East to Empire: Ferdinand the Catholic and His Aspiration to Christian Imperium in the Mediterranean, 1479–1516

The reign of Ferdinand and Isabella (1474-1516) is frequently viewed as the genesis of the Spanish Empire, an empire that was primarily a Castilian creation and whose existence derived from Spain’s New World colonies. The same decades, however, saw a process of Spanish imperial expansion to the east, leading to the incorporation of the Kingdom of Naples and numerous African presidios into the Spanish Crown. Ferdinand conceived of these presidios as points from which to launch a grand crusade into the eastern Mediterranean. The projected conquests included Egypt, Ottoman-ruled Greece and Turkey, and Palestine.

The rationale behind this series of planned conquests was strongly ideological. Ferdinand, among other Christian princes, expended no small effort in seeking the title to the defunct crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, a title he procured with his conquest of the Kingdom of Naples (1503). Ferdinand employed his status as King of Jerusalem to bolster his political legitimacy, parlaying his position into universalist claims that placed him at the head of the commonwealth of Christian believers, the leader of a new Christian imperium. Moreover, the title to Jerusalem served as the foundation for legal arguments that Ferdinand crafted concerning just war against non-Christian peoples both in the Mediterranean and beyond. The religious politics of the Mediterranean basin thus played a vital role in the formulation of legal doctrines that were subsequently applied in contexts on the other side of the Atlantic to serve as justification for the legitimacy of the Spanish conquests in American lands.

Drawing on diplomatic correspondence, royal instructions, memoriales, and juridical tracts, this paper will “re-orient” traditional understandings of Spanish expansionism in the Age of Discovery while simultaneously pointing to discourses of political legitimation and sovereignty that derived from a theocratic understanding, propagated by the Catholic Monarchs, of the duties of the prince.