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Isabella: The Warrior Queen QUOTES

Isabella: The Warrior Queen QUOTES

1 " The Inquisition in Ferdinand’s domains almost immediately acquired an even more unsavory reputation than that in Castile. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

2 " While she was beneficient in many ways, she also seems to have had an unforgiving streak that made her harsh, punitive, and unbending in punishing people she saw as evildoers and in seeking to accomplish her goals. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

3 " Discovery of new territories was becoming the great new entrepreneurial enterprise, and only a few countries, most notably Portugal and Castille, had recognized the magnitude of what was coming. Those that seized these opportunities would reap the profits and gain the glory. Those who didn't would be left hehind. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

4 " For the zealous of each faith, only their own specific practice holds the keys to the universe. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

5 " Without question, Isabella was fervently religious and spent many hours in prayer at her private altar seeking to divine God’s purpose for her life, obsessively attending mass, even living inside a suite of rooms positioned above the chair at the Cathedral in Toledo when she was visiting Castile’s spiritual center. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

6 " Her religiosity had a dark side. She feared unknown and dangerous things in the spiritual realm. It’s not coincidence that she commissioned the large family portrait that showed her sheltering under the arms of the Virgin Mary while menacing demons danced above their heads. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

7 " When the way of conscience is also the way of profit, there is little difficulty in following it. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

8 " Interestingly, however, in the New Testament, Christ does not appear to his mother after his death, although he reportedly made appearances to over five hundred over people on at least a half dozen occasions. The fact that Queen Isabella added this noncanonical image to the mix suggests that she was interested in giving the mother of Jesus a more important role in the Christian story, either for her own reasons or because she felt that Mary’s role was being undervalued by the church. At the same time she was actively advocating the growth of the female religious order called the Conceptionists, which promoted the Virgin Mary as holy in her own right, not just through her son. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

9 " Not surprisingly, the two allies in the paritition of Naples, Spain and France found themselves too deeply at odds be able to share their troubles amicably. They engaged in border disputes that ultimately erupted into war. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

10 " Under the administration of the Spanish Habsburghs, the Neapolitans would not enjoy self-government, and they would suffer from the religious intolerance that by this time was ingrained into the culture. Still the Neapolitans were somewhat protected from uncursions by pirates that were backed and supported by the Turks and, for the most part, from further assault by the French. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

11 " Isabella’s legacy was visible everywhere in Panama, once the hub of Spain’s colonnial empire, where tons of gold and silver were transported to Europe so that the queen’s descendants could expand their power and dominion in the Old World. There were dozens of sites, mostly crumbling, abandoned ruins, covered in jungle vines, where the Spaniards had lived and worked when they ruled the planet. The derelict Castilla de San Lorenzo and the tumbled-down walls of Panama Viejo were evidence that even awesome political power can be fleeting. This made a vivid impression on me, a child of American empire overseas, then at the apex of its strength, both admired and resented around the world. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

12 " Ambassadors from Spain and England met to hammer out the terms of the deal, which involved determining how much dowry should be paid by Catherine’s parents and how much by the Tudor king Henry VII of England, the father of the prospective bridegroom. Henry VII wanted the marriage to happen quickly so that Catherine’s blue blood would bolster his family’s wobbly claim to the English throne, but he was also notoriously penurious. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

13 " The medieval structure was unprepossessing, not looking at all like a home to monarchs. The site underscored to me how humble Isabella’s beginnings had been, and how unlikely her meteoric rise to power. It seemed almost unbelievable that a young woman from this background at a time when women seldom wielded power, would pave the way to world dominion for her grandchildren. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

14 " The patterns in the Castilian court in the late 1400s are remarkably similar to those that have been revealed in recent public scandals involving the clergy and other powerful figures. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

15 " For while both families wanted the match, both were ferociously angling for advantage. Henry VII was always watching his promises, which eventually made his son and heir a very rich man and Isabella had fair daughters to dower. The families dickered over the prices each should pay and the terms of the arrangement from 1488 to 1509, from the time Catherine was three years old until she was twenty-four. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

16 " Isabella used the same mixture of flattery and manipulation in her international negotiations as she did in domestic affairs. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

17 " It was always good to have an ally in a foreign court. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

18 " What I have tried to do is place Isabella within the context of the time and place in which she lived. She was a religiously fervent Catholic, living in an era when the Ottomon Turks seemed on the verge of wiping Christianity off the map, I am convinced that much of what she did was a reaction to this perceived threat, and to her belief that she was being called upon the bolster the faith against a very formidable enemy. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

19 " By the time King João II finally inherited the throne, he noted with disgust that the only property his father had left him by right was the land under the roads. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen

20 " When his father died and João became king in 1481, he embarked on the same program of centralized royal administration that other successful European countries, including Spain, France, and England, were employing to stabilize themselves and plane a check on nobles who had grown arrogant and lawless during times of disorganized governments and evil chaos. "

― Kirstin Downey , Isabella: The Warrior Queen