Bride and Groom: The Politics of Marriage in the Iberian Peninsula

Isabel of Portugal (1428–96) was the daughter of João, Constable of Portugal and Master of the Order of Santiago, and Isabel de Barcelos or de Bragança (d. 1465). The constable was the son of João I of Portugal (1385–1433) and the English princess Philippa of Lancaster (Queen Catalina’s sister), while Isabel was the daughter of Afonso I, Duke of Bragança and Count of Barcelos, and Beatriz Pereira de Alvim. As Afonso was a “natural,” or illegitimate, son of João I, Isabel de Barcelos was the half niece of her husband. Thus, their marriage fell well within the Church’s forbidden degrees of consanguinity. João and Isabel had four children, but only two, Isabel and Beatriz, survived to adulthood and bore children who went on to become the rulers of Castile and Portugal, respectively. Isabel, of course, was the mother of Isabel the Catholic, while Beatriz’s daughter, the infanta Leonor, became queen consort of João II. Her son Manuel would succeed João II as Manuel I in 1495, as a consequence of the death of João’s heir, the crown prince Afonso, as will be seen in chapters 5 and 6. With Manuel I the endogamy of the Portuguese line came full circle. Isabel of Aragon (the daughter of Isabel the Catholic and granddaughter of Isabel of Portugal) was married to Prince Afonso, and after his death wed Manuel. Over the course of his twenty-six-year reign, Manuel married two of the Catholic Kings’ daughters and one of their granddaughters: Isabel of Aragon (d. 1498), María of Aragon (d. 1517), and Leonor of Habsburg (d. 1555), the daughter of Juana I of Castile. Over the preceding centuries the royal houses of Castile, Portugal, Aragon, and Navarre had been intermarrying aggressively, with the result that by the end of the fifteenth century there were Trastámaras installed on all of the thrones of the peninsula (except for Muslim Granada, which would be conquered by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492). This dynamic would be continued by the Habsburgs, who, having inherited every kingdom except Portugal, pursued a committed policy of intermarriage with the Avis dynasty.

As for Isabel’s husband, Juan II inherited the throne of Castile after the death of his father, Enrique III (1390–1406). Known as “el Doliente” (traditionally, “the Mourner,” but more properly, “the Suffering” or “the Infirm”), Enrique had endured an acute illness from the age of seventeen that affected his body and face and left him “melancholic.”²As Fernán Pérez de Guzmán (d. 1458), a historian and poet at the court of Juan II, put it, “Between his work and the affliction of the long illness he became very sad and angry (muy triste e enojoso).”³ In fact, the royal chancellor, Pedro López de Ayala, drew allusions in his chronicle of the king to the intermittent and debilitating madness (locura) of Charles VI of France (1380–1422), which he also referred to as “a mental instability” (trastocamiento de cabeza). But for Ayala, there was a difference: Enrique was melancholic—a temporary condition—while Charles was inherently mad.⁴ Enrique’s melancholy was caused by his physical illness, and thus can be distinguished also from Duarte of Portugal’s pecado de tristeza discussed in chapter 2.⁵ Consequently, unlike that of Isabel of Portugal, Enrique III’s condition was not portrayed as an antecedent of Juana I’s illness or a link in the supposedly “defective genealogy” that led to it. His illness was physical—thus something for which he bore no blame. One of Enrique’s physicians, Alfonso Chirino, stated that this sickness made the monarch’s life “a torment”; the royal doctors did not know how to cure him.⁶ In any event, no sooner had he passed away than Enrique’s Jewish physician, Chief Rabbi Meir ben Solomon Alguadex, was accused of having murdered the king.⁷

Juan II, only one year old, was put under the tutelage of two mutually hostile co-regents: his mother, Catalina of Lancaster, and his uncle, Fernando de Antequera—the queen reigning in the north, and the prince in the south. Catalina would remain in this role until Juan reached his majority in 1419 at age fourteen.⁸ By this time she was sole regent, Fernando having given up his guardianship in 1412 after being elected king of Aragon through what became known as the Compromise of Casp. Representatives from Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia—the most important kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon—chose Fernando as ruler after the Catalan dynasty had run out of direct legitimate heirs in 1410 with the passing of Fernando’s uncle, Martí I (1396–1410). In the interval, Fernando had married a wealthy heiress, Leonor de Alburquerque, in 1394, with whom he had seven children, including the infamous Infantes de Aragón—princes who for many years provoked great turmoil in Castile during the reign of their cousin, Juan.

These disruptions would only be settled, after much resistance on the part of Catalina, by the marriage of her three children to three of Fernando de Antequera’s offspring.⁹ In 1415 Pope Benedict XIII (anti-Pope, 1394–1423) presided over the marriage of María of Castile to Fernando’s son, Alfons, who would inherit the Crown of Aragon the following year. Three years later, Juan II and his sister, Catalina, wedded their cousins, Maria and Enrique of Aragon.¹⁰ These marriages would have profound repercussions for the politics of Castile and Aragon for years to follow. Meanwhile, in order to consolidate his dynastic grip, Fernando de Antequera married his remaining children into the other royal houses of the peninsula. The infante Juan of Aragon—who would eventually succeed his brother as king of the Crown of Aragon in 1458—was wed to Blanche I (1425–41), who reigned over Navarre in her own right, while the infanta Leonor became the queen of Portugal by her marriage to Duarte I. The result of this game of thrones was that the children of Fernando de Antequera and Leonor of Albuquerque reigned over all the Christian kingdoms of the peninsula by either inheritance or marriage.

The significance of this web of marriages was lost on no one. As Alfons the Magnanimous himself observed, “As much by their common blood and the marriages that have joined the most illustrious kings of Castile, and of Navarre and of Portugal, one could say that they are all ruled as if by the same dynasty.”¹¹ As the powerful Lope de Barrientos (1382–1469), Bishop of Segovia, put it, “The sons and daughters of this King of Aragon [Fernando de Antequera] had all the kingdoms of Spain.”¹² That said, these marriages did little to mitigate the fighting between the Aragonese and the Castilian branches of the dynasty, which clashed throughout the fifteenth century, until the marriage of Isabel and Fernando in 1469 united the two lines.

Unlike his father, Juan II did not seem to suffer from any major medical condition, but was portrayed as a lustful hedonist, and like his mother, had the reputation of being prone to bad influences—specifically, that of his favorite, Álvaro de Luna. Traditionally, scholars date the beginning of Álvaro de Luna’s favor with Juan II to 1420, shortly before the “Coup of Tordesillas.” On July 14 of that year, the infante Enrique of Aragon abducted the fourteen-year-old Juan, his cousin and brother-in-law, together with Álvaro de Luna, and confined them in Talavera de la Reina. Four and a half months later, Álvaro orchestrated their escape, which was aided by Enrique’s brother, the infante Juan. This episode drew the adolescent Juan deeply into Álvaro’s confidence and set the stage for the conflicts to come. Meanwhile, the death of Fernando de Antequera had unleashed his sons’ ambitions. As Barrientos remarked (and as Pérez de Guzmán concurred), Fernando’s passing “destabilized peace and concord in Castile,” while the chronicler Pero Niño observed: “Fear died [along with the king] and justice became ill throughout most of Spain.”¹³ In the decades that followed, the Aragonese Trastámaras did their best to undermine the rule of Juan II, who was saved only by the ruthless efficiency of his royal favorite. But Álvaro’s time would also come, and his influence at court would end in 1447.

The precise date was August 22, 1447, when Juan II married Isabel of Portugal in Madrigal de las Altas Torres, at the initiative of the constable himself.¹⁴ Isabel’s dowry was set at 45,000 gold florins, with another 60,000 to be paid on the death of her mother—a sum that would revert to her in the event of Juan’s death, so she could return to Portugal if she wished.¹⁵ She was also granted the lordships of Soria, Arévalo, Madrigal de las Altas Torres, and Ciudad Real, although as Francisco de Paula Cañas Gálzez has pointed out, it does not seem that she ever received the latter.¹⁶ Her influence over her husband has been regarded as a key factor in the king’s estrangement from Álvaro and the latter’s execution in 1453.¹⁷ Isabel of Portugal’s predecessor as queen, Maria of Aragon (d. 1445), had not been fond of Álvaro either, all the more so because he had been in open conflict with her brothers, the Infantes de Aragón.¹⁸ For instance, in a defiant letter to Álvaro on January 21, 1441, Maria strongly reprimanded him, “You have done many serious and grievous acts in defiance of the King, Our Lord, and to the detriment and in scandal of His kingdoms.”¹⁹

The favorite was usurping the queen’s role as close adviser and confidant to the king. For this reason, in that same letter, Maria underlined her own position as “a closer person to the said Lord King than any other.”²⁰ In fact, as Diana Pelaz has pointed out, in some solemn documents Juan II used the form rreynante en vno or rregnante en vno (reigning as one) in reference to himself and his queen—although, in truth, given the influence of his favorite, it was more of a triumvirate than a duarchy.²¹ After Maria died, rumors circulated that she had been poisoned by Álvaro, an allegation the chronicler Pérez de Guzmán noted. However, her sister-in-law and cousin, María of Castile, queen consort of Aragon (1416–58), was quick to put the accusation to rest in a series of letters to her husband, Alfons the Magnanimous, the royal secretary, Joan Olzina, and other important figures.²² Maria’s goal was to mediate and avoid further conflict between the two branches of the Trastámara family.

His violent end notwithstanding, Álvaro de Luna had enjoyed the king’s favor and friendship for over twenty-five years. During this time his help in ruling Castile was crucial, but it was precisely because of his efficacy that his policies and position undermined the authority of the king himself and ultimately provoked a political and military conflict not only with the Infantes de Aragón, but also with the Castilian noble faction that supported them. Rising from relatively humble beginnings as the illegitimate son of an Aragonese nobleman, Álvaro Martínez de Luna, the younger Álvaro became immensely wealthy, acquiring the titles Duke of Trujillo, Count of San Esteban, Constable of Castile, and Grand Master of the Order of Santiago, and cultivating a network of clients and allies who would remain loyal to him even after his death. For example, the anonymous Chronicle of Álvaro de Luna (1453), which is generally attributed to one of his men, Gonzalo Chacón, whose goal it was to defend the reputation of his deceased patron, presents the constable as a perfect knight. It was said of Juan II that “of his own natural character, [he] embodied more cruelty than piety”; that “neither humanity nor clemency were his servants or familiars”; and that it was “out of his well-known cruelty, and out of his greed” that the king had Álvaro put to death.²³ In contrast, the king’s defenders, like Ruy Sánchez de Arévalo (d. 1470), underlined Juan’s piety, naivete, and love of reading, blaming these for distracting the king and leading him to neglect his realm.²⁴ Likewise, the picture Fernán Pérez de Guzmán painted was of a king well versed in Latin, who was immersed in reading, poetry, and courtly pastimes.²⁵

Love and Desire as Power: The Queen and the Friend

On August 22, 1447, the nineteen-year-old princess Isabel of Portugal married the forty-two-year-old Juan II of Castile in Valladolid.²⁶ At this point Juan II already had an heir from his previous wife, Maria of Aragon. The infante Enrique was twenty-two, three years older than his stepmother and married to Blanca II of Navarre, although he had proven incapable of consummating his marriage and was roundly whispered to be impotent or homosexual.²⁷ He would have been aware that the marriage to Isabel had the potential not only to reorient the kingdom’s diplomacy away from the Aragonese Trastámaras and toward Portugal, but also to produce a second heir. This, together with his antipathy toward Álvaro de Luna, undoubtedly led him to skip the ceremony.²⁸ Others were more taken by the new queen. Iñigo López de Mendoza, the Marquis of Santillana, an important nobleman and renowned poet, did attend, afterward composing a poem praising the “illustrious, beautiful queen” (illustre Reina fermosa). In the poet’s mind, beauty and virtue went together, and in Isabel’s case, he considered her no less beautiful than the ladies painted by Florentine artist Giotto (d. 1337). Such beauty was held to be proof of both her virtue and her merit as a queen-to-be.

In his “Song to the Queen, Lady Isabel of Portugal” (“Canción a la reina doña Isabel de Portugal”), the marquis sang her praises:

After marrying Juan, Isabel witnessed firsthand the unrest in Castile and within the royal family. According to the established narrative, the turmoil fired Isabel’s determination to remove Álvaro de Luna. The tension at court was surely palpable, although the precise dynamic is hard to discern from the chronicles, given both the political agendas at play and the queen’s supposed health problems. In May 1453, only a month before the constable’s execution, Juan II’s physician, Fernán Gómez de Ciudad Real, is said to have written a letter to Archbishop Gutierre of Seville, in which he noted that “the fury of the queen towards the constable is boiling over.” He described the situation at court as “miserable,” and said that Álvaro de Luna, “enraged with anger and a sickness of the mind, was governing worse each day.”³⁰ The same Fernán Gómez, in another letter to the archbishop of Toledo, written after the constable had been imprisoned, went so far as to state that the king was having second thoughts regarding Álvaro’s execution, but that Isabel was on watch to ensure he followed through: “If the queen were not vigilant, though the sentence were given and the scaffold prepared, I believed the King would have freed him.”³¹ Taking a dramatic tone, the doctor claims that on two occasions the king, while alone in his chamber, gave his chief steward (maestresala), Solís, a letter to deliver ordering Diego de Stuñiga to halt Álvaro’s execution, but both times the vacillating Juan called his servant back. In a subsequent letter, this time to Juan Ramírez de Guzmán, Senior Knight Commander of Castile (comendador mayor), Fernán Gómez claimed that after the execution “the king made many gestures of his grief.”³²

Striking as these letters may be, they are the subject of some controversy. In 1875 Adolfo de Castro declared them a seventeenth-century forgery, pointing to their various inaccuracies, how they closely followed the chronicle of Juan II, and the fact that they were unattested until 1642. It was then that Gil González Dávila first cited them, claiming they had been published in Burgos in 1499.³³ Nevertheless, some nineteenth-century scholars, like the Marquis of Pidal, believed there was some truth in the letters, although they contained interpolations and the attribution to Fernán Gómez was false; others, like Juan Rizzo Ramírez, maintained their authenticity.³⁴ In his Historia de la literatura española (1861–) José Amador de los Ríos declared that we could never be fully sure the Centón—the name given to this collection of epistles—was a forgery or not.³⁵ More recently, in 2012, Fernando Gómez Redondo clearly stated that the Centón was “the funniest fake collection ever concocted” and that it was edited around 1640, but backdated to 1499.³⁶Although fake, the Centón letters remain important with respect to the figure of Isabel of Portugal, because, as we will see in the next chapter, she had an “afterlife” in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts, including this particular collection. The Centón is interesting because, unlike other early modern accounts, it does not portray Isabel as behaving inappropriately with Beatriz da Silva.

In any case, the chronicles of Juan II’s era that were the likely sources of the Centón imply that there was an obvious competition between the wife/queen and the friend/favorite, with some authors going so far as to suggest that it had a sexual undercurrent. As the story is told, the young and beautiful queen made a strong impression on the mature Juan II. Alonso de Palencia (d. 1492), a chronicler of Enrique IV and later a supporter of the infante Alfonso (Isabel the Catholic’s brother), and a chronicler in the court of Isabel I and Fernando II, gives an unequivocal account of the relationship between Isabel I’s parents. In his mind, Álvaro de Luna made a fatal error in arranging the monarch’s marriage to Isabel de Portugal because at that time the constable was getting old and was less attractive, and as a consequence the new queen displaced him as the object of the king’s desire:

For the monarch, now approaching old age, was passionate for the tender maiden, and began to enjoy more freely the honorable treatment he received from his beautiful wife; and [Álvaro de Luna] not daring with his usual energy in those early days of marriage to spoil this gift and the uninterrupted series of pleasures of the sovereign, young [Isabel of Portugal] found the opportunity to advise her husband in secret.³⁷

One of Isabel’s contemporaries, Gonzalo Chacón (d. 1507), who is the most likely author of the Chronicle of Álvaro de Luna, holds that Isabel was so loved and desired by the king that she used the power she had over him to achieve her own ends: “Whereby there is no doubt that women who are much loved, tend to influence their husbands excessively, thus cultivating their love with their attractive and sweet feminine ways and their gentle and loving words.”³⁸ In another section of the same chronicle, Chacón reports how the royal favorite consented to these encounters between Juan II and his queen because he was aware of and dared not challenge the monarch’s great love for his wife: “The good Master, knowing of the great love his lord, the King, had for his wife, the Queen, he took some days to tarry and take some amusements with her … after which the King was for some days in Madrigal with his wife, the Queen, and after a little more than ten days, they went to Toledo.”³⁹ For Chacón, it was the constable’s page, Alonso Pérez de Viveros, who sowed ill will between the queen and Álvaro. For his part, the contemporary historian Fernán Pérez de Guzmán (d. 1458) went so far as to say that Álvaro controled the king’s sexual life: “Nor did he let him spend time with his second queen, his wife, or have intercourse with her when he wished.”⁴⁰ Pérez de Guzmán also clearly states that the royal couple decided together what to do with the royal favorite: “The king and the queen agreed to imprison the maestre.”⁴¹

On the occasion of Álvaro’s execution in 1453, the Marquis de Santillana composed two works, The Doctrine of Favorites (Doctrinal de privados) and Verses on the Fall of Don Álvaro de Luna (Coplas a la caída de don Álvaro de Luna).⁴² His Coplas includes a verse claiming that Álvaro had sabotaged the king’s domestic bliss: “You made him hate the comforts of wife and children.”⁴³ Even Chacón, who said that Álvaro tried to accommodate Juan’s visits to Isabel, had to acknowledge that the favorite was concerned about the king’s sexual life. For instance, in his pro- Álvaro chronicle, he recounts that even while imprisoned in Portillo and awaiting execution, the constable wrote letters to Juan’s advisers asking them to prevent the monarch from engaging in too much sex, so as not to endanger his health.⁴⁴ Although lust was considered one of the seven deadly sins and the medicine of the day held that men could be seriously debilitated by too much sexual intercourse, Álvaro’s fixation on Juan and Isabel’s physical intimacy was unusual, to say the least. In the constable’s defense, even Palencia, who was normally prepared to blame Álvaro for anything imaginable, confirmed that Juan became even more prone to lust and gluttony after his favorite had been removed. In his words, the king was “not keeping moderation in the pleasures of love and of the table … [and had become a] slave of sensuality and daily given to the caresses of a young and beautiful wife.”⁴⁵

The information related by the chronicles is supplemented by the testimonials in the so-called Zarauz Manuscript—the record of a judicial proceeding undertaken after Álvaro’s death that was compiled in 219 folios at the beginning of the sixteenth century.⁴⁶ On June 2, 1497, Álvaro’s daughter, María de Luna, sued the Marquis of Villena to recover the county of San Esteban de Gormaz (in Soria). The marquis was the widower of Álvaro’s granddaughter, Juana de Luna, who had died without heirs.⁴⁷ Her aunt, María de Luna, claimed the county as Luna patrimony, contending that because her father had not committed a crime of lèse-magesté against Juan II, his properties had not been confiscated and should revert to the family patrimony. The marquis, for his part, argued that they had indeed been confiscated and then given to the constable’s son, Juan—the father of the marquis’s deceased wife—and that, therefore, María had no claim on the properties. To corroborate this, he called a series of witnesses who presented testimony that further tainted Álvaro’s memory and reinforced his characterization as a manipulator of the king. Ten of the witnesses testified that Álvaro had bewitched and impoverished Juan II and taken control of his kingdom.

Airing this type of dirty laundry did not reflect well on the institution of the monarchy and cast a shadow over the reign of Isabel the Catholic’s father. Consequently, the Catholic queen intervened and put a stop to the trial, although it reopened after her death and had still not been resolved by 1550. Several of the testimonies are anonymous and undated, and their reliability cannot be guaranteed, but it seems that there were two rounds of questioning: one prior to 1501, and the other concluding by 1504.⁴⁸ The depositions confirm the antagonistic relationship of Álvaro and Isabel, and one question in particular (the twelfth put to each witness) inquires as to whether Álvaro had wanted to separate the royal couple in order to maintain his noxious influence over the king.⁴⁹ Eleven witnesses replied in near unison that Álvaro did what he could to separate the couple. One witness testified that in November 1452, when the queen refused to give her hand to Álvaro, he took it and kissed it anyway, which she disliked very much because she did not even like to speak with him.⁵⁰ Another witness claimed that Álvaro had dared to tell Isabel: “I married you and I will unmarry you!”⁵¹ For his part, anonymous witness 44, described as a servant of the queen, clearly stated that the royal favorite had wanted to sabotage the monarch because the king “loved and desired [Isabel] greatly.”⁵² He also said that on one occasion the queen came to Valladolid to see her husband without Álvaro knowing, and that when Álvaro realized that the two had spent the night together, he went to their chamber and knocked on their door very early in the morning. This infuriated the queen, who told him, “It is shameless to come banging on the door of the king’s bedchamber so early in the morning.”⁵³ Witness 11 even mentioned another occasion on which Álvaro publicly admonished the queen to the surprise of all of those present, snapping at her, “Who ordered you to come to court? Weren’t you told not to come?”⁵⁴

Women and Power

Whatever the strategies the queen and the favorite each used to influence Juan II, it is clear that Álvaro de Luna’s role as adviser put him in clear competition with the functions of the queen. The power that both Isabel and Álvaro exercised over the weak king provoked anxiety among the upper nobility, who saw their monarch at the mercy of two individuals they could not control. As Juan II’s case shows, royal power could be easily subordinated to indirect influences.⁵⁵ Power, as defined by Moisés Naim, “is the ability to direct or prevent the current or future actions of other groups and individuals. Or, put differently, power is what we exercise over others that leads them to behave in ways they would not otherwise have behaved.”⁵⁶ On the other hand, for Byung-Chul Han, the definition of power must be flexible, because it encompasses many divergent ideas; it cannot be reduced merely to coercion, influence, or demonization, because it is most effective when manifested as the “automatism of habit.”⁵⁷ In his words, “The power of power consists precisely in its capacity to influence decisions and actions without the use of explicit ‘orders.’”⁵⁸ For Foucault the definition is even broader: “Power is only a certain type of relation between individuals”—a “process which, through ceaseless struggles and confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or reverses the multiplicity of force relations.”⁵⁹

Isabel was not only a queen, but also a wife—a position that in itself granted her a level of considerable agency and as such was a subject of concern. In didactic and fictional texts alike the influence of the wife was a source of concern. From Don Juan Manuel’s tales of marriage in Count Lucanor (Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de Patronio; 1335) to chivalric books like Curial e Güelfa (mid-fifteenth century) to conduct manuals devoted to women, the same idea is repeated consistently: wives have power over their husbands, so it is important to define a clearly limited role for them.⁶⁰ The ideal wife was expected to be obedient and supportive, and to occupy a secondary position to her husband. In his poem “The Report on the Doctrine Which Was Given to Sara” (“Relación de la doctrina que dieron a Sarah”; ca. 1454), Pérez de Guzmán meditates on the idea of the wife’s subjection to her husband, citing Genesis 3:16: “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”⁶¹ In sixty-nine stanzas he glosses the advice that Sara’s parents gave her before she married as recounted in Tobit 10:12–13: “My daughter, honor your father-in-law and your mother-in-law, since from now on they are as much your parents as those who gave you birth. Go in peace, daughter, and may I hear a good report about you as long as I live.”⁶² Similarly, an anonymous Castilian manual from the mid-fifteenth century, Lessons and Teachings That a Wise Man Gave to His Daughters (Castigos y doctrinas que un sabio daba a sus hijas), also insists on the obedience of the wife to her husband. In the Castigos, the author points to Griselda, the character from Boccaccio’s widely translated last tale of the Decameron, as a demonstration of the blind obedience a wife should show her husband.⁶³

However, not all moralists were so uncompromising. Eiximenis’s Book of Women (ca. 1392), the most comprehensive didactic treatise on the subject of women written in medieval Iberia, includes a chapter titled “Treatise on Married Women” (“Tractat de les maridades”). Directing himself to the husband, the Franciscan moralist urges him not to forget that “the wife is the sister of the husband, and not his slave or servant.”⁶⁴ In The Ladder of God or Treatise on Contemplation (Scala Dei or Tractat de la contemplació) a subsequent reworking of the book dedicated to Maria de Luna (ca. 1358–1406), the queen consort of Martí I of Aragon, and dated to approximately 1399, Eiximenis elaborates on the power of the queen as wife. In his view, the king and queen have distinct but complementary roles, which he constructs around the binary categories of male and female. That said, he acknowledges that gender is not strictly physical, but—in anticipation of Judith Butler—presents gender identity as performative. In his view an individual can cross from one gender to the other as a consequence of their actions and presentation.

It was possible, therefore, to destabilize gender roles and the hierarchies associated with them by performing those roles in manners that challenged established norms. But this is not to say that Eiximenis regarded gender as arbitrary; he clearly advocated for a binary model in which males were in the dominant position. According to his recommendations, the wife of a ruler should be devout, and should not participate in the affairs of the kingdom. She should not be overproud, and should make the honor and the well-being of her husband and his subjects her primary concerns. Needless to say, Eiximenis’s texts, like conduct treatises in general, reflect the anxieties that the manifest power of queens and wives provoked among men, especially the male clergy. And while Eiximenis and his ilk sought to present models of female conduct that were both prescriptive and proscriptive, they remained as ideals. The many archival sources at our disposal clearly demonstrate the agency and authority noble and royal women exercised, such attitudes notwithstanding.⁶⁵

Two Sides, Same Coin: The Queen and the Favorite

This is the context in which we have to understand Isabel of Portugal’s position. She was a wife and a queen consort with her own family connections, and she expected to occupy an influential position in her new kingdom and in the eyes of her husband. In fact, one can see Isabel of Portugal and Álvaro de Luna as they are presented in the chronicles as two sides of the same coin. Accounts hostile to the queen accused her of being an object of excessive desire on the part of Juan and lamented her ability to “manipulate” her weak husband. For his part, Álvaro de Luna is presented in exactly the same terms, which were even more worrisome in his case because of the moral implications that same-sex love carried in that era. The accusation of sodomy became a powerful tool to discredit someone and could be deployed for political gain.⁶⁶

Álvaro was a scion of the powerful Luna family of Aragon, one branch of which included both the Aragonese queen, Maria de Luna, and the embattled Avignon-based Aragonese anti-Pope Benedict XIII, who continued to be recognized as pontiff by some in the Crown of Aragon until his death in 1423, even after having been deposed by the Council of Pisa in 1409 and excommunicated as a schismatic in 1417.⁶⁷ Another kinsman, Pedro de Luna Albornoz, Bishop of Toledo (1403–14), had placed the twenty-something Álvaro in the Castilian court as a page, where he soon became an intimate of the then five-year-old prince Juan. The anonymous continuator of Gonzalo de la Hinojosa’s chronicle recounts that Juan II’s infatuation was such that “he would not sleep with anyone else but [Álvaro] in his bedchamber,” thus alarming the queen regent Catalina of Lancaster, who forced the page into exile.⁶⁸ But after her death Álvaro returned to the Castilian court and quickly came to exercise his “power over the king” (su poder del rey) to the point that he became wealthy very quickly.⁶⁹ Alfonso de Palencia, seeking to discredit the favorite, described Álvaro’s power in these terms: “The king, lord Juan, had, since a most tender age placed himself in the hands of lord Álvaro de Luna, which some suspected involved undignified and lascivious machinations on the part of the favorite in his familiarity with the king.”⁷⁰

The accusation of sodomy, which portrayed Álvaro de Luna as the active and dominant partner and the king as the passive, effeminate subordinate, is implied in several texts that seem to draw on a single source. This “Record of grievances” (“Memorial de agravios”) can be found in its near entirety within Pedro Carrillo de Huete’s (d. 1448) Chronicle of the Falconer (1421) and partially in the section of the Chronicle of Juan II (1454) attributed to Álvar García de Santa María (d. 1460) and Pérez de Guzmán, which was later incorporated into Lope Barrientos’s Continuation (Refundición) of Huete’s chronicle.⁷¹

In that earliest accusation, one reads that Álvaro de Luna “has brought … that most filthy and abhorrent thing to God and Nature spoken about among all of the vices … which out of loyalty one cannot openly name or speak of here.”⁷² For García de Santa María the issue was not sodomy, but that the constable’s relationship “was the cause of the factionalism and enmities among the grandees of the kingdom” for control over the king.⁷³ The Chronicle of Juan II echoes this. Whatever the truth of these damaging accusations, one could not but notice the unusual level of intimacy between Juan II and his favorite, to the point that even the only pro-Álvaro chronicle written in this period, the Chronicle of Álvaro de Luna, presents the nature of the love between the king and his favorite in a rather ambiguous light.⁷⁴

What it is certain is that being a royal favorite or a beloved wife did not necessarily sit well in the competitive patriarchal political culture of the time. The Castilian nobility grew concerned when the ruler (whether male or female) favored a particular individual, because this threatened the balance of power in the kingdoms and their own status. Juan II’s own mother, Catalina of Lancaster, was also censured in the chronicles for her closeness to her friend and confidante Leonor López de Córdoba (ca. 1362–1430), a noblewoman who authored the first Castilian-language autobiography, and who went from being a powerful player at court to breaking her friendship with the queen and being expelled from the court.⁷⁵ Years later, in 1416, Catalina’s new favorite, Inés de Castro, was also dismissed from the court, along with Juan Álvarez de Osorio, with whom she was accused of having an illicit relationship, although in fact she was expelled for her political intrigues aimed at undermining the queen.⁷⁶

Recourse to favorites was also characteristic of the Trastámara dynasty in Castile. Enrique IV leaned heavily on trusted companions, as had his father and grandmother. At a young age, he began a relationship with Juan Pacheco, a nobleman six years his senior, of whom Pérez de Guzmán wrote that Enrique “loved him so much that nothing was done other than what [Pacheco] commanded.”⁷⁷ When the monarch replaced him with a new royal favorite, Beltrán de la Cueva, the spurned Pacheco retaliated by whispering that Juana (1462–1530), the daughter and heiress of the supposedly impotent Enrique, was in fact the adulterous offspring of Beltrán, and launched a rebellion against the king.⁷⁸ This rumor provided the grounds for the rejection of Juana—referred to derisively as “La Beltraneja”—as heir to the throne, and the eventual ascent of Isabel the Catholic. For the chronicler, Diego de Valera (d. 1488), Pacheco was a “shameless knight, ungrateful servant, and disloyal retainer!”⁷⁹

Undoubtedly, this succession of crises in fifteenth-century Castilian politics left Isabel the Catholic fully aware of the dangers of “favoritism.” Neither she nor Fernando cultivated favorites, and one might even say that thanks to their unique dual monarchy and their shared household, they served as each other’s favorites.⁸⁰ The danger in depending on such individuals was clear; thus, in a letter of secret instructions dated 1543, Carlos V advised his son and heir Felipe to avoid favorites. The emperor specifically recommended that his son not confide only in the powerful cardinal-bishop of Toledo, Juan Pardo de Tavera (1534–45), because, notwithstanding the good counsel and assistance he might provide, it would invite his subjects to accuse the young prince of being governed by his favorite.⁸¹ Prince Felipe was married to Maria Manuela of Portugal, whose mother, Catalina of Habsburg, Felipe’s aunt, had also advised her daughter not to have a favorite among the women of court, but to seek instead the company of a group of honest ladies.⁸²

As it was, whatever competition there may have been between Álvaro de Luna and Isabel of Portugal ended when the royal favorite was beheaded on June 3, 1453.⁸³ Almost a month earlier, on April 8, Juan wrote to inform his son and the important noblemen, clergy, officials, cities, and towns of his realms of Álvaro’s fall from grace and the many reasons behind it, although at bottom it came down to the fact that the former favorite would not abandon his “evil and errant path” (malo e errado camino).⁸⁴ Chacón’s Chronicle of Álvaro de Luna noted “one could say that Juan II killed himself” by ordering the execution of Álvaro.⁸⁵ As it was, the king had little opportunity to reflect on the act, given that he died just over a year later, on July 20, 1454. For the chronicler, “there were some that said that the burrowing worm of his conscience was what killed him.”⁸⁶ As Jorge Manrique put it in the famous couplets composed on the death of his own father, “We shouldn’t say much more [regarding Álvaro], except that we saw his throat cut.”⁸⁷

In sum, both Álvaro de Luna and Isabel of Portugal are presented as exerting a dangerous sway over Juan II. In each case, this influence was rooted in sexuality and their deep emotional proximity to the king, who was depicted as weak and easy to manipulate. For kings and male members of the upper aristocracy, it was socially acceptable to take lovers even while married, and to sire illegitimate children who bore their pedigree with pride. Nevertheless, it was seen as inappropriate when lovers, or even legitimate wives, had “excessive” influence. On the other hand, engaging openly in a homosexual affair was one of the few sexual taboos that applied to all men, including kings, and, according to the law, was punishable by death.⁸⁸

As favorite, Álvaro de Luna intruded on the political role traditionally taken by the queen or by the heir, the twenty-eight-year-old, future Enrique IV. In 1351 in the neighboring Crown of Aragon, Pere the Ceremonious instituted the custom of giving the heir apparent the title Prince of Girona, in order to introduce him to the exercise of formal power. Here also, the viceregal office of the lieutenancy—whether as lieutenant-general of all of the Crown, or of one of its particular constituent kingdoms—had developed as an institution. The lieutenant served as a sort of second-in-command to the king and his agent-in-place, and the office was normally held by either the heir or the queen, or at times some other trusted member of the royal circle. No such office developed in Castile, however, and this provided an opening for the rise of favorites.

The reign of Enrique IV was no less troubled than that of Juan II. Enrique IV seemed to be at the mercy of his own royal favorite, Juan Pacheco, and was forced in 1453 to annul his thirteen-year marriage to Blanca II, Queen of Navarre (1461–64), on the grounds of his failure to physically consummate it. As we will see in the next chapter, which focuses on Isabel’s “sickness” during her time as a dowager, the death of Juan II provoked a dynastic recalibration that had been set into motion by the execution of Álvaro de Luna.⁸⁹ Moreover, the cases of Isabel of Portugal and Álvaro de Luna show how gender, love, and sex affected political perceptions in the late Middle Ages. Whenever someone was seen to enjoy a “special” power over the king because of a singular relationship based on either sex or sentimentality, this was seen by the courtiers and the nobility as a threat to their own interests. As the chronicler García de Santa María put it, “In the royal palace and royal houses there is always envy and evil, because as the wise man says: anyone that thinks that he has a friend in the royal palace is mistaken”—a sentiment that resonated in the twentieth-century quip spuriously attributed to President Harry Truman: “Want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.”⁹⁰

1. This can be seen in Enrique Flórez’s influential eighteenth-century account, which presents Isabel of Portugal’s sickness after the death of her husband as anticipating the illness of her granddaughter Juana the Mad. Flórez, Memorias de las reynas catholicas, II:749. This is echoed in recent accounts, such as that of Joseph Perez, who refers to “Isabel de Portugal, who suffered from mental illness and wound up falling into madness,” and continues, “Some time later this drama would be reprised when her own granddaughter, Juana, began to show signs of mental imbalance.” Perez, Isabel y Fernando, 50. For his part, Fernández Álvarez underscored Juana’s “genetic profile, which predisposed her to severe episodes of depression.” Fernández Álvarez, Juana la Loca, 241. See also Segura Graíño, “Influencias de Isabel de Portugal,” 328–29.

2. Pérez de Guzmán, Generaciones y semblanzas, 69–70; Porras Arboledas, Juan II, 29; Mitre Fernández, “Lo real, lo mítico y lo edificante,” 17; Amasugo Sárraga, Alfonso Chirino, 78–79; Nogales Rincón, “Un año en la corte,” 108–12.

3. Pérez de Guzmán, Generaciones y semblanzas, 70.

4. López de Ayala, Crónica del rey Don Enrique III, 201–2; Mitre, “Lo real, lo mítico y lo edificante,” 25.

5. Amasuno Sárraga, Alfonso Chirino, 63–71; Mitre, “Lo real, lo mítico y lo edificante,” 21.

6. Amasuno Sárraga, Alfonso Chirino, 78.

7. See Soyer, Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories, 151–52.

8. Echevarría, Catalina de Lancaster, 93–118; Muñoz Gómez, Fernando “el de Antequera,” 85–99; Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, 18–26.

9. Catalina of Lancaster resisted marrying her daughter Catalina to Enrique of Aragon. The marriage of Juan II and Maria de Aragon had been arranged during the reign of Enrique III; nevertheless, Catalina tried unsuccessfully to marry him to her niece, Leonor of Portugal, the daughter of João I and Philippa of Lancaster. See Echevarría, Catalina de Lancaster, 194–99; Muñoz Gómez, Fernando “el de Antequera,” 169–70.

10. García de Santa María, Crónica de Don Juan II, 362; Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, 57; Miralles, Dietari del capellà, 110–203.

11. ACA, CR, reg. 2697, f. 119r (1–13–1452).

12. Barrientos, Refundición de la Crónica del Halconero, 23.

13. Porras Arboledas, Juan II, 71.

14. Palencia, Crónica de Enrique IV, I:73. The marital agreement dated from September 28, 1446. ANTT: Chancelaria Afonso V, liv. 5, f. 80 (9–28–1446), ed. Dia Dinis, Monumenta henricina, vol. 9, doc. 134, 186.

15. Cañas Gálvez, “Las casas de Isabel y Juana,” 24–25.

16. Cañas Gálvez, “Las casas de Isabel y Juana,” 25.

17. Porras Arboledas, Juan II, 20; Pastor Bodmer, Grandeza y tragedia, 251–54.

18. “The queen, who had already suffered so many misfortunes, among them the separation from her husband being the constant desire of the favorite, encouraged her son, don Enrique, and his brothers to bring [Álvaro] to ruin, a goal towards which they all labored.” Palencia, Crónica de Enrique IV, I:15.

19. Calderón Ortega, Álvaro de Luna, 281–82, doc. 88.

20. “Más conjunta persona al dicho señor Rey que a otra alguna.” Calderón Ortega, Álvaro de Luna, 281–82, doc. 88.

21. Pelaz Flores, “Reynante(s) en vno,” 852; Pelaz Flores, Poder y representación, 13–14.

22. Pérez de Guzmán, Crónica de Juan II, 625 (1445). See María’s letter to Joan Olzina, Alfons’s royal secretary. ACA: CR, reg. 3191, f. 55v-56r (Valencia, 4–1–1445), ed. ACA, La muerte, 301, doc. 299. Palencia went so far as to claim that Álvaro de Luna poisoned both Juan II’s wife, María, and her sister, Leonor of Portugal, with the king’s permission. Palencia, Crónica de Enrique IV, I:69–70. The same charge was repeated later in Portugal by the sixteenth-century chronicler Duarte Nunes de Leão (d. 1608). Palencia, Crónica, chap. 13, 50. See also Pelaz Flores, Reinas consortes, 284–86.

23. Porras Arboledas, Juan II, 17; Chacón, Crónica de don Álvaro de Luna, 270, 326, and 402.

24. Porras Arboledas, Juan II, 18.

25. Pérez de Guzmán, Generaciones y semblanzas, 167.

26. Azcona, Isabel la Católica, 9.

27. Palencia, Crónica de Enrique IV, I:64. See Ruiz, Spain’s Centuries of Crisis, 95–96; Salvador Miguel, “El divorcio del príncipe,” 253–54.

28. Calderón Ortega, Álvaro de Luna, 76.

29. López de Mendoza, Obras completas, song 7.

30. Gómez de Cibdareal, Centón, doc. CI (beginning of May 1453), 166–67.

31. Gómez de Cibdareal, Centón, doc. CII (Valladolid, June 1453), 170.

32. Gómez de Cibdareal, Centón, doc. CIIII (Valladolid, June 1453), 173 (172–73).

33. Castro, Sobre el “Centón,” 2–3, 31, and passim.

34. Castro, Sobre el “Centón,” 13.

35. Amador de los Ríos, Historia crítica, vol. VI, chap. VIII, cited by Castro, Sobre el “Centón,” 15.

36. Gómez Redondo, Historia de la prosa, I,:663; 663–69.

37. Palencia, Crónica de Enrique IV, I:75–76.

38. Chacón, Crónica de Álvaro de Luna, 307.

39. Chacón, Crónica de Álvaro de Luna, 288.

40. Round, The Greatest Man Uncrowned, 41.

41. Pérez de Guzmán, Crónica de Juan II, 654.

42. Cruz-Sáenz, “The Marqués de Santillana’s Coplas,” 219–24.

43. Round, The Greatest Man Uncrowned, 41.

44. Round, The Greatest Man Uncrowned, 41.

45. Palencia, Crónica de Enrique IV, I:135–36.

46. A partial edition of the inquest was published by Corral, Don Álvaro de Luna.

47. Corral, Don Álvaro de Luna, 10; Pastor Bodmer, Grandeza y tragedia, I:229–31.

48. Corral, Don Álvaro de Luna, 49.

49. Corral, Don Álvaro de Luna, 66.

50. Corral, Don Álvaro de Luna, 68 (witness 39).

51. Corral, Don Álvaro de Luna, 68 (witness 43)

52. Corral, Don Álvaro de Luna, 69 (witness 44)

53. Corral, Don Álvaro de Luna, 69 (witness 44).

54. Corral, Don Álvaro de Luna, 69 (witness 11).

55. Pelaz Flores, “O triunfo do amor politico,”109.

56. Naím, The End of Power, chap. 1.

57. Byung-Chul Han, What is Power? 2, 12, 26, and 40.

58. Byung-Chul Han, What is Power? 7.

59. Foucault, “Omnes et Singulatim,” 253; Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 187.

60. To cite just three examples from Don Juan Manuel’s Count Lucanor, see the tales “Lo que sucedió al conde de Provenza, que fue librado de prisión por el consejo que le dio Saladino” and “Lo que sucedió con sus mujeres a un emperador y a Alvar Fañez Minaya” or “Lo que sucedió a un mozo que casó con una muchacha de muy mal carácter.” This became something of a stock narrative device, as can be seen, for instance, in an anonymous mid-fifteenth-century Catalan text, Curial e Güelfa, in which the character of Güelfa is said to have an overbearing influence on the Duke of Milan.

61. See the study and edition of Pérez de Guzmán’s text in Díez Garretas, “La doctrina que dieron a Sara,” 126, verse 289: “You will be subjugated to your husband” (Al marido serás sujudgada).

62. The Vulgate, Tobit 10:12–13; English translation from the New Revised Standard Version. See also Díez Garretas, “La doctrina que dieron a Sara,” 112.

63. Silleras-Fernandez, Chariots of Ladies, 76–80.

64. Eiximenis, LD, I:129. See also chapter 2.

65. Silleras-Fernandez, Chariots of Ladies, 98–150.

66. Since the twelfth century, sodomy has become a focus of moral legislation, as part of the process R.I. Moore described as “the formation of a persecuting society.” See Moore, The Formation, 85–88; Boswell, Christianity; Karras, “The Regulation of ‘Sodomy,’” 970. Thomas Aquinas considered sodomy the second worst vice against nature. Lochrie, Covert Operations, 195.

67. See, generally, Moxó, La casa de Luna; Silleras-Fernandez, Power, Piety, and Patronage, 65–90.

68. Hinojosa, Continuación, 112.

69. Hinojosa, Continuación, 112.

70. Palencia, Crónica de Enrique IV, I:6.

71. Hutcheson, “Desperately Seeking Sodom,” 245n6.

72.Crónica del Halconero, 331; Hutcheson, “Desperately Seeking Sodom,” 226–27 and 243–44n11.

73. García de Santa María, Crónica de Don Juan II, 369–70.

74. Hutcheson, “Desperately Seeking Sodom,” 239.

75. Pérez de Guzmán, Generaciones y semblanzas, 34. There are also archival sources that substantiate Queen Catalina’s discontent and anger at Leonor. Perea Rodríguez, “Por mi señora,” 192–93; Severin, “A Letter of Complaint”; Rivera Garretas, “Leonor López de Córdoba,” 151–54. See also Muñoz Gómez, Fernando “el de Antequera,” 93–94; Estow, “Leonor López de Córdoba,” 34–38; Echevarría, Catalina de Lancaster, 124–29; Piera, Women Readers, 227–64.

76. Díaz de Games, El victorial. See also Porras Arboledas, Juan II, 70–72; García de Santa María, Crónica de Don Juan II, 372.

77. Pérez de Guzmán, Crónica de Juan II, 369. See also Palencia, Crónica de Enrique IV, I:89–91.

78. Pulgar, Claros varones de Castilla, 52 and Marino, Don Juan Pacheco.

79. Palencia, Crónica de Enrique IV, I:162–63; Val Valdivieso, “La herencia del trono,” 15–49.

80. Isabel’s closest friend was Beatriz de Bobadilla, who married Andrés de Cabrera, Marquis of Moya, an important official at court. Palencia, Crónica de Enrique IV, 2:112; Fernández de Oviedo, Batallas y quinquajenas, 186–87; Rábade Obradó, “Leonor López de Córdoba y Beatriz de Bobadilla.” For an overview of the favorite in medieval Castile, see Foronda, Privauté, gouvernement et souveraineté.

81. López del Castillo, Memoria manuscrita, 39.

82. Costa Lobo, “Infanta D. Maria,” 178; Silleras-Fernandez, “Inside Perspectives,” 235–43. In the early modern period, the figure of the favorite reemerged with force; see Elliott and Brockliss, The World of the Favourite.

83. Juan II confiscated two-thirds of Álvaro’s treasure. See Calderón Ortega, Álvaro de Luna, Colección diplomática, 406, doc. 136; Yarza Luaces, La nobleza ante el rey, 78.

84.Memorias de D. Enrique IV, II:43, doc. XXV (Burgos, April 8, 1453). See also 46–47, doc. XXVI.

85. Porras Arboledas, Juan II, 262; Pérez-Embid Wamba, “Don Álvaro de Luna,” 240.

86. Porras Arboledas, Juan II, 262n250. See also Gómez de Cibdareal, Centón, epistle CV (Valladolid, end of June 1454), 174; Castro, Sobre el “Centón,” 31–32 and passim.

87. Manrique, Coplas, 377.

88. Karras, “The Regulation of Sodomy,” 979. See also Alfonso X, Las siete partidas, 3:664–65; González-Casanovas, “Male Bonding as Cultural Construction,” 167; Karras, “Knighthood, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and Sodomy,” 273–86; Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe, 8–9; Lochrie, Covert Operations, 180.

89. At the time of his father’s passing, he got help from Aragon, his aunt, queen-lieutenant María of Castile, who was “distraught and grieving” (congoxada e desconsoloda) for Juan II’s death. In the same letters in which she announced his death to her husband, Alfons V, and her brother-in-law and fellow royal lieutenant, Joan, she lobbied them to maintain the peace within Castile. See ACA: CR, reg. 3217, ff. 39r–v (Valladolid, July 22, 1544), 38v-39r (Valladolid, July 22, 1544), ed. ACA, La muerte, 305–8, doc. 307 and 308.

90. García de Santa María, Crónica de Don Juan II, 123.