Isabella I of Spain Queen 1451 - 1504 In 1498, two months before Columbus left Spain on his 3rd Voyage to the Americas, his patrons, Ferdinand and Isabella sign a letter with Inquisition and Judaica association!!

Manuscript Letter Signed "Yo el Rey" ("I the King") and "Yo la Reyna" ("I the Queen"), 1 page, 8.5" x 9". Alcal de Henares, Spain, March 26, 1498. In Spanish, translated. Fine condition.

In full, "Dr. [Alfonso Ramires] de Villaescusa, our municipal royal representative [corregidor] in the town of Valladolid. It has been reported to us that the municipal councilors [regidors] of that town are not in agreement about the election of their parliamentary representatives [procuradores de cortes] and that some of them have given their votes to the count of Ribadeo, and since the count is the person that he is, we would like him to be one of those named as representatives of that town. We therefore order that you find a way to bring this about. And regarding the salary, let there be given what seems to you to be just for the person who is to have it." The Count of Ribadeo was regidor of Valladolid.

At the lower right, "By order of the King and Queen / Francisco de Madrid."

Between 1485 and 1490, Alfonso Ramires de Villaescusa was sent to Toledo as a judge concerning property confiscated by the Inquisition. In 1491, the Royal Court at Valladolid, presided over by the Bishop of Leon, wrongfully allowed an appeal of an order by the Supreme Council of the Inquisition to Rome, Queen Isabella promptly dismissed the bishop and all the judges and replaced them. In 1492, the daughter of heretical parents in Valladolid were successful in their appeal to the judge, Alfonso Ramires de Villaescusa, to return some property. Dr. de Villaescusa, served as a judge of the goods confiscated from those punished by the Inquisition. His daughter married into an important converso family that used the name Snchez de Toledo. The principal target of the Inquisition was the conversos, descendants of Spanish Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity some three generations earlier.

Jews were the only heretics mentioned in Ferdinand and Isabella's royal decree in 1480, which set up the Inquisition. Professor Ben-Zion Netanyahu, father of the Prime Minister, wrote in "The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain" (1995), in part, "The royal decree explicitly stated that the Inquisition was instituted to search out and punish converts from Judaism who transgressed against Christianity by secretly adhering to Jewish beliefs and performing rites and ceremonies of the Jews." The main reason stated in the royal Edict of Expulsion, signed on March 31,1492, was to keep Jews from re-Judaizing the converses. Jewish money was now needed to rebuild the kingdom after the costly war against the Muslims. It was easier to expel all the Jews at once and confiscate the wealth and property they would leave behind.

In Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1995), Norman Roth writes of a letter from Ferdinand and Isabella to the Count of Ribadeo written on March 31, 1492,to inform the Count of the decree, the Edict of Expulsion, issued that very day. Roth notes the similarities of the language used by the monarchs in this letter and in their decree. He writes, in part, "This letter is important because it adds some specific information: that they were informed by the inquisitors and 'from other parts' that the earlier remedies (separate juder_as [Jewish-only neighborhoods], expulsions from Andaluc_a and Zaragoza) had been of no avail, and only expelling the Jews completely would stop the 'evils and harm which come to the Christians from participating with and conversation with the said Jews' who continue to 'pervert' them (words almost identical to those in the decree). Thus, if we did not already suspect it, we here have proof that it was the Inquisitors who were responsible for the Expulsion."

A successful claim to Judge de Villaescusa was made by Francisco de Leon in 1495 for money owed him by a condemned heretic. Much of the income of judges depended directly upon fines and fees.

Isabella and Ferdinand were married in Valladolid in 1469; Columbus died there in 1506.