All about Her Mother

As is well known, the reign of Isabel the Catholic and her co-monarch Fernando constituted a turning point not only for the history of Castile and Aragon but for the history of the world—a watershed in the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. With Enrique IV’s daughter Juana widely discredited as the illegitimate “Beltraneja,” and her own brother, Alfonso, dead, Isabel was positioned as heir to her half brother’s throne of Castile. Subsequently, in 1469 she secretly wed her cousin Fernando, who had been crowned King of Sicily the previous year and would eventually inherit the Crown of Aragon from his father, Joan II, in 1479. Prior to that, on January 15, 1475, the couple signed the “Concord of Segovia”—a marital agreement that formally established Isabel and Fernando’s political union and outlined their respective rights and duties vis-à-vis their own and each other’s kingdoms. Notably, it guaranteed Isabel’s personal lordship over Castile. While it may have been unusual for a royal husband to make such a concession and accept a role secondary to his wife, Fernando’s position was not strong. The Crown of Aragon was embroiled in the Catalan Civil War (1462–72) and conflict with France. Fernando was even obliged to agree not to take any of his future children out of Isabel’s realms without her permission. Reciprocally, Isabel was named lieutenant-general of the Crown of Aragon on April 14, 1481. There was a long precedent of Aragonese queens serving in this role, but unlike her predecessors, it seems that Isabel did not intervene actively in the affairs of the Crown, whereas Fernando certainly did in Castile.⁸ Throughout their marriage, the Catholic Monarchs gave each other mutual support while respecting each other’s autonomy. For their part, Juana and her husband, Philippe, would never develop a good working partnership. In his arrogance, the impetuous and inexperienced Philippe imagined he could rule his new kingdoms while sidelining his wife. Surprisingly, as we shall see in the next chapter, he almost succeeded.

No sooner had Isabel and Fernando married than they were forced to defend their claims in battle against Enrique’s daughter Juana—a struggle that lasted from 1474 to 1479 and drew in the princess’s husband, Afonso V of Portugal.⁹ As victory neared, the royal couple turned to internal affairs, asserting their domination over the Castilian nobility, and instituting the Inquisition in 1478, in response to “the converso problem”—the secret proselytizing of some of their kingdoms’ remaining Jews, which allegedly was leading some converts to secretly return to their former faith. When this situation with the conversos proved intractable, the Catholic Monarchs ordered the remaining Jews of Isabel’s realms (and as a consequence, Fernando’s) to either accept baptism or go into exile. The Alhambra Decree of March 31, 1492, was bookmarked by two other watershed events in that same year: the defeat and surrender of the Nasrid sultanate of Granada on January 2, and the departure of Columbus’s first mission westward on August 3. In recognition of these extraordinary accomplishments the Valencian pope, Alexander VI, granted the king and queen the honorific “the Catholic Monarchs” in 1496. This title has contributed to their historical reputation as zealous Catholics, although, in fact, their attitudes to the faith were much more complex than the title suggests, and religion was not necessarily the main impetus behind their policies and programs.¹⁰

In contrast, Juana was seen as someone who at times neglected her religious duties. For example, at one point, the influential Tomás de Matienzo, the subprior of the convent of Santa Cruz in Segovia (later bishop of Córdoba and Burgos, and confessor to Fernando), reported to the Catholic Monarchs that Juana was not confessing her sins regularly and showed “little devotion”¹¹ Such accusations would dog Juana’s reputation for centuries. For example, the nineteenth-century scholar Gustav Bergenroth went so far as to describe Juana as a “heretic,” rather than “mad.”¹² To be fair, with all of Isabel’s and Fernando’s accomplishments vis-à-vis the Church and Christendom—conquests, evangelizations, expulsions—they would have been a hard religious act to follow. Moreover, even their eldest daughter, Isabel, adopted a pious posture when she leveraged the expulsion of the Portuguese “heretics.” In the end, even if Juana had invested more in her reputation for piety, it would have been difficult for her to shine. While her piety may not have been expressed as policy, this does not necessarily mean that it was less deep or committed than that of others in her family.

In contrast, such was Isabel the Catholic’s reputation that the converso poet Antón de Montoro (d. 1477) did not hesitate to praise the queen as a sort of Virgin Mary, who had not been chosen by God to bear Christ only because she had not yet been born at the time.¹³ Although she missed her chance to conceive the Son of God, Isabel did her queenly duty of bearing a series of heirs in order to guarantee the stability of the realm and the survival of the dynasty. Nevertheless, although five of her children—Isabel (1470–98), Juan (1478–97), Juana (1479–1555), María (1482–1517), and Catalina (1485–1536)—reached adulthood, only three would outlive her, and her line would end with them. The Trastámara dynasty would be supplanted by the Habsburgs. It was perhaps because God and Providence seemed to smile on the royal couple that they were unduly confident in the fortunes of their son, Juan. Despite the fact that he was their only male child, and that this was an era in which life expectancy was so uneven, even for princes (as had been demonstrated by the death of their son-in-law Afonso), and that there was no impediment to women inheriting the crown in Castile, Isabel and Fernando did not prepare their daughters for the eventuality of succeeding them. While Juan was trained in the arts of war and government, the royal daughters were raised to be queen consorts: following the humanistic trends that dominated the court, they were trained in Latin, music (Juana played the clavichord), dance, embroidery, and Christian virtue.¹⁴

This education is reflected in Isabel’s choice of reading for the princesses, which included the Castilian translation she commissioned of Eiximenis’s Book of Women.¹⁵ This Catalan Franciscan set out a full program of moral instruction for women corresponding to the different stages of life: young women, married women, widows, and nuns. Having spent time at the court of his patroness, Maria de Luna, an Aragonese queen who was both a seignior and her husband Martí I’s lieutenant-general, Eiximenis understood the political roles that queens and elite women could be expected to play, although he saw them as secondary figures, who needed to be subservient to their husbands and remain focused on their families.¹⁶ His understanding of women’s roles was very much in line with the developing trends of humanism in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries as epitomized by figures such as Joan Lluís Vives, who promoted female education while emphasizing the need for women to be subordinate, and who lauded chastity as the highest feminine virtue. Juana seems to have applied herself to the instruction she received. The Dominican friar Andrés de Miranda, from the monastery of Santo Domingo in Burgos, oversaw Juana’s education from 1484 to about 1512, and even resided with her for two years in Flanders. He later praised her, noting that, “for her sex and age,” she was “exceptionally gifted in reciting and even composing verses” in Latin.¹⁷

In 1496 Juana was married to Philippe of Habsburg, Duke of Burgundy and Archduke of Austria, and heir apparent to the throne held by his father, Maximilian I, King of the Romans (1486–1519) and future Holy Roman Emperor (1508–19). Simultaneously, Juana’s brother, the crown prince Juan, was wedded to Philippe’s sister, Marguerite.¹⁸ This political arrangement was intended to seal a dynastic merger with Burgundy, put a brake on France’s interference in Naples, and further the interests of the Crown of Aragon in general. Previously, Maximilian had attempted an alliance with France by betrothing Marguerite to the future Charles VIII (1483–98), even sending her to be raised at the French court. But in 1491 the French king broke off the engagement and married Anne de Bretaigne instead. From the perspective of Philippe and his entourage, the alliance with the Spanish kingdoms was a second choice, and there was little enthusiasm among his camp for Maximilian’s strategic realignment.

Nevertheless, in August of 1496, having been married by proxy in Valladolid, the sixteen-year-old Juana embarked from Laredo, on the Cantabrian coast, for Middelburg in the Netherlands, with a fleet of twenty-two ships bearing a numerous group of attendants and nobles (see fig. 8).¹⁹ In principle this was to be a one-way trip—she would take up residence in her new lands never to return. The voyage to Flanders, however, foreshadowed things to come. The journey was beset by storms, and one of the ships—carrying most of Juana’s belongings—was lost at sea. Then, over the course of the dank northern winter a considerable number of the retinue that had accompanied her to Flanders and were waiting to return to Castile with Juan’s bride, Marguerite, died.²⁰ As a further ill omen, when Juana arrived in her husband’s lands, she was not received with the dignities appropriate for a bride of her station. Unlike the enthusiastic reception her sister Isabel received in Portugal or that planned for her sister-in-law-to-be, Marguerite, in Castile, no major celebration greeted Juana’s arrival.²¹

The new Archduchess of Austria, Duchess of Burgundy and Brabant, and future Countess of Flanders would not meet her husband, who was touring Germany at the time, for another month and a half. Meanwhile, as she struggled to become acquainted with her new home, she fell ill, recovered, and finally installed herself at Lier. Philippe arrived, most likely on October 17, 1496, and the couple married the following day (or on October 20, at latest).²² The legend, and the consensus among some scholars—most likely following Michael Prawdin—claims that at their first encounter Juana and Philippe fell passionately in love. However, as Miguel Ángel Zalama Rodríguez has pointed out, this detail resembles a contemporary literary trope rather too closely, and there are no primary sources that clearly support this contention.²³ That said, there are reports that they wedded “in haste” and consummated the marriage physically before it had even been properly celebrated at court.²⁴ Whether out of attraction or duty, or a combination of both, the couple would bear six children within a period of little over eight years: Eleanor (1498–1558), Carlos (1500–58), Isabel (1501–26), Fernando (1503–68), Marie (1505–58), and Catalina (1507–78).²⁵

Like her mother, Juana developed a reputation of being a jealous partner, as reflected in a letter of 1505 to Filibert de Veyre (or Vere), the Flemish ambassador in Castile, in which she compared herself to Isabel, and anticipated that like her, in time, she would be able to overcome and control her “passion”:

If in anything I used passion and ceased to show a comportment that suited my dignity, it is well known that the cause was none other than jealousy; and not only in me is this passion, but in the Queen, my lady, whom God blesses, [the Queen,] who was such an excellent and remarkable person in the world, was like me jealous. But time healed Her Highness, as it will please God to do to me.²⁶

In this same letter, she grants her kingdoms to her husband. Bethany Aram, however, does not believe the letter is genuine, as Juana’s signature appears to be a forgery. Other scholars do not dispute the signature but hold that the letter was signed under duress. Others still consider it to be authentic, and therefore further proof of Juana’s shortcomings.²⁷ Whatever the case, the letter does not appear to have been written by a “mad” queen. The “Juana” of this letter uses a very cunning strategy, admitting that she did not always behave as was expected, but contending that she would overcome her shortcomings, just as her mother had. Further, at the beginning of this same missive says, “They think that I lack brains” (juzgan que tengo falta de seso), she compares her tribulations with those of Jesus Christ, who was judged and condemned unjustly. And if she was jealous, it was not without cause. The Flemish chronicler who recounted Juana and Philippe’s second voyage to Castile emphasized Philippe’s interest in “beautiful girls” (belles filles), and what he described as Juana’s “very bad habit” (très malvaise coutume) of “jealousy and irrationality” (jalousie et follie).²⁸ As Maximilian I’s chronicler, Lorenzo Padilla (1495–1540), would note in his Chronicle of Philippe I, even though Philippe “took lovers very discreetly,” he “loved the queen very much.”²⁹ By the standards of the day, masculine infidelity was not viewed as unusual, immoral, or outrageous.

While Philippe did not humiliate Juana by siring any illegitimate children, her mother, Isabel, did have to bear such an indignity. Fernando the Catholic was well known for his affairs, producing at least four illegitimate children: Alonso de Aragón (1470–1520), Archbishop of Zaragoza, who served as lieutenant of the Crown of Aragon; Juana de Aragón, who married Bernardino Fernández de Velasco, Constable of Castile, and was lady-in-waiting to her halfsister Juana; and two daughters who became nuns, both named María de Aragón.³⁰ Fernando’s infidelities and Isabel’s jealousy are noted by their official chronicler, Hernando del Pulgar, who wrote that although the king loved his wife, “he gave himself to other women,” while Isabel loved her husband very much but “was jealous beyond measure.”³¹

Indeed, jealousy was the second rule of courtly love as expressed in Andreas Capellanus’s The Art of Courtly Love: “He who is not jealous cannot love.”³² Thus it seems that Isabel and Juana both loved as Capellanus intended. However, the problem for Juana was that while she might arguably be compared to her mother, Philippe was in no way the equal of Fernando. Even though Fernando and Isabel experienced marital discord, the Aragonese king balanced a love and affection for his wife with a collaboration and respect for his queen that was not demonstrated by Philippe. The letters from the Catholic King to the queen discussed in chapter 1 are a testament to this. And while jealousy may have been laudable in the context of idealized courtly love, it could be corrosive in the context of actual courtly politics, as Juana herself recognized.

In her groundbreaking study of 2005, Bethany Aram points out that Juana’s inability to secure the allegiance of her courtiers became a major liability because her household was controlled by her husband and his councillors from 1496 until his death in 1506.³³ This conclusion reflects the consensus of other scholars, including Raymond Fagel, Manuel Fernández Álvarez, José Manuel Calderón Ortega, and Gillian Fleming, who cite Juana’s relative isolation and minimal economic resources as undermining her position.³⁴ For a noblewoman of the age, managing her household, as well as officers and ladies at court, and building independent networks of patronage and political allegiance, were of paramount importance. Moreover, Juana faced the additional challenge of integrating mutually hostile cliques of courtiers who came from two distinct cultural and political environments: Castile and the Low Countries.

The 1501 Ordonnance, or court register, of Juana’s household in Brussels listed 164 people (of whom 34 were Spaniards), overseen by three Flemish courtiers: Charles de Croy, Prince of Chimay, Jeanne de Comines, Dame de Halewijn, and Ana de Beaumont.³⁵ But Juana— hamstrung by a lack of resources—struggled to gain their loyalty or buy their support. As reflected in the contemporary literary masterpiece La Celestina, it was well known that servants could be counted on to look out for only their own best interests, not the interest of those they served. Although Juana had arrived with the considerable dowry of 20,000 escudos, the sum was controlled by the House of Accounts (Chambre des Comptes) at Lille, not by herself, so she could not use it to cultivate the loyalty of her subordinates.³⁶ Moreover, in addition to managing her household, she needed resources to negotiate the competing political agendas of her parents and her husband. Although the Crown of Aragon was at war with France over Naples, Philippe and most of his advisers, including the archbishop of Besançon, and Guillaume de Croy, Lord of Chièvers, were pro-France. Moreover, the court cultures of Castile and Burgundy were quite different, the former characterized by devout austerity, and the latter by a lax and spendthrift joie de vivre.

In 1497 Philippe reinstated and updated the court ordinances of his predecessor, Duke Charles the Bold (1467–77) and enlarged the Burgundian court to recapture the famous splendor of its bygone days. In 1504 the expenses for his household amounted to 450,222 livres and 10 sous, out of which a mere 50,000 livres went to Juana and her children.³⁷ Chroniclers were aware of striking differences between the Iberian and Flemish court cultures and incorporated this into their narratives. For example, to illustrate Flemish overindulgence, Fernández de Oviedo recounted how much courtiers there liked to dance and how they even dared to sit “on the lap or skirts of a lady.”³⁸ On the other hand, the nobleman and chronicler Antoine de Lalaing, who accompanied Philippe to Castile, sniffed at the modest attire of Isabel and Fernando, who at times dressed in plain wool (drap de laine). Juana, he said, dressed in Spanish fashion (à la mode d’Espaigne) on her arrival, albeit in a more luxurious red velour (velour cramoisy).³⁹ Lalaing also described the particularities of Spanish knightly culture, such as the jeu de cannes (or juego de cañas in Spanish)—a game of Muslim origin in which participants on horseback attempted to strike each other with staffs that was popular at court and Philippe enjoyed playing.⁴⁰

Isabel’s Cumulative Grief

The image of Isabel the Catholic that was constructed in her own time and has come down to us through history is that of pious conqueror, holding her own as a woman in a world of men. However, toward the end of her thirty-year reign cracks began to show in the queen’s image as an unshakable and self-possessed ruler. After the triumphs of her early reign, her last seven years (1497–1504) were a time of sorrow, characterized by death, mourning, and sickness.⁴¹ At the beginning of this particularly challenging period, Juana was eighteen years old and living in distant Flanders; at the end, when her mother passed away, she was twenty-five. While Juana was still getting used to living in a faraway court, becoming a wife and mother, and adjusting to the responsibilities that her position entailed, her mother was entering her last years.

Isabel (and Fernando) lost several heirs in rapid succession: their heir apparent, Juan, Prince of Asturias, died in 1497, and shortly after, his wife, Marguerite of Austria, gave premature birth to a child who died. As seen in the previous chapter, just ten months later, their daughter Isabel, newly married and queen of Portugal, died in childbirth, most likely with her parents at her side. The child, Miguel da Paz, survived the birth but died in his second year. These deaths within the Catholic Monarchs’ most intimate circle were preceded by the passing of other personal and political intimates, including their son-in-law, Afonso de Portugal, in 1491, and Isabel’s mother, Isabel of Portugal, in 1496, which would be followed by the death of Arthur, Prince of Wales, heir to Henry VII of England, in 1502, leaving their daughter, Catalina (Catherine of Aragon), a widow after only five months of marriage. Catalina remained in far-off Britain, serving as her parents’ envoy. Isabel would not live to see Catalina’s marriage in 1509 to Arthur’s brother, nor her coronation as queen of Henry VIII. She and Fernando would be spared witnessing her humiliation when Henry eventually repudiated her and split with the Catholic Church so as to annul their marriage and wed his paramour, Anne Boleyn, in 1533. Needless to say, all of these losses not only affected Isabel and her family, including Fernando and Juana, on a personal and emotional level, but undermined the Catholic Kings’ political agenda and put the future of their dynasty in jeopardy.

Of these deaths, the most significant, both politically and emotionally, were the loss of three heirs in rapid succession: Juan, Isabel, and Miguel da Paz—a series of events that positioned Juana as the new heir to the Crowns of Castile and Aragon. The chronicler Andrés Bernáldez (d. 1513) describes these deaths with imagery that evokes the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows:

The first knife of pain (cuchillo de dolor) that pierced the soul of the lady Queen Isabel was the death of the prince. The second was the death of lady Isabel, her first born daughter, the queen of Portugal. The third knife of pain was the death of master Miguel, her grandson, who had been at that point her consolation. And from that time the said lady Queen Isabel, so greatly necessary to Castile, lived without pleasure, had her health and life cut short.⁴²

Isabel exhibited all of the symptoms typically associated with grief, including melancholy. Moreover, as she neared her fiftieth year, her grief over these losses also coincided with physical decline due to old age. The sudden loss of her son, Juan, was probably the greatest blow. Isabel herself was not present, as she was accompanying her daughter Isabel to marry Manuel I, but Fernando was near enough to rush to his son’s side in Salamanca and stay with him until the end. On October 5, the day after Juan’s death, Fernando recounted the tragic event in a letter to the Constable of Castile, displaying what would have been regarded as appropriate Christian restraint:

[Juan] gave his soul to Our Lord with such devotion and such deliberation and with such prudence and in such a Catholic manner, that with the aid of His mercy, he took refuge in his piety and His Holy Glory. Knowing that great thanks have been given to Him for all of this, I am setting out on the road that the queen must have taken, because it is clear that it is right that I ought to be with her at this time.⁴³

The funerary rituals that followed Juan’s passing were particularly elaborate and expensive, certainly more than those of his progenitors or his sister Isabel’s would be.⁴⁴ As was customary for a deceased prince, and as we have seen in the case of Afonso of Portugal, Juan was memorialized in literature that circulated widely within the kingdom. For example, the romance or ballad “The Death of Prince Don Juan” (“La muerte del príncipe don Juan”) is preserved in no less than 46 oral and 450 written versions in Spanish, Judezmo, Galician, and Portuguese.⁴⁵Garci Sánchez de Badajoz, Juan del Encina, and the Comendador Román also commemorated the deceased prince in verse with their Tragedy in Verse (Tragedia trobada), Sad Spain without Joy (Triste España sin ventura), On Such a Loss so Sad (A tal pérdida tan triste), and On the Death of Prince John (Sobre el fallecimiento del príncipe Juan).⁴⁶

Of course, consolatory treatises were also written, and condolence letters sent.⁴⁷ Two consolatory epistles written to the king and queen by Fray Íñigo de Mendoza (d. 1507) stand out, as they reflect the spirit and tone of the letters sent by the Cardinal Jorge da Costa to João II of Portugal, Leonor of Viseu, and Princess Isabel after the passing of Prince Afonso in 1491.⁴⁸ While Fray Íñigo wrote a short letter to Fernando reasoning that “great sufferings prefer brief reminders” (los dolores largos quieren las cosas breves), he opted for a longer missive to Isabel. The queen of Castile was, of course, his sovereign and primary patroness and thus merited greater attention, and perhaps he felt that she needed more robust guidance than Fernando. But Fray Íñigo had also been upbraided by the queen herself, frustrated by his failure to reach out to her immediately. Thus his letter began, “Your Highness was asking why I had not written you in your anguish at these events.”⁴⁹ This was likely out of caution rather than disrespect—comforting someone in distress, particularly the monarch, was a delicate matter and required forethought and tact. As it was, Fray Íñigo encouraged Isabel by reminding her that the children were not hers, but merely borrowed from God (Dios nos los presta). God gives and takes, he said, and it was not her place to question his reasons or intentions because He “cannot do anything that is not good.”⁵⁰ The friar was clear and to the point: Isabel had been granted many mercies from God, but now she was being punished. In other words, he quite audaciously shifted some of the responsibility from her children’s deaths to her, advising her to reflect on her past and present offenses against God in order to understand what it was that provoked such harsh divine retribution.

Alonso Ortiz, who had written various treatises for the royal family, echoed Íñigo de Mendoza in a treatise addressing Prince Juan’s passing.⁵¹ There, Ortiz positioned the rulers as directly responsible for the loss of their only son. Curiously, the friar did not dedicate his Treatise on the Death of the Very Renown Lord Juan to the monarchs, but to his own patron, Cardinal Cisneros, referring to the treatise as a “little book on sorrow” (librillo de duelo).⁵² In this text the queen is presented as having superior Christian knowledge and greater emotional restraint than her husband, and it is she who consoles him, so as to overcome the passing of their son (the book was written before the younger Isabel had died). After rehearsing the Christian and cardinal virtues—always good to keep in mind, and particularly during bereavement—Ortiz emphasized the need to control one’s emotions. He had Isabel comfort a tearful and bereft Fernando, assuring him that “to suffer is to have character” and that one should trust in God’s mercy.⁵³

To avoid presenting the Catholic Monarchs’ sins as the sole cause of their child’s demise, Ortiz blamed Juan too. In the cleric’s recreation the prince was aware that he was dying. Despite this, he appeared solemn and strong, just as he was described in his father’s letters—a good Christian cut from the same cloth as Jorge Manrique’s father in the famous couplets. Thus, facing death, Juan declared: “May the will of Christ be done.”⁵⁴ But the prince acknowledged his own shortcomings, and when he was asked by his confessor whether it was his “excessive love” that had provoked his death, he replied: “I ask if I should blame this love I have for my own wife.”⁵⁵ Again, God does not tolerate being second place in love to anyone or anything, and consequently, Juan must pay the price for his hubristic and sensuous self-indulgence. He had been so consumed by his passion that he could not think of anything else, even God. Nor was he mindful of the deleterious and debilitating effects of excessive sexual activity on men; and so, after just six months of intense physical and emotional love, Juan would be dead.⁵⁶ In other words, Ortiz checked off all the literary topoi, medical theories, and accepted wisdom of the day.

In Ortiz’s imagining, as Juan approached death the prince inquired about the young wife he was about to leave behind, anticipating that she would suffer as much as he had seen his bereaved sister Isabel suffer: “Seeing you widowed of me, you will live your days in tears and unending bitterness.”⁵⁷ The deranged widow who could never recover from her loss was becoming a literary archetype. In fact, real-life Marguerite of Austria’s (1480–1530) losses were far greater than that of Juan’s sister, Isabel. With the death of Juan, she lost not only a husband and a child, but also her queenly crown; and as a childless young widow and the only daughter of Maximilian I, a new marriage would be inevitable, whatever her feelings on the matter. But from what is known, Marguerite was certainly distraught, though not to the degree Ortiz imagined. At least not this time around.

Having returned home as a dowager princess, Marguerite was married to Philibert the Handsome, Duke of Savoy (1497–1504), in an effort by Maximilian to outflank Louis XII of France (1498–1515) matrimonially.⁵⁸ By all accounts their attachment was deep, and Marguerite became very active governing the duchy.⁵⁹ When Philibert died of pleurisy at age twenty-four, Jean Lemaire de Belges (ca. 1473–ca. 1525) described her in his poem “La couronne Margaritique” as trying to throw herself out of a window in an unsuccessful attempt at suicide.⁶⁰ Persuaded at last to be parted from her deceased husband’s body, Marguerite, who came to be known as the “Lady of Mourning” (La Dame de Deuil), engaged in the same unrestrained mourning as Princess Isabel after the passing of Afonso of Portugal, cutting her hair and threatening to take up the life of a religious.⁶¹ Marguerite even had Philibert’s heart embalmed separately, that she might cherish it as a memento.⁶²

Nevertheless, Marguerite overcame her melancholy and recomposed herself. And having resisted a third marriage (to Henry VII of England, who, as we will see in the next chapter, would later try to marry Juana I), she enjoyed her wealth and independence. She became a notable patroness of the arts and played an active role in politics, first as governor-general (from 1507) and then regent of the Netherlands (1509–30)—appointed first by Maximilian and then by Carlos V—and as guardian of four of Juana I’s six children.⁶³ When Marguerite finally died on December 1, 1530, she asked to be buried in Savoy alongside her second husband, Philibert, at the monastery of Brou, which she had built in Bourg-en-Bresse. For this endeavor, Marguerite used her dowry from Savoy, spending 220,000 gold coins on the construction of his mausoleum.⁶⁴

Such displays of emotion were not unusual. As reflected in Ortiz, even his fictionalized Isabel the Catholic could not contain herself when faced with the death of her son and heir. In Ortiz’s telling, “Soaked with tears, the queen could not disguise her deep maternal suffering, and forgetting her dignity, dropped down, falling to her knees, and beginning to pray.”⁶⁵ Interestingly, the queen is presented as being no longer able to dissimulate (disimular) her feelings: the mother could no longer hide behind the mask of the queen. This is reflected also in the letters of Martire d’Anghiera, who presented both Isabel and Fernando making efforts to conceal the pain provoked by their personal misfortunes. Rulers had to control their emotions. And if this was difficult for them after the passing of Juan, it was all but impossible after losing their daughter Isabel and grandson, Miguel da Paz:

The death of the little infant Miguel has deeply shaken the two grandparents. They already declared themselves powerless to bear with serenity of spirit so many blows of Fortune. From where, stunned, they marvel at this turbulence of human affairs that, among so many acclamations, furrows so deeply its brow, and amidst so many promising sowings brings forth so many thorns and thistles. Nevertheless, they ignore these dark shadows as much as they can and show themselves in public smiling and of serene countenance. It is not difficult, however, to guess what they feel inside.⁶⁶

Here they display what Baldassare Castiglione would cast as the courtly virtue sprezzatura: the ability to perform complex activities and confront difficulties without apparent effort while maintaining a facade of emotional detachment.⁶⁷ The difference between what one really is and how one seems—or better put, how one appears to others—would become a preoccupation in the early modern period and is reflected widely in the literature of the Spanish Golden Age.

Toward the end of his treatise, Ortiz draws on the Old Testament (Exodus 20:5, Numbers 14:18, and Deuteronomy 5:9), reiterating that the sins committed by parents are paid for by their descendants, even three or four generations later. His imagined Isabel affirms this: “No one doubts that children are punished for the sins of their parents.”⁶⁸ In the view of the moralist, it was not only sins of the Catholic Monarchs that were at the root of these misfortunes, but also those of their predecessors, including Juan II of Castile and Isabel of Portugal, and Joan II of Aragon and Juana Enríquez.⁶⁹ Therefore, the death of Prince Juan is presented as a clear punishment, which is rather different from what Ortiz had written in his earlier treatise, for Princess Isabel.⁷⁰ In that case, the dowager princess was to think of herself as a Job-like figure, who relished good fortune until God tested her faith. In this view, Afonso’s passing was not divine punishment for her sins, but rather a providential opportunity for her to display virtue and love of God.⁷¹

And what is one to make of the dedication of the Tratado to Cardinal Cisneros? Perhaps Ortiz was suggesting that the Catholic Monarchs’ confessor and trusted political adviser held a share of responsibility in the whole matter, given that it was his duty to guide Isabel and Fernando along the path of righteousness. After all, death was one element of God’s punishment of Adam, Eve, and all of humanity as a consequence of original sin; and after Christ, it was the obligation of the Church—and no one, perhaps, personified the Church quite like Cisneros—to guide humanity to eternal life and salvation through repentance.

During her final years, Isabel the Catholic was not only dealing with cumulative grief; she was also chronically ill with fevers and pains, thirst, and vomiting. The queen was suffering from what Martire d’Anghiera defined as a “mortiferous tumor,” which corresponds to what some scholars have identified as cancer of the uterus.⁷² Similarly, the Jewish chronicler Yosef ha-Kohen says that after the death of her children “[Isabel] suffered from weariness of her life, and a pernicious and stubborn ulcer which is called cancer devoured half of her body, and she died,” to which he added with satisfaction, “God is just!”⁷³ Perhaps, Isabel took solace in Ortiz’s work or for that matter in the Fourth Dialogue on the Auspicious Day of the Death of the Prince of the Spains (Dialogui quattuor super auspicato hispaniarum principis emortuali die; 1498) of the future bishop Diego Ramírez de Haro y Villaescusa (1459–1537), in which she and her husband figured as literary characters.⁷⁴ In Villaescusa’s third dialogue, which is described as “consolatory” by the author, Fernando lectures his wife on the matter of death, whereas Isabel is presented not merely as the mother of her children, but also of her people. They too, Fernando says, need her attention:

Your people have taken you as their mother. Therefore, behave like their true mother, and not a stepmother. Treat your subjects as if they were your real children, and not your adopted children.⁷⁵

Interestingly, the words of Villaescusa, who published his work in Flanders, where he served as Juana’s chaplain, reflected the reality of Isabel’s period of sadness and ill health—circumstances that prompted her to withdraw from the day-to-day politics of the realm, leaving her Castilian subjects increasingly in the hands of the foreign, Catalano-Aragonese king consort, Fernando.⁷⁶ As if all of these complications were not enough, these years were also marked by Isabel’s increasingly fraught relationship with her new heir, Juana. Even a scholar as determined to argue in favor of Juana’s competency as Bethany Aram cannot but acknowledge that “the events of 1502–4 nevertheless convinced Queen Isabella that her daughter might not be able or willing to rule Castile.”⁷⁷ Gillian Fleming, who is even more sympathetic, sees Juana as torn between compelling but conflicting priorities: her filial and royal duties versus her marital obligations.⁷⁸ Thus, we must consider what happened between Juana and her mother between 1502 and 1504 and what the consequences of this were.

A Queen-to-Be Visits Her Kingdoms

With the death of the infant Miguel da Paz in 1500, Juana became the new heiress apparent to the thrones of Castile and Aragon, and consequently was summoned home from Flanders. Philippe had sent trusted envoys to Castile to mark his presence, but it was important for the future monarchs to be seen by their subjects, to be sworn as heirs in the presence of the kingdoms’ grandees, and to familiarize themselves with their future roles. But troubling rumors regarding Juana and her relationship with Philippe had preceded her home. When Martire d’Anghiera wrote to Bernardino Carvajal, Cardinal of Santa Cruz, regarding Juana’s return, he worried that the princess was more interested in pleasing her husband than taking the throne, implying that she loved him to excess (which, as we have seen, was a bad omen):

Of the [coming] of Juana, his wife, there is no doubt [that she will come], if the husband comes, for she is madly in love with her husband. Even if she were not moved by the ambition of so many kingdoms and the love of her parents and all those with whom she grew up, she would be drawn here alone by her attachment to the man they say she loves so ardently.⁷⁹

Martire d’Anghiera prudently says “they say she loves” (quem ardintisime dicitur amare), reflecting that although he has not observed it personally, such are the rumors.⁸⁰ On the other hand, the ambassador, Gutierre Gómez de Fuensalida, who was with Juana and therefore better informed, wrote to the Catholic Monarchs praising Juana’s good sense, “sanity” (cordura), and many virtues.⁸¹ In any case, the couple’s visit to Castile was delayed in part because Juana had become pregnant and could not travel. After the delivery of her third child, a girl they named Isabel, on July 16, 1501, she and Philippe embarked on the long-awaited trip, coming not by sea as her parents had wanted, but crossing hostile France by land. Philippe’s ambition was to develop his own international policy, distinct from whatever his in-laws had planned, and that included a marital agreement between his heir, Carlos (the future Emperor Carlos V), and Louis XII’s daughter, Claude. This was intended to put an end to the conflict over Naples, which Louis was to bestow on his daughter as a dowry.⁸²

After passing through France, Juana and Philippe arrived in Castile on May 22, 1502, where the cortes convened in Toledo to recognize Juana as Princess of Asturias and heiress to the throne, with Philippe as her consort.⁸³ On October 27, this was repeated in Zaragoza vis-à-vis the Crown of Aragon, but with one caveat: Juana would inherit only if her father, Fernando, did not sire another male heir (which, as we will see in the next chapter, very nearly came to pass). With his wife’s succession a fait accompli, Philippe wanted to return to his lands (again via France) to attend to his own affairs. He had only planned to be away for a year.

Isabel was very much against this idea. In her view, it was crucial that Juana and Philippe stay in Castile and acquaint themselves with the mechanics of rulership and get to know their subjects (and vice versa). As Martire d’Anghiera, who was at court at the time, explained in a letter to the cardinal of Santa Cruz, the queen told her son-in-law that “future kings should be raised and reside as long as possible among those they are to command.”⁸⁴ Moreover, she added, Juana should not be made to travel while pregnant, in winter, or through enemy territory. It is at this point that Martire d’Anghiera says what he really thinks about Juana, who was torn between her mother’s advice to stay and her husband’s determination to leave Castile:

[This situation is] much harder for the ardent wife, who is a simple woman, even though she is the daughter of such a great woman; she moans and does nothing but cry. Not even with this, does Philippe soften.⁸⁵

And Philippe would not soften; he departed Castile on December 22, 1502, leaving Juana behind—a decision that would have significant consequences.

For those in the royal circle, who lived surrounded by courtiers and attendants, there was no private life at court; thus Juana’s actions and supposed feelings are described in contemporary sources. But while these sources appear reliable in the sense that they were often written by eyewitnesses, who included doctors, secretaries, and well-connected courtiers, they also underline the pervasive misogyny of the time and reflect a predisposition against Juana.⁸⁶ These sources agree in presenting Juana as more interested in being with her husband than in rulership. Philippe had demanded she return to Flanders, and even had their young son, Carlos, make the same request.⁸⁷ In another letter to the cardinal of Santa Cruz, Martire d’Anghiera portrays Juana (who was pregnant again) as deeply melancholic after the departure of her husband:

Since her husband’s departure, [Juana] has not had a moment of joy, nor has she ever lifted her eyes from the ground. She cares not the least for wealth, nor for power, nor for kingdoms, nor even for her own parents. With her countenance darkened, she thinks only of her husband, and he alone is her preoccupation, her care, and her sleeplessness. Once she gives birth, her mother has promised her that she will let her go.⁸⁸

He also describes a worried Isabel, lonely after Fernando had left for Perpignan to prosecute the war against France and had left her to deal with their ever more troublesome and troubled daughter.

Juana’s determination to leave Castile led her to fight with and disrespect her mother. Martire d’Anghiera’s fears were vindicated by a growing concern in court circles regarding Juana’s health and disposition, how she was managing her emotions (passiones), and how all of this would affect her “honor” and well-being. The Aragonese courtier Lope de Conchillos, Fernando’s royal secretary, disclosed in a letter to Miguel Pérez de Almazán, another of the king’s loyal secretaries, that “the queen [Isabel] is fine, but she is greatly troubled and exhausted by this princess [Juana], may God forgive her.”⁸⁹ To this he adds that the affairs of the palace were not an appropriate subject to repeat in person, let alone commit to writing (no son de dezir ni escrivir esto). Soon after, on June 20, 1503, the doctors Soto and Juan wrote a more detailed communication to Fernando, who was away on campaign. Because of the confidential and delicate nature of their report, they prefaced it with an order to destroy the message on reading, which—thankfully for historians today—the king ignored, quite possibly deliberately in order to retain corroborating evidence of his daughter’s conflictiveness. The physicians were concerned about Isabel’s declining health, which in their opinion was aggravated by the constant fighting between Juana and her mother.⁹⁰ They described to the king how whenever Isabel returned from an encounter with the princess, those who saw the queen “were shocked by the great change in color and expression that she bore.” They stressed that the constant conflict with her daughter was undermining Isabel’s health, warning that it was “such a great danger for the health of the Queen, our Lady, to have the life she has with the Lady Princess, that every day we fear these accidents.” Nor could the doctors help but notice that Juana was also suffering. To see the princess caused them great “sadness” because she hardly slept or ate and was “very sad and slim” (muy triste y flaca) (fig. 9). In their words, “her sickness was very advanced” (su enfermedad va muy adelante).⁹¹

Such sentiments are echoed in Lorenzo Padilla’s chronicle, which goes into greater detail, describing how Isabel the Catholic was ill, and how she did not want her daughter to return to Flanders.⁹² Regardless, Juana was determined to depart because “she loved her husband very much” (quería tanto a su marido).⁹³ Padilla also recounts how the queen sent Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, Bishop of Córdoba, to the fortress of La Mota (in Medina del Campo). The cleric, who knew Juana well, was to convince her to stay, and, if necessary, to prevent her from proceeding on her journey. This meeting did not go well. When the bishop detained Juana, who was literally on her way out of Castile, she became understandably upset and “said some very bad words to him” (le dijo muy malas palabras). The princess was so distressed by the whole episode that she refused to return to her rooms and spent the night in between the two gates of the fortress—having neither stayed (as her mother ordered) nor left (as she had been forbidden).

Needless to say, this was highly inappropriate behavior for a princess, and it very much affected her standing at court and made her the object of gossip. Both Martire d’Anghiera and Isabel herself mentioned this episode in their correspondence. Martire d’Anghiera, who broke from the pompous and laudatory style he employed when speaking about the royal family, exasperatedly referred to the princess as a “Lioness from Africa [Punica], in a fit of rage” (Punica leaena, in rabiem accensa), echoing Proverbs 19:12: “The king’s wrath is as the roaring of a lion; but his favor is as dew upon the grass.”⁹⁴ The lion had several symbolic meanings in medieval western Europe, and not all were positive. It could be seen as threatening, as a representation of either Christ or the devil, as noble or regal, as pridefully sinful, or as merciful. In one instance in the New Testament Saint Peter described the devil as a “roaring lion” looking for “someone to devour.”⁹⁵ While Juana was portrayed as a furious “lioness,” Elizabeth Spelman contends there is a “politics of emotion” in which anger is associated with self-worth, and is not only gendered but serves as a “mechanism of subordination.”⁹⁶ Similarly, for Cara Fox anger is gendered and “reflects a position of privilege “valorized for men and [considered] dangerous and threatening for women.”⁹⁷

According to Martire d’Anghiera, Juana left quite suddenly after having received a letter from Philippe ordering her to go—she wasted no time, and consulted no one, not even her mother. After the bishop’s failure to contain Juana, the ailing Isabel was forced to travel the fifty miles that separated the alcázar (fortress) of Segovia from Medina del Campo to convince her daughter to stay put until her father returned from Aragon, where he was monitoring the war with France. The queen found her daughter “very angry” (muy enojada) but convinced her to remain a bit longer by explaining, according to the chronicler Lorenzo Padilla, “that God would never wish that her desire nor that of the king, her father, would be for her to unmarry her.”⁹⁸ This is quite sensational. It suggests that in Padilla’s view, Juana’s parents’ opposition to Philippe was so strong that they would consider forcing her into an annulment.

Nevertheless, the most revealing (and damaging) testimony came from Isabel herself. She felt it urgent to explain her side of the story to Gómez de Fuensalida, her ambassador in Flanders, so that he could intervene on her behalf before her “son,” Philippe. Here, Isabel presents the war with France as the main reason to delay Juana’s trip. Traveling by land was simply not safe, and it would be better to wait until springtime to see how things had developed and then set sail. As regards Juana’s health and state of mind, the letter presents her as “suffering” (doliente), worried, losing her capacity for self-control, behaving inappropriately, and not listening to those around her: “Due to the disposition in which she found herself and the great distress she felt, there was no one around who could calm her down or restrain her.”⁹⁹ The queen also felt compelled to explain what had happened at the fortress of La Mota, and does so, providing even more detail than Padilla’s chronicle or Martire d’Anghiera’s letter. Isabel was concerned about Juana’s state of mind and feared that should the princess not wait in the Cantabrian port of Laredo for better weather to embark, she might decide to set out by land. Thus, she sent the bishop of Córdoba to stop Juana from leaving La Mota, which very much irritated the princess, to the point that she decided to escape from the fortress and set off for Flanders unaccompanied. As Isabel writes incredulously, “She planned to leave from the fortress where she was staying or go on foot and alone through the alleys and the muck.”¹⁰⁰

In the face of such an undignified public display of Juana’s intransigence and rage, the bishop ordered the outer gate of the fortress of La Mota to be barred, leaving the princess locked inside. Padilla and Martire d’Anghiera both reported Juana’s angry reaction. Isabel, however, recounts it in greater detail:

She was so angry that while trying to get them to open the doors, she stayed by the castle gate through the entire afternoon, through the night and the next day, until the hour of two, in the damp, resolute in her exposure, on one of the coldest nights of this winter, and refused to return to her lodging, although everyone who was with her had begged her to do so, and she took refuge in a kitchen which was there by the gate, where she remained another four or five days, in spite of the many letters I wrote her, and in spite of the fact that I sent the Archbishop of Toledo [Cardinal Cisneros] and don Enrique to try to get her to move out of there and return to her chambers, there was nothing that moved her.¹⁰¹

Isabel the mother was concerned for her daughter’s well-being, but Isabel the queen needed Juana to stay in Castile. As she wrote in one of her letters to the princess,

I do not believe, nor do I hope, and for this reason I cannot countenance your departure, since although there may be many reasons for it, such a departure would provoke greater consequences; I, with the love that I have for you, my own daughter, and desiring you all good and setting aside anything that may be to the contrary; I ask you very much that you do not leave and stop preparing your departure.¹⁰²

In her communication to Gómez de Fuensalida, Isabel explains how she put her own health in danger in her haste to meet Juana in person, and how badly their meeting had gone: “She spoke words of disrespect to me so harshly and so out of line with what a daughter should say to her mother, that if I did not see the disposition in which she was, I would not have suffered them in any way.”¹⁰³ Nonetheless, their reunion was something of a success, because Juana went back to her rooms, having secured a promise from her mother that she could return to Flanders by sea as soon as the weather permitted. In this missive Isabel seems resigned to let Juana go, even conceding that traveling to Flanders to join Philippe would be very beneficial for Juana’s condition; and in view of how the situation was affecting the queen’s health, it would probably be better for Isabel too. It was getting Juana to Flanders in her current state of distress that worried Isabel; she wanted not only to keep her daughter at home, but also to avoid further scandal.

For this reason, Isabel prevailed on Gómez de Fuensalida to secure Philippe’s help. During her trip to Flanders the queen wanted “people around [Juana] who had authority to calm and restrain her (templarla y refrenarla), in view of the suffering (pasyón) she was enduring, so that she would not do anything that might damage her reputation or dishonor her.”¹⁰⁴ Isabel wanted Philippe to contact Juana’s senior Flemish attendants, Hugues de Melun and Madame de “Aloyn” (Hallewijn), to prepare for this task. In addition, in recognition of how highly Juana valued her husband’s counsel, the queen also asked Philippe to suggest that Juana follow her parents’ advice. For his part, Philippe did as he was told, while trying to calm his mother-in-law by telling her that if Juana had behaved inappropriately with her it was only “due to the great love she has for me and the desire to be with me.”¹⁰⁵

Juana’s fixation on reuniting with Philippe has traditionally been attributed to her excessive dependency on him, as noted by her contemporaries who understood the destructive nature of “passions,” and of love in particular. What doctors Soto and Juan anticipated and indicated to Fernando regarding Juana’s melancholic state, together with what happened at La Mota as described by Isabel, Padilla, and Martire d’Anghiera, today would most likely be qualified as a “breakdown”—a temporary mental health crisis, rather than an uncurable and incapacitating mental illness. In 1504 Juana was a mature twenty-five years old. She had been married for eight years, was the mother of two sons and two daughters, and was Archduchess of Flanders and the heiress to Castile and Aragon. Nevertheless, she was still not allowed to do as she wished. Both her husband and her parents were determined to control her. Her aim was to resist them, but the execution of her strategy led to her being seen as undignified.

In the end, when Fernando finally returned to Castile, they started preparing the fleet that was to transport Juana from Laredo to Flanders in March 1504. Eight months before her mother’s passing, Juana departed Castile, leaving her second-born son, Fernando, behind. Juana’s visit to Castile seriously damaged her reputation at court, and to some extent her relationship with her parents, who started doubting her viability as heiress. As Jerónimo Zurita reports, Juana’s time in Castile suddenly brought her “indisposition” and “dementia”—matters that had become a preoccupation of her parents—into the public eye.¹⁰⁶ When the Catholic Monarchs realized that they could not “rule” over their daughter, their next move was to request that their grandson, Carlos, be brought to Castile to be raised at their court.¹⁰⁷ But Isabel’s passing cut short these negotiations, and left behind a last will and testament over which her final experiences with her daughter and son-in-law cast a long shadow.

The Will of the Queen and the Unwilling Daughter

Isabel had been thinking about her own death for quite some time before she wrote her last will and a supplementary codicil. Putting one’s affairs in order before death was always recommended, but for a ruling monarch it was a necessity of government. It seems that Isabel began thinking about her own demise as early as 1487, when during the siege of Vélez-Málaga a Muslim nobleman who had pretended to be an ally nearly assassinated her and the king in their tent.¹⁰⁸ Five years later, it became ever more urgent, when on December 7, 1492, a “crazy” peasant named Joan de Canyamars attacked and seriously injured Fernando in Barcelona.¹⁰⁹ The monarch had been absent from Barcelona for eleven years, and although his subjects there were so excited by his visit that the bishop of Girona called him a “second divine incarnation,” he was nearly killed as a consequence.¹¹⁰ On December 30, three weeks after the incident, Isabel, still in Barcelona, wrote to her confessor, Hernando de Talavera, making it clear that this assassination attempt had profoundly affected her: “So we see that monarchs can die from whatever misfortune, just like others: good reason to prepare oneself to die well.”¹¹¹ To this she added: “There is a very great difference between believing it and thinking it, and accepting it.”¹¹² Isabel sounded resigned to the inevitable and asked Talavera to start paying off all her debts.

This preoccupation with paying her debts in full resurfaced in Isabel’s long and detailed last will and testament, dictated on October 12, 1504, and written on ten parchment pages, in Medina del Campo.¹¹³ As was customary for a ruler, the document focused on three main points: her soul, her body, and her kingdoms. Her wishes were recorded only forty-five days before she passed away, and as Alonso de Santa Cruz’s chronicle recounts, she had been very ill in her last three and a half months:

And so, her fevers became increasingly intense, such that often she lost her senses and it made her blurt out ravings. And because that humor was gradually extending through her veins, she began to suffer from dropsy, such that she wished nothing more day and night but to drink water. And with this she began to gradually grow bloated, thus losing her strength. And she suffered in this way in great illness for a span of a hundred days.¹¹⁴

Not only was Isabel unwell, but she was also likely still meditating on the loss of her dear children and worrying about how Juana would perform as ruler. Given her great familiarity with consolatory texts, so many of which had been written for her by members of her circle, not to mention the many sermons she had listened to and advice she had received from confessors, Isabel would have been keenly aware that in some sense her demise would be seen as a reflection of divine favor or lack thereof. Isabel was also meditating on the passion of Christ. To prepare for such a delicate moment of transition to the life beyond, Isabel commissioned from the Franciscan Ambrosio de Montesino a customized meditation on the passion of Christ, “Couplets Commissioned by the Lady Queen Isabel, Her Highness Being at the End of Her Illness” (“Coplas por mandado de la reyna doña Ysabel, estando su alteza en el fin de su enfermedad”)—a prayer for the queen to repeat as an exercise on affective meditation and performative compassion. Montesino describes the episode of the garden of Gethsemane, when after the Last Supper Christ shows sorrow, agony, and sadness at his imminent Passion. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus even sweats blood—but nevertheless he accepts his fate.¹¹⁵

Thus, the queen began her last will and testament by reflecting on the Day of Judgment and asking God for mercy. As a sign of humility, she requested to be buried in the habit of a Franciscan, in that order’s convent of Saint Francis or Saint Isabel that she and Fernando had established within the grounds of the Alhambra palace in Granada. In deliberate modesty, she eschewed the ornate sculpted sepulcher of royalty, in favor of being buried beneath the floor marked only by a slab with an engraved epitaph.¹¹⁶ Such a display of humility was certainly unconventional for a monarch, but it bears remembering that her contemporary Leonor, Queen of Portugal (d. 1525), who had endured the loss of her only son, Afonso, would later choose to be buried in the same style.¹¹⁷ Great losses require grand gestures.

Isabel wanted to rest “whole” (entera), which is to say, she did not want any parts of her body to be removed or to be embalmed. In the end, however, the convent would only be a temporary resting place. Her will also made it clear that she wanted to lie alongside Fernando. Where he went, she would follow. For his part, Fernando reciprocated, asking in his will to be laid to rest with her in the royal chapel attached to what had been the great mosque of Granada, now repurposed as the city’s cathedral (construction on a new church did not begin until 1518). He specified he should lie with her in the convent until such a time as their new tombs were ready.¹¹⁸ Isabel showed more than the usual preoccupation with the fate of her soul and requested an enormous number of masses to be sung: 20,000 for her alone and 20,000 more for those who died in her service in the Castilian war of succession, the wars with Granada and Naples, and the colonization of the Americas, all of which were to be performed in Observant Franciscan churches and monasteries.¹¹⁹

After participating in so many bereavement rituals over her last years, particularly the very sumptuous one in honor of her son, Juan, she changed course when planning her own arrangements. She did not want her subjects to wear mourning attire, nor did she want the church where she lay to be adorned in black. Instead of the usual multitude of votive candles, only thirteen should be lit. The money saved through this economizing and the savings from the mourning clothes that would not have to be ordered were to be directed instead to the poor as alms. Beyond this, she donated dowries for 200 poor single women, clothes for another 200 paupers, and ransoms for 200 captives, in addition to which she bequeathed a series of donations to monasteries.

The most important section of Isabel’s will deals with government, clarifying the arrangements and official appointments she wanted made. It is at this point that Juana finally appears in her mother’s testament, when the heiress is asked to ensure that the royal patrimony remains undivided. Conscious of Juana’s problems with Philippe, and of the tenuousness of one’s authority from beyond the grave, Isabel appended the following formula to each order to Juana: “I order the said Princess, my daughter, and the said Prince, her husband.”¹²⁰ Isabel wanted Juana and Philippe to have an arrangement similar to the one she had with Fernando. Castile had not been subsumed by or joined permanently to Aragon by their marriage: in Castile, Isabel reigned supreme, and Fernando was her consort, and vice versa in Aragon, as reflected in their royal motto “They amount to the same” (Tanto monta, monta tanto). By repeating that formula in her will, in which Philippe always came second, Isabel was underlining the fact that without his wife, he was nothing more than an archduke. This is further clarified in the section in which she wills her kingdoms to Juana: “I order and establish and institute the most Illustrious Princess, Lady Juana, as my universal heir (mi universal heredera) in all of my kingdoms and lands and lordships and of all of my properties after the end of my days.”¹²¹

Isabel’s presentation of the inheritance was also tied to the situation in Flanders. Thanks to her ambassadors, she was aware that Juana and Philippe’s marital relationship had gone sour since the princess’s return. It seems that the archduke had taken a lover at court, disrespecting and further aggravating Juana, who had put her credibility in Castile on the line in order to return to him. But the patriarchal society of the time did not see male infidelity as a problem, particularly for powerful noblemen like Philippe. Again, it is the gossip-loving Martire d’Anghiera, who, in a letter to Hernando de Talavera, Archbishop of Granada, and Iñigo López de Mendoza y Quiñones, Count of Tendilla and Governor of Granada, recounted Juana’s scandalous reaction. Martire d’Anghiera’s letter is dated April 10, 1504, seven months before Isabel’s death. In it, he describes how a jealous Juana assaulted Philippe’s lover, physically striking her, and then ordering her blond locks to be shorn. In a hyperbolic tone, he presents a princess consumed by wrath: “With a heart full of rage, her face spitting flames, gnashing her teeth, she struck out at one of her ladies.”¹²² It bears remarking that in this instance d’Anghiera was not present. Unfortunately, we do not have Talavera’s replies, but it is no small irony that he had written a treatise against gossip and slander, which he considered a mortal sin, comparing the rumor-monger to a snake. For all his moralizing, however, Talavera received all of the political gossip from the Castilian and Burgundian courts thanks to Martire d’Anghiera.¹²³

For Philippe, who was also prone to fits of temper, this assault on his paramour was humiliating and a public undermining of his masculinity and his station as husband. He reacted in kind. In Martire d’Anghiera’s account, he threw himself at Juana—implying his behavior was violent—and insulted her and banished her from his company.¹²⁴ It was after this, Martire d’Anghiera explains, that Juana sank into anguish and her health deteriorated. When news of the incident reached the Catholic Monarchs, they too were distraught. Isabel was furious at the archduke’s attack on her daughter. For the king and queen, their son-in-law was a cipher.

The royal couple, so powerful at home, had few means at their disposal to put a brake on this abuse, and this feeling of impotence must have further aggravated them; but, in the final analysis, Philippe was the husband, and his “rights” had to be respected. Making the pill all the more bitter, it had been Juana who had insisted so adamantly on returning to Philippe, against her parents’ explicit wishes. Hence, in a subsequent letter (dated July 19, 1504) to the same individuals, Martire d’Anghiera elaborates on how Isabel and Fernando were both now physically ill as a consequence of their profound indignation at Philippe’s conduct. The queen’s fever, he reported, had intensified.¹²⁵

The metaphors of the body politic current since antiquity describe society as a human body with the ruler as the head, as in John of Salisbury’s widely circulated mirror of princes, Policraticus (ca. 1159). Fernando and Isabel now foresaw that the future “head” of their Spains—Juana and Philippe—were in conflict, and their anticipation of this malady of the body politic was now making their physical bodies sick. The historian Ernst Kantorowicz saw the medieval king as having two bodies: a physical “body natural” and an immortal “body politic.”¹²⁶ Thus, the monarch’s last will and testament was crucial in ensuring the integrity of the body politic through the transition to a new ruler. But somehow Philippe was compromising both of Kantorowicz’s bodies, so Isabel was obliged to use her testament to protect her “body politic.”

During Isabel’s final months Philippe became particularly cruel and abusive toward his wife. Unfortunately for historians, the political crisis was so serious and Isabel so sick that the Catholic Monarchs did not even dare to commit their concerns to writing, and resorted to sending trusted individuals, like the bishop of Córdoba, to Flanders with private oral instructions for their retainers there.¹²⁷ In the face of this, Philippe tightened his control over Juana, isolating his wife by denying her economic resources and rearranging her household to deprive her of any servants loyal to her. The situation reached a flash point when Philippe forced Juana to renounce her four enslaved Morisca servants—an incident that was reported in excruciating detail to the Catholic Monarchs by Diego Ramírez de Guzmán, Bishop of Catania, and by the ambassador, Gómez de Fuensalida, Comendador de la Membrilla.¹²⁸ Apparently Philippe had developed an antipathy toward these servants—that they were enslaved and of Muslim origin was evidently a source of suspicion in the Low Countries.¹²⁹ Even the renowned humanist Desiderius Erasmus, who knew Philippe and Juana personally, refused Cardinal Cisneros’s invitation to join him in Castile because the cultural mixture of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam that characterized medieval Iberia was alien to his taste.¹³⁰

In Philippe’s view, Juana was spending too much time with these former Muslims, while the court physicians reported that they were bathing her and washing her hair with such frequency that it was putting her health in danger.¹³¹ Even Juana’s private hygiene was now subject to surveillance. The bishop of Catania and Gómez de Fuensalida reported how Philippe offered Juana female Flemish servants as replacements, threatening her in writing that unless she obeyed him, he would not come back to see her. This provoked, according to the ambassador and the bishop, Juana’s “great anger” at the messenger, inciting another bout of ira regina similar to those she had experienced in La Mota and with Philippe’s lover. Again, by expressing her anger, Juana was vindicating her rights, and again her husband dismissed her wishes in order to preserve his privilege and dominance over her; nevertheless, again, she was the one who was perceived as out of place. Anger is gendered and bound up in power. As Barbara Applebaum contends, “Anger as an outlaw emotion, therefore, constitutes a claim of equality that those in power must dismiss in order to preserve dominance or risk a challenge to the norms that support systemic privilege.”¹³²

Philippe finally decided to take care of the matter in person. But Juana refused to relinquish her slaves, so he left, and soon after sent another letter repeating the same message: she needed to let them go or she would not see him again. Juana still refused to comply with his demand. At this point, the ambassador, seeing the crisis that was building, intervened by reminding Philippe that the Catholic Kings had requested that he treat his wife “with kindness” (dulcemente), to which the archduke replied that he would try, but that the enslaved women had to go.¹³³ Once again, Philippe sent the same letter, and once again, Juana refused. Once more, he met with her in person, and once more they argued. (Ironically, in all of this Juana was spending a lot more time with Philippe than she ordinarily did!) The angry archduke reproached his wife with “hard words” (palabras duras): “Madam, I am not happy that these slaves are in your company; send them away, for I will not sleep in your chamber while they are here.”¹³⁴ In other words, Philippe admitted explicitly that he was withholding sex from Juana—reneging on his part of the marital debt. Determined to see the matter finally come to an end, Philippe sent messengers to carry off the slaves by force, because he desired greatly to sleep with his wife, to which Juana responded that she would dispose of them herself, and that he should come. And so, they were reconciled and spent the night together. But Juana had been less than forthright. Instead of sending the enslaved women back to Castile, she only sent them next door to her bed-servant’s chamber. When she summoned one of them to her the next morning, Philippe flew into a rage and swore again that she would never see him again.

For the archduke, enough was enough, and he dispatched his men to remove the four Moriscas by force. This time it was Juana who became enraged. According to the ambassador’s account, Philippe suggested that Juana had even dared to threaten him: “You have done this to me, but I am going to make you pay in ways that you cannot even imagine.”¹³⁵ Apparently, she told him that she planned soon to be “leaving there secretly for some seaport where she would embark for Spain, which would be a great dishonor for him and for all of us.”¹³⁶ To prevent Juana’s escape Philippe had her locked up in her rooms, and separated her from all the Spaniards at court. The ambassador and bishop’s report state that they were forced to arbitrate again, begging Philippe not to do such a thing to the Princess of Asturias, and offering to mediate in the dispute. The bishop met with Juana, but took Philippe’s side, asking Juana to move on and accept her new Flemish maidservants—a resolution that did not sit well with her.¹³⁷

The report states that to make Juana happy, Philippe invited their children to court and slept with her again, but she still would not accept the Flemish servants. Once again, he put her in isolation, quarantining her from all of the Spanish courtiers, and not allowing exceptions even at times of prayer. In response, Juana embarked on a hunger strike and demanded Philippe’s presence. When he did not come, she spent the entire night pounding on the floor of her room (which was the ceiling of his chamber, located below) first with a rock or a stick, and then with a knife, while shouting for her doors to be opened. Neither the princess nor the archduke slept that night.

From this point forward, the bishop and the ambassador’s account is nothing more than a retelling of Philippe’s story—Juana was not allowed to see any Spaniards, including them, so they had no way of communicating with her. The archduke claimed that Juana had sworn to him that she would refuse all food and die of starvation unless the ladies he had chosen for her, together with the couple’s children, were removed from the palace. Here, Philippe gets to the heart of the matter: Juana’s refusal to submit to his will. He says to her (as reported): “Because you do not want to do anything that I want, and because you want to be in a way that dishonors you and me… . If you do not do what I want, I will leave you, and I will go away, and I won’t see you until you do it.”¹³⁸ The topos of the subservient wife figured prominently in both the fiction and the conduct literature of the age, and Philippe had apparently taken it to heart. It is almost as if Juana was destined to become his Griselda—the female protagonist of the last tale of Boccaccio’s wildly popular and widely translated Decameron.¹³⁹ In the story, Griselda is taught by her cruel husband, Gualtieri, Marquis of Saluzzo, to be obedient to the point of sacrificing everything to him, even her own children. But the Princess of Asturias did not yet bend to her husband’s will, and is reported to have replied, “I would rather die than do anything you want me to do.”¹⁴⁰ However, as it was, the situation was untenable, and Juana broke down and sent Philippe a letter in which she accepted his conditions. Proof of their reconciliation came in the form of the couple’s fifth child, Marie, born on September 15, 1505.

At bottom, Philippe wanted to impose on Juana a Flemish household staffed by individuals loyal only to him in order to tighten his control over her and monitor her communication with her parents. And in the end, he succeeded. The enslaved Moriscas were sent back to Spain, together with a few other servants Philippe singled out—undoubtedly the servants Juana felt closest to.¹⁴¹ Although Juana was certainly in the right in fighting to control her own household, her tactics made her appear unruly and did not play well at court. She acquired the reputation of a woman unable to control her emotions or to follow courtly rules. From our perspective today, although anachronistic, it is clear that what the ambassador and the bishop reported was not merely manipulation, but a textbook case of deliberate domestic abuse. Philippe cut her off from all communication with those who were closest to her, and whom she loved and trusted, and deprived her of her economic independence. On top of this, Philippe blamed her for the situation, which further undermined her self-esteem and sent her into a downward spiral of emotional distress. Temporary reconciliations, even passionate ones such as the two enjoyed, are not unusual in toxic domestic relationships.¹⁴² Then, no less than today, society tended to normalize unhealthy behavior, thus making it difficult for individuals—whether perpetrators or victims—to understand that the nature of their relationship was abusive.

All of this was unfolding and being conveyed to Isabel at the very time she was preparing to dictate her testament and, eventually, the supplementary codicil. Her aims, then, were to protect Juana, mollify Philippe, and position Fernando as arbiter and guarantor of the succession. Anticipating that Philippe would bring his Flemish entourage to rule over Castile (as he had done with Juana’s household), she prohibited foreigners from being appointed to any senior positions in local or royal administrations, at court, or within the Church in her kingdoms. She presented this rationale: “The Prince, my son, being of another nation and of another language, if he did not conform to the said laws and privileges and rights and usages and customs of these said kingdoms and he and the Princess, my daughter, did not govern them by the said laws and privileges and usages and customs, they would not be obeyed or served.”¹⁴³ Castile was to be governed by Castilians, even if the king consort was Flemish. This was not an unreasonable position; it echoes Portuguese concerns at the prospect of a dynastic union with Castile and Aragon, as seen in chapter 6. In his manual of statecraft, The Prince, Isabel’s contemporary Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) also recognized the challenges in ruling over a foreign land and people:

When states are acquired in a country differing in language, customs, or laws, there are difficulties, and good fortune and great energy are needed to hold them, and one of the greatest and most real helps would be that he who has acquired them should go and reside there. This would make his position more secure and durable.¹⁴⁴

But Philippe was not the only person Isabel was concerned about. Her relationship with Juana and her confidence in her daughter and heir were shaken by her experiences during the princess’s sojourn in Castile in 1502–4. Juana’s reputation among the Castilian nobility had suffered, and now her conflicts with her husband were further undermining Isabel’s confidence. The dying queen had to plan for every possible contingency. How would the succession be managed if Juana were not in Castile at the time of her passing? What would happen if she were in her husband’s lands for extended periods of time? But beyond these questions, Isabel had to contend with the fact that Juana might not be able or willing to accept the crown, “or being [in her kingdoms, she] is unwilling or unable to comprehend their governance.”¹⁴⁵ This clause is of paramount importance because it states what should not be said, and contemplates a situation entirely unbefitting for a monarch. It suggests that Juana would have as little interest in ruling as queen as she had shown as heiress, as when in 1504 she chose to return to her husband and children in Flanders instead of remaining in Castile in anticipation of this transition. According to Isabel’s will, should this come to pass, the de facto ruler would not be Juana’s husband, Philippe, but rather the new queen’s father, Fernando.

Isabel was walking a fine and subtle line: affirming that her daughter would be the queen regnant, while preventing her son-in-law from ruling without her. She may have imagined that Philippe would try to dispose of Juana in order to rule Castile himself, and so Isabel had to make Juana indispensable to him. This would protect Juana and endow her with the value and honor she was due as queen in her own right. By positioning Fernando as “interim king,” Isabel was acknowledging the crucial role he had played at her side in Castile over the course of their thirty-five-year marriage, and introducing a deterrent to Philippe’s ambitions. Such a proposal—one that obliged Fernando to step in in the case of the queen’s incapacity—had already been ratified at the estates (cortes) of Toledo in 1502, and at those convened at Madrid and Alcalá de Henares in 1503, and Isabel had discussed just such a scenario with the leading members of the nobility and clergy.

This being a legal document of extreme importance, it was not enough for Isabel to state this once in her will. She needed to reiterate it, both for the sake of clarity and to be sure there could be no means of working around it. For this reason, she repeated the same provision with very similar wording, but adding a terminal date to Fernando’s regency: 1520, the year their grandson and Juana’s heir apparent, Carlos, would reach the age of twenty. Isabel may have been prepared for the possibility that Juana either could not or would not rule, but she had every confidence in her young grandson:

That each and every time the said Princess, My daughter, is not in these said kingdoms or after She comes to them at any time She has to go and be away from them, or being in them She is unwilling or unable to take part in the governance of them (no quisiere o no podiere entender en la governaçión d’ellos), that in any of the said cases the King [Fernando], My Lord, rules over, administers, and governs the said kingdoms and dominions and has the governance and administration of them by the said Princess. My Lord, as is said, will administer and govern the said kingdoms and dominions and hold the government and administration of them on the part of the said Princess, as is said, until Prince Don Carlos, my grandson, the firstborn son and heir of the said Prince and Princess, is of legitimate age, of at least twenty years.¹⁴⁶

Isabel’s intention was to ensure the succession of her line. The crown would go first to Juana, and then to her oldest surviving male child. Were there no surviving male children, it would then pass to Juana’s eldest living daughter. If Juana had no surviving children, the throne would go to Isabel’s daughter María, the queen of Portugal, and to her children, male, then female. And if María had no successors, the crown would go first to Isabel’s daughter Catalina (Catherine of Aragon, then dowager of Arthur, Prince of Wales, and ambassador to the court of Whitehall), and then on to whatever children she might have. After walking through all of these scenarios, Isabel reiterated that no illegitimate child should sit on the throne. And while the queen had many kind words for her husband (“the huge and great love that I have for Your Lordship and that you have for me”) and left him with plenty of resources (including the incomes from the maestrazgos of Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcántara, and half of the rents from the American territories) and was grateful for all he had done for Castile, she never wavered from the contention that the kingdoms of the Crown of Castile were hers (mis reynos) and hers alone and that she exercised “absolute royal power” in them.¹⁴⁷ To drive this point home, she added, “I want and command that it be accepted, held and kept by law and as law, and that it shall have the force and vigor of law, and that no law, statute, right, custom, or any other thing whatsoever, shall encroach upon it or be able to encroach upon it.”¹⁴⁸

Isabel wrote her last will and testament forty-five days before she perished, but the matter of Juana still gave her no rest. On November 11, 1504, only fifteen days before Isabel died, Fernando had to reprimand Gómez de Fuensalida because he was not properly communicating his messages to his daughter, who was indisposed and “not as healthy as We would like her to be.”¹⁴⁹ The king was clear: Isabel and he wanted his messages to reach Juana because she was their heiress, and as such “she is everything” (ella es el todo). The ambassador’s allegiances should be to her and none other. Fernando also wanted Gómez de Fuensalida to convey Isabel’s passing to Philippe as quickly as possible after the event. Philippe was to travel to Castile with Juana, because without her he would not even be granted a reception. Fernando’s message was clear: if Juana was “everything,” without her, Philippe was nothing. Fernando knew this well by his own experience. Philippe was merely king consort, as was he, with no claim to authority in Castile by his own right.

Just three days before her death on November 23, 1504, Isabel added a codicil to tie up the remaining loose ends in her will relating to government, laws, and the reformation of the monasteries. Nor did she forget her newest subjects of the New World: they were to be “well treated,” consonant with her politics at home, and converted to Christianity.¹⁵⁰ Faith mattered.

In her will Isabel had already insisted that Juana and Philippe be “Catholic Princes”—protectors of the Church and patrons of the Holy Inquisition.¹⁵¹ In the codicil she acknowledged the servants who had taken care of her own mother during the dowager’s final years in Arévalo, and ordered that the lifelong pensions her mother had granted them away on her death seven years earlier would continue to be paid after the queen’s own death.¹⁵²

In his chronicle, Bernáldez records that Isabel died of “natural causes,” but he cannot deny the role in her decline played by her suffering—“the knives of pain” in her soul and heart that resulted from the premature loss of her children Juan and Isabel.¹⁵³ But for all of Isabel’s efforts to ensure the smooth transition of the monarchy and to secure the place of Juana and the future of her kingdoms, it was precisely on her death and with her will that Juana’s problems really began.

1. AGS: PTR, leg. 30, 2 (Medina del Campo, October 12, 1504), ed. Torre, Testamentaría, 80.

2. For Fernández Álvarez, one cannot but feel her “misfortune.” Fernández Álvarez, Juana la Loca, 69.

3. For an analysis of some of the literature, art, and cinema around Juana, see the volume edited by Gómez, Juan-Navarro, and Zatlin, Juana of Castile.

4. See, for example, Turner, “A Cure for the King”; Pfau, “Madness in the Realm”; Bures, “Charles VI.”

5. Maurer describes Henry VI as “oblivious and unresponsible; efforts to communicate with him and to get him to speak met with no recognition … his condition was also accompanied by physical weakness.” Maurer, Margaret of Anjou, 79.

6. Weissberger, Isabel Rules; Lehfeldt, “Ruling Sexuality,” 31–56; Liss, Isabel the Queen; Guardiola-Griffiths, Legitimizing the Queen.

7. We can observe a similar dynamic with the Aragonese queen, Maria de Luna, nearly a century earlier. Maria wielded direct political power as the lieutenant-general of her husband, Martí I, but avoided provoking masculine anxieties by cultivating a pious and reserved political persona. See Silleras-Fernández, Power, Piety, and Patronage, passim.

8. AGS: PTR, leg. 21, f. 1, ed. Torre, Documentos, 423–28. See also Salvador Esteban, “La precaria monarquía hispánica,” 315–27.

9. Azcona, Juana de Castilla, 214, 272.

10. For the Portuguese expulsions, see chapter 6.

11. Just five months later, however, he characterized her as a “good Christian.” Suárez Fernández, Política internacional, 5:288–99, 351–52; Fleming, Juana I, 38; Aram, Juana the Mad; González García, “Saturno y la reina impía,” 164–65.

12. Bergenroth’s view was debunked in 1869 in Gachard, “Jeanne la Folle defend contre l’imputation d’héresie.” See Rodríguez Villa, Bosquejo, VIII–X; and Aram, Juana the Mad, 1.

13. Gerli, “Gender Trouble,” 178–79; Azcona, Isabel la Católica, 396–400; Liss, Isabel the Queen, 157–61; Weissberger, Isabel Rules, 112–24; Lehfeldt, “Ruling Sexuality,” 40–54; Guardiola-Griffiths, Legitimizing the Queen, 16–23; Kaplan, “In Search of Salvation,” 289–308; Silleras-Fernandez, Chariots of Ladies,151–202.

14. Jansen, The Monstrous Regiment, 69–70; Segura Graíño, “Las sabias mujeres en la corte,” 175–87; Val Valdivieso, “Isabel la Católica y la educación,” 558–62.

15. Silleras-Fernandez, Chariots of Ladies, 151–202.

16. Silleras-Fernandez, Chariots of Ladies, 21–58, 98–150; Silleras-Fernandez, Power, Piety, and Patronage, 37–64, 115–38.

17. Aram, “Juana “the Mad’s” Signature,” 34n65.

18. Suárez Fernández, Política internacional, 5:470–76.

19. Suárez Fernández, Política internacional, 4:569–89.

20. Zurita, Historia del Rey, 2: b.32, 294–95; Aram, Juana the Mad, 34; Cauchies and Van Eeckenrode, “Recevoir madame l’archiduchesse,” 267; Ladero Quesada, La armada de Flandes.

21. See chapters 5 and 6 for comparison; and Padilla, Crónica de Felipe I llamado el Hermoso, 43–45; Prawdin, The Mad Queen, 17; Aram, Juana the Mad, 37–41; Fernández Álvarez, Juana la Loca, 80; Fleming, Juana I, 22–23.

22. Padilla, Crónica, 40; Zalama, “Recuperar la memoria,” 25; Cauchies, “Un príncipe,” 75.

23. Zalama, Vida cotidiana y arte, 30; Prawdin, The Mad Queen, 18–19; Fernández Álvarez, Juana la Loca, 81; Cauchies, Philippe le Beau, 50; Calderón Ortega, Felipe el Hermoso, 32.

24. As we saw in chapter 5, contemporaries also remarked on how Juana’s sister, Isabel, not only rushed to consummate her first marriage, but did so scandalously within the sacred confines of a monastery.

25. Padilla, Crónica, 54, 63–64.

26. Letter from Juana to Monsier de Veyre (Brussels, May 3, 1505) asking him to intercede on her behalf before King Fernando; cit.: Fernández Álvarez, Juana la Loca, 61; ed.: Rodríguez Villa, Bosquejo, XII–XIV.

27. Aram, “Juana ‘the Mad’s’ Signature,” 333.

28.Deuxième voyage, 458–59.

29. Padilla, Crónica, 149.

30. Fernando named his son lieutenant: ACA: CR., reg. 3826, f. 139 (Valladolid, August 30, 1514). See also RAH: Salazar y Castro, A-9, f. 181 (date missing); Rudolf, “El emperador Fernando I,” 131–32; Fernández de Córdova, “Facciones políticas bajo Juana I,” 30; Zurita, Historia del Rey, b.7, 50.

31. Pulgar, Crónica, 256.

32. Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, 184.

33. Aram, Juana the Mad, 8; Aram, “Voyages from Burgundy,” 97.

34. Fagel, “Juana de Castilla,” 86; Fleming, Juana I, 29; Calderón Ortega, Felipe el Hermoso, 34; Pérez Bustamante and Calderón Ortega, Felipe I, 67.

35. Domínguez Casas, “Estilo y rituales de corte,” 92.

36. Aram, Juana the Mad, 191; Suárez Fernández, Política internacional, 4:636–42, doc. 188; 5:353–56, doc 100.

37. Domínguez Casas, “Estilo y rituales de corte,” 94; Domínguez Casas, Arte y etiqueta, 621–24.

38. Fernández de Oviedo, Batallas y quinquajenas, 244; Pérez Bustamante and Calderón Ortega, Felipe I, 66–67.

39. Lalaing, Premier voyage, 180. The court of the Catholic Monarchs was rather sober. In The Prince Niccolò Machiavelli showed great admiration for Fernando’s political maneuvering, but also accused him of being stingy and greedy. This was indeed his reputation, although it was denied by some of his courtiers, like Martire d’Anghieria. Epistolario, 3, doc. 566 (to Luis Marliano, Bishop of Tuy and Carlos’s physician and counselor), 217–19 (January 23, 1516). Ladero Quesada, Los últimos años, 312; Rodríguez Fuster, “La visión de Fernando,” 38–43.

40. Lalaing, Premier voyage, 193.

41. This section draws on a previous article, Silleras-Fernandez, “Isabel’s Years of Sorrow.”

42. Bernáldez, Memorias, 380.

43. Azcona, Isabel la Católica, 878; see also Bernáldez, Memorias, 379. See chapter 6 for a comparison of the sorrow expressed at court after the deaths of Princes Afonso of Portugal and Juan of Castile/Aragon.

44. See the section on Isabel I’s will, below.

45. Prince Afonso’s ballad, “Muerte del príncipe de Portugal,” was not as popular as Juan’s. A longer version commissioned by Princess Isabel from Montesino seems to be the original version. See Marías Martínez, “Historia y ficción en el romance,” II, 643–46; Catalán, “Permanencia de motivos,” 35–37; Menéndez Pidal, “El Romancero en la corte castellana,” 291–305.

46. Dutton, Cancionero del siglo XV.

47. RAH: Salazar y Castro, A–10, f. 38 (Lisbon, 9–17–1498). See also chapter 2.

48. See chapter 5.

49. Amaro, “Dos cartas,” 460.

50. Amaro, “Dos cartas,” 461.

51. See chapter 6 for a contextualization of Ortiz’s works.

52. Sanz Hermida advocates for Diego de Deza, Bishop of Salamanca and Juan’s ayo as dedicatee. See his introduction to Ortiz’s Tratado del fallesçimiento, 26–27.

53. Ortiz, Tratado del fallesçimiento, 52.

54. Ortiz, Tratado del fallesçimiento, 57. For a brief discussion on Manrique’s coplas, see chapter 2.

55. Ortiz, Tratado del fallesçimiento, 58.

56. Recall the secret instructions referred to earlier that Carlos V dictated for his newlywed son, in which he advised moderation vis-à-vis Felipe’s sexual encounters with his bride. Fernández Álvarez, Corpus documental de Carlos V, 2:90–103; Silleras-Fernandez, “Sois a chave que une as duas coroas,” 253–57.

57. Ortiz, Tratado del fallesçimiento, 60.

58. Louis XII authorized Marguerite to cross France on her way to Flanders. RAH: Salazar y Castro, A-11, ff. 197–98 (Olms, September 10, 1499). In the same missive in which Diego Ramírez de Villaescusa communicated to Isabel and Fernando Marguerite’s safe arrival in Ghent, he announced the birth of their grandson, the future Carlos V. RAH: Salazar y Castro, A-11, f. 249 (Ghent, March 14, 1500).

59. Gristwood, Game of Queens, 64.

60. Marguerite wrote to her former in-laws, the Catholic Monarchs, to notify them about the sad news of her husband’s passing. RAH: Salazar y Castro, A-11, f. 418 (September 30, 1504). See Jansen, The Monstruous Regiment, 88; Kern, Pathologies of Love, 119–20. For an analysis of grief and love in widowhood and in French literature, see Moore, The Erotics of Grief, 123–84 and passim.

61. See chapter 5. Tremayne, The First Governess of the Netherlands, chap. 3; Bonner, Fortune, Misfortunes, Fortifies One, chap. 2.

62. Sharon, The Monstrous Regiment of Women, 88–89; Blockmans and Prevenier, Promised Lands, 210–13.

63. Welzel, “Widowhood,” 108; Eichberger, “Margareta of Austria,” 49–52; Eichberger, “Instrumentalising Art,” 573; Blockmans and Prevenier, Promised Lands, 210–14.

64. Eichberger, “Instrumentalising Art,” 575.

65. Ortiz, Tratado del fallesçimiento, 61.

66. Anglería, Epistolario, 1:b.13, doc. 216 (to the Cardinal of Santa Cruz), 412 (July 29, 1500). See also chapter 6 for more on disimular. Suárez Fernández, Fernando el Católico, 354–55.

67. Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier was composed over the course of twenty years (1508–28). For an overview, see Burke, The Book of the Courtier, 139–57.

68. Burke, The Book of the Courtier, 68.

69. Ortiz, Tratado del fallesçimiento, 68.

70. See chapter 6.

71. Ortiz, Tratado consolatorio, Escorial: 23-V-11, f. 13v.

72. Anglería, Epistolario, 2:b.16, doc. 274 (October 3, 1504), 85–86; Cabrera Sánchez, “La muerte de los miembros,” 115.

73. Ha-Kohen, Valle del llanto, 180.

74. Villaescusa’s text is divided into four such conversations: Isabel speaking with Death, Fernando with Marguerite of Austria, Isabel with Fernando, and the royal couple with their daughter-in-law. González Rolán, El humanismo cristiano; Sanz Hermida, “Literatura consolatoria,” 166; Villaescusa, Cuatro diálogos, 81.

75. Ramírez de Haro, Cuatro diálogos, 307.

76. Martínez Millán, “De la muerte del príncipe Juan,” 1, 53; Azcona, Isabel la Católica, 713–20, 735–37; Liss, Isabel the Queen, 378–401; Edwards, Isabel la Católica, 220; Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 2:585–92.

77. Aram, “Queen Juana: Legend and History,” 34. On the contrary, Ladero Quesada sees dementia in Juana, while Suárez Fernández judges it to be a serious mental disturbance. Ladero Quesada, Isabel I de Castilla, 137; Suárez Fernández, “Coyuntura europea,” 55.

78. Fleming, Juana I, 49–52.

79. Anglería, Epistolario, 1:b.14, doc. 222 (June 30, 1501), 428.

80. Anglerii, Opus Epistolarum, 128. Aram considers that Martire d’Anghiera was trying to gain Philippe’s patronage and that either he or his editor tampered with the letters before they were published in 1530, four years after he died. Aram, Juana the Mad, 68. While this is plausible, it cannot be confirmed. While Martire d’Anghiera was not “pro-Juana,” and he admired some qualities of her husband, in the struggle for the crown he was closer to Fernando’s party, as explained in chapter 8.

81. Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 182.

82. Ladero Quesada, Los últimos años, 75.

83. Padilla, Crónica, 87; Zurita, Historia del Rey, b.4, 25.

84. Anglería, Epistolario, 2:b.15, doc. 250 (September 20, 1502), 35.

85. Anglería, Epistolario, 2:b.15, doc. 250, 35.

86. Dutch chronicles, like the Divisiekronick of Cornelius Aurelius (1517) or the anonymous chronicles of 1530 and 1531, barely mention Juana and explain very little about her time in Flanders. See an analysis in Fagel, “Juana de Castilla,” 106.

87. A month before Carlos turned four years old, in January 1504, he sent his first signed letter, which was addressed to his maternal grandfather, Fernando, and was most likely written at the request of his father, to ask his mother to come back to Flanders. Foronda de Aguilera, Estancias y viajes, 20; Parker, Emperor, illustration 2 (insert between 364 and 365).

88. Anglería, Epistolario, 2:b.15, doc. 253 (January 4, 1502), 41.

89. “La Reyna [Isabel I] se queda buena, aunque muy atribulada y cansada desta señora Princesa [Juana], Dios se lo perdone.” RAH: Salazar y Castro, A-9, f. 219r (Medina del Campo, February 12 [year missing]).

90. RAH: Salazar y Castro, A–11, ff. 380–81 (Alcalá de Henares, June 6, 1503).

91. “Se espantaron de la gran mudanza en el color y la figura que traya”; “tan grand peligro por la salud de la Reyna nuestra señora tener la vida que tiene con la señora princesa que cada día temenos estos accidentes.” RAH: Salazar y Castro, A–11, ff. 380–81 (Alcalá de Henares, June 6, 1503).

92. Padilla, Crónica, 114.

93. Padilla, Crónica, 114.

94. Anglería, Epistolario, 2:b.15, doc. 268 (December 29, 1503), 75. Emotions like anger and rage were considered a sign of mental instability. See Katajala-Peltomaa and Niiranen, Mental Dis(order) in Later Medieval Europe, 4.

95. Harris, “The Lion in Medieval Western Europe,” 191; cf. 1 Peter 5:8.

96. Spelman, “Anger and Insubordination,” 270.

97. Fox, “Gender, Emotion, Literature,” 218.

98. Padilla, Crónica I, 115.

99. Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 197.

100. Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 197.

101. Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 197 (date illegible).

102. BL: Berenroth, MS 28572, I, f. 43r-v (nineteenth-century copy).

103. Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 197.

104. Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 198.

105. Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 211.

106. Zurita, Historia del Rey, b.5, 124.

107. Padilla, Crónica, 116; Cauchies, “Un príncipe,” 81.

108. López de Coca Castañer, Historia de un magnicidio frustrado, 14.

109. Queen Isabel described the incident as not politically motivated. Sesma Muñoz, Crónica de un atentado real, 136; Jiménez Calvente, “Fernando el Católico ante la muerte,” 131–32.

110. Gual Vila, “L’intent de regicidi,” 747; Belenguer, Ferran el Catòlic, 181–82.

111. Mendibil and Silvela, Biblioteca selecta, 2:18.

112. Mendibil and Silvela, Biblioteca selecta, 2:18.

113. The queen ordered the sale of her possessions to pay her debts (including the dowries of her daughters, Maria and Catalina), a process that took eight years and was entrusted to one of the executors of her will, the contador mayor, Juan Velázquez. The other executors were Fernando; Cardinal Cisneros, her confessor; Diego de Deza, her contador mayor; Antonio de Fonseca; and her secretary, Juan López de Lezárraga. Martín Barba, “El desarrollo de la almoneda,” 251; Liss, Isabel the Queen, 377–401; and Fernández Álvarez, Isabel la Católica, 428–48.

114. Santa Cruz, Crónica, 1, 302. In a letter to the Archbishop of Granada and the Count of Tendilla, Martire d’Anghiera describes the same symptoms. Anglería, Epistolario, 2:b.16, doc. 274 (March 10, 1504), 85–86.

115. Luke 22:39–46; Matthew 26:36–46; Mark 14:32–42. For an overview on Christian compassion as a performatively constituted emotion in the period 1050–1530, see McNamer, Affective Mediation.

116. Torre, Testamentaría, 63.

117. See chapter 6.

118. See Fernando’s testament at Calderón Ortega and Díaz González, El proceso de redacción, 45–46.

119. The masses for her soul are accounted for in her will; the one for those who died in her service appears in the codicil. Torre, Testamentaría, 99. Fernando commissioned 10,000 masses in his will. Calderón Ortega and Díaz González, El proceso de redacción, 47.

120. Torre, Testamentaría, 63.

121. Torre, Testamentaría, 63.

122. Anglería, Epistolario, 2:b.16, doc. 272 (April 10, 1504), 84.

123. Talavera’s A Very Useful Treatise against the Common and Frequent Sin of Gossip, Detraction, and Slander Against People in Their Absence (Breve e muy provechoso tratado contra el murmurar e decir mal de otro en su absencia, que es muy gran pecado y muy usado) was printed in 1496 but written ca. 1477. See the study and bilingual edition by Johnston (Hernando the Talavera). Pascua holds that Talavera used this treatise to criticize the Inquisition and its tactics. Pascua, “Invisible Enemies,” 269–70.

124. Anglería, Epistolario, 2:b.16, doc. 272 (April 10, 1504), 84. “Philippum allata, impatiens iste praeceps in uxorem dicitur eam contumeliis jurgiisque assecit.” Anglerii, Opus Epistolarum, 157.

125. Anglería, Epistolario, 2:b.16, doc. 273 (July 19, 1504), 84–85.

126. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies.

127. See, for example, Fernando’s letter to Fuensalida in Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 296 (Medina del Campo, October 28, 1504).

128. Five enslaved Moriscas are documented at Juana’s court: María de Reyna, Inés de Asia, Inés de Ribera, María de Ribera, and her daughter, María de Ribera. Domínguez Casas, “Estilo y rituales de corte,” 93.

129. Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 297–301 (Brussels, January 11, 1504). See also Aram, Juana the Mad, 77; Fleming, Juana I, 52–55.

130. Schevill, “Erasmus and Spain,” 96–97.

131. The ambassadors Juan Manuel, Lord of Belmonte de Campos, and Gómez de Fuensalida, Commander of Membrilla, reported this to the Catholic Kings. Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 304–5 (Ghent, October 10, 1504).

132. Applebaum, “Learning from Anger,” 133.

133. Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 298.

134. “Señora, yo no soy contento que estas esclavas estén en vuestra compañía, y echaldas de aquí, porque yo no dormiré en vuestra cámara mientras ellas aquí estuvyeren.” Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 298.

135. “Vos me aveys hecho este torno; más yo os haré otro de que os pese, el qual vos no pensays.” Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 299.

136. “Con pensamiento de yrse de allí secretamente a algún puerto de mar donde se embarcase para España, lo qual sería gran deshonra para él y para todos.” Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 299.

137. Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 299.

138. “Porque no querés hazer nada de lo que yo quiero, y porque querés estar de manera que os deshonrreys a vos e a mi… . Sy no hazes lo que yo quiero, yo os dexaré, y me yré y nos verne a ver hasta que lo hagays.” Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 299.

139. Klapisch-Zuber, “The Griselda Complex”; Campbell, “Sexual Poetics and the Politics of Translation,” 191–216; Silleras-Fernandez, Chariots of Ladies, 77–80.

140. “Yo me dexaré antes morir que hazer ninguna cosa deso que vos quereys.” Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 299.

141. For instance, a married couple and another servant named Sepúlveda. Letter from the ambassadors Juan Manuel and Fuensalida to the Catholic Monarchs (Ghent, October 11, 1504), ed. Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 305.

142. Rakovec-Felser, “Domestic Violence and Abuse,” 62.

143. Torre, Testamentaría, 75.

144. Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 3.

145. Torre, Testamentaría, 76.

146. Torre, Testamentaría, 77. Regarding Isabel’s will, see also Zalama, “Recuperar la memoria”; Fleming, Juana I, 65, 66.

147. Torre, Testamentaría, 85, 86.

148. Torre, Testamentaría, 88.

149. Gómez de Fuensalida, Correspondencia, 307 (Medina del Campo, 11–11–1504). See also Aram, Juana the Mad, 78–79; Azcona, Isabel la Católica, 925–37.

150. Torre, Testamentaría, 97.

151. Torre, Testamentaría, 78–79.

152. Torre, Testamentaría, 99.

153. Bernáldez, Memorias, chapter 102.