Lot 99
Isabella I of Spain Queen 1451 - 1504 In 1503, during Columbus' 4th voyage to the Americas, his patron Queen Isabella signs a letter with Inquisition and Judaica association!
Manuscript Letter Signed "Yo la Reyna" ("I the Queen"), 1 page, 8.5" x 8.5". Segovia, Spain, October 13, 1503. To Alfonso Ramires de Villaescusa, municipal royal representative [corregidor] in the town of Valladolid. In Spanish, translated. Fine condition.
In full, "My municipal royal representative [corregidor] and inspector [juez de residencia] in the town of Valladolid. You know well that in a letter of mine I sent to order that all the householders [vezinos] of that town and its territory between the ages of eighteen and sixty should be prepared to set out with their arms and horses at any time I might order, as is contained at greater length in my said letter. And because it is now redounds much to my service to know what people will be able to leave from that town and its territory on horse and on foot, and how they are equipped, and what arms and gear they have with which to serve me, I therefore order that you inform yourself about how many have been chosen from there, both on horse and on foot, and send me a complete account of both, signed with your name."
At the lower right, "By order of the Queen / Lope Cunchillos."
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 Snchez 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. 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. Isabella was crowned as Queen of Castile and Leon in the Alcazar [Castle] de Segovia in 1474.
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