The Eastern Chimera

This chapter covers King Ferdinand's planned series of Levantine conquests stretching from Egypt through the Holy Land to Greece, Turkey, and eastward into Asia. While the planned conquests never attained fruition, the chapter provides an analysis for the legal arguments upon which they were predicated. It also describes King Ferdinand's conquest of the kingdom of Naples, where he had obtained the title to the defunct crusader kingdom of Jerusalem. The seemingly symbolic title to Jerusalem served as the foundation for the legal arguments mentioned in the chapter on how King Ferdinand crafted a just war against non-Christian people both in the Mediterranean and beyond. The chapter also talks about the religious politics of the Mediterranean basin that played a vital role in the formulation of the legal doctrines that were subsequently applied in other spheres of expansion, allowing Ferdinand to portray himself as an evangelical prince and imbuing Spanish conquests in other regions with legal and moral legitimacy.

One Shepherd, One Flock

This chapter examines Spanish, as well as Christian and Islamic, thought on “universal empire.” It analyzes the thinking on universal empire as a form of political organization that developed as a result of the protracted dialogue of competing claims by fellow Christian and Islamic polities. It also addresses Portuguese, French, and Ottoman iterations of universalist claims as the expression of a utopian ideal of religiopolitical organization. The chapter covers the political ideology of the wide variety of literature that situated the Mediterranean at the center of a drama where a universal Christian order would be instated. It also focuses on the Castilian conquest of Granada and the acquisition of numerous presidios and cities along the coast of the Maghrib, where King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella deployed a variety of propaganda that successfully disseminated the image of the monarchs operating in this capacity.

The Turk Within

This chapter examines the rhetoric and methods of legitimation employed during the Franco-Spanish wars for control of Italy from 1494 to 1516 and in the Franco-Spanish dispute over Navarre. The chapter explores how France and Spain transformed the struggles into holy wars fought for the defense and preservation of the respublica christiana. In the circumstances where both disputants were Catholic monarchies, the chapter also looks into the arguments that justify war against a fellow Christian power that were imbued with the legal force and legitimacy of a war for the expansion of the faith. It traces the origins and evolution of conflict, focusing on the ways both French and Spanish adherents sought to establish the struggle as a just and holy war. The chapter ends by analyzing the processes whereby two related conflicts between the houses of Trastámara and Valois were transformed into holy wars waged in defense of the Church and of Christendom.