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Review Article EXEGIMONUMENTUM: DECONSTRUCTINGA QUEENLY EDIFICE Barbara F. Weissberger University ofMinnesota-Twin Cities November of 2004 marks die quincentenary of the death of Isabel I de Castilla, early modern Europe's first powerful queen regnant.1 In the spring of 2004 at the University of Minnesota, I organized an interdisciplinary symposium to mark the occasion, and in conjunction with the event a Minneapolis early music group presented a concert of Christian, Muslim, andJewish music from the late Middle Ages, and in particular, the reign of Isabel. The two performances were open to the general public, and I was asked to lead a discussion before each concert . The pointed questions asked by audience members on those evenings made clear to me that certainly in die United States, but I suspect elsewhere outside of Spain as well, Isabel is most remembered as the queen who instituted the Spanish Inquisition and expelled the Jews from Spain. For this reason alone it is surprising how little attention is being paid to the Isabelline quincentenary. The disinterest stands in marked contrast to the scholarly and popular furor elicited by a related quincentenary of a dozen years ago: the one commemorating Christopher Columbus's first voyage of exploration. In 1992, the popular press in North and Soutii America registered something of a historiographical paradigm shift. What had been ' Isabel la Católica. Queen ofCastile: Critical Essays. Ed. David A. Boruchoff. The New Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ?, 312 pp. ISBN 0-312-29307-0 La corónica 33.1 (Fall, 2004): 197-206 198Barbara F. WeissbeigerLa coránica 33.1, 2004 proudly invoked as a "Discovery" became a less triumphalist "Encounter ", as the indigenous subjects who were so profoundly affected by Isabel's most famous act of patronage were acknowledged. Of course, colonial and post-colonial scholars had been hard at work during the previous decades to revise the master narrative of early modern history by reading it through the perspective of the conquered rather than solely or even primarily through that of the conquerors. And many Latin American intellectuals felt that even this readjustment in dunking about the "Old" and "New" worlds was a cover-up born of bad faith. Writing in Madrid's El Pais, Paraguayan author Augusto Roa Bastos had the following to say: "Encuentro de dos mundos, encuentro de culturas, son apenas subterfugios retóricos de una mala conciencia colectiva o de una todavía peor memoria histórica" (6 de febrero, 1991). What interests me here is that the scholarly and popular ferment that the Columbian anniversary inspired in no way affected the reputation of the sovereign whose penetrating vision and unbounded ambition was most responsible for turning the sailor's bizarre plan into reality. As far as I can tell, this disinclination to criticize or even reevaluate Isabel's role in the creation of the Spanish empire has not been affected by the arrival ofher five hundredth anniversary. In Spain many popularizing biographies of Isabel and histories of her reign have appeared and more are forthcoming, but virtually all of what is being said is eulogistic, ifnot hagiographie. The sole exception seems to be the debate on the renewed efforts of the Spanish Council of Bishops to advance the fifty-year-old petition for Isabel's canonization . Some have pointed to Isabel's policies toward her Jewish and Muslim subjects (little mention has been made of her equally harsh treatment of odier undesirables, such as homosexuals) as obstacles to her beatification and eventual canonization, but diis awareness has not inspired careful analysis of these policies and dieir results for die emerging nation-state. When asked about the possibility ofdie Vatican accepting Isabel's beatification during this quincentenary year, diplomat and author José Antonio Vaca de Osma acknowledged diat die queen's responsibility for the Inquisition and die Expulsion were indeed obstacles to her canonization, but dismissed the problem with die following highly debatable pronouncement: "Expulsó a losjudíos porque todo el pueblo se lo pedía; además, los judíos de hoy han perdonado aquella decisión" (El País, 2 de febrero, 2004). That some Spanish scholars are now choosing to reinscribe die status quo on...

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