Ferdinand And Isabella

Ferdinand and Isabella Ferdinand and Isabella are a king and queen of Spain in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries that united their kingdom and also supported the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus. King Ferdinand was born March 10, 1452 in Sos, Aragon. Queen Isabella was born April 22, 1451 in Madrigal de las Altas Torres, Spain. With Isabella being 18 and Ferdinand being 17, the two married in the year 1469. Together they had 4 daughters and 1 surviving son. When Henry IV died in 1474, Isabella and Ferdinand began to reign in Castile, and then with the appointment of Ferdinand to the throne of Aragon in 1479, the two realms were unified to form Spain. Their goals for this kingdom included peace and order through reduction of aristocratic power and concentration of political authority in their hands, the support of the Cortes (parliament), which is the body that represented not only the nobility but also the church and municipalities, and the conquest of Granada and religious uniformity. In 1478, Ferdinand and Isabella introduced the Spanish Inquisition. A reason for the Inquisition included a desire to create religious unity and weaken local political authorities and familial alliances. Money was another motive- the government made a profit by taking away the property of the people who were found guilty of heresy. The word "inquisition" refers to the tribunal court system used by both the Catholic Church and some Catholic monarchs to root out, suppress, and punish heretics, which are people who publicly declare their beliefs and refuse to denounce them, even after being corrected by the authority. Medieval Spain was the only multiracial and multireligous country in Western Europe because of its large population of Muslims and Jews. Serving the Spain and its monarchs well, the Jews had been provided an active commercial class and an educated elite for many administrative posts. But in the fourteenth century, the Jews of Spain