Ferdinand protected his own realms’ Muslims while backing anti-Islamic crusades elsewhere

Evidence

No doubt it was the attitude of the royal family that was decisive. Here we cannot speak with absolute certainty, and we have to evaluate two contradictory indicators. The Portuguese marriage negotiations in which Cisneros had acted as trusted advisor of the Crown, as we have seen, show him and the monarchs as working in concert towards the elimination of Islam from Christian lands. However, as an indicator that royal commitment to what one might call “religious cleansing” was not unconditional, it must not be forgotten, as has been stated above, that all his life Ferdinand never allowed the Muslims of those kingdoms over which he himself reigned (Aragon, Valencia) to be harassed in any way. It was not that Ferdinand was pro-Muslim, but he was not prepared to break his coronation oaths. There is also the paradoxical point that Ferdinand was most anxious to begin to carry crusading warfare into Islamic North Africa. And he was looking further to the east as well, for he put himself forward as protector of the Christians in the Holy Places. He realized that Spain’s capacity to launch a military expedition across the Mediterranean would be impaired if there were trouble with Muslims at home. There is no certainty on this subject, but it would seem likely that Cisneros, in stirring up trouble with the Granadan Muslims, had gone well ahead of his royal masters. Perhaps he was seeking to create “realities on the ground,” faits accomplis, that could not then be disavowed. When Cisneros’s excess of enthusiasm created a very dangerous situation, as it did, his royal masters briefly disowned him, but that is to run ahead of our main narrative, and we must return to the elches of the Albaic´ın. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 175

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth checking whether Ferdinand’s coronation-oath reasoning applied differently in Castile vs. Aragon when later expulsion orders came.
• SEED: A possible essay angle: ‘religious cleansing by proxy’ — how rulers use zealous subordinates to do what they cannot openly sanction, then disown them when it works or fails.
• DEEPTHINKING: The faits-accomplis dynamic and the tension between a ruler’s oath-bound protection of his own subjects and his crusading ambitions abroad is a dense, multi-layered piece of political psychology.