Ferdinand and Isabella

Profiles in Power

by John Edwards

This book is about a couple, not a single, dominant ruler. Thus it raises issues of gender, and the dynamics of a marriage over thirty-five years, as well as the practice of monarchical power. The reader sees Ferdinand and Isabella struggle to establish their regime, and then work out an elaborate reform programme in Church and State. It sees them fight a total war, by fifteenth-century standards, against Muslim Granada, leading to that kingdom s conquest, and an equally total war, through the Inquisition and the Church in general, to convert Spanish Jews and Muslims to Christianity, and to reform and purify the religious and social lives of the established Christians themselves. For readers interested in Early European History.

Genres: Spanish History, Nonfiction, Biography, History

216 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2004

About the author

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Historian - University of Oxford