died at the beginning of the next year. King Ferdinand was buried at the Royal Chapel in Granada.

Towards the end of Ferdinand's life, his power was firmly consolidated inside Spain, in the newly conquered possessions in southern Italy, America , Africa ; all his enemies were who by cunning, who by force were defeated. Ferdinand himself quite frankly joked that his opponents were “drunk and stupid,” and he deceived them more often than they did him. He prepared for his heir and grandson Karl Habsburg , the son of Juana Mad , a colossal state, various parts of which, however, retained their laws and traditions and great autonomy.

Countries and territories ruled by Ferdinand directly or on behalf of other persons:

• lands of the Aragonese crown (hereditary possession) - Aragon , Catalonia , Valencia , Sicily , Sardinia , Mallorca , Malta
• the kingdom of Castile and Leon (ruled first as the husband of Isabella , then as regent of his daughter, Juana Mad ) - Castile , Toledo , Leon , Galicia , Asturias , Canaries
• Ferdinand attached to Aragon - Roussillon , Navarra , Andalusia , Naples , some cities in North Africa and the Adriatic.
• annexed to Castile - West Indies .

First marriage

Marriage with Isabella of Castile , October 19, 1469 in Valladolid . Their children (not counting those who died in infancy):

1. Isabella (1470–1498), the first marriage after the Infant Alfonso of Portugal , the second after his uncle Manuel I of Portugal , the next heir to the throne.
2. Juan (1478–1497), was married to Marguerite of Austria from the house of the Habsburgs .
3. Juan the Mad , Queen of Castile, married to Philip the Beautiful Habsburg (brother of Margarita of Austria, these were double marriages).
4. Maria of Aragon - after the death of her sister Isabella, she became the next wife of Manuel I of Portugal .
5. Catherine (Catalina) of Aragon - in the first marriage, the wife of Arthur , Prince of Wales , in the second - his brother Henry VIII Tudor .

Second marriage

After the death of Isabella, with whom he lived for 35 years, in 1506, 54-year-old Ferdinand married Germain de Foix , 18-year-old daughter of the Navarre Viscount , among other things, and in the hope of further male offspring (of the children from his marriage, Isabella survived parents only daughters). And indeed, a son was born, but died a baby:

• Juan de Aragón and de Foix ( Spanish: Juan de Aragón y de Foix ) (b. 1509 ). This boy, if he had survived, would have inherited one Aragonese crown of his father and would not have allowed Charles V of Habsburg, the son of Juan the Mad , to unite Spain.

So the male line of the Trastamar dynasty was cut short, giving way to the Habsburgs, the descendants of Juana Mad.

Bastards

Ferdinand had survived two illegitimate children before marriage. After the marriage, two more were added to them.

1. Alfonso of Aragon - was appointed bishop of Zaragoza .
2. Juan of Aragonese - was married to Bernardino Fernandez de Velasco , the constable of Castile .
3. Maria of Aragon - was placed in the convent of Santa Maria de Grazia near Madrid .
4. Maria of Aragon - received the same name as her sister, and was placed in the same monastery.

In movies and TV shows ^[7]

Telefilm “Christopher Columbus” (Italy, USA, France, Germany. 1985). The role is played by Nicol Williamson .

The series " Requiem for Granada " (Spain, Italy. 1990). The role is played by Pedro Dies del Corral .

The film " 1492: The Conquest of Paradise " (USA, UK, France, Spain. 1992). The role is played by Fernando Garcia Rimada .

The film " Madness of Love " (Spain. 2001). The role is played by Hector Kolome.

The series " Isabella " (Spain. 2011-2014) and its sequel " Split of the Crown " (2016). One of the main figures of the series, the role is played by Rodolfo Sancho .

When writing the article, material was used from the article Ferdinand V Catholic // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary .

Vilar P. History of Spain / Per. I. Borisova. M .: AST, Astrel, 2006. ISBN 5-17-036605-1, 5-271-13794-5.

History of Spain. Volume 1. From ancient times to the end of the XVII century. ISBN 978-5-91674-240-4

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