Isabella von Portugal

Isabella of Portugal was born in Lisbon on 24 October 1503, the daughter of King Manuel I of Portugal and his second wife, Maria of Aragon. She was the couple’s second child and eldest daughter. Until the birth of her brother Luís in 1506, she was considered second in line to the Portuguese throne. Her education was supervised by her governess, Elvira de Mendoza. Isabella studied mathematics, Renaissance classics, Latin, Spanish and French, as well as courtly etiquette and Christian doctrine. After her mother’s death, when Isabella was fourteen, she and her sister Beatrice inherited their mother’s properties and revenues from Viseu and Torres Vedras. As Manuel I’s eldest daughter, Isabella was a particularly desirable marriage candidate. For Portugal and Spain, a marriage to her first cousin Charles, the son of Joanna I of Castile and Philip of Burgundy, offered the prospect of a strong alliance between the two kingdoms and would bind Portugal’s naval power more closely to Spain. It would also strengthen Charles’s political position in Europe. At first, however, Charles showed little interest in the marriage. In 1518, he arranged for his sister Eleanor to marry Isabella’s widowed father and later turned toward an alliance with England. In 1521, he became engaged to Mary Tudor, the daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. In Portugal, the rejection of the Infanta was regarded as an insult. Isabella herself nevertheless remained determined either to marry Charles or to enter a convent. When Charles later abandoned his English alliance and urgently sought legitimate heirs, he resumed his plans to marry Isabella. She was only three years younger than he was, spoke fluent Spanish, and brought a substantial dowry of 900,000 Portuguese cruzados, which could help relieve the financial burdens caused by Charles’s Italian Wars. After obtaining a papal dispensation for a marriage between first cousins, the union was agreed in 1525. At the same time, Isabella’s brother John III was to marry Charles’s youngest sister, Catherine of Austria. In January 1526, Isabella traveled to Spain. Her wedding to Charles took place shortly after midnight on 11 March in the Alcázar of Seville. Although the marriage primarily served political purposes, the couple developed a close personal relationship. Charles remained with Isabella longer than originally planned, and they spent several months together at the Alhambra in Granada. There, Charles had seeds of a Persian flower unknown in Spain planted. The resulting red carnations pleased Isabella so much that he ordered more plants to be set out in her honor. Their life together was nevertheless shaped by Charles’s frequent and lengthy absences. He left Spain, among other times, from 1529 until April 1533 and again from December 1536. Even after a brief return in 1538, he soon departed once more. Isabella remained in Spain with their children. As the Castilian nobles had wished, the children were raised there; Isabella supervised their education and taught them Portuguese. She wrote to her husband regularly but often received no reply for months. During Charles’s absences, Isabella served as regent of Spain. She governed the country from 1529 to 1533 and again from 1537 to 1539 while Charles led military campaigns and attended to his other territories. Isabella took part in meetings of the governing councils, consulted with ministers, and gradually gained increasing influence over political decision-making. She did not merely accept recommendations but developed solutions of her own. In regular letters, she informed Charles about political, military and financial developments and received his instructions on imperial affairs. Charles considered her deliberations especially prudent and well thought out. As regent, Isabella presided over the royal councils, signed decrees in the king’s name, supervised appointments to public offices, and dealt with the administration of the overseas territories. She held both civil and criminal jurisdiction and entrusted Diego López de Medrano with the organization and management of the royal household. Her government also coordinated the defense of the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts against attacks by North African corsairs. At the same time, she supported Charles’s campaigns in Italy and North Africa. The protection of maritime trade and the influx of precious metals from the Americas strengthened the Crown’s finances. Through prudent financial administration, Isabella helped preserve Castile’s relative prosperity during her regencies. In domestic and foreign policy alike, Isabella defended royal authority, which had been shaken by earlier rebellions against Charles’s foreign commitments. She traveled regularly between Toledo, Valladolid, Seville, Barcelona and Majorca. She also intervened in negotiations over marriage alliances between the French and Spanish royal families. She was particularly concerned that her own children should not be married to the considerably older descendants of King Francis I of France. Isabella suffered repeated illnesses during her final years. In 1539, she became pregnant for the seventh time, but developed a fever during the third month and suffered severe complications. She gave birth to a stillborn son and died two weeks later, on 1 May 1539, at the age of 35. Charles was not present at her death. The loss devastated him. He could not accompany her body to the royal chapel in Granada and afterward withdrew to a monastery for two months. He wore black for the rest of his life and never remarried. Isabella and Charles had seven children, three of whom reached adulthood, including Philip II of Spain and Maria, who later became Holy Roman Empress through her marriage to Maximilian II. In 1574, Philip had Isabella’s body transferred to the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. In 1654, her remains were moved together with those of Charles to the Royal Pantheon of Kings. Even after her death, Isabella remained present in art and music. Charles commissioned memorial music and asked Titian to paint several posthumous portraits of his wife. He took the paintings with him on his travels and kept them after his retirement to the monastery of Yuste. Isabella of Portugal thus entered history both as an empress and queen and as an independently acting regent.