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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2011
The topic of conversation at the refined court of Urbino, one evening, was rule by females. A courtier, as reported by Castiglione, maintained that much attributed to the late Queen Isabella was actually the work of her husband. Giuliano de' Medici sprang to the defense, eloquent on the subject of her justice:
Wherefore among the people there arose a very veneration for her, composed of love and fear, and a veneration still so fixed in the minds of all that it almost seems that they expect her to be watching them from heaven and that she might praise or blame them from up there.
Not every observer was as sanguine. García Sarmiento, a corregidor at Medina del Campo in 1506, complained: “these kingdoms have been very badly governed and Queen Isabella, for her evil rule, was in Hell,” and as for Ferdinand, “with her he never did anything save rob and dissipate these kingdoms.”
Just as the Reyes Católicos have had their partisans and detractors, so too the corregidores attract a mixture of praise and blame. The queen did reach her goal of placing these officials throughout her domain, yet they were not thereby made self-sustaining, because the alert administrative presence of a stable monarchy was required to permit them to function adequately. Isabella left the kingdom so troubled a succession that the fate of this legacy was put in doubt.
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