Isabel and Afonso: A Happy Arrangement

Born in 1470, Isabel of Aragon was the eldest child of Isabel and Fernando and, until the birth of her brother, Juan, eight years later, she was heir apparent to both the Crown of Aragon and the Crown of Castile (see figs. 5, 6, and 7).² By the time she married the Portuguese crown prince Afonso (1475–91)—a marriage intended to establish a long-sought-after alliance with Portugal and to lay to rest a conflict between the kingdoms that had lasted more than a century—she was second in line to the throne of Castile and Aragon.³ For his part, Afonso was the eldest grandson of Afonso V (1438–81), the king who had married his niece, Juana of Castile, referred to pejoratively as “la Beltraneja” (1462–1530), and who had launched a failed invasion of Castile to support his wife’s claim to the throne against Isabel the Catholic.⁴ Afonso and Isabel’s marriage was arranged as part of the Treaty of Alcaçovas, signed on September 4, 1479, by the representatives of the Catholic Monarchs, on the one hand, and those of Afonso V of Portugal and his son, the future João II, on the other. The aim was to put an end to the war of Castilian succession (1475–79). This marital agreement and the peace treaty between Castile and Portugal, signed at Trujillo on September 27, 1479, were first discussed by Isabel the Catholic and Beatriz of Bragança, Duchess of Beja (the queen’s maternal aunt), who met in the castle of Alcántara (Cáceres) from March 18 to 22, 1479.⁵

This treaty brought peace to Portugal and Castile by obliging Juana “la Beltraneja” to renounce her claim to the throne of Castile while providing her with two options. The seventeen-year-old princess could reserve herself for marriage to the then one-year-old heir to Castile, Juan—a marriage that would take place when the boy turned fourteen, and only if he consented—or embark on a religious life. Perhaps, understandably, given all she had been through, she chose the latter, and entered the convent of Saint Clare in Coimbra.⁶ To ensure that she would not abandon her vocation or flee from Portugal, the Catholic Monarchs—who always pointedly referred to her as “Afonso V’s niece” (and not as his wife and queen, or as the daughter of Enrique IV)— requested the collaboration of Pope Sixtus IV, and later, Innocent VIII, as well as João II of Portugal, to ensure that Juana would remain cloistered for the rest of her life, regardless of her own wishes.⁷ Thus, the agreement that prompted the marriage of Princess Isabel to Afonso of Portugal also catapulted her aunt, Juana, into the convent where she would remain until João II died in 1495. Her case, as we will see in chapter 8, presents some similarities to that of Juana I of Castile, who was also deprived of her crown, but who was incarcerated in a palace rather than a nunnery. In spite of all of these indignities, Juana “la Beltraneja” never conceded her title. While the Portuguese referred to her as “The Excellent Lady” (A Excelente Senhora) for the rest of her days she continued to sign her letters simply as “The Queen” (La Reina).

To further backstop the treaty, the young Isabel and Afonso would be held effectively as hostages (en régimen de tercerías) in the castle of Moura, just inside the Portuguese border with Castile in the custody of a third party, Beatriz de Bragança.⁸ Beatriz was not only Isabel’s great-aunt, but also Afonso’s grandmother; consequently, she and her retinue were expected to be neutral.⁹ Beatriz was also the mother of the future king, Manuel, then Duke of Viseu. But at this point, no one would have guessed that the eleven-year-old Manuel, the brother of João’s queen, Leonor, and a grandson of Duarte I, would ever come to the throne. As a result, he was sent as a hostage to Castile, as the temporary replacement for his elder brother, Diogo, who had fallen ill and could not travel. Among those who accompanied Manuel en route to Castile were his ama (nursemaid), Justa Rodrigues, and his aio (tutor)— the latter none other than Diogo da Silva Meneses, the brother of the future saint Beatriz da Silva.¹⁰ All of this reflects both the endogamic entanglements of the Portuguese and Castilian dynasties, and the porosity of the border between the two kingdoms. Courtiers and aristocrats moved back and forth continuously, thus contributing to a mutual intelligibility that linked the two kingdoms’ court cultures—an engagement that was further reinforced by a series of carefully planned marital alliances that joined their respective royal families and leading houses.

Only after Isabel and Fernando could be certain that their rival, Juana, was confined in Coimbra did they send their daughter to Portugal.¹¹ The princess was about ten years old when she arrived in her new kingdom in January 1481 and would remain there until May 1483, when she was almost thirteen and could return to her parents. Given the fact that Isabel was five years Afonso’s senior and that the prince was so young, it was decided that—should another desirable marriage offer arrive in the interim and Isabel take it—Afonso would instead marry Isabel’s younger sister, Juana, thus guaranteeing the final outcome of a marriage between the two royal houses.¹² The result of this back-and-forth was that—and this was unusual for the time—Isabel spent nearly three years of her childhood being raised alongside her future husband, Afonso (as well as nine months unwittingly living together with her second future husband, Manuel, who was one year older than her). Thanks to this, she must have learned the language and customs of this foreign kingdom and come to feel at home here and within the Portuguese court.¹³

Eventually, the decision was made to marry Isabel to Afonso, and a wedding ceremony was held by proxy in Seville on April 18, 1490. To mark the happy occasion, over the course of fifteen days “grand festivities, jousts, and tournaments” were held in which even “the king jousted and broke many lances.”¹⁴ The event was also celebrated in verse. For example, the humanist poet and lexicographer Antonio de Nebrija composed and recited a celebratory nuptial poem in Latin in the couple’s honor, eponymously titled Epithalamium.¹⁵ Following the wedding ceremony, a flurry of congratulatory correspondence between both royal families was exchanged. Isabel and Fernando each wrote separately to João II and to Prince Afonso, referring to the latter as “dear son” (caro hijo).¹⁶ Fernando’s missive to his son-in-law was very warm, with the king confessing, “I don’t know whom I love more, you or my first-born daughter.” To João, he wrote regarding the marital alliance, “Pray to Our Lord that it will be very much at your service, which I hope it will be, and with much joy and love from all the parties.”¹⁷ Meanwhile, the new bride wrote asking the Portuguese king to receive her as his daughter.¹⁸ Isabel’s dowry was fixed at 106,676 Castilian gold doblas and two-thirds of dobla de banda, to be paid in three installments, while she received the towns of Torres Novas, Torres Vedras, and Alvaiázere for her upkeep in Portugal, plus 7,500 gold florins per year for the expenses of her household and court.¹⁹

Isabel, then twenty years of age, would return to Portugal in November of that year.²⁰ When the new bride arrived, she was greeted by magnates, including Manuel, Duke of Beja and Viseu, and the bishops of Evora and Coimbra.²¹ On November 25 the union was sealed physically (and apparently enthusiastically) at the Hieronymite convent of Espinheiro, on the outskirts of Évora. In the words of Garcia de Resende,

There in the buildings of the monastery where they were staying, the prince was joined with her, and many people were surprised that this was happening in the house of Our Lady, of such devotion. And we can say with great certainty that that night an image fell from the wall of the church next to the room where they lay.²²

With the marriage having been consummated, on Sunday, December 28, the wedding party made a solemn entrance into the city. The young couple would remain there until the new year, with further festivities, including tournaments, bullfights, and banquets held from December 30 to January 2.²³ As Resende put it, “I believe that in Spain such a day has never been seen, nor have I heard that anywhere else has seen it,” while the humanist Cataldo Parísio Sículo praised Isabel as “the light of the world” (lux mundi).²⁴ As for Prince Afonso, although he was only sixteen, he had the reputation of being handsome, gentle, and delicate, and of being much loved by his parents. Nonetheless, his “feminine” affectations, including the cloth he chose for his robes and his aversion to carrying his sword, were a source of tension with his father, “for which the king was driven much to anger.”²⁵

Despite the fact that their marriage had been arranged on purely political grounds, the couple was to all appearances happy and in love. But disaster unexpectedly struck on July 12, 1491, when on a pleasure outing along on the banks of the Tagus with a young courtier, Joam de Meneses, Afonso fell from the saddle and was badly injured as he was dragged under his horse. Princess Isabel and Queen Leonor rushed to the scene and held vigil at the prince’s side, together with João. The doctors, who were hastily summoned, confirmed that the prognosis was grim, and so the royal couple sent orders for prayers to be said and for the clergy of nearby Santarém to process in barefoot penitence in order to elicit God’s mercy. But to no avail. The crown prince died twelve hours after his fall, without having regained consciousness and still laid out in the humble fisherman’s hut where he had first been conveyed.²⁶

The chronicles report the lamentations of Isabel and Afonso’s parents together with all of those present during the young prince’s final hours and vividly convey the atmosphere of acute agony that gripped them. In Resende’s words, Isabel and Leonor were “as if out of their senses”; while for the chronicler Rui de Pina they were “wounded by a deadly sorrow,” as the king, in “so great an extreme of sadness, and disconsolate,” wept profusely.²⁷ Now, while it is certainly true that premature and accidental deaths were not uncommon in this era—in fact, António Henrique Oliveira Marques calculated the average life span of members of the Portuguese royalty who survived infancy to be no more than forty-nine years—it is clear that in the eyes of Afonso’s contemporaries, the young heir had died tragically and well before his time.²⁸ And so, the passing of the sixteen-year-old prince on July 13, 1491, provoked a dynastic crisis in Portugal, and an emotional crisis in Isabel—referred to now as “the Princess Widow of Portugal.” The young widow fell into the grips of an intense and debilitating grief that would last at least until 1496, nearly ten times longer than the marriage itself.

A Princess and a Kingdom in Mourning

Isabel and Afonso’s marriage was cut short after only seven months and twenty-two days.²⁹ With the prince’s death, the royal family, the Portuguese court, and the entire kingdom were plunged into mourning.³⁰ Gone were the luxuries of happier days for the royal retinue: “Brocades were traded for heavy woolens, and silks for simple shawls and scarves, and pleasures and joys for very great and sad wailings, not only in Portugal, but far beyond, across all of Spain.”³¹ Resende reported that the crown prince’s funeral was an exceptionally somber and emotionally charged event, commemorating “a most heart-felt death, with the greatest tears flowing out of the court, and throughout all the kingdom, such as had never been seen.”³²

The dramatic reaction to Afonso’s death must be understood in terms of what it represented. This was not merely the death of a young and beloved prince, but the death of João II’s only legitimate heir, making a crisis of succession all but inevitable, and potentially opening up the kingdom to destabilizing intrigues. So, the Portuguese followed tradition by publicly and visibly displaying their pain, while writers memorialized the event in verse and prose, and consolatory letters arrived for the royal couple and the princess. Álvaro de Brito Pestana, a poet who has no less than thirty compositions included in Resende’s Cancioneiro geral, declared:

Two other poets whose work is found in the Cancioneiro were also inspired by the tragedy. João Manuel (ca. 1460–1500) composed a “Lamentation” (“Lamentaçao”), while Luis Anríquez (dates uncertain) composed an ode, “The Death of the Prince” (“A morte do príncipe”).³⁴

The royal family was expected to demonstrate its sorrow through a variety of postmortem rituals and public acts of grieving. Some of these were immediate and of prescribed duration. Aside from the funeral itself and the processions convened both in situ and across the realm, the crying and lamentations described by the poets were seen not only as permissible, but obligatory. Similarly, the taking up of mourning clothes, the cancellation of festivities, the practice of public prayer, and frequent attendance at religious services were established practices for the period shortly after the loss of a loved one. Other demonstrations of grief were long-term or permanent in nature: the endowment of requiem masses in perpetuum, pious donations including the foundation of churches or monasteries, the endowment of benefices, gifts to charity, the commissioning of literary remembrances, and the construction of a monumental physical tomb. Even the deceased was not without presence or agency, both in the shape of their physical remains, which were at the center of the ceremonial, and through the medium of their last will and testament, by which they organized their patrimony, resolved any outstanding debts, and disbursed funds to the Church and charity as well as to relatives, servants, friends, and favorites.

But royalty had to carefully chart a course through their own emotions, the demands of tradition, the obligations of custom and society, and the rules and doctrine of the Church. This was not always easy to navigate. As seen in chapter 2, both in Iberia and across the Mediterranean certain extreme forms of public demonstrations of sorrow that had been practiced since antiquity and even biblical times had come to form part of what was socially expected for the expression of grief. For instance, women might crop their hair or even pull it out in public, while men might do the same also with their beards. Men might cover their head in ashes, while women sometimes scratched their faces with their nails. Such displays were engaged in spontaneously by volunteer mourners, including family members, friends, and dependents, but it remained common among the wealthier classes to hire professional mourners. Mostly women, these wailing mourners (plañideras in Spanish, ploraneres in Catalan, and pranteadeiras in Portuguese) would process alongside the cortege, loudly wailing, weeping, and lamenting in such a dramatic and compelling way that observers and passersby, no matter how indifferent to the deceased, would be swept up and then overwhelmed by their own emotions and thus drawn into a contagion of grief.³⁵ The persistence of this tradition can be seen in the representations of professional mourners found in contemporary art, typically carved into the sides of deluxe sepulchers, as well as in paintings. Although both the Church and municipal authorities had come to view such ostentatious and self-indulgent displays of grief as immodest and inappropriate, and did their best to discourage them, they could do little to prevent them.

One person who did not successfully manage the public perception of her bereavement was the young widow, Isabel. Contemporary chronicles, letters, didactic treatises, and other literary texts consistently depict her as suffering from a dangerously intense and overly ostentatious period of grieving.³⁶ Resende, for example, lamented how “the princess shore off her beautiful locks and dressed in robes of mourning with her head covered with a black veil.”³⁷ This in itself was not so extraordinary: João II also cut off his hair, as did some of his subjects, and the royal couple and their court dressed in mourning for no less than six months.³⁸ Of course, Afonso’s death was particularly traumatic not only because of his age, but because he was the king’s only legitimate heir, and this accounts in part for the unprecedented intensity and depth of public bereavement that followed. As Resende evocatively recounts,

And with this there was raised before everyone a very great, very sad, and afflicted howling, with everyone striking themselves repeatedly, wrenching out many noble beards and hair, with the women tearing at the beauty of their faces with their hands and their nails until the blood ran, a turn of events so shocking and sad that nothing similar has been seen.³⁹

This account is echoed by Pina, who recounted how the men comported themselves like women: “Everyone lost their wits and began to rip out their beards by force, such that their faces looked like those of women, and with their own hands they clawed themselves with their cruel nails, such that they drew blood.”⁴⁰ Within the emotional community of the court the grief of the family became contagious, infecting and reinfecting the courtiers, who were driven to ever more intense exhibitions of despair. Undoubtedly, the “group effect” was conducive to exaggeration of emotions and ever more extreme behavior. The contemporary Castilian poet Gómez Manrique, a nobleman and royal adviser to the Catholic Monarchs, recounts a similar scene in his “The Death of the Noble Knight Garci Lasso de la Vega” (“La defunçión del noble cavallero Garcilaso de la Vega”), describing the performance of grief by his mother, sister, and the women of their household at the news of the knight’s passing, in lurid terms.⁴¹

But, for all the perturbations of the Portuguese court, the chronicler Pina focused his sympathies on the young widow, Isabel. For Isabel, more than even the king and queen, the wheel of fortune seemed to have turned, as she departed for her parents’ kingdom:

And the sad and innocent princess, [Afonso’s] wife, so recently well-married, saw herself then made a widow, deprived of the deserved title which she bore, with her luxurious brocades set aside, and narrow Dutch shifts made of rough wool (burel) and thick linen (estopa) in which she was then dressed; there was nothing left of her golden locks to cut, and as if she had taken religious vows, having abandoned all social intercourse, waited on only by her own servants, eating on the floor off of plates of clay, rejecting all possessions and station, having entered in these kingdoms wedded, garbed in gold and precious gems trotting along before all on fine ponies, and left soon after a widow, robed in coarse wool and sack-cloth, riding atop pack animals, hidden from all sight.⁴²

Not all the recountings of Isabel’s misfortune are so sensational. For example, when the Castilian chronicler and churchman Andrés Bernáldez (1450–1513) described the same event, his depiction of Isabel was more restrained and offered fewer details than the accounts of the Portuguese chroniclers. There are several reasons why this might be. First, Bernáldez was not an eyewitness to the princess’s mourning, and his account is derivative. Second, as a chronicler of the Catholic Kings, he may have been wary of provoking scandal or publicly besmirching the royal family’s reputation. But his account also reflects the comparatively restrained style of Castilian chronicles, which unlike the Portuguese, shy away from hyperbole even when recounting traumatic events (such as the death, only six years later, of Isabel and Fernando’s son, Juan). On the death of Afonso, Bernáldez wrote:

In this same month of July—one could not know if it was the same day or the day before, or [the day] after, or seven or eight days [later], there came news of the great misfortune and disastrous death of the prince of Portugal, don Alonso, son-in-law of the king and of the queen, husband of the princess Lady Isabel, who, riding a horse together with a squire who was on another horse, fell from his horse and was suddenly killed; this took place in the town of Santarém. And even before the siege was lifted, the princess arrived to her parents in Íllora dressed in mourning, and it was there where the king and queen kept her company, and shared with her some of her pain and misfortune from the death of her husband.⁴³

The descriptions of Afonso’s fatal accident also vary. Galíndez de Carvajal claimed in his chronicle that the prince died as a consequence of a kick from a horse.⁴⁴ A more detailed account is found in the correspondence of Martire d’Anghiera. The Italian humanist, who served as a diplomat and courtier of the Catholic Monarchs, describes the event in two of his numerous dispatches written from Granada. The first, sent on October 31, 1491, to the powerful Italian prelate Cardinal Ascanio Visconti, was brief and to the point: “The only son-in-law that [Isabel and Fernando] had—and who was certainly well-loved—the only son of the king of Portugal has died in an unfortunate accident, having fallen from a horse.”⁴⁵ The second, sent to his friend Alfonso Carrillo, Bishop of Pamplona, went into considerably more detail and added literary flair:

Having loosed the reins, as the youthful nobles of Spain have the habit of doing, the unfortunate prince, the only legitimate son, spurred on his horse in the corral, in the very direction where by chance an unknown youth happened to be crossing. The horse collided with the passerby, fell face down and landed on top of the chest of the young prince. The fragile ribs which protected his entrails were broken, and three hours later, as it is recounted, he died without having uttered a word.⁴⁶

If Castilian prose accounts were rather dry, the poetry inspired by the prince’s death (and therefore intended for royal and public consumption) was more emotionally charged. For instance, the Franciscan Ambrosio de Montesino (d. ca. 1514)—a convert or descendant of a convert from Judaism, with close ties to the court, where he served as royal confessor and preacher—was commissioned by the widowed princess to write a lengthy ode to memorialize her deceased husband. In Montesino’s verse, Queen Leonor and Princess Isabel, who were together when they received news of Afonso’s accident, launched immediately into a dramatic display of grief, encouraged by the messenger himself, who lamented to them the cruelty of fortune (que fortuna os es crueldad). Thus, he exhorts them:

Ramón Menéndez Pidal believes this composition is the source of two other shorter popular ballads on the death of the prince.⁴⁸

As reflected above, the most acceptable form of showing grief was through one’s choice of clothing while in mourning. The general custom was to dress in modest, unadorned darkly colored clothes made of rough cloth, such as wool. Over the course of the fifteenth century, black gradually became the color of bereavement, beginning with the death of João I in 1433, until it was finally mandated as such by Manuel I.⁴⁹ Prior to this, black had been reserved for the royal couple, while others were expected to wear homespun clothing of white or yellow color.⁵⁰ Naturally, only the wealthier classes could afford to vary their wardrobe. The poor, having no other option, instead were expected to wear their everyday clothes inside out as a sign of their grief.⁵¹

Isabel’s grief is also noted in the 1542 edition of The Chariot of Ladies, which had been translated and expanded by an anonymous Observant Franciscan in residence in Portugal at the service of the queen, Catalina of Habsburg (1507–78), herself a daughter of Juana I of Castile. This account, which drew heavily on the Portuguese telling of Isabel’s mourning, describes the widow chopping off her hair and withdrawing from the world:

Who can say how many tears she shed! She never changed her clothes; for forty days she did not eat more than a bite of bread, and by force, the king, her father-in-law, and the queen, her mother-in-law, who were by her side through this, personally fed her… . For more than three months she never lay down in bed; never did she change her clothes, but dressed in mourning, a shawl drawn over her head, so that no one could see her face, and due to this mistreatment, her health suffered great detriment.⁵²

While this description might be interpreted as literary hyperbole or a reflection of the performative and material aspects of mourning, contemporary evidence confirms that Isabel’s comportment was of great concern to those around her. For example, João II was so alarmed by his daughter-in-law and wife that he forbade them from attending Afonso’s formal funeral service, which was held at the Dominican monastery of Batalha, on August 25, 1491, forty-three days after his passing.⁵³ This monastery, founded by João I to commemorate his victory over the Castilians in the battle of Aljubarrota in 1385, had become the royal pantheon of the Avis dynasty. Kings João I, Duarte, and Afonso V were put to rest there, along with other members of their families. Thus Prince Afonso joined his forebears there, as would his father, João II, when he died, aged forty, only four years later.

The nobility, knights, and prelates of the realm attended Afonso’s funeral, making it a major event of state. Those present were conscious that the ceremony marked the end of an era for both the Avis family and the royal monastery. João II had no other legitimate children, and his campaign to legitimize his “natural son,” Jorge (1481–1550), Duke of Aveiro and Coimbra, was opposed by many, including his own queen. This led the line of succession to Leonor’s own brother and João’s cousin, Manuel, Duke of Beja and Viseu. It was Manuel who would succeed João in 1495, and no sooner had he become king, he founded a new Hieronymite monastery in Lisbon to serve as the pantheon for his branch of the Avis dynasty.

As for the funeral itself, Resende noted: “And truly, these two things can be attested to, there was never seen such a great ceremony, nor such despair.”⁵⁴ Both the experience of grief and how we express it are conditioned by culture, and manifest themselves in various forms that are inflected in turn by factors such as gender and social status. Although it is an emotional experience, sorrow is entwined both with the material world and with performativity, and tends to become highly ritualized. As in the case of the wailing women, or mourners for hire, both the Church and civil authorities had come to see ostentatious grief as inappropriate and as the relic of an obsolete pagan past. This is reflected in legislation that was passed by the city council of Lisbon in 1385, and was adopted by other Portuguese cities. Here, practices including tearing out one’s hair or beard were described as “Gentile”—a form of idolatry that ran counter to God’s commandments. An ordinance passed in Évora a year later forbade “that from this day forward any person tear out or pluck his hair or lacerate his face or give voice to cries or shouts or make other noises for his dead.”⁵⁵ Of course, in the Middle Ages laws were difficult to enforce; they represented the aspirations of jurists rather than actual practice. Hence, such legislation reflects the continuing popularity of these rituals rather than their extinction. Consequently, João I felt it necessary to re-promulgate these laws in 1402. His own legislation notwithstanding, João’s own funeral in 1433 was characterized by the same style of exuberant public mourning; perhaps seen as necessary, given that he had established the new Avis dynasty and transformed the monastery of Batalha into the royal pantheon of his line.⁵⁶

Isabel’s suffering—her crying, loss of appetite, sleep deprivation, and rejection of hygienic and social norms—may have run counter to Church and lay restrictions on the demonstration of grief, but it reverberated strongly with literary topoi and popular images of extreme Christian piety, specifically self-mortification.⁵⁷ It evokes the “gift of tears,” a motif that had been associated with female sanctity (although not exclusively) since the fourteenth century. The “gift of tears” was a sort of uncontrollable weeping, which in a religious context could be seen as holy, as a boon from God, and as an opportunity to show contrition and humility. It was common among mystics and saints, like Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) and Margery Kempe (d. 1438), whose weeping brought them closer to God, and among the desert fathers and mothers in early Christianity.⁵⁸ But Princess Isabel’s weeping did not meet the criteria of this kind of weeping. The problem, at least in the eyes of pietists, was that like amor hereos, the love of one’s dearly departed, or even the love of love itself, displaced God as the proper object of one’s love. In other words, it was as if Isabel were becoming a martyr, but to her own emotions, rather than to God. At the same time, it was expected that a widow would grieve intensively, all the more in the case of a young widow. Given the consensus among medieval moralists that widows should preferably never remarry, young women had to contend not only with their immediate loss, but with the prospect of a poorer, more vulnerable, and sexless life,—a future without intimacy, whether physical or emotional.

For contemporaries, what was troubling about Isabel’s grief was not only its intensity, but its duration. She seems to have gotten locked into a cycle of intense bereavement that she could not shake even after she had returned home to Castile.⁵⁹ A six-month period of mourning was judged as “reasonable” by the standards of the time. This was the interval that João II and Leonor observed before returning to the routines of daily life and the affairs of state. But Isabel persisted, to the point that she was seen as transforming herself into a sort of pseudo-nun: penitent, chaste, devout, and self-mortifying. What may at first have solicited sympathy, now appeared self-indulgent, impious, and irresponsible—after all, Isabel was a princess of the realm, and princesses had a job to do, and that job was to get married.

The Limits of Consolation: The Cardinal of Alpedrinha Rubs Salt in the Wound

Ostentatious displays of sorrow were not encouraged by the Church, which saw one of its roles as offering consolation to the grieving. This is reflected in the reaction of Jorge da Costa (1406–1508), Cardinal of Alpedrinha, to Afonso’s passing. A very influential churchman with close ties to the royal court, he had accumulated a long inventory of benefices, rents, and rights over the course of a long career. He had served as confessor to Afonso V and as tutor to the king’s sister, Caterina, as well as bishop of Evora (1463–64), archbishop of Lisbon (1464–1501) and Braga (1501–8), and cardinal (from 1476).⁶⁰ His career spanned the reigns of several Portuguese kings and five popes: Sixtus IV, Innocent VIII, Alexander VI, Pius III, and Julius II.⁶¹ By all accounts he was very close to Leonor de Viseu but not to João II, which becomes obvious when one reads the consolatory letters he wrote to each. Resende characterizes Costa’s relationship with João as so fraught that at one point the king had considered killing him, prompting the cardinal to move to Rome.⁶² Further straining their relationship, Costa did not support the legitimization of João’s “natural” son, Jorge, thus ensuring the throne would go to Queen Leonor’s brother, Manuel.⁶³

According to custom and expectations, the cardinal was to console the king, queen, and dowager princess following the untimely and politically momentous death of Prince Afonso. And that he did, but the content of his letters and the tone he chose to address each of them reflected their position, their gender, and his own personal predisposition regarding the person in question. Costa wrote three letters from Rome all dated September 3, 1491. This was some seven weeks after the prince’s death, by which point the cardinal must have received reports of what had happened and of the somber mood at court. The longest letter was addressed to the king, a somewhat shorter one to the queen, and a brief note to the (now less politically consequential) widow. Common elements in the three missives include the importance of trusting in God and accepting His will. The eighty-five-year-old churchman also suggested that by taking the prince in his youth, God had spared the young man the suffering of old age. He showed sympathy and tact to Leonor and Isabel, and he enjoined João to “console much the Lady Queen, who is a woman and weaker, and cannot bear the weight of such sorrow.”⁶⁴ But when addressing the king’s own sorrow, the cleric’s sympathy turned to accusation.⁶⁵

In principle, the idea behind the letter was to console João, whom the cardinal claims to have always loved, but in the process, he accuses the monarch of being responsible for the death of his own son. As the cardinal saw it, João II did not love his son, but “adored” him.⁶⁶ In his view, the king’s behavior contravened the First Commandment: “I am the Lord your God, you shall not have any gods before Me.” For the cardinal, João had been behaving not like a Christian prince, who must love God above all else, including his own children, but like the pagan idolators of antiquity. He saw João in the same light as those discussed in chapter 1 who suffered from or affected amor heroicus, and who practiced a “religion of love” that turned their beloved into a godlike figure of worship. In this light, for Costa, Afonso’s death represented divine punishment for the king’s prideful self-indulgence. The cardinal claimed he had already warned João about this dangerous behavior, cautioning him against the sin of idolatry and emphasizing the need to love God above everything else:

Do not adore your son, for it is not the vocation of a Christian king to adore anyone but God, and I do not believe my advice was necessary, for of all of the things that God has put up with throughout the ages, whatever the estates, laws and lives of men, it was only the sin of idolatry that He never brooked without some sort of penalty or punishment, and for this reason so it is said in the Scriptures—I do not want to belabor this or give examples—I say this because it was Your Majesty who did not love your son so much as adore him.⁶⁷

As he continues, the cardinal acknowledges that “to love one’s sons is a natural thing, but to love them so much goes against nature and natural and divine law: he who does this, lives completely outside the Law.”⁶⁸ He reminds João that Afonso was always God’s property; that he had been lent to the king only until He would decide to reclaim him.⁶⁹ Then he cites a series of biblical authorities, including Solomon, Job, and Abraham. Abraham, of course, was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac at God’s request, while Job’s fidelity to God was tested by the loss of health, wealth, and children. The cardinal presented Afonso’s demise as a just retribution for the king, and following Augustine, reminded him that such tribulations purge sins like fire. In this light, Afonso’s passing could be seen as a signal for João to contemplate his own salvation and rid himself of vice. “Our Lord,” the cardinal reminded him, “punishes us for our own good, so we must resign ourselves to it.”⁷⁰ Costa says he understands the king is suffering “such great and so excessive tribulations” that no human comfort can assuage them—only divine consolation. Then the cardinal reminds João of his station as king, and that as such he must demonstrate the dignity of his rank, making visible his strength and determination so that none dare question his authority.⁷¹

This last point indicates that Costa was likely aware of just how affected the royal family was. Word must have come back that João had abandoned himself to sorrow, and was neglecting the affairs of the kingdom and his duties as a ruler. And even though it seems that the king was only absent for a “few days,” this was noted by his courtiers. For example, António Carneiro, the king’s secretary, reported his concerns to the city council of Lisbon on July 18, five days after the prince’s passing: the king “is so upset and distracted that he does not attend to any of his affairs.”⁷² At that point the king, the queen, and the princess were staying at the residence of the courtier Vasco Palha in Santarém, where they remained for fifteen days as they grappled with the shock of their loss and received the visits and correspondence of well-wishers. And with that the cardinal concluded his letter, advising the king to confess and take communion, reminding him that all of his own words, harsh as they may have seemed, were written out of love. “I write this to you with love and charity and with many tears,” the cardinal closed.⁷³

Looking at the precise circumstances of Afonso’s death, one can appreciate the weight of João’s grief. The day that the prince died he was supposed to go to the river with his father. The king and his son enjoyed bathing together in the Tagus. It was a hot July day; but that afternoon the prince had decided instead to go riding with one of his young courtiers, and it was then that he fell from his horse and died. Resende’s account of João II’s agony on seeing the son “that he raised with so much love” dying in the humble shack where he had been carried unconscious shows the monarch’s love and deep affection for his child. João was inconsolable:

And when he saw that the son he had raised with such love, such happiness in order to be the most perfect prince the world had known, in whom the king received and desired such great benefit that he could not pass even one day without seeing him, nor could he be at peace without having seen or conversed with him, leaving him in such a great extreme of sadness and disconsolation that nothing could be said or done, with him expressing so many words of desolation and of such pain and sadness that nobody could listen to what the king was saying without crying many sad tears themselves.⁷⁴

When Jorge da Costa wrote to Queen Leonor and Princess Isabel, he did not suggest that it was João’s sinful conduct that had caused the prince’s death. On the contrary, his letters to both women were purely consolatory. There, he presented the young man’s passing not as a punishment, but as something that must be accepted and taken as an opportunity to become closer to God. As he did with the king, Costa took the opportunity to signal his love for the queen, and reminded her too of her place at the top of the social and political hierarchy, and of her obligation to compose herself and serve the kingdom. If anything, he wrote, the suffering and sadness she has endured will have served to ready her soul for any future circumstance. Only God, he reminded her, can console her pain: “such a great burden and weight of sadness and suffering.”⁷⁵

The shortest letter was addressed to Isabel. Here, the cardinal came straight to the point, telling Isabel that while it might be true that she had lost an exceptional prince, “if you have not lost God, you have not lost anything.”⁷⁶ She must remember that while God “ordained” her marriage to Afonso, he did not guarantee how long it would last, and Isabel should have not assumed otherwise. This situation should teach her to trust only God, who is the one who never cheats and cannot be cheated. Only God brings consolation.

Situating the reaction to Afonso’s death within William Reddy’s framework, the “emotional regime” constituted by the Portuguese court was in obvious distress. But João, first and foremost as ruler, and Princess Isabel and Queen Leonor, as royalty, had a duty to perform their “emotional suffering” as discretely as possible, given that they were obliged to serve as examples for their subjects. Accepting the Lord’s will and trusting only Him while forgetting the treacherous world were expected of Christians. Their “emotional refuge,” such as was available to them, would have been constituted by the ritualization of death through the choreography of funerary rites, the performance of socially sanctioned acts of mourning, and, of course, the reading of consolatory texts: letters like those of Costa, Cardinal of Alpedrinha, and other clerics and courtiers, together with poems and tracts written either for this occasion or for mourners in general.

In contrast to João, these events brought the cardinal and the queen closer. Costa allied with the queen to prevent João’s own son from being legitimized, thus guaranteeing that her brother, Manuel, would be the next king of Portugal. In the years that followed, the cardinal supported the queen’s numerous charitable enterprises, notably the foundation of Santa Casa de la Misericordia, a hospital for the poor in Lisbon, in 1498. João had died three years earlier at the age of only forty, but Leonor would survive her husband for thirty years, dying in 1525 at age sixty-seven. As a dowager queen, she retreated into modesty, adopting a disaffected attitude toward a mortal world (a contemptus mundi) that had deprived her of her son and her husband, but remained politically active and supported her brother, Manuel I. Likewise, she eschewed the prestige of the royal pantheon at Batalha, opting instead to be interred modestly in the convent of Mare de Deus, the Clarissan house she had founded in Lisbon in 1509. Moreover, as a signal of her humility and deep contrition, and contrary to the practices of her royal peers, she requested to be buried under the floor rather than in a monumental tomb of the kind her husband had, because she wanted humble nuns to walk over her remains until the Day of Judgment.⁷⁷

The two opposing constructs of contemporary widowhood were the “merry widow” and the “chaste widow.” Although the merry widow—portrayed as freed from masculine supervision and indulging in promiscuous sexual activity—became a very popular literary figure in the late Middle Ages, the trope originated in antiquity. It can be seen in “the Widow of Ephesus,” a tale in Petronius’s Satyricon (1 CE), and eventually appeared in medieval story cycles like the Book of the Seven Sages. It appears in a critical light in the Lamentations of Matheolus (Liber lamentationum Matheoluli; ca. 1295), a misogynist tract condemned by Christine de Pizan. Held up as proof of women’s treachery, this stereotype reflects masculine anxieties provoked by the notion of a woman with worldly experience and independent resources who was free of male supervision.⁷⁸

At the opposite pole is the “chaste and permanent widowhood” advocated by Saint Paul and the Fathers of the Church, like Augustine and Jerome. It was a model also favored by early modern humanists, as reflected in Desiderius Erasmus’s On the Christian Widow (De vidua christiana; ca. 1489) and Joan Lluís Vives’s On the Instruction of the Christian Woman.⁷⁹ By forsaking sexuality, these widows, it has been suggested, came to comprise a sort of “third gender,” particularly those with the status, wealth, and influence that came with being a royal or noble dowager.⁸⁰ Leonor chose the latter model, and, like a number of medieval dowagers, maintained her independence and political influence while safeguarding her reputation by keeping one foot firmly in the contemplative world of the Church. She actively promoted Franciscanism and participated in public acts of piety, but never herself professed as a nun, thereby escaping both masculine control and male opprobrium.⁸¹

As for João, it seems Costa’s tough love had the desired effect, and if we are to believe the king’s secretary, Resende, the monarch finally accepted his son’s passing as the best outcome for the kingdom. He came to appreciate that Afonso’s “softness and delicacy” (brandura e delicadeça) had made him a poor candidate for monarch. Rather than his regally decisive father, the deceased prince had resembled his grandfather and namesake, Afonso V, who had abdicated and taken up a life of contemplation in 1477 after losing his struggles against Castile.

And the king said this because the prince was so full of mildness … and also seeing the persons who he associated with, who were not of the type the king desired, or wished, but rather were delicate and mild, and even when [the king] chided and berated him for this, and with much love showed, he could not go against his own nature, which pained the king because this was not appropriate for his kingdoms. And clearly the Prince was more inclined towards the character of his grandfather, the lord-king Afonso, than to the king his father, and he was more mild, and soft than he should have been.⁸²

João was made of different stuff. He did not hesitate to eliminate his enemies brutally—including his own brother-in-law, Diogo de Viseu—and reconfigure the state. According to Resende, João—who went on to be held up as the “Perfect Prince” (Príncipe Perfeito) and a reflection of the Machiavellian ideal—became more devoted to God: “Because the king was very Catholic, all of the good things that happened to him he attributed to God, and the rest to his sins, giving all his prayers to Our Lord.”⁸³ This certainly reflects the advice of the cardinal, who concluded his letter to the grieving king by advising penance, constriction, communion, and confession in preparation for judgment by the Lord, who is above all judges.⁸⁴

The harsh tone of Costa’s letter of consolation was not unique. For example, when Isabel of Castile and Fernando of Aragon lost their only son and heir, Juan, in 1497—six years after Afonso—they were plunged into a bereavement that also provoked a series of consolatory letters, poems, books, and treatises to commemorate the prince and help overcome the tragic event. On this occasion, Fray Íñigo de Mendoza wrote consolatory letters to the royal couple. The Franciscan reminded Isabel that she had received many mercies and favors from God, and that her present tribulations should prompt her to deliberate on her past and present offenses to God, rather than retreat into self-pity and neglect her duties to her subjects.⁸⁵

A Widow in the World

What, then, were the options for a bereaved princess like Isabel? The only two possibilities for medieval widows were remarriage or permanent chastity. But widows themselves did not necessarily get to choose, as we saw in the case of Juan II of Castile’s dowager, Isabel of Portugal. Permanent chastity was imposed on the widowed queen by her husband’s last will and testament as a condition for her to continue to raise her own children and control their patrimony.

As for Isabel of Aragon, there was no doubt she would be returning to Castile. She had not produced a child, so she was of little interest or use to the Portuguese royal family. However, as a young widow and potential future bride, she had further services to render to her own dynasty. Thus, on September 11, 1491—three months after her husband’s passing—Isabel was reunited with her parents, who were at that moment redoubling their efforts to conquer the Nasrid sultanate of Granada.⁸⁶ The Portuguese chroniclers Resende and Pina both remarked on the sad farewells Isabel and her parents-in-law paid one another—an occasion marked by saudade and copious tears.⁸⁷

While in Portugal Isabel must have become well acquainted with the figure of the infanta Joana (1452–90), who had died just prior to her arrival in the kingdom and may have served as an inspiration for her own approach to widowhood. João II’s elder sister and only surviving sibling, Joana, had been the presumptive heir to the kingdom until João’s birth. The princess, however, showed little interest in the life of the court, declaring instead her intention to profess as a nun. This was forbidden by her father, who could not dispense with his only daughter and the second in line to the throne. Consequently, she remained active in court, serving as regent while he campaigned in North Africa in 1471. With the birth of Prince Afonso in 1475, and the apparent securing of the family line, she moved into a Dominican convent. Even then, she was occasionally pulled out of the convent to attend to affairs of state. She was put forward as a bride for Charles VIII of France (1483–98), and subsequently, England’s Richard III (1483–85), turning down the first herself, and being spared the second by the Shakespearean villain’s humiliating death in battle at Bosworth Field. The rest of her years were lived out between the royal court and her convent at Aveiro, where she was eventually buried.

Beatified in 1693 and sanctified in 1757, she was known popularly as “Santa Joana.”⁸⁸ Like Beatriz da Silva, she took on a legendary status in the centuries after her death. Her earliest hagiographic biography, Memorial da Infanta Santa Joana, was probably written by a nun and fellow resident of Aveiro, and was reworked and published in 1585 as The Life of the Most Serene Princess Lady Joana, Daughter of the Lord-King Afonso the Fifth of Portugal (Vida da Sereníssima Princesa Dona Joana Filha d’el-Rei Dom Afonso o Quinto de Portugal), by the Dominican friar Nicolau Dias, and then subsequently in 1594 and 1674.⁸⁹ Her vita praises her pious virtues and renunciation of worldly power, highlighting the intense piety that had characterized Joana since adolescence: “the great love that she had for the immortal Lord, whom she wanted to take as spouse.”⁹⁰

Joana had lost her mother, Isabel of Coimbra (d. 1455), at age three, after which she was raised by Beatriz de Meneses. Subsequently residing in the convent of Odivelas under the tutelage of her aunt, the nun, Felipa of Coimbra (1435–97), Joana remained there until she sought out the more rigorous discipline of the Dominican house at Aveiro. Pina states that Joana’s father sent her to Odivelas in 1471 when she was nineteen to avoid unnamed scandals; in other words, for this chronicler her life was certainly not one of unremitting pious devotion.⁹¹ As hagiographies are wont to do, these texts present Joana as single-mindedly pursuing piety; yet it is clear that she did not abandon the court altogether, nor, as historian Ana Maria Rodrigues points out, did she ever take the vows of a nun.⁹² Perhaps the move to Aveiro was less about discipline and more about avoiding surveillance. Indeed, she did not actually live in the monastery, occupying instead some fairly luxurious apartments nearby, where she was attended by her ladies-in-waiting.⁹³

This was an established strategy for aristocratic widows who wanted to maintain autonomy. For example, Elisenda de Montcada (1292–1364) founded the convent of Pedralbes in Barcelona. She retired there after the death of her husband, Jaume II of Aragon (1292–1327), but never took vows. Later that century, to escape her abusive husband, Sanxa Ximenes d’Arenós, Countess of Prades, moved to a Clarissan convent in Valencia, where she also lived without professing as a nun.⁹⁴ And, indeed, while Joana lived at Aveiro, she kept serving the royal house, including as regent during the king’s absence while on campaign against Tangiers in 1471. It was she to whom João II entrusted Jorge, the illegitimate son that the king had fathered with Ana de Mendoza (one of Juana la Beltraneja’s ladies-in-waiting). Jorge, later Duke of Coimbra, lived with his aunt until her death when he was nine, and then joined his father at the royal court at about the time Isabel returned to Portugal as Prince Afonso’s bride.⁹⁵

But if Joana provided an inspiration for the widowed Isabel as a pious escape from the world of men, it was not to be for the bereaved Castilian princess. For the Catholic Monarchs, Isabel represented an important political asset: second in line to the Crowns of Castile and Aragon, and a childless twenty-one-year-old widow. She was an excellent marriage prospect. And so, after a reasonable period of mourning, they made it clear to her that as a daughter and princess, her duty to them and their kingdoms was remarriage. She would resist, but, as we will see in the next chapter, when she finally yielded and agreed to marry her deceased husband’s uncle, Manuel I of Portugal, she did so on her own terms, demanding a price that would seem to seal her own reputation as a pious Catholic: the expulsion of the “heretics” from Portugal.

1. This was a gradual process. See Buescu, “A morte do rei.”

2. Pulgar, Crónica RC, I, 37.

3. Isabel had already been betrothed to the future Fernando II, King of Naples (the grandson of Alfons the Magnanimous by his illegitimate son, Ferrante), but this engagement was broken off with the help of Pope Innocent VIII. AGS: PTR, leg. 51, f. 16 (Rome, July 21, 1487). Some weeks later, Innocent granted Isabel and Afonso a dispensation for consanguinity so they could marry in spite of their ties of blood. AGS: PTR, leg. 50, f. 20 (Rome, August 6, 1487). See also Nogales Rincón, “La cultura del pacto en las relaciones,” 121–44; Nogales Rincón, “Los proyectos matrimoniales,” 43–68.

4. For their marital contract, see AGS: PTR, leg. 49, doc. 97 (ca. 1480).

5. Guimarães and Combet, Rainhas consortes; Pulgar, Crónica RC, I, 367; Zurita, Anales, b.20, chap. 34; Torre and Suárez Fernández, Documentos, doc. 127 (179–83), doc. 129 (185–202); and for the dowry, doc. 148 (227).

6. Regarding her profession as a nun, one of the documents notes that when Juana was pressed by the abbess to take vows a year after her arrival at the monastery, she stated that she had no obligation to profess but that she was willing to stay, and “took the vow of her own volition.” AGS: PTR, leg. 49, doc. 89 (1487). See also AGS: PTR, leg. 49, doc. 70 (October 16, 1480). For her potential marriage to Prince Juan, see AGS: PTR, leg. 49, doc. 88 (ca. 1480). Regarding Juana la Beltraneja, see Azcona, Juana de Castilla; Drumond Braga, “A excelente senhora” 247–54; Humble Ferreira, “Juana la Beltraneja,” 89–90; Zurita, Anales, b.20, chap. 82, 303.

7. For the popes, see AGS: PTR, leg. 49, doc. 79 (March 1, 1484), doc. 80 (1489), and leg. 16, doc. 35 (Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 1484). Regarding João II’s promise to keep Juana in the convent, see AGS: PTR, leg. 49, doc. 90 (ca. 1482) and doc. 91 (Evora, March 27, 1490).

8. Pina, Chronica de D. João II, 133–34. A detailed analysis of this episode is found in Barreto Dávila, “Quotidiano e Jogos de Poder,” 371–86.

9. For Afonso V, João II, and infanta Beatriz’s tercería obligations and care of Princess Isabel, see AGS: PTR, leg. 49, doc. 72 (ca. 1479–80). See also Torre and Suárez Fernández, Documentos, I:308, II:100–108; Guimarães and Combet, Rainhas consortes, 34–43.

10. Oliveira e Costa, D. Manuel I, 53. See also chapter 4.

11. Torre and Suárez Fernández, Documentos, II:130–36.

12. Resende, Vida e feitos, 46–48, 55, 107.

13. AGS: CSR, leg. 50, f. 14. The tercería ended on May 15, 1435. See also Olivera e Costa, D. Manuel I, 67. Torre and Suárez Fernández, Documentos, III:21, doc. 474. Her case bears some similarity to that of Maria de Luna, an Aragonese noblewoman who was raised at the court of Pere the Ceremonious, and grew up with her future husband, and later, king, Martí I. The result was an unusually strong and intimate royal marriage that reinforced Martí’s political program and saw Maria serving as his lieutenant-general. Silleras-Fernandez, Power, Piety, and Patronage, 11–36.

14. Bernáldez, Memorias, 211; Pulgar, Crónica, II, 187–88; Pina, Chronica de D. João II, 967–69; Resende, Crónica de D. João II, 151; Alonso Ruiz, “Doña Isabel de Castilla,” 110–13; Torre and Torre, Cuentas de Gonzalo de Baeza, 343.

15. Nebrija, Epithalamium, ed. Martínez Alcorlo, 102–30.

16. RAH: Salazar y Castro, A-11, f. 39r (Seville, May 6 [1490]).

17. RAH: Salazar y Castro, A-11, f. 39r.

18. RAH: Salazar y Castro, A-11, f. 39v (Seville, May 7 [1490]).

19. Torre and Suárez Fernández, Documentos, I:227 and II:374–80; Drumond Braga, O Príncipe, 38, 68; Rodrigues, “For the Honor of Her Lineage,” 9; Cordeiro de Sousa, “Notas acerca de la boda,” 37–38.

20. Fernan Silveyra represented Prince Afonso at his Sevillian wedding. AGS: PTR, leg. 50, f. 25 (Evora, February 15, 1490) and f. 26 (Evora, April 26, 1490). For the matrimonial capitulations, see Torre and Suárez Fernández, Documentos, II:368, doc. 421. See also Resende, Crónica de D. João II, 53–54; Pina, Chronica de D. João II, 909; Cordeiro de Sousa, “Notas acerca de la boda,” 33–51; Drumond Braga, O Príncipe, 42, 49.

21. Drumond Braga, O Príncipe, 78, 80.

22. Resende, Crónica de D. João II, 169; Drumond Braga, O Príncipe, 81; Pina, Chronica de D. João II, 976; Guimarães and Combet, Rainhas consortes, 66–67.

23. Drumond Braga, O Príncipe, 82–84.

24. Resende, Crónica de D. João II, 172, 340. See Drumond Braga, O Príncipe, 82; Parísio Sículo, Duas oraçoes.

25. Resende, Crónica de D. João II, 207; Resende, Vida e feitos, 192.

26. Resende, Crónica de D. João II, 191–93.

27. Resende, Crónica de D. João II, 193–95; Pina, Chronica de D. João II, 136.

28. Oliveria Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 270.

29. Resende, Crónica de D. João II, 195.

30. Resende, Crónica de D. João II, 199; Pina, Chronica de D. João II, 985.

31. Resende, Vida e feitos, 196.

32. Resende, Crónica de D. João II, 199–200.

33. Resende, Cancioneiro geral, I:221.

34. Bénichou, “El romance,”113–24; Resende, Cancioneiro geral, I:221, 374, II:237.

35. Oliveira Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 274. Regarding sincerity and ritual, see Tausiet and Amelang, Accidentes del alma, 17–18.

36. Callahan, “The Widow’s Tears,” 245–65; Resende, Crónica de D. João II, 204–5.

37. “E a princesa trosquiou os seus prezados cabellos e se vestio toda d’almafegua e a cabeça cuberta de negro vaso.” Resende, Vida e feitos, 1545.

38. Resende, Crónica de D. João II, 199–200; Nogales Rincón, “Las lágrimas de la infanta de Castilla” 108–28; Pina, Chronica de D. Duarte, chap. 7, 93.

39. Resende, Crónica de D. João II, 194.

40. Pina, Chronica de D. João II, 984–85.

41. See chapter 2.

42. Pina, Chronica de D. João II, 137–38.

43. Bernáldez, Memorias, 229. See also Estow, “Widows in the Chronicles,” 153–67; Arranz Guzmán, “La reflexión sobre la muerte,” 117–19.

44. Galíndez de Carvajal, Anales breves, 545.

45. Anglería, Epistolario, 1:b.4, doc. 91, 166.

46. Anglería, Epistolario, 1:b.4, doc. 93 (Granada, March 18, 1492), 174.

47. Bénichou, “El romance,” 113–24; Cirot, “Sur les romances,” 168–72; Barreiro, “El Romancero, vínculo hispano-lusitano,” 304–9; Alçada, “Teatralidade e intertextualidade.”

48. There are two manuscripts of Afonso’s ballad, a plain text, and a musical score, and no less that fifty different oral versions survived into the twentieth century in Portugal, Azores, and Madeira. Marías Martínez, “Historia y ficción en el romance,” 646; Marías Martínez, “Las muertes entorno a los Reyes Católicos,” 405–7; Menéndez Pidal, “El Romancero en la corte castellana,” 41–43.

49. For more on the color black, see chapter 2.

50. Oliveria Marques, Daily Life in the Middle Ages, 278; Pereira Lopes, “O Luto em Portugal,” 11. For Castile, see Nogales Rincón, “El color negro,” 221–45.

51. Oliveira Marques, Daily Life in the Middle Ages, 278.

52.CD, I, 427 (cited also above, in the introduction).

53. Pina, Chronica de D. João II, 989; Resende, Crónica de D. João II, 202.

54. Resende, Crónica de D. João II, 202–4; Pina, Chronica de D. João II, 989–90; Drumond Braga, O Príncipe, 104.

55. Cited by Oliveira Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 274.

56. João I’s successor was Duarte “the Philosopher,” who is examined in chapter 2. Duarte personally oversaw the important arrangements of his father’s funeral, to the point that he sent a memorandum to the royal preacher, the Dominican Fernando de Arroteia, so that he would prepare the funerary sermon following the new king’s guidelines. Rosa, “King Duarte’s Guidelines,” 178–82.

57. Nogales Rincón, “Las lágrimas de la infanta de Castilla,” 108–28; Viera, “El llanto de la infanta Isabel,” 409–11.

58. Nagy, “Religious Weeping,” 119–20; Gutgsell, “The Gift of Tears,” 239, 252.

59. Mourning was further codified in the era from 1491 to 1557. See Lopes, “Confortando reis e rainhas,” 7.

60. Guimarães, Leonor de Lencastre, 75; Faria, “A diplomacia de D. Manuel I,” 126.

61. Lopes Dias, “Cartas do Cardeal,” 297; Chambers, “What Made a Renaissance Cardinal,” 87–108; Mendonça, D. Jorge da Costa.

62. Resende, Crónica de D. João II, 23; Guimarães, De princesa a rainha, 76.

63. The cardinal would only help the king secure the papal bulls required to appoint Jorge Master of the Orders of Santiago and Avis. Pina, Chronica de D. João II, 112; Mendoça, D. Jorge da Costa, 55–62; Soyer, The Persecution of the Jews, 144.

64. Lopes Dias, “Cartas de consolação,” 305.

65. Lopes Dias, “Cartas de consolação,” 309.

66. Lopes Dias, “Cartas de consolação,” 305.

67. Lopes Dias, “Cartas de consolação,” 305.

68. Lopes Dias, “Cartas de consolação,” 306.

69. Lopes Dias, “Cartas de consolação,” 308.

70. Lopes Dias, “Cartas de consolação,” 308.

71. Lopes Dias, “Cartas de consolação,” 309.

72. Drumgon Braga, O Príncipe, 99; Documentos do Archivo da Camara Municipal de Lisboa, Livros de Reis, III, 308.

73. Lopes Dias, “Cartas de consolação,” 309.

74. Resende, Vida e feitos, 193.

75. Lopes Dias, “Cartas de consolação,” 310.

76. “Se a Deus não perderdes não perdeste nada.” Lopes Dias, “Cartas de consolação,” 312.

77. For Leonor’s last years, see Guimarães, Leonor de Lencastre, 235–61.

78. Blamires, Women Defamed and Women Defended, 185; Clark Walter, The Profession of Widowhood, 299–346; Mirrer, “Introduction,” 13–14.

79. Clark Walter, The Profession of Widowhood, 2–9, 347–48; Mirrer, “Introduction,” 13; Carlson and Weisl, Constructions of Widowhood, 5–6; Hayward, “Between the Living and the Dead,” 221; Backer, Widowhood in Early Modern Spain, 17–88.

80. Murray, “One Flesh, Two Sexes, Three Genders?,” 35.

81. As seen in chapter 4, some widow noblewomen in neighboring Castile, like Teresa Enríquez, were celebrated for their piety and for devoting their resources to the Church and its causes.

82. Resende, Crónica de D. João II, 207.

83. Resende, Crónica de D. João II, 155.

84. Lopes Dias, “Cartas de consolação,” 309.

85. See a more detailed analysis of the letters and other consolatory texts in chapter 7.

86. Bernáldez, Historia, I (2):300; Guimarães and Combet, Rainhas consortes, 72; Martínez Alcorlo, Isabel de Castilla, 175–78; Serrão, Itinerarios de el-rei, 15.

87. Resende, Vida e feitos, chap. 135, 204; Pina, Chronica de D. João II, chap. 53, 142–46.

88. Rodrigues, “The Crown, the Court,” 59.

89. The text is preserved in a miscellaneous manuscript that also includes the chronicle of the foundation of the monastery of Aveiro (Museu de Aveiro: MS 1, 33/CD), and is edited as Crónica da fundação do Mosteiro de Jesus de Aveiro e Memorial da infanta Santa Joana by Rocha Madahil. The text is anonymous, most likely written by a nun from the convent. See Sobral, “A vida da Princesa Santa Joana,” 213–23.

90. Dias, Vida da Sereníssima Princesa, 10; Pina, Chronica de El-Rey D. Affonso V, 3:68.

91. Pina, Chronica de El-Rey D Affonso V, 826.

92. Rodrigues, “The Crown, the Court,” 59.

93. Rodrigues, “The Crown, the Court,” 60–61.

94. Silleras-Fernandez, Chariots of Ladies, 59–97.

95. Guimarães, Leonor de Lencastre, 131–33.