Queen Isabella: Pawn My Jewels
on Saturday, June 29, 2019Queen Isabella Money Quote saying she was willing to literally sell the family jewels to pay for Christopher Columbus to explore the globe. Queen Isabella said:
“I will assume the undertaking for my own crown of Castile, and am ready to pawn my jewels to defray the expenses of it, if the funds in the treasury should be found inadequate” — Queen Isabella
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In this quote, Queen Isabella is expressing her strong support for financing Christopher Columbus’ proposed expedition to find a western route to Asia. When she says she is willing to “pawn my jewels to defray the expenses” if the royal treasury is inadequate, the Queen is conveying her determination and commitment to fund the voyage, even if it requires using her own valuable possessions as collateral.
The quote suggests Isabella considered Columbus’ proposed journey an important undertaking worth personally investing in, and shows her resolve to ensure it was properly financed through all available means. Overall, it demonstrates Isabella’s bold support and endorsement of exploration that helped enable Columbus’ historic voyage.
This is very likely the same Isabella who made that famous statement about pawning her jewels to fund Columbus’s voyage. The text describes Isabella I of Castile, who along with her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon, sponsored Christopher Columbus’s 1492 voyage that led to the European discovery of the Americas.
Specifically, the text mentions:
“Just three months after entering Granada, Queen Isabella agreed to sponsor Christopher Columbus on an expedition to reach the East Indies by sailing west (for a distance of 2,000 miles, according to Columbus). The crown agreed to pay a sum of money as a concession from monarch to subject.”
The exact quote about pawning her jewels, it is a famous statement attributed to Isabella regarding her support of Columbus’s expedition. The Isabella described here – Queen Isabella I of Castile who reigned from 1474 to 1504 and helped unify Spain – is definitely the same historical figure associated with that quote and with sponsoring Columbus’s voyages.
Birthday: April 22, 1451 – Death: November 26, 1504