INTRODUCTION
One of the most despicable displays of what President Donald Trump called the “left-wing cultural revolution” where statues, monuments, and symbols of America’s heritage have been destroyed, defaced and removed across American cities, took place over the Juky 4th Independence Day holiday when a statute of Christopher Columbus was maliciously yanked down in Baltimore’s “little Italy” neighborhood and wantonly dumped into the harbor. Across the country, similar acts of desecration have been committed against not only the Genoese explorer, but also mostly White, historically important men.
Much of the Baltimore Columbus statute has been recovered by crews supported by Italian- American communities and organizations. None of the perpetrators of the vile act have been prosecuted by authorities. In fact, the Baltimore police, as have other police departments across the nation, took no action to prevent the vandalism. A police spokesman said:
As the number of protesters grew, it was
tactically unsafe for those few officers to
position themselves between the protestors
and the Christopher Columbus Stature in
attempt to prevent vandalism and destruction.
While we strongly oppose the destruction of
property in our city, we will continue to mitigate
any risk of injury to protestors and our
officers.(1)
Vandals topple Columbus statute in “Charm City”
One wonders if the Columbus statute would be still standing if a few of the officers dispersed some tear gas into the crowd or fired a few rifle shots at the mob? More than likely the statute would still be in its place of honor.
As of yet, there has been no assault on Columbus’s patron and one of the most important women in world history, Queen Isabella I of Spain. The Genoese explorer, to say the least, thought highly of the queen and considered her a saint. Of course, the mobs who are ignorant of history and only know what their handlers are telling them would not know of the connection between the two. Or maybe Isabella has been spared -as of yet- because she was a woman.
TARGET OF PC CRITICS
While Queen Isabella has survived the current mob’s wrath, she has been a target of Political Correctness for quite some time. The opposition to her has come from the usual suspects and has prevented her and what she would certainly consider her greatest achievement – sainthood. The Catholic Church, whose pope at the time Alexander VI, called Isabella and her husband Los Reyes Catolicos – “The Catholic Monarchs” has bowed to pressure mostly from anti-Christian lobbyists to put on hold her elevation to sainthood after she was declared a “Servant of God” in 1974.
In 2003, there was a movement to restart the beatification process, but it stalled – led by the infamous Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Foxman said:
Queen Isabella has a dark mark in history
of being anti-Semitically cruel and setting
a standard that other countries followed.(2)
It came as no surprise that Foxman wished that her case would “fall on deaf ears in the Vatican.”
Foxman and Isabella’s other detractors have gotten their wish as her case for sainthood has been dropped by Newrome which, after the Second Vatican Council, 1962-65, has consistently bowed to anti-Christian pressure on all sorts of issues.
ISABELLA & SPAIN’S JEWS
The most vociferous opponents to Isabella’s beatification base their protests on her expulsion of the Jews from Spain in the Alhambra Decree, which led, in some instances, to the destruction of Jewish places of worship, in particular, a synagogue in the city of Bastille. While it seems that the PC police squad have squashed Queen Isabella’s chance for earthly glorification, the still unsurpassed biography of her by William Thomas Walsh, Isabella of Spain: the Last Crusader, presents quite a different view of the monarch and the reality of late 15th century Spanish life from how she is typically misrepresented in the press and by court historians.
Working from a variety of original sources, Walsh points out that many within the country’s Jewish community were actively engaged in undermining the queen’s authority and, more importantly to her, subverting the Christian Faith. Her banishment decree was not a capricious act aimed at an oppressed minority that simply sought peacefully to practice its religion and folkways, but a well-thought-out response intended to counter a legitimate threat to her rule. In the current secular humanistic age, such an act is considered “dictatorial” or “racist.” However, during the Age of Faith, monarchs such as Isabella considered themselves duty-bound to be “defenders of the Faith.” They not only looked out for the general welfare of their realms, but strove to protect the spiritual well-being of their subjects, be it from external forces or internal subterfuge.
RECONQUISTA
The Muslim Surrender of Granada to Fernando and Isabella, 1492
Columbus had approached the Spanish Crown about funding an Atlantic expedition prior to his epic journey. Isabella had promised the navigator support for such a mission only after the last vestiges of Muslim rule had been eradicated on the Iberian Peninsula. In early 1492, Ferdinand (Fernando) and Isabella accomplished that goal that had taken Spain some 700 years to overcome with the capture of Granada. The Reconquista completed, the Catholic monarchs, true to their word, awarded Columbus the necessary funds for his history-changing voyage.
The Reconquista was one of the most important events in the history of Christendom. It can be argued that the vast riches and lands which came with the New World discoveries were Divine Providence’s reward for Spain’s dogged determination to rid Christendom of the Mohammedan menace and Isabella’s sage decision to oust the Jews from the kingdom.
There was never any thought of compromise or coexistence with the Muslims in either the Catholic monarchs’ hearts or minds. After the sultan of Egypt al-Ashnat Saifud-Din Qa’it Bay had won a significant victory over the Ottoman Turks, he demanded that Ferdinand and Isabella stop their war in Granada. He threatened, among other measures, to take reprisals on Christian pilgrims and threatened the destruction of the Holy Sepulcher.(3)
Fernando was not to be intimidated. He quickly retorted with a sharp and detailed history of the Reconquista which showed that it was his and his predecessors’ right to regain their homeland from the Muslim invaders. Moreover, if Catholics were killed to stop the war in Granada, Ferdinand would kill Granadan Moors in retribution.(4) To this warning, no response was recorded from the sultan.
Isabella and Fernando used their money and resources not for “national greatness,” or their own self aggrandizement as the later “absolutist” monarchs would do, but instead employed their treasures to triumphantly defeat one of Christianity’s mortal foes: “Huge sums of money were spent and large armies raised and the war was pursued with a remarkable single-mindedness at the express of almost all the country’s other interests.”(5)
If Christian principalities and powers of the time had a portion of Isabella’s ardor for the faith, the “infidels” would have long since been vanquished or at least been pushed out of the former lands of the Roman Empire which they had brutally overrun. Unfortunately, the Western world went in an increasingly secular direction after the passing of the queen, eventually adopting totalitarian social democracy as its governing system, while pushing Christianity out from nearly every sector of public life.
Isabella’s personal sanctity and love for her people has never been denied. Prior to the attack on the Muslim-held fortress of Loja, Isabella organized a massive army, the makeup of which consisted of soldiers from across the Europe continent eager to join the crusade, inspired, no doubt, by the queen’s indomitable will as the late Warren Carroll shows:
The whole army knew that Isabella . . . was
praying night and day for their success; knowing
her holiness, they were immensely confident in
the power of her prayers. Never had her prestige
among them stood so high; her constant care for
the wounded, her find and firm hand upon their
supply line, keeping them equipped with all they
needed wherever they might go, were now known
and honored by every soldier.(6)
Even her love for her husband would not dissuade the queen from accomplishing what she believed was a holy mission. In 1484, Ferdinand had sought to reclaim the rights that his family had in Roussillon, France. Yet, the financial situation at the time only allowed for one war to be fought, so a decision had to be made: a conflict over a dynastic dispute or the continuation of the struggle to expel the Muslims.
Isabella never wavered. Unlike other sovereigns who became embroiled in internal politics instead of fulfilling their vows as Christian monarchs, Isabella pressed on, even more determined. In one of the few instances where her disagreements with her husband became public, the queen wrote:
This is so just and so holy an enterprise
that among all those of Christian princes there
was none more honorable or more worthy, none
more likely to gain the aid of God and the love of
the people. . . . Two years ago the war with the
Moors began, in which great efforts were made and
great preparations undertaken on land and sea, at
immense cost. In view of all this, it appears unwise
to lose all by beginning another war with the French.(7)
The Reconquista was not only a part of Spain’s struggle, but became one of Christendom’s major efforts. This can easily be seen with the participation of knights and fighting men across Europe. The most important of these were the Lombards, whom Isabella recognized as crucial for the achievement of the ultimate goal. As Carroll points out:
[T]he Lombards became the key to the war
against Granada; they were the decisive and
irresistible weapon, once brought to the scene
of action. It was not easy to transport these
monsters over the primitive roads of southern
Spain, but it was done under Isabella’s constant
prodding.(8)
While the conquest of Granada at the beginning of 1492 ended 700 years of Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula, the victory would have never been achieved without the sacrifices of Queen Isabella. Before an attack on Granada could be made, the fortress of Baza had to be captured. Ferdinand’s earlier defense of Sicily and his foray into France, however, left him critically short of funds. He considered postponing the assault until the needed money and supplies could be procured. He sought Isabella’s advice.
Her respond was typical: The campaign to take retake Baza “had be continued and it will be continued.”(9) Another retreat would be fatal to the spirit of the people and ultimate success. William Thomas Walsh explains the heroic efforts the queen made to secure the funds, soldiers and supplies for Baza’s capture:
Money was the first need. She pawned her
gold and plate, priceless heirlooms from
her ancestors; and she sent all her jewels
by speedy messengers to Valencia and Barcelona . . .
her pearl necklace, her balas rubies, even the
jeweled crown of Saint Fernando.(10)
The amount sold was astronomical totaling some 60,000 florins.(11) “The pawning of Isabella’s jewels,” Walsh contends, “was the turning point in . . . the fall of Baza [which] marked the beginning of its third and final phase.”(12)
The capitulation of Granada and the restoration of Christianity in Spain was celebrated throughout Europe and recognized at the time for its supreme significance. Probably no one summed up the accomplishment of Ferdinand and Isabella better than England’s King Henry VII who proclaimed:
These many years the Christians have not
gained new ground or territory upon the
infidels, nor enlarged and set farther the
bounds of the Christian world. But this is
now done by the prowess and devotion
of Fernando and Isabella, sovereigns of
Spain, who to their immortal honor have
recovered the great and rich kingdom of
Granada, and the populous and mighty city
of the same name from the Moors . . . for
which this assembly and all Christians are
to render laud and thanks to God, and to
celebrate this noble act of the King of Spain,
who in this is not only victorious but apostolical,
in the gaining of new provinces to the Christian
faith.(13)
LIBERATING THE NEW WORLD
Although no one realized it at the time, Isabella’s patronage of Columbus and the later Spanish exploration of the Americas proved to be just as liberating for the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere as had Isabella and Ferdinand’s eradication of Muslim and Jewish power in Iberia in 1492. Most of what has been taught about Christopher Columbus and his heroic benefactor has been distorted, lied about and politicized for the advancement of leftist causes, the most important of which is the smearing of the great European men of the past and to ridicule the pride their descendants feel in their glorious heritage. The historical untruths have not stopped with Columbus and Queen Isabella, but are being spread about conditions of the pre-Columbian societies.
Instead of an idyllic land where the inhabitants lived in peace and harmony with one another until the evil, conquering White man appeared, life in the pre-Columbian Americas was, to say the least, quite grisly. A recent archeological discovery in Mexico City of the ancient Aztec Empire shows again what everyone already knew, prior to the on-slaught of leftist historical Revisionism, that barbaric human sacrifice was practiced on a large scale.(14)
Archeologists have found more than 650 skulls where human sacrifices were conducted at the site of Templo Mayor, which was one of the primary temples of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitian. The new find substantiates the description of Andres de Tapla, a Spanish soldier who accompanied conquistador Hernando Cortez in 1521, and his account of the discovery of tens of thousands of skulls which were in a temple that became known as Huey Tzompantli. The number of skulls must have been vast, for they “struck fear” in the hearty and seasoned Spanish explorers.
A depiction of human sacrifice in MesoAmerica
That the Spanish immediately ended this hellish practice is not much spoken about by leftist history professors in their lectures to their gullible, wide-eyed students. Such inconvenient facts do not fit the liberal paradigm of the evil marauding conquistadors subjugating the innocent Mesoamerican peoples to Spanish rule. Nor is there much mention by academia that Columbus’s discovery more importantly – and horrifically for the politically correct – brought Christianity to the indigenous peoples and thus a chance for eternal salvation, literacy and basic humanity.
Instead of enslavement and plunder that leftist historians use as motives for the exploration of the New World by the Spanish Crown, the exact opposite was the truth, as candidly stated by Columbus himself:
She [Isabella] would continue the experiment
for the glory of God and His Church, even if
the islands yielded nothing but rocks and stones.
She had spent more money . . . on enterprises
of less importance, and would consider all she
had disbursed well employed, for it would
result in the spread of [Christianity] and the
good of Spain.(15)
CONCLUSION
Nearly every moral and ethical system ever devised has always condemned ingratitude. Acknowledgement and veneration of the glorious deeds of those of the past in which a civilization was built is a necessary duty for its preservation. When a culture’s icons are ignorantly defamed or replaced, it is a sure sign that it is in steep decline. The tearing down of Christopher Columbus statues and other luminaries of America’s past is an ominous indicator of a deeply troubled and disintegrating society.
Since Columbus and Isabella are intimately bound in history, the tearing down of his statues are also a desecration of her great name. If it had not been for the indomitable efforts of Queen Isabella, the discovery of America may not have taken place for centuries later. This would have meant, in the New World, continued human sacrifice on an industrial scale and the continued enslavement of neighboring tribes byh the Aztec Empire. In Europe, Spain – and possibly the rest of Europe – may have been taken over by Muslim armies.
Although today’s “Powers-That-Be” may denigrate her name, there is an overwhelming number of contemporary accounts which ably attest to her personal sanctity. The huge success and popularity of her reign could have led, as it had with so many other rulers, to megalomania. However, throughout her remarkable life, she saw herself not as a mighty, semi-divine empress, but a servant of God, as she movingly expressed on the eve of her coronation:
To you Lord, in whose hands is the right of kings,
I humbly pray that you may hear the prayer of
your servant and show forth the truth, manifesting
your will by your wonderful deeds; so that if I am
not in the right, do not let me sin through ignorance,
but if my cause be just, give me zeal and strength to
obtain it with the help of your grace. . . .
Christus Rex 