The long turn of the century, from the 1480's to the 1530's, was a momentous period in the emergence of the early modern Spain, Europe, and the Americas. Contentious religious issues, political intrigue, and counters of all the new peoples characterized there. After Castile Princess Isabel's 1469 elopement with Ferdinand of Aragon and her successful effort to spoil the claims of her cousin, Joanna la Beltraneja, to the Castilian crown, a united Spanish future was secured. Any confusion about Spain's future rulers ended with the conclusion of the Castilian's succession crisis in 1479. Thus, through their marriage, Queen Isabel and King Fernando would have thereafter ruled the United Kingdoms of Castile and Leon and the Kingdom of Aragon. Among their multiple efforts to solidify an integrated and homogeneous Spain, the monarchs sought to enforce and imprint a strict Christian identity on all of their subjects, Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Unfortunately for Jews and Muslims, this meant their conversion to Christianity or their expulsion. Those that adopted Christianity were, as had been the case since the 1450's, subjected to tests to their religious purity. However, in towns not only targeted some private people but now forced converses like family confederation members of the Santa Marias in Corporal Halls to bury their Jewish past even deeper. In 1478, via papal bull, the Spanish monarch secured the establishment of the Holy Office the Inquisition. And just two years later in 1480, it began its efforts to seek suspected heretics, especially Judaizers within the Christian flock. Caught in this machinery were converses of all stripes. Jewish commoners and merchants turned to Christians, lower nobles and clerical leaders. Even elites like the new nobles, de Estuniga and [inaudible] families. Conversors stood to both benefit and lose the most in this Arab identity shifting. If they could successfully mask their Jewish ancestry and serve the emerging imperial Spain, they might enjoy the fruits of their last 100 years into members of the Royal Court and the Roman Catholic Church. If they fail to make the transition to a quote, Catholic Spain, all could be lost to the constant probing of the Inquisition and the old Christians who might challenge their religious purity. By 1492, the Marchak history claimed its Christian victories and Muslim, Jewish, and Native American losses. After a ten-year war to claim Islamic Nostra Granada, the Spanish monarchs took up residence and they get luxuriously ornate Alhambra Palace on January 1st. There are many 350,000-100,000 Jews were exiled from Spain on July 31st. And Cristobal Colon and his crew landed on Española in the Americas on December 25th. While Europe was simultaneously inflamed with political and religious challenges, Spain appeared to benefit at every step of the way. In the same year that the Catholic monks occupied the Alhambra, Pope Innocent VIII passed away, and a Spaniard, Rodrigo Lanzol y de Borja, was elected as Pope Alexander VI. A great patron of the Santa Maria family who had intermarried with a [inaudible] family. The Spanish pope sought to secure a prosperous future for Spain and this blended family of the Santa Maria's in Corporal Halls. At the direction of Ferdinand and Isabel, the family's ambassador in Rome, Cardinal Bernardino Lopez de Carvajal, sought and obtained Pope Alexander VI's blessing in the Spanish claims and Americas be at the May 3rd and May 4th [inaudible]. The cardinal, now at the forefront of the national affairs, routinely shared correspondence with many noteworthy personages. Future emperor Maximilian I and future emperor Carlos V, French Kings Charles VIII and Louis XII, the politically astute and treacherous Machiavelli, and of course, Fernando and Isabel. At the end of the '49s just when the international affairs should have settled down and the Spanish parties concluded their mutual agreeable partitioning at their American claims with the Treaty of Tordesillas 1494, there was a violent and alliance shifting confrontation escalating between France's Charles VIII, Austria's Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, Naples, and the papacy. The opening of the 1500s would be a perpetually eventful one. The early 1500s brought no reprieve as both tumultuous and celebrated events got its Spanish history into a new imperial one. This was especially the case when Isabel died in 1504 and Fernando ruled United Spain as King of Aragon and region of Castile and León until his death in 1516. Fernando's role as caretaker of Castile and Leon was necessary due to the determination, the Princess Joanna, the couple's daughter and heir, was psychologically mad. Imperial Spain found formidable footing in 1519. In that year, Charles V, grandson of Isabel and Fernando assumed the shared mantles of King of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor. And Spanish conquistador, Hernan Cortes, conquered the Aztecs of Mexico. Spain's rise seemed assured when it effectively confronted and held out the Ottoman Turks at the Siege of Vienna in 1529 and the Spanish expeditor, Francisco Pizarro, defeated the Peruvian Incan Empire in 1532 to 1533. It is within this earth-shaking Spanish, European, and American historical context that the converses from Virgo's entered into the terminal stage of their transition into early modern identities. They were no longer Jews and it appeared there was no way back.
