Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World) 075465074X, 9780754650744

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QUEENSfflP AND POLITICAL POWER IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN

Women and Gender in the Early Modern World Series Editors: Ally son Poska and Abby Zanger In the past decade, the study of women and gender has offered some of the most vital and innovative challenges to scholarship on the early modern period. Ashgate's new series of interdisciplinary and comparative studies, Women and Gender in the Early Modern World, takes up this challenge, reaching beyond geographical limitations to explore the experiences of early modern women and the nature of gender in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Submissions of single-author studies and edited collections will be considered. Titles in the series include: Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World Edited by Marta V. Vicente and Luis R. Corteguera Women Writers in the Spanish Enlightenment The Pursuit of Happiness Elizabeth Franklin Lewis Religious Women in Golden Age Spain The Permeable Cloister Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt The Power and Patronage of Marguerite de Navarre Barbara Stephenson Architecture and the Politics of Gender in Early Modern Europe Edited by Helen Hills The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan Kate Langdon Forhan The Bawdy Politic in Stuart England, 1660-1714 Political Pornography and Prostitution Melissa M. Mowry

Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain

Edited by THERESA EARENFIGHT Seattle University, USA

O Routledge

jn^^ Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2005 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Theresa Earenfight 2005 Theresa Earenfight has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Queenship and political power in medieval and early modern Spain. - (Women and gender in the early modern world) 1. Queens - Spain - History 2. Spain - Politics and government 3. Spain - History - 711-1516 4. Spain - History House of Austria, 1516-1700 I. Earenfight, Theresa 946-.0099 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Queenship and political power in medieval and early modern Spain / edited by Theresa Earenfight. p. cm. — (Women and gender in the early modern world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7546-5074-X (hardback: alk. paper) 1. Queens—Spain—History. 2. Marriages of royalty and nobility—Spain—History. 3. Power (Social sciences)—Spain—History. 4. Spain—History. I. Earenfight, Theresa, 1954- IL Series. DP59.9.Q44 2005 946'.02'082—dc22 2004008885 ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-5074-4 (hbk)

For Joseph R O'Callaghan, teacher and mentor, who introduced me to the world of medieval Spain

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Contents List of Illustrations List of Contributors Preface Acknowledgements Note on Proper Names

ix x xiii xxix xxx

PART I: THE PRACTICAL LIMITS OF PARTNERSHIP 1

2

3

Unwilling Partners: Conflict and Ambition in the Marriage of Peter II of Aragon and Marie de Montpellier Elizabeth Haluska-Rausch

3

The Many Roles of the Medieval Queen: Some Examples from Castile Joseph F. O 'Callaghan

21

Absent Kings: Queens as Political Partners in the Medieval Crown of Aragon Theresa Earenfight

33

PART II: PRACTISING THE POLITICS OF RELIGION 4

5

6

Defending Their Jewish Subjects: Elionor of Sicily, Maria de Luna, and the Jews of Morvedre Mark Meyerson

55

Spirit and Force: Politics, Public and Private in the Reign of Maria de Luna (1396-1406) Nuria Silleras-Fernandez

78

The Queen and the Master: Catalina of Lancaster and the Military Orders Ana Echevarria-A rsuaga

91

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PART III: REPRESENTING THE POLITICS OF QUEENSHIP 7

8

9

10

Royal Portraits: Representations of Queenship in the Thirteenth-Century Catalan Chronicles Maria VanLandingham

109

Isabel of Castile (1451-1504), Her Self-Representation and Its Context Peggy Liss

120

Choices and Consequences: The Construction of Isabel de Portugal's Image Jorge Sebastian Lozano

145

Conspicuous in Her Absence: Mariana of Austria, Juan Jose of Austria, and the Representation of Her Power Eleanor Goodman

163

Bibliography Index

185 202

List of Illustrations Figure 9.1

Titian. Portrait of Empress Isabel de Portugal, 1548, oil on canvas. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

146

Figure 9.2

Portrait of Empress Isabel de Portugal, undated, oil on wood. National Museum, Poznan.

147

Figure 9.3

Dalmatic made from the Empress's gift of clothes, 1539; gold brocade. Monastery of Guadalupe.

159

Figure 10.1

Francisco Rizi, Juan Carreno, and Dionisio Mantuano. Capilla del Milagro (ceiling), fresco. Convent of the Descalzas Reales, Madrid.

167

Figure 10.2

Follower of Pablo de San Leocadio. Nuestra Senora del Milagro, oil (?) on panel, early 16th century. Convent of the Descalzas Reales, Madrid.

168

Figure 10.3

PompeoLeoni. Philip II and Family, bronze. Basilica of El Escorial, San Lorenzo El Escorial.

174

Figure 10.4

Pompeo Leoni. Juana of Austria, marble. Church of the Descalzas Reales, Madrid.

175

Figure 10.5

Designed by Peter Paul Rubens. Ferdinand II, Philip IV, Isabella of Bourbon, tapestry. Convent of the Descalzas Reales, Madrid.

176

Figure 10.6

Floorplan. Convent of the Descalzas Reales, Madrid.

178

Figure 10.7

Floorplan. Mezzanine level, Convent of the Descalzas Reales, Madrid.

179

Figure 10.8

Floorplan. Upper story, Convent of the Descalzas Reales, Madrid.

180

Figure 10.9

Luca Giordano. Carlos II, Mariana ofNeuberg, and Mariana of Austria (detail), fresco, 1692-94, Imperial Staircase, Basilica of El Escorial, San Lorenzo El Escorial.

184

List of Contributors Theresa Earenfight, Associate Professor of History at Seattle University, received her Ph.D. from Fordham University in 1998. The recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Spain, she is the author of 'The Political Dynamic between the Aragonese Monarchy and the Consell de Cent of Barcelona during the Lieutenancy of Maria of Castile (1440-58)' mElMon Urbd a la Corona d'Arago del 1137 als decrets de Nova Planta (Barcelona, 2003) and 'Political Culture and Political Discourse in the Letters of Queen Maria of Castile', La coronica 31:2 (Fall 2003): 135-52. She is at work on a monograph of the career of the Aragonese queen, Maria of Castile (1401-58). Ana Echevarria-Arsuaga is Associate Professor of Medieval History at the Universidad Nacional de Education a Distancia (Madrid). She received her Ph.D. in 1995 from the University of Edinburgh, where she received a Vans Dunlop Scholarship of the Faculty of Arts. She is the author of 'Catherine of Lancaster, the Castilian Monarchy and Coexistence', in Late Medieval Spain, edited by Roger Collins and Anthony Goodman (2003); Catalina de Lancaster (1372-1418) (2002), and The Fortress of Faith: The Attitude towards Muslims in Fifteenth Century Spain (1999). Eleanor Goodman is acting Assistant Director of the Mary and David Harrison Institute for American History, Literature, and Culture at the University of Virginia Library. She received her Ph.D. in 2001 from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, where she wrote her dissertation 'Royal Piety: Faith, Religious Politics, and the Experience of Art at the Convent of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid'. Dr Goodman's research interests center on the role played by the visual arts in religious experience, politics, and patronage. Elizabeth Haluska-Rausch received her doctorate in History from Harvard University in 1998 after completing a dissertation entitled 'Family, Property and Power: Women in Medieval Montpellier, 985-1213'. Her current research examines the changing position of aristocratic women in Bas-Languedoc before the Albigensian crusades, including Marie de Montpellier. Dr Haluska-Rausch is an adjunct member of the Medieval Studies Department at Southern Methodist University. Peggy Liss, an independent scholar, is the author of many books and essays on late medieval and early modern Spain, among them Isabel the Queen: Life and Times (1992; rev. ed., 2004), Atlantic Port Cities, 1650-1850 (with Franklin W. Knight, 1991), Mexico under Spain, 1521-1556: Society and the Origins of Nationality (1984); and Atlantic Empires: The Network of Trade and Revolution (1713-1826)

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

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(1983). The recipient of the Cruz Oficial de la Orden de Isabel la Catolica and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Dr Liss has taught at Case Western Reserve University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Swarthmore College. Mark Meyerson received his doctorate in Medieval Studies in 1987 from the University of Toronto, where he is currently associate professor in the Department of History and the Centre for Medieval Studies. The author of Jews in an Iberian Frontier Kingdom: Society, Economy, and Politics in Morvedre, 1248-1391 (2004); A Jewish Renaissance in Fifteenth-Century Spain (2004); and The Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel (1991), Meyerson is currently working on a monograph entitled Of Bloodshed and Baptism: Violence, Religion, and the Transformation of Spain, 1300-1600. Joseph F. O'Callaghan, Professor Emeritus at Fordham University, focused his teaching and research on medieval Spain, medieval kingship, and medieval Parliaments. His principal publications include Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (2003), Alfonso X and the Cantigas de Santa Maria: A Poetic Biography (1998); The Learned King: The Reign of Alfonso X of Castile (1993); The Cortes of Castile and Leon, 1188-1350 (1988); ,4 History of Medieval Spain (1975); and The Spanish Military Order ofCalatrava and its Affiliates (1975). He also translated The Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile (2002). Jorge Sebastian Lozano has recently completed his doctoral dissertation, clmagenes femeninas en el arte de corte espanol del siglo XVI' (Valencia, 2005). After pursuing graduate studies at Columbia University and the Universitat de Valencia, he has taught in the Art History department of the Universitat de Valencia. He is a contributor to Ediciones Catedra's forthcoming Historia de las Mujeres en Espana y America Latina, edited by Isabel Morant and Monica Bolufer. He has presented papers on Spanish royal women and the arts at a number of conferences, both in Spain and the United States, notably at the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, at New York University, 2000; 'Luchas de Genero' (proceedings published 2001); and XIV Congreso Nacional de Historia del Arte, Malaga (proceedings published 2004). Niiria Silleras-Fernandez is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for Cultural Studies of the University of California Santa Cruz with a postdoctoral fellowship granted by the Spanish Ministerio de Education, Cultura y Deporte. She continues to investigate themes relating to women and power as explored in her doctoral dissertation 'Maria de Luna, una reina entre la piedad y el poder (1396-1406)', (Bellaterra: Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 2002) which is the basis of an English-language monograph currently in preparation. She has written several articles on queenship, piety and the court in late medieval Spain. Marta VanLandingham received her doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1997. Recent publications include 'Household Practice and Royal

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Programme in the High-Medieval Realms of Aragon', in The Medieval Household in Christian Europe, c. 850-c. 1550, edited by Cordelia Beattie, Anna Maslakovic, and Sarah Rees-Jones (2003); Transforming the State: King, Court, and Political Culture in the Realms of Aragon (1213-1387) (2002), 'The Hohenstaufen Heritage of Costanza of Sicily in the Mediterranean Expansion of the Crown of Aragon in the Later Thirteenth Century', in Across the Mediterranean Frontiers: Trade, Politics, and Religion, 650-1450, edited by D. A. Agius and I. R. Netton (1997).

PREFACE

Partners in Politics Theresa Earenfight

The idea for this collection of essays first took shape at the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies conference held at New York University in 2000. As the conversations spilled out from the formal sessions to informal conversations, I was struck by how much work on queens was being done and how little of it had reached a wide audience. None of this abundance of recent scholarship on Spanish queenship had been collected into a single volume. This is due in part to the newness of the research, much of it recently completed archival research and not-yet-published dissertations. It is also due to the fact that until recently Spanish history was seen as peripheral to European history.1 Queens in England and France, and empresses in Germany, have received considerable scholarly attention in the past few decades, but the lives and political careers of most Iberian queens remain largely unknown to non-specialists. My aim in editing this book has been to bring together some of this new research by both newer and well established scholars. Equally striking but ultimately more important was the Spanish political culture that created a distinctive form of queenship similar to but substantially different from that of northern Europe. Like their counterparts in England, France, and the German Empire, Spanish queens and empresses faced the imperative to produce an heir and to raise and educate their children; they participated in public ceremonial functions, performed charitable work, and were important patrons of religion and art. Unlike northern queens, however, Spanish royal women were more likely to be active in the governance of the realm. They exercised considerable legitimate authority more often, more publicly, and more directly than queens elsewhere in Europe. With two notable exceptions—Urraca of LeonCastile in the twelfth century and Isabel of Castile in the fifteenth—none of these queens ruled in their own right. Most royal women became queens through marriage, not direct inheritance from their fathers. As foreign-born princesses or aristocratic, but not royal, heiresses, they were excluded from the inheritance of their husband's realm but they possessed a political status as the wife of the king and mother of the heir that permitted a certain measure of autonomy. They 1

For a superb overview of the historiography of late medieval and early modern Spain, see Jocelyn N. Hillgarth, The Mirror of Spain, 1500-1700: The Formation of a Myth (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).

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occupied prominent and powerful offices such as the regency in Castile and the Lieutenancy in the Crown of Aragon, and they exemplify a form of queenship that can best be described as a political partnership. The authors whose essays are included in this volume outline some of the dimensions of this partnership and characterize the political role of the queen within the institution of monarchy. The active and visible political careers of Spanish queens from the thirteenth through the seventeenth centuries were fostered by a combination of forces—on the one hand, territorial expansion and conquest, and on the other, a political culture that did not explicitly prohibit queens from active participance in the governance of the realm. The circumstances surrounding the Muslim conquest of 711 and the Christian Reconquest led to a pragmatic form of monarchy that, for the most part, did not explicitly prohibit women from inheriting or ruling. This fostered dynamic political partnerships that involved both king and queen, were sensitive to the prevailing legal customs and local culture, and took into account individual abilities and temperament. In Castile and Leon, princesses could legitimately inherit in the absence of a legitimate male heir. Alfonso VI of Leon (1065-1109) designated his daughter Urraca as his successor and she ruled in her own right from 1109 until 1126. Married twice to powerful men, including Alfonso I of Aragon (1104-34), Urraca defied the notion that a man who married a ruling queen should automatically share in the governance of his wife's realms.2 Isabel I of Castile (1474-1504), arguably the most famous Castilian queen, held her realms separate from those of her husband, Fernando II of Aragon (14791516), who ruled Aragon in his own right but did not have sovereign power over Isabel; not even after her death could he rule solely as king of Castile.3 Such cases are not common, however. Many queens occupied a middle ground, governing with some form of duly sanctioned public authority. Queens could easily step into institutional gaps caused by a king's minority, illness, or death because political power in premodern Europe was never isolated in one person. Even the word 'monarchy', with its implications of sole rulership, is misleading. Rather, it had a 'corporate' character that permitted a range of powersharing options that fell under the general rubric of monarchy.4 There are many ways to rule and to govern, and in order to understand the diversity of queenship practices, we must analyze the variations of official authority that could fall under the general rubric of monarchy. In early modern Europe, nobles and their extended 2

Bernard Reilly, The Kingdom of Leon-Castilla under Queen Urraca, 1109-1126 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). 3 See Peggy Liss, chapter eight in this volume; idem, Isabel the Queen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). 4 'The Crown itself had a corporational character—with the king as guardian, though again not with the king alone, but with the composite body of king and magnates who together were said to be, or to represent, the Crown'. Ernst Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 381; Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction (New York: Pantheon, 1978, first French edition, 1976), I: 92-102.

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families, the decisive power brokers in parliamentary assemblies and privy councils, became deeply imbedded into the bureaucracy of the increasingly absolutist state.5 Rulers relied on an inner circle composed of a few trusted intimates, who often were family members.6 Recent work on the role of the feared and hated personal adviser known as the 'favorite'—Piers Gaveston, Alvaro de Luna, Richelieu, and Olivares, to name just a few—points out that the importance of further extending the political dimension of the royal court to include close advisers.7 These men, who worked just as often in an unofficial capacity as an official one, wielded tremendous influence that could, in the case of Olivares and Felipe IV of Spain, for example, completely overshadow that of the king.8 My point is not that nobles, bishops, favorites, brothers, and chief ministers have been omitted from the conventional narrative of monarchy. That is clearly not the case. Biographies of the great men behind the king are staples of historical scholarship. My point is that the fact that these men held power and authority should not lead us to exclude women from consideration. Men such as Olivares, Richelieu, Thomas Wolsey, and Thomas Beckett have been included in the narrative of monarchy because they held positions of power that supplemented and assisted the king. Ernst Kantorwicz's famous metaphor of the king's body admits a plurality of power, but he fails to account for the queen as part of the corporate and corporeal quality of monarchy, even though he opens his discussion of the problem with an anecdote from the court of Elizabeth I Tudor of England (15581603). Yet queens were just as, if not, more intimate with the king than were many favorites, and yet we struggle to account for their role in the political sphere and in the other, more subtle or private locations of political power and authority. The point is that politics has both official and unofficial avenues, and, like kingship, queenship resided in both places. Because of the very public political nature of life at court, queenship—the public political interaction between a king and a queen, singly or as a couple, and their subjects—constitutes a discursive practice.9 Even 5

For instance, co-rulership occurs when the incumbent and successor hold the office simultaneously; dual paramountcy is a doubling up of the supreme office; corporate dynasties essentially duplicate the supreme office; and stand-ins and stake-holders assume temporary deputies of governance, such as lieutenants, regents, protectors, and queensdowager. Jack Goody, Succession to High Office (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 5-8. 6 Hillay Zmora, Monarchy, Aristocracy, and the State in Europe, 1300-1800 (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 37-54. 7 Essays in the recent collection, The World of the Favorite, edited by John H. Elliott and L. W. B. Brockliss (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), take up this issue. In that volume, I. A. A. Thompson sets out the main framework in £The Institutional Background to the Rise of the Minister-Favorite', 13-25. 8 Antonio Feros, 'Images of Evil, Images of Kings: The Contrasting Faces of the Royal Favorite and the Prime Minister in Early Modern European Political Literature, c. 15801650', in World of the Favorite, 205-22. 9 Theresa Earenfight, 'Political Culture and Political Discourse in the Letters of Queen Maria of Castile', La coronica 31.2 (Fall 2003): 135-52.

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those queens who were denied full access to the traditional avenues of political power must be included in the discussion, for even non-actors act according to norms established in the political realms.10 Their elevated social status and their proximity to the center of power meant that they could be, and often were, engaged in the public political sphere. Situated in a 'public sphere in the political realm', monarchy was 'co-extensive with public authority', the royal court was an integral component, and queens were just as likely as kings to be concerned with the res publican Unlike kingship, which had few temporal and geographic variations in so far as the role of the king with respect to governance per se, queenship was more susceptible to subtle variations in ideology, institutional structures, and circumstance. Queens regnant and queen consorts engaged in the political realms occupied 'strategic sites of historical action', or political 'hot zones', that 'creatively and pragmatically construe ongoing values'.12 Queenship is particularly sensitive to subtle shifts in kingship theory and practice, with the cultural meanings of both institutions profoundly altered by the dynamics of their interaction, as Peggy Liss makes clear in her essay on Isabel of Castile. These 'mobile and transitory' moments of crisis disrupt immediate and local power relations and redefine the relationship.13 Louise Fradenburg calls these moments 'queenly time', that dangerous but potent moment when a queen steps into the public political sphere and practices queenship as governance.14 The working definition of queenship that underlies the essays in this collection is this: It is a repertoire of collective norms, institutional structures, and strategies for participation within the public political sphere of monarchy that included, but was not limited to, governance. In short, queenship is a partnership, a key component of the institution of monarchy. I do not mean to suggest that kingship and queenship are equal institutions, nor that it was an equal partnership, for it was neither. Monarchy was a complementary dynamic, never fully reciprocal, predicated on a relationship of political unequals that was fundamentally contractual

10

Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 25-7. 11 The narrowness of Habermas's definition of modernity and 'public political discourse . . . in the world of letters' as rooted in the Enlightenment has been a stumbling block for anyone studying premodern societies. He defines 'public' not as merely the flip side of 'private', but in its political sense, as a res publica, a literate, bourgeois public that engaged in lively debate about the political life of the realm. Jtirgen Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger (Boston: MIT Press, 1989), 30. 12 Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), xixiii, 73-103,138-55. 13 Michel Foucault uses the phrase 'radical rupture' to describe the 'massive binary divisions' that occur in such moments of dislocation. History of Sexuality, I: 96. 14 Louise Olga Fradenburg, 'Rethinking Queenship', in Women and Sovereignty, edited by Louise Olga Fradenburg (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992), 1-13.

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rather than consensual.15 The relationship was sometimes more equal than at other times, but a queen-consort, no matter how powerful, was always a 'junior partner' as Marta VanLandingham aptly notes in chapter seven. Subordinate status does not imply, however, that queenship was any less an integral part of the dynamic of monarchical power and authority. Regardless of whether or to what extent a king or queen was active in politics and governance, queenship is key because, as Joan Scott has observed, 'all unequal relationships [are] political' because they involve unequal distributions of power'.16 Just as we would not dream of studying kingship without looking carefully at the composition of his court and parliamentary assemblies, so we must not study queenship in isolation. To eliminate it from the analysis of monarchy is to create an inaccurate and skewed picture, only a part of the whole that distorts not only our perception of monarchy but of society as a whole. Thinking of queenship as a partnership reflects the dynamic of gender relations, which depended on maintaining a rough balance of forces. An imbalance that weakened the king—physical or mental illness, absence—could empower a queen, and vice versa. Three factors determined whether or not a queen ruled, in what capacity, the duration of her rule, and the extent of her authority: first, a prevailing political ideology, by which I mean an aggregate of consciously held beliefs or opinions that influenced the practice of rulership; second, institutions that were established legally in response to that ideology; and third, a particular set of family circumstances that left a vacancy that someone, man or woman, could fill. This ordering of factors does not imply a hierarchy or a causal relationship. Circumstances could propel a queen to power and then theories could be written or practices revised later, or an institution could be created to meet a particular set of circumstances but persisted by virtue of its usefulness. How these various factors played out over time depended on particular social, geographic, and historic conditions that varied, sometimes widely, from place to place. In both Castile and the Crown of Aragon during the later Middle Ages, testamentary succession was common, one reason it was possible for queens to inherit and rule in their own right.17 Regarding queenship as a key component of royal power, the authors represented here bring a multifocal, broadly based reading of politics that draws 15

Constance Jordan, Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 4. 16 Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, 25-7. 17 Patricia Humphrey, 'Ermessenda of Barcelona: the status of her authority', in Queens, Regents, and Potentates, edited by Theresa Vann (Denton, TX: Academia Press, 1993), 1535; William Clay Stalls, £Queenship and the Royal Patrimony in Twelfth-century Iberia: the example of Petronila of Aragon', in Vann, Queens, Regents, and Potentates, 49-61; Donald Kagay, 'Countess Almodis: "Illustrious and Distinguished Queen" or "Woman of Sad, Unbridled Lewdness'", in Vann, Queens, Regents, and Potentates, 37^7; Maria Isabel Lopez Diaz, 'Arras y dote en Espana. Resumen historico', in Nuevas perspectivas sobre la mujer, edited by Maria Angeles Duran, 2 volumes (Madrid: Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, 1982), 1:83-106.

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from the many sources and disciplinary perspectives to describe particular local practices of queenship over a wide span of time. Their work breaks down the rigid dialectical explanations and fixed binary oppositions—public/private, domestic/political, king governs/queen does not—that tend to exaggerate reality and occlude our vision of the past. Taken as a whole, they recognize the inherently gendered structure and theory of monarchy and clearly show how structures and ideologies used to describe kingship and queenship both influence and mask realities of power. They take into account aspects of power not usually perceived as strictly political. Their work examines long-held assumptions about women and the exercise of power in pre-modern Europe and in so doing, demonstrates the distinctiveness of Spanish queenship in practice. They describe political partnerships forged between the kings and queens of late medieval and early modern Spain, fluid and dynamic relationships that vary depending on circumstance, personality and prevailing social and political contexts, yet maintain a certain 'Spanishness'. All the authors share an assumption that by understanding queens within the context of monarchy, we can better understand the status and role of non-royal women in the political arena in pre-modern Europe. The operative definition of politics shared by the authors is that the power and authority that constitutes politics is everywhere and in everything that touches the governance of the realm. Politics can, therefore, be observed, measured, and analyzed in many places—in public and in private, in fiscal account books and official chronicles, in self-conscious representations, in parliamentary assemblies, in the royal palace, in political treatises, in church, and in works of art. Furthermore, the authors share several assumptions about power and authority. While related, these two terms are separate entities, especially with respect to gendered social relations.18 Power is not a tangible 'thing' but rather a force that exists in its exercise. Michel Foucault notes that 'power is neither given, nor exchanged, nor recovered, but rather exercised . . . it exists only in action. .. . [it] is above all a relation of force'.19 Monarchy, seen in this way, is a multiplicity of power relations that are not separate entities, but rather elements contained within a network. Its power 'circulates', or functions as a chain.20 Authority, on the other hand, is constituted power.21 Authority is any capacity to secure obedience or 18

Jordan, Renaissance Feminism, 4. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 19721977, edited by Colin Gordon, translated by Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, and Kate Soper (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 89-90. 20 It is c [. . . ] never localised here or there, never in anybody's hands, never appropriated as a commodity or a piece of wealth. And not only do individuals circulate between its threads; they are always in the position of simultaneously undergoing and exercising this power. . . . [T]hey are always also the elements of its articulation'. In other words, individuals are the vehicles of power, not its points of application. Foucault, History of Sexuality, I: 98. 21 Reinhard Bendix, Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), 218-43; Leonard Krieger, The Idea of Authority in the West', American Historical Review 82:2 (1977): 249-70; Michelle 19

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conformity that is derived from a title to do so and that follows a hierarchical chain of command.22 The distinction between informal power and legitimate authority is central to a definition of queenship. What forms could and did this political partnership take in late medieval and early modern Spain? 'Queenly time' most often meant regency.23 The queenregent's political authority was accepted, at least in theory, as an extension of her maternal rights as the guardian of her children. The regency was the most obvious as well as the most common office through which a queen could take part in government. Her political authority was accepted, at least in theory, as an extension of her maternal rights as the guardian of her young children and her right to exercise public authority was compared to that of a mother through the unique bond between mother and child. Because a regency had predetermined beginning and end points, it was palatable to ambitious brothers, uncles, nobles, and anyone else who felt threatened by a ruling queen or who sought to take advantage of the opportunity. High-ranking clerics or nobles could also rule in the king's stead, but most often the best choice was a family member, not only uncles or brothers, but also wives and mothers and sisters.24 Three essays in this volume focus on queensregent. Ana Echevarria discusses the contentious regency of Catalina of Lancaster for her young son, Juan II of Castile (1406-54); Jorge Sebastian Lozano looks at Isabel of Portugal, regent for her husband, the Emperor Carlos V (1519-58); and Eleanor Goodman examines the Dowager Empress Mariana of Austria, regent for her son, Carlos II (1665-1700). One of the most uniquely Spanish official institutional governing arrangements, the office of the queen-lieutenant in the medieval Crown of Aragon, is particularly interesting because, to my knowledge, it is unique in premodern Europe. My essay in chapter three describes the institution of the queen-lieutenant, a legitimately granted official public political form of co-rulership held by seven Aragonese queens who governed for their husbands who were absent on a military or diplomatic mission. These queens seem to be, as described in the evocative Zimabist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, editors, Women, Culture, and Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), 99-100. 22 Carol Clover, 'Regardless of Sex: Men, Women, and Power in Early Northern Europe', Speculum 68 (1993): 363-87; Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski, introduction to Women and Power in the Middle Ages (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1988), 1-17. 23 See O'Callaghan, The Many Roles of the Medieval Queen', chapter two in this volume. In Castile, Maria de Molina, widow of Sancho IV was regent for both her son, Fernando IV (1295-1312), and grandson, Alfonso XI (1312-50). Berenguela, regent for Fernando III (1217-52), maintained order in Castile in the face of threat of invasion by her ex-husband and civil war. In Navarre, Toda Asnurez, was regent for her son Garcia I Sanchez (926-70); Urraca Fernandez and Jimena Gonzalez, grandmother and mother, respectively, were regents for Sancho III Garces, el Mayor (1000-35). See also Roger Collins, 'Queens-Dowager and Queens-Regent in Tenth-Century Leon and Navarre', in Medieval Queenship. edited by John Carmi Parsons (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), 79-92. 24 Kantorowicz, King fs Two Bodies, 381.

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riddle from the eighteenth century that Eleanor Goodman quotes in the introduction to her essay on Mariana of Austria, somewhere between 'fish and fowl' ('ni es carne ni pescado', p. 163). They are a unique category—they were not regents, nor did they rule in their own right, and their power and authority were held and exercised at the king's discretion.25 The office of the lieutenancy, devised in the thirteenth century, was a means for both princes and queens to rule the Crown's extensive territorial possessions. Lieutenants governed in place of a healthy, very much alive and fully competent adult king who was otherwise occupied in another of the various realms that comprised the medieval Crown of Aragon. The reign of one queen who held the office of the lieutenancy—Maria de Luna, wife of Martin I (1395-1410)—is discussed at length in this volume by two authors.26 Mark Meyerson discusses her role in the development of royal policy toward the Jews while Nuria Silleras-Fernandez focuses more broadly at her complex reign by touching on issues such as religion, dynastic politics, and the legal status of the Catalan peasantry. The reign of Maria of Castile (1401-58), wife of Alfonso V 'the Magnanimous', king of the Crown of Aragon (1416-58) was the apogee of the institution. She governed the principality of Catalunya from 1432 until 1453 as Lieutenant, while her husband conquered and governed the kingdom of Naples. Maria had control over all secular and religious officials in the principality, could make laws, and was empowered to carry out both civil and criminal justice. Assisted by a royal council separate from the king's, she had full royal authority in Catalunya. She was followed by the formidable Juana Enriquez, who governed effectively during a chaotic period of civil war. These queenlieutenants set important precedents for the reign of their much more well-known successor, Isabel of Castile (Maria of Castile was her aunt and Juana Enriquez her mother-in-law). Unofficial governing arrangements were common, ubiquitous to a certain extent, but they are difficult to define and characterize because the documentation for such arrangements is often fragmentary, ambiguous, or insufficient in quantity to determine to whether and to what extent the queen governed. For example, They resemble the immensely powerful Byzantine empresses—Theodora, Zoe, Irene— who governed as co-rulers with a husband or son, but unlike the unabashed seizure of government that brought so many Byzantine empresses to power, the authority of the Aragonese queens was calmly and officially sanctioned. Liz James, 'Goddess, Whore, Wife or Slave? Will the Real Byzantine Empress Please Stand Up?' in Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe, edited by Anne Duggan (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1997), 123-39; Barbara Hill, Liz James, and Dion Smythe, 'Zoe: The Rhythm Method of Imperial Renewal', in New Constantines: the Rhythm of Imperial Renewal in Byzantium, 4th-13th Centuries, edited by Paul Magdalino (Aldershot, UK and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1994), 215-29; Dion C. Smythe, 'Behind the Mask: Empresses and Empire in Middle Byzantium', in Duggan, Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe, 141-52. 26 The others are Blanca of Naples, wife of Jaume II, in 1310; Teresa d'Entenga, wife of Alfonso IV (1324-27); Violant of Bar, third wife of Juan I (1388-1430); Margarida of Prades, second wife of Martin (1412-21); Maria of Castile, wife of Alfonso V (1420-1453); and Juana Enriquez, second wife of Juan II (1461-1477).

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Mark Meyerson describes the importance of Elionor of Sicily to the tumultuous reign of Pere III of the Crown of Aragon (1336-87) in fostering, and in some cases defending, their Jewish subjects in Morvedre, a town located in the kingdom of Valencia. Marta VanLandingham describes the relationship between Violant of Hungary and Jaume I of the Crown of Aragon (1213-76) as both an exemplary marriage and a superb political partnership. Jaume claims publicly to make no final decisions without first consulting Violant, his second wife whom he takes pains to present as an improvement over his first wife. Violant possesses all the characteristics that Alfonso specified, but what Violant has, and that Alfonso did not think to mention, is brains. She is not only intelligent, she is savvy in many ways—shrewd, patient, courageous in speaking her mind, and very much involved in military affairs. This is a significant but unusual place to find a queen—with the exception of Urraca of Leon-Castile and Isabel of Castile, military affairs were offlimits for late medieval and early modern queens.27 Unlike most medieval kings, Jaume gives us a rare glimpse of a queen who, although a 'junior partner' (p. 110), is nevertheless a genuine partner who typifies the ways in which, in the absence of prohibitions, queens simply stepped into the political arena.28 At the other extreme, Marie of Montpellier exemplifies what Elizabeth Haluska-Rausch describes as an 'unsuccessful' partnership, an appearance of a partnership which was in fact, a failure on all levels. Marie of Montpellier brought an impressive dowry, substantial personal wealth, and formidable family connections to her marriage to Pedro II of the Crown of Aragon (1196-1213). These assets should have positioned her well for a role in the governance of the realm, but instead they became a site of conflict rather than a source of power. And Pedro was a bully, unwilling to accept anyone, least of all his wife, as sharing in any aspect of his sovereignty. She was a 'silent' partner, the financial backer whose wealth and family connections enabled Pere to wage war and opened the door to Aragonese influence north of the Pyrenees, setting the stage for the conquests of their son, Jaume I (1213-76). We are fortunate to have two important perspectives on queens and their political role in monarchy from medieval kings themselves—a proscriptive view from Alfonso X of Castile (1252-84) in the Siete Partidas and the Especulo, and a descriptive one from Jaume II of Aragon in the Llibre dels Feyts. What does a 27

Matilda of Boulogne, wife of Matilda's rival claimant, Stephen of Blois (r. 1125-54), rescued him from catastrophe during the civil war by helping to negotiate the second treaty of Durham between Scotland and England in 1139 and providing a fleet for Stephen's defense at Dover. R. H. C. Davis, King Stephen, 1125-1154, 3rd edition (London: Longman, 1990), 35-57,114. 28 Other examples abound in the kingdom of Castile. Violante, wife of Alfonso X of Castile (1252-84), frequently advised her husband on political matters such as taxation; she interceded between her father, Jaume I of Aragon (1213-76), and her husband over the revolt of the Mudejars in 1264; she participated in sessions of the Cortes and was appointed by her husband to a commission to the Cortes of Burgos in 1272 to negotiate with rebellious nobles. Joseph F. O'Callaghan, The Learned King: The Reign of Alfonso X of Castile (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 93,185,220,224-6,228.

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queen bring to this partnership? As Joseph O'Callaghan clearly demonstrates, when Alfonso emphasized the 'harmonious' union of a king and queen, he meant more than just the reciprocity of the marriage relationship and the ways in which one partner makes the other better. He also meant the ways in which both king and queen share their responsibilities in both the public and private realms. Alfonso enumerates four things that a king should look for in a partner: money, character, physical attributes, and good lineage. The possession of money can cut both ways, as the case of Marie of Montpellier makes clear. Character, meaning personality, intelligence, diplomatic skills, tact, shrewdness, wits, and even tenacity, is harder to measure and yet it may well be the determining factor in the success or failure of a monarchical partnership. Marie of Montpellier comes across as particularly passive and weak while Violant of Hungary, Elionor of Sicily, Maria de Luna, and certainly Isabel of Castile and Isabel of Portugal were endowed with formidable personal traits and were well matched to their equally formidable husbands. Physical attributes can include beauty, ability to bear children, and just plain good health. The notion of physical beauty is explored by Sebastian Lozano in his analysis of the portraits of Isabel of Portugal, wife and empress of Carlos V. He notes, however, that Isabel, despite her celebrated beauty, was not simply a passive subject, seen through the men who painted her and commissioned her portrait. She was actively engaged in the creation of her image. As Sebastian Lozano points out, her portraits thus reflect not only the norms and ideals of beauty but also the consequences of her choices. We are accustomed to reading images of the wives and mistresses of the king or emperor created by male artists in a way that polarized gender, but under Isabel's influence Titian instead created a new form imperial art that emphasized the ruling partnership. Just as monarchy is not, strictly speaking, the rule by just one person, it is not just a political structure. It is also a powerful kin group organized as a dynasty and therefore both husband and wife must be part of the discussion. Birth determined a queen's inheritance rights and her suitability as bride for a foreign prince, but it was marriage, which ultimately constituted a queen's political rights and responsibilities. Monarchy is therefore a blend of both the familial and the political, although not necessarily to the same degree, and the private royal sphere is a public creation.29 The royal family was the framework for the transmission and exercise of lordship, as well as a model and source for attitudes and structures and behavior toward women in general and queens in particular. It furnished principles of order, and simultaneously adapted and molded those attitudes, structures, and behavior into the institutions of medieval government. One could argue that influence exercised through the family is indirect power, and therefore not true royal authority. But when the family in question was among the most powerful in Europe, this was indeed real political power.30 A queen's proximity to the king himself, her role as mother and legal guardian of the heir, and the myth of 29

Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, 24. Martin Aurell, Les noces du conte: mariage et pouvoir en Catalogne (785—1213) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1995). 30

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kingship distinguished her not only from other family members but also, and importantly, from other, non-royal, women.31 There is, however, a catch: the traits Alfonso describes were not always under the queen's control. She may have substantial real power as a result of personal attributes—intelligence, force of personality, will, charisma—or family connections and personal wealth, but without the authority of political status she may be unable to exercise it, and again Marie of Montpellier is an example of what can go wrong. On the other hand, for Maria de Luna, Isabel of Portugal, and Maria of Castile, whose families were either royal or among the top tier of the regional nobility, family ties lent credibility and important support from powerful family members. For Mariana of Austria, a Habsburg princess but an Austrian one and therefore foreign to Spanish eyes, it was potentially divisive. The Aragonese queen-lieutenants, who by definition were expected to govern, had the greatest security in the political arena of all the Spanish queen-consorts and empresses. Jaume I of Aragon, Alfonso's father-in-law, was less concerned with the way things should be, but in his description of the way things actually were, he describes a queen, Violant of Hungary, who embodies the ideal his son-in-law would seek. Despite his portrait of the queen as a strong, tough, loving partner, Jaume makes it clear that he is dominant and the queen is his subordinate. He tells us that he never made an important decision without first consulting Violant, but then he goes on to say that she was quite different from his first wife, Leonor of Castile, who he divorced because she did not support him properly. Ultimately, the Llibre dels Feyts is, in Marta VanLandingham's apt phrase, a 'portrait as a construct,' as much political theory as kingship ideology, a blend of fact and fiction. And as both O'Callaghan and VanLandingham make clear, these works must be read in the context of literature. When Alfonso and Jaume speak officially of their wives, it is a flattering portrait not only of the queen, but of the king and it is far more favorable than what their partisans or enemies write of the queens.32 Taken as a whole, the Siete Partidas, the Especulo, and the Llibre dels Feyts all reflect a truth of queenship and monarchy, but like all mirrors such reflections are only fragments of the panorama as a whole. How does a partnership work in practice? What are the limits of a 'junior' partner? How do individual queens make a space within the institutional, legal, and customary parameters that delineate the role of the Spanish queen in the institution of monarchy? Although Alfonso X does not ascribe a political dimension to queenship in either the Siete Partidas or the Especulo, in practice it was part of a queen's 'portfolio'. O'Callaghan suggests that these works, coupled with the fact that there was no explicit legal prohibition of a queen's right to act 31 On the mythic power of monarchy, see Clifford Geertz, 'Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power', in Local Knowledge (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 121-46. 32 Anne J. Cruz, cThe Female Figure as Political Propaganda in the Tedro el Cruel' Romancero', in Spanish Women in the Golden Age: Images and Realities, edited by Magdalena S. Sanchez and Alain Saint-Saens (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996), 69-89.

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openly in the political sphere, left open a loophole in the institutional structure of both the Castilian and the Aragonese monarchy that resulted in a series of powerful queen-regents and queen-lieutenants. Mark Meyerson takes up two related issues, finance and royal policy toward the Jews. His focus is on the queen's patrimony— the land and lordship that pertain to the queen as queen, not as individual, and that after her death can only pass to the next queen, not her kin—lands on which substantial numbers of Jews lived and worked. His piece carefully describes and analyzes two monarchical partnerships, one a lieutenancy and the other an unofficial arrangement, separated by a generation, concerned with the same issues—the working dynamic among each king and queen, municipal officials, Jewish leaders, and the people of Morvedre. Meyerson demonstrates that the hisory of queens is the history of more than just women—in this case, it encompasses the history of Jews, the Inquisition and royal religious policy, and the fiscal affairs of the queen—and that without understanding the actions of Elionor and Maria, the history of Jews in Valencia would be incomplete. Nuria Silleras-Fernandez's essay on Maria de Luna is a fine example of seeing politics in the widest possible sense, encompassing governance, religion, and family, both the queen's natal family and her husband and son. Maria skillfully used all the resources at her disposal—family ties and wealth, great beauty, intelligence, diplomacy—and her reign combined all the ways in which a queen could exercise authority except in her own right. She was resourceful and shrewd, intrepid and almost fearless, and she had tremendous political instincts. She benefited greatly from growing up in the household of her future husband and under the watchful guidance of her mother-in-law, the influential Queen Elionor of Sicily, vividly described by Mark Meyerson. And, as Silleras-Fernandez points out, Maria brought a deep and abiding sense of social justice in her advocacy of manumission for the remenga peasants of Catalunya, a sentiment that foreshadows Isabel of Castile's well known stance regarding the native peoples of the Americas. Official partnerships were not without problems, however, as Ana Echevarria so clearly shows in her essay on the regency of Catalina of Lancaster. If there ever was a woman with impressive family credentials, Catalina, the daughter of John of Gaunt and granddaughter of Pedro I of Castile (1350-69), was it. But her husband, Enrique III, died during a moment of serious instability in Castile and her regency for her son Juan was contentious. Catalina's reign is an object lesson in the limits of a queen-regent's authority. A contemporary of Maria de Luna and the mother of Maria of Castile, Catalina's role in government was seriously weakened by Enrique's decision to establish her as co-regent with Fernando I, of Antequera (1412-16), Enrique's illegitimate brother. Fernando, a slippery and shrewdly manipulative man, was her match in terms of wealth, prestige, and political acumen but he held a trump card: control over the elections for the Masters of the powerful military orders. The military was the one area of governance that queens rarely engaged in and when they did, it was risky. Without stronger institutional support and faced with a wily opponent, Catalina did not have the authority that Maria de Luna had to allow her to fend off challenges to her rule. The cumbersome and ambiguous co-regency was a serious hindrance to her effectiveness, but

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even that mattered little in the end. Even Fernando? s accession to the Crown of Aragon did not prevent him from meddling in Castilian affairs. In contrast, Isabel of Castile's marriage to Fernando II of Aragon formed arguably the most famous monarchical partnership. Peggy Liss's essay is a fine example of how comparative studies strengthen the notion of monarchy as a partnership.33 The partnership of Isabel and Fernando, despite the fact that they ruled their respective realms separately, is best exemplified by their conquest of Granada and religious policies.34 But beyond that, as Liss describes it, queenship as Isabel conceived it was not only not isolated from kingship, it was of the same piece as kingship. This, then, is a study of monarchy, not just queenship. It presents a 'gender-spanning dynastic' image of how a queen's ideology shapes and is in turn shaped by kingship ideology.35 Isabel, a 'kingly queen', saw no political distinction between what she did as queen and what her male ancestors did. She saw herself as God's partner in war and politics, and crafted a self-reflection carefully intended to convey the queen's power and authority as linked not only to powerful females such as the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc, but also as part of a long line of Castilian monarchs dating back to the Visigoths. Liss's description of Isabel's linkage to virginity should be read alongside current research on the queen's political use of her sexuality.36 Finally, as Liss makes clear by associating Isabel of Castile with Elizabeth I Tudor, Spain was not isolated from the rest of the continent. Spain's royal context was far wider and its influence far more complicated than we have recognized. Liss argues that Isabel, as a proprietary queen, reconfigured the institution of monarchy by intertwining kingship and queenship ideologies into a single institution. The reign of Isabel of Castile marks a turning point in the history of the Spanish monarchy. She signals a shift from kingdom to empire, from queens to empresses, and her ideology suggests a very different sort of monarchy. But after her death, sons outlived their fathers and princes often married foreign brides to whom they were, nevertheless, closely related. Ultimately, none of the queens after Isabel of Castile and her daughter, Juana, ruled in their own right. These empresses were constrained by early modern ideologies of absolute monarchy, divine right, and centralized professional bureaucratic institutional structures that 33

See also Isabel la Catolica, Queen of Castile: Critical Essays, edited by David A. Boruchoff (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Tariscio de Ascona, Isabel la Catolica: vida y reinado (Madrid: La Esfera, 2002); Alvaro Fernandez de Cordova Miralles, La Corte de Isabel I: ritosy ceremonias de una reina (Madrid: Dykinson, 2002). 34 On the development of Isabel's thoughts on religious policy, see Barbara Weissberger, c "Me atrevo a escribir asi": Confessional Politics in the Letters of Isabel I and Hemando de Talavera', in Women at Work in Spain: From the Middle Ages to Early Modern Times, edited by Marilyn Stone and Carmen Benito-Vessels (New York: Peter Lang, 1998), 14769. 35 Compare to Cruz, 'The Female Figure as Political Propaganda'. 36 Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, 'Ruling Sexuality: The Political Legitimacy of Isabel of Castile', Renaissance Quarterly 53 (2000): 31-56.

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left little room for women.37 Habsburg empresses increasingly exercised their authority from a private place; they are not necessarily less powerful, just less visible.38 Were we to rely strictly on documents for our knowledge of the past, we would risk missing important information. The essays by Sebastian Lozano and Goodman demonstrate how that shift can be documented visually, making their work important for scholars from a range of disciplines,. Royal women at the Habsburg court demonstrate the power of the myth that rule by one man uniquely destined by God to govern and endowed with a charisma that signified his divine election was fashioned out of a potent mixture of art, literature, ritual, ceremony, music, and theology that shaped each realm's political culture. From medieval manuscript illumination of royal chronicles to the paintings of Velazquez and Rigaud, the artist's goal was to present royal power as legitimate, masculine, Christian, and in the hands of a single individual no matter how powerful or powerless that individual may have been.39 The royal body was regarded in strictly masculine terms, and so it appears striking to us when we are confronted with queenship iconography in paintings such as Rubens's famous cycle of paintings of Marie de Medici or a less well-known manuscript miniature of Maria of Castile in which the symbols of male power are borne by a woman.40 All too often, we look for 'fish or fowl' and in so doing we risk missing variations in practice, well known to both the men and women subject to their rule. These variations were glossed over by modern his-torians who saw the structure of monarchy as kings themselves wished it to be seen and did not question the veracity of the depiction nor seek to explain practices that did not correspond to the image of monarchy as solely the domain of kings. This standard reading of the masculinist iconography of monarchy is called into question by both Sebastian Lozano and Goodman. Both Isabel of Portugal and Mariana of Austria are depicted from an external viewpoint, from outside the marital couple but this view was mediated by the empress herself in the case of 37

Moreover, whether and to what extent Juana governed is disputed. See Bethany Aram, La reina Juana: gobierno, piedad, y dinastia (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2001) and 'Juana ccthe Mad's" Signature: The Problem of Invoking Royal Authority, 1505-1507', Sixteenth Century Journal 29:2 (1998): 331-58. 38 Magdalena S. Sanchez, The Empress, the Queen, and the Nun: Women and Power at the Court of Philip III of Spain (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). 39 Abby Zanger, Scenes from the Marriage: Nuptial Fictions and the Making of Absolutist Power (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997); Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Colette Beaune, Birth of an Ideology: Myths and Symbols of Nation in Late Medieval France, translated by Susan Ross Huston (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Roy Strong, Splendor at Court: Renaissance Spectacle and Illusion (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1973). 40 Theresa Earenfight, 'The Queen as King: Rulership Iconography in the FifteenthCentury Crown of Aragon', in Parchment and Politics in the Middle Ages, edited by H. Wayne Storey (New York: Fordham University Press, forthcoming); Margaret Carroll. 'The Erotics of Absolutism: Rubens and the Mystification of Sexual Violence', Representations 25 (Winter 1989): 3-30.

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Isabel. In both cases, the empress is portrayed not as a type or fixed form but as a living breathing female in possession of considerable power and authority. For example, Isabel was Carlos's right hand in Spain, regent and governor there during his many long absences, but rather than look at the actual politics of her regency, Sebastian Lozano carefully explores how Isabel used art—broadly defined as any aesthetic production including painting, clothing, and jewelry—as an expression of role in imperial politics.41 She understood how to use portraiture as a way to depict the political importance of her marriage as symbolic of the unity of king and queen, emperor and empress. Titian is the painter most often associated with Carlos, but Sebastian Lozano shows Isabel to be every bit as engaged in the active creation of Habsburg imperial art. The double portraits and paired portraits of Isabel and Carlos can be read as explicitly political statements that portray the monarchy as two bodies, male and female, and thus signify the monarchical partnership. Carlos was keen to show the world the woman who was his partner in politics and in his affections. Eleanor Goodman shows the potency of an empress's power indirectly, by describing the extraordinary lengths to which Juan Jose, the illegitimate son of Felipe IV (1621-65), went to efface Mariana, the Dowager Empress and regent, from the political arena. But Mariana could not be obliterated: Her portrait in fresco in the convent of the Descalzas Reales was a permanent reminder of her centrality in Felipe's reign. Mariana, like many of the Habsburg royal women, chose her confessor, the Austrian Jesuit Everard Nithard, for her key advisor and used a convent as both a religious and political site.42 This created rivalries but because he was not sexually available, he was not seen as a threat.43 In much the same way as Pedro II of Aragon tried to eliminate Marie of Montpellier, Juan Jose tried unsuccessfully to deny Mariana her rightful role in the partnership that kings and queens forge when they create the institution of monarchy. The differences are instructive, however. Situated opposite Juan Jose on the far side of the timeline, Pere was operating at a time when monarchy was emerging from feudal lordship to a more centralized and ultimately egalitarian 41

The history of the reign have been discussed at length by John Lynch, Spain under the Habsburgs, 2nd edition, 2 volumes (New York: New York University Press, 1984); M. J. Rodriguez-Salgado, The Changing Face of Empire: Charles V, Philip II and Habsburg Authority, 1551-59 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988). See also Ramon Carrilero Martinez in La emperatriz Isabel de Portugal, senora de Albacete y de Alcaraz, 1526-1539: estudio historico-documental (Albacete: Institute de Estudios Albacetenses 'Don Juan Manuel' de la Excma. Diputacion de Albacete, 2001). 42 In The Empress, the Queen, and the Nun Magdalena Sanchez argues that convents were important as meeting places for the queen, the king, and her advisors. For an important comparison, see Leslie P. Peirce, 'Beyond Harem Walls: Ottoman Royal Women and the Exercise of Power', in Gendered Domains: Rethinking Public and Private in Women's History, edited by Dorothy O. Helly and Susan M. Reverby (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 41-55. 43 JoEllen M. Campbell, "Women and Factionalism in the Court of Charles II of Spain', in Spanish Women in the Golden Age, 109-24.

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institution in terms of the role of the queen. Juan Jose, on the other hand, was part of a monarchy that was centralized and 'divine' in a way that Pere could never have imagined. In neither case was there much room for a queen with political authority, but in both cases, for a variety of reasons that both Haluska-Rausch and Goodman carefully explore, the queen's central role in monarchy remained, not dead, although in an attenuated form. Both Marie of Montpellier and Mariana of Austria are 'conspicuous in their absence' from the historiography of monarchy, but in different ways. Their importance lies not only in what they did and did not do, but as extreme examples of the variations in the actual practice of queenship that signal to us the limits of monarchical partnership. Inextricably linked by legal and political theory as well as shared familial and dynastic concerns, kings and queens formed an integral part of the interlocking political, social, economic, and legal institutional structure of each kingdom. As medieval political theorists tried to define what made a king, their conclusions profoundly affected a queen's role in the public arena. Their notions, in turn, were influenced by the practice, the performance, of queens themselves. By stripping away the camouflage of monarchy and upending the conventional frameworks, narratives, and theories of monarchy the authors of these essays engaged in a critical examination of the mechanisms which governed premodern European monarchy. Pinpointing the inherently gendered character of medieval and early modern monarchy, they open our eyes to how the structures and ideologies of monarchy both influenced and masked the realities of power. Rather than stable and composed of opposing pairs, monarchy is revealed as a composite, contradictory and contested, continually at risk by the very dynamism that enlivens the range of the practices, making it subject to continual transformation. Spanish kings and queens, emperors and empresses, were not paired opposites but complementary elements within a hermeneutic system. By emphasizing this complementarity of kingship and queenship, the authors have revealed subtle shifts in practice that profoundly affected the spectrum of possibilities open to both kings and queens and redefined the institution itself. By abandoning the artificial binary opposition between kings and queens, we come to a more subtle understanding of the two as elements of power and authority whose exercise is temporally and culturally contingent, but only up to a point. In the case of queens, the limits of this contingency are established by both the overarching patriarchal society and political culture that control the basic parameters of life. In this culture, medieval queens, like women in general, rarely assumed a paramount position in governance, but rarely were they completely excluded from all avenues of power. Whether by birth or through marriage, women were partners in the institution of monarchy, from our vantage point we use the extent of their participation in governance as a sensitive indicator of the political culture of premodern Spain.

Acknowledgements I have been fortunate to work on this project with a group of talented colleagues and friends. Above all, I am grateful to the series editors at Ashgate Publishing, Abby Zanger and Allyson Poska, who have been tremendously supportive of this book. A conversation with Allyson in New York in 2000 planted the seed of a book on Spanish queens, and Erika Gaffney of Ashgate shepherded the manuscript from idea to finished manuscript. Their suggestions made the book more focused and more broad-ranging. Without them, this book would not have been possible. Among my colleagues at Seattle University, I am especially grateful to Maria Bullon-Fernandez, Licia Carlson, Hazel Hahn, Jacquelyn Miller, Jodi O'Brien, Erik Olsen, Andrew Schulz, Richard Young for their insights into women and power. The Women Studies Program provided a venue for cross-disciplinary discussion on gender that has deepened my thinking on queenship and political power. Melody Moss and Kevin Grove generously provided valuable suggestions for revision along with superb editorial assistance. For many conversations about Spanish queens and kings, I thank Elka Klein, Isabel O'Connor, William D. Phillips, Lucy Pick, Shelley Roff, Nancy Rubin, Teo Ruiz, Eleni Sakellariou, Miriam Shadis, Gretchen Starr-LeBeau, Barbara Weissberger, and Rebecca Winer. Elizabeth Kunz, David Platen, and David Cloyce Smith, dear friends who are also historians, provided scholarly advice tempered with much-needed wicked humor. Carly Althauser, Jennifer Elam, Anne Gough, Anika Lehde, James Nau, and Julie Weiskopf, once students and now colleagues, tweaked my thinking on the idea of monarchy. I thank my family, of course, but one sibling in particular deserves special recognition. My brother Philip Earenfight, an art historian of Renaissance Italy, clarified my thoughts on visual representations of monarchy. Thanks to Catherine DeGraw, Gail Breeze, Joseph Hummel, Victoria Medgyesi, Angela Powell, Sonja Sekely-Rowland for reminding me that there is more to life than 'middle-aged queens in the Middle Ages'. The research and writing of this book was sponsored in part by generous grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain's Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports and United States Universities, Seattle University Faculty Research Fellowship, and the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Seattle University. Susan Seeker, Provost of Seattle University, has provided resources, more than just tangible, that has made the research and teaching about the lives of women so rewarding. My greatest intellectual debt is to Joseph F. O'Callaghan, the eminent scholar of medieval Castilian monarchy, who introduced me to Spanish history and whose intellect, vision, and personal integrity has sustained me in all my work. I am deeply grateful to him for writing an essay for this volume and it is to him that this volume is dedicated.

Note on Proper Names Medieval Spain encompassed several realms—the Crown of Aragon, Castile, Leon, and Navarre—and languages, a fact which posed difficulties in editing this collection of essays. These problems are minimized in the early modern period, after the marriage of Isabel of Castile and Fernando of Aragon united the realms under a single Castilian dynasty and tried to impose linguistic unity. This is particularly problematic for the realms of the Crown of Aragon which constituted a federative empire spanning the western Mediterranean, each entity with its own language. Some rulers were Catalan by birth, others Aragonese; Alfonso V, Maria, and Juan of Navarre were part of the Castilian Trastamara family. Moreover, regnal numbers can be confusing because since 1162, the kings bore the regnal numbers of an Aragonese dynasty. Catalan historians, however, consider the House of Barcelona to have originated earlier, so that a Catalan scholar will refer to the king who ruled from 1416 to 1458 not as Alfonso V, but Alfons IV. Respecting both the authors of the essays collected in this volume and the languages spoken by the queens and kings of the Crown of Aragon, the authors determined which language and which regnal numbers best convey the speech of the actors. This means that although there are some queens and kings whose names translate the same into English—the Catalan Pere and Castilian Pedro both translate as Peter, for instance—their names may not be spelled the same in all essays. Proper names that indicate a non-Catalan identity are rendered accordingly. Therefore, Castilian forms are used for all the Trastamara kings and princes: Fernando I 'de Antequera', Alfonso V 'the Magnanimous', Juan II (Juan of Navarre before 1458), because they were from a Castilian dynasty and most writers refer to them as they would have called themselves. Potentially confusing common names are the following, rendered first in the Spanish form, then Catalan, and finally in English. Alfonso, Alfons, Alphonse Leonor, Elionor, Eleanor Enrique, Enriq, Henry Juan, Joan, John Maria, Maria, Marie Martin, Marti, Martin Pedro, Pere, Peter Violante, Violant, Yolande (also Yolanda) Translations of texts are rendered into modern standard English by each author. Toponyms are given in the modern forms. This may cause some confusion among readers more familiar with the French Rousillon rather than the Catalan Rossello, but this system has the advantage of underscoring the coherence of the realms of the Crown of Aragon.

PARTI THE PRACTICAL LIMITS OF PARTNERSHIP

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CHAPTER ONE

Unwilling Partners: Conflict and Ambition in the Marriage of Peter II of Aragon and Marie de Montpellier Elizabeth Haluska-Rausch

The ideal feudal marriage in the period before the Albigensian crusades in Languedoc, and, it appears, in the Crown of Aragon as well, created a partnership. Examples abound of couples working together to promote the interests of their house or dynasty, build wealth, and administer the lands held by the family. The marriage might remain fundamentally unequal, with the wife exercising largely private authority, but sometimes both partners shared highly visible public duties. Happiness is not easily measured in feudal documents, but it is clear that the majority of medieval marriages in the area were successful. Unfortunately, most is never all, and there are plenty of counter-examples in which marriages were rent by greed or ambition. The marriage of Peter II of Aragon and Marie de Montpellier falls into this second category. The union of Peter II and Marie de Montpellier is possibly the bestdocumented marriage from the entire area from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Strife began early and lasted until Marie's death ended the marriage. This marriage has been examined before, once as a well-illustrated example of the process of canonical divorce, and, later, as an example of the deteriorating position of Catalan countesses.1 In some ways, their unhappy marriage was little different 1 The following abbreviations are used in the notes: AM (Archives Municipales de Montpellier), CM (Cartulaire de Maguelone, edited by Jean Rouquette and Andre Villemagne, 5 volumes [Montpellier, 1912-24]), GT (Grand thalamus), HL (Histoire generate de Languedoc, edited by Claude Devic and J.J. Vaissete, new edition, 16 volumes [Toulouse, 1876-1892]), LIM (Liber instrumentorum memorialium: Le cartulaire des Guilhems de Montpellier, edited by Alexandre Germain and Charles Chabaneau [Montpellier: 1884-6]), LTC (Layettes du Tresor des Chartes, edited by AlexandreTeulet et al., 5 volumes [Paris, 1863-1909]). Johannes Vincke, 'Der Eheprozess Peters II von Aragon (1206-1213)', Spanische Forschungen der Gdrresgesellschaft, ser. 1, 5 (1935): 108-9; Martin Aurell, Les noces du comte: Mariage etpouvoiren Catalogne (785-1213) (Paris, 1995).

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QUEENSHIP IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN

from the unhappy marriages of other regional magnates. However, it differed in two important respects. First, as king, Peter did not enjoy the same latitude as his vassals. In spite of a concerted effort spanning more than six years, he failed to dismiss Marie. Less highly placed men could and did divorce their wives with few repercussions and little clerical interference.2 Second, and most importantly from the perspective of this study, because they were reigning monarchs the domestic discord of Peter and Marie inevitably overlapped into the political sphere. For Peter this meant a kingdom. However, Marie's interest and influence does not appear to have extended beyond the seigneury she had inherited from her father. Superficially, the marriage of a king to the heiress of a seigneury appears incongruous, but at the time it did not. To understand how this union came about, it is useful to consider the place of the early count-kings and the lord of Montpellier in Occitania—a region stretching south from the Loire to the Rhone to the PyrEnees. The bond between this region and the county of Barcelona extended beyond a near-common language and similar culture, and almost all the most powerful families in Occitania were linked to the counts of Barcelona by blood as well. Two great counties had dominated the region since the eleventh century—the county of Barcelona and the county of Toulouse. There is not space here to fully explore the delicate and shifting balance of powers in the region, but the lords of Montpellier had been steadfast allies of the counts of Barcelona and later of the crown of Aragon from the early twelfth century. Beyond their own lands, the lords of Montpellier were regarded as counts from at least the beginning of the twelfth century, wielding something very like comital power. It spite of this, they never styled themselves as counts or viscounts, but bore the title, 'Lord of Montpellier' with pride. For most of the twelfth century Barcelona and Toulouse vied for hegemony over the region.3 The apogee of influence in Occitania came for the counts of Toulouse in the late twelfth century; it was to arrive for the crown of Aragon, briefly, under James I (1213-76).4 The marriage of Peter to Marie represented a logical step in the extension of Aragonese power north of the Pyrenees. For Marie, Montpellier was both home and inheritance, but her grasp on both was tenuous in 1204. It must be supposed that she hoped her powerful husband would protect her claim against all rivals.5 2

For most strata of society, divorce appears to have remained uncommon. How-ever, at the comital level some men used divorce as a political tool. Conspicuous examples include the later counts of Toulouse and Bernard IV, count of Comminges. HL 6: 22, 145-7, 174; Charles Higounet, Le comte de Comminges de ses origins a son annexion a la couronne, 2 vols. (Paris, 1949), 74-7. See also Barral, viscount of Marseilles and Adalais de Porcellet (1191). Stanislaw Stronski, Le troubadour Foulquet de Marseille (Kracow, 1910), 166-7. 3 For more on this complex region in the Middle Ages see Frederic Cheyette, Ermengard ofNarbonne and the World of the Troubadours (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), see especially, 260-71, and Thomas Bisson, The Medieval Crown of Aragon: A Short History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). 4 Bisson, The Medieval Crown of Aragon, 62-72. 5 Montpellier was not a modest seigneury. Although inland, control of the port of Lattes made Montpellier a major port, second in the region perhaps to only Marseilles. In addition

UNWILLING PARTNERS

5

Examination of the short years between their marriage in 1204 and their deaths in 1213 reveals conflicting ambitions and a troubled relationship. Marie's own story, which sets the stage for their unfortunate union, is usually characterized as tragic from beginning to end. This interpretation should perhaps be revised to at least grant her the status of a tragic heroine, for she realized the two goals arguably most important to her. She died in legal possession of the seigneury of Montpellier with her right to her patrimony vindicated, and with the expectation that one day her son would govern the family's lands, as indeed, he did. By the time Marie and Peter celebrated their nuptial mass in June 1204, Marie had already been married twice. Marie was the only child born to the ill-fated marriage of her father, Guillem VIII, lord of Montpellier and the great niece of Byzantine Emperor Manuel Comnenus, Eudocia Comnena. When Guillem VIII set Eudocia aside in 1187, he had every reason to believe that the absence of a male heir would be sufficient to secure clerical approval of the divorce.6 In this case the issue remained unresolved, and in 1191, Guillem VIII began his efforts to eliminate Marie as a potential heir to the seigneury. That year he married his elevenyear-old daughter to the aging viscount of Marseilles, Barral. The viscount did not survive a single year of marriage and Marie returned to her familial home in 1192.7 Five years later, Guillem VIII negotiated a second alliance for Marie, and again with a man more nearly his contemporary than hers—Count Bernard IV of Comminges. Her father presented her to Bernard as a matrimonial prize, but Marie also has a voice in the charter 'I give to you, Bernard... myself, and all that I have or ought to have . . . '8 Next, Guillem VIII wanted Marie to renounce her interest in the seigneury, and, although it is likely the words preserved in the charter are those of her father, for the first time, Marie acted as an adult, forever foregoing any claim to Montpellier.9 It is possible that Marie did this willingly. She may have regarded her legal interest in the property as insubstantial at best. Although her brother was not yet recognized by the papacy as the heir, magnates and townspeople alike considered her young half-brother Guillem VHI's future successor— and he had several brothers. An impressive collection of ecclesiastical and lay authorities witnessed both wedding and renunciation.

to wealth brought by thriving commerce, the community boasted one of the oldest universities in Europe, famed for schools of both law and medicine. The court of the lord of Montpellier was grand, and Marie's father was a well-known patron of troubadours. Ghislaine Fabre and Thierry Lochard, Montpellier: La ville medievale (Paris, 1992), 59-67. 6 LIM, no. 92; Luc d'Achery, Spicilegium: Collectio veterum aliquot scriptorum qui in Galliae bibliothecis delituerant, edited by Joseph de la Barre, 3 vols. (Paris, 1723), 3: 550. See also Szabolcs de Vajay, cEudocie Comnene, 1'imperatrice des troubadours,' Genealogica etHeraldica, Report of the 14th International Congress of Genealogica and Heraldic Sciences in Copenhagen, 25-29 August 1980 14 (Copenhagen, 1982), 321-38. 7 L1M, no. 29. 8 LIU, no. 204. 9 L/M,no205.

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QUEENSHIP IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN

Bernard tired of Marie swiftly, and by December of 1201 Marie had once again returned to her family in Montpellier.10 Guillem VIII enlisted the aid of a number of local ecclesiastics to reunite the couple, but Bernard promptly returned to one of his previous wives, and Marie was once again a threat to the uncontested inheritance of the seigneury by her half-brother. The question of the legitimacy of her father's second family had not been settled, and papal approval of Guillem VIIFs marriage to Agnes of Castile remained elusive. The years between his marriage in 1187 and his final illness in 1202 were apparently dotted with an increasingly impatient series of letters asking the papacy to recognize his second marriage.11 In late 1202 Guillem VIII died, leaving the seigneuiy to his young son, Guillem IX. However, around Easter of 1204, the consuls led a revolt against the young lord, and Marie assumed her place as Guillem VHFs only legal heir.12 The marriage of the young widow and Peter II must have been negotiated not long after. The wedding took place on June 15, 1204. Marie surrendered her dowry to Peter at that time, a common and not ordinarily hazardous convention. This rich inheritance included the seigneuries of Montpellier and Aumelas, the port of Lattes and much of the surrounding countryside. In return, Peter II endowed Marie with the county of Roussillon.13 It soon became evident that Peter, perennially in search of funds to fuel his military goals, was far more interested in acquiring control of a rich commercial center than in the woman who had inherited it. Bernard Desclot first made the observation in the thirteenth century, remarking that Peter wanted Montpellier more than he wanted Marie.14 Peter never welcomed her as a partner, perhaps remembering too vividly his mother's influence early in his reign, and Marie's role as queen was to be permanently circumscribed. Marie, however, had goals of her own, all involving her seigneury. The marriage was never a happy one, but several periods of crisis are particularly evident. Four of these ruptures coincided with Peter's most reckless accumulation of debt: 1204, 1205, 1206, and 1212.15 The first crisis stemmed not from a conflict between king and queen, but from the ambitions of the developing commune of Montpellier. In the fall of 1205 a profound rift developed between 10

L/M,nos. 37,38,39. LIM, no. 24; Bullaire de Veglise de Maguelone, edited by Jean Rouquette and Andre Villemagne (Montpellier, 1911), nos. 113, 131, 159, 160, 167, 168. See alsoffl,, 6: 201-5, 212-3. 12 LIM, no. 99; HL, 6: 206-7; Jean Baumel, Naissance de Montpellier, 985-1213, Histoire d'une seigneurie duMidi de France, 4 volumes (Montpellier, 1969), 1: 234-5. 13 Spicilegium, 3: 565-7. 14 (Llibre dels feits.) Jaume I, Bernat Desclot, Ramon Muntaner, Pere III. Les quatre grans croniques, edited by Ferran Soldevila, 2nd edition (Barcelona, 1983), Cronica, 409: '[Peter] said that by reason of her he had abased himself much and that he had wedded her for the sake only of Montpellier, and moreover that she was not the daughter of a king'. Translation from Bernat Desclot, The Chronicle of King Pedro III ofAragon, translated by F. L. Critchlow (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1934), 25. 15 Thomas Bisson, Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia under the Early Count-Kings, 11511213, 2 volumes (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 1: 130. 11

UNWILLING PARTNERS

7

king and queen. A third upheaval followed a year later, when Peter began to court Marie de Montferrat, and the seigneury rebelled within a few months. It seems likely that other periods of discord surrounded Peter's betrothals of their toddler son. A sixth time consuming disruption began with the arrival of the papal legate and endured for many months while the representatives of the pope tried to determine whether or not the marriage was valid. The final breech occurred in 1212 when Peter first refused to readmit Marie into his good graces and recognize their son as his heir, and then added insult to injury by awarding the seigneury to her half-brother, Guillem IX, in early 1213. The rebellion of 1204 that furnished Marie with the seigneurial title has been investigated elsewhere.16 Actual record of the event is sparse, and much must be reconstructed from oblique references. The Chronique romane—which briefly recorded the most important events of the early seignuery of Montpellier and only later became a more elaborate record of the history of the commune—made no mention of the event.17 A bit more may be gleaned from the agreement between Peter and Marie and the consuls of Montpellier. Peter and Marie specifically excluded those exiled from Montpellier from the privileges and agreement—perhaps as a result of the revolt.18 It appears that several council members were to be replaced for their part in the uprising. In these first charters, Marie and Peter appear to be acting in concert, both as lord and lady of Montpellier, and as king and queen. Peter's portion of the confirmation is rather general, whereas Marie's is highly personal—the curia of Montpellier becomes cmy curia' and Montpellier and its appurtenances become 'my lands'. With her conscious use of the first person possessive, Marie began to assert her position as lady of Montpellier. Montpellier wanted Marie as their lady—why is not entirely clear. The council of fifteen may have wanted to free themselves from the male line of the Guillem family. However, there is little to suggest that Guillem VIII or his predecessors had thwarted the commune since the abortive revolt of 1141.19 Perhaps the community disapproved of the fiscal policies of Guillem IX.20 In any case, the council appears to have approved of the royal marriage, but it is possible that their support was linked to the formal approval of the carefully crafted redaction of 122 customs the consuls of Montpellier presented the young couple on August 15.21 The customs themselves show every sign of thoughtful legal expertise, and were probably 16

Alexandre Germain, Histoire de la commune de Montpellier, 2 volumes (Montpellier, 1851), 1: 1, 22-56; Baumel, Naissance de Montpellier, 985-1213, 234-5; Andre Gouron, "'Libertas hominum Montispessulani". Redaction et diffusion des coutumes de Montpellier', Annales duMidi 90 (1978): 289-318, 291, 294; Faber andLochard, 100. 7 'La chronique romane', Thalamus parvus: Le petit thalamus de Montpellier, publie par la premiere fois d'apres les manuscrits originaux, edited by Ferdinand Pegat, Eugene Thomas, et al. (Montpellier, 1840), 329. 18 LTC, 1: no. 721; Baumel, Naissance de Montpellier, 985-1213, 234. 19 See Gouron, 'Libertas hominum Montispessulani', 295-8. 20 Andre Gouron, 'Gestion et revenues seigneuriaux de Montpellier au temps du testament de Guillem VIII (UQ2)>, Annales duMidi 102 (1990): 239-^6. 21 LrC,no. 721.

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QUEENSHIP IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN

the result of much more than a few months work. Indeed, references to the customs of Montpellier as a model appear from the 1130s on.22 Nonetheless, formal recognition of the customs was a politically significant act, and the first step in the direction of independence. Marie was no doubt willing to approve the customs since this display of public power was evidence of her new role as lady of Montpellier, but Peter's willing acceptance probably reflected his larger goals. Peter needed Montpellier to help fund his expensive policy of expansion, and he may have been more than willing to acquiesce to the demands of the communal leaders. By the time of his marriage to Marie de Montpellier he had borrowed more than 270,000 sous. Many of these debts were held by individuals; none were as large as the 150,000 sous he had borrowed from the count of Toulouse in 1204.23 Montpellier and its environs were attractive as sources of revenue. Within two years of the wedding he had mortgaged the central holding of Montpellier and the strategically important coastal town of Lattes for a total of 175,000 sous. Peter mortgaged the port of Lattes to the consuls of Montpellier in exchange for 75,000 sous in mid March 1205. Marie approved the arrangement a few weeks later from her new home at Collioure.24 No doubt she, like the consuls of Montpellier, believed Peter's promises of swift repayment. Then in July of 1206 Peter and Marie mortgaged Montpellier to its consuls for the enormous sum of 100,000 sous.25 The long term effects of the three agreements were twofold. From this date on, Peter found himself approving communal privileges in various parts of his domain, at least part of the time in direct reference to the privileges he had granted Montpellier.26 Second, the debts he incurred proved to be a source of contention between Peter and Marie, and also between Peter and the communal leaders. Marie may have been uneasy about her husband's attempts to leverage her property, but it was not until September of 1205 that it became clear that Peter had every intention of dispossessing his bride in order to realize his own goals. Two documents mark Peter's first exercise of force in the couple's unequal relationship: an inter vivos gift from Marie to Peter in September, and the betrothal of the infant Sancha to the young son of the count of Toulouse the next month. The crisis was personal for Marie, but had repercussions for her seigneuty and potentially for other cities that recognized Peter as their lord. It is quite likely that Marie never envisioned a loss of control over her patrimony as complete as that Peter attempted. Marie was born into a period of transition for women in Bas-Languedoc. Into the last quarter of the twelfth century, 22

Gouron, 'Libertas hominum Montispessulani', 296,298-9. Bisson, Fiscal Accounts, 129-30; HL, vol. 8: cols. 518-22. 24 AM, GT: 2r (14 March 1205); AM, Grand Chartier, no. 101. 25 AM, GT: 3v (10 My 1206). 26 Joaquim Miret y Sans, 'Itinerario del rey Pedro I de Cataluna, II en Aragon', Boletin de Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 3 (1905-06): various, 436-7, 440-43; Joaquim Miret y Sans, 'Itinerario del rey Pedro I de Cataluna, II en Aragon', Boletin de Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 4 (1907-08): various, 20,23-5. 23

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9

most heiresses, great and small, were active participants in the administration of their lands. To refer to one's inheritance as a dowry had few practical effects, and most marriage agreements fully specified the line of descent the property would ultimately follow.27 However, by the time Marie inherited the seigneuiy from her unwilling father, young women fortunate enough to inherit considerable immovable property rarely maintained any lingering control over their lands. In more than one case marriage was followed almost immediately by the sale of the bride's property by her marital family.28 The inter vivos gift Peter wrested from Marie was in much the same vein. Peter did not try to sell Montpellier, but certainly saw his wife's property as a resource to be exploited. I, Lady Marie, daughter of the late Guillem lord of Montpellier, by the grace of God queen of Aragon, countess of Barcelona, and lady of Montpellier, not induced by force, or in another way oppressed, with this present public writing, validated in perpetuity by me and mine . . . give to you, Lord Peter, by the grace of God, king of Aragon and count of Barcelona, my husband, inter vivos and irrevocably, the castle and town of Montpellier. . .. The transaction is quite thorough and stripped Marie of her entire inheritance, not only Montpellier and its immediate vicinity. As the document closed, Marie agreed to waive all recourse to any laws prohibiting such a transaction between husband or wife—or any that might interfere with Peter's enjoyment of the property.29 Marie's sudden surrender of all her rights to her hard-won inheritance seems startling. No doubt critical to Marie's pacific agreement to the arrangement was the assurance that the lands would revert to their heirs after Peter's death. Marie may not have been sure she, or any children of theirs, would survive the next few months. In September of 1205, Marie would have been in the last weeks of pregnancy, and birth could be a dangerous time for mother and child in pre-modern Europe. Her general health may already have deteriorated—less than four years later she created her first testament.30 Marie provided no protection for the interests of her two daughters or her half-brothers and sisters—if the royal couple did 27 Jean Hilaire, cLes regimes matrimoniaux aux Xle et Xlle siecles dans la region de Montpellier', Recueil de memoires et travaux publics par la Societe d'Histoire du droit et des institutions des ancienspays de droit ecrit 3 (1955): 15-38. 28 Elizabeth Haluska-Rausch, 'Family, Property and Power: Women in Medieval Montpellier, 985-1213' (Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1998), 39-40. For an example seeZJM,no. 550. 29 Spicilegium, 3: 566-7. £[E]go Maria, filia quondam Guilellmi dominii Montispessulani, Dei gratia regina Argoniae, comitissa Barchinonis, et domina Montipessulani non inducta vi, vel in alquid circumventa, cum hac praesenti publica scriptura in perpetuum valitura per mes et omnes meos, bona fide dono inter vivos et irrevocabiliter trado tibi domine Petro, Dei gratia regi Argoniae, comiti Barchinonis, marito meo, castrum et villam Montipessulani. . .' 30 Jose Maria Lacarra and Luis Gonzalez Anton, 'Les testaments de la Reine Marie de Montpellier', Annales duMidi 90 (1978): 106-20,117-19.

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not have any children survive them, Peter was free to dispose of the property as he saw fit. Conspicuously absent from the list of signatories are Marie's proximi— only one aunt out of all her large family signed the document.31 The legality of the transfer was questionable from the outset, at least in Montpellier—and possibly other coastal cities with similar customs—since the customs of Montpellier expressly prohibited the alienation of dotal property without the consent of the bride's extended family. Such a gift was also suspect under Roman law, a truth the learned legal community of Montpellier was unlikely to overlook.32 A month passed, and a baby girl was born. Peter immediately took action. Unlike the irrevocable gift Marie presented Peter, the document recording the betrothal of their daughter appears to be innocuous enough. The form is familiar, and the content unsurprising. Peter promised to release the seigneuiy to his daughter Sancha and the count's son after his death. Similarly, the count agreed to leave his son and daughter-in-law the duchy of Narbonne and the county of Toulouse.33 Peter's interest in securing a binding alliance with the count of Toulouse is obvious. The count of Toulouse was the only magnate in Languedoc whose power and influence approached that of Peter II, and his cooperation was vital to the realization of Peter's territorial goals north of the Pyrenees. However, in addition to dispossessing Peter's unfortunate queen, any alliance made with the count would have had serious repercussions for Montpellier and other cities of the coast. The counts of Toulouse had become increasingly powerful in Bas-Languedoc during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, due in large part to a successful policy of marrying regional heiresses. As early as 992, Guillem Taillifer had married Emma of Provence, providing a lasting claim to the county. This claim was renewed several years later when Raimond IV married his first cousin, also an heiress to Provence.34 Other less important properties came to the county in a similar fashion. For example, the county of Melgueil had passed to Toulouse with the death of Ermessende of Melgueil in 1176.35 That particular alliance was of considerable interest to Marie's predecessors and Marie, as well as the consuls of the nascent commune of Montpellier. As count of Melgueil, Raimond VI was nominal feudal superior of the seigneury of Montpellier, although historically the 31

Troximi' literally translates as nearest—nearest relatives, generally—but can extend to others with common interests. Stephen White interprets the term as relatives beyond a first or second degree of kinship. Stephen D. White, Custom, Kinship and Gifts to Saints: The Laudatio Parentum in Western France, 7050-7750 (Chapel Hill, 1988), 49, 181-2. 32 'Consuetudines et libertates ville Montispessulani', Thalamus parvus: Le petit thalamus de Montpellier, publie par la premiere fois d 'apres les manuscrits originaux, edited by Ferdinand Pegat, Eugene Thomas et al. (Montpellier, 1840), Article XIV (1205), 66; See also LTC, 1: no. 721, article 54; James Brundage, Sex, Law and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 37. 33 Spicilegium, 3: 567-8; Itinerario, 3: 372. On the question of Narbonne, see Cheyette, Ermengard of Narbonne, especially 14-24, 52, 274. 34 7/L,4:30-31,61. 35 HL, 8: cols. 323-^.

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powerful seigneury had overshadowed the much older county of Melgueil. Toulouse also had a claim to the county of Provence, the ancient duchy of Narbonne, Albi, Beziers, Nimes, and parts of Rouergue among other properties.36 The counts of Toulouse were for all practical purposes, princes.37 Their power and careful acquisition of territories along the coast did not make them welcome, however. The communities of the coast were used to different freedoms than were the citizens of Toulouse, and they must have regarded the encroachment of the count with a certain amount of suspicion.38 Possibly in response to rumors of the events related above, Montpellier added an additional seventeen articles to their customs in the summer of 1205.39 Marie's response to Peter's unilateral decision to betroth their daughter to the heir of the count of Toulouse was violent. Although she had been satisfied to present Montpellier as a gift to Peter the previous month when her future was uncertain, now that she and their tiny daughter had survived, she was no longer eager to give up all that was hers. Furthermore, however grudgingly recognized as count of Melgueil and so feudal lord, the counts of Toulouse were, effectively, the hereditary enemies of her family.40 By good fortune, her unusually expressive outburst has survived as a portion of her approval of the agreement between Peter II and Raimond VI. The document is irresistible, since it provides a glimpse of Marie and Peter as the emotional human beings that they were. To all who read or hear these things, it is obvious that I, Marie, by the grace of God, queen of Aragon, countess of Barcelona and lady of Montpellier, have been long pressed by the king, my husband, to approve the treaties, conventions and oaths which he has made for the future betrothal of Raimond, son of Raimond, count of Toulouse, duke of Narbonne and marquis of Provence, and of the queen Jeanne, to Sancha, my daughter and [that] of Peter, king of Aragon, my husband, and for the constitution of her dowry. Observing and considering that these conventions are to my great detriment, I have not wished to approve or confirm them. As a result, I have been debased and tormented by undignified threats on the part of the lord king, my aforementioned husband. And still, I have not wished to approve what he has done, more, I have said to him—I will never agree to this. The King Peter, my husband, observing that I continued to refuse to approve the agreement, said to me, if I did not consent, he would no longer lend protection to the town of Montpellier and its dependencies, more, that he would abandon them for all time, because he did not want to have a land, a seigneury, or a wife, or anything else, that he was unable to dispose of at his will. And then, in a strong voice, I asked him re-peatedly—why 36

HL, 3: 338-9; HL, 4: 30-31. Joseph Strayer, The Albigensian Crusades (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 13-14. 38 John H. Mundy, Men and Women at Toulouse in the Age of the Cathars (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 26; Coutumes de Toulouse (1286) et leur premier commentaire (1296), edited by Henri Gilles (Toulouse, 1969). 39 ' Consuetudines et libertates ville Montispessulani', 60-71. 40 Cheyette, Ermendard of Narbonne, 266. 37

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do you wish to defraud me? But he was extremely angry, and responded that he wished me to approve these agreements because he had promised that I would do so, and that if I refused I would cause him great damage. And with these words the king retired. And [there] I remained in the greatest distress, uncertain what I must do, deprived of my friends and counselors. I called to me then Pierre de Fortes, and all the men of Montpellier who could be found at Collioure, (that was Armand Avellerius, B. Raimbaut, P. Guilabert, and R. Petit), for I had no one with me except my lady in waiting Cecile, and Pierre de Portes, [my] secretary. To all, I related those things written above. They, seeing the violence the king did me, told me they could not give me counsel, and that I, and all my possessions, were under the power of the king, and that in consequence, he could do as he wished. They said that they recognized that I would be acting under duress, and that they did not believe it to be to my advantage. Therefore, because I am unable to do otherwise, and because I do not doubt that the king, because of the threats reported above, would abandon me and my property—in the presence of Clemence, of Pierre de Portes, of Pierre Cevenerius, of P. Almo, of Bernardin Amelius, of Bernard de Colle, of Cecile, of Inego dAdemar, and of Guillem de Portes, I have said—I approve under duress. I have approved all above, and more I am pledged to it, but under constraint and threat of violence.41 4 [D]educta et cruciata fui'—her choice of words could not have been more evocative—humiliation and crucifixion. Marie saw only personal disaster in Peter's projected alienation of Montpellier to the count of Toulouse. If Marie had had any doubt about the king's motives and his interest in her and her property, all would have been swept away in this interchange. The threat of abandonment was a real one—Marie's hold on what she considered her seigneury was not secure. At any time, her half-brother, who had already once proved that he had the support of local castellans, could challenge her, perhaps disastrously. Acquiescing to Peter's will, however painful and humiliating, at least left the potential for recovery, since their daughter could not wed for many years. In the end, the child died in infancy and the proposed alliance was never realized, but the rift that developed between king and queen was to prove irreconcilable.42

41

HL, 8: cols. 533-4. A French translation appears in Jean Rouquette, Marie de Montpellier, reine d'Aragon: 1181(?)-1213 (Montpellier, 1914), 36. This has been reproduced in its entirety in two recent articles: Claudie Duhamel-Amado, 'Guillaume VIII de Montpellier, Marie et Pierre d'Aragon', Majorque, Languedoc etRoussillon de antiquitee a nos jours, (Montpellier, 1982): 35^15; P.-A. Amargier, 'Marie de Montpellier (11811213)', Cahiers de Fanjeaux (1988): 21-36. The verbs I have translated as debased and tormented are 'deducta et cruciata fui', and alternative translation could be 'I have been debased and crucifed by unwarranted menaces'. See also Aurell, Les Noces du comte, 436; Claudie Duhamel-Amado, Temmes entre elles: Filles et epouses languedociennes (Xle et Xlle siecles)', Femmes: Mariages-lignages Xlle—XIVe siecle. Melanges offerts a Georges Duby, (Brussels, 1992), 125-55. 42 HL, 8: cols. 534-6.

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By 1206 Peter had borrowed all he could from Marie's inherited properties and his interest in Marie, if it had ever stretched beyond her property, had dwindled to nothing. In his own words, he had no need of property or wife who would not do his bidding, and began to look elsewhere for a more congenial arrangement.43 In June 1206 Peter wrote to Innocent III, asking the pope to examine the validity of his marriage to Marie based on the possibility that her previous marriage was still valid, or that the royal marriage was invalid since papal permission had not been sought before the contract was created.44 It is probable that Peter began to court Marie de Montferrat, heir to the throne of Jerusalem, in the summer of the same year. Although it is not clear exactly when Peter first approached the heiress to the kingdom of Jerusalem with a proposal of marriage, by September of 1206 the suit had been accepted, contingent upon Peter's successful divorce from his first wife.45 Personally, this could have meant destitution for Marie, if Peter chose not to return her dowry to her. Marie had probably abandoned any hope of taking an active role as queen—she was no doubt far less willing to relinquish even a tenuous hold on the seigneury. The inter vivos gift of late 1205 was supposedly irrevocable. Even if it did not effectively supersede the marriage contract, a knotty legal battle would almost certainly have been necessary if Marie was to regain control of her lands. The legally sophisticated council of Montpellier must have been acutely aware that Marie's chances of regaining her title were problematic at best and that their hold over Peter would become increasingly tenuous if he repudiated Marie. Unlike Marie, who had two hundred years, or more, of family history linking her to the seigneury and the surrounding lands, Peter had no innate loyalty to the area. Although the cause of the revolt of Montpellier in 1206 is not preserved, it seems highly likely that news of Peter's contingent engagement to Marie de Montferrat had reached the community. Peter had been in residence since midsummer. It was from Montpellier that he first wrote to Innocent III on the question of divorce, and to Montpellier that Marie de Montferrat's advisors traveled to negotiate a marriage.46 His chances of maintaining secrecy under the circumstances were slim. The people of Montpellier, probably fearing that the enormous loans they had made to Peter were never to be repaid, attacked the symbols of their feudal relationship with the king, destroying the castle, towers and defenses of the seigneury. Peter fled to the castle of Lattes, which had sheltered Marie's greatgrandfather during the earlier communal revolt of 1141. The mob burned it to the ground.47 The bishop of Maguelone intervened and negotiated a peace agreement 43

HL, 8, cols. 534-46; HL 6: 240-41, 248. Lacarra and Anton, 'Les testaments de la Reine Marie de Montpellier', 110; Bullaire, no. 173; Vincke, 'Der Eheprozess Peters II von Aragon', 117. 45 Lacarra and Anton, 'Les testaments de la Reine Marie de Montpellier', 110; Vincke, 'Der Eheprozess Peters II von Aragon', Appendix, nos. 1, 9. 46 HL, 8: cols. 534-6; see also HL, 6: 246-7. 47 CM, 2: 292; 'La chronique romane', 329. 44

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between the irascible populace and their mutable lord. Peter promised to be a dutiful lord, and to repay the mortgages within two years.48 The town promised Peter and Marie 40,000 sous as reparation for the destroyed castle. Peter also agreed not to enter Montpellier for the duration of the mortgage. The document reveals an uneasiness on the part of the community. The consuls carefully sought to bind Peter and Marie to their agreement individually. Marie finally confirmed the arrangement nearly a year later, in August 1207, but although she ceded Montpellier and Lattes to the consulate until the debts were paid, unlike Peter she did not give up her right to enter the towns. A second agreement followed. Marie solemnly promised that the ruined towers, walls and defenses of Montpellier would never be rebuilt. With these two charters, she not only bound herself to the repayment of debts not really of her making, she alone gave up a potent symbol of her seigneurial power in an effort to mollify the mutinous leaders of Montpellier.49 Her strategy, although expensive, was effective, and the boni homines, the 'good men' who ran the town, began to regard her as more than an extension of her husband, and she became their lady in a way Peter was not their lord. Permanent removal of seigneurial fortifications seem to have been the only concession the council of Montpellier required of Marie, and so Peter, but elsewhere in the domain, three cities chose this juncture to seek privileges of their own. In August of 1207 Peter approved a set of mostly commercial privileges for the community of Perpingnan. The community may have been somewhat skeptical of Peter's good faith, and required a confirmation of the original concession in October of the same year.50 In September, Peter approved another set of privileges for Vilafranca del Confluent, and finally in December 1207, Peter permitted Lleyda franchises and rights in exchange for forgiving the debt he owed them.51 The following year old franchises or privileges were confirmed or new ones granted to Calatayud, Jaca, and to the Templars at multiple locations.52 Although a troubled relationship with Montpellier was an all-encompassing matter for Marie, Montpellier was only one of several cities testing Peter's royal patience. Marie began to fully assume her role as lady of Montpellier, although Peter II remained Montpellier's unpopular titular lord, and it appears that she alone offered the bishop of Maguelone an oath of fidelity in 1208.53 The consuls of Montpellier may have developed a renewed interest in Marie when she produced a son. Marie had born two daughters during her short marriage to Bernard IV of Comminges.54 It is not clear whether or not the girls were raised in their father's court, but the council may have been hesitant to welcome either daughter as their future lady. 48

Miret y Sans, 'Itinerario del rey Pedro I de Cataluna', 3: 381-2; CM2: 292; AM, GT: 6v (4 August 1207, 6 August 1207). 49 AM, GT 6v (4 August 1207, 6 August 1207). 50 Miret y Sans, 'Itinerario del rey Pedro I de Cataluna', 3: 436-7. 51 Miret y Sans, 'Itinerario del rey Pedro I de Cataluna', 3: 440. 52 Miret y Sans, cltinerario del rey Pedro I de Cataluna', 3: 441,444,446,447. 53 HL, 8: col. 526. 54 HL, 6: 212-13.

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Marie was herself evidence of the potential problems an inheriting heiress could pose for her people in the early thirteenth century. The birth of the future James I in February of 1208 may have been as welcome an occurrence to the leaders of Montpellier as his arrival was unwelcome to his father. Peter entered into a treaty in June 1209 with the king of Navarre, borrowing 20,000 morabetins, and establishing the line of descent of the Crown of Aragon. James's name was conspicuously absent.55 Montpellier, however, could expect the child to inherit the seigneury from his mother regardless of his father's marital ambitions. Indeed, in July of 1209, Marie drafted a testament that would have left virtually her entire inheritance to James.56 Peter was reluctant to acknowledge the child as his heir, perhaps since he was seeking a divorce from the boy's mother, but he could not apparently deny his paternity. Just as Marie's father had tried to remove Marie from the succession through marriage, it appears that Peter began his attempts to marginalize James when the child was quite young. Peter eschewed Languedoc in favor of an alliance nearer his own domain. In 1210 Peter negotiated a first betrothal for his son. The count of Urgell had died in the spring of 1208, leaving a widow and a young daughter. Peter enfeoffed the count's widow with the same rights as her husband in May 1208. In late October 1209 he received usufruct of the county from the countess in exchange for protecting her daughter's rights. Peter then placed the county under the protection of another vassal, in exchange for yet another loan.57 Perhaps in an attempt to mollify the countess and to present his son with an attractive option to the crown, he betrothed the toddler to the heiress to Urgell in February 1210. Aurembiaix would have brought the county of Urgell as her dowry in exchange for a promised counter-dowry of the county of Pallars and several villages.58 Marie's name appears in none of the documents, and her feelings on the matter can only be guessed. The county of Urgell was a rich prize for the son of a seigneurial lord, but not so rich as the Crown of Aragon. However, once again, the proposed marriage was never to take place. James's first betrothal was not particularly remarkable, except for his youth. If it had been realized in the fullness of time it would have been a reasonable match for both prince and countess. The second, however, had significant personal ramifications for Marie, and promised to have significant political ramifications for war-torn Occitania. In January of 1211 Peter II met with Simon de Montfort in Narbonne to discuss Montfort's conquests in Languedoc—which included Carcassonne and Beziers, as well as several smaller holdings, all of which the Trencavel family had held as fiefs from Peter.59 A few days later they met again in 55

Miret y Sans, 'Itinerario del rey Pedro I de Cataluna', 3: 501-2. Lacarra and Anton, 'Les testaments de la Reine Marie de Montpellier', 117-19. 57 Miret y Sans, 'Itinerario del rey Pedro I de Cataluna', 3: 443, 505-6. 58 Aurell, Les Noces du Comte, 357-8. The countess married Alvaro Perez de Castro in 1212. Aurembiaix became James's concubine in 1228. Bisson, The Medieval Crown of 56

Aragon, 49, 63. 59

Strayer, The Albigensian Crusades, 68, 77.

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Montpellier, once again negotiating the terms by which Simon would hold his acquisitions. Although the lands had been wrested from their rightful holders by force, and in the case of Beziers with horrifying loss of life, it appears that Peter recognized it as a fait accompli, and was persuaded to accept Montfort as his vassal.60 His acceptance of the northern lord's homage probably meant abandoning his own half-formed hope of recovering Carcassonne for himself. To seal the agreement of 27 January 1211, Peter and Montfort betrothed their two young children, James and Amicie.61 It is not clear when or how the previous betrothal of James was dissolved. Marie's name does not appear among those of the participants or of the signatories in the document. Her confirmation, if it ever existed, does not survive. The betrothal is an unusual one for the area—James was to be raised in Simon de Montfort's home with his bride-to-be. It does not appear to have been usual to betroth a child and send him, or more likely her, to be raised in his or her future inlaws' home. The only other example of such a fosterage arrangement from Montpellier involved one of the younger daughters of Guillem VII. The girl was betrothed to a son of the neighboring Lord of Anduse at the age of eight, and was to be 'held and nourished' by the Lord of Anduse and his wife until she was old enough to wed their son. To every appearance the child's mother was already dead, and her father may have sought to have her raised by a noblewoman of comparable rank.62 Similar circumstances cannot be envisaged for James. Marie, although not enjoying good health, was certainly alive, and there is no evidence that she was a party to the negotiations that tore her three-year-old son and primary heir from her. Even a cursory reading of the document offers a ready explanation for Marie's absence—once again, Peter was attempting to separate her from her property. Marie had discovered in 1205 the futility of open defiance, and with the community of Montpellier restive, her position was if anything, weaker. Peter anew offered Montpellier to his prospective ally, in this case to cover the cost of rearing his young son. Income from Montpellier was to begin to go to Montfort from the time he took James into his care until James reached an age of 18 years. Montfort was also to supply Marie with an undisclosed income.63 Although many years later James claimed that his father placed him in Montfort's care out of respect for the northern crusader, it seems likely that he was less of a foster son than a hostage.64 Marie could only have been distressed by the course events had taken. Adding to her anxiety was her failing health. She drafted a second testament later the same year, still naming James as heir to the majority of her

60 61 62 63 64

HL, 6: 344-5. Miret y Sans, 'Itinerario del rey Pedro I de Cataluna', 4:16-17; Llibre delsfeits, 6. Spicilegium, 3: 566-7. Miret y Sans, cltinerario del rey Pedro I de Catalufia', 4: 16-17. Llibre delfeits, 6.

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property.65 If she was to secure her son's inheritance, all outstanding questions of divorce and fosterage needed to be resolved expediently. One matter stifling the king's ambitions was his inability to rid himself of Marie. Although Marie must have regarded the official opening of the papal investigation on the legitimacy of the marriage in spring 1211 with apprehension, Peter no doubt greeted the step with relief.66 He had everything to gain. Although Montpellier refused to acknowledge his claim to the seigneury as exclusive, Marie had granted her birthright to her husband in 1205. Marie de Montpellier was not of any political importance, except regionally, and the Albigensian crusades were forcing Languedoc and the Crown of Aragon to look beyond their traditional borders. Although the original object of Peter's marital aspirations, Marie de Montferrat, had married in 1210, he continued to search for a suitable bride. However, before Peter could secure a new wealthier or more politically significant wife, the papal investigation needed to reach a successful conclusion. Beginning in May 1211, the central portion of the investigation lasted seven months. The legates collected the dispositions of supporters of both king and queen. The documents themselves are so temperate that it is difficult to reconstruct the emotions and ambitions surging beneath the surface. Fortunately for Marie, her lawyers were able to provide far better evidence than were the king's, and eventually the only viable cause for divorce was pre-contract—the king grasped at the possibility that her marriage to Bernard IV of Comminges was still valid. Under the guidance of Marie's lawyer, seven witnesses provided a lengthy testimony on Marie's behalf, including her aunts Clemence and Guillemette, Guillemette's husband and son, and Bernard of Anduse, Guillemette's brother-in-law.67 However, her surviving uncle, the bishop of a neighboring see, provided testimony on behalf of the king.68 Throughout much of the investigation, Marie was something of a bystander—her health continued to falter, and she sometimes missed interviews with the legate due to illness. Her defense fell largely to her supporters.69 Marital discord had presumably reached its height in 1211. The divorce proceedings left the circumstances of both king and queen uncertain. Montpellier appears to have continued to support their lady, and similarly the communities of the Crown of Aragon showed no sign of deserting their king. Neither partner was in a position of strength, however. Marie's future depended on the confirmation of the marriage's legitimacy; Peter's goals were best served by its dissolution. Marie's position could hardly have been strengthened by the removal of young James from her care. Peter's negotiations with Montfort must have been worrying to the communities of the coast as well, especially when the violence and thoroughness of his conquest is taken into consideration. Montfort's systematic 65

Miret y Sans, 'Itinerario del rey Pedro I de Cataluna', 4: 26. Miret y Sans, 'Itinerario del rey Pedro I de Cataluna', 4: 23^. See also Vincke, 'Der Eheprozess Peters II von Aragon', 128-33, and Appendix, nos. 7,12,13,14. 67 Vincke, 'Der Eheprozess Peters II von Aragon', Appendix, nos. 13,14. 68 Vincke, 'Der Eheprozess Peters II von Aragon', Appendix, no. 17. 69 Vincke, 'Der Eheprozess Peters II von Aragon', Appendix, no. 12. 66

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annexation of the south had utterly disrupted the old feudal hierarchy that had fostered and protected the young commercial centers.70 Peter's territorial ambitions reached their crescendo during this period. Although Montfort posed the greatest threat to Languedoc, and so to Peter's goals north of the Pyrenees, Peter spent most of the year 1211 and to all appearances all of 1212, south of the range. While there he extended privileges to at least four Catalan communities in 1211, and one in 1212.71 Peter needed the support of his domain, for by the middle of 1212 Peter's attention turned to the conquest of Tolosa, with the staggering costs associated with launching a major military expedition. His debts continued to grow.72 In July Peter's fame and success reached an all time high as he led his army to a monumental victory at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa.73 During the same interval Marie faced her most serious setback since she became lady of Montpellier, and for once, not at the hands of her husband, or at least, not directly. In June of 1212, Innocent III required that Marie relinquish the seigneuiy and return her patrimony to Guillem IX, or defend her position in person by November.74 Guillem IX, so long on the sidelines, had apparently written to Innocent III in an attempt to recover the seigneury. Since by the following January Guillem IX had the obvious support of Peter II, he may have petitioned the pope with the king's tacit permission. Marie, once again, faced dispossession. No doubt discouraged, and plagued by bad health, Marie nonetheless rose to the challenge, and traveled to Rome that fall in an attempt to validate her birthright.75 Montpellier, which had remained largely untouched by the crusade sweeping through the south, was no doubt alarmed by the potential for conflict between Marie, Peter and Guillem IX. The consulate asserted their independence by adding an additional five articles to the customs without the blessing of Peter, Marie or Guillem IX.76 Although the question of the legitimacy of the royal marriage remained unresolved, later in 1212 or very early 1213, Peter opened his suit of Marie, daughter of Phillip II of France. The courtship, such as it was, seems to be poorly documented but the reasons for Peter's interest in a French princess can be guessed. It seems likely that as the fortunes of the south deteriorated at the hands of northern French crusaders, an alliance with the French king who supported the crusade would have seemed prudent. Peter's ever-growing debts may have made the possibility of another rich dowry to exploit very attractive as well. The Archbishop of Barcelona undertook the negotiations, and in addition to the 70

Miret y Sans, cltinerario del rey Pedro I de Cataluna', 4: 20, 23-5; Strayer, The Albigensian Crusades, 55-85; HL, 6: 286-377. 71 Miret y Sans, 'Itinerario delrey Pedro I de Cataluna', 4: 18-19, 23^, 32-3. 72 Bisson, Fiscal Accounts, 129-30. 73 Bisson, The Medieval Crown ofAragon, 39; //L, 6: 383. 74 Bullaire,nos. 186,188. 75 Bullaire,iLos. 186,188,189. 76 'Consuetudines et libertates ville Montispessulani', 70-74. See also, Gouron, 291.

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proposed marriage, the archbishop sought to induce Phillip II to limit the violence of Montfort against the people of Languedoc.77 By the time the entourage reached Paris, Innocent had already made his final decision on the marriage of Peter and Marie. The year 1213 marked the conclusion of Peter and Marie's seven-year battle. Innocent III declared that the marriage was valid in a letter of 19 January. Marie's unflinching resolve and unblemished character had won her the respect of the pope, and a powerful ally.78 The matter of her right to Montpellier remained uncertain, however. Peter, for reasons of his own, made a gift of Montpellier to Marie's half-brother within the week. His attention was turned mainly towards unraveling the knotty problems warfare had caused his vassals in the south. Early in January he met with a council at Lavaur to negotiate the restoration of territories once belonging to the counts of Foix, Comminges, and Toulouse but usurped by Simon de Montfort. Three weeks later he met with the three men in question and agreed to protect them in exchange for their fidelity.79 In spite of securing as fideles three of of the most powerful magnates of the south, the situation was spiraling out of Peter's control. Although his success at Las Navas de Tolosa nearly convinced Innocent III to end the Albigensian crusade, ultimately the pope scolded Peter for seeking to end the crusade before all heretics were eliminated.80 Peter's hope of securing Languedoc was rapidly fading. The spring brought a bittersweet victory for Marie. Early in April, the pope declared the marriage of Guillem VIII and Agnes null, and Marie was at last indisputably the rightful heir to the seigneury. Innocent III ignored Peter's usurpation of the property and insisted that the people of Montpellier once again welcome Marie as their lady. The pope further required that the commune recompense Marie for the various indignities to which they had subjected her.81 Although ill and far from home, Marie was at last victorious. She was never to realize her success, and died only weeks after the pope's final intercession on her behalf. Marie had not been receiving revenue from Montpellier, and as the unqueenly financial situation exposed by her final testament bears witness, little support had been forthcoming from other sources.82 Although Peter could not have realized it at the time, his life was also drawing to its untimely end. There is little evidence that Marie's death had any effect on Peter's course of action, perhaps because he had been successfully ignoring her for years. In the final analysis the marriage of Peter II and Marie de Montpellier was rather a strange one. It bears little resemblance to that of Peter's parents' or, in77

HL, 6: 411; Vincke, cDer Eheprozess Peters II von Aragon', 141; Miret y Sans, 'Itinerario del rey Pedro I de Cataluna', 4: 92, note; Aurell, Les Noces du comte, 441.

78

79 80

81

Bullaire, no. 186.

Miret y Sans, 'Itinerario del rey Pedro I de Cataluna', 4: 92-3. Strayer, The Albigensian Crusades, 91-2.

Bullaire, nos. 188, 189,195. 82 Lacarra and Anton, 'Les testaments de la Reine Marie de Montpellier', 117-20; Spicilegium, 3: 576.

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deed, those of their son, James. Active conflict and a protracted divorce process marred almost seven years of the nine-year union. Marie never fully realized her role as queen—except when her own property was in question the king sought neither her counsel nor her consent. This exclusion from interests of the crown seems to have inspired Marie to cling to her patrimony and inherited title with ever-fiercer determination. Her primary ambition appears to have been preserving and protecting her seigneury for herself and her children. The poignancy of her early death should not be allowed to obscure the fact that she had achieved her greatest goals in spite of almost overwhelming opposition and unreliable health. Marie died secure in the knowledge that her marriage had been upheld, her lands restored, and that her son would one day inherit not only her seigneury, but in all, probability his father's crown. Her world, to all appearances, was always a small one—her family and her inheritance. Peter's horizons were much broader, both as ruler of the Crown of Aragon and as a king whose ambitions extended beyond the borders of his kingdom. Montpellier was just one of many holdings he regarded as a resource to fuel expansion and conquest. Marie and her circumscribed sphere played only a minor role in his plans.

CHAPTER TWO

The Many Roles of the Medieval Queen: Some Examples from Castile Joseph F. O'Callaghan

The responsibility of a medieval queen varied immensely depending upon many factors. As the king's wife her principal function was to provide an heir to the throne. If her relationship with her spouse was particularly intimate she might have substantial influence over him and his policies. Expected to manage the domestic affairs of the royal household, she controlled the expenditure of money and employed appropriate personnel. As a pious daughter of the Church she often displayed her piety by patronage of monasteries and convents. Widowed, she might eventually retire to the quiet of a convent. Upon her death she was usually interred by her husband's side, often in a monastery or church that they had founded. If her husband died leaving small children, a queen might find herself in a position of significant authority. In that case she was often acknowledged as guardian of the heir to the throne and sometimes as regent. In some instances, the heir, upon reaching maturity, acknowledged the service his mother had rendered to him, but occasionally, he wished to be free of her apron strings and did not always treat her kindly. When a male heir to the throne was lacking the rights of a female could be recognized, but every effort was made to provide her with a husband who was expected to execute most of the functions attributed to the monarch. Thus the queen played a variety of roles as wife, mother, patroness, dowager, widow, and regent. Depending on her personality and circumstances she might wield great influence and power. A Legal Primer of Queenly Conduct In his great law codes Alfonso X, king of Castile-Leon (1252-84), had something to say about the role of the queen in Castilian society. The ideas set down in the Especulo drawn up early in his reign were elaborated more fully in the Siete Partidas, a more comprehensive version of the earlier text. Not surprisingly, he was concerned primarily with the queen's responsibility to the dynasty and through the dynasty to the kingdom itself. The harmonious union between the king and the

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queen was perceived as helping to bring stability and good government to the people. Although these ideas were put forward in legal texts, the laws relating to the office and functions of the queen were didactic and clearly were intended to set down contemporary conceptions about the proper conduct expected of a queen. King Alfonso's opinions likely reflected views generally prevalent not only in Spain, but also throughout Europe. We do not have a comparable statement from a queen but it seems reasonable to suppose that most queens, while they might chafe at some of the restraints imposed upon them, would have acknowledged that the texts summarized fairly well what was expected of them.1 Alfonso X began his consideration of the status and functions of the queen by cautioning the king to avoid any relationship with women of low rank or immoral behavior (yiles e desconuenientes mugeres). Above all he should take care not to have children by them, because that would only debase the royal lineage and dishonor the king and his realm. Moreover, the pursuit of many women would inflict harm on both his body and his soul. If he should beget children among his female relatives, his sisters-in-law, nuns, or married women other than his wife, he would commit a grave sin and set a poor example for his people. Whereas King David remarked that the children of a man 'blessed by God stand around his table like the branches of new olive trees' (Psalm 128: 3-4), children born of extramarital unions could not be presented to the public without great shame for them and for the king. According to King Solomon 'when wise men overindulge in wine and women they are led to deny God' (Sirach 19: 2-3), who withholds his blessing in this life and punishes the king in the next world because he broke the divine command and degraded his family (Partidas, 2, 5, 3). In his book of counsel written for his son, Fernando IV, Sancho IV, repeated his father's admonitions about the hazards of relationships with wicked women.2 Ironically, King Alfonso had his own share of illicit relationships and produced several illegitimate children. In the Especulo (2, 3, 1), he stressed that if the king had a mistress, even though this was not proper and contrary to the law of the Church, she should be protected out of honor for the king, and no one should dare to lie with her or to give her in marriage without his consent. If she were a great lady, her lover would be subject to execution as a traitor (traydor)', if she were of lower rank, he would be guilty of a lesser form of treason (aleve) and

Las Siete Partidas del Sabio Key Don Alonso el Mono, edited by Gregorio Lopez, 3 volumes (Salamanca: Andrea de Portonaris, 1555); Las Siete Partidas, translated by Samuel Parsons Scott and edited by Robert I. Burns, S. J., 5 volumes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). See also Especulo. Texto juridico atribuido al Key de Castilla, Don Alfonso X, el Sabio, edited by Robert A. MacDonald (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990). Castigos e documentor para bien vivir ordenados por el Rey Don Sancho IV, edited by Agapito Rey (Bloomington, IN.: Indiana University Press, 1952), 117-23, ch. 19.

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would lose his eyes; if she were the daughter of a distinguished townsman, the lover would be exiled from the realm.3 As Alfonso X remarked, marriage, according to the Church, was an indissoluble union, and so the king should seek a bride who possessed four essential characteristics: good lineage, beauty, good habits, and riches. By marrying a woman from a good family, he would be held in greater esteem and so too would their children. The more beautiful she was, the more deeply would he love her, and she would, of course, bear children that were comely and genteel. That was important for, as King Alfonso commented, the children of royalty ought to appear well to other people. Clearly, he believed that the king, and by extension, the members of his family, should look the part and possess physical characteristics that enhanced their status. As a woman of good character, the future queen would better know how to protect the honor both of her husband and herself, and her wealth would redound to his benefit and that of their children and of the kingdom. If a king was fortunate to find a woman endowed with these four traits, he ought to thank God, but if she did not possess them all, she should at least come of a good family and be of upright character. Beauty and riches could be dispensed with, especially as they were transitory, whereas her lineage and good behavior could only bring honor to her descendants. To neglect these matters the king would sin against himself and his children, something that he should always guard against (Partidas, 2, 6, 1). Having said all that, King Alfonso also stressed the king's obligation to love, honor, and protect the queen, and cited three reasons for doing so. First, the king and queen united in marriage became one and could only be separated by death, except under certain canonical conditions. Secondly, by law the queen should be the king's sole companion both in his joys and pleasures and in his worries and cares. The third reason for loving the queen was that their children would succeed him after death. There were also three reasons for honoring her. First, because the king and queen were one, the more that she was honored, the greater would his honor be. Secondly, if he held her in high esteem, she would more readily strive for his well-being and honor. Thirdly, the honor shown to her would benefit their children who, in turn, would also enjoy the respect of the people. The king's third obligation was to protect the queen, again for three reasons. Bound by law to her alone, for his own good he ought to be on his guard lest he lose her. Secondly, he should take care not to say or do anything against her that might be improper nor should he give her any reason to do something unseemly. Thirdly, she should be protected to assure that her children were indeed his children. The queen who was honored, loved, and protected by her husband would love, honor, and care for him, and thus would offer a good example to all the people of the realm. In order to achieve this, the king should surround her with men and women who loved and

3

Joseph F. O'Callaghan, The Learned King. The Reign of Alfonso X of Castile (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 8-9, and Alfonso X and the Cantigas de Santa Maria. A Poetic Biography (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998), 20-21.

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feared God and who knew how to safeguard the honor of both husband and wife. Commenting that one learned good or bad habits from one's associates, the king quoted Cato and King Solomon who advised 'associating with good people' and 'avoiding the wicked' (Sirach 13: 1, 15). Thus if the queen were placed in the company of virtuous men and women she would learn how to conduct herself appropriately (Partidas 2, 6, 2). After emphasizing that 'adultery is a great sin and a great error/ the Especulo (2, 3, 1-3) denounced as a manifest traitor (traydor connosgido) anyone who induced the queen to betray her husband in this way. A person who killed, wounded, or defamed the queen or revealed her secrets or entered her private chambers unbidden would incur the same penalty. In the Siete Partidas King Alfonso elaborated further on the obligation of his people to protect the queen and on the consequences of indecorous behavior on her part. In particular, he condemned anyone who counseled her or caused her to do anything injurious to her husband and degrading to herself. As God had given her in marriage solely to the king, any liaison that she might undertake with anyone else would not only offend against his honor, but would also subject her to the worst dishonor that could befall a woman. Moreover, the legitimacy of her children would be brought into question and they would have cause to be ashamed of their mother. By reason of their union in marriage, the king and queen were one person, so that any offense against her was also an offense against him. Anyone, therefore, who encouraged promiscuous behavior on her part, so that she 'became common property (faziendola ser comunal)\ committed a great act of treason (traycion conoscidd) against the king and should be punished in the same manner as if he had killed the king (Partidas, 2, 14, 1). Realizing that some of his daughters might eventually become queens through marriage, King Alfonso, although he had much more to say about the education of his sons (Partidas, 2, 7, 1-10), was at pains to discuss the upbringing of the infantas. Whereas his sons could be expected to learn much as they traveled about the realm, the royal princesses were more closely guarded. Both the king and queen were responsible for rearing them, but the task of providing immediate supervision fell principally to the queen. Great care had to be taken in choosing nurses and governesses (amas e ayas) who would be their daily companions. As women of intelligence, loyalty, and honesty, they were bound not only to protect the young ladies entrusted to them, but also to instruct them in good manners and customs, so that they would respect themselves and their husbands and give good example to others. They should be taught to read, especially the canonical hours and the psalms, to eat, drink, and speak in a refined manner, and to dress suitably. Above all they should learn to curb their anger which is a sign of a wicked disposition, but which, 'more than anything else, leads women to do wrong'. On the contrary, by learning the tasks proper to noble ladies, they would be happy and tranquil, and free of wicked thoughts (Partidas, 2, 7, 11). When their daughters came of age, the king and queen were expected to arrange suitable marriages for them. Just as good lineage, beauty, good habits, and wealth were qualities to be looked for in a prospective queen, so too were they to

THE MANY ROLES OF THE MEDIEVAL QUEEN

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be sought in the young men chosen to marry the princesses. Not only would the royal family be greatly ennobled by a union with another honorable family, but the young man's good looks would prompt love and lead quickly to children. Young men of good behavior would know how to honor and protect their wives so that they would enjoy a better life together and their love would be enduring. Wealth, of course, would assure that the married couple and their children were held in great honor. Again, as in the case of the future queen, Alfonso X emphasized that while beauty and wealth might be dispensed with, good lineage and good conduct were essential. If the king reared his daughters properly, educated them, and married them suitably, he could be confident that he had fulfilled his duties toward them; but he should guard them against any occasion for doing wrong, and thus causing him grief and injury (Partidas 2, 7, 12). The Especulo (2, 4, 2) condemned as a traitor anyone who had illicit intercourse with a royal princess or counseled her to say or do anything 'whereby she would lose the love of God.' She herself would be disinherited and thrown into prison at the mercy of the king and his court. Just as it was the responsibility of the people as a whole to shield the queen against any offense against her person, so too, according to the Partidas (2, 14, 2), were the people expected to protect the king's daughters and other female relatives. Once again, anyone who dishonored a royal princess would receive the same punishment as if he had killed the king. The princess, by such ill-advised behavior, would lose her good reputation and would not be able to marry appropriately to her rank. If the guilty person could not be found, his property would be confiscated and he would be exiled in perpetuity. Anyone who abetted this liaison would have his eyes put out and lose his property. The many women who resided in the queen's household (corte de la reyna, casa de la reyna, known anciently as the chamber or camera) were also under royal protection and were especially admonished to avoid adultery and fornication. Among the women living there were female relatives of the king and queen; the wives and daughters of magnates (rricas ffenbras) and of knights who attended upon the queen or were being raised under her direction; married women; widows; nuns; and servants. Just as certain things were protected and hidden in the queen's household, so also the ladies (duenas) and maidens (donzellas) of the household should be kept from the sight of wicked men and women and safeguarded against their insults. This was done to preserve the honor of the king and the queen, of the women themselves, and of their families. Anyone who committed a sexual act that would cause a woman of the queen's household to lose her reputation (ganar mala fama de su cuerpo) would be charged with treason (aleve conocido) and executed, if he were caught in the act.4 Otherwise if he were a man of rank he would be exiled from the realm and held as an enemy by his family. If he were a person of inferior status, he would be executed at once and his property confiscated (Partidas, 2, 14, 3; Especulo, 2, 15, 1-13).

Aleve was treason of a secondary character, but its penalties were severe.

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The protection accorded to the queen's ladies-in-waiting was also extended to all the other women who served in her household and to those who visited from time to time. These included nuns as well as slaves or 'women professing another religion'—'mugeres de otra ley\ The latter were Muslim women who had likely been reduced to slavery after being captured in the wars of reconquest. No one was to commit any act against any of them whereby they would become 'wicked women'—'malas mugeres\ A man who had sexual relations with them would be guilty of treason (aleve conoscidd), though of a lesser sort, but would, if caught in the act, be executed; otherwise he would be expelled from the kingdom. A man of low rank would be executed and if he could not be found would lose half his property. A woman (amd) nursing the royal children or attending daily (cobijerd) upon the queen, taking care of her clothing or her coffers, would be guilty of manifest treason (traycion conoscidd), together with the man with whom she had sexual intercourse. The nurse's action was particularly reprehensible because of the possibility, according to ancient wise men, that her milk might give a serious disease to the royal children or cause their death.5 The woman entrusted with the queen's wardrobe (cobijerd) anciently enjoyed great respect, even being thought of as equal to the queen because she was intimately associated with her on a daily basis and knew all her actions and secrets. Consequently, she could more readily induce the queen to indulge in iniquitous behavior and could help her to conceal it. Moreover, such a woman, filled with pride and desiring to engage in improper activity, might be tempted to don the queen's clothes and headdress so as to appear more prominent. Some might even suppose that she was the queen, and thus the queen, though having done nothing wrong, might be falsely accused. One may surmise that the situations just described had likely occurred in reality and that the law was intended to thwart such conduct in the future (Partidas, 2, 14, 4). These sections in the Siete Partidas form a sort of code of proper conduct for the queen, the royal princesses, and their ladies-in-waiting, governesses, nurses, and household servants. What comes through very clearly is that whatever affected the queen and by extension her children and the women of her household affected the king because of the indissoluble bond of marriage. Thus, anyone guilty of sexual misconduct or of facilitating such conduct by the queen, the princesses, or the women of the household was condemned as a traitor to the king and subject to the drastic penalties for treason, namely, execution, confiscation, or banishment.

5

Especulo, 2, 15, 4 stipulated that a married woman in the royal household who committed adultery would be left to the mercy of her husband (que iudgue commo toviere por bien), A guilty nun would be remanded to her convent to be punished by her community.

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Some Notable Castilian Queens The daily living-out of the customs mentioned in the Alfonsine law codes can be perceived in the lives of several notable Castilian queens. Until the end of the eleventh century most Spanish Christian queens were drawn from peninsular noble houses, but Alfonso VI, king of Leon-Castile (1065-1109), chose five queens from other countries, namely, Agnes of Aquitaine, Constance of Burgundy, Berta of Tuscany, and two French noblewomen, Elizabeth and Beatrice. This initiated a policy, not always followed by his successors, of seeking political alliances with leading noble or royal families abroad. Despite having been married five times, he had no male heir and so his daughter Urraca (1109-26), succeeded to the throne in her own right. The need to provide an heir to the throne prompted Alfonso VI to arrange his daughter's marriage to Alfonso I of Aragon (1096-1134), but the marriage was a failure in every way. Not only did the pair prove incompatible, but they failed to produce a child. As a result of her first marriage to Count Raymond of Burgundy Urraca did have a son who eventually succeeded her as Alfonso VII (1126-57). However, her reign was filled with turmoil in part because of hostility from those who championed her son's rights and hoped to drive her from the throne. A later chronicler commented that after her separation from the king of Aragon, she indulged in activities 'unworthy of relation'.6 Thus, even though she did succeed to power, her reign was nearly as disrupted by civil war as was England where her younger contemporary, Matilda, the daughter of King Henry I (1100-35) attempted unsuccessfully to secure the throne. Alfonso VII, like his grandfather, sought a bride from outside Spain, taking as his second wife, a Polish princess, Rica, on the recommendation of the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad III.7 A very promising alliance was created when Alfonso VIII (1158-1214), still in his teens and anxious to strengthen his hold on the throne, sought the hand of Eleanor Plantagenet, the daughter of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Young Eleanor brought claims to the duchy of Gascony as her dowry, claims that both her husband and her grandson, Alfonso X, tried to enforce without success in 1205 and again in 1254. Together with her husband in 1187 she founded Las Huelgas de Burgos, a convent for Cistercian nuns. She and her daughters often resided there and one daughter and a granddaughter became members of the 6

Chronica latina regum Castelle, edited by Luis Charlo Brea, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaeualis 82 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 37, ch. 3: 'diuertit ad alia indigna relatu\ See also, The Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile, translated by Joseph F. O'Callaghan (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002), 7, chapter 3. 7 Bernard F. Reilly, The Kingdom of Leon-Castilla under King Alfonso VI, 1065-1109 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), and The Kingdom of Leon-Castilla under Queen Urraca, 1109-1126 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), and The Kingdom of Leon-Castilla under King Alfonso VII, 1126-1157 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998); Joseph F. O'Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), 193-233.

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community. When her son, Fernando, the heir to the throne, died suddenly she 'got into the bed on which her son lay; placing her mouth to his mouth and clasping his hand in her hand, she tried either to revive him or to die with him'. Infante Fernando was buried at Las Huelgas and in time both his mother and father and other members of the royal family were interred there. Thus Las Huelgas, established at her urging, became a royal pantheon.8 Two daughters of Eleanor and Alfonso VIII, Berenguela and Blanca (or Blanche) played prominent roles in the political life of the early thirteenth century. As a means of assuring peace between Castile and Leon, Berenguela, the elder of the two, was married to Alfonso IX, king of Leon (1188-1230), by whom she had several children.9 However, as the royal couple were related within the prohibited degrees of kindred (they were first cousins once removed) the papacy demanded that they separate, but they did so only in 1204.10 After her father's triumph over the Almohads at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, Berenguela wrote an account of his victory addressed to her sister Blanca, then married to Prince Louis of France (dilectae et diligendae sorori suae): I tell you joyfully that, by the grace of God, from whom all virtue comes, that the king, our lord and father, conquered in a pitched battle Almiramamolin [the Almohad caliph]. We believe that this was an especially notable honor because until now it was unheard of that the king of Morocco would be overcome on the battlefield. Know that a servant of our father's household announced this to me, but I did not wish to believe until I saw our father's own letters.11

8

Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispanie sive Historia Gothica, edited by Juan Fernandez Valverde, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaeualis, 72 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1987), 255, Bk. 7, ch. 33: 'ad instantiam serenissime uxoris sue Alienor regine monasterium dominarum Cisterciensis ordinis hedificauit. . . .' Chronica latina, 55, ch. 20: 'audita mortefilii, mori cum eo uoluit, et intrauit lectum in quo iacebat films et supponens os ori et manus manibus complicans, nitebatur uel eum uiuificare uel cum eo mori'. The Latin Chronicle, 41, ch. 20. For a summary of Eleanor's life see Julio Gonzalez, El reino de Castilla en la epoca de Alfonso VIII, 3 volumes (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones cientificas, I960), 1: 185-93. 9 Berenguela was betrothed to Conrad of Hohenstaufen, the son of Frederick Barbarossa, at the curia of Carrion in 1188, and they were acknowledged as heirs to the throne, but Conrad returned to Germany and the papal legate, Cardinal Gregory, annulled the betrothal. Gonzalez, Alfonso VIII, 1: 197-8; Miriam Shadis, Political Women of the High Middle Ages. Berenguela of Castile and her Family (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002). 10 Julio Gonzalez, Alfonso IX, 2 volumes (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones cientificas, 1945), 1: 91-120, and Alfonso VIII, 1: 196-200; Joseph F. O'Callaghan, 'Innocent III and the Kingdoms of Castile and Leon', in Pope Innocent III and his World, edited by John C. Moore (Aldershot and Brookfield: Ashgate, 1999), 317-36; Antonio Garcia y Garcia, 'Innocent III and the Kingdom of Castile', ibid., 337-50. 11 Gonzalez, Alfonso VIII, 3: 572-4, no. 898.

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Soon Berenguela had to assume a new responsibility as guardian for her younger brother, Enrique I (1214-17), who succeeded to the Castilian throne. As many queens before and since, she attempted to protect the king, who was under age, from the overweening power of the nobility.12 When her brother died suddenly in an accident, the question of who should rule Castile was thrown open. The townsmen of Castile and Castilian Extremadura proclaimed Berenguela as queen, but she preferred that they acknowledge her son by Alfonso IX, namely, Fernando III (1217-52). Until her son was recognized she concealed her brother's death from Alfonso IX who could have claimed the throne in his own right. For several years she guided her young son out of his adolescence into adult maturity. She also arranged his marriage in 1219 to Beatrice of Swabia, daughter of Emperor Philip of Swabia and granddaughter of Frederick Barbarossa, a union that forged a significant link with Germany and gave Alfonso X a future claim to the Holy Roman Empire. After Beatrice's death, Queen Berenguela, as she was styled, with the help of her sister, who hoped to safeguard the county of Ponthieu from falling into English hands, in 1237 found a second wife for her son, namely, Jeanne, daughter of the count of Ponthieu. When Fernando III became engaged in the wars of reconquest he relied on his mother to maintain order elsewhere in his realms and to supply him with troops and the other necessities for war. Berenguela also had a significant role in the development of Castilian historiography, prompting Bishop Lucas of Tuy to undertake his Chronicon mundi.13 She remained a great influence on her son until she died in 1246.14 Berenguela's sister Blanca, better known as Blanche, born in 1188, had been married in 1200 to the future Louis VIII of France (1223-26) in a move to solidify an alliance between Castile and France and to ease tensions between France and England. After Louis's brief reign, Blanche of Castile became regent for her son Louis IX (1226-70), and strenuously defended his rights to the throne against a rebellious nobility. She too had a principal hand in choosing his wife, Marguerite of Provence, and Jean de Joinville tells us that the young couple met secretly without the queen mother's knowledge. When Louis IX went on his first crusade he called on his mother to serve as regent and in that capacity she organized financial support for his efforts. Robert Fawtier remarked that 'to all intents and purposes [Blanche] may be counted among the kings of France'.15

12

Gonzalez, Alfonso VIII, 1: 217-38. Lucas of Tuy, Chronicon mundi, ed. Andreas Schott, in Hispania Illustrata, 4 volumes (Frankfort: Claudius Marnius et Heredes Joanni Aubrii, 1603-08), 4: 1-2, and Cronica de Espana, edited by Julio Puyol (Madrid: Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas, y Museos, 1926), 3, prologue. 14 Julio Gonzalez, Reinado y Diplomas de Fernando III, 3 volumes (Cordoba: Monte de Piedad y Caja de Ahorros de Cordoba, 1980-86), 1: 81-5, 96-100, 114-7. 15 Robert Fawtier, The Capetian Kings of France. Monarchy and Nation (987-1328), translated by Lionel Butler (London: Macmillan, 1960), 27-9; Regine Pernoud, Blanche of Castile, translated by H. Noel (New York: Putnam, 1975). 13

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In the second half of the thirteenth century another strong woman, Violante, daughter of Jaime I of Aragon, and wife of Alfonso X of Castile, also played an exceptional role. When the Mudejars or subject Muslims in the kingdom of Murcia revolted, Alfonso X sent Violante to her father's court to appeal for help in suppressing the uprising. Still later when the Castilian nobility challenged the king because of his innovations in law and taxation, he delegated Violante to negotiate with them and to recall them from their self-imposed exile in the Muslim kingdom of Granada. This collaboration between king and queen, husband and wife, unfortunately fell apart in the king's later years as he was afflicted with a debilitating illness that led to increasing irascibility and vicious behavior on his part. Because he mistreated Violante she withdrew from Castile and sought refuge with her brother in neighboring Aragon. Although she was reconciled to her husband and returned to Castile, his violent conduct toward his son and heir, Sancho, led her to break with her husband once again and to support her son in his rebellion. Although Alfonso X did not mention Violante by name in either his religious or secular poetry and did not address a love poem to her, it would be unwise to take that as a certain guide to the nature of their relationship. After Sancho IV became king, Violante apparently intrigued with his enemies including her second son Juan and the supporters of the Infantes de la Cerda. After Sancho's death she continued to support Infante Juan, now in opposition to Fernando IV whose rights to the throne were defended vigorously by his mother, Maria de Molina, Violante's daughter-in-law. Violante died at Roncesvaux in 1300 on her return from making a jubilee pilgrimage to Rome.16 Early in the fourteenth century Maria de Molina, daughter of Alfonso de Molina, son of Alfonso IX and Berenguela, and brother of Fernando III, and uncle of Alfonso X, entered upon the stage and held a principal place there through three reigns. First, as the wife of Sancho IV (1284-95), she supported his struggle against his father, and later tried to mediate between them. It is interesting that another woman, Alfonso X's illegitimate daughter, Beatriz, the wife of Afonso III of Portugal (1245-79), returned home after her husband's death and became her father's principal source of consolation and compassion in the midst of his illness and his son's rebellion. She too labored with Maria to try to reconcile father and son. After the death of Sancho IV, Maria de Molina assumed the role of regent and tutor for her son Fernando IV (1295-1312), and like Berenguela before her, strove mightily to uphold his rights against other members of the royal family and a rebellious nobility. Because she and Sancho IV were related within the prohibited degrees of kindred (they were first cousins once removed) successive popes

16 Richard P. Kinkade, 'Violante of Aragon (12367-1300?): An Historical Overview,' Exemplaria Hispanica 2 (1992-93): 1-37; O'Callaghan, The Learned King, 8-9, 93, 179, 185, 199, 202, 218, 220, 224-6, 228, 244-6, 259, 266, 280, and Alfonso X and the Cantigas de Santa Maria, 20-21, 58, 67-8, 119, 130-31, 133, 155, 164, 166, 219, 226; Manuel Gonzalez Jimenez, Alfonso X, 1252-1284 (Palencia: Diputacion Provincial and Editorial La Olmeda, 1993).

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31

refused to acknowledge their marriage or the legitimacy of their offspring. Maria eventually succeeded in obtaining the necessary funds from the cortes to obtain a dispensation and a recognition of Fernando IV's legitimacy from Pope Boniface VIII in 1301. All this was a tribute to the tenacity of Maria de Molina, who had skillfully defended the king and the crown agasinst foreign and domestic enemies for nearly seven years. Although she preserved the throne for her son, once he came of age he wished to be free of her tutelage and sent her away from court. Several nobles, who aspired to dominate him, said to him: 'You are now lord of all Castile and Leon. You are grown up and of age. If you always have to follow along behind your mother you will never be worth anything and men will not hold you in esteem'.17 Ironically, when he died leaving an infant, Alfonso XI (131250), as heir to the throne, Maria again stepped forward to protect her grandson against enemies on all sides. Though she did not live to see his majority, her efforts did much to secure his position as king.18 A truly remarkable woman, Maria de Molina, as Nieto Soria commented, 'was the closest and most faithful collaborator of Sancho IV during his entire reign, and became, after his death, one of the most solid pillars of royal rights'. In the minorities of both Fernando IV and Alfonso XI she stood out as one certainly concerned to preserve the rights of the crown rather than to pursue selfish personal interests. Of particular importance was her desire to utilize the cortes as an instrument to this end. She alone among the contenders for power seems to have been willing to rely upon the good judgment of the cortes to rally behind the monarchy in time of crisis. Unlike her colleagues in the regency, she was undoubtedly convinced of her own ability to persuade the cortes to united behind her in upholding the rights of the king. On her death in 1321 she was buried in 'mio monasterio\ the convent of nuns of Santa Maria la Real de Valladolid.19 These examples drawn from the history of medieval Castile illustrate the diverse roles of queens. All of them performed their primary function of providing an heir to the throne and generally conformed to accepted contemporary notions of piety. One at least, Eleanor Plantagenet, seems to have been genuinely in love

17

Cronica de Fernando IV, in Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles 66 (1955): 121, ch. 8: Vos sodes senor de Castiella e de Leon, e sodes ya grande e de edad, e si siempre avedes de andar enpos de vuestra madre, nunca valdredes nada, e non vos presciardn los omes? 18 Mercedes Gaibrois de Ballesteros, Historia del reinado de Sancho IV de Castilla, 3 volumes (Madrid: Re vista de Archives, Bibliotecas y Museos, 1922), and Maria de Molina, tres veces reina (Madrid: 1936); Jose Manuel Nieto Soria, Sancho IV1284-1295 (Palencia: Diputacion Provincial and Editorial La Olmeda, 1994); Cesar Gonzalez Minguez, Fernando IV de Castilla (1295-1312). La guerra civil y el predominio de la nobleza (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1976). Maria's will, dated 29 June 1321, is found in Antonio Benavides, Memorias de Don Fernando IV, 2 volumes (Madrid: Jose Rodriguez, 1860), 1: 680-86, no.33. 19 Joseph F. O'Callaghan, The Cortes of Castile-Leon, 1188-1350 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 26-36, 45-6, 61-2, 73-5, 79-80, 88-93, 105-6, 123-4, 138-^0; Nieto Soria, Sancho IV, 48. 6

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QUEENSHIP IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN

with her husband, Alfonso VIII; the same is likely true of the relationship between Beatrice of Swabia and Fernando III, and between Maria de Molina and Sancho IV. The marriages of two queens, Urraca and Berenguela, were dissolved on the grounds of consanguinity. Whereas Urraca ruled in her own right, Berenguela, perhaps hoping to avoid the disorder that plagued Urraca's reign, transferred her rights to her son Fernando III. Both Berenguela and her sister Blanche of Castile wielded great influence over their sons and acted as regents for them during their military campaigns. Queen Violante rendered notable service to her husband by enlisting Aragonese help in suppressing the revolt of the Mudejars and in acting as his representative to the rebel nobility, but outrage at her husband's behavior eventually drove her to support her son's rebellion. Lastly, Maria de Molina, a strong and dutiful wife to Sancho IV, whose marriage was only legitimated by the papacy after his death, successfully protected the rights of her son, Fernando IV, and her grandson, Alfonso XI, to the Castilian throne. Clearly without these vigorous women several notable kings would have likely lost power. As royal consorts the women depicted here engaged in many diverse activities not only of a domestic or familial character, but they also enjoyed prominence as politicians, administrators, charitable benefactors, patrons of the arts and shapers of contemporary tastes and fashions. Their stories are important to our understanding of the development of European civilization.

CHAPTER THREE

Absent Kings: Queens as Political Partners in the Medieval Crown of Aragon Theresa Earenfight

The notion of monarchy as sole rulership by a king has potent mythic power, even though we recognize that in practice power was not isolated in one person. Rather, it had a corporate character that admitted a plurality of power and permitted a range of power-sharing options situated in dispersed and localized sites of power clustered around the king.1 The queen, linked intimately and officially to the person of the king, occupied one of these sites. Unlike kingship, however, which assumed direct rulership, queenship encompassed a spectrum of ruling practices bounded by two extremes, a queen ruling in her own right and outright prohibition of female rulership. Most queens, however, occupied the middle zone between these two poles, where the range of practices was the greatest and political theories were the least developed. This zone, filled with queens-regent, queens-dowager, queen-mothers, and unofficial co-rulers, offers rich possibilities for examining the practical limits of the theoretical boundaries of kingly power and the rightful place of a female ruler in society. Consider, for example, seven queens who married kings of the Crown of Aragon, where no queen had inherited the realms since Peronella succeeded her father in 1137.2 These seven queen-consorts were often foreign-born and some 1

The following abbreviations are used in the notes: AC A (Archivo de la Corona de Aragon), AHN (Archivo Historico Nacional), ARV (Archivo del Reino de Valencia), AHCB (Arxiu Historic de la Ciutat de Barcelona), MR (Mestre Racional), C (Cancilleria), and LLRO (Lletres Reials Originals). Ernst Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 7-23. 2 The medieval Crown of Aragon, several distinct political entities gathered together under a single ruler, originated in 1137 with the marriage of Peronella of Aragon and Ramon Berenguer IV, count of Barcelona. The kingdom of Mallorca and the Balearic islands were conquered between 1229 and 1235, as was Valencia in 1238; Sicily, 1282; and Sardinia, 1322. To keep matters simple when referring to this federative polity, I refer to the Crown of Aragon when discussing it as a whole and, when necessary, specify individual

34

QUEENSHIP IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN

had limited fluency in Catalan, but they were far from silent, hardly powerless, and certainly not absent from the political sphere. On the contrary, it was the kings who were absent. By the fourteenth century, conquest and adroit marriage alliances brought the Crown a variety of possessions that stretched across the western Mediterranean, forcing the kings to travel almost continuously and delegate key aspects of royal authority to trusted officials. During their frequent and often lengthy absences from principal royal court in Barcelona, the kings of this far-flung federative realm relied increasingly on governmental lieutenants to govern in their place. This important but little known office, distinct from its military counterpart, was originally established in the thirteenth century as both an ad hoc adjunct to the king and a training ground for princes to rule one or more of the constituent realms of the Aragonese crown. Elsewhere in Europe this office was staffed by men, but in the Crown of Aragon seven queen-consorts governed, sometimes for long periods of time, with fully sanctioned de jure and de facto authority.3 These queens with a portfolio are Blanca of Naples, wife of Jaume II, lieutenant in 13104; Teresa d'Entenga, wife of Alfonso III, from 1324 to 13275; Violant de Bar, 3rd wife of Joan I, 1388-956; Maria de Luna, first wife of Marti, 1396-14067; Margarida of Prades, second wife of Marti, 1412-218; Maria of Castile, wife of Alfonso IV, 1420-539; and Juana Enriquez, second wife of Juan II, 1461-77.10

regional kingdoms or counties. Thomas N. Bisson, The Medieval Crown of Aragon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 27-31, 64-7, 87-9, 95-6, 93, 111. 3 In Castile, Violante, wife of Alfonso X of Castile (1252-84), acted like a lieutenant for her husband when he was ill but she had no special title. She certainly was busy: she frequently advised her husband on political matters such as taxation; she interceded between her father, Jaume I of Aragon (1213-76), and her husband over the revolt of the Mudejars in 1264; she participated in sessions of the Cortes and was appointed by her husband to a commission to the Cortes of Burgos in 1272 to negotiate with rebellious nobles. Joseph F. O'Callaghan, The Learned King: The Reign of Alfonso X of Castile (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 93,185,220,224-6,228. 4 Documentation for her lieutenancy can be found in the ACA: C 59-62. See also Roger Sablonier, The Aragonese Royal Family around 1300', in Interest and Emotion: Essays on the Study of Family and Kinship, edited by Hans Medick and D. W. Sabean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 210-39. 5 ACA: C 426-27; Bisson, Medieval Crown of Aragon, 101. 6 These dates correspond to the material contained in the registers, not the actual dates of her lieutenancy. She was queen until Joan's death in 1395, but the registers of documents that pertain to her lieutenancy extend to 1430 and are commingled with personal household and private documents. ACA: C 2029-36; Bisson, Medieval Crown of Aragon, 121-6. 7 Maria de Luna served two separate terms as lieutenant, 1396-97 and 1401. Because she was active in Marti's government, the registers run continuously and are misleading— she was not lieutenant for the entire span covered by the registers. ACA: C 2327-51. A. L. Javierre Mur, Maria de Luna, reina de Aragon (Madrid, 1942), 52-84. 8 ACA: C 2355; Bisson, Medieval Crown of Aragon, 130. 9 Maria of Castile's two separate terms as lieutenant, 1420-23 and 1432-53, are documented in ACA: C 2948-3228. Theresa Earenfight, 'Queenship, Politics, and Government

ABSENT KINGS

35

The scope of authority exercised by these Aragonese queen-lieutenants had enormous implications for Aragonese theories of queenship, and by extension, monarchy. As more queens became lieutenants, and as they served for longer periods of time, the office became a key component of queenship.11 To the ruling elites and Aragonese populace, these seven politically active queens possessed a status roughly equivalent to that of the kings and were integral to political discourse. This distinctive political partnership had important implications for the theory and practice of Spanish monarchy in the early modern era. Although the Aragonese still preferred rule by men, their pragmatism left them unencumbered by theories such as the French Salic Law that prohibited women from inheriting or ruling in any capacity. 'Alter Nos': Standing in for the King When making a decision concerning a stand-in necessitated by a short-term crisis presented by an absent, minor, or ill king, kings and their advisers looked to the regency, the protectorate, and a few high status offices such as the justiciar or the seneschal. But the peripatetic Aragonese kings faced a vexing long-term challenge. They needed an institution with the stature and clout of the regency but one that would also provide the king with sufficient flexibility to respond quickly to changing circumstances. The contractual nature of the Aragonese monarchy prompted kings to choose the lieutenancy, which over time developed into a unique form of co-rulership that became explicitly associated with queenship. The late medieval lieutenancy was not an innovation, nor was it unique to the Crown of Aragon.12 Similar institutions, influenced by theories of representation developed by canon lawyers, appeared throughout Europe under a variety of Latin names (gerenti vices, custos, procurator, locumtenens) each slightly different but all of them fall under the rubric of governmental lieutenant. A lieutenant was, in the literal sense of the definition of the Latin phrase locum tenens, someone who occupied the place of another person, in this case, the king. This meaning is clearly in the Medieval Crown of Aragon: The Lieutenancy of Maria of Castile, 1420-23 and 1432-53' (doctoral dissertation, Fordham University, 1997). 10 ACA: C 3495-3502; Nuria Coll Julia, Dona Juana Enriquez, lugarteniente real en Cataluna (1461-68), 2 volumes (Madrid, 1953). 11 The increased incidence of coronation ceremonies for queen-consorts further legitimized her power. Five Aragonese queens had formal coronation ceremonies, all since 1276. They are Constan9a of Sicily (1276), Blanca of Naples (1295), Sibila de Portia (1377), Maria de Luna (1399), and Leonor of Albuquerque (1414). But a formal coronation was not a requirement for Aragonese queens, suggesting that marriage was important in the making of a queen more than a coronation ceremony. Ferran Soldevila, Historia de Catalunya, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1934), I: 397-8,400,406-7; Javierre Mur, Maria de Luna, 52-84. 12 Jesus Lalinde Abadia, 'Virreyes y lugartenientes medievales en la Corona de Aragon', Cuadernos de Historia de Espana (Buenos Aires) 31 (1960): 98-172; idem, La institution virreinal en Cataluna (1471-1716) (Barcelona, 1964).

36

QUEENSHIP IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN

retained in all its Romance cognates: the French lieutenant, the Castilian lugarteniente, the Italian tenente, and the Catalan lloctinent.13 A governmental lieutenant in the Crown of Aragon was, in the terminology of the documents, the king's alter ego (in Catalan, alter nos), occupying the place when the king was absent and relinquishing the office when the king died. As an institution, the governmental lieutenancy shares many features with other, more familiar offices such as the English justiciar, the French seneschal or bailiff, or the lieutenants in Jerusalem.14 Like justiciars, seneschals, and bailiffs, lieutenants held their office for continuous periods of time and handled certain routine government business, including the exercise of justice, maintenance of public order, supervision of all subordinate royal officials, and, in some cases, command of military forces. Like regencies and protectorates, it was a nonheritable custodial office whose scope was usually, but not always, explicitly stated. Four characteristics make it a distinctive office—its intimate association with the royal family, the scope and nature of the authority exercised in conjunction with the king himself, the continuous and often lengthy tenure, and its close association with Aragonese queenship. The lieutenant was often but not always a member of the royal family, male or female. Because of this, the lieutenant personified royal power more perfectly than any other office and thus had a higher dignity than all others.15 This substitution of a lieutenant for a king was acceptable to his subjects perhaps because of the close association with the The lieutenancy did not exist officially in Castile and Navarre, but the regency was common there. In Navarre, Toda Asnurez, was regent for her son Garcia I Sanchez (92670); Urraca Fernandez and Jimena Gonzalez, grandmother and mother, respectively, were regents for Sancho III Garces, el Mayor (1000-35). Maria de Molina, wife of Sancho IV of Castile, was regent for both her son, Fernando IV (1295-1312), and grandson, Alfonso XI (1312-50) during a period of anarchy and warfare. Berenguela of Leon was regent for her younger brother, Enrique III (1214-7), and succeeded him after his death. Mercedes Gaibrois de Ballesteros, Maria de Molina, ires veces reina (Madrid, 1936), 43-6; Miriam Shadis, 'Motherhood, Lineage, and Royal Power in Medieval Castile and France: Berenguela de Leon and Blanche de Castille' (doctoral dissertation, Duke University, 1994), 50-7, 182-9, 207-13; Joseph F. O'Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), 335-6, 401, 403, 432. 14 H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The Governance of Mediaeval England from the Conquest to the Magna Carta (Edinburgh, 1963), 32-3, 154-69; John W. Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus: Foundations of French Royal Power in the Middle Ages (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), 220-5; Jonathan RileySmith, The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174-1277 (London: Macmillan, 1973), 18, 59-60, 105-8, 170-228, 319-20. 15 Only twice were non-royal family members appointed lieutenants. Hug de Angelsola was lieutenant in Mallorca from 1397 to 1403 and Galceran de Requesens was lieutenant in Catalunya from 1453-56. ACA: C 2356-58 document Angelsola's tenure, and ACA: C 3319-32 document Requesen's. Lalinde Abadia, 'Virreyes y lugartenientes', 112, 129-31. On Requesens, see Earenfight, 'Queenship, Politics, and Government', chapter 6. A. Garcia Gallo, 'El derecho de sucesion al trono en la corona de Aragon', Anuario de historia del derecho espanol 36 (1966): 5-187, especially 31-45.

ABSENT KINGS

37

immediate royal family. The lieutenant in the Crown of Aragon handled both the routine business of governance and duties normally reserved to the king, and did so in conjunction with the king. The most important duties were the convocation of parliamentary assemblies and supervision of secretaries, which entailed the possession of royal seals. In this sense, a lieutenant resembles the chancellor or a governor, and, like a chancellor, a lieutenant could remain in office during the interregnum or from king to king. There the similarities end, however. Whereas chancellors and governors performed very specific tasks, often for a specific length of time, at the king's command, they were subject to his will: they worked for the king. A lieutenant, on the other hand, acted with and, at the same time, in place of the king. When a king delegated certain tasks to his chancellor, he still retained superior authority. The chancellor could advise the king, he could prepare a writ on the king's order for the king's signature, but that was the extent of his authority. A lieutenant, on the other hand, acted in concert with the king as well as in place of the king and thus could order the writ and sign it. In theory lieutenants were empowered to act freely in all circumstances, but in practice all kings retained the power to withhold assent or revoke the title. The lieutenant was a permanent royal official who held the office at the discretion of the king, sometimes for life.16 Although the office was devised to end at the king's death, the lieutenant could continue without interruption at the new king's discretion, thus distinguishing it from both regents and protectors. Whereas a lieutenant was appointed by a very much alive and well king to rule with him, in his place, in far-flung territories or newly-conquered realms, a regent (or regency council) ruled because youth or illness or captivity impaired a king's ability to rule.17 In short, the royal lieutenant, as the embodiment of the king's personal authority and a custodian of the realm, was a co-ruler who governed both in place of and with an adult king who was fully capable of ruling but, for any number of reasons, was unable to govern a particular territory or territories. Compelled by necessity, the Aragonese kings put the lieutenancy to continuous use until it developed into a permanent institution. Conquest, annexation, inheritance, and dowry expanded the boundaries of the realms of the Crown of Aragon in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries making it difficult if not impossible for one person to rule Aragon, Catalunya, Valencia, Mallorca, Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia.18 Lalinde Abadia, La institution virreinal, 47-9, 78-81, 263; idem, 'Virreyes y lugartenientes', 100-10. 17 In France, the regency could function like the Aragonese lieutenancy. For example, when a healthy and sane Philip Augustus left France in 1190 to go on crusade, he left the kingdom in the hands of a regency council led by his mother, Adele of Champagne. Kimberly A. LoPrete, 'Adela of Blois and Ivo of Chartres: Piety, Politics, and the Peace in the Diocese of Chartres', Anglo-Norman Studies 14 (1991): 131-52; and Andre Poulet, 'Capetian Women and the Regency: The Genesis of a Vocation', in Parsons, Medieval Queenship, 93-116, especially 108. 18 J. N. Hillgarth, 'The Problem of a Catalan Mediterranean Empire 1229-1327', English Historical Review, Supplement 8, 1975.

38

QUEENSHIP IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN

Understanding that delegation did not necessarily entail any loss of regal authority or status, the Aragonese kings used lieutenancies as a form of co-rulership to govern realms that spread from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. The Queen-Lieutenant in the Crown of Aragon, 1310-1420 The lieutenancy originated in the Crown of Aragon during the reign of Jaume I (1213-76), who appointed his sons as Procuradors General to rule the home territories of Aragon and Catalunya while he conquered, and then established a government in Valencia and Mallorca.19 At this stage, Procuradors did not act as true proxies for the king, but when Pere III annexed Sicily in 1282, government became a truly long-distance affair, prompting him to reform the office and name it the Lieutenant General. The designation 'General' indicated substantial governmental powers and territorial jurisdiction20 In 1358 Joan (later Joan I, 1387-96) was the first lieutenant fully empowered to rule in the king's place when his father, Pere IV (1336-87), named him Lieutenant General. As government became increasingly complex, kings called on their wives to aid in governance. With two exceptions, little is known of about the careers of most of these queens, many of whom held the office intermittently, usually during an emergency or until their eldest son reached his majority. Jaume II (1291-1327) appointed his wife, Blanca of Naples, to serve as his lieutenant in April 1310 while he was on crusade in Almeria.21 Her tenure was brief, no more than two months, and little is known of her actions, but she set a precedent for six subsequent Aragonese queen-lieutenants. Her brief lieutenancy was an important reminder that although queens had not ruled in their own right since 1137, they could exercise legitimate political authority. Teresa d'Entenga ruled briefly during the last illness of her husband, Alfonso III (1327-36) in 1327, but it is not clear whether she was a lieutenant earlier. There is no official privilegio or other document naming her as lieutenant, and because Alfonso was incapable of ruling, she acted more as a regent than a lieutenant.22 Although not a lieutenant, Elionor of Sicily, third wife of Pere III, has the distinction of being the first queen to convoke Corts of Barcelona, but she did so not in any official capacity. Rather, she simply took over for her husband, at his expressed request, on 22 January 1364 because he was on the battlefield in Castile.23 Their son, Joan (later, Joan I), took over briefly for Elionor when she joined Pere to celebrate Christmas in 1364.24 19

Lalinde Abadia, 'Virreyes y lugartenientes', 100-11; Bisson, Medieval Crown of Aragon, 58-94; Soldevila, Historia de Catalunya, 1: 194-255, 255-85. 20 Soldevila, Historia de Catalunya, 1: 296-332. 21 Sablonier, 'Aragonese Royal Family',210-39. 22 Bisson, Medieval Crown of Aragon, 101. 23 Cortes de los antiguos reinos de Aragon y de Valencia y principado de Cataluna, 23 volumes (Madrid, 1915). 2: 135-332 (Barcelona, 1364), 2: 332-448 (Barcelona, 1365), and 15: 446-52. For more on Elionor of Sicily, see Mark Meyerson, 'Defending their Jewish

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39

Very little is known about the lieutenancy of Violant de Bar, wife of Joan I, except that it overlaps with that of her successor, Maria de Luna, queen-lieutenant from 1396 to 1397 for Marti I (1395-1410). When King Joan died in May 1395, he left no adult sons and the crown devolved to his brother Marti, king of Sicily.25 While Marti was en route from Sicily to Barcelona, Maria secured official recognition for Marti, even though Violant claimed to be pregnant.26 Maria summoned and convoked two sessions of the Parlament of Barcelona, a local parliamentary assembly, to legitimize Marti's right to succeed, determine whether or not Violant was pregnant, and establish a council to advise Maria until Marti returned.27 She pacified the kingdom and governed for a year until Marti's return and served a second term as lieutenant in 1401 while Marti was in Navarre and Valencia. She remained one of her husband's ablest advisers. As advocate for the semi-servile remenga peasants, Maria de Luna tried unsuccessfully until her death in 1406 to secure a bull from Pope Benedict XIII that condemned peasant servitude.28 It is noteworthy that in the case of both Elionor of Sicily and Maria de Luna there was little opposition to these queens assuming substantial public political roles that were normally exclusively reserved for the king or the eldest son. The best explanation for minimal fears of rule by a queen must be proximity of a healthy adult male king. The inherent instability of both instances, war with Castile in 1364 and the death of the ruling king without a designated heir, and the need to move quickly and decisively probably overrode the novelty of a queen convoking a parliamentary assembly. In both cases the convocation was ad hoc and brief. Had the crises persisted or had either queen remained at the head of regional government for longer than absolutely necessary, some formal protest might have been lodged. The records of 1364 do not state so explicitly, but it is possible that Pere III brought in Joan to preside during Christmas to quell preemptively any hints of opposition to his wife's actions.

Subjects: Elionor of Sicily, Maria de Luna, and the Jews of Morvedre,' chapter four in this volume. 24 Cortes 2: 222-55. Her official records are contained in ACA: C 1562-85. See also Soldevila, Historia de Catalunya, 1: 370-74. 25 Javierre Mur, Maria de Luna, 52-84; Lalinde Abadia, 'Virreyes y lugartenientes', 114; Bisson, Medieval Crown ofAmgon, 125-31,148. 26 Soldevila, Historia de Catalunya, 1: 397-8, 400, 406-7. For Maria de Luna, see Meyerson, 'Defending their Jewish Subjects' and Nuria Silleras Fernandez, 'Spirit and Force. Politics, Public and Private, in the Reign of Maria de Luna (1396-1406)' chapter five in this volume. For Violant, see Dawn Bratsch-Prince, 'A Queen's Task: Violant de Bar and the Experience of Motherhood in Fourteenth-Century Aragon', La coronica 27:1 (1998): 21-34; 27 Cortes 4: 248-400 (Barcelona, 1396) and 4: 301-67 (Barcelona, 1396-97). 28 Cortes 4: 248 et passim for the Corts in 1396. Javierre Mur, Maria de Luna, 52-84. Although Benedict XIII was later denounced as an antipope, he was a legitimate pope during the period in question.

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QUEENSHIP IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN

The Apogee of the Lieutenancy: Maria of Castile and Juana Enriquez By the fifteenth century, however, the devolution of substantial authority on a queen-lieutenant had become permanent. The last two queens to serve as lieutenants—Maria of Castile and Juana Enriquez—dominated fifteenth-century Aragonese politics and established important precedents for long reign of Isabel of Castile (Maria's niece and Juana's daughter-in-law). Taken together, they governed for forty years. Maria, wife of Alfonso IV, served as Lieutenant General in various realms (but mostly in the principality of Catalunya) from 1421-23 and 1432-53.29 She maintained a court separate from the king's at Naples, took council from her own sacrum consilium, convoked Corts regularly, and governed forcefully during a difficult period in Catalan history. Juana Enriquez served as Lieutenant General for her husband, Juan II (1458-79) from 1461 to 1477.30 Even more so than Maria (her sister-in-law), Juana was a co-ruler with Juan: She had proved her worth as his right hand during the tumult of the civil war and governed Girona during the siege, and became Lieutenant in her own right in 1465.31 Maria governed longer and possessed broader powers than any of her predecessors.32 In May 1420, prior to embarking on a military conquest of Naples, Alfonso named Maria, then eighteen years old, as Lieutenant General.33 In the privilegio, he delegated to her full governmental powers over the kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia, the principality of Catalunya, and the island of Mallorca, stipulating that her powers as Lieutenant General should be equivalent to his own as king and that she had the authority to rule independently. Maria had full sovereign power over all civil and criminal jurisdictions in all four realms, including the army and the military orders. Her authority superseded all other officials—royal, seigneurial, regional, local—including provincial governors,

29

Francisca Hernandez-Leon de Sanchez, Dona Maria de Castilla, Esposa de Alfonso el Magndnimo (Valencia: Universidad de Valencia, 1959), 59-61. 30 Coll Julia, Dona Juana Enriquez, I: 71-4. 31 Juan also relied on his son, Carles of Viana, as lieutenant but his kingdom did not include Naples, which was inherited by Alfonso's son, Ferran, who ruled until his death in 1494. For Carles of Viana, see Jaime Vicens Vives, Els Trastdmares, el segle XV (Barcelona: Editorial Teide, 1956), 167-71. For Juana Enriquez, see Coll Julia, Dona Juana Enriquez, I: 133-221, 239-59, 261-361. 32 Earenfight, 'Queenship, Politics, and Government;' idem, 'Maria of Castile, Ruler or Figurehead? A Preliminary Study in Aragonese Queenship', Mediterranean Studies 4 (1994): 45-61. 33 Alfonso had no legitimate sons to enlist as lieutenant. He had three brothers, referred to collectively as the Infantes de Aragon—Enrique, Pedro, and Juan, king of Navarre—an ambitious and untrustworthy group of siblings. Luis Suarez Fernandez, Angel Canellas Lopez, and Jaime Vicens Vives, Los Trastdmaras de Castilla y de Aragon en el siglo XV: Juan II y Enrique IV de Castilla (1407-1474), El compromiso de Caspe, Fernando I, Alfonso V, y Juan II de Aragon (1410-1479). Volume 15 of Historia de Espana, edited by Ramon Menendez Pidal (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1964), 699.

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41

prelates and religious orders, nobles, townspeople, and peasants. She could grant constitutions, make laws, sign letters with her own hand according to her own conscience, carry out justice, both civil and criminal, and name judges and delegates. She could summon, convoke, and preside over the Corts, the regional parliamentary assemblies.34 This explicit statement of Maria's legitimately sanctioned authority makes it clear that she held her authority at the king's discretion. Her authority was equivalent to the king's, but he retained the ultimate authority. He held dominion, yet in practice they governed together. In 1423 Alfonso returned home empty-handed and the first privilegio expired, but in 1432 he again seized the chance to conquer Naples.35 This time his original intention was to grant the lieutenancy not to Maria but to his brother, Juan of Navarre, Alfonso's heir and therefore constitutionally qualified to act for the king. But Juan was a testy and difficult man and the Catalan Corts asked that Maria be placed in charge.36 An abiding animosity had developed between Juan and the Catalans that threatened to impede government at all levels. They feared, and rightly so, that Juan would drag them into further conflict with Castile, and probably thought, but did not state outright, that Maria would not be nearly as difficult to deal with as Juan and that they could more easily get their way. Most important to Alfonso, however, was the fact that Maria had clearly demonstrated her political abilities. Alfonso changed his mind and named her Lieutenant General, with governmental authority which was essentially the same as in 1420, except that it included all of Alfonso's Iberian realms.37 Maria faced a serious crisis in 1435 when a disastrous defeat of the Aragonese navy near Ponza on 5 August resulted in the capture of Alfonso and his brothers.38 She convoked a Corts Generates of the three realms in Mongo to negotiate with the Genoese, request a subsidy of 100,000 gold florins to pay for his ransom, and organize a rescue fleet.39 After his release, Alfonso remained in Italy to complete the conquest of Naples and sent Juan, also released from captivity, to Spain. Recognizing the problems inherent in ruling from a distance, and probably wanting to protect himself in the event that something should happen to either Juan or Maria, and fearful that his war in Italy might spread to Catalunya, Alfonso named

34

Cortes, 13: 83. Earenfight, 'Queenship, Politics, and Government', chapter 3; Hernandez-Leon de Sanchez, Dona Maria de Castilla, 87. 35 Alan Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous: King of Aragon, Naples, and Sicily, 13961458 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 72, 114-15, 175-95; Suarez Fernandez, Los Trastdmaras, 697-706, 719-24. 36 Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, 183-84; Hernandez-Leon de Sanchez, Dona Maria de Castillo, 87. 37 ARV: MR 9050: 3v-^v; Cortes, 20: 432-5. 38 AC A: Generalitat 4: 23, published in Jose M. Madurell Marimon (ed.), Mensajeros Barceloneses en la Corte de Napoles de Alfonso V de Aragon, 1435-1458 (Barcelona, 1963), doc. 29, pp. 101-3; Soldevila, Historia de Catalunya, 2: 54-56. 39 Hernandez-Leon de Sanchez, Dona Maria de Castilla, 115, 123-8; Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, 213.

42

QUEENSHIP IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN

his brother co-lieutenant in Catalunya with Maria.40 Once the threat from Italy subsided, Juan devoted more attention to his own kingdom of Navarre. In November 1438 Alfonso, asserting Maria's ability to govern alone, revoked the colieutenancy arrangement of 1436 and granted her full powers as lieutenant in Aragon, Valencia, and Mallorca as well as Catalunya.41 Ill health and an outbreak of the plague in Valencia limited her ability to govern such a wide region, but she retained full powers in Catalunya and Mallorca. Two years later, as an indication of his increased trust in his wife and his preoccupation with the war in Italy, Alfonso further amplified her powers as lieutenant and gave her greater control over royal finances, both income and expenditures.42 A decade later, relations between Alfonso and Juan grew worse after the dual catastrophe of defeat at the battle of Olmedo (19 May 1445) and Infant Enric's death. Alfonso relied on Maria to provide not only good government but also accurate accounts of Juan's behavior.43 In October 1445, Alfonso reinstated Juan as Lieutenant General in Aragon and Valencia but sternly warned him that if he intervened in Castile the lieutenancy would be given to Maria permanently because he would not treat his wife 'as a child does a toy on a string'.44 Juan paid attention to his brother's threat and this configuration—Maria as Lieutenant General of Catalunya and Mallorca, and Juan of Aragon and Valencia—lasted until 1453. The co-lieutenancy arrangement was not a perfect solution, and may have been intended all along as a temporary expedient.45 Alfonso defined each lieutenant's powers and duties according to need, not theory, and the only meaningful difference between the two lieutenants is that Juan was expected to take seriously the military powers which Maria delegated. On the other hand, Alfonso relied on Maria to keep the administration running smoothly and used her as a buffer between Juan and the Catalans and he made certain that Juan was never lieutenant of Catalunya unless Maria was co-lieutenant. Even the joint lieutenancy of Juan and Maria in Catalunya lasted only two years, from November 1438 to October 1440, and they never governed together at the same time: Maria was in charge

40

Hernandez-Leon de Sanchez, Dona Maria de Castilla, 98; Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, 220-21. The document is contained in ARV: MR 9050: 5r-7v (20 January 1436). 41 ARV, MR 9050: 9v-12r; Hernandez-Leon de Sanchez, Dona Maria de Castilla, 9093. 42 ARV, MR 9050: 14v-15r (3 October 1440); Hernandez-Leon de Sanchez, Dona Maria de Castilla, 94. 43 ACA: C 2652: 89r-v (11 June 1444), cited in Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, 267. 44 ACA: C 2690: 178v (14 October 1445); and 183v (22 October 1445), cited in Alan Ryder, 'The Evolution of Imperial Government in Naples under Alfonso V of Aragon', in Europe in the Late Middle Ages, eds. J. R. Hale, J. R. L. Highfield, and B. Smalley (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 332-57; Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, 269; Hernandez-Leon de Sanchez, Dona Maria de Castilla, 93-4. 45 Ryder, 'Evolution of Imperial Government', 338; idem, Alfonso the Magnanimous, 69, 220; Lalinde Abadia, La institucion virreinal, 60.

ABSENT KINGS

43

when Juan was away, and vice-versa.46 Even when the military situation was calm, Juan could not be trusted to focus on his duties as lieutenant. In 1438 Alfonso wanted to force the Justicia of Aragon from office but he doubted that Juan would carry out his orders ('because he [Juan] does not wish to face the unpleasantness'), so he arranged for Maria to take over the task, and he had a notary keep a complete record of all Juan's council proceedings.47 Alfonso had another good reason to switch lieutenants from time to time—the fragile state of Maria's health.48 She suffered from a chronic ailment, perhaps epilepsy, and she was prone to fevers and other debilitating viral or bacterial illness. In general, he was reluctant to appoint a substitute for Maria when she fell ill and typically preferred to assume a wait and see approach. The king counted on the well-organized, highly efficient Catalan bureaucrats to handle routine matters of tax collection and processing of judicial petitions until she recovered. But at times she seemed near death, and waiting and seeing was not an option. In May 1440, for instance, she had called a Corts to meet in Lleida to request money for Alfonso's war against Genoa. While there she became so ill, 'more dead than alive', that her opening speech to the Corts was read for her.49 She urged Alfonso to appoint someone to take over for her, but he wrote back saying that he preferred her and no other. He suggested that she prorogue the Corts and go to Valencia to recuperate. Nevertheless, Alfonso was not about to take chances. At the time, Juan and the Infante Enrique were completely absorbed in Castilian affairs, so he had documents drawn up that named Carles of Viana (1421-61), the nineteen-yearold son of Juan of Navarre, as Lieutenant General. Carles was inexperienced in government and to complicate matters, he and his father were not on good terms and Alfonso may have been concerned about how the two would get along. But by October Maria was back at work and her nephew was not needed.50 Throughout her two terms as Lieutenant General Maria proved herself to be prudent, fair, and effective and by the mid-1440s, Maria had become Alfonso's indispensable partner in government. Prior lieutenants had maintained an extensive administrative court that resembled the king's, but Maria was the first queenlieutenant with a Consell and Audiencia separate from the king's that possessed both advisory and judicial functions.51 She met weekly with her royal council, regularly convoked Corts, consulted with the Diputacio del General (the standing committee of the Corts that met when the Corts was not in session), and routinely sat in on sessions of the Consell de Cent, the town council of Barcelona. Regular 46

On only a handful of occasions in 1453 do they issue documents simultaneously, and there is no other direct evidence of joint governance. ACA: C 3319, 2v-13v (28 April 1453 to 20 October 1453). See also Lalinde Abadia, La institution virreinal, 85-6. 47 ACA: C 2695: 131r-v(16 December 1438). 48 Hernandez-Leon de Sanchez, Dona Maria de Castilla, 29-39. 49 ACA: C 3162: 66v and 80; Cortes, 20: 349-443; Hernandez-Leon de Sanchez, Dona Maria de Castilla, 121. 50 Hernandez-Leon de Sanchez, Dona Maria de Castilla, 94; Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, 240. 5 * Ryder, * Evolution of Imperial Government' ,345-6.

44

QUEENSHIP IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN

mail deliveries carried the official documents and private letters between Alfonso and Maria. The Catalans were instructed to report on the proceedings of the Barcelona town council and parliamentary assemblies to both Alfonso and Maria. Much of her time was spent in the administration of ordinary civil and criminal justice; supervision of the financial offices; governance of all subordinate comital, regional, and municipal officials; and maintenance of public order. She passed on to Alfonso all matters dealing with military affairs, diplomacy, the higher nobility and the church; she wrote detailed letters describing the issues and outlining her proposed plans; she suggested candidates for vacant offices; she referred judicial cases that fell outside her jurisdiction; and she reported to him the deliberations of her own council and court.52 Perfunctory salutations such as 'Amada muller' 'Carissima reyna' aside, the relationship between Alfonso and Maria was strictly business.53 Long before the 1440s, she must have resigned herself to marriage to an absentee husband who had a mistress and three illegitimate children, and only after 1450 did she give up on the thought of his return to Spain.54 She devoted herself to the task at hand, to govern Catalunya in his stead which became difficult during the mid-1440s when two separate but intertwined issues—the convocation of Corts in the absence of the king and Alfonso's decision to grant manumission to a group of semi-servile peasants (the remences)—galvanized Catalunya. Maria's convocation of the Corts of Catalunya raised constitutional questions while the discussions about the peasants embraced social, economic, and legal concerns. The two issues became connected when the issue of peasant manumission was brought before the Corts, with Maria presiding. Her convocation of the Corts was, in itself, problematic enough for the Catalan ruling elites, but her open support of the peasants made it difficult for them to work with her for a resolution. Maria presided over eight separate sessions of the Corts of Catalunya between 1435 and 1458, most of which were highly charged events.55 Two separate issues were central to the dispute over a queen-lieutenant routinely presiding over the Corts: first, the legality in general of such a delegation of authority to a lieutenant, and second, the question of what it meant to the Catalans to have a woman stand in for the king in such a weighty matter. The authority to convoke the Corts by the king, in person, was central to Aragonese kingship, and the pertinent question was whether that right was transferable to his lieutenants. Alfonso's privilegios are unambiguous, but the convocation of Corts by a lieutenant who was also a queen inverted the political order by substituting a female royal body for a male one.56 The final sessions of Corts over which Maria presided 52 ACA: C 2651: 30v-31r (14 March 1438), doc. 128 in Madurell Marimon, Mensajeros Barceloneses, 190; Hernandez-Leon de Sanchez, Dona Maria de Castilla, 98-104. 53 Theresa Earenfight, 'Political Culture and Political Discourse in the Letters of Queen Maria of Castile', La coronica 32.1 (Fall 2003): 135-52. 54 ACA: C 3227: 120r-v (2 May 1450). 55 Earenfight, 'Queenship, Politics, and Government', chapter five. 56 J. N. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 1250-1516,2 vols. (Oxford, 1976-78), II: 203.

ABSENT KINGS

45

dealt with the manumission of the remenga peasants, an issue that had been brewing for decades, came to the fore in 1447, and occupied all concerned for the next seven years. Ultimately, the issue became not just peasant manumission, but who was to decide the issue itself? The king? The Lieutenant General? The Corts? The remenga dispute is emblematic of the wider theoretical issues of Aragonese kingship, the scope of the office of the Lieutenant General, and ultimately, of co-rulership. In this matter, Tomas Mieres, a prominent jurist and member of the king's council, provided key support for a lieutenant's convocation of the Corts. In his treatise, Apparatus super Constitutionibus Curiarum Generalium Cathalonie (1446), Mieres ruled that the authority to convoke the Corts did not rest entirely with the king, but that it could be delegated, as much to a queen as to a prince.57 The struggle over the remences was nasty and protracted.58 Alfonso needed money to finance wars in Italy and the high cost of government in Naples and Barcelona. Maria, following along the path forged fifty years earlier by other queenlieutenants, Maria de Luna, argued in favor of the peasants from a humanitarian stance. The Catalan landlords tried to minimize their financial losses should the remences gain their freedom and were willing to go over Maria's head, directly to the king in Naples, to get what they wanted. The peasants, of course, simply wanted to secure an improvement in their status. The king played one side against the other, granting manumission in 1448 but suspending the order a year later, then seeming to favor the peasants only to change his mind again, and finally in 1450 summoning the Corts to discuss the matter. On 20 July 1450, in a letter to her secretary she considered the entire matter of the remences in peril of collapse ('E lo negoci per go sta en bassat e en gran perill') because the peasants have lost hope ('sindichs e pagesos comenger a perdre cor e speranga'), all because of Alfonso's bad faith negotiation and double dealing.59 Shortly thereafter, she begged Alfonso not to change his mind and revoke his support, or risk serious unrest among the peasants ('qualsevol sinistre o perill que de ago pugues insurge lo que deu no vulla').60 She was not exaggerating the seriousness of the situation. That summer, the countryside which had been quiet for over a year came alive again with hints of unrest. The events of 1451 and 1452 were mostly filled with watching and waiting and embassies to and from Naples, marked by Alfonso's periodic changes of heart. Maria fought vociferously on behalf of the peasants in the Corts, in her actions against the increasingly bellicose lords, and in her letters to her husband, a master of vacillation. In July 1451, she considered the Corts' offer of a subsidy of 400,000 florins in exchange for the king's return to Catalunya and, presumably, for 57 Mieres felt that the task of convocation could legally fall under the jurisdiction of the Governor General, who was not even a member of the royal family. Francisco Elias de Tejada, Las doctrinaspoliticas en la Cataluna medieval (Barcelona, 1950), 189-99. 58 For a more detailed discussion of the remen9a peasants during the reign of Alfonso and Maria, see Earenfight, 'Queenship, Politics, and Government', chapter six. 59 ACA: C 3227,128v-129r. 60 ACA: C 3227,156r-v, 30 July 1450.

46

QUEENSHIP IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN

a revocation of the decree of manumission. In November, the queen wrote directly to the peasants explaining that, in light of the fact that the manumission decrees would be prejudicial to the landlords, she and Alfonso were seriously considering a revocation of the decrees of 1448 and ordering a return to the status quo ante.61 A 'gran clamor' among the peasants resulted, but the threat of violence and rebellion notwithstanding, in March of 1452, Alfonso tentatively accepted the offer from the Corts, but delayed public announcement until May.62 Their working relationship was transformed by Alfonso's revocation of manumission and Maria's frustration and annoyance spilled over in her letters to him. Having made a decision to abandon the remences against her advice, in effect over her head, she insisted that he tell her precisely why he changed his mind. As if to emphasize that he now wanted her to simply carry out intentions without listening to her, she wanted to know explicitly what he wanted her to do and when.63 She had lost all credibility within the Corts, she wrote, and no one will work with her directly. As for the remences, they were most aggrieved ('grandissimament agreujiats') at the turn of events. The remenga representatives were afraid to return home where they would face 400,000 very angry peasants who would not be happy if they came home without the deal they were promised.64 Maria's pleas fell on deaf ears. Alfonso changed his mind again and in February 1453 he revoked the obligation.65 By that spring he realized that he could not delay a final decision any longer. In a final about-face, on 15 July 1453, Alfonso re-established peasant obligations to their lords.66 Expressing frustration and sadness that she had spent five years in fruitless negotiations in the Corts ('non ha sortit algun fruyt ni algun util'), Maria nevertheless continued to work through the summer of 1453. In her letters to Alfonso she described seemingly endless wrangling in the Corts and frustration with petty demands. Her health began to decline, but her anger did not falter. On 25 July 1453 she wrote another angry letter to Alfonso about the remences, this time telling him that the remences were very angry at having spent a lot of money for nothing, and that the burden of this

61

ACA: C 3155, 194v-195r. For the original decree, see ACA: C 3155, 57v-58r, 15 May 1450. 62 ACA: C 3155, 195r-v, 30 March 1452; Sobreques i Vidal and Sobreques i Callico, La guerra civil catalana del segleXV, 1: 28-9. 63 ACA: C 3227,170r-172v, 21 October 1452. 64 'Apres del dit acte, o reuocacio, los dits sindichs de les remences sentint se grandissimament agreujats de aquella son vinguts a mi dients que yo vull cessar, o dilatar ultra del degut llur justicia, e que per aquesta raho ells son en punt que no gossen anar per la terra per dubte de llurs principals que com saben senyor son en nombre circa de xxxx Milia homes los quals pensen que per culpa llurs sindichs aquest negoci se dilate, e supliquam continuament' ACA: C 3227,174r-175r, 16 June 1453. 65 ACA: C 2700: 17v (15 February 1453). 66 Santiago Sobreques i Vidal and Jaume Sobreques i Callico, La guerra civil catalana del segleXV, 2 volumes (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1973), I: 29.

ABSENT KINGS

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decision—she foresaw great quarrels with the remences—was on both their consciences.67 She finally quit the lieutenancy in the late summer of 1453, predicting that quarrels over Corts and peasants would continue.68 After leaving Catalunya on 9 October 1453, she spent the rest of that year and most of 1454 engaged in negotiations with her brother and brother-in-law concerning the Castilian succession.69 Her last years, from 1454 to 1458, were spent mostly in Valencia, where she governed as Lieutenant General and only occasionally took part in events in Catalunya.70 To replace his wife, Alfonso broke with tradition and legal precedent and appointed Galceran de Requesens, a knight with no connections at all to the royal family.71 Before she left, she warned Alfonso that the new government may not go smoothly.72 Her predictions proved accurate: Requesens remained in office for just one year. There were protests to his lieutenancy, and he wrote to Maria, asking for help with the testy Catalans. The latter letter is a remarkable admission of the difficulty of his position, in which he asked Maria to return to Barcelona and resume as lieutenant in his place.73 Alfonso recognized his mistake and did not repeat it: in July 1454 he replaced Requesens with his brother Juan who, for all his shortcomings, was at least a member of the royal family.74 When he succeeded Alfonso as king in 1458, Juan faced a rather different kingdom than that which Alfonso had governed. Although he had governed the kingdom of Navarre since the death of his first wife, Blanca, in 1441, he did so in the name of his son Carles of Viana, as stipulated in Blanca's will. He was still engaged in fruitless skirmishes with Castile and had a tense relationship with France. The kingdom of Naples had devolved to Alfonso's son Ferran, which shortened the distances among the various realms and would seem to lessen the need for lieutenants. But two centuries of rule through lieutenancies had fostered a habit of co-rulership that Juan maintained. His absences were generally due to military engagements on the Iberian peninsula, so he was close at hand and chose to use lieutenants when the need arose, not regularly or continuously as Alfonso did. Because of his proximity, lieutenants convened or presided infrequently over sessions of Corts, and thus they encountered few of the difficulties that Maria faced. Although he relied on his lieutenants—Carles, his wife Juana Enriquez, and later their son Fernando—he was discerning and cautious. A complex and contra67

'Affermen hauer despeses grans quantitats de peccunia e que a9o no passa sens gran carrech de les consciencies vostra e mia segons pus largament vostra alteza haura poscut veure en dites mies letres a les quals me reffer'. ACA: C 3227,175v-176r. 68 ACA: C 3200: 84v-85r (2 October 1453). 69 Jaime Vicens Vives, Juan II de Aragon (1398-1479): Monarquia y revolution en la Espana del sigloXV (Barcelona, 1953), 150-57; Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, 273. 70 Hernandez-Leon de Sanchez, Dona Maria de Castilla, 96-7. 71 ACA: C 2661: 29r-30v, 31r-32r(31 August 1453). 72 AHCB: LLRO: 654 (1 November 1453). 73 ACA: C 3227: 180v (20 October 1453); 181r-v (26 October 1453). He reiterated his difficulties on 1 December 1453. ACA: C 3227: 182r-v. 74 Vicens Vives, Els Trastamares, 164-7; idem, Juan II de Aragon, 161-77.

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dictoiy man who was loathe to share power, Juan was infamous both for his reluctance to work with the Catalan ruling elites and his shabby treatment of his son. Carles and Juan had a deeply problematic relationship owing to the father's unwillingness to relinquish his claim to Navarre in favor of his son, and then disinheriting him in favor of his daughter Leonor, wife of Gaston de Foix. Tensions between father and son worsened when Juan married Juana in 1444, and many of the later political problems in the Crown of Aragon can be traced to personal problems in the royal family.75 Juan's miserly attitude toward the Catalans and his son did not, however, extend to his second wife. He endowed Juana with similar powers to those possessed by Maria of Castile, and in many ways she was truly co-ruler with Juan. Throughout her marriage to Juan she was one of his closest advisers and most valuable allies, traveling with him throughout Navarre and the Aragonese realms. Juan relied on her intelligence and discretion, her prodigious familial, financial, and political connections in Castile, and her tenacious and formidable negotiating skills. In 1451 he appointed her Governor of Navarre with Carles, and the next year she gave birth to Fernando, both of which further deteriorated an already troublesome relationship. In 1458 Juan appointed Carles, then thirty-three years old, as Lieutenant General in Catalunya, where he proved to be enormously popular. Juan imprisoned him on trumped up charges of treason, and when he died of tuberculosis in September 1461, accusations of foul play surfaced, accusing not only Juan but also Juana of plotting against Carles in favor of her son, Fernando (1452-1514, later Fernando II of Aragon).76 But Juana was nothing if not intrepid and, no newcomer to politics, she shrugged off the personal attacks and succeeded Carles as Lieutenant General.77 She maintained an extensive court with separate chancery and treasurer, but without the judicial and legislative offices that Maria of Castile possessed in parallel with Alfonso's Neapolitan court.78 Amid the turbulence and widespread civil unrest that erupted in the wake of Carles's death, she suppressed opposition in the towns and countryside and secured support for her husband and Fernando. In June 1461, she negotiated on behalf of the Crown to moderate the anti-royalist Capitulations of Vilafranca del Penedes. Like her sister-in-law before her, Juana sided with the remences, a position that made her highly unpopular with the city magistrates of Barcelona and the landlords. Unlike the six Aragonese queen-lieutenants who preceded her, Juana is noted for her active involvement in military actions, notably the early campaigns of the ten-year civil war. In June 1462, she and Fernando fled from forces led by the rebellious Count of Pallars and took refuge in a royal castle in Girona only to find themselves besieged for a month. She organized the defense of the castle and held 75

Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 2: 272-94. Geronimo Zurita, Anales de la Corona de Aragon [1562-82], edited by Angel Canellas Lopez, 8 volumes (Zaragoza, 1967-77), III: 304; Coll Julia, Dona Juana Enriquez, I: 77-82. 77 Lalinde Abadia,' Virreyes y lugartenientes ',112,162-4. 78 Coll Julia, Dona Juana Enriquez, II: 47-53, 225-30. 76

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the rebels at bay until Juan and Louis XI of France arrived with military support. Although not personally at the head of an army, she was a tough negotiator who rallied and helped organize and provision an array of forces in defense of the Crown in the Ampurdan, accompanied forces to Barcelona and into Aragon.79 She was a key negotiator in the treaties of Sauveterre and Bayonne in May 1462 that settled the succession of Navarre and allowed the French to occupy the territories of Rousillon and Cerdanya to France in return for military support. She was virtually prisoner, with her daughter Juana, in the castle of Larraga in 1463. Hostilities worsened, the French, Castilians, and Portuguese intervened, and periodically the Catalans 'deposed' (most notably in 1462) Juan, Fernando (occasionally), and Juana. Her inclusion in this list, although a dubious honor, is a clear indication of her power and importance in the political sphere.80 After her release from Larraga and as the civil war intensified, she turned her attentions to governing Crown realms as Lieutenant General from 1464 until her death in 1468.81 With Fernando at her side, and seeking to pacify the warring factions, she presided over the Cortes of Aragon that met in Zaragoza from 1466 to 1468. During this period, she traveled extensively throughout the realms in the midst of civil war, gathering troops and supplies, negotiating with military leaders while personally attending to the business of governing—collecting taxes, holding courts of justice, dealing with the church, managing Crown lands and her own patrimony.82 The war outlived her by four years, but it is fitting that her indefatigable work as co-ruler with her husband and as tutor to her son mark her as the last queen-lieutenant of the Crown of Aragon. The End of an Institution The marriage of Fernando and Isabel in 1469 and their succession in 1479 to the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile dramatically altered the institutions of government. The situation was unique in many ways, not the least of which was that Isabel, was queen of Castile in her own right.83 To her, the lieutenancy was superfluous. But Fernando recognized that he would be spending significant amounts of time away from his Aragonese realms, and in 1479 he named Enriq, count of Empuries and Segorbe, his Lieutenant General.84 With this act, the lieutenancy lost forever its association with queenship.

79

Coll Julia, Dona Juana Enriquez, II: 78-104. Coll Julia, Dona Juana Enriquez, I: 83-120, 169-201, 325-6 and II: 7-^0,105-20. 81 ACA: C 3412: fol. 33v (6 March 1465); document 68 in Coll Julia, Dona Juana Enriquez, II: 395^102. Fernando served as Lieutenant in Catalunya (1461-62) and Sicily (1463-68). 82 Coll Julia, Dona Juana Enriquez, II: 121-221. 83 Peggy Liss, Isabel the Queen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 84 Lalinde Abadia,c Virreyes y lugartenientes', 167-9. 80

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It is not insignificant that the last two queen-lieutenants, Maria of Castile and Juana Enriquez, were the aunt and mother, respectively, of Fernando of Aragon. The degree of political engagement of these two women, as well as the partnership forged by them with their husbands, was not lost on Fernando as he sought his own solution to absentee rulership. In 1535, his grandson Carlos V transformed the lieutenancy, renamed it the viceroyalty, and used it to rule the vast Spanish empire in the New World.85 When he needed someone to govern one of his European realms when he was absent, which was often, Carlos turned instead to the office of the regent and appointed not only his wife, Isabel of Portugal, but also his aunt, Margaret of Austria, and his sister, Mary of Hungary. These were formidable women. Isabel, regent of Spain for Carlos at several key points in the reign, was very much her husband's political partner. Margaret was regent of the Netherlands for her father, the Emperor Maximilian, from 1507 until 1514, and then from 1519 until 1530 for Carlos.86 Mary was regent in Hungary after the death of her husband, Louis, and then succeeded Margaret as regent in the Netherlands from 1531 until 1555, where she was important to Carlos late in his reign as he confronted the Protestants.87 The year 1555, when Philip succeeded his father as king of Spain, signals an important shift in Spanish political life. The pragmatic and, in Aragon, contractual, political culture of medieval monarchy transformed into the monarchy of early modern Europe that was increasingly absolutist and bureaucratic. The legitimate, officially sanctioned office of political authority of the Aragonese queenlieutenant was curtailed sharply as Castilian institutional forms dominated the resulting Habsburg monarchy. Queen-lieutenants were replaced by powerful secretaries and ministers, educated in universities and trained professionally, who governed for kings when they were absent, either physically or mentally. As a result, a once dynamic relationship of monarchy that relied on both king and queen for its functioning became fixed in a position where the king was the superior authority and the queen relegated to a subordinate status. Monarchy in Spain ceased to be a working political partnership. This is not to say that early modern Habsburg queens were powerless, for indeed they were influential women But their power was less likely to be official, legitimate authority and more likely to be unofficial, exercised privately. No matter how powerful any single Habsburg queen may have been, because queenship remained a subordinate office, once its institutional linkage with the Aragaonese lieutenancy was broken, the nature and

85

Lalinde Abadia, 'Virreyes y lugartenientes', 168-9; idem, La institution virreinal, 159-64; Ryder, 'Evolution of Imperial Government', 357. 86 Jane de longh, Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands, translated by M. D. Herter Norton (New York: Norton, 1953). 87 Daniel R. Doyle, 'The Body of a Woman but the Heart and Stomach of a King: Mary of Hungary and the Exercise of Political Power in Early Modern Europe' (doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1996).

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location of a queen's power changed fundamentally and profoundly from that of her medieval predecessors.88

88

Antonio Feros, Kingship and Favoritism in the Spain of Philip III, 1598—1621 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

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PART II PRACTISING THE POLITICS OF RELIGION

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CHAPTER FOUR

Defending Their Jewish Subjects: Elionor of Sicily, Maria de Luna, and the Jews of Morvedre Mark Meyerson

The years between 1348 and 1416 constituted an era of crisis for the Jews of Morvedre (present-day Sagunto). Housed in a town located some 20 kilometers north of Valencia, the capital of the kingdom of Valencia (part of the federated Crown of Aragon), this Jewish community was attacked, in November 1348, by the forces of the Union of Valencia, then in the final weeks of a rebellion against King Pere III (1336-87); it next endured the Castilian occupation of Morvedre between the winter of 1363 and March 1365, when the Castilian garrison expelled it from the town; and, finally, after surviving through the horrific summer of 1391, when most Jewish communities in Castile and the Crown of Aragon were engulfed by a wave of anti-Jewish violence, it faced, among other threats, aggressive papal inquisitors, the inflammatory preaching of the charismatic Dominican Vicent Ferrer, and the proselytizing policy of King Fernando I (1412-16).1 Two queens played a crucial role in the survival of the Morvedre community through a good number of these calamitous years: Elionor of Sicily (1349-75), the third wife of Pere III, and Maria de Luna (1396-1406), the wife of Marti I (1396-1410). Elionor worked successfully to repopulate Morvedre's Jewish quarter (juerid) after her husband recovered the devastated town from the Castilians in September 1365. Maria continued to foster the revived aljama (a legally constituted Jewish or Muslim community) and shielded it from inquisitors and mischievous municipal officials. Neither queen acted out of what one might call 'philo-semitism'. Both were pious, conventionally so, which precluded anything more than an Augustinian toleration of the Jews.2 Elionor and Maria were motivated, first and 1

The following abbreviations are used in the notes: ACA (Arxiu de la Corona d' Arago), ARV (Arxiu del Regne de Valencia), C (Cancilleria), MR (Mestre Ractional). For the history of this community, see two studies by M. D. Meyerson, A Jewish Renaissance in Fifteenth-Century Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), and Jews in an Iberian Frontier Kingdom: Society, Economy, and Politics in Morvedre, 12481391 (Leiden: Brill, 2004). 2 On the piety and religious interests of these queens, see U. Deibel, 'La reyna Elionor de

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foremost, by fiscal pragmatism, since the aljama pertained to their particular queenly treasuries. The Jews of Morvedre were fortunate in that both queens were very able and assertive, capable of advising, challenging, and acting independently of their husbands. Beyond this essential competence, each queen possessed, according to their modern biographers, certain characteristics which, if not necessarily flattering, still benefited their Jewish subjects. Elionor was politically 'calculating', while Maria was moved by a 'spirit of justice'.3 In the following account these traits emerge clearly enough. Elionor of Sicily was the third wife of Pere III. They married on 27 August 1349. In Elionor Pere gained c a remarkable adviser'.4 She bore him his two surviving sons and successors, Joan and Marti. Pere granted Elionor rights to the revenue from more than twenty towns in Catalonia, Aragon, and Valencia. The revenue was intended to defray the expenses of the queen's court and household, which had their own corps of functionaries.5 Elionor, however, did not acquire rights to the revenue from Morvedre—that is, from both its Christian municipality and Jewish aljama—until 1359. The reason for the delay was that until 1359 Queen Leonor of Castile, the widow of Alfons III of Aragon-Catalonia and Pere's hated stepmother, had been receiving the ordinary taxes collected by the crown in Morvedre and several other towns.6 On Leonor's death, Pere transferred the revenue from these towns to Elionor's treasury.7 The Christians and Jews of Morvedre newly coming under Queen Elionor's jurisdiction were overtaxed and testy, their loyalty to the crown somewhat less than unshakeable. During the rebellion of the Valencian Union against the monarchy in 1347-48, many Christians in Morvedre had sympathized with the Union and, at one point, had even delivered King Pere into the hands of the rebel leaders in Valencia. Although the town's Jews had remained loyal to the king and had suffered the Union's midnight assault for their troubles, they had frequently

Sicilia', Memorias de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, 10 (1928): 385-6; and A. L. Javierre Mur, Maria de Luna, reina de Aragon (Madrid: 1942), 17-8, 20-23, 256. J. Cohen, '"Slay Them Not": Augustine and the Jews in Modem Scholarship', Medieval Encounters 4 (1998): 78-92, presents a useful overview of the scholarship on Augustine's foundational views. 3 Deibel, 'Elionor', 385; and Javierre Mur, Maria, 20, 27. See also the view of these queens offered by R. Tasis i Marca, Pere el Ceremonios i els seus Jills, 2nd edition (Barcelona, 1980), 51-2,195-6. 4 J. N. Hillgarth, 'Introduction', in Pere III of Catalonia, Chronicle, translated by M. Hillgarth, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), 1:6. 5 Deibel, 'Elionor', 395^41, and 430 for the list of towns attached to her treasury in 1393. 6 Pere III, Chronicle, 1: 176-9, 210-11; and A. Chabret Fraga, Sagunto: su historiay sus monumentos, 2 volumes (Sagunto, 1979; reprint of 1888 edition), 1: 239-40, 244-7. 7 ACA: C 1169: 54r(ll June 1359).

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groused about and attempted to evade the king's heavy fiscal demands.8 In fact, just one year before Elionor was granted Morvedre, the entire Jewish community had marched out of town in an act of protest against royal taxation. Regional nobles had been more than willing to admit the Jews into their seigneuries. King Pere had lured them back to Morvedre with special fiscal arrangements so that by the spring of 1359 the localjueria was full of life.9 Elionor did not long enjoy her authority over the inhabitants of Morvedre and the taxes they paid because Morvedre, along with a number of other Valencian towns, surrendered to invading Castilian forces in the early months of 1363. Still, she did have the opportunity to discover how some of her subjects in Morvedre would respond to her husband's demand for new taxes to subsidize his war effort: with flight, or the threat thereof. The queen of course forbade such flight but also wisely took measures to prevent the officials collecting taxes from exacting immoderate salaries from her subjects.10 The effort to repopulate Morvedre after the war would put her administrative and diplomatic skills much more to the test. King Pere recovered Morvedre from the Castilians on 14 September 1365, after a siege of over six months. By the time the town fell to Pere the Jews were already absent. Foreseeing the shortage of victuals that would eventually cause their surrender, the Castilians had expelled the Jews and a number of Christians— that is, those who had either resisted the occupation or displayed an unwillingness to defend the town against King Pere. Regardless of how the Jews and Christians of Morvedre had really viewed the Castilian occupiers, the vindictive Pere, for whom the memory of Morvedre's ambivalent loyalty during the Union rebellion still rankled, chose to see them all as 'rebels'. As far as he was concerned, all royal subjects, Christian or Jewish, who had willingly remained in Morvedre until March 1365, without overtly resisting Castilian rule, had committed the crime of lese majesty. He therefore punished the town by depriving it of its autonomy and placing it under the jurisdiction of the capital city, Valencia. Even the Jews and Christians whom the Castilians had expelled were, in the king's eyes, rebels. He immediately ordered his officials to confiscate their property and assets.11 Although Queen Elionor had no reason to share Pere's grudge against the people of Morvedre, since 8

M. D. Meyerson, 'Victims and Players: The Attack of the Union of Valencia on the Jews of Morvedre', in Religion, Text, and Society in Medieval Spain and Northern Europe: Essays in Honour of J, N. Hillgarth, edited by T. Burman, M. Meyerson, L. Shopkow (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 70-102. 9 Meyerson, Jews, 227-37. 10 ACA: C 1571: 32r-v(15 July 1362). The kingdom of Valencia granted Pere a subvention of 1,060,000 sous in 1362. See S. Romeu Alfaro, 'Cortes en "lo setge de Murvedre" de 1365', in Primer Congreso de Historia delPais Valenciano, 3 volumes (Valencia, 1980), 2: 620. ACA: MR 482: 13r (February 1363) shows that Elionor had received from the aljama of Morvedre one-half of its annual tribute of 2,000 sous for the fiscal year 1362-63; the payment was made on Christmas 1362. Meyerson, Jews, 243-8, for an account of Pere's treatment of the people of Morvedre after the Castilian occupation.

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she had married him after the Union's suppression, she did little to dissuade him from his vengeful policies. The queen's chief concern was to ensure that she received from Pere's treasurer her share of the rebels' appropriated property: twothirds, according to the agreement between herself and the king.12 Indeed, in her handling of the Jewish aljamas attached to her treasury Elionor was guided primarily by financial considerations, hardly a shocking conclusion in regard to royal Jewish policies.13 She thus consistently bolstered the ascendancy of the wealthy and unscrupulous Jahuda Alatzar over the aljama of Valencia because Alatzar was a reliable source of large loans. Working hand-in-glove with the plutocracy of the capital's large and prosperous Jewish community, however, presented a different challenge from that of resuscitating Morvedre's scattered one.14 Even so, her prudence and calculation served her well in both cases. In 1366 Elionor and Pere began the arduous task of repopulating and repairing Morvedre. His thirst for revenge slaked, the king was not about to let strategic Morvedre remain nearly vacant and indefensible. Still, if Christians and Jews were to return to Morvedre and make a go of it, certain essential conditions had to be met: pardons and safeconducts from the king; a livelihood, the acquisition of which depended partly on royal mercy; and a sustainable fiscal burden. Pere was responsible for doling out pardons to the Jewish returnees, but with regard to other matters the Jews were in Queen Elionor's capable hands.15 By the summer of 1366 there was a recognizable Jewish community in Morvedre, though it had taken only the first steps on the road to demographic and economic recovery. In August former members of the community, who had perforce abandoned their homes and properties in Morvedre the year before, were still 'wandering' through the aljamas of the kingdom, most likely Valencia, Lliria, Castello, Borriana, and Vila-real. Given that many Jewish families from Morvedre had, over the course of the previous decades, acquired domiciles, land, and economic interests in a number of places and even established family branches in other jueries, these wanderers were probably not destitute beggars but Jews of some means who still had not decided whether to return to Morvedre or to settle down where they were. Beggars would not have had the luxury of leaving houses and other goods in Morvedre unattended. Queen Elionor and the reconstituted aljama of Morvedre were therefore inclined to force the issue for the benefit of both their treasuries. The queen instructed the local bailiff to command the wandering Jews to reside officially in Morvedre and pay the accustomed taxes; otherwise they would lose all property they had left in the town and its district.16 12

ACA: C 1573: 126r (4 May 1365), and 132r-v (12 May). See Y. Assis, Jewish Economy in the Medieval Crown ofAragon, 1213—1327: Money and Power (Leiden: Brill, 1997) for the early period in general; and Meyerson, Jews, chapter three, for the kingdom of Valencia specifically. 14 J. Riera i Sans, 'Jafuda Alatzar: jueu de Valencia', Revista d'Historia Medieval 4 (1993): 69-88. 15 ACA: C 1212: 56v (22 March 1366); and C 1622: 133v-134r (14 April 1372), referring to pardons granted in September 1365 and August 1370. 16 ACA: C 1574: 116v-117r (12 August 1366): 'Sicut relatum est nobis, nonnulli judei 13

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Elionor could pressure Jews to return to Morvedre for a while, but it was far more difficult to guarantee their long-term residence in the town. After all, Jewish returnees could simply liquidate their local assets and move elsewhere. Keeping her Jews reasonably content and prosperous proved tricky, since at times it involved balancing their interests against those of the Christian municipality and regional lords. Municipal officials logically expected the Jews to contribute to the expense of repairing the town's castle and walls. Unfortunately they were demanding too much of the Jews, a dangerous measure which might prompt them to join Christians who had packed their bags for the same reason. When Queen Elionor admonished the officials to lessen their demands, she asked that they inform the Jews that they were acting thus at her urging. The Jews' perception of her as a benevolent lord, Elionor knew, could be decisive for the successful repopulation of Morvedre's Jewish quarter.17 While the queen could intervene effectively in Morvedre in the interests of the Jews, opposing nobles on their behalf presented greater political risks. The war with Castile had hit seigneurial lands especially hard. Armies had burned crops, prevented the peasants from planting, and caused the abandonment of farms and villages.18 The Jews of Morvedre, who had long invested substantial resources in seigneurial economies, were bound to encounter resistance when attempting to recover debts and other assets from lords and peasants struggling to rebuild after years of war. Nicolau de Proixida, the lord of Almenara, whose tenants had depended heavily on Jewish loans, managed to obtain from King Pere the remission of all debts owed to residents of Morvedre. Bonafonat de Sant Feliu, the bailiff of Morvedre and an official of the queen's household, ignored the pardon, however, and took action against the delinquent peasants of Almenara. Responding to the complaints of the peasants, in May 1366 Queen Elionor ordered him to desist. But in August, cat the instance of the Jews' of Morvedre, who convinced her of how much the royal remission prejudiced the town, she sent the bailiff back to olim habitantes in villa predicta [Morvedre], dimissis pro mine hospiciis et possessionibus ac aliis bonis que in dicta villa et eius terminis habebant, vagando incedunt per alias aljamas terre nostre quod in non modicum nostri et regaliarum nostrarum ac etiam aljame judeorum dicte ville Muriveteris detrimentum et preiudicium noscitur redundare'. 17 ACA: C 1574: 116v (14 August 1366): cvosaltres [municipal officials] immoderadament contra raho los [Jews] tatxats els fets pagar ensemps ab vosaltres en les obres del castell, dels murs e vails, e en les cases que havets imposades per vostres necessitats, la qual cosa torna en gran dampnatge de la aljama dels dits juheus . . . vos pregam que per honor de nos vos vullats haver envers la dita aljama e sos singulars benignament e favorable, axi en les dites obres com en altres carrechs, e que aytant com puschats los alleugets de messions e de carrechs, esguardada lur fretura e inopia. E en tal manera que coneguen que per nostres prechs son alleujats dels dits carrechs e messions a les quals no poden complir. Sabents que a£o vos tendrem en servey, el contrari nos desplauria molt'. 18 J. Boswell, The Royal Treasure: Muslim Communities under the Crown ofAragon in the Fourteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 385-90, especially regarding the seigneurs' Muslim peasants.

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Almenara. The bailiff could not have had much success there, for the pleas of the influential Proixida soon reached the queen and moved her, in September, to stay all procedures until she could personally investigate the matter.19 The queen apparently decided to concede to the people of Almenara a temporary moratorium on debt collection instead of a remission of their debts. Unfortunately for the Jews of Morvedre Almenara was not the only recipient of her generosity. Several seigneurs, great lords as well as mere knights, shielded their tenants from the legal initiatives of Morvedre's Jewish creditors with the queen's moratoria. The tactics of the seigneurs were not only defensive, however. Maintaining that the Jews of Morvedre had, due to their 'crime of rebellion' against the king, forfeited all their property, the lords refused the Jews access to the lands and other assets they owned on their estates and seized them for themselves. This state of affairs persisted for a few years, with the result that seigneurial domains were reconstructed at the expense of the Jews. By 1369, however, enough was enough. The Jews of Morvedre and their aljama, which rendered Queen Elionor ordinary taxes, could not bear being shut out from the lands of the seigneurs indefinitely. On 2 February Elionor revoked all moratoria and instructed royal officials to see to it that the lords permitted the Jews to collect the debts owed them. Moreover, since the crown had by now pardoned the Jews for their rebellion, all the properly which the Jews had possessed on the lords' estates before the war was to be fully restored to them.20 If there were limits to Elionor's ability to protect the Jews' interests on seigneurial domains, her authority to tax the Jews of her own aljamas was unlimited. Fortunately Elionor chose to exercise fiscal restraint instead of fleecing her Jewish subjects. The re-emergence and persistence of a Jewish community in Morvedre after the Castilian occupation owed much to her prudent administration. Because the Jews' economic opportunities in the wider region were, for a number of reasons, limited for some years after the war, the financial situation of the aljama was especially precarious. The remarkably foresighted fiscal policy of Queen Elionor was therefore absolutely crucial for the process of reconstruction. Tax records and royal letters clearly demonstrate this and reflect the gradual and steady reinvigoration of the Jewish community. Sensitive to the 'damages and scandals' the Jews had suffered on account of the Castilian occupation, in August 1366 she forgave the Jews all taxes they normally would have paid to King Pere during the months extending from the Castilians' capture of Morvedre until their surrender of it the previous September.21 19

ACA: C 1574: 35 v (16 May 1366) treats the complaint of the people of Almenara. C 1574: 112r-v (13 August 1366) is the queen's order 'ad instantiam judeorum dicte ville', which suggests that the Jews were the creditors of Morvedre mainly implicated in the affairs of Almenara. ACA: C 1574: 120r-v (5 September 1366). Deibel, 'Elionor', 405-6, treats the functions of Sant Feliu in the queen's household. 20 ACA: C 1577: 32v-33r (2 February 1369). 21 ACA: C 1574: 112v-113r (13 August 1366): cAd dampna et scandala que vos aljama judeorum ville nostre Muriveteris et singulares vestri propter occupationem, quam Rex Castelle dudum fecit de villa predicta, multipliciter passi estis nostrum intuitum

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For the current fiscal year, September 1365 to September 1366, she was requesting only a 500 sous b. (currency of Barcelona) tribute from the aljama. The size of the tribute doubled for the next two fiscal years, 1367-68, but the 1,000 sous b. demanded was only half the size of the tribute the queen had received from the aljama before the war.22 The bailiff of Morvedre and two local Jews of his choice carefully determined the contributions to be made by each Jewish household to these tributes.23 At the urging of King Pere, and perhaps contrary to her own wishes, Queen Elionor demanded extraordinary subsidies from some of her aljamas, including Morvedre, in April 1368. This money was to help finance the king's endless struggles with the Sards. The sums were, however, quite small: 700 sous b. from Morvedre, 1,000 sous b. from Alzira, and 600 sous b. from Borriana.24 Prince Joan added a bit to the burden, requiring 'the aljamas of the kingdom' to provide him with 1,630 sous for expenses. Although these subsidies were relatively paltry, the aljama of Morvedre found it difficult to produce them.25 Recognizing the 'poverty' of the Morvedre community and the danger that even small extraordinary taxes posed to its survival at this juncture, the queen promised the aljama that it would have to render nothing more than the 1,000-sous tribute in the fiscal year ending in September 1369.26 King Pere was less cautious, however, and soon his treasurer, Ramon de Vilanova, was ordering the Valencian aljamas to send representatives to negotiate the subsidies the king needed for defensive action against the unruly mercenary Companies, then passing through Catalonia en route to Castile. Enraged that Vilanova had acted without consulting her about the taxation of her aljamas, Queen Elionor commanded the bailiff of Morvedre to advise the local Jews neither to designate a representative nor to pay anything. She then wrote an angry letter to Vilanova, reminding him just how poor the Valencian aljamas were. The aljama of Xativa was so indigent she had been compelled to release it from all fiscal obligations. A demanda on her part to the Jews of Alzira had precipitated flight en masse, leaving, it was reported, only one Jewish household in the town. As for the aljama of Valencia, the only community that was not impoverished, she and King Pere would discuss fiscal affairs with it once they arrived in Valencia.27 misericorditer dirigentes'. 22 ACA: C 1574: 111 v-112r (13 July 1366) for the queen's request. ACA: MR 489: 2v (January 1367), 44v (June 1367); MR 491: 6r (January 1368); MR 492: 5r (July 1368), and 44r (December 1368) for the receipts of the said quantities. ACA: MR 482: 13r (February 1363) records the aljama? § contributions just before the Castilian occupation. 23 ACA: C 1574: 120r (13 August 1366). 24 ACA: C 1575: 124r (22 April 1368); and ACA: MR 492: 5v (July 1368). 25 ACA: C 1618: Ir (3 May 1368). 26 ACA: C 1575: 188r-v(17 October 1368). 27 ACA: C 1577: 33r-v (1 February 1369), and 33v-34r (same date), are addressed to Vilanova and the bailiff of Morvedre, respectively. ACA: C 1474: llv (6 December 1368) is the letter of King Pere to the Valencian aljamas ordering them to send representatives to Vilanova to discuss subventions 'ratione guerrarum'; 19r (26 June 1369) shows that the

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In order to persuade Vilanova, the queen painted an overly dark picture of life in the Jewish quarters of Xativa and Alzira. True, these towns still felt the effects of the widespread economic dislocation the war had caused, but they had not suffered Castilian occupation. In fact, Elionor had not freed the Jews of Xativa of all fiscal liabilities in 1368; they rendered 1,500 sous b. that year, but only after reaching some 'agreement' with the queen, who had probably wanted more. This aljama paid the same amount in 1369, and 2,000 sous b. in 1370.28 The aljama of Alzira, never a large community, paid only 500 sous b. for its annual tribute, but in 1368, perhaps to compensate for the relatively small sums she was collecting from Morvedre, Queen Elionor sought an additional 2,000 sous b., 1,000 to subsidize the crown's actions in Sardinia and 1,000 sous for a demanda. It was the latter which had allegedly precipitated the flight of practically the entire community. The next year, in order to pacify the aljama, which obviously had more than one household, the queen requested nothing more than the 500-sous annual tribute.29 Perhaps the only Jewish community in the kingdom that did not need to be treated so gingerly by the queen was the one in the capital. From it she received annually a tribute of 12,000 sous b. In addition to this substantial sum, the aljama paid 10,000 sous b. in 1368 and 2,000 sous b. in 1369 towards the queen's expenses. Although the Jews of Valencia had always provided the lion's share of the crown's Jewish revenue, there was a compelling reason why it did so in the years immediately following the war: a good number of the Jews whom the war had affected and displaced moved to the capital, at least temporarily.30 True to her promise to the Jews of Morvedre, Queen Elionor successfully fended off the king's treasurer, but she could keep her needy husband waiting only until the expiration of the promised moratorium in September 1369. Already in July she notified the aljama of Morvedre, along with her other aljamas, that, on top of its annual tribute, it would have to subsidize King Pere's Sardinian meeting with the aljama representatives still had not taken place, probably due to Queen Elionor's objections. ACA: C 1577: 32r-v treats the problem of the Jews of Alzira changing residence cen altres lochs de Regne de Valencia'. Although some Jews had certainly abandoned Alzira—perhaps only temporarily—Queen Elionor's informant seems to have exaggerated the extent of the Jews' flight. A. Furio, 'Diners, i credit. Els jueus d'Alzira en la segona meitat del segle XIV, Revista d'Historia Medieval, 4 (1993): 134, 144-8, presents evidence of the activity of a number of Jews—certainly more than one family—in Alzira in 1369. Perhaps the Jews of Alzira, like the Jews of Morvedre, had developed strategies enabling them to live and work in Alzira without being officially members of, and paying taxes with, the local aljama. 28 ACA: MR 491: 7r (February 1368); MR 492: 38r (November 1368); MR 494: 22v-23r (September 1369); and MR 496: 38r (December 1370), although it is uncertain whether the queen's treasurer ever collected any more than the 666 sous 8 diners (one-third of the 2,000 sous) recorded here. 29 ACA: MR 488: 44v (June 1366) [no payment was recorded in 1367]; MR 492: 5v (July 1368), 9v (August 1368), 39r (November 1366); and MR 494: 3r (July 1369). 30 ACA: MR 488 (1366), 489 (1367), 491-2 (1368), and 493^ (1369). Queen Elionor could also draw upon the massive financial resources of Jahuda Alatzar, who loaned her 87,000 sous in 1370 (ACA: MR 495: 1 Ir). See also Riera, 'Jafuda Alatzar'.

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expedition to the tune of 1,000 sous in mid-September.31 The aljama must have objected immediately, for the very next month, even when her spouse was desperate for income, she reduced the subsidy by 400 sous.32 The other Jewish communities from which the queen sought subsidies—Xativa, Alzira, and Borriana—did not receive such remissions. Whatever their financial difficulties, they were not located in towns, like Morvedre, which Castilian forces had devastated and which were still being repopulated and rebuilt. Indeed, the main problem of the Morvedre community was demographic. It still did not have the numbers to handle large extraordinary taxes; at the same time, such taxes scared off the very Jews it hoped to attract. Hence for the next two years Queen Elionor did not request any extraordinary subsidies from the aljama, and apparently persuaded the king and his treasurer as to the wisdom of this policy.33 In September 1370 Elionor moved to rectify the aljama's demographic deficit, instructing the bailiff, Sant Feliu, about how to encourage Jews 'who are of a mind to come settle there'. He should tell them that the fiscal demands the queen had been making—and which 'we intend to make, God willing'—of her aljamas, and especially of the aljama of Morvedre, were reasonable and tolerable, such that for the last two or three years the aljamas could 'give a certain something each year'.34 There was nothing disingenuous in all of this. Elionor was not extending tax exemptions or any other privileges that might be withdrawn later. She was simply offering the Jews the prospect of living under a fiscal regime which, as long as she controlled it, would not be rapacious and would enable the community to rebuild. Representative of a queen who kept her word and member of one of the old royalist families with whom the Jews had long maintained beneficial relations, Sant Feliu inspired confidence among the potential Jewish immigrants, or, better said, returnees. By 1372 the Jewish population in Morvedre had increased enough 31

ACA: C 1577: 86r (7 July 1369). The subsidies to be paid by the other aljamas were 1,500 sous by Xativa, 1,000 sous by Alzira, and 500 sous by Borriana. 32 ACA: C 1577: 97r (8 August 1369). ACA: MR 358: 48r (December 1369) records the receipt of the 600 sous from the Jews of Morvedre; the monies received from Jews of Borriana, Xativa, and Alzira are recorded at 18v and 30v. 33 ACA: C 919: 135r-v (3 August 1370). 34 ACA: C 1579: 81r-v (1 September 1370): 'Mas aqueys que deyts qui han en cor de venir poblar alii deven pensar que les altres aljames nostres, e aqueixa en special de Murvedre, havem comportades en lurs peytes e carrechs e entenem a fer, deu volent. . . . que per algun poch temps, 50 es II o III anys, nos donen certa cosa cascun any'. The queen began the letter by advising the bailiff not to make individual fiscal agreements with each Jew who settles in Morvedre, for she learned from experience that this was not good policy ( c Car una vegada ho fahem que no fou ben fet e per a9o nols hi volem acostumar'.) Such individual arrangements infringed upon aljama autonomy and made it extremely difficult for it to assess the taxable income of its members and to pursue any kind of reasonable fiscal planning. ACA: MR 495: 39v (May 1370); MR 496: 22v (September 1370); MR 497: 37v (May 1371); and MR 498: 30r (October 1371) record the receipt of the 1,000-sous annual tributes from the Jews of Morvedre.

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for the queen to risk raising the rate of the annual tribute.35 Overly optimistic, Elionor sought 2,000 sous in 1372, double the amount collected the previous four years. The aljama balked; thus she remitted 500 sous from the tribute.36 Even so, there can be no doubt that in the post-bellum reconstruction of Morvedre's Jewish community the year 1372 was a turning point. A tribute of 1,500 sous b. still amounted to an increase of one-third, and in subsequent years the size of the annual tribute continued to grow: 2,100 sous b. in 1373 and 2,200 sous b. in 1374.37 Both quantities exceeded the size of the annual payment the aljama had made before the outbreak of the war. The growth of the Jewish population, and of the taxes it proffered the queen, lagged slightly behind that of the Christian population. In 1366 and 1367 the queen's treasurer received only slightly more than 2,000 sous b. from the municipality. In 1368, however, the municipality's contribution quadrupled to 8,100 sous b., and in 1369 it jumped to 16,300 sous b. It subsequently diminished slightly, to 15,132 sous b. in 1371 and to 14,451 sous b. in 1373.38 Since most Jews had little desire to return to a ghost town, it is not surprising that the repopulation of the Jewish quarter quickened considerably after 1369, by which time the streets of the Christian neighborhoods were evidently buzzing with life. Throughout these years of reconstruction a significant portion of the revenues the queen received from Morvedre was rendered by the Jews: for instance, the Jews paid one-third of the total in 1367, approximately one-ninth in 1368, and approximately one-eighth in 1373. Key for the revival of Morvedre's Jewish community and its ability to render steadily increasing annual tributes after 1371 was Queen Elionor's determination not to submit it to excessive extraordinary taxation. Naturally, once there was a solid demographic foundation upon which the aljama could rebuild its finances— and this was apparently the case by 1372—the aljama's extraordinary fiscal obligations were bound to mount, though not too much if the queen continued to have any say in the matter. Elionor was sufficiently convinced of the general 35

ACA: C 756: 160r (7 May 1371) suggests that members of the Asseyo and Bubo families had returned to Morvedre in the latter half of 1371. 36 ACA: C 1580: 136r (15 March 1372): the original request; C 1581: 26v (3 July 1372): the remission. ACA: MR 500: 20v, 40v record the payment of 1,500 sous by the Jews of Morvedre. 37 ACA: C 1581: 114v-115r (1 May 1373); MR 501: 38v (June 1373); MR 502: 42v (December 1373); C 1583: 66r-v (26 January 1374); MR 503: 44r (May 1374); and MR 504: 2 9r (October 1374). The Jewish community of Lliria, a town which the Castilians had also captured, benefited as well from the careful stewardship of Queen Elionor. In 1368 it paid an annual tribute of 800 sous b., and by 1370 it was rendering a tribute of 1,200 sous to the queen. It continued to pay this amount in subsequent years (with the exception of 1372 when it paid 1,000 sous), which indicates that, while smaller than the aljama of Morvedre, it had achieved a level of demographic and economic stability. 38 ACA: MR 489 (1367 [but also recording payments from 1366]); MR 491-2 (1368); MR 493-4 (1369); MR 495-6 (1370); MR 497-8 (1371); MR 499-500 (1372); and MR 501-2(1373).

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economic recovery of Morvedre that she thought it fair to ask the residents of the town—Christian or Jewish—to contribute moderate quantities of grain to provision her castle in Cervello or to aid the starving inhabitants of Menorca.39 The subsidies that she, acting on behalf of King Pere, required the Valencian aljamas to give the king in 1374 were quite reasonable: 500 sous b. from Morvedre, 1,000 sous b. from Xativa, 200 sous b. from Alzira, 300 sous b. from Borriana, and 9,000 sous b. from Valencia city.40 It still upset Queen Elionor when other members of the royal family, or their officials, pressured her Jewish communities to provide subsidies or loans without her mediation. In 1374 Prince Joan needed funds to pay the troops he was leading to Rossello and Cerdanya to combat the mercenaries fighting for the persistent Jaume W of Mallorca, who still had not relinquished his claim to the Balearic kingdom. He therefore turned to Jahuda Alatzar, the financier from Valencia, and demanded that the Jew loan him 100,000 sous. The Valencian aljamas were, according to the prince's elaborate scheme, to contribute 40,700 sous to Alatzar's loan. The arrangement worked out between Alatzar and the aljamas left the Jews of Morvedre responsible for 3,300 sous.41 The queen was annoyed, in part because, as she must have known, Prince Joan had long been receiving an annual allowance of 12,000 sous from crown aljamas42 She expressed her displeasure to Joan in no uncertain, but somewhat exaggerated, terms. Reminding him that the aljamas belonged to her and were already burdened enough, she warned, 'And if you wish to oppress them further . . . it would only lead to their undoing and we would lose them'. She ordered the bailiff of Morvedre not to cooperate at all with the prince; the Jews must not give anything.43 39

ACA: C 1583: 167r (21 October 1374): 25 caffigos of grain for the castle, which the bailiff should purchase from the people of Morvedre if necessary; and 172r (27 December 1374) regarding Menorca. 40 ACA: C 1583: 67r (25 January 1374). The queen notes that 'inducimur . . . quadam inexcusabili ratione'. 41 ACA: C 1651: 84r-v (19 October 1374). 42 ACA: C 772: 77v-78r (30 June 1374) shows that the prince had originally been granted this allowance in 1355. At this juncture the Jews of Morvedre were complaining because the alj'ama of Valencia had just modified the original distribution of the burden of the allowance among Valencian aljamas in a manner prejudicial to them. 43 ACA: C 1582: 106r (27 October 1374): 'Molt car primogenit Entes havem que vos per manera de prestech e sots altres colors fets demandes a les aljames des jueus de Regne de Valencia e dels jueus de Calatayud de totes quantitats de diners, la qual cosa no plau a nos. Majorment com sens licencia e volentat nostra vos en plenits. Car vos sabets ben que les dites aljames son nostres e que nos [dojnaven subsidis e altres drets qui ab los altres carrechs que ells han los son fort oneroses. Et si vos sobre tot a9o les volets mes oppembre no seria sinon desferlos e que nos les perdessem. Perqueus preguam e volem que ne de la aljama de Murvedre ne daltres aljames nostres demanets ne hajats res e que daqui anant demandes alcunes en nenguna manera a les dites aljames no fa9ats ne fer fa9ats'. ACA: C 1582: 106v (same date) is the letter to the bailiff of Morvedre. In a later letter—C 1583: 174v-175r (5 November)—the queen ordered the bailiff of the Jewish aljama of Valencia, Domingo Costa, to compel the aljama to reimburse the Jews of Xativa for the 4,400 sous

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Impressed by his mother's determination to guard her turf, Prince Joan responded with a plea, perhaps a genuine one, of poverty. The upshot of this family argument is uncertain, but, since Queen Elionor died on 20 April 1375, Prince Joan may well have had his way. In any case, the Jewish community in Morvedre was, by that time, populous and prospering, in good shape to weather the coming storms. The aljama of Morvedre became a possession of Maria de Luna, the queen of Marti I, in January 1398.44 Since the death of Queen Elionor, however, the aljama'$ progress had not been wholly smooth. The anti-Jewish violence of the summer of 1391 had transformed the kingdom's socio-religious landscape: in the capital the great aljama was wiped out and replaced by a converse community; other towns were left with small converso populations living beside the remaining local Jews. True, due to the decisive action of the royal bailiff and local notables, the aljama of Morvedre did escape the 1391 violence largely unscathed, thereby becoming the most important Jewish community in the kingdom. Nevertheless, the ramifications of the violence affected it deleteriously. The influx of Jewish refugees into Morvedre put a strain on aljama resources and institutions; papal inquisitors investigating judaizing converses and their Jewish contacts snooped around town and harassed the Jews; and the Jews' economic and social relations with Christians in the area were, for a time, more delicate and uncertain.45 Queen Maria, then, acquired the aljama of Morvedre at a precarious moment in its history. She quickly emerged as the Jews' most resolute protector. Of course, like Elionor, she had a vested interest in the survival and prosperity of this aljama. While kings were hard pressed to give close attention to all the towns and villages comprising the royal patrimony, their queens could devote themselves more fully to the few communities under their supervision. Maria, in fact, involved herself in a wider range of the Jews' affairs than had Elionor. One reason was that whereas Elionor had been granted jurisdiction over the entire town, and so had been responsible for the affairs of the Christian municipality as well, Maria received only the Jewish aljama. She governed it closely.46 they had paid to its officials for their portion of the loan to Prince Joan. Apparently the aljama of Valencia had already forwarded the entire 40,700 sous to Jahuda Alatzar and Prince Joan; it expected to be repaid by the other aljamas. 44 ACA: C 2311: 10r-14r, 16v-17r (both 26 January 1398). The queen also acquired the Jewish communities of Tortosa, Fraga, Barbastro, Huesca, Ejea, and Albarracin, as well as the Muslim communities of Valencia, Xativa, Tortosa, Fraga, Huesca, and Albarracin. 45 On the 1391 violence in the kingdom of Valencia, see F. Danvila, 'El robo de la juderia de Valencia en 1391', Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia, 8 (1886): 358-97; P. Wolff, 'The 1391 Pogrom in Spain: Social Crisis or Not?' Past and Present, 50 (1971): 418, esp. 9-10, 16-18; J. Riera Sans, cLos tumultos contra las juderias de la Corona de Aragon en 1391', Cuadernos de Historia: Anexos de la Revista 'Hispania', 8 (1977): 21725; E. Vidal Beltran, Valencia en la epoca de Juan I (Valencia, 1974), 53-70; J. Hinojosa Montalvo, The Jews of the Kingdom of Valencia: from Persecution to Expulsion, 1391— 1492, translated by S. Nakache (Jerusalem, 1993), 21-46; and Meyerson, Jewish Renaissance, chapter one. 46 Maria may well have learned something about administering Jewish affairs from

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In May 1398 Queen Maria issued a series of letters on behalf of the Jews of Morvedre. With the expressed hope of augmenting the community's population (and increasing the number of taxpayers), she confirmed all the privileges it had been granted by Pere III and his predecessors.47 She also exempted the Jews from any special investigations into illegal usury,48 affirmed the right of the adelantats (aljama executive officers) to adjudicate civil suits between Jews according to Jewish law and without any intervention whatsoever of the local bailiff,49 and enjoined all officials to protect the Jews, now her 'treasure'.50 The queen's expectation that such measures would attract more Jews to Morvedre was not unfounded. Hence a year later she made sure that all immigrants establishing their domicilium there understood that they were liable to contribute to communal taxes.51 In 1402 Maria empowered the growing community to establish confraternities for caring for the sick, burying the dead, and teaching poor boys, as had been the custom before 1391.52 These were all rather traditional measures, though after 1391 a consistent and familiar royal policy meant a great deal to the Jews. A more striking indication of Maria's earnestness was her attempt to endow her local procurator, Francesc Aguilo, with powers superior to those of the royal bailiff and, in particular, to grant him appellate jurisdiction over any cases involving Jews that might come before the bailiffs court. Her aim was cto place that aljama . . . in a better position than it has been in until now'.53 Aguilo was a member of one of the knightly families who had protected the Jews in 1391, but, then again, so was the bailiff, Bernat de Sant Feliu, son of Bonafonat. The queen soon had to revoke this provision, not because it favored the Jews excessively but because it violated the bailiff s jurisdiction. She was similarly compelled to restore to the bailiff at least some supervisory role in the Jews' civil suits, even if it meant additional legal expenses for Jewish litigants.54 Still, the Jews had no reason to fret with a Sant Feliu as bailiff. Under the careful administration of Queen Maria and King Marti, the financial situation of the aljama gradually improved. In 1398 the aljama was still struggling Queen Elionor, for she was educated at Elionor's court while waiting to marry Prince Marti. See Riera, 'Jafuda Alatazar', 81, regarding this Jew's role in the finances of both Countess Maria and Queen Elionor between 1362 and 1372, the year of Maria's wedding to Marti. 47 ACA: C 2335: 91v (18 May 1398), confirmed by King Marti on 31 May, ACA: C 2191: 26v. 48 ACA: C 2335: 85v (18 May 1398). On 20 May 1404 Maria renewed this exemption for a period often years, ACA: C 2178: 96v-97r. Jews, of course, could still be sued before ordinary lay judges. 49 ACA: C 2335: 88r-v (18 May 1398). The legal opinions of Maimonides, or 'Magistri Mosse de Egipt', contained in the Mishneh Torah, were cited as the principal source for the Jewish judges of Morvedre. 50 ACA: C 2335: 86v (20 May 1398). 51 ACA: C 2336: 81r(27May 1399). 52 ACA: C 2338: 157v (9 December 1402) [Hinojosa, Jews, no. 269]. 53 ACA: C 2335: 88v-89r (18 May 1398). 54 ACA: C 2335: 125r-v, 125v-126r (both dated 25 July 1398).

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with the numerous debts it had contracted in 1391-92, when a general state of emergency and the flood of Jewish refugees necessitated much unprecedented expenditure. Maria and Marti taxed the Jews more lightly than had their predecessor, King Joan.55 They were prepared to forgive the Jews some of their obligations if aljama officials could make a good case. There was, for example, some question regarding the amount the aljama owed the crown 'for reason of protection'. Pere III had originally demanded 500 sous b. annually, but Prince Joan had then reduced the sum to 125 sous. Even though Maria deemed Joan's action a violation of regalian rights, she did not press the aljama for the 500 sous.56 Extraordinary taxation was not too burdensome and was intermittent. The queen made the largest request in 1398, asking the aljama to pay her 3,135 sous for all the provisions she had made that year on the Jews' behalf. The money came directly out of the pocket of Jacob Fagan, who seems by then to have become something of a favorite of the queen, probably because his pockets were so deep. She had in fact taken some care to ensure that Jacob's pockets stayed full, instructing, for instance, the justice of Sogorb and other officials to proceed against individuals indebted to him.57 The royal couple—or sometimes Maria alone—regulated the amount of annuities (censals) aljama officials might sell for the purpose of raising funds to meet communal expenses.58 In order further to assist the officials in this task, Maria 55

On the aljama during the 1391-96 period under King Joan, and on the taxation of it during the reign of Marti, see Meyerson, Jewish Renaissance, 27-35. 56 ACA: C 2311: 40r-v (2 December 1398): Marti grants to Maria the protection payments Joan had collected from the crown's Jews; and ACA: C 2337: 98r-v (4 November 1399): after initially deciding, on 26 July, to exact the 500 sous, Maria suspends the order for a period of three months. The registers of the bailiff of Morvedre (Arxiu del Regne de Valencia, Mestre Racional [henceforth ARV MR]: 3988-91) indicate that the order remained suspended. 57 ACA: C 2335: 90r (18 May 1398). In her capacity as Marti's lieutenant, Maria had acted on Jacob's behalf even before the aljama of Morvedre became attached to her treasury. ACA: C 2330: 131v-132r (23 February 1397), a letter of gentle reproach from the queen to Jacob, describes how one Diago de Cetina had, on the queen's instructions, worked out a compromise between Jacob and various Christian and Muslim debtors in and around Sogorb. However, because En Diago had to go to Sicily on royal business and the terms of the compromise could not be effected on time, Jacob went ahead and took legal action against the debtors, some of whom were seigneurial vassals. Maria agreed that Jacob was within his rights, but pointed out that Jacob's suits might unnecessarily antagonize the seigneurs. She therefore admonished him to be patient and to wait until En Diago's return. The familiar tone of this letter is noticeable. Some years later Maria granted a guiatge to Jacob and his guarantors so that he could conduct business in Sogorb for a period of ten days without fear of being sued by his creditors. See ACA: C 2339: HOv-lllr (17 March 1404). 58 ACA: C 2341: 123v-124r and C 2175: llv-12r (20 July 1401): permission to the aljama from both queen and king to sell a censal valuing 15,000 sous; C 2339: Ir (18 March 1403): permission to sell a censal of 1,650 sous from the queen alone; and C 2339: 129r-v and C 2177: 72v-73r (7 February 1404): permission to sell a censal of 5,000 sous from both

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upheld the system of internal sales taxes (cises) established by King Joan in 1394 and renewed the license for another ten years in 1403.59 She also empowered communal officials to collect all taxes owed by Jews considering emigration before their departure, and to tax the property of deceased taxpayers before their heirs attempted to transfer the property elsewhere.60 Such fiscal considerations, as well as her favoring of Jacob Pagan, led Maria to intervene in aljama politics. Jacob's connections with the queen made him a much more formidable opponent to his numerous rivals in the community. David el Rau, for instance, complained that Jacob had been using his 'power' and influence to drag him before various Christian tribunals, thus violating the jurisdiction of Jewish courts while exhausting him with needless legal expenses.61 Even though Jacob used his influence with Queen Maria on behalf of the community, aljama officials, at least those serving in 1398, were more resentful than grateful. That year they refused to reimburse Jacob after he paid the aforementioned 3,135 sous to the queen's treasurer. Nor would they take his expenditures into account when they assessed him for taxes. Upon receiving a letter from the queen enjoining them to put their rancor aside and requite Jacob, the aljama officials turned to the lieutenant bailiff, Remiro Remirez, for assistance, shrewdly inflaming his indignation at the special jurisdiction over the Jewish community which Queen Maria and her underlings claimed. Remirez marched over to the Jewish quarter, disdainfully displayed the queen's letter while impugning her authority in Jewish affairs, and then seized Jacob. He also persuaded the sindic of the aljama, who allegedly needed little persuading, to defy the queen publicly. Jacob Pagan found himself at the center of a jurisdictional conflict between Queen Maria on the one hand and the royal bailiff and the municipality on the other. Maria needed at least another six months to resolve Jacob's difficulties.62 Events would prove that it was much to the benefit of the Jewish community that the queen did not shrink from confrontation, whether defending her favorite king and queen. On the growing importance of the censal in the kingdom's economy and in municipal, royal, and seigneurial finance, see A. Garcia Sanz, 'El censaP, Boletin de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura, 37 (1961): 281-310; and A. Furio, 'Credito y endeudamiento: el censal en la sociedad rural valenciana (siglos XIV-XV)', mSenorioyfeudalismo en la Peninsula Iberica (ss. XII-XIX), ed. E. Sarasa Sanchez and E. Serrano Martin, 4 vols. (Zaragoza: 1993), 1:501-34. 59 ACA: C 2335: 88r (18 May 1398); and C 2339: 109r-v (6 December 1403). ACA: C 1906: 212r-v (7 January 1394) [Hinojosa, Jews, no. 198] is Joan's original license. Such a system of internal sales taxes had been in place since 1326, on which see Meyerson, Jews, 141-3. 60 ACA: C 2339: 128v-129r (15 February 1404), and C 2177: 73r regarding potential emigres; and C 2339: 160r-161r (28 August 1404) regarding the property of the deceased. 61 ACA: C 2330: 59r-v (2 December 1396). Maria responded favorably to David's plea, commanding the bailiff to have the suits remitted to Jewish judges if they warranted such adjudication. David and Jacob did not resolve their dispute for a long time—not until 1403. 62 ACA: C 2335: 140r-v [two letters] (2 November 1398), 143r (11 December 1398); C 2336: 62v (7 April 1399), and 77r-v (23 May 1399).

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Jacob or rescuing his fellows from the clutches of the papal inquisitors. Maria acquired an aljama in a state of political transition. A good number of Jews who had taken refuge in Morvedre in 1391 had put down roots in the community by 1398. Since they were paying taxes, these new permanent residents ofthejueria wanted a voice in communal government. They naturally objected to an electoral regime which was practically a closed shop and which offered them only a slight possibility of breaking in any time soon. King Marti therefore opened up the elections: instead of just the current officials, 'each and every Jew of the said aljama, at least those who comprise or represent the aljama' were to choose by majority vote the adelantats, tercer (an alternate adelantat), and clavari (treasurer). Marti's definition of the electorate was deliberately vague; those who demanded a voice were given one.63 Once the adelantats were chosen, Queen Maria provided for the election of the councillors. Every three years the current adelantats would choose seven councillors, instead of the previous twelve. The seven were to represent the upper, middle, and lower classes, but the queen did not specify how seven should be divided by three. She most likely intended three of the seven councillors to be drawn from the upper class so as to consolidate its control of communal government. After all, the queen was most accustomed to dealing with the Jacob Pagans of the Jewish world. In fact, she included in her provisions a clause authorizing the adelantats to keep their friends on the council for another term 'if sufficient persons . . . cannot be found in the aljama'64 As for the election of the adelantats themselves, Maria presumed that the open elections just held at the urging of her husband were only a temporary measure designed to bring new wealthy residents into aljama government. After this brief opening, the electoral regime dominated by the now expanded group of plutocrats could again be closed. For many in the community this closed system was unsatisfactory. Tensions mounted. In 1403 'the aljama' cried out for a change and Queen Maria listened. Rescinding the provisions of 1398, she agreed that the election of the executive officials—adelantats, tercer, and clavari—should be conducted 'in a larger council'. Maria and her Jews had in mind the open electorate King Marti had called for in 1398—that is, open to Jews sufficiently interested and esteemed by their fellows to merit a political voice. The adelantats and clavari thus elected would then select the seven members of the multi-class advisory council. Elections were to be held every year, for the executives as well as the councillors, which enabled a greater number of families to participate in communal government. As had long been the case, close relatives were not to serve together. This flexible system met the needs 63

ACA: C 2189: 180v-181r (1 March 1398). The king also made sure that the elections did not degenerate into a brawl: the royal bailiff would preside and the notary of the aljama would record the vote of each Jew 'separately [and] secretly'. 64 ACA: C 2335: 85r-v (18 May 1398): ccum contigerit ipsos consiliarios eligi dictis adelantatis videbitur non posse inveniri in ipsa aljama sufficientes personas que possint sub dicto numero in consiliarios eligi possint illos . . . vel partem eorum in consiliarios noviter pro triennio tune venienti eligere'.

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of a growing and changing community, furthering oligarchy and stability while making some room for the lower and middle classes, especially their most upwardly mobile members. It functioned, in theory at least, and usually in practice, until the reign of Fernando II (1479-1516).65 In addition to overseeing the aljama's internal affairs, Maria was busy shielding the Jews from external threats. The sources of trouble were the local municipal government and, more seriously, the church. With regard to the former, it was actually religious issues that brought tensions between aljama and municipality to a head. At the Corts of 1403 King Marti enacted legislation to curtail contact between Jews and converses, especially the huge converse community in the capital. One element of the legislation had the potential to legitimate the antiJewish behavior of Christians so inclined. This was the provision demanding that all Jews wear a badge half red and half yellow in color so that they could be more easily distinguished from Christians, New and Old.66 For the Jews of Morvedre, the problem with this badge was that it was larger and, with its yellow half, more noticeable than the red badge Joan I had ordered them to wear in 1396. The Jews feared that the new badge would incite Christians to deride and harass them. The jurats of Morvedre wasted little time: the following year they were importuning the local bailiff to force the Jews to wear the more humiliating badge. Queen Maria intervened on behalf of her Jews, asking the jurats to refrain from further action until she could consult with them a few days hence in Morvedre.67 Having decided not to enforce the specifics of her husband's legislation, and indeed to countermand it, Maria convinced the jurats that the small red badge was more than sufficient. Later that year, since the Jews of Morvedre traded so much in Onda, she asked the Master of the Order of Montesa, the lord of Onda, not to enforce the legislation.68 All officials in any place where the queen possessed 'certain titles' received a command to this effect.69 65

ACA: C 2339: 73v-74r (29 November 1403). ARV: B 1150: 356v (29 January 1449) [Hinojosa, Jews, no. 502] shows that the system instituted by Queen Maria was still in use; this letter, in fact, explicitly refers to the provisions of 1403. On the modification of the system by Fernando II, see Meyerson, Jewish Renaissance, 182-3. 66 ACA: C 2322: 43r (28 September 1403); and ARV: C 630: 350r-v [Hinojosa, Jews, no. 270] for a copy of the same legislation. 67 ACA: C 2339: 116r (15 May 1404). 68 ACA: C 2340: 38r (8 December 1404) [transcribed in Chabret, Sagunto, 2: 342, n.l]. 69 ACA: C 2340: 38r-v (8 December 1404): 'Quia percepimus exposicione per humili facta nobis pro parte aljame judeorum ville Muriveteris quod ipsi judei qui jam alias per cristianos in dictorum judeorum derrisionem premaximam et vilipendiam satis grande pluries et sepe vexantur, timent ne ipsi per vos aut aliquem vestrum cogantur deffere aliam rodam seu signum aliud ab illo quod per judeos Regni Valencie fuit solitum temporibus retrolapsis defferi et exinde crescat eisdem quod fieri posset de ficili ipsa derrisio sive dampnum'. ACA: C 2339: 188v-189r (16 October) is a similar command to the jurats of Sogorb with regard to the Jews who 'stan e habiten' there, and who cse dubten que no sostinguen molts scamiments e vituperacions' should they 'aportenroda o senyal inordonat e passant mesura'. The Jews of Morvedre were certainly frequent visitors to Sogorb.

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The desire of the jurats of Morvedre to have the Jews wear the new badge did not stem from a concern to inhibit their fraternizing with converses. Their motives in attempting to humiliate the Jews further were jurisdictional and fiscal rather than religious. They were lashing out at the Jews in frustration, because they could neither tax the Jews as they wished nor exercise any authority over them. Relations between the municipality and the aljama had begun to sour in 1398, just when the aljama was incorporated into the patrimony of Queen Maria. Whereas in July 1397 the king had lauded municipal officials for 'maintaining and defending' the Jews,70 between 1398 and 1404 he and the queen reprimanded them several times for annoying the Jews. Municipal officials resented the Jews' new and separate status as special wards of the queen. Before 1398 municipality and aljama, the two corporations comprising the town, had always pertained to the same patrimony, whether that of the king, which was usually the case, or that of Queen Elionor of Sicily; hence they had been answerable to the same higher authority. Now, however, Queen Maria and her own officials were interposed between municipality and aljama', they upset the status quo. The officers of the municipality viewed the new situation both as a blow to their own authority as the governors of the town and as an opportunity to profit at the expense of the Jews. Municipality and aljama first clashed in the realm of judicial affairs. Although the local bailiff, as the king's representative, had always possessed, and still possessed, supreme jurisdiction over the Jews, the local justice, as the town's main judge, had often adjudicated suits, especially civil litigation, between Christians and Jews.71 The queen and her men intended to displace the municipal justice, taking such cases into their own hands or leaving them to the bailiff to rule on.72 For the municipality this meant a loss of revenue, in the form of judicial fees, and a derogation of its authority. In order to circumvent the bailiff and the queen's officials, the justice first had a conniving royal prosecutor arraign all Jewish defendants before his court; the two then shared the monetary settlements paid by the Jews.73 Once the king disciplined the prosecutor, the justice took the path of open defiance. It was not until almost two years later, at the end of 1399, that the combined pressure of king and queen cured the justice of his habit of interfering in cases involving Jews.74 70

ACA: C 2114: 40v(ll July 1397). For example, ACA: C 1857: 30v (3 June 1393) [Hinojosa, Jews, no. 172], regarding litigation between the Jew Samuel Legem and local Christians, Alfonso Riello and Domingo de les Coves. However, because Samuel doubted the impartiality of the justice, King Joan had the local bailiff join the justice to decide the case. 72 For example, ACA: C 2341: 139v (13 July 1404), regarding a plea of one Anthoni Cabastany against David el Rau, which was to be adjudicated by the court of the queen's chancery. 73 ACA: C 2116: 15v-16r (1 March 1398). 74 ACA: C 2311: 57v-58r (4 August 1399), and 62r-v (16 October 1399) are both letters to the justice from King Marti; C 2337: 98v-99r (4 November 1399) is a letter of the queen informing the Jews that the justice is not to interfere in their lawsuits. After this, there were no further complaints or royal orders. 71

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The next year it was the turn of the jurats and prohomens. To their way of thinking, the imposition of the new regime, in which municipality and aljama were in important respects beholden to different masters, permitted them to reconsider and alter the fiscal arrangements existing between the two corporations, and, naturally, to do so in a manner that favored the municipality. First they unilaterally modified an arrangement established in 1370 prescribing Jewish liability for municipal sales taxes;75 presumably they increased either the rates paid by the Jews or the number of taxable items. Their second move was more radical; it concerned the payment of the peita (property tax). The Jews had always paid the peita levied on the domiciles and movable goods they possessed in the Jewish quarter directly to the crown. Their peita payments for this mtra-callum property had never formed part of the peita which the municipality rendered to the king. The jurats nonetheless sent agents into the jueria to inventory and assess the Jews' property with the intention of forcing the Jews to contribute to the peita of the municipality. Between September 1400 and February 1401 the king and queen both sent out several letters objecting strenuously to the illicit initiatives of the jurats and demanding that they return everything to its 'pristine state'. The jurats, it seems, had not actually collected the taxes from the Jews, but they continually threatened to do so.76 The jurats were, if anything, tenacious. Legal battles between the municiipality and the aljama 'for reason of the taxation of houses' dragged on for the next two years, with municipal officials inflicting unspecified 'damages' on the aljama along the way. The houses in question must also have included those which Jews owned outside the jueria; for these properties the Jews were obliged to pay peita to the municipality. ThQ jurats were no doubt haggling with the Jews, backed by the bailiff and queen's agents, over assessment.77 The promulgation in 1403 of the new badge law was therefore timely in that it provided municipal officials with another means of forcing their will on the Jews. When Queen Maria appeared in Morvedre in late May 1404 to cow the jurats into forgetting about the larger badge, she probably also resolved outstanding fiscal issues between them and their counterparts in the aljama. After this, municipal officials were, with regard to Jewish affairs, relatively docile. The efforts of King Marti and especially of Queen Maria to foster the aljama of Morvedre, and other aljamas, might well have come to naught had the papal inquisitors had their way. During the reign of Joan I inquisitors had been active prosecuting judaizing converses with the support—sometimes lesser, sometimes greater—of the king.78 The pious King Marti was keener to extirpate the judaizing heresy from among the converses. Convinced that Talmudic Jews were leading 75

On this, see Meyerson, Jews, 257. ACA: C 2311: 80v (3 September 1400); C 2337: 171v (18 September); C 2126: 126r (13 December); C 2311: 85r-v, 85v-86r (19 January 1401); and C 2341: 44r (20 January). 77 ACA: C 2338: 88v-89r (20 May 1402); C 2174: 109r (18 August); and C 2339: 8v (9 May 1403). 78 See Meyerson, Jewish Renaissance, 35^2, for a detailed account. 76

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converses astray, Marti, in September 1400, permitted the inquisitors to prosecute the guilty Jews.79 Within a year, however, the king came to the uncomfortable realization that, as far as the Jews in particular were concerned, he and the inquisitors were working at cross purposes. Maria had probably helped to open his eyes. A pugnacious defender of her patrimony, the queen had from the start viewed all clerical meddling in the affairs of her Jews as a threat. When she learned, in 1398, that the bishop of Sogorb had indicted Jacob Fagan 'concerning certain things touching the Catholic faith', she asked the bishop to release him, accepting Jacob's claim that the charges were false and the opinion of 'trustworthy individuals' that the bishop's initiatives savored more of vexation than of correction. She chose to disregard the fact that five years earlier Jacob had been accused of delivering matzah to the converses of Sogorb and penalized for sending his baptized son to North Africa to return to Judaism. It mattered less to Maria that Jacob might possibly have encouraged converses to judaize than that 'our rights and our vassals . . . will remain whole'.80 The bishop of Sogorb's procedure against Jacob Pagan was but trifling compared to the torments that the inquisitor Barthomeu Gago and his colleagues inflicted on the Jews in 1400-01.81 One of Gago's more egregious actions occurred in Morvedre. There, the object of his attention was a Jewish woman named Mira, whom he accused of returning to Judaism after having received baptism from a certain chaplain in 1391. The inquisitor rounded up witnesses to testify against Mira, but the witnesses afterwards confessed that they had lied. Undeterred, Gago twice imprisoned Mira for three days at a time, shackling and starving her. Upon hearing of this 'inhumane' treatment of Mira, Queen Maria had her own agents look into the affair and demanded that Gago send her a transcript of 79

ACA: C 2195: 68v (15 September 1400), a letter ordering all officials to cooperate with the inquisitors in their investigations. This followed his more detailed pragmatica regarding the alleged nefarious influence of Talmudic Jews on converses—see ACA: C 2173: 115r(12 August 1400) and the discussion in Meyerson, Jewish Renaissance, 45. J. Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, 1982), 77-99; and Y. Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, translated by L. Schoffman, 2 volumes (Philadelphia, 1961), 2: 391-3, on the role of the church and the inquisition in Jewish affairs due to the papacy's growing concern about the Talmud. 80 ACA: C 2335: 89v-90r (18 May 1398): Tongeve captionis dispendia et multorum sumptuum incomoda que Jacob Fa9an, judeus aljame nostre Muriveteris, delatus apud vos [bishop of Sogorb and his vicar] minus vere, ut asserit, de quibusdam catholicam fidem tangentibus nostro per jam per alios delata auditui exposuit idem Jacob in nostri presentia lacrimosus'. After ordering the bishop to cease procedure against Jacob, she concludes, 'quod dictus vassallus noster [Jacob] ex causa predicta amplius vexationis damna non sentiet juraque nostra et nostri vassalli jamdicti perinde remanebut integra pariter et illesa'. For the earlier charges against Jacob, see the discussion of ACA: C 1906: 64r-66r (10 May 1393) [Hinojosa, Jews, no. 164] in M. D. Meyerson, 'The Jewish Community in Murviedro [Morvedre] (1391-1492)', in The Jews of Spain and the Expulsion of 1492, edited by M. Lazar and S. Haliczer (Lancaster, CA, 1997), 132-3. 81 See Meyerson, Jewish Renaissance, 48, for more details.

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the 'trial'. Satisfied that the case against Mira was a tissue of lies, she ordered the inquisitor, on 30 September 1401, to cease all actions against her.82 However, two months later and after two more letters from the queen, Gago still held Mira in chains. King Marti therefore intervened and informed Gago that if he did not immediately release Mira he would be banished from crown lands within eight days, and if found there he would 'keenly feel the wrath of our most cruel enmity'.83 If the queen's anger had not fazed him, the king's certainly did. Disturbed by the inquisitors' questionable activities, Marti ruled in August 1402 that since Jews are not members of the church, they could not fall under the jurisdiction of the inquisition.84 The inquisition was quiescent for a time, but it resumed its offensive against the kingdom's Jews in the summer of 1404 and persisted in prosecuting Jews during the remainder of Marti's reign. The remarkable perseverance of the inquisitors in the face of royal opposition was due in no small part to the consistent support they received from the bishop of Valencia, Hug de Llupia.85 The bishop and his agents actually did more than voice approval of the inquisition; they collaborated with it. Thus, when rising to the defense of the Jews of Morvedre in 1405, Queen Maria discovered that she now had more than one opponent. First she contended with the inquisition. Realizing that her husband's trumpeting of the plenitude of royal power over Jews had not sufficiently impressed the inquisitors, she took a more pragmatic approach and effected a compromise with them as to their 'mode of investigating' and 'duly punishing' Jews in Morvedre. If the queen was willing to admit that perhaps some Jews deserved punishment, then presumably some Jews had been conniving in the judaizing of converses. Nevertheless, by May 1405 the queen was unhappy, alleging that the inquisitors had violated the agreement and were proceeding 'incessantly' against some of her Jews.86 Maria seems to have persuaded the inquisitors to honor the compromise, but in July episcopal officials replaced the ministers of the inquisition as the tormentors of the Jews. Much to her dismay, the local bailiff was not willing to prevent the bishop's men from entering the jueria; he probably feared being excommunicated.87 The queen then proposed to the bishop that they each choose representatives to work jointly on the case that so interested the bishop.88 Bishop Hug, however, refused her offer, as the matter was of such great import to 'the Holy Catholic Faith'. It involved not Jews who led converses astray but Jews who had been bap82

ACA: C 2338: Iv (30 September 1401). ACA: C 2174: 26r-v (20-21 November 1401), two letters [Y. (F.) Baer, Die Juden im christlichen Spanien. Urkunden und Regesten, 2 vols. (Berlin: 1929-36), 1: no. 474]. 84 ACA: C 2174: 105r-v (5 August 1402) [Baer, Die Juden, 1: no. 476]. 85 On whom, see M. M. Carcel Orti, cCasa, corte y cancilleria del obispo de Valencia Hug de Llupia (1398-1427)', Anuario de EstudiosMedievales 28 (1998): 635-59. 86 ACA: C 2340: 97v (19 May 1405). 87 ACA: C 2340: 111 v (27 July 1405). The queen also pointed out that King Marti had written to the justice of Morvedre instructing him to arrest the bishop's men if they did not cease acting against the Jews. 88 ACA: C 2340: 11 Ir-v (27 July 1405). 83

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tized and were now living publicly as Jews. The bishop therefore assigned the case to his Official, two masters in theology, and one Johan Carbonell. The bishop's response evoked unsettling memories of the inquisition's horrible treatment of Mira four years earlier. Worse still, the Jews—more specifically Jewish women—whom episcopal agents meant to try were not ordinary women. One was Jamila, the daughter and heir of the wealthy and powerful Jew of Valencia, Jahuda Alatzar (d. 1377). Her husband was Samuel Suxen, scion of the affluent Suxen family of Xativa and once adelantat of the aljama of Valencia. The other two women were Jamila's aunt Astruga, the affluent widow of Salamo Abenmarvez of Valencia, and Jamila's daughter, also named Astruga. Were these women condemned, the queen's treasury would sustain significant losses. A bit of probing on the part of the queen's men revealed that the main charges were against Astruga, Jamila's daughter, and that they had been made by her paternal uncle, the converso Manuel Salvador, formerly Mahir Suxen of Xativa. Salvador was claiming that Astruga had returned to Judaism after baptism and that her mother and great aunt had induced her to commit this grave crime against the Catholic faith. Salvador's intention, the queen maintained, was to have Astruga baptized so that she could then marry his converso brother-in-law, the husband of his (and Samuel Suxen's) deceased sister. Salvador had even brought the widowed brother-in-law from Mongo for the purpose. Salvador and his brother-in-law must have had designs on the large dowry that Astruga would bring to the marriage. As a consequence of Salvador's scheming, the bishop imprisoned the three women at the end of June and had all of Jamila's considerable assets inventoried. The discovery that Johan Carbonell, the one layman assigned to the case, was an advocate of Manuel Salvador increased Queen Maria's suspicions about the whole affair. By September the bishop still had not conducted a proper trial, though he had managed to extract some confession from the young Astruga. The bishop seems to have believed Salvador's charges, or perhaps he was seizing the opportunity to coerce another Jew into the church and confiscate some of Jamila's wealth in the bargain. The queen, in any case, demanded that the bishop cease this unjust harassment of her vassals and forbid the participation of Carbonell in the trial. She suggested that if there really was a crime against the faith, then she and her officials would be pleased to assist in the proceedings in accordance with the agreement she had reached with the inquisition. She then commanded the viceroy to free the women from the bishop's prison and to arrest Salvador if the bishop did not comply with her orders.89 The bishop must have obeyed, for the women were soon back in Morvedre. Seven years later Astruga, Jamila's daughter, married a Jew of Calatayud, Mosse Constantin.90 The death of Queen Maria at the end of 1406 deprived the Jews of Morvedre of their most staunch defender. After her death, King Marti less effectively limited inquisitorial and episcopal abuse of Jews and converses in the kingdom of 89

ACA: C 2340: 121v-122r (9 September 1405) is the letter to the bishop, and 122v (same date) is the letter to the viceroy. 90 ACA: C 2360: 16v-17r (19 August 1412).

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Valencia. No longer bound by their compromise with the queen, the inquisitors and their allies in the episcopal palace resumed their questionable prosecution of Jews. While filling their own coffers, they worked to impoverish converses and Jews, and to drive them either out of the kingdom or irrevocably into the church. Even though King Marti tried to put an end to the worst abuses, it was often too little too late.91 Only time and the advent of a more decidedly pro-Jewish monarch, Alfonso IV, 'the Magnanimous' (1416-58), would put a stop to the inquisition's molestation of the Jews of Morvedre and set this Jewish community on a course of demographic expansion and prosperity.92 Elionor of Sicily and Maria de Luna could not solve all the problems of the Jews of Morvedre in the course of the years when the aljama pertained to their queenly treasuries and was under their supervision. Fiscal imperatives, the prevailing late medieval anti-Judaism, which they neither could nor wanted to escape, and their husbands' ultimate determination of the crown's Jewish policy all limited what they could achieve on behalf of the Jews. Still, that the Jewish community in Morvedre survived through the tumultuous decades after the Black Death to thrive in the fifteenth century owed a great deal to the careful administration and protection of these two dynamic queens.

91

Javierre Mur, Maria, 103-8, points out that Maria had to urge the hesitant Marti to pacify the city of Valencia, which was plagued by faction and feud; the queen was more decisive and interventionist. 92 For the Jews of Morvedre under Marti I (post-1406), Fernando I (1412-16), and Alfonso IV, and the Jews' changing economic strategies, see Meyerson, Jewish Renaissance, chapters 1-3.

CHAPTER FIVE

Spirit and Force: Politics, Public and Private in the Reign of Maria de Luna (1396-1406)1 Nuria Silleras-Fernandez

When the infant countess Maria de Luna was married to the infant Marti, the second son of Pere the Ceremonious (1336-87), no one would have predicted that twenty-four years later she would become queen of the Crown of Aragon. Her accession to the throne in 1396 came about by accident—an accident suffered by King Joan I (1387-96) while he was practicing his favorite pastime (which had gained him the sobriquet, cthe Hunter'). The king had no male heirs and thus it befell his brother, Marti, to succeed him; Maria, Marti's consort, became queen. In the Middle Ages a queen was to be pious, charitable and cultivated, but her most important role was that of mother, and she was expected to give birth to at the very least one male heir. Both as queen and mother she was counted upon to maintain a public and ceremonial image as a representative of the monarchy. In order to emulate Christian humility and to promote a good reputation, the queen was to be manifestly pious, and liberal with the alms which she dispensed to the poor, the needy and, most importantly, the clergy and religious orders within her realms. Though these were not strictly speaking political activities, they did serve indirectly to sustain the monarchy and thus were in an important sense political. Further, the ideal of the queen as not empowered in any direct sense is countered by a practical reality in which the queen did in fact play an important, sometimes 1

This article addresses themes treated in greater detail in my doctoral dissertation, 'Maria de Luna, una reina entre la piedad y el poder (1396-1406)', (Bellaterra: Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 2002). This article was written during the tenure of a post-doctoral fellowship granted by the Spanish Secretaria de Estado de Educacion y Univesidades of the Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte and financed in part by the Fondo Social Europeo. I would like also to thank the Center for Cultural Studies of the University of California Santa Cruz for institutional support. The following abbreviations are used in the notes: AC A (Archivo de la Corona de Aragon), AHN (Archivo Historico Nacional), AMV (Archivo Municipal de Valencia), ARP (Archivo del Real Patrimonio), ARV (Archivo del Reino de Valencia) and CR (Cancilleria Real).

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indispensable, role in the government of the realm. While some medieval monarchies expressly excluded women from formal government, others were less extreme, permitting queens to serve as lieutenants or regents; finally there were other regimes in which women could not only inherit crown and title, but could indeed wield power in their own right. In any of these scenarios, however, the queen was a figure with a considerable capacity for political influence thanks to her various attributes: governor, royal wife, mother, widow, regent or royal lieutenant. The present article has as its aim to briefly investigate the political interventions of Maria de Luna (1396-1406). This involves contextualizing her experience before she came to the throne—her formative period as a political figure. Next, her formal political activities as the lieutenant of her husband, Marti I, will be reviewed. Finally, her 'private' political life, intimately linked to her public politics, and which was centered on her family, lineage and her patronizing of individuals and religious institutions will be examined. The medieval Crown of Aragon was a political-dynastic entity, an aggregate of several kingdoms and counties with diverse traditions concerning the nature of royal and comital power. The net effect of these customs was that, while women were in practice prohibited from inheriting the Crown or ruling in their own right, they could exercise real power as representatives of the kings, a role formalized in the office of the lloctinent/lugarteniente (lieutenant).2 The royal lieutenancy was usually occupied by the king's first-born son and heir, but in special circumstances—when the king was absent on campaign, ill, when the heir was a minor, or in other 'emergency' situations—the queen could be temporarily designated lieutenant. In short, a queen could only exercise monarchical power by virtue of her relationship with her husband, and thus her political capacity during his lifetime would depend to no small degree on the type of personal relationship which they enjoyed, in addition to her own character and capacity. When Maria de Luna became queen she was already a mature woman, well-experienced in the administration of noble patrimony and the dynamics of life in the royal court. These factors helped to determine her success as lieutenant-general of the Crown of Aragon in 1396-97 and as lieutenant of the Kingdom of Valencia in 1401-06. Hence in order to understand her ten years as queen and her political activities during this period, it is necessary to take into account her own precedents, education, and activities before she came to formal power. Maria de Luna appears to have been born in 1358, daughter of one of the most important noble lines of the Crown of Aragon.3 She was the first-born child of

2

Regarding the right of succession see: A. Garcia Gallo. 'La sucesion del trono en la Corona de Aragon', Anuario de Historia del Derecho Espanol 36 (1966): 5-187. For Maria de Castella as lieutenant, see T. Earenfight, 'Maria of Castile, Ruler or Figurehead? A Preliminary Study in Aragonese Queenship7, Mediterranean Studies 4 (1994): 45-61. 3 She appears in the will of her father, Count Lope de Luna. ARV: Real 647: 8r-18v (10 August 1358), edited in part in P. Garces de Carinena, Nobiliario de Aragon, anotado por Zurita, Blancasy otros autores, edited by A. Ubieto, (Zaragoza: 1983): 155-69.

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Lope, Count of Luna and Lord of Segorb and his wife, Brianda d'Agout4 With the death of her father in 1360 she inherited his extensive patrimony, a fact which contributed to the decision one year later by King Pere the Ceremonious to marry her to his second-born son, Marti. The monarch wanted to have a noble and wealthy heiress for his son, and the Countess of Luna answered his most eager expectations. The formation and consolidation of great seigniorial estates through marriage to noble heiresses was a standard strategy of the aristocracy of medieval Europe. Many great families owed their rise to such unions, for example the FoixBearn (later rulers of France), the Armagnac-Rodez, the Brabante-Limbourg, Hainault-Holland and Flanders-Burgundy.5 In that spirit, on 14 July 1361, at Zaragoza, Brianda d'Agout, Pere the Ceremonious and Queen Elionor de Sicilia signed the accord which established that their respective children would contract marriage when they had reached the age of fourteen. It also specified that the infant countess be moved to the royal court once she had reached the age of eight, to be educated by the queen.6 Through this betrothal Pere repaid his debt to the deceased Lope de Luna, who had maintained an unflinching loyalty to the monarch during his recent conflict with the nobility (the Union). For his part, in addition to bringing the valuable estates of Lope into the royal orbit, Pere strengthened his ties to and, thus, his influence and authority over the rebellious Aragonese nobility. As for Maria de Luna, because had been betrothed at such a young age she came to enjoy an intimate relationship with the royal family from her earliest years. In fact, she ended up moving in with the royal court before the agreed time; from 1362 on, when she was likely only four years old, she appears in administrative records accompanying Queen Elionor and her children in their travels.7 Thus Maria grew up with the boy who years later would become her husband, a fact which engendered a high level of mutual confidence and intimacy in the couple. As a result of their marriage Maria's estates became some of the most extensive of the Crown: her own inheritance, including Lope's vast tracts of land in Aragon and Valencia, were augmented by the generous concessions made by Pere to his son Marti.8 After Pere's death in 1387 the king's first-born, Joan I, and his wife, Violant de Bar, came to power, whereupon the new ruler installed his brother 4 In this era, the Luna lineage was divided into three branches, of which Count Lope's line, the Ferrench de Luna, was the most important. Brianda d'Agout was a descendant of a Proven9al house, the Lords of Sault. See F. de Moxo Montoliu, La Casa de Luna (1276— 1348). Factor politico y lazos de sangre en la ascension de un linaje aragones (Madrid: 1990), 199-210. 5 M. Nassiet, Tarente et successions dynastiques aux 14e et 15e siecles', Annales Histoire, Sciences Sociales 3 (1995): 631. 6 ACA: CR 1547: 39r-43v (Zaragoza, 4 July 1361). 7 ACA: ARP 608: 30v (April-May 1362); 38v (June-July 1362). 8 Pere the Ceremonious made the following assignations to Marti: in Catalonia, the County of Besalu, Camprodon, the Viscounty of Bas, Tamarit and Sant Esteva de la Llitera; in Aragon Berbegal, Pertusa, Bolea, Biel and Loarre; and in Valencia the County of Xerica (in exchange for Besalu) and Morella, La Plana, Elche, Crivillent, Liria, Alcoy and Penaguila.

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as Duke of Montblanc and named him as his lieutenant. Thus, Maria de Luna added the title of Duchess of Montblanc to her already long list of honors, and so became the mistress of a seigniorial agglomeration without parallel in the Crown of Aragon.9 From the outset of the couple's adult relationship, Maria de Luna had not only taken a direct role in the administration of the estates which Marti had assigned specifically to her for the upkeep of her own household, but had also become in-volved in directing their common patrimony. As early as 1385, the infant named his wife as lieutenant over his lands in the Kingdom of Valencia. Otherwise, Maria was occupied with her role as mother—for the survival of their estates producing an heir was as indispensable as skillful management. Over a relatively short period Marti and Maria had four children: Marti, Jaume, Joan and Margarida. Unfortunately, all of them died in infancy, except for the first-born, known as Marti the Young (to distinguish him from his father). On 19 November 1391, Marti the Young married his cousin Maria, Queen of Sicily, and in this manner Maria de Luna became the mother of a king before having become a queen-mother. Setting out for Sicily along with his father and a great company of nobles and soldiers three months after his marriage; Marti would not return until 1397, and Maria only ever saw her son once more, in the course of a short visit he paid to his parents in 1405.10 With her husband gone, Maria had been left behind in the Crown of Aragon where, aided by her extensive family network, she was to administer their properties and send money to Sicily in order to help her son install himself as king over his reluctant subjects. Since their arrival in Sicily, father and son had encountered serious problems—they were unable to enter the city of Palermo until they had subjected it to a four-day siege. This was followed by a further setback, when the nobleman Artal de Alagon raised a revolt on the island which obliged Joan I to send a fleet which had been earmarked for an expedition to Sardinia to aid his brother and nephew.11 Once these initial crises had been overcome, the situation stabilized, but Sicily continued to be an unstable realm. During this time Maria de Luna's role in providing economic support was key—the long siege which eventually brought Palermo under Marti's power had been possible thanks only to the resources in the form of cash and soldiers which his mother had been able to muster. This came at no small cost, as Maria had been 9

C. Laliena Corbera, 'Senorios en una era de crisis. Los dominios de las Casas de Luna e Hijar en la tierra de Belchite (Zaragoza), 1350-1450', Revista d'Historia Medieval 8 (1997): 182. 10 Queen Maria of Sicily was the daughter of Federico IV the Simple and of Costanza (a daughter of Pere the Ceremonious by Maria de Navarra). Pere had tried unsuccessfully to convince his heir, Joan, to marry Maria of Sicily (and thus unite that kingdom to the Crown of Aragon), but the prince refused. Regarding Marti the Young's Sicilian expedition, see: Manual de novells ardits, vulgarment apellat Dietari del antich consell barceloni, edited by F. Schwartz Luna and F. Carreras Candi (Barcelona: 1892): I: 26 (Saturday 17 February 1392); P. Corrao, Governare un regno. Potere, societa e istituzioni in Siciliafra Trecento e Quattrocento (Napoli: 1997): 74-88. 11 Manual de novells ardits, I: 51-2 (Sunday, 11 July 1395).

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forced to pawn or to sell many of her properties. But although the situation was not borne without great difficulty, her astute and loyal management of her husband's and son's affairs gained Maria a wide reputation as a capable administrator.12 Further, her diplomatic skills were revealed when she acted as Marti's representative to and liaison with his brother Joan, from whom he was frequently forced to solicit aid.13 It was through these experiences as countess that Maria de Luna developed skills in governance; indeed, the strengths and the limitations which she exhibited at this stage were those which would later characterize her years as queen. As it happens, the queen's steadfastness and astuteness have been noted unanimously by historians, who have traditionally noted a lack of these qualities in her husband, King Marti, often portrayed as irresolute. Indeed, this king's political indecision was to have fatal consequences for his and Maria's lines—his failure to name an heir to the crown as he lay dying in 1410 initiated a dynastic crisis which threw the realm into confusion. This was only settled by the resolution taken at Caspe in 1412, the so-called 'Compromise', which placed the Trastamara dynasty on the throne. Maria de Luna became queen in 1396 after her brother-in-law Joan I died in mysterious circumstances, alone and without last rites, allegedly after having fallen from his horse while hunting on 19 May of that year. His death came only days after he had resolved to take action against his corrupt and dishonest royal councilors, who had been embezzling money from the royal coffers and gone as far as contracting mercenary forces in order to seize control of the Crown. For some time the city councils of Barcelona and Valencia had been warning the king, but he paid them no heed until the truth of their accusations had become patently clear.14 Now with Joan dead both the custom of the realm and the last will and testament of the king determined that, in the absence of a male heir, his brother Marti should succeed him. At this point, however, Marti was still in Sicily with his son; under these circumstances Maria de Luna became not only the queen of the Crown of Aragon, but lieutenant and de facto ruler as well. Maria became a direct political authority.

12 In 1396 the representatives of the city of Valencia described the effect that paying for the Sicilian adventures had had on Marti and Maria's patrimony in the kingdom: 'As it has been demonstrated to the present council, that very high lady, our queen Lady Maria wife of the very high lord, King Marti, now reigning, has undergone great need and distress . . .' ['Com fos raonat e cert al present consell que la molt alta senyora Reyna nostra, la senyora dona Maria, muller del molt alt senyor Rey en Marti, ara regnant, passava necessitat e gran fretura . . ']. AMV: Manual de consells A-21: 48r-v (Valencia, 28 September 1396). For the financing of the campaign, see F. J. Cervantes Peris, La herencia de Maria de Luna. Una empresa feudal en el Tardomedievo valenciano (Segorb: 1998), 239. 13 A. Rubio i Lluc, Documents per I 'Historia de la cultura catalana mig-eval (Barcelona: 2000), II: 335-6, doc. 348. 14 M. Roca, 'Memorial de greuges que'ls missatgers de la ciutat de Valencia presentaren al Rey Johan I d'Arago', Boletin de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, 7980 (1923): 70-79.

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In this first challenging year of her reign Maria had one objective: to assure Marti's place on the throne and, thus, to link her family line to the crown itself. She found her first political allies in the Principality of Catalonia with the city councilors of Barcelona, who immediately recognized her officially as queen. Only eight days after Joan's death they assembled and swore loyalty to her, becoming an ad hoc royal council.15 But the transfer of power was challenged first by the queen-widow, Violant de Bar, who announced that she was expecting a posthumous child (and heir) by the deceased king, and second by the infanta Joana, Joan Fs first-born child (by his earlier marriage with Matha de Armagnac), who also claimed the throne. Faced with these threats Maria reacted swiftly and with determination. On 31 May 1396 she ordered Joan and Violant's councilors to be jailed on charges of treason and embezzlement. The queen-widow was put under close observation and after a few months, when it became obvious that she was not pregnant, her claims were dismissed.16 It was at this point that the Kingdom of Valencia recognized Marti as king, and Maria as his representative; the ever-contrary kingdom of Aragon chose to wait until Marti would appear formally at their cones and swear to respect their laws and privileges before they would make any such declaration. When the infanta Joana's efforts to secure the throne by diplomacy failed, she and her husband Mateu, Count of Foix, resolved to take the crown by force and mounted an invasion. As recalled by Bernat Metge in Lo Somni, Maria de Luna took on the role of commander-in-chief, preparing defenses, mobilizing the nobility and directing her own military response from Barcelona.17 The Foix 15

According a statute of 1286 the royal council was to meet on a daily basis in the king's house—sessions in which the king would participate on Tuesdays and Fridays, at which time important affairs were to be discussed. On other days, the king was represented by his chancellor or vice-chancellor. M. T. Ferrer Mallol, 'El consell reial durant el regnat de Marti I 1'Huma'. Actes del XV CHCA (Zaragoza: 1996): I: 181. Maria de Luna's council included the Archbishop of Tarragona, Bernat de Pinos, Francesc d'Aranda, Bernat Miquel, Guillem Pujada, Guerau de Palol, Bernat c.a Trilla, Joan ces Avaces, Marc Torell, Pere Qabadia, Guillem de Cabanyes, Jaume Marquet and Francesc de Casasaja. Coleccion de Cortes de los antiguos Reinos de Aragon, Valencia y el Principado de Cataluna (Madrid: 1900-1901), IV: 248-9. 16 In all probability Violant de Bar faked her pregnancy. See N. Silleras-Fernandez, 'Queenship en la Corona de Aragon en la Baja Edad Media: estudio y propuesta terminologica', La coronica, 32: 1 (Fall 2003): 119-33; idem., 'Widowhood and Deception: Ambiguities of Queenship in Late Medieval Crown of Aragon', in Shell Games: Scams, Frauds and Deceits (1300-1650), edited by M. Crane, M. Reeves, and R. Raiswell (Toronto: CRRS Publications, University of Toronto, 2004), 187-96 and 203-05. For Violant as queen, see D. Bratsch-Prince, 'A Queen's Task: Violant de Bar and the Experience of Royal Motherhood in Fourteenth-Century Aragon', La coronica 27: 1 (1998): 21-34. 17 The author and royal secretary Bernat Metge was one of the councilors of Joan I and Violant who had been imprisoned by Maria. After being released, Metge wrote his work Lo Somni in an effort to regain royal favor. In the course of the work, speaking to a spirit, he compares Maria to Fabius Maximus, the Roman general (d. 203 B.C.E.) credited with saving Rome during the Second Punic War through his cautious and prudent policies: 'Our

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launched two attacks, in autumn 1396 and spring 1397, suffering a decisive defeat in the course of the latter. Thus, Maria and Marti's position as monarchs had been secured thanks to the queen's able administration and command; further, the king's confidence in her abilities had been made manifest. So certain was Marti in Maria's abilities as a ruler that he did not hasten back to the Crown, but stayed in Sicily aiding his son, despite Maria's repeated requests that he return. Even when he finally departed Sicily in January 1397, Marti made several stops along the way, visiting Sardinia, Corsica and Avignon (where he had an interview with Maria's kinsman, Pope Benedict XIII), and did not arrive in Barcelona until 27 May, more than four months after his departure.18 Once Marti had arrived to claim his title Maria, with her customary discretion, left the public eye and took on the role of queen-consort. Nevertheless, she remained politically active as one of her husband's chief advisors. Though the couple maintained separate households and courts they tended to follow the same itinerary and spent much of their time together, and Maria undoubtedly exercised a strong influence over Marti's decisions. In this period her main political activity centered on reinforcing the monarchy and avoiding conflict between the realms which together constituted the Crown. Thus, in 1402, following an initiative of Joan I, she intervened to put an end to the abusive feudal customs (mals usos) to which the Catalan remenga peasants were subject.19 To this end she sought the men of arms say that it was she that cast out (our enemies), meaning to say that she is another Fabius Maximus, who won more battles for Rome without fighting, than others did in combat against the enemy. Know surely, (and I speak uncouthly, because it is so, Spirit, as you know better than I), that they were cast out thanks only to the wisdom, industry and good management of the said lady, who having made great preparations, aided in this by our noble city of Barcelona and Aragon, frightened them and put them to flight, as would the lion the stag and the gerfalcon the crane'. [La nostra gent d'aimes diu que els hie gita, cuidant donar entenent que son estats altre Fabio Maximo, que vence mes batalles per Roma no batallant, que altres combatent los enemies. Sapies certament (e die grosseria, car per tal com est espirit, mills ho saps que jo) altre no els hie gita sino la saviesa e industria e bons tractaments de la dita senyora, que ab los grans preparatoris que feu, ajudants en a9o la nostra insigne ciutat de Barchinona e Arago los espanta e els feu fugir, aixi com lo lleo lo cervol e el grifaut la grua.] Bemat Metge, Lo Somni, L. Badia; X. Lamuela (eds.). Obra completa deBernatMetge (Barcelona: 1983), IV: 237. 18 Benedict XIII belonged to the same noble house as Maria, but was descended from a lesser branch, the Martinez de Luna. The division in the Church administration known as the Western Schism took place in 1378 after the death of Gregory XI, who had returned the papal seat from Avignon to Rome. In choosing his successor the Roman cardinals elected Urban VI while a college of dissident cardinals proclaimed Clement VIII. In 1394 Pedro de Luna (1328-1423) succeeded Clement VII in Avignon taking the name of Benedict XIII. Although he was deposed by the Council of Constance in 27 July 1417, Tapa Luna' never submitted to this decision, and continued to consider himself the only legitimate pope. 19 The remenga peasants of Catalonia were those who were subject to the mals usos, the remenqa being the monetary price that they were required to pay in order to redeem themselves from servility. Remenqa peasants were tied to the land, and were transferred with it in case of sale, donation or inheritance. The mals usos included a whole range of feudal-

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support of Benedict XIII, with whom she exchanged letters and embassies, asking him to pressure ecclesiastical lords in Catalonia to abandon the mals usos as an example to their secular counterparts.20 Maria's initiative was a manifestation of her monarchical agenda: on the one hand she wanted to reduce the possibility of peasant revolt, which had flared up in the past, and at the same time to weaken the power of the feudal nobility. But the embattled Pope refused to become involved, delegating the decision to the prelates of the Crown. This response infuriated Maria, who wrote to Benedict, accusing him of offending her 'queenly dignity' (dignitat reginal)—given her position in the Crown she felt it was only befitting that she negotiate with the Pontiff himself and not with mere clerics, rather.21 Ultimately Maria failed to realize her objective, as would a later queen, Maria de Castella (1416-58), who as lieutenant of Catalonia (1432-53) reopened the issue.22 Maria had, in fact, returned to formal politics in 1401, with her appointment as lieutenant of the Kingdom of Valencia, a post in which she served until 1406. At the opening of the fifteenth century Valencia city and its hinterlands were in a state of near anarchy and the kingdom on the brink or peril due to incessant noble feuding and raiding. The root of these altercations was a rivalry between the Centelles family on one side, and the Solers and the Vilaraguts on the other, with the rest of the nobility of the realm choosing sides according to links of lineage, friendship or self-interest. Such noble rivalries were not unusual, but they had flared up at this point with a special intensity and were causing serious disruptions. The causes of the feud are difficult to disentangle—a stew of old conflicts between the leading families, personal rivalries, and alliances and enmities which family tradition demanded be honored. Beneath them lay a financial element, as the noble families vied for the control of municipal offices, which offered the only hope of financial solvency for some of the impoverished noble factions. As put by Francesc Eiximenis, there were simply too many greedy nobles and knights in Valencia.23 From the monarchy's point of view the noble factions were disobedient and disruptive; it befell Maria de Luna to bring them into line and to restore order to Valencia and Segorb, the principle cities of the realm.

type monopolies and jurisdictions. See J. Vicens Vives, Historia de los Remensas en el siglo XV (Barcelona: 1945) and P. Freedman, The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 20 In the letters which she sent to the pontiff, Maria qualified the mals usos as 'detestable and vile' (ldetestabilie et execrabiliter'), contrary to both divine and human law. A. L. Javierre Mur, Maria de Luna, reina de Aragon (Madrid: 1942), 87-9, 254-8, 268-70. 21 ACA: CR 2354: 16r-17r (Valencia, 12 October 1402), edited by Javierre, Maria de Luna, 254-8, doc. 87. 22 Maria de Castella, Alfons the Magnanimous's (1416-58), also failed, and the affair eventually led to civil war (1462-72). See T. Earenfight, 'Queenship, Politics, and Government in the Medieval Crown of Aragon: The Lieutenancy of Maria of Castile 1420-23 and 1432-53' (Ph.D. dissertation, Fordham University, 1997), 308-75. 23 A. Rubio Vela, 'La lenta recuperation (1375-1410)', E. Belenguer (coord.), Historia del Pais Valencia (Barcelona: 1989), 2: 261-2.

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In fact, the municipal government of the city of Valencia had requested Maria's intercession with Marti in order to convince him to come to the city even before Maria had been made lieutenant.24 It was after she had arrived and had begun to lobby and mediate for the pacification of the noble factions that Marti gave her the official post of his representative.25 Towards the end of 1401 the king journeyed from Valencia to the frontier with Navarre in order to meet with that kingdom's sovereign, Carlos III, with the aim of finalizing a marital union between the latter's daughter, Blanca, and Marti the Young, who had been widowed. At that point, Maria was given formal authority as lieutenant. By mid-February the king was on his way back to Valencia to help Maria with the ongoing problem of noble unrest, but in July, he left her alone once more. The king was needed in other parts of the Crown, but in the meanwhile a personal royal presence was required in Valencia in order to maintain authority—Maria would fulfill this role. For her part, probably because the situation seemed to be worsening, Maria urged Marti to name someone of confidence to the post of viceroy in Valencia permanently, strongly recommending Ferran Lopez de Luna. Ferran, her own illegitimate brother, was serving her as chamberlain, councilor, and procurador at that time.26 Thus, one of the other ambits of Maria de Luna's political activity is revealed: her determination to situate members of her own family and circle of allies in important positions, thereby further ennobling her own line and creating her own network of influence. Maria left Valencia for Barcelona in late 1404 for a long awaited reunion with her husband and a chance to see her son for the first time since his departure for Sicily. But, even absent, she remained involved in Valencian affairs.27 When the 24

For example, when the city councilors sent envoys to Zaragoza to beg Marti to return, they asked Maria to help them plead their case: 'And be a favorable intercessor for them before the Lord King in such a manner that, well dispatched, they might return with high praise for your ladyship'. [ C E esser a ells favorable ajudadora envers lo senyor Rey de manera que be e bien despatxats se-n puxen tornar ab grans laors de la vostra senyoria'.] AMV: Lletres missives g3 6: 367v-368r (Valencia, 4 June 1400) and 367v. In 1396-97, during her lieutenancy, Maria de Luna had induced the Valencian nobles to establish a truce in order to fight together against the Count of Foix's invasion. 25 ACA: CR 2223: 73r-76r (21 December 1401), cited in J. Lalinde Abadia, 'Virreyes y lugartenientes generales en la Corona de Aragon'. Cuadernos de Historia de Espana 31-32 (1960): 114. 26 ACA: CR 2223: 95r-96v (18 June 1404). Ferran was the only official to bear the title of viceroy for Valencia during the fifteenth and, likely, the sixteenth century. A. Santamaria Arandez, El consell General de Valencia en el trdnsito a la modernidad (Valencia: 2000), I: 151. 27 Without going into further detail, it bears remarking that Maria de Luna was not unbiased when it came to the matter of the noble factions of the Kingdom of Valencia. For example, she was markedly partial to Gilabert de Centelles, Lord of Nules and Oliva. He was one of the most troublesome and aggressive of the kingdom's nobles, but enjoyed her protection because he was Marti's chamberlain and a key advisor to both of the royal couple (Maria also named him as executor of her will). For a detailed analysis of Maria's lieutenancy, see Silleras-Femandez, 'Maria de Luna', chapter 3, CE1 uso de la politica'.

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noble infighting worsened, both the city councilors of Valencia and the viceroy Ferran wrote to inform her and beg her to intercede with Marti. Maria complied, sending a series of petitions aimed at convincing Marti to return personally to the realm and fulfill his obligations as king.28 This episode reveals one of the limitations of queenly political power; despite her authority and capability, the queen did not reign or command in her own right, but rather by virtue of her marriage and the status of her husband. When situations became critical subjects demanded the presence of their king, rather than the queen. Despite her abilities, and her position as lieutenant, Maria could never be more than a secondary authority to Marti, from whom her authority originated. Indeed, a symbolic manifestation of the derivative nature of queenly power can be seen in the coronation ceremony of the Crown of Aragon, wherein the king crowned himself, before next crowning the queen. Pere the Ceremonious had established the choreography of the ceremony in his Ordenation of 1353, taking the Old Testament coronation of Esther by King Assuer as his inspiration.29 The political activities discussed above relate to Maria's efforts to maintain and promote the monarchy and the Crown. But she followed a private political agenda which was just as important, and reflected her preoccupation with her family, her son, her lineage, her determination to extend her 'queenly dignity' and her promotion of religious institutions (itself a medium of her private political endeavors). Her concern for her own blood line is obvious. Maria de Luna's only child who survived infancy was Marti the Young, from whom she had been separated since 1392, when he departed for his new realm.30 But despite their physical distance Maria was determined to aid and counsel her son, and in the letters to her heir she continually urged him to be a good king, and to balance authority, justice, devotion and humility.31 Both Maria and Marti I aimed to foment a wider family political alliance through their son, and the two consulted before sending him advisors and servants.32 Maria also functioned formally as

28 While in Barcelona, Maria wrote to Marti, who was in Valldaura, entreating him to head for Valencia without delay. ACA: CR cartas reales de Marti I, caja 8, no. 888 (12 January 1406); nos. 892 and 893 (18 January 1406), no. 898 (25 January 1406), the latter three edited by Javierre, Maria de Luna, 282-6. 29 See Pere the Ceremonious, 'Ordenacions', Coleccion de documentos ineditos de la Corona de Aragon, edited by P. de Bofarull (Barcelona: 1850), 5: 304-16. Maria de Luna was crowned in Zaragoza on St. George's Day 1399. 30 Marti the Young arrived in Barcelona on 31 March 1405. It was a short visit, as on 5 August problems with his subjects forced his return to Sicily, where he had left his wife, Blanca de Navarra, as his lieutenant. 31 In 1401, for example, she counseled him to be generous to his cousin Jaume de Prades, as befitted a good king. ACA: CR 2341: 94r (12 May 1401). 32 A considerable number of individuals were sent to Sicily by Marti and Maria, who used positions in their son's court to reward their own servants and favorites. Two examples are the son of Guillem de Perapertusa, Marti's chamberlain, who was sent to be Marti the Young's cup-bearer, and the son of Francesc Pujada, one of Maria's scribes, who was sent

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Marti the Young's procurador in the Crown of Aragon, administering his estates and accepting in his name the oaths of the regional cortes as they swore to honor him as Marti Fs future successor.33 Thus in the course of pursuing her own agenda, she took charge of one of the most essential programs of any dynasty: the succession. The fact that she distinguished between the dynastic succession and her own line can be seen in her concern for her son's heirs. Although Maria had been a grandmother twice, the children in question had died in infancy. But Marti the Young did have two surviving illegitimate children, Fadrique and Violant, the result of liaisons with the Sicilian ladies, Tarsia Rizzani and Agatuzza de Pesci. In 1403, Marti I conveyed these two children to the Crown, where they were put in Maria's care and she took the role of educator and grandmother—legitimate or not, they represented the future of her line.34 In addition to promoting her and Marti's common line, Maria actively aggrandized her own family, the Lunas. In this respect, her closest relatives profited most from her patronage, but she did not neglect the lesser branches or other families, like the Cabreras or the Agouts, to whom she was also linked by blood or marriage. Favor was shown by introducing their members into the royal court, and promoting them to positions of influence in the administration, Church institutions or in her household (as lords and ladies-in-waiting).35 In exchange for such to serve as the scribe of the Sicilian king. ACA: CR 2336: 30v (30 November 1398); ACA: CR 2338: 124v (22 September 1402). 33 The royal faction of the cortes of Valencia swore loyalty to Maria de Luna as her son's procurador, in turn, she confirmed the privileges which previous kings had granted the kingdom, in her son's name. AMV: Privilegios reales, Marti I, n° 23 (Valencia, 5 My 1401). 34 On 21 September 1403 Marti I wrote to Francesc de Casasaja, a Barcelona merchant and royal councilor, and charged him with the task of conveying the infants Fadrique and Violant to Barcelona. The king asked Francesc to take charge of the children until he decided what to do with them, before which he would consult with the queen: 'And given that the queen is not with us, since she still remains in Segorb and will likely be here within a few days, we have not been able to determine what to do until the said Queen arrives, and thus once with her we will decide, God willing, how to deal with the said son and daughter'. [E per tal car la Reyna no es aci amb nos, com sia encara romasa en Segorb, mas deu hie esser dins fort breus dies, no havem pogut ordenar que-n farem tro la dita Reyna hie sia, e llavors tantots ab ella ensemps ordenarem, Deus volent, dels dits fill i filla axi com se pertany. ACA: CR 2245: 182v (21 September 1403), edited by D. Girona Llagostera, Itinerari del rey En Marti, 1396-1410 (Barcelona: 1916), 123, doc. 89.] 35 Maria liked to people her intimate circle with women of her own lineage. Thus she ensured the Lunas a preeminent social position, and at the same time was able to control them more effectively, uniting her role as queen with that of head of her noble line. Among her courtiers figured Brianda d'Agout (her mother), Brianda de Luna (her sister), Brianda and Eleonor Cornel (Brianda's two daughters), as well as other Luna women: Isabel, Violant, and Joana (Maria's niece). The Luna women appear repeatedly in the documentation. For example, Violant de Luna received an assignnation for board totaling 138 sueldos of Barcelona. ACA: ARP MR 526: f. 73r (30 September 1400), 73v (31 December 1401), 74r (31 March 1401).

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patronage Maria expected and demanded faithful service and obedience from her favorites—every gift had its price.36 It is no coincidence that it was at this time that the Luna line lived its grandest era, with Maria as queen in the Crown of Aragon, her son as King of Sicily, and their kinsman as Pope in Avignon. Since the reign of Jaume II (1291-1327) the queens of the Crown of Aragon had maintained independent households which were assigned their own sources of rental income. Thus Maria's own court was a manifestation of her own personal tastes, religious sense and desire to transmit an image of majesty to her subjects. In fact, Marti and Maria shared many interests and were profoundly religious by both inclination and education. They each employed counselors of various Orders and took an interest in addressing the monastic decadence of the time. The king (known popularly as cthe Ecclesiastic') preferred Carthusians, Franciscans and hermits, and founded a number of houses, notably the Carthusian monasteries of Valldecrist (1386) and Valldemossa (1399). For her part, Maria shared her commitment to Franciscans and hermits, but favored the Cistercians and, in particular, those of Santa Maria de Veruela, which was the pantheon of her line, the Ferrench de Luna. In 1397 as part of her aristocratic politics she induced Marti to sign a privilege specifying that henceforth in eternum the reginal chaplain should be the Abbot of Veruela or some other member of that community.37 Here Maria was imitating the model of Pere the Ceremonious, who tied the offices of royal chaplain and royal almoner to his favorite monastery, Poblet (the seat of the royal pantheon). Maria de Luna's pious and cultural activities were marked by a strong political element in that they were always tied to the recognition or perpetuation of her own name. For example, in 1402 she founded the Convent of Sant Espirit, through which she contributed directly and deliberately to the reform of the Franciscan Order, known as the Observant Franciscan (observanciafranciscand). Despite the model of austerity promulgated by this Franciscan movement, however, she endowed the Order with numerous rents in order that it might endure and continue cherish her memory and pray for her soul. In addition, Maria was particularly generous with almsgiving, purchasing masses and prayers, and in participating in religious processions and public ceremonies. This was quite characteristic of medieval royalty and nobility, as this type of tangible Christian generosity permitted them to gain favor before God, promote their dynasties and lineages, and act as a model for their own subjects, thus contributing to the stability and wellbeing of their realms simultaneously. For Maria, such public devotions served 36

Maria's illegitimate step-brother Ferran Lopez de Luna, one of the queen's favorites, was named royal counselor, procurator, majordomo, chamberlain, 'Captain-general of the mountains and city of Jaca' (during the invasion of the Foix), and viceroy of the Kingdom of Valencia, holding some of these offices simultaneously. 37 Marti's privilege survives to this day. AHN: Clero, Monasterio de Veruela, carpeta perg. 3783 (ant. legs. 2454, 2456, 2561), perg. 9 (15 November 1397). In 1401 Maria confirmed the privilege: AHN: Clero, Monasterio de Veruela, carpeta perg. 3783 (ant. legs. 2454, 2456, 2561), perg. 12 (15 December 1401).

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both her formal and personal political agendas, and she practiced them with energy. Maria died in Villareal on 29 December 1406, precisely when she was on her way to Valencia to join Marti and continue her political mission. Thus, she did not survive to see how in the years immediately following all of her efforts to preserve the thrones of the Crown of Aragon and of Sicily for her descendants came to naught. Marti the Young, her only surviving child, died in 1409 leaving no legitimate heirs, and the following year Marti I died without even having contemplated naming his illegitimate grandson, Fadrique de Luna, as his successor. As a result, in 1412 a new dynasty, the Trastamaras, took control of the Crown; Fadrique would die in prison in 1438, with all of his lands (including Maria's legacy: the County of Luna and the city of Segorb) having been confiscated as punishment for his own attempts to claim the throne. Thus, the great failure for which Marti I is remembered represents the great failure also of Maria de Luna: she did not provide a direct successor to the throne. But this unfortunate epilogue is the fruit of circumstance beyond Maria's control; during her lifetime Maria de Luna determinedly and capably took control of her political and personal destiny, pushing her authority to the limits of 'queenly dignity', restrained only by the limitations to which she was subject by gender, managing her political agenda through a combination of religious patronage and regal authority—a remarkable fusion of spirit and force.

CHAPTER SIX

The Queen and the Master: Catalina of Lancaster and the Military Orders Ana Echevarria-Arsuaga

Political partnership is the concept that best defines the life and career of Catalina of Lancaster (1372-1418). She shared power and political affairs not only with her husband, Enrique III of Castile (ruled 1390-1406) but also with her brother-in-law, Fernando of Antequera (king of the Crown of Aragon, 1412-16). She and Fernando acted as co-regents for Catalina's son, Juan II of Castile (ruled 1406-54), during his minority. This was the first case—or perhaps the only one—in the history of Castilian queenship where a widow-queen shared significant authority despite her gender. The fact that she was chosen as a political counterpart to her brother-in-law suggests her husband's trust in her intelligence and goodwill as well as a rare wide political culture which she taught to her daughter Maria, later to be queen of the Crown of Aragon. As the only descendant of King Pedro I of Castile (1350-69), who was murdered by his half-brother Enrique Trastamara in 1369, Catalina had her own rights to the crown of Castile. She had been brought up as the heir to the throne by her father, John of Gaunt, the duke of Lancaster, who had envisaged a crown for himself and his wife, Constanza of Castile. However, John's 1386 campaign on Castilian soil failed, leaving him with marriage policies as the only way to make a profit out of his enterprise. Catalina's marriage to the Trastamaran heir Enrique III solved the succession problem in Castile and gave Catalina a number of privileges, which she played earnestly in favor of the crown—first, as princess of Asturias, and later, as queen.1 This chapter will examine the way that a Castilian queen could share royal power and present herself as the legitimate head of the kingdom in certain circumstances. While Catalina's authority as queen was both limited and exploited by her husband when he needed complementary support for the crown, her capacities as regent were severely curtailed by Fernando of Antequera. The first part of this essay will deal with these two periods of Catalina's life as queen 1

These aspects of her life have been analyzed in Ana Echevarria, Catalina of Lancaster (Hondarribia: Nerea, 2002), 11-50 and idem, 'Catherine of Lancaster, the Castilian Monarchy and Coexistence', in Medieval Spain: Culture, Conflict and Coexistence, edited by Roger Collins and Anthony Goodman (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002): 79-122.

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regnant and queen regent. But her role as 'madre del rey e su tutora, e regidora de sus reynos'2 is the most remarkable period of her life when we think of the difficulties it involved. Only after Fernando of Antequera's death in 1416 could Catalina manage every aspect of government, including military issues. Among these concerns, the least common to queenship were probably Castilian foreign policies concerning the Islamic kingdom of Granada and royal intervention in the affairs of the military orders. The latter will be analyzed in the second part of this chapter, using the example of the order of Calatrava. The sources of information about Catalina's rule consist of chronicles and charters, as well as wills and personal letters exchanged by members of the royal family.3 The charters are concerned mostly with her foundations of monasteries and churches, from 1392 onward.4 Catalina is also mentioned in several wills, including those of her parents; her husband, Enrique III; Fernando I of Aragon; and, of course, her own testament.5 Finally, it is the chronicles that provide most of the information about her life and the development of her policies.6

2

This is the title she used in all her charters and personal letters during the regency. The heading of her charters reads 'duquesa de Soria e Senora de Molina e de Huete e de Atienza e de Carrion'. 3 Some of these letters were published by V. Garcia Rey, Lafamosa priora dona Teresa de Ayala (Madrid: Tipografia de Archivos, 1930), 53-70. The rest were found in the Archivo de la Corona de Aragon, sections Cartas Reales (CR) and Cancilleria Regia (CR). Other abbreviations used in the notes: ACA (Archivo de la Corona de Aragon), AHN (Archivo Historico Nacional), C (Cancilleria), AGS (Archivo General de Simancas), and AMM (Archivo Municpal de Murcia). 4 Her most important foundation, the Dominican convent of Santa Maria la Real de Nieva, has a wealth of archival material in the Archivo Historico Nacional, Clero, c. 1951. 5 John of Gaunt's will has been published by A. de Silva-Vigier, This Moste Highe Prince . . . John of Gaunt, 1340-1399 (Edinburgh: Pentland Press, 1992), 371-4. Enrique Ill's will is included in two chronicles: Pedro Lopez de Ayala, Cronica del rey don Enrique III, in Cronicas de los reyes de Castilla, edited by C. Rosell (Madrid: 1914), II: 264-70; Alvar Garcia de Santamaria, Cronica de Juan II de Castilla, edited by J. de M. Carriazo (Madrid: 1982), 25-43. Catalina of Lancaster's own testament was found in the Archivo del Reino de Valencia by L. Corell Ruiz., Una copia del testamento de Catalina of Lancaster (Valencia: Instituto Valenciano de Estudios Historicos, Institution Alfonso el Magnanimo, 1952). 6 For English and French chronicles, see Echevarria, Catalina of Lancaster, 207-8. A discussion of Castilian chronicles is in ibidem, 71-2, 207-19. About the regency, J. de M. Carriazo has edited most of the chronicles available: Lope de Barrientos, Refundicion de la cronica del Halconero (Madrid: 1946); Pedro Carrillo de Huete, Cronica del Halconero de Juan II (Madrid, 1946); Gonzalo Chacon, Cronica de don Alvaro de Luna, condestable de Castilla, Maestro de Santiago (Madrid: 1940). See also Fernan Perez de Guzman, Cronica del serenisimo prmcipe don Juan, segundo Rey deste nombre, edited by L. Galmdez de Carvajal, in volume II of Cronicas de los reyes de Castilla, edited by Cayetano Rosell (Madrid: 1953); hereafter, Cronica de Juan II. The best monograph is still Luis Suarez Fernandez, Los Trastdmaras de Castilla y Aragon en el s. XV, volume 15 of Historia de Espana, edited by R. Menendez Pidal (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1964).

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First of all, let us consider the types and amount of power that Catalina of Lancaster was able to exercise during the reign of her husband, and whether or not she acted as a real partner to her king. Like most medieval queens, Catalina of Lancaster could wield power through private influence on her husband. This kind of action had important consequences in public life as well, since both private and public aspects were often mixed in late medieval politics. 'Unofficial' or 'informal' power7 was thus combined with other strategies when Catalina and Enrique worked complementarity in state matters. The most remarkable example of such influence was Catalina's intercession for peace with England and Portugal, the two kingdoms where her brother and sister reigned.8 Another tool that Catalina used to expand her influence in the royal court was undoubtedly her chamber. During Enrique Ill's reign, it was composed of the great steward of the queen (first, Gomez Suarez de Figueroa, and later, Juan Alvarez de Ossorio); a great treasurer; a great accountant; the queen's secretaries and lawyers; and her chaplain, the dean of Leon. Such a structure had its parallels in the organization of noble ladies' households, which varied in size according to the importance of the ladies' positions.9 During Juan IPs regency, Catalina's circle was much more controversial. It included the bishops of Burgos and Segovia, some lawyers and clerks, and some of the young king's counselors (his tutor Gomez Carrillo de Huete, for example, and Alonso Garcia de Cuellar, the great accountant and the guardian of the royal treasure kept in the alcazar of Segovia). Catalina's chamber also featured a number of ladies from the most reputed noble families in the kingdom, like the wife of Juan Hurtado de Mendoza, the great steward of the king; and Dona Leonor, daughter of the duke of Benavente. The royal favorite was famous author Leonor Lopez de Cordoba,10 who was later replaced by Ines de Torres. Thanks to their influence, courtiers such as Fernan Alfonso de Robles climbed in royal favor and would become great accountant to the king in due time.11 Land domains, lordship, and royal jurisdiction in Catalina's hands were important sources of revenues, and required her attention during Enrique's reign.

7

As defined by John C. Parsons, editor, Medieval Queenship (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), 9-10 and Janet L. Nelson, 'Medieval Queenship', in Women in Medieval Western European Culture, edited by L. E. Mitchell (New York: Garland, 1999), 179-208, esp. 182. 8 F. Lopes, Cronica de D. Joao I (Barcelos: 1983), II: 411-12. 9 I. Beceiro Pita, 'La mujer noble en la Edad Media castellana', in La condicion de la mujer en la Edad Media, edited by Yves-Rene Fonqueme and Alfonso (Madrid: 1986), 289-313, 308. 10 Garcia de Santamaria., Cronica, 56-7; Perez de Guzman, Cronica de Juan II, 278. 11 Fernan Perez de Guzman devoted a chapter to the three most remarkable members of Catalina's chamber, to criticize the royal habit of taking favorites into court, in a clear reference to Juan II and Alvaro de Luna. Fernan Perez de Guzman, Generaciones y semblanzas (Buenos Aires: 1947), 68. For further discussion and a bibliography about Leonor Lopez de Cordoba, see Echevarria, Catalina de Lancaster, 119-40.

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The Treaty of Bayonne12—signed by John of Gaunt and Juan I of Castile to end the dynastic problem posed by the murder of Pedro I by his half-brother Enrique II— had important economic consequences for Catalina. Her mother, Constanza of Castile, was given Guadalajara, Olmedo, and Medina del Campo, with their important ferias (fairs) but these properties were governed through Catalina's chamber, namely by her steward, Juan Alfonso de Mayorga.13 Both women controlled the revenues of some of the richest towns in Castile and a great part of the wool commerce of the realm. Later, Juan I gave the town of Huete to his cousin Constanza as a gift. Catalina was also generously endowed with Soria, Atienza, Deza, and Molina. By 1399 these towns were still her most important properties, according to her charters, and she soon received Huete from her mother. The queen acted in these towns as their owner, issuing charters and deciding over common matters on behalf of the royal couple. Although in Castilian law a husband could not use his wife's dowry for his own purposes, Catalina saw one of her towns taken away on behalf of the interests of the crown. Enrique III gave Almazan to his great steward Juan Hurtado de Mendoza in 1395, in exchange for Agreda, whose citizens refused to join the Mendozas' lordship. To compensate the queen, Benavente became Catalina's domain when Fadrique de Trastamara was imprisoned for treason. It seems that the common people were quite satisfied with the way that Catalina governed them, as they made clear in a brief directed to the king when their lordship was again transferred to Juan Alfonso Pimentel in 1398. For these people, being under the queen's authority was no different from being under the king's own rule, and it was a good way to escape the outrages of nobility.14 Another way that a queen could work for the throne was by increasing her private domains; that is, by purchasing new lands or fiefs. Carrion de los Condes had been traditionally one of the towns given to Castilian queens as a dowry. When Enrique II was enthroned, he rewarded his followers with lands and titles taken from the royal properties (the 'mercedes enriquenas'). Juan Sanchez Manuel, who was granted the county of Carrion, was a relative of Queen Juana Manuel, and he passed the title and its properties on to his first daughter, Leonor. Catalina of Lancaster claimed that the town had been given as a dowry to her grandmother, Maria de Padilla, and that she was the legal heiress. In order to solve the problem, Enrique III granted his royal permission for Leonor Manuel to sell 12

J. J. N. Palmer and B. Powell, The Treaty of Bayonne (1388) with Preliminary Treaty ofTrancoso (1387) (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1988), xii-xiii; P. Lopez de Ayala, Cronica del rey D. Juan /, 117, 120. See Fernando de Ybarra, Matrimonies reales hispanobritdnicos en el medievo (Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia, 1999), II: 258, 268-70. 13 ACS, Camara de Castilla, Diversos, leg. 41, 2; edited by P. E. Russell, The English intervention in Spain and Portugal in the time of Edward 111 and Richard II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 575-9. 14 Julio Valdeon Baruque, Los conflictos sociales en el reino de Castilla en los siglos XIV yXV (Madrid: 1986), 115-9.

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Carrion with all her rights to Queen Catalina in exchange for 15,000 golden florins of Aragon.15 By means of this purchase, Catalina increased her wealth and vindicated the memory of her grandmother. At the same time, the crown retrieved an important town which had been part of the royal domains dispersed by Enrique II. Finally, the queen was a patron of religion and the arts, a role that remains to be studied. Her most important religious foundations consisted of a convent of Dominican sisters at Mayorga (1392), and the monastery of Santa Maria la Real de Nieva. The monastery was given to the Dominican order and was granted lands taken from the properties of Segovia.16 In 1394 Catalina granted a number of privileges to the monastery church of Saint Dominic in Toledo,17 home to Prioress Teresa de Ayala and her daughter Maria, Catalina's aunt. The fact that Catalina was offered a manuscript of Las siete edades del mundo, a brief work on world history written by Bishop Pablo de Santamaria, suggests that she had a role as a patron of culture very much in the Renaissance fashion.18 Enrique III died in Toledo in 1406, during a meeting of the Cones that was held in order to approve a campaign against Granada. The role of Catalina of Lancaster as queen regent of Castile expanded between 1406 and 1418. In the first, longer period, from 1406 to 1411, she had to share the regency with her brother-in-law, Fernando of Antequera. Between 1412 and 1416, Fernando moved to Aragon where he had been proclaimed king. While he was fighting resistance within that kingdom, however, he had to give up some of his Castilian obligations, leaving his powerful legates in control. When Fernando died in 1416, Catalina was finally able to act as the single regent of the kingdom and sustain her own policies, but by that time her poor health prevented her from governing with her full faculties. Enrique had made sure that his son, Juan, was elected heir to the throne by the delegates of Castilian cities, and was then proclaimed prince of Asturias in a public act of acclamation by the Cortes in 1405. The king's brother, Fernando, enjoyed a privileged position in the kingdom, however, and according to several chroniclers, he thought of taking the throne for himself.19 Fernando was lord of Lara, duke of 15 ACS, Patronato Real, 33, 20-1; 33, 21 and 33, 20-IL; ACS, Camara de Castilla, Diversos, leg. 41, 4. See also E. Mitre Fernandez, Evolution de la nobleza en Castilla bajo Enrique III (1396-1406) (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1968), 62-3. 16 AHN, Clero, carp. 1951-53. See also A. Sanchez Sierra, El monasterio de Santa Maria la Real de Nieva (Segovia: 1992), 25-43; Echevarria, 'Catherine of Lancaster', 87-8. 17 Garcia Rey, Lafamosa priora, 53-5. 18 Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Ms. h.ii.22, f. 1 r. On patronage, see Merry E. Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 167-71. 19 Jeronimo Zurita y Castro, Anales de la Corona de Aragon (Zaragoza: 1978), IV: 8968, quoting Lorenzo Valla, Gesta Eerdinandi regis Aragonum, edited by O. Besomi (Padua: 1973), 23-5. Zurita was a devoted admirer of Fernando, and did not hesitate to distort the facts when convenient for his political cause. His suggestions that Juan had not been sworn as the heir to Castile and that Castilian nobles pleaded for Fernando to take the throne are

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Penafiel—one of only three members of the royal family to hold this dignity—and by his marriage to Leonor of Albuquerque in 1393, he acquired lands as far away as Navarre and Portugal.20 Between 1402 and 1406, the couple organized their possessions and gave some of them as fiefs to well-known members of the lesser nobility. Fernando was also granted an enormous revenue to be paid from the taxes of some of the most important towns in the country. In short, Fernando had enough power, funds, and influence to claim the throne. Catalina's problematic regency, due in part to unsettled political conditions, was not a novel situation. Only two queens, Urraca of Leon (1109-26) and Berenguela of Castile (ruled briefly in her own right and then was regent from 1214 to 1217), claimed the right to rule by inheritance, but their marriages to ruling kings and subsequent renunciations of sons made it impossible for them to exercise power on their own. Queen Urraca had to yield authority to her problematic husband, Alfonso I of Aragon, and later proclaimed her son to be Alfonso VII. Queen Berenguela, divorced from Alfonso IX of Leon, was initially the guardian of her younger brother, Enrique I. Upon the petition of the Cortes of Valladolid, however, she yielded the rights to her son, Fernando III. Only one queen enjoyed the privilege of two periods of regency without being a member of the royal family herself: Maria de Molina (1295-1301, 1312-21). While in the first period she managed to rule alone, in the second she had to share power with some male counterparts: her son Pedro and her brother-in-law, Juan, who had attempted to seize the throne for himself before. This tradition of female power through maternity was continued by Catalina of Lancaster.21 It is certain that, in terms of Catalina's character and education, she was perfectly capable of performing her task alone, but Enrique III decided to appoint Fernando as co-regent of the kingdom, and three others—Bishop Pablo of Cartagena and two nobles, Diego Lopez de Estuniga and Juan de Velasco—were

not confirmed by contemporary chronicles (Garcia de Santamaria and Perez de Guzman), but only by those written during the reigns of Alfonso V and Juan II of Aragon, when Fernando Fs 'legend' was being shaped. 20 His properties included Cuellar, Paredes de Nava, Olmedo, Medina del Campo, the county of Mayorga and the duchy of Penafiel with all their lands. Among the lands inherited by his wife were the towns of Haro, Ledesma, and Alburquerque; Uruena, one of Castile's best fortresses; and Villalon. The development of Fernando's career and titles is discussed in Mitre, Evolution, 203-15. 21 A general discussion can be found in Nelson, J., 'Medieval Queenship', 189. See also Mercedes Gaibrois de Ballesteros, Maria de Molina: Tres veces reina (Madrid: EspasaCalpe, 1967); Bernard F. Reilly, The Kingdom of Leon-Castilla under Queen Urraca, 11091126 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); Miriam Shadis, Political Women in the High Middle Ages: Berenguela of Castile and her Family (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, forthcoming, 2004). On the differences between regency and lieutenancy, see Theresa Earenfight, 'Maria of Castile: Ruler or Figurehead? A Preliminary Study in Aragonese Queenship', Mediterranean Studies 4 (1994): 45-61.

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designated as tutors of the child-king. The queen had the right to replace them only in case of death.22 How can we reconcile Enrique Ill's trust in Catalina, which can be assumed from her appointment, with Fernando's situation? In my opinion, leaving Fernando free to engage in leagues with other nobles would have been far more dangerous for Juan II and Catalina than having him as regent. Furthermore, his wealth and territorial power were such that he could have taken the kingdom by arms. We also have to consider the fact that Dona Maria, Catalina's eldest daughter, was engaged to Fernando's son, Alfonso, and any accident that might have befallen the king would have automatically placed Fernando's lineage on the throne of Castile. Taking all this into account, the wisest way to proceed was to appoint Fernando as co-regent, keeping his loyalty under the close surveillance of the queen. In the beginning of the regency, both Fernando and Catalina seemed to agree on one point: A two-year-old king should not be handed over to some nobles. So the Queen found refuge in the alcazar of Segovia and refused to leave Juan II with Diego Lopez de Estuniga and Juan de Velasco. Catalina had serious reasons to keep her son with her, opposing Enrique Ill's testament. A collegiate body did not produce a peaceful minority, as shown during Enrique's own minority, so the regents negotiated an economic compensation. Once this affair was settled, the field was open for a confrontation between Catalina and Fernando. There were several reasons why Fernando and Catalina faced each other between 1406 and 1411. The first of them, which brought forth other consequences, was war against Granada. Fernando decided to start a campaign as soon as possible, to make good use of the funds granted by the Cortes. Catalina, in charge of the royal treasure, opposed war on the grounds that the hard-won money should be kept until her son was of age. Since the troops were already gathered, Fernando managed to impose his own view. After several attempts at arrangements that would have kept both regents together while the campaign was taking place, the kingdom finally was split into two spheres of influence, following Enrique Ill's last will.23 While apart, both regents had to be informed of each other's activities, and all charters had to be signed by both. Catalina and half of the royal council would keep Leon and Castile under their rule, while Fernando would take the other half of the council to the frontier and use the kingdoms of Andalusia and Murcia as bases for the army. But it is well worth noting that all of Fernando's patrimonial fiefs were north of the Sistema Central, and he also had the extensive areas controlled by the military orders under his command.24 22

Alvar Garcia de Santamaria, Cronica, 23-55; Perez de Guzman, Cronica de Juan II, 21 S. See also I. I. Macdonald, Don Fernando de Antequera (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948), 24-5, and Ybarra, Matrimonios, 399-414.

23

24

Lopez de Ayala, Cronica del Rey don Enrique III, 267.

Garcia de Santamaria, Cronica, 88-89; Perez de Guzman, Cronica de Juan II, 284^6. This has been studied in detail by Juan Torres Fontes, 'Dos divisiones politicoadministrativas en la minoria de Juan II de Castilla', Anales de la Universidad de Murcia

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The military campaign was unsuccessful, but it raised a number of issues between the regents, which hindered the functioning of normal government of the country. Most matters concerned the use of the royal treasure by Fernando, who was accused of fraud, and to the areas of influence of each regent in the royal council.25 The meeting of the Cortes in Guadalajara was an excuse to bring the two parties together, and Fernando addressed a series of claims to Catalina and the royal council which were difficult to comply with. The infante responded by launching what can be considered a true coup d'etat in 1408, which deprived Catalina of much of her queenly power.26 His aims were, first, to neutralize those members of the royal council who opposed the continuation of war, and second, to justify his actions before the realm. 7 After some military pressure, an agreement was issued on 23 June 1408, concerning the running of the council, the availability of funds from the royal treasure, and the retreat of troops from the city while Catalina and Juan II were staying there.28 This was just the first step toward a new agreement, but first Catalina refused four of the measures Fernando proposed: first, that none of the regents could touch the royal treasure, stored in Segovia, without a decision of the royal council in the event of disagreement; second, the end of the double council, which had been established when the realm was divided for war, or, at least, that the queen should always notify Fernando which members of the council she dispatched; third, that the oaths sworn by some members of the council to the queen alone should be released; and finally, that the capacity to sign truces with Granada would not be the exclusive right of the queen and the council members who had remained in Castile. Catalina saw her capabilities severed, as slowly but steadily, Fernando started to impose his ideas about the government of the country and attack the bases of power that Catalina had started building as a queen. He signed peace with the nobles Juan de Velasco and Diego Lopez de Estuniga; he withdrew Leonor Lopez de Cordoba from the queen's chamber; and he elevated Bishop Sancho de Rojas to be one of the most powerful men in the regency. It is difficult to see how Catalina could have exercised power again in this situation, but foreign affairs were her particular field of influence.29 As a matter of fact, Castile began to have two parallel

(1946-47): 339-53; for the 1406 division, see 341-3. Also see Suarez Fernandez, Los Trastdmaras, 33. 25 For a longer discussion of these two problems, see Echevarria, Catalina de Lancaster, 109-20. 26 Juan Torres Fontes, 'La regencia de don Fernando de Antequera', Anuario de Estudios Medievales 1 (1964): 388-402. 27 Garcia de Santamaria, Cronica, 243-6; Perez de Guzman, Cronica de Juan //, 309-15. 28 In a letter to Murcia, the infante explained his claims. AMM, Cartulario real, 13921412, f. 67r-70v. Torres Fontes, 'La regencia', 420-28; and Maria Victoria J. Vilaplana Guisbert, Documentos de la minoria de Juan II. La regencia de Don Fernando de Antequera. Coleccion de documentos para la historia del Reino de Murcia; volume 15 (Murcia: Real Academia Alfonso X el Sabio, 1993), 151-61. 29 For this question, see Echevarria, 'Catherine of Lancaster', 92-7.

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courts for diplomacy. Ambassadors were often sent separately to Catalina and Fernando for different purposes, and letters were copied twice, or else two different letters were sent to each of them. The other outcome of this situation was the existence of two conflicting dynastic policies within the realm: one designed by Catalina for her son's interests, and one followed by Fernando for the benefit of his family. A second phase of the regency started around 1411, after the campaign in which Antequera was conquered. When Martin I of Aragon (1395-1410) died without a male heir in 1410, the best candidates for succession to the throne of Aragon were Jaime of Urgel, Juan II of Castile, and Fernando of Antequera. Fernando was determined to claim his rights, but he needed legal and economic support from Castile. Although the queen had called a commission of experts to determine if Juan II and Fernando were qualified to claim the Aragonese crown, Fernando tried to obtain an advantage by suggesting that no legates be sent to Aragon until one candidate was settled on in Castile. Finally, it was decided that Fernando would be the Trastamara candidate for the crown of Aragon.30 Once more, of the two opposing dynastic policies, the one proposed by Fernando de Antequera won the game. Catalina may have hoped that Fernando's departure for Aragon would leave the way open for a single regency, since such a contingency was not addressed in Enrique Ill's testament. As a result, her support was so firm that Fernando was even allowed to choose the ambassadors who would represent him in Aragon. Fernando was determined, however, to continue governing in Castile from Aragon. He used the traditional method of dividing Castile into two provinces for its rule, while he traveled to Aragon to be crowned and to fight Jaime of Urgel.31 Catalina and Fernando signed an agreement for half a year, but it had to be extended to a year and a half.32 Fernando also left a number of his followers in key positions at the royal court, with orders to avoid 'que algunos grandes despues de su partida quisiesen mover algunas cosas que no cumpliesen al bien de estos reinos'.33 Moreover, he ordered Sancho de Rojas, now archbishop of Toledo, to supervise the government of Catalina's province, thus depriving Catalina of most of her power. The absence of Fernando was a serious hindrance to the government of Castile, which was affected by his success in Aragon in many different ways. Fernando lacked de facto authority over his own provinces, and there was a constant cash flow from Castile toward Aragon, since all of the revenues of the 30

Perez de Guzman, Cronica de Juan 77, 335-6. AMM, Cartulario Real 1391-1412, ff. 165v-167v.; Vilaplana Gisbert, Documentos, 365-70. 32 Vilaplana Gisbert, Documentos, 444-5, 458-60. 33 Legates in the government of the provinces: Juan, bishop of Sigiienza; the king's tutor Pablo de Santamaria, bishop of Cartagena; Enrique Manuel, count of Montealegre; and Perafan de Ribera, adelantado mayor of Andalucia. Doctor Pero Sanchez del Castillo and Juan Gonzalez Acevedo were Fernando's representatives at the regency council; chronicler Alvar Garcia de Santamaria was in charge of the registry. Perez de Guzman, Cronica de Juan 77, 346. 31

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family in Castile, the tenth Fernando received as regent, and forty-five million maravedis bound for war against Granada, were spent paying for Fernando's campaign in Aragon and his coronation ceremony. Those persons who had business with Fernando now had to travel to Aragon at considerable expense. The king of Granada profited from peace and stopped paying tributes. Finally, the wedding of Catalina's daughter, Maria of Castile to Alfonso, Fernando of Antequera's son and her first cousin, produced expenses that were paid in Aragon, as well as the dowry, all of which eventually weakened Catalina's economic position as warden of the Castilian royal treasure for her son.34 Despite his difficulties ruling Aragon, Fernando had undisputed authority in Castile over every matter dealing with war and the monastic military orders. However, Catalina's intervention in one of the crises suffered by the orders had important consequences. Let us begin with a brief outline of the situation. The Iberian military orders had military functions from their foundation. Their creation had several aims, including the recruitment of well-trained armies who were moved by strong religious feelings, in order to participate in the conquest of Islamic territories. The royal patrons of the orders pursued a centralized policy concerning the new territories that were conquered: By giving them to the orders, the kings avoided the dispersion of land in the hands of the nobles. Sometimes they even used the Iberian orders against their Christian enemies, rather than against Muslims. The first order to be established in Castile was Calatrava in 1158, followed by Santiago in 1170, and San Julian de Pereiro, later to be called Alcantara, in Leon, possibly 1156 or 1176.35 From the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Order of Calatrava suffered from an internal crisis that originated in the appointment of powerful noble masters who were concerned with their own ambitions. These struggles resulted in the frequent division of the command (encomiendd) of Aragon, which often served as the refuge of rebel knights or commanders. The kings of Aragon tried to use the special relationship they developed with the Calatrava knights to their own advantage, especially under Pedro IV.36 This state of affairs became even more complex when Enrique III decided to appoint his cousin, Enrique de Villena, as master of Calatrava in 1404, against the wishes of the order and of the nominee himself. It must be remembered that the orders had their own systems of electing their masters, and royal interference was never welcome. Most of the Calatrava knights and lay brethren supported another candidate from their own ranks: Luis Gonzalez de Guzman, high commander of the order. Gonzalez de Guzman had to run away and take refuge in the fortress of Alcaniz, the most impressive possession of the 34

Pedro Andres Porras Arboledas, Juan II 1406-1454 (Valladolid: La Olmeda, 1995), 63-4. 35 Alan Forey, The Military Orders: From the Twelfth to the Early Fourteenth Centuries (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 23-32. 36 For the fourteenth century, see C. Laliena Corbera, Sistema social, estructura agraria y organizacion del poder en el Bajo Aragon en la Edad Media (sighs XII-XV) (Teruel: Institute de Estudios Turolenses, 1987), 260.

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order in Aragon.37 As soon as Enrique III died, the order withdrew its obedience to Enrique de Villena in a meeting of the general chapter that took place in Calatrava, and voted for Gonzalez de Guzman38 because Enrique de Villena's marriage was still valid, and therefore, obeying him meant excommunication. Gonzalez de Guzman was unable to sustain his position, however, and in the summer of 1407 Abbot John VII of Morimond confirmed Enrique's election, on the grounds of the affiliation the military order had to his own Cistercian abbey.39 The final verdict was left to the papal curia. Meanwhile, Martin I of Aragon made good use of the situation and asked Pope Benedict XIII to provide two new masters for the territories of the orders of Santiago and Calatrava in Aragon. 1409 was the most complex year of Catalina's regency and it marked a turning point for all the Iberian military orders. Unexpectedly, the orders came to play a fundamental role in Fernando's dynastic scheme. Although the orders were mostly independent from everyone but the pope, then enmeshed in controversy and schism, their involvement in war against Granada made them all important for Fernando. At that time, the queen was almost alone, deprived of her chamber and much of her political influence by means of the 1408 coup. At the beginning of the regency, both Catalina and Fernando agreed on their support of the papacy of Benedict XIII. A new cooperation was established between the regents and the Avignon pope: While Pedro de Luna, Benedict's nephew, was granted the archbishopric of Toledo, Fernando hoped to achieve the appointment of his sons as masters of the orders of Santiago and Alcantara, despite the fact that they were not of age. Benedict XIII needed all the support he could gather to face France, and Fernando of Antequera knew how to use all his influence on the pope. After the death of Fernan Garcia de Villalobos, master of Alcantara, Bishop Sancho de Rojas persuaded the great commander and the knights to vote for Fernando's fourth son, Sancho, although he was only eight years old at the time. Benedict XIII granted the dispensation, and the child was consecrated in a solemn ceremony before the royal court in Valladolid on January 23, 1409.40 In February, Benedict XIII, who had received legates from Luis Gonzalez de Guzman, ordered that the Calatrava commanders of Seville and El Collado—Joan Rodriguez and

37

Emma Solano Ruiz, La Orden de Calatrava en el siglo XV: Los senorios castellanos de la orden alfin de la Edad Media (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 1978), 64; Francisco de Rades y Andrada, Chronica de las tres Ordenes y Cavallerias de Santiago, Calatrava y Alcantara (Toledo: Juan de Ayala, 1994; 1572), fol. 65-6. 38 Perez de Guzman, Cronica de Juan II, 279. Rades y Andrada, Chronica de Calatrava, f. 67. 39 Joseph F. O'Callaghan, 'The Affiliation of the Order of Calatrava with the Order of Citeaux', in The Spanish Military Order of Calatrava and its Affiliates (London: Variorum, 1975), I: 265. 40 Garcia de Santamaria, Cronica, 248, 258-62. Alan Ryder, Alfonso el Magndnimo, rey de Aragon, Ndpoles y Sicilia (1396-1458) (Valencia: Edicio Alfons Magnanim, 1992) 28.

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Juan de Carmona—should hold the administration while the dispute was being resolved.41 In March, Martin I of Aragon wrote to Fernando of Antequera and Juan II, assuring them that he would stop his demands to the pope about the masters of the military orders for Aragon.42 Martin was already thinking about the succession to the Aragonese throne, and both Castilian Trastamaras had valid rights to become candidates. It would be reasonable to assume that Martin had received letters from Fernando asking him to withdraw his claims. Finally, Fernando put the finishing touch to his strategy by getting his third son, Enrique, appointed as master of Santiago after the death of Lorenzo Suarez de Figueroa. This time there were other candidates involved, such as Garci Fernandez de Villagarcia, the great commander of Castile. With Catalina's support, Fernando appealed to Benedict XIII. Catalina complied with Fernando's will in this difficult moment. Fernando increased pressure on Avignon by sending an embassy and letters signed by Juan II. The pope accepted a direct designation for the boy, Sancho, issued the usual dispensation, and ruled out an election by the chapter to avoid further complications. Fernando justified his actions on the grounds that he had to provide properties for his younger sons (who would not inherit his patrimonial lands), in order not to deprive the monarchy of their royal property. What Fernando did not say was that he also wanted the immense resources of the two military orders for his campaign against Granada, and that he was going to control them thereafter.43 The queen was incapable of stopping him. Benedict's separate embassies to each of the regents set the guidelines for further contacts. The one sent to Catalina included a letter asking her to help the two legates raise funds for the pope.44 With two orders already in his power and the crisis unresolved in the order of Calatrava, Fernando played his cards again by means of the pope and his partisans in Aragon. Fernando used the fortress of Alcaniz, governed by Gonzalez de Guzman, as the meeting place for the commission which had to determine the succession to the crown of Aragon.45 However, the affairs were far from resolved. A delay followed, due in part to the complications derived from the papal schism. The Council of Pisa in 1409, Martin Fs death in 1410, the Compromise of Caspe in 1412, and the Aragonese civil war all combined to hinder the way to reconciliation within the order of Calatrava. The division lasted until 1414, when the Chapter of the Cistercian Order declared Enrique de Villena's designation null 41

Garcia de Santamaria, Cronica, 284-5. Rades y Andrada, Chronica, f. 67, mentions the pope in Rome, but the embassy was sent to Benedict XIII. 42 AC A CR: 2252, fol. 53. Although there were two letters directed to Juan II and Fernando, no letters were sent to Catalina. 43 Garcia de Santamaria, Cronica, 288-90; Perez de Guzman, Cronica de Juan II, 315. Ryder, Alfonso el Magndnimo, 29. 44 Suarez Fernandez, Castilla, el cisma, 59, 278-89. 45 As a matter of fact, they were not sure of the acquiescence of the commander and the knights of Calatrava, so they had to send an embassy first. Garcia de Santamaria, Cronica, 423-4.

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and void and confirmed Gonzalez de Guzman.46 Only twelve knights continued to pay allegiance to Enrique. However, the crown and the regents did not confirm the chapter's decision immediately. After Fernando's death on 2 April 1416, Catalina assumed those functions of the regency that she had never enjoyed before. She became involved in war and truces, and by extension in the affairs of the military orders. It was important for Catalina to counterbalance the power of Infante Enrique, master of the order of Santiago, which explains why she acted immediately after the death of Fernando I to intervene in a matter as strange to queenship as the control of the military orders.47 Her brother-in-law had set a precedent that she was eager to follow for the benefit of her son. The first thing she was concerned with was the appointment of a new master of Alcantara. Sancho had died a month before his father, and the friars hastened to elect the former great commander, Juan de Sotomayor. Catalina, however, wanted to bestow the title upon Gomez Carrillo de Cuenca, Juan IPs tutor, and she immediately appealed to the pope. He answered that the election was a privilege of the friars, and that she should accept the master with patience.48 Catalina then undertook very seriously the question of whether Gonzalez de Guzman was the rightful master of Calatrava. She asked Gonzalez de Guzman to send all the evidence of his right to the title, and she established a commission to review it. On August 22, Juan II and his mother issued a charter confirming his appointment and all his decisions, reminding everybody of the services paid by the new master to the crown, and commanding the knights and vassals of the order to accept him as their master.49 A month later, Catalina sent a letter to Alfonso V of Aragon with these terms: Most dear and much beloved cousin, I would have you know that I ordered Don Friar Luis de Guzman, master of Calatrava, to send me and my lady and mother the Queen, my tutor and regent of my realms, all the titles he had by which he claimed to have rights to the mastership of Calatrava, and he sent them to me with his faithful messengers. [I] had them seen and examined by certain doctors and clerks, and once seen and examined, I commanded the aforementioned master to come and pay due homage to me as was given by the masters of Calatrava, which his predecessors used to pay to the kings, my ancestors, where I come [from]. The same master came here to the town of Valladolid and paid me homage and due obedience, and I gave him the banners and seal of the 46

Rades, Chronica de Calatrava, f. 67 v. This is a very different issue from the financial support of the orders, which was traditional for queens and ladies born in crusader dynasties, such as Sybil of Anjou, the duchess of Flanders; and Jeanne of Constantinople, who was married to Prince Ferrand of Portugal. See Karen S. Nicholas, 'Countesses as Rulers in Flanders', in Aristocratic Women in Medieval France, edited by Theodore Evergates (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 123-4, 129-30. 48 Perez de Guzman, Cronica de Juan II, 370, followed by Rades, Chronica de Alcantara, f. 36 v. 49 AHN, O.M. Calatrava, Documentos Reales 239 and 240. See also Solano, La Orden de Calatrava, 67-8. 47

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aforementioned order, and took his liege and homage for all the castles and fortresses of the same order in the way that his predecessors the masters of Calatrava used to do. And I ordered my charters to be issued to him for all the commanders, towns, and villages of the same order, to have him and receive him as their master, and to make use of him for everything as they used to do with the other masters of Calatrava. The aforementioned master asked my favor to pray you to have him recommended and to have those charters issued to him as he needs for all the commanders, towns, villages, and vassals extant, which the master of Calatrava has and possesses in your realms and lordships, so that they would come to him with all the fruits and rents which belong to him. Therefore, King, most dear and much beloved cousin, I pray you, if it pleases you, to have him recommended and have him given the aforementioned charters which he may need for that reason, and to be paid liege and homage for the fortresses that the same master and his order have and possess in your realms and lordships aforementioned, in the form and manner which they used to be taken in the time of King Pedro of good memory, your great-grandfather, and the other kings of Aragon, his and your predecessors. Given in Valladolid, on the 24th day of September. I, Sancho Romero, had it written by the order of our lady the Queen, mother and tutor of our lord, the King, and regent of his kingdoms.50 50

'Muy caro e muy amado primo rey de Aragon e de (Jegilia. Yo el rey de Castilla e de Leon vos enbio mucho saludar como aquel para quien tanta salut e vida con onrra querria quanta vos mesmo deseades'. Muy caro e muy amado primo, fago vos saber que yo enbie mandar a don fray Luis de Gusman, maestre de Calatrava, que enbiase a mi e a la reyna mi sennora e mi madre, mi tutora e regidora de mis regnos, todos sus recabdos que toviese porque el se desia aver derecho al maestradgo de Calatrava, e enbiomelos con sus giertos mensageros, los quales yo mande ver e esaminar a giertos dotores e letrados, e por ellos vistos e esaminados yo enbie mandar al dicho maestre que veniese a me faser la reverengia devida que los maestres de Calatrava sus antegesores acostumbraron faser a los reys mis antegesores onde yo vengo. E el dicho maestre veno aqui a la villa de Valladolit e me fiso la dicha reverengia e obidiengia devida, e yo dile los pendones e sello de la dicha orden e tome del pleito e omenaje por los castillos e fortalesas de la dicha orden en la manera que lo acostunbraron faser los otros maestres de Calatrava sus antegesores, e mandele dar mis cartas para todos los comendadores e villas e logares de la dicha orden, para que lo ayan e regiban por su maestre, e que usen con el en todas las cosas segun que meior e mas conplidamente usaron con los otros maestres que fueron de Calatrava. E el dicho maestre pediome por merget que vos enbiase rogar que lo oviesedes por recomendado e le mandasedes dar las cartas que mester le fuesen para todos los comendadores e villas e logares e vasallos que son e el maestre de Calatrava ha e tiene en vuestros regnos e sennorios, para que le recudiesen con todos los frutos e rentas que le pertenescan. Por que rey, muy caro e muy amado primo, vos ruego que vos plega de lo aver por recomendado e de le mandar dar las dichas cartas que menester oviere en la dicha rason e de le tomar pleito e omenaje por las fortalesas quel dicho maestre e horden han e tienen en los dichos vuestros regnos e sennorios, segun en la forma e manera que se acostumbraron de tomar en el tiempo del rey don Pedro de buena memoria, vuestro visavuelo, e de los otros

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Ultimately, then, Alfonso decided to give Gonzalez de Guzman all the castles, fortresses, and towns belonging to the order in Aragon, and the master soon sent his legates to take those properties on his behalf.51 It was not until 1417, however, that Benedict XIII issued a letter to the order settling the matter. According to this letter, Gonzalez de Guzman had been elected after the death of Enrique III; the papal curia had issued two decrees favorable to Gonzalez de Guzman on different occasions; and finally, the pope acknowledged Gonzalez de Guzman's right as master to take the goods of the order, and released him from any excommunication which he might have incurred. The last step for his recognition was another trip made by John VII of Morimond to Calatrava, on July 26, 1418. The abbot confirmed Luis Gonzalez de Guzman and established a new series of statutes declaring that no magisterial election could take place unless he or his representatives were summoned to attend.52 Thus, by the end of her regency, Catalina of Lancaster had attempted to build a network of support for her son within the military orders. Unfortunately, in the struggles that followed, only Luis de Guzman remained loyal to Juan II and fought the infantes of Aragon. Juan de Sotomayor, master of Alcantara, thought it was too dangerous for his order to oppose Enrique, master of Santiago. Given the small credit that Catalina has achieved in modern historiography, it is remarkable that she could exercise her authority in an area so unprecedented for a woman: the rule of the military orders, in a country where crusades were fought continuously. She showed her ability to involve people in negotiations throughout her lifetime, to such an extent that her epitaph reads, 'Por la qual es paz y concordia puesta para siempre ("Because of her, peace and concord forever")'.53

reys de Aragon sus antegesores e vuestros. Dada en Valladolid, veynte e quatro dias de setienbre.Yo, Sancho Romero, la fis escrevir por mandado de nuestra sennora la reyna, madre e tutora de nuestro sennor el rey e regidora de sus regnos'. [1416] September, 24. Valladolid. ACA Cartas Reales, Fernando I, c. 10, 1234. 51 AHN O. M. Calatrava, Ms. 1348 c, f. 37-40. See also Solano, La Orden de Calatrava, 68. 52 O'Callaghan, 'The Affiliation', 266. 53 E. Florez, Memorias de las reynas catholicas (Madrid: 1790), I: 726.

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PART III REPRESENTING THE POLITICS OF QUEENSHIP

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Royal Portraits: Representations of Queenship in the Thirteenth-Century Catalan Chronicles Marta VanLandingham

The chronicle written by Bernat Desclot in the final decades of the thirteenth century renders the following image of Violant of Hungary, queen of the AragoCatalan realms between 1235 and 1251: '[King Jaume] took to wife . . . the daughter of the king of Hungary, who was named Lady Violant; and she was the queen of Aragon. She was a very beautiful woman, and was good and pleasing to God and to her people'. Desclot then went on to list a number of the children that sprang from this union and to describe briefly their subsequent dynastic triumphs.1 Another major Catalan chronicler who lived and wrote in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth century, Ramon Muntaner, had even less to say about Queen Violant. He wrote that Jaume had married the daughter of the king of Hungary and mentioned the names and important marital alliances of some of her children, but he left out altogether any personal characteristics of the queen, failing even to supply her name.2 Violant—as she was known in Catalan; her birth name was probably Yolanda or Yoles3—was born in Hungary in 1215, came to the Arago-Catalan realms to marry the king in 1235, and died sixteen years later at the age of 36. Bernat Desclot would have been young when Violant ruled as his queen, and did not record his chronicle of the deeds of the royal family until about 35 years after her

1 Bernat Desclot, Llibre del rei en Pere, ch. 48, in Les quatre grans croniques, edited by Ferran Soldevila, (Barcelona: Editorial Selecta, 1971). The translations in this essay are all mine. Because of his focus on the successful dynastic alliances created by most of these offspring, Desclot neglected altogether to count certain sons and daughters, hi toto, Jaume and Violant engendered either nine or ten children who survived into adulthood. 2 Ramon Muntaner, Cronica, ch. 6, in Soldevila, Les quatre grans croniques. 3 I have chosen to use the version of her name that would have been most familiar to those who considered her their queen, that was and is most closely allied with her royal identity.

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passing.4 To Muntaner, who wrote in the first decade of the next century, Violant could not have been more than a figure of the past who had left her mark only in her children. It is very easy, therefore, to understand why both these historians resorted to the standard contemporary topoi of queenship—the queen as lovely, good, pious, and proper, but by far most significantly as a cog in the dynastic succession, as a bearer of the royal honor of her forefathers, conveyed to her king by her marriage vows and to their children through her blood.5 In stark contrast to this bare-bones model of queenship, however, stands that presented by Violant's own husband and monarch, Jaume the Conqueror, in his autobiographical Llibre delsfeits. In this work, the predominant image of Violant is as Jaume's chief adviser. She is the only counselor whom he trusts implicitly to support his goals without reservation and to understand the political and military contexts in which he is embroiled well enough to provide him with truly useful guidance. Her role as his junior partner in rulership is best manifested during Jaume's siege of the city of Valencia. In September of 1238, as the siege has dragged on and the Christian forces have realized several triumphs against the Muslim inhabitants, the ruler of the capital, Zayyan,6 has despatched an ambassador to initiate talks with Jaume. In his chronicle, the king remembers that he did not wish for any of his nobles to know of these negotiations, as he did not at all trust them not to interfere in his taking of so rich and important a city. So he approaches the queen and informs her alone of the overtures of the Muslims.7 Soon thereafter, Zayyan's 4

The identification of the chronicler Bemat Desclot with the courtier and eventual treasurer Bernat Escriva, proposed originally by Miquel Coll i Alentorn in his introduction to the Cronica de Bernat Desclot (Barcelona: Editorial Barcino, 1949) has been widely accepted. On Desclot/Escriva as a royal official, see M. VanLandingham, Transforming the State: King, Court and Political Culture in the Realms of Aragon (1213-1387) (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 151-2. Escriva first appeared in the entourage of Jaume's son Prince Pere in 1268; he most likely composed his chronicle starting in the mid-1280s. 5 The bibliography on medieval queenship is still more limited than it should be, but growing. For some particularly useful works on ideals of queenship vs. practice, see for example Marion F. Facinger, 'A Study of Medieval Queenship: Capetian France, 9871237', Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 5 (1968): 3^8, as well as the articles by Lois L. Huneycutt and John Carmi Parsons in Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, edited by Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth MacLean (Urbana, 1995). Various articles in Medieval Queenship, edited by John Carmi Parsons (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993) are very helpful. See also Miriam Shadis, Political Women of the High Middle Ages. Berenguela of Castile and her Family (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, forthcoming). 6 His full name was Abu Jamil Zayyan b. Abi Cl-Hamlat Mudafi b. Abi clHajjaj b. Sa'd b. Mardanish; see Robert I. Burns, Islam under the Crusaders: Colonial Survival in the Thirteenth-Century Kingdom of Valencia (Princeton University Press, 1973), 33. The chronicles most often list the ruler's name simply as £aen. 7 Tor many of them would not be pleased if Valencia were to be taken; they would be much happier if the city remained in the hands of the Muslims than if it should come into my power', 'car molts n'hi havia a qui no plaia que Valencia fos presa, que mes 1'amaven que fos de sarrams que no que vingues en nostre poder, e a enant ne pot horn coneixer la

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nephew arrives at camp to begin to parley. Jaume's chronicle places a great deal of emphasis on his call to the queen to be present at the height of the negotiations, on his clearly proclaimed insistence to the Muslim ambassador that he will make no final decisions without her.8 Three days after the initial phase of the negotiations, the envoy returns to Jaume with the information that Zayyan will surrender the city peacefully only if the Muslim inhabitants can take away their effects without being searched and are provided with protection as they emigrate. Jaume then states that 'we will discuss the matter with the queen alone, who is in our counsel'. When Jaume asks Violant what she thinks of the proposal, the queen says, in Jaume's words, 'that if I thought we should accept those terms, then she thought it right also, because no one should risk losing Valencia from one day to the next' when he is so close to taking the city. Jaume generously praises the advice she has given, stating that he will accept it and act on her recommendation—though he must include in the record an additional rationale for proceeding with the surrender on Zayyan's terms in order to bolster—or improve upon?—Violant's reasoning.9 Although Jaume ends his record of these events with a forceful illustration of his own role as the primary and ultimate decision-maker, he has nonetheless placed a great deal of emphasis on his trust of his queen, his reliance upon her judgment. My goal in this work is not to investigate the facts behind the events portrayed here, not an attempt to verify the truth of Jaume's assertions of her value to him in rulership. Instead I wish to explore the portrait itself as a construct, as a guided confluence of fact, memory, and program. Such a representation of a queen as drawn by her consort largely for the purposes of royal propaganda provides us with a very rare and highly suggestive view of contemporary notions of queenship through the eyes and desires of a ruling monarch. According to Jaume the Conqueror's own world-view, a queen must clearly be much more than a receptacle through which the majestic characteristics of monarchy and honor might pass from one generation to the next. These characteristics can and should also be expressed through her own person, in her own voice. The queen's authority remains indirect, of course, necessarily mediated through her king and his own judgment. Nonetheless the Violant who appears in the pages of the Llibre stands for Jaume's model of a true queen—a reliable political associate rather than merely a childbearer. Jaume and his descendant Pere the Ceremonious are the only medieval kings known to have redacted their autobiographies as a chronicle for posterity. Recent scholarship has determined conclusively that Jaume was himself the chronicle's prova'. Jaume then records that the queen was very pleased both with the general secrecy surrounding the negotiations and with her own inclusion at their heart. Jaume I, Cronica o Llibre dels Feits, ch. 271, in Soldevila, Les quatre grans croniques. 8 Jaume treats the preliminaries with the ambassador (and an interpreter) alone, but as soon as an actual surrender plan is nearly completed, he puts a halt to the process while he sends for the queen. When she arrives, she is informed of all the details of the negotiations thus far. At that point Jaume tells the representative that only now, in the queen's presence, will he make his final offer. Jaume, Llibre, chs. 276-7. 9 Jaume, L//Z>re, ch. 278.

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primary author.10 He worked with collaborators who reinforced the heroic epic tone of the work by occasionally incorporating contemporary prose-poem tales of Jaume's deeds into the body of the text, but the vast majority of the material was dictated by the monarch personally.11 The redaction was apparently completed in two major stages: the first, covering the years from Jaume's conception in 1207 up to 1240, was probably composed in 1244; the rest of the material was likely dictated in 1274, with an addendum by one of Jaume's collaborators to cover the final two years of the reign.12 It is important to note, if nothing else for purposes of comparison, that Violant was not the only queen who ruled at Jaume's side. Jaume had had a previous bride, Elionor, a member of the royal family of Castile, though that marriage had lasted in truth no more than three or four years and in law only eight.13 The marriage had been instigated by Jaume's great vassals, who feared for the dynastic succession; Jaume was an only child at that time, orphaned very early, and he lived and ruled during his youth in highly precarious circumstances. The nobles

10

The fascinating question of why Jaume poured so much time and energy into pioneering the creation of this complex and detailed two-volume record of his deeds as monarch merits further investigation. Robert I. Burns, in 'The Spiritual Life of James the Conqueror, King of Arago-Catalonia, 1208-1276: Portrait and Self-Portrait', argues that Jaume's primary motivation was to leave behind a monument to God's grace towards himself, a 'testimonial of thanksgiving'. The king believed that his many triumphs, celebrated throughout the Christian world, signaled a divinely-touched destiny, and that such a gift from god was to be lauded as permanently and publicly as possible. (The Catholic Historical Review 62 (Jan. 1976): 1-35, quote on p. 15). Jaume also clearly had much more worldly motivations for writing his autobiography; one was the same logic of ego that drives anyone to record the story of his or her life and put it out before the world. The courts of the thirteenthcentury realms of Aragon were saturated with troubadour poets and their tales of knightly derring-do; Jaume plainly felt that his own deeds rivaled those of even the most famous heroes such as Roland, Alexander, and the Cid. Finally, Jaume wanted to set forth his life as an exemplar of a good and blessed Christian monarchy, so that his descendants might learn from his actions and attitudes and might extend the glory of his dynasty into many future generations. This final motivation most influenced the inclusion of programmatic aspects into his work, including his framing of the deeds of Violant within his model of queenly behavior. 11 See Robert I. Burns, 'Castle of Intellect, Castle of Force: The Worlds of Alfonso the Learned and James the Conqueror', in The Worlds of Alfonso the Learned and James the Conqueror, edited by Burns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 10; Marti de Riquer, Historia de la Literatura Catalana: Part Antiga (Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 1984), 1: 394-429; and Soldevila, Les quatre grans croniques, 9-64. 12 Riquer, Historia, 406-8. The final few chapters, covering the last two years of Jaume's reign, his final illness, and his death, were obviously added on by a former collaborator who wished to bring the work to a logical conclusion. 13 A. Tona i Nadalmai, Minyonia del bon rei Jaume el Conqueridor, la dona i la llegenda (Barcelona: Editorial Portic, 1973), 216-19; Elionor was the daughter of Alfonso VIII of Castile and Eleanor of England. She and Jaume were married on 6 February 1221. The marriage began to be dissolved in 1225, and papal confirmation was received in 1229.

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therefore had the boy marry and attempt to begin a family as soon as possible14— though the timing proved to be too optimistic. The wedding took place just four days after Jaume's thirteenth birthday, and the adult king, looking back on the trauma from the safe distance of twenty-odd years, admitted in his chronicle that 'for a year I could not do with her that which men do with their wives, because I was not old enough'.15 This confession, particularly surprising from a man of legendary virility, sets the stage for his relationship with his first queen, as portrayed in the Llibre; a relationship lacking in passion and common ground, but imbued at times with an exasperated affection like that of siblings. In 1224, the very young couple is trapped in a fortification in Aragon by rebellious nobles. When they realize the peril of their situation, Elionor takes to weeping bitterly. Jaume quotes one of their few allies as regaling the young queen with stirring words of consolation, but he himself only did what little he could to comfort her.16 Eventually he comes up with a plan of escape, which strikes the reader as something only a desperate teenager could contrive. As he explains it to Elionor, he will lower her, seated on a board slung between two ropes, down through a trapdoor and into a subterranean passage, where he will arrange to have her met by a friend. Once she is safely away, Jaume will fight his own way out, killing all who stand in his path and fleeing on a very fast steed. Elionor's reply might strike us as quite reasonable—she tells the boy unequivocally that 'there is no way in the whole world that I am going to leave here either on a board or by rope'. Jaume begs her, but she continues to refuse. Jaume finally lets go of his mad plan because of the depth of her fears.17 Jaume probably included this episode in his memoirs, in some detail, in part to illustrate his own imaginative courage at a tender age, but also to explain, to some degree, why he soon decided to have the marriage annulled on that ever-convenient excuse of consanguinity. Elionor did not share Jaume's vision, did not partake of his courage and steadfastness. She held him back, as no proper queen should do. Perhaps in part because Elionor bore a son whom Jaume declared as his legitimate heir, and perhaps also under some influence from the positive regard for the young queen suggested in Jaume's autobiography, the king made sure that Elionor was well supported after the dissolution of the union. But as far as Jaume's propaganda was concerned, by refusing to support him in his time of need, Elionor contributed to his shame rather than embracing the cause of his honor, as was his due from his queen. He was therefore justified in rejecting her. From a slow start, Jaume went on to compile, over the course of a long life, a highly notable record with women. The common joke is that the epithet of 'the Conqueror' referred as much to his erotic as to his military exploits. Jaume had many known mistresses, several formal concubines, and one other legal wife, a 14

Jaume, Llibre,ch. 18. Jaume, Llibre,ch. 19. 16 Jaume, Llibre,ch. 22. 17 Jaume, Llibre, ch. 23: 'Sapiats que en taule ne ab corda no avallaria d'aqui per nulla re del mon'. 15

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Navarrese noblewoman whom he married after the death of Violant.18 But this marriage was morganatic; Teresa Gil de Vidaure had no claim whatsoever, according to the marital agreement, to any aspect of the office of queenship. She was the wife of the king without in any way being the queen.19 Dona Teresa is only mentioned once in Jaume's chronicle in passing; his other women are referred to solely when their existence or Jaume's actions on their behalf somehow affect the larger political or military context, or in one instance in repentance. But as far as Jaume was concerned, these women could not be queen because they lacked the royal blood, the quasi-magical element of lineage that his pride and the wellbeing of the realms demanded in his consort. Shortly after his marriage to Violant, during a moment in which his nobles are implying criticism of his honor, Jaume exclaims, 'I once had no wife. The pope proposed to me the daughter of the king of Hungary, and [the daughter of] the duke of Austria. I chose the daughter of a king who is among the most honored in the world . . . . Before I had shown myself so worthy, they gave me the daughter of the king of Castile Don Alfonso [VIII]; that is yet more reason why now, when I have better proven myself, I should take the daughter of a king'.20 The elevated status of their fathers both enhances and conclusively demonstrates his own majesty, the value placed by the world upon his accomplishments. Jaume's other women lack this crucial element of regal descent, while Elionor fails to live up to the promise that is inherent in her royal background in her own actions and attitudes. But Violant incorporates both the potentiality of royalty, as borne to her through generations of anointed ancestors, and its fulfillment. Another element in the passage just quoted is worthy of note as providing a partial explanation of Violant's success as Jaume's model queen. After Pope Gregory IX, expressing some frustration at the capricious nature of royal husbands, has agreed to the nullification of Jaume's first marriage, he suggests that Jaume choose a replacement bride from two who are carefully selected for him. Both young women are suitable to be royal brides, but both come from territories located very far indeed from the realms of Aragon. At least one scholar has suggested that the papal strategy was geared to avoiding the creation of the sort of alliance between neighboring territories that could prove dangerous.21 More 18 For a discussion of Jaume's known sexual/romantic affairs, see, for example, Tona i Nadalmai, Minyonia, and Bums, 'Spiritual Life'. 19 See Cynthia L. Chamberlin, 'The 'Sainted Queen' and the 'Sin of Berenguela': Teresa Gil de Vidaure and Berenguela Alfonso in Documents of the Crown of Aragon, 12551272', in Iberia and the Mediterranean World of the Middle Ages: Studies in Honor of RobertI. Burns, S.J., edited by Larry J. Simon (Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1995), 303-21. 20 Jaume, Llibre, ch. 130; cN6s no havem muller, e parlen-nos la filla del Rei d'Hongria, e del due d'Hostalrich, e parla-ho PApostoli, e nos haven haiida filla de Rei dels pus honrats del mon: e jassia que ens vullen donar la filla del due d'Hostalric, ab mes haver no la pendrem, que mes amam la filla del rei d'Hongria; que, quan nos no valiem tant, nos donaren la filla del rei de Castella don Alfonso, ben es rao que ara, quan valem mes, que prengam filla del rei'. 1 Tona i Nadalmai, Minyonia.

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immediately, in my opinion, the pope was doing his best to ensure that Jaume would marry a woman with whom he could never possibly find any hint of joint ancestry; the pope was undoubtedly exasperated with the free and easy manipulation of the restrictions of consanguinity. But an important incidental result of this match was that Violant came into the marriage entirely as an outsider. One relative of her father's, the count Dionis, accompanied her to her new land and settled with her;22 but for the most part she was displaced from her family and left with few artifacts of home. This status as a woman completely separated from any web of alliances of birth and obligation among the influential families of Iberia and southern France might lessen her value to the king on the chessboard of external politics, but it could only enhance her position as Jaume's main supporter, as his true political other half. To quote Jaume, 'She said . . . that no one else could have as great a stake in my honor and in my welfare as did she. And if God should honor and love me, she would be grateful, as all her hopes for her own wellbeing rested in me'.23 Through her words to her king and through her actions, Violant proved herself to be completely trustworthy, to be essentially lacking in the autonomous personal agendas that were rife among the king's other advisers. This quality of dependence on the king was plainly very highly valued by Jaume, and was clearly an important element in the make-up of his model queen. Her role at Jaume's side reached, however, well beyond the post of political adviser. For example, Jaume depicts her at times as serving in the more universally accepted role of queen as intercessor for her people, particularly when safeguarding the wellbeing of her family. In March of 1244 Jaume and the Infante Alfonso of Castile are engaged in a serious dispute concerning the rights to certain territories around Xativa. The Infante, who will later be crowned as Alfonso X 'el Sabio', is engaged—or married by words of future—to Jaume and Violant's oldest daughter, who is at this time only seven or eight years old and is being raised at the court of Castile. Jaume makes it manifest in his chronicle that the negotiations between the contending parties are eased notably by the presence of Alfonso's mother-in-law in the king's camp; several times Alfonso uses the excuse of visiting Queen Violant to resume talks, and several times family-style rituals are employed to cool the heated atmosphere.24 Eventually, however, the situation deteriorates into threats of force; Jaume becomes enraged and is about to storm away from the meeting grounds. Jaume later recorded that Violant 'began to weep, and said she had been born in an evil hour, because she had come here in order to mend relations between me and her son-in-law, but now she sees on what bad terms we are separating'. Jaume finally announces that, because she has asked him to, he 22

Ferenc Oliver Brachfeld, 'Una familia hongaresa a Catalunya el segle XIII', in Homenatge a Antoni Rubio ILluch (Barcelona: 1936), 3: 599-606. 23 Jaume, Llibre, ch. 271; 'E ella dix que li plai'en molt les paraules que nos li mostravem: que en la nostra honor e el nostre be nulla re no hi havia tan gran part com ella. E si Deus nos honrava e ens amava, que li ho grai'a, car I'esperanga del seu be tota era en nos'. 24 See, for example, Jaume, Llibre, chs. 343, 344, and 345.

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will stay. A treaty is then crafted.25 Violant is therefore represented as having saved the day through the force of her tears, through her emotional influence. In this vignette, the mother-queen has safeguarded peace within the family, and by extension, by a redefinition of the role of family, within the Iberian monarchies. More often, though, Violant is shown in the exercise of her influence beyond rather than within the sphere of family relations. Jaume records in his chronicle several other moments in which Violant serves as his chief consultant and coworker in intricate political negotiations—as, for example, at the May 1244 capitulation of Xativa,26 and when dealing with the 1247 revolt of the Muslim lord alAzraq.27 Interestingly enough, however, each of these matters in which Violant is portrayed as having acted forcefully directly concerned the conquest and maintenance of the kingdom of Valencia. Several scholars have linked this observation with the fact that Violant's sons were not due to inherit the home territories of Aragon and Catalonia; Jaume already had a legal heir from his first marriage with Elionor of Castile. As one scholar has written, Violant 'above all else was a medieval mother, with the obsession commonly shared by all of them of leaving their sons with a good inheritance'.28 Because, therefore, Violant's male children could only hope to inherit any territory that had not already been promised to the firstborn prince, these scholars have given Violant credit for being the driving force behind the conquests of the Balearics and of Valencia, since these newlyincorporated territories could be granted by Jaume as he wished. In other words, Violant supported Jaume politically in these trying times not because she was his chief ally, not because he trusted her judgment and her desire to act in the best interests of the king and the state but rather because she was fiercely ambitious on behalf of her sons and would use her intercessionary powers over her husband to carve out for them a new kingdom or two. A close reading of the Llibre, however, reveals that Jaume would have found such a theory patently absurd. The Violant who appears in the pages of his memoirs was not initially a supporter of his planned conquest—or at least she preached caution in their undertaking to a degree that Jaume considered insulting to his abilities. In the early months of 1238 Jaume is faced with a crisis in his effort to take the Valencian capital. He has discovered that his knights are planning to desert a crucial border post just north of Valencia city the moment he leaves there to gather his army in Aragon and Catalonia. In order to avoid this outcome, and to make manifest his utter determination to concentrate all his energies on meeting his military goal with no unnecessary delays, Jaume announces that he will not set 25

Jaume, Llibre, ch. 348; c e la regina pres-se a plorar e dix que en mal punt era nada, que ella era venguda aqui per adobar a nos e a son genre, e ara que vees que aixi es partia tan mal'. Advisors try to calm the raging monarch, but with no effect; they in turn pressure the queen to intensify her supplications to her husband. She does so successfully. 26 Jaume, Llibre,ch. 353. 27 Jaume, Llibre, chs. 361-3. 28 Tona i Nadalmai, Minyonia, 234. For this theory see also F. Soldevila, Jaume I (Barcelona: Editorial Teide, 1955).

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foot outside of the kingdom of Valencia until the city is taken. Instead he will call his wife the queen to join him on the frontier, again illustrating his determination to plant himself where he is until the conquest is complete. The queen soon arrives, but with Jaume's hated uncle Ferran in tow. This man has been a thorn in Jaume's side since the king was born. Ferran arrives ready to criticize, as always, his nephew's decisions; he implies strongly that Jaume is a fool to cut off contact with his vassals in his own kingdoms for an unpredictable amount of time. Disappointingly for Jaume, Violant has come under Ferran's influence; 'she agreed with all that Ferran had said, as they had come to an agreement on the road to speak in this manner'.29 Jaume negotiates with them to some degree, but eventually wins their acceptance of his plan.30 At various points in the Llibre Jaume offers rationales for his decisions to initiate and enlarge upon his military conquests. Creating new inheritances for the sons of his second marriage, in order to keep his pesky wife off his back, is never mentioned as a motivation. More convincingly, Jaume portrays his model queen undermining his interests in a way which reveals that, at least early in their relationship, she could not have been a prime mover of the Valencian campaign, familiar though the image of a nagging wife, ambitious for her sons, might have been to later historians.31 This episode from 1238 is not the only incident in which Jaume portrays his queen as making a mistake in judgment in regards to her husband's needs. Seven years later Jaume is forced to chastise her for withholding very important information from him regarding al-Azraq's rebellion. But Jaume shows Violant redeeming herself several times over immediately following the incident, first by insisting she be allowed to accompany him when he goes to attend to the situation, and later by taking the initiative in keeping Jaume well aware of further developments.32 In placing such an emphasis on her redemption, Jaume is illustrating the king's role in the correction of his people and even his most trusted followers. But aside from this blip in their working partnership, Jaume has depicted his relationship with his queen as having become ever closer, with their minds continually more attuned to each other's. In Violant's first rocky entrance onto the military stage, just three years after her translation from a faraway land and marriage to a stranger king, having come temporarily under the influence of that stock figure the 'evil counselor', she fails to support Jaume in his tactics. In her final appearance in the chronicle, however, set in 1247, Violant and Jaume share a moment of perfect understanding, of shared incredulity that the monarchs' Muslim subjects are so 29 Jaume, Llibre, ch. 240; 'E la reina atorga 90 que ell havia dit, car abdos s'eren acordats pel cami que aixi ho dixessen'. • ° The entire episode is recounted in Jaume, Llibre, chs. 237-41. 31 The theory that Violant was the driving force behind the conquest of Valencia also does not hold up well under an analysis of the basic chronology. Jaume began the crusade against Valencia in 1232, after the completion of his campaign against the Balearics. He married Violant late in 1235, after much of northern Valencia had already fallen under his control. Even at the time of the siege and conquest of the city of Valencia, in 1238, Violant had borne Jaume a daughter, but would not give birth to her first son Pere until 1240. 32 Jaume, Llibre, chs. 361-3.

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perverse as to not express overwhelming despair at the anti-Christian rebellion of one of their own.33 In between times Violant has developed into the perfect queen. And though Jaume's focus in recording his deeds is almost single-mindedly military—the field of battle being, of course, the primary stage on which a knight performed—the king does supply a tantalizing bit of material which allows us a glimpse into their purely domestic life, into her development as Jaume's perfect wife as well as co-ruler. Not long after Violant's arrival on the frontier, Jaume sends messengers to bring her from a nearby town to join him at a castle he has just taken, where he believes she will be more comfortable. Violant tells the messengers that she will come as soon as she has finished her dinner; but Jaume has given his men strict instructions to bring her away to dine with him. To quote Jaume: 'When she heard this, she left her dinner. I waited for her at the foot of the castle's hill. She and I entered joyfully into the castle, and ate together in great delight'.34 The inclusion of this little tale is quite remarkable. The editor of this chronicle, Ferran Soldevila, is driven to raptures by this happy scene of lovers in love, and implies that a night of passion is clearly foreshadowed.35 Soldevila takes his conclusions here farther than the text allows; we must guard against envisioning our histories like Hollywood movies. Jaume's decision to include this rather charming but minor domestic vignette in the record of his great deeds will probably always remain somewhat mysterious. Other questions are also raised by this scene: why does he portray himself waiting impatiently upon her arrival? Why reveal her as at all hesitant to come to him, prepared dinner notwithstanding? It is possible that, like quite a few other minor events in the chronicles that have no obvious meaning, Jaume just felt the need to remember some of the details of what had been for him a special moment. The workings of memory are never predictable, and not all of the inclusions in the chronicle had to be informed by political considerations. But firm answers must needs remain frustratingly out of reach. If there is any program to be read here, it would have to be merely the illustration of growing bonds of love and trust between a king and his queen.36 One final point about Jaume's depiction of his model queen in the Llibre dels felts, Violant appears in about two dozen chapters in the chronicle; Jaume quotes her directly quite often in these passages, allowing her to have her own voice, though naturally filtered through his own memory, mind, and expression. But never once, in all of these episodes, does he mention her by name. Each and every 33

Jaume, Llibre, ch. 362. Jaume, Llibre, ch. 248; C E ella, quan ho oi, lleixa son menjar, e esperam-la tro que venc, e eixim a la costa del peu del castell, e nos e ella entram alegrament dins lo castell, e ab gran alegria menjam'. 35 Les quatre grans croniques, 309. 36 Scholars believe that, during the course of this marriage, Jaume the great philanderer remained basically faithful to Violant, or at least did not set up any formal mistresses. Also, we should keep in mind that, in the span of sixteen years, Violant bore Jaume nine or ten children who survived into adulthood—an occupation which would have had to infringe upon her ability to act as Jaume's advisor. If she had been male, never pregnant, would he have been even more deeply dependent on her political support? 34

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time she is either 'the queen' or 'the queen, my wife'. His first wife Elionor is referred to by name; his other women, when they appear, are granted an identity. Jaume probably did not consciously strip his queen of her individuality; but his purpose here, to whatever degree he might perceive it, is to present his idea of a prototypical queen, a perfect partner for a king, an extension and reflection of his own royal self. Some rather honest, notably human anecdotes, as we have seen, are allowed to crop up because they are inextricably a part of his personal image of Violant. But it is clear that he deeply approves of her royal background and bearing, of her wisdom in reading his needs and supporting his brilliance and honor, of the trust he could place in her loyalty and in the acuity of her advice. The later chronicler Ramon Muntaner did not refer to Violant by name because he could not be bothered; she was no more to him than an empty title from the past. Jaume did not cite her by name in his memoirs for the opposite reason; her person, at least as he chose to present her to the world, embodied and fulfilled all of the elements that comprise a model queen. In his work, Violant and the perfect queen are one and the same.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Isabel of Castile (1451-1504), Her Self-Representation and Its Context Peggy Liss

Some time ago Frances Yates wrote of Elizabeth I of England's imperial stance and suggested it compared closely to that of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor who was, as Charles I, also king of Spain. More recently Marie Tanner has written of that emperor's use of imagery, and especially that indicating Trojan ancestry, put forth by his Habsburg predecessors. Neither study takes into account the extent to which Charles drew as well on maternal tradition, and specifically on that of his maternal grandparents, los Reyes Catolicos, Isabel of Castile and Fernando of Aragon.1 I have shown in my biography, Isabel the Queen, that Isabel was proprietary queen of Castile in her own right, and in her day recognized there as more powerful than Fernando.2 My thesis here is twofold: that the well-known imperial image of a world class queen, Elizabeth I, had more in common than heretofore suspected with that of Isabel I, who, well before Elizabeth, had placed herself and her people at the center of a universal drama, and that both queens drew on some common ideational sources. Studies abound of Elizabeth's flamboyant self-representation, to which we shall return. Less known is that Isabel, although she insisted she be depicted as reigning jointly with her husband, Fernando, nonetheless positioned herself equally advantageously, if on the whole in ways less obvious today than did Elizabeth.3 Yet to her contemporaries she sent out easily recognizable signs and symbols aplenty communicating her strong sense of who she was and how she wished to be seen. In the doing, she literally left messages all over the place. Further, Isabel

1

Frances Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1975); Marie Tanner, The Last Descendant of Aeneas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). 2 Isabel the Queen: Life and Times, revised edition (Philadephia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004; first edition 1992); all page references herein refer to the 1992 edition. 3 In her correspondence with Fernando and in contemporary accounts, Isabel adhered to another convention, that of chivalric rhetoric, sounding like lady to knight. So, while deferring prettily, she strongly suggests he besiege another town or two.

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couched them in language and imagery blending the religious and the political.4 Resulting was a self-representation that was, but only most immediately, traditionally Spanish. L

One parallel comes to mind instantly: Elizabeth's best known designation, the Virgin Queen, is an allusion to the virginity and the role of Mary and to England's queen being the earthly counterpart of the Queen of Heaven. As to Isabel, assuredly she was no virgin queen. Her marriage to Fernando of Aragon at seventeen was from all accounts remarkably successful, one of love, passion, and a meeting of minds. It went far to shape Spain and its history. It also produced five children. Nonetheless, in representing Isabel, she and her publicists did play on several aspects of Holy Mary. Perhaps the association of a reigning queen with the Queen of Heaven was inevitable; Isabel had after all few other exemplary female models familiar to her people, although admirers did compare her to the biblical queen, Esther, and the judge, Deborah. Yet unquestionably the image of Mary was far more potent and multi-purpose. At the outset of her reign, Isabel mirrored one function often ascribed to Mary. During her accession ceremony at Segovia in 1474, she presented herself as Mary was so often depicted in medieval Europe, as the personification of the political community. Castile's kings were held to personify the realm; a reigning queen had to make the case. So in Segovia Isabel portrayed herself as heir to those kings in progressing through the town on horseback, preceded by a single rider, in his right hand a naked sword, as an eye-witness reported, 'so all could see even at a distance that the bearer of royal authority who could punish the guilty was approaching'; moreover, that sword was held by the point 'as in Spanish usage', hilt upright, thus forming the shape of a cross.5 Throughout the medieval Western world, the sword symbolized a principal royal function, to do justice. But viewed as a cross, when borne before Christian kings it also alluded to another, waging just and holy war. It recalled the popular legend of the event to which the Roman emperor, Constantine, ascribed his conversion to Christianity, the appearance of a great cross in the sky bearing the legend: 'In this sign conquer!' It called to mind too the biblical prophecy in the book of Revelation: the vision of 'one like a son of man', who has 'a sharp, two-edged sword issuing from his mouth' (1: 16). The Emperor 4

This essay results from some questions surfacing while I worked on Isabel the Queen and on a recently completed manuscript on political power and religious language in the Western world. Accordingly, I draw on some sources referred to previously in supporting the argument developed here. See also my Tsabel, Myth and History', in David A. Boruchoff, editor, Isabel la Catolica, Queen of Castile: Critical Essays (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 57-78. 5 Alonso Fernandez de Palencia, Cronica de Enrique IV, edited by Antonio Paz y Melia, 4 volumes (Madrid: 1973-75) Dec. 2, lib. 10, cap. 10 (II: 155).

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thereby, in taking up Christianity, also claimed for himself a providential assignment akin to a messianic mission. Against this background, in Segovia that day the sword represented an avowal by Castile's new ruler to vigorously fulfill the royal obligations of war, justice, and religion. In that time and place, and in accord with Spanish usage, the sight of a regal woman preceded by an upraised sword announced most specifically that this queen was dedicated to the pursuit of the greatest of those kings who were her predecessors, to regaining Spain.6 Isabel was pointedly evoking the particularly Spanish tradition of crusading, of taking up the sword against Muslim kingdoms in Iberia. That it was a woman who embodied this endeavor, rather than seem incongruous, may well have emphasized its sacrality, and hers. Isabel and her holy cross surely evoked the well-known warrior woman, Joan of Arc, who fought to save her nation and whom the new queen greatly admired; yet the combination of queen and sword undoubtedly and most potently called up yet another ascription of Holy Mary.7 For Mary was the particular patroness of the reconquest of Spain, as had long since been made clear by the moorfighting king, Alfonso XI, who fulfilled a battlefield vow in handsomely endowing her shrine at Guadalupe.8 And Spanish armies went to war under the banner of Santa Maria de las Batallas. Mary was plainly many things to many people, as Isabel showed herself determined to be. The ceremonial chosen for her accession, its elements culled from royal tradition, announced that this queen would personify and protect her people, intercede for them with heaven, and do battle against God's enemies, who were by definition also their own. Ever after, Isabel reminded her subjects of the intimate relationship that she as ruler enjoyed with heaven. When in 1478 Isabel gave birth to a son, her chroniclers and poets wrote of that momentous event in language readily recognizable as paralleling the birth of Jesus. Yet the image then presented was not that of tender mother and child. Rather, Isabel was, like Mary, declared a second Eve, who was to right the wrongs of the first. So the Franciscan friar, courtier, and poet, Inigo de Mendoza, addressed Isabel as High Queen, 'come by grace of God to remedy our ills, [begun]

6

See also Las Siete Partidas del Rey don Alfonso el Sabio, 3 volumes (Madrid: 1807), lib. 3; Poema de Alfonso XI, stanzas 127-9; and Jose Manuel Nieto Soria, Ceremonia de la realeza'. propaganda y legitimation en la Castilla Trastdmara (Madrid: Nerea, 1993), 18890; Bonifacio Palacios Martin, 'Los simbolos de la soberania en la Edad Media espanola. El simbolismo de la espada', VII Centenario del Infante Don Fernando de la Cerda (Madrid, 1976), 273-96. 7 A life of Joan of Arc dedicated to Isabel stressed the warrior-maiden's militant heroism rather than her religiosity. See Adeline Rucquoi, 'De Jeanne d'Arc a Isabelle la Catholique: Timage de la France en Castille au XVe Siecle', Le Journal des Savants (Jan.-June 1990) 155-74; and V. Campo and V. Infantes, editors, La Poncella de Francia: la historia castellana de Juana de Arco (Madrid: 1997). 8 See Peter Linehan, The Beginnings of Santa Maria de Guadalupe and the Direction of Fourteenth-century Castile', Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 36 (1985): 284-304. The term reconquest or reconquista is not of the period, but the sentiment it signifies is.

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when our life was lost by the sin of a woman'.9 This second Eve, it was understood, would bring redemption through bringing Christ into the world. Isabel, in instituting her reign, had projected a dual and doubly potent image, at once female and male and heavenly and earthly, and she continued to do so. She assiduously performed the principal kingly functions of leading in war and seeing to it that justice—royal justice—prevailed among her subjects. In her world, earthly rulers were to mirror the attributes of the King of Heaven, who was commonly portrayed as a majestic figure delivering judgment, severely final. 'Kings', stated the Castilian law code, Las Siete Parti das, 'are vicars of God, each put in his kingdom over its people to maintain them in justice and in truth in temporal matters, just as an emperor in his empire'. That compilation (made by a king) also views the king as head and heart and soul of an organic community, providing 'unity to all the other members, to make a body of them'.10 In 1477, Isabel, having triumphed in civil war against dissident nobles, ostentatiously and effectively turned to doing justice. She immediately went to Seville, Castile's most populous city and key to Andalusia, where she brought its near-autonomous nobles under royal authority. This she did in large part through setting up a court of law over which she herself presided and there dispensing swift and rigorous justice. She made her authority felt by wielding, very publicly and very forcefully, the royal justice superior to all other that, according to Castilian law codes, reflected heaven's law. In the same vein, her decisions and policies, her decrees stated, were heaven's will as well as her own. Waging war was both a kingly responsibility and a holy endeavor, and war prevailed through most of Isabel's life. When Isabel was two years old, the fall of Constantinople to Muslim Turks and their westward advance aroused European fears and a renewed call to holy war by the papacy. Within months the new king of Castile, Enrique IV, who was her half-brother, responded, by proclaiming a crusade against the remaining Muslim stronghold within Spain, the kingdom of Granada. Subsequently, civil strife ensued through her formative years, yet all factions then engaged in a war of words employing the traditional language of holy war against godless adversaries. When her younger brother, Alfonso, whose cause she inherited, died at the age of 14, he was spoken of in Christlike terms as a pure and holy child taken up to heaven.11 Isabel herself, in a circular letter she then signed, attributed the demise of 'the Lord King my brother' to 'the sins of these kingdoms'.12 His death, it was understood, had come about because of divine wrath at communal immorality. Alfonso had, was the scriptural resonance, been a sacrificial lamb. 9

Inigo de Mendoza, 'Dechado del Regimiento de Principles' appended to Hernando del Pulgar, Libra de Claros Varones, edited by R. B. Tate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971); cited in Liss, Isabel, 158. 10 SietePartidas, 2.1.5; 7.13.26. 11 Palencia, Cronica de Enrique IV, dec. I, lib. 10, cap. 10. 12 Juan Torres Fontes, El principe don Alfonso, 2nd edition (Murcia: 1985), appendix documents 1-2, pp. 203-7.

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In Isabel's Spain, this sort of conflation of religious and political language for political purposes and particularly for royal self-representation drew on the sacred and Spanish past for legitimacy; it also had a long history within that past, so that it was taken up by Isabel as traditional in defining her royal role, her Spain, and the world. II.

The Spanish history to be found in chronicles and other works in the royal library Isabel inherited served to define Spanish identity. Spain and the Spanish indeed existed largely as a history, a history, however, not confined to the past but going somewhere special, led by rulers with hearts and souls in direct contact with the Almighty. Such was the longstanding assumption of chroniclers, writers, poets, and law codes. Although literacy was limited, that belief was also widely diffused—communicated orally and visually, by merchants, priests, soldiers, singers, and ordinary people, in conversation, letters, and sermons, in liturgy, ceremonies, art and architecture, in drama, poetry, songs and stories, and in royal decrees. Couched in familiar words and images, invested with sacrality, that history at once conveyed an ideology of power, an explanation of the universe, and a guide to personal and communal salvation. Isabel reinforced her standing and legitimated policies that might otherwise appear innovative through reference to a hallowed history. By her accession in 1474, the Spanish past, having taken a definitive shape, conversely shaped what Isabel was about and how she presented it. Isabel, it should be added, was extremely literal-minded. Among other benefits to a crowned head, that history, in attesting to a long and close mutually supportive association between Spain's rulers and clergy, gave the stamp of ancient usages and their continuity. The Spanish view of history dated from the days of the Visigoth kings and the bishop who was their principal ideologue, Isidore of Seville. It was Isidore's history of the Goths—Isabel owned a copy of it—that made authoritative, even a cultural assumption, the supposed existence since time immemorial of blessed Spain, Mother Spain, a holy land inhabited by an elect people. Equally extravagant, in Isidore's writings and subsequent Spanish histories Visigothic kings appeared as all-powerful throughout Iberia. What is truer is that those kings took a stance, endorsed by Isidore, of being independent of all superior earthly authorities, whether the Roman emperor or the pope.13 Here too was precedent acted on by the Queen, most notably in chal13 See Isidore of Seville, 'History of the Kings of the Goths', in Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain, edited by Kenneth B. Wolf (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 1990), 81-110. See also J. N. Hillgarth, 'Studies in Historiography and Iberian Reality', History and Theory 24 (1985): 23-43; J. N. Hillgarth, 'Historiography in Visigothic Spain', in Hillgarth, Visigothic Spain, Byzantium, and the Irish (London: Variorum, 1985); Marc Reydellet, 'Les Intentions Ideologiques et politiques dans la Chronique d'Isidore de Seville', Melanges d'Archeologie et d'Histoire 82 (1970): 363-400;

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lenging the pope for control of the Inquisition, and winning. Moreover, Isidorian myths of the wide-ranging power of Goth kings became history; subsequent kings would claim the Visigoths as founding ancestors, and Isabel's chroniclers and publicists proudly point to that heritage of hers.14 From Isidore on, Spanish histories tended to be cast in biblical mold, echoing scriptural narrative and patterning in telling of the past and in foretelling the future. After Arab conquest, chroniclers presented history much as the prophet Jeremiah had interpreted that of the Jews: an idyllic past had been lost through sin, but a return to righteousness was to put the people back on the path leading to a divinely-promised restoration. Initially, chronicles written at courts and by clergy in Christian Asturias told of an Isidorian edenic Spain that had been lost by the Goths through kingly and communal sin. An angry God had sent what are variously referred to as Arabs or Ishmaelites as punishment, but had preserved a small Goth remnant led by the worthy Pelayo, that, besieged in a cave at Covadonga, was saved by a miracle. 'He who parted the waters of the Red Sea so that the children of Israel might cross', states the Chronicle of Alfonso III of Asturias (ca.880) with great satisfaction, 'also crushed, with an immense mass of mountain, the Arabs who were persecuting the church of God'.15 Now all Spain must be regained, was the message, through returning to the moral high ground and by hard fighting. That chronicle depicts Alfonso I of Asturias (737-57) as a restoring Joshua, terms Alfonso II 'the Great', and has a preface written by Alfonso III himself, who situates his own reign within an uninterrupted Gothic history.16 Several of Isabel's chroniclers would follow suit. With the advent of the Crusades came crusading within Spain. Regaining Spain was viewed abroad as a stage in, and type of, regaining Jerusalem, and within the country Spain was considered a microcosm of all Christendom, a Christendom synonymous with the Church as most broadly conceived. Muslims, once simply God's instruments became the forces of Antichrist. Thereafter, the project of Christian reconquest loomed large in expositions of the Spanish past, present, and prophetic future. Identifying regaining Spain with waging holy war received additional impetus when almohades, fundamentalist North African berbers, in the early twelfth century took over Islamic al-Andalus, then advanced and Reydellet, 'La conception du souverain chez Isidore de Seville', mlsidoriana, edited by M. Diaz y Diaz (Leon: 1961), 457-66. 14 Diego de Valera, Doctrinal de principes, in Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles (Madrid: 1959), 116: 173. 15 The Chronicle of Alfonso III, in Wolf, Conquerors and Chroniclers, 168. The Christian leader, Pelayo confident that he is inspired by God and, drawing liberally on Psalm 88: 33-4, tells his people: T have faith that the promise of the Lord which was spoken through David will be fulfilled in us: I will visit their iniquities with the rod and their sins with scourges; but I will not remove my mercy from them'. 16 A roughly contemporary work, the anonymous Prophetic Chronicle, foresaw that Alfonso III would soon reign over all Spain. Those chronicles probably relied on lost prototypes. See Kenneth Wolfs introduction to Conquerors and Chroniclers, 46-60; and Jose Antonio Maravail, El concepto de Espana en la edad media (Madrid: 1981) 309-12.

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with newly intense fervor against Christians, who quickly reciprocated in kind. 'What had been sporadic armed forays', as has been said, 'now tended to become for both sides a perceptibly grimmer clash of alien peoples and sharply divergent religious, cultural, and political alliances'.17 Spanish kings formed coalitions among themselves, their ideology kept step, and Spain's mission took on a more decidedly religious, even messianic, cast. Even so, Fernando III, having taken the Muslim kingdom of Seville and faced with governing a large and diverse population, found it expedient to declare himself 'ruler of the three religions', of Christians, Muslims, and Jews. That claim, while acknowledging cultural diversity, was, rather than an endorsement of it, an assertion of royal authority; Fernando also expelled Seville's Muslims. Similarly, Isabel as queen effectively asserted her direct authority over Muslim and Jewish communities, and ultimately expelled Granada's Muslims. She also echoed some statements made and activities pursued by Fernando Ill's son, and Alfonso X. Alfonso's formulation of history and the Spanish royal role within it went far to set the stage for her own outlook. Alfonso X, el Sabio, is remembered for texts he wrote or sponsored, among them poems to Holy Mary, the Siete Partidas, translations of Greek classics from the Arabic, and two histories in Castilian. Alfonso's inheritance included the kingdoms of Castile, Leon, Toledo, Galicia, Seville, Cordoba, Murcia, and Jaen, and his concept of Spain was one of a Castilian-centered hegemony over yet other of the Spains: Asturias, Navarre, Portugal, and Aragon-Catalonia. Alfonso also aspired to be elected Holy Roman Emperor, a title held in his mother's family. It is not surprising that he put Spanish history within a universal context and at its culmination. He in turn drew on two works of his father's reign that began with the Creation and told of kings and events, 'of Moors as of Christians and even of Jews', and of the miracles of God. Both works exalted royal power. They made much of reconquest as the royal and national mission, viewed all Spanish society as historically unified and dedicated to that pursuit, and they found Spain's prototype in both Israel under its great kings and imperial Rome.18 Alfonso's own General History collated classical and biblical chronology in 17

Charles Bishko, 'The Spanish and Portuguese Reconquest, 1095-1492', in his Studies in Medieval Spanish Frontier History (London: Variorum, 1980), III: 398-9. 18 Lucas of Tuy, Chronicon mundi, edited by Andreas Schott [1236], in Hispania Illustrata, 4 volumes (Frankfort: Claudius Marnius et Heredes Joanni Aubrii, 1603-1608), IV. 1-16; the Spanish edition is La Cronica de Espana, edited by Julio Puyol y Alonso (Madrid: 1926). Rodrigo Toledano, P. P. toletanorum quotquot extant opera Tomus tertius: Roderici Ximenii de Rada, Toletanae ecclesiae presulis, opera praecipua complectens [1243, 1246] (Madrid: 1973). Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada, canciller mayor of Castile and archbishop of Toledo, known as el Toledano, 'one of the most powerful men in Fernando Ill's kingdom', reflected the official outlook of the court, and probably did much to create it. Lucas has all Roman, Visigothic, and Christian history come together in Spain. He also took pride in the many saints martyred in Iberia, the native-born philosophers Seneca and Lucan, and the emperors of Spanish birth—Nerva, Trajan, and Theodosius. See Lucy Pick, Conflict and Coexistence: Archbishop Rodrigo and the Muslims and Jews of Medieval Spain (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).

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the customary medieval way—so Troy's walls were built in the days of Joshua, a knight of Israel.19 Yet he also had Hercules come from Troy as founding father to Spain's kings and nobles. Hercules set up pillars at the western edge of the world and left his nephew Hispan to govern Iberia and become progenitor to an unbroken line of rulers, kings who intermarried initially with native Hispani and then with the stalwart Christianity-bearing Goths, and among whose ancestors were also the Amazons.20 Yet when easy living weakened Goth moral fiber, heaven had sent the plague of Arabs. Pelayo was a righteous survivor of lost Spain—and here Isidore was cited—of the earthly paradise that had been 'like the paradise of God' (ch. 558). To Alfonso, Spain's destruction by the Muslim conquest—was like the combined fall of Babylon, Rome, and Carthage, and the loss of Jeremiah's 'Jerusalem of the Jews'. Alfonso's initial universal golden age, however, had been ruled by Jupiter, who prefigured Christian power, and who was king of Crete as well as ancestor to Trojan Aeneas, and, through Aeneas, to Alexander the Great, the Roman caesars, and so to their heirs, the Holy Roman Emperors Frederick I Barbarossa and Frederick II.21 That Alfonso himself was a king of kings and ruled diverse peoples was but one contributory circumstance to his interest in tracing imperial continuity. His background and ambitions were another; he campaigned for the imperial title and those Fredericks were family. Alfonso X found an imperial continuity leading up to himself through Jupiter, Hercules, the Goths, and an unbroken line of kings and emperors. He also based imperial status for his Spain on another medieval assumption derived from intermixed biblical and classical sources, that history moved through four world empires, each situated ever farther to the west. In the General estoria, Rome was to be the most noble, final, and westernmost of the four; it would conquer all others and rule forever.22 But in the Estoria de Espana, where Hispania had once been an illustrious province of Rome, Rome's torch passed to the Goths and Spain.23 This 19

Alfonso X of Castile, cel Sabio', General estoria, Part I: edited by A. G. Solalinde (Madrid: 1930); Part II: edited by Antonio G. Solalinde, Lloyd A. Kasten, and Victor R. B. Oelschlager, 2 volumes (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1957, 1961). See also Charles F. Fraker, The Scope of History: Studies in the Historiography of Alfonso el Sabio (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); Maravall, Concepto and Alan Deyermond, 'The Death and Rebirth of Visigothic Spain in the Estoria de Espana\ Revista canadiense de estudios hispdnicos 9 (1985): 345-67, 20 See R. B. Tate, 'Mythology and Spanish Historiography of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance', Hispanic Review 22 (1954): 1-18; Francisco Rico, Alfonso el Sabio y la 'General estoria', 2nd edition (Barcelona: Ariel, 1984), 120; and Carlos Alonso del Real, 'Amazonas y Godos', Hispania 23 (1963): 324-41. 21 General estoria, I: 200-201; and see Rico, 74, 76, 97-120. 22 Fraker, Scope, 5. 23 Lucas of Tuy's Spanish are descended from Romans and Goths, but it is the Romans who get the lion's share of attention. He does not dwell on the Goths. Toledano pays them more attention but gives Spain the same august genealogy as Rome, as having been founded from Troy. Alfonso takes it from there.

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was in effect to fall back on the Isidorian assertion of Goth pre-eminence over Rome. Alfonso's Rome had been great, but the Visigoths greater. In their veins ran the blood of Aeneas and his Trojans, and they had defeated the Romans in battle. Even so, his Visigothic kings much resembled Roman emperors, and their lineage had remained uninterrupted down to himself. In short, Alfonso described a Spain independent of and superior to Roman empire, yet Rome's continuator. A Spain that was to be the final world empire foretold in the book of Daniel and to fulfill the prophecy Virgil gave for Rome. Alfonso's histories, like the Bible and that of Virgil's Rome, if dedicated to the past, set out an agenda for the future. Final empire assumed a last world emperor, and one was at hand. By Alfonso's time, a final universal emperor had become a stock figure of prophecy appearing in both learned works and popular lore, and within predictions often laid to Roman sibyls and a yet more exotic source, a prophesying Merlin.24 Attributed especially to Merlin and the sibyls were politically-oriented forecasts couched in animal imagery, and recurrent among them was that of the Lion King who is the final emperor and who will triumph over Islam, conquer Jerusalem, and rule the world. A source of Alfonso's history, an anonymous epic poem written by a monk about 1260, in celebrating Castile's founder, the count, Fernan Gonzalez (920-70), cited Merlin in telling of the Crowned Lion. He is a king of Castile; he will emerge from the cave of Hercules and go against the king of Granada, who is The Dragon.25 That poet also relied on lost epics, lore, and battle songs, written in the vernacular, and took an Isidorian pride in Spain. In the poem of Fernan Gonzalez, Spain becomes Israel, the Castilians are God's chosen people, and Castile is Jerusalem. By the time of Alfonso XI, who drove back the last Muslim force coming from Africa, Spain was a construct of those histories and its rulers invested with that imperial mission, much as it was perceived by Isabel. Isabel owned copies of early chronicles and the histories of Alfonso X and of some of his sources, among them universal histories and that epic poem. She also possessed a compilation of Merlin prophecies that enlarged on that imperial prediction—their outline clear if their tenses problematic. Spain's rulers, Merlin says, descend from Goth kings come to Spain from the East and sent by God. A lion appears; it is Fernan Gonzalez; victories are won. A glorious present arrives. God will send help in the form of a lion and the lands will remain free, The Lion King will be lord of all Spain and standard-bearer of the Church. His sons will cross the seas and extend through the universe. They will subject Africa, rule in 24 In 1170 a Catalan troubadour mentioned Arthurian themes as current literary fashion. In 1170, too, Alfonso VIII of Castile married Eleanor of England, whose parents, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, encouraged the writing of Arthurian histories. See Maria Rosa Lida de Malkiel, 'Arthurian Literature in Spain and Portugal', in Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, edited by Roger Sherman Loomis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 407-18. 25 See Poema de Fernand Gonzalez, edited by Zamora Vicente (Madrid: 1946); and Maria Rosa Lida de Malkiel, La Idea de la Fama en la Edad media (Mexico City: 1952), 197-207,351,357,437.

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Asia, and reside in Jerusalem.26 In the later fourteenth century, Merlin and a Spanish Last World Emperor became associated in particular with Enrique II of Castile—a son of Alfonso XI and the first of the Trastamaras, Isabel's dynasty. Enrique's ally, the infante, Pere (1305-81), Aragon's influential regent, was instrumental in Enrique being celebrated as the awaited Spanish Lion who would defeat the Muslims.27 Subsequently, the universal thrust given to Spanish history and the tradition of grandiose prophecy announcing it were brought to bear in Castile on the unlikely figure of Juan II, who was Isabel's father. In 1405 when at last a son was born to the king, Enrique III, known as the Ailing, and the queen, Catalina, that child, Juan, was greeted as literal savior of the dynasty—Enrique died two years later— even as redeemer of the world. Juan's announced coming of age in 1418 and, shortly after, his accession, were celebrated with Last World Emperor prophecies.28 Clearly, that myth and the universal relevance of regaining Spain had become domesticated in court panegyric. They also circulated widely in prophecies and appeared in updated histories. With Juan, Spain's great past and prophesied imperial future then received yet denser biblical analogy from certain royal publicists who were also converts from Judaism. Juan's education until he was 14 was guided by his father's trusted counselor, the bishop Pablo de Santa Maria, who was Canciller mayor of the realm and from 1416 bishop of Burgos. Santa Maria had been a leading rabbi until 1390, then converted and studied Christian theology at Paris. As Juan's tutor, he presented to his young charge a universal history, The Seven Ages of the World, a summary of the chronicles of Spain.29 Santa Maria relied heavily on the histories of Alfonso X, 26

'La demanda del sancto griaP, [a version of the Baladro de sabio Merlin], edited by Justo Garcia Morales (Madrid: 1956), appears in Libros de caballerias, edited by Adolfo Bonilla y San Martin (Madrid, 1907), ptl, pp. 155-62. 27 As sources, Pere gave predictions of Merlin, Joachim of Fiore, Peter Olivi, Arnau of Vilanova, John of Rupescissa, and an anonymous prophecy, Ve mundo en centum annis. He also cited an anonymous prediction that 'the lion of Spain', Enrique, would destroy all unbelievers in 1390; ultimately Enrique would restore Jerusalem to God. The house of Trastamara would then rule the world under 'one God and one faith' for fifteen years in great tranquility and before the final Antichrist. See Pere Bohigas, Trofecies catalenes dels segles XIV y XV, Bulletin de la Biblioteca de Calalunya (1925): 24^ 28 See Cancionero de Baena, edited by Jose Maria Azaceta (Madrid: 1966) no. 332, 333, 335, s. 81-88. Prominent among them, in a 1418 poem, Gonzalo Martinez de Medina declared that the angry lion of Spain was emerging from his cave and exhorted Juan to pursue the reconquest of Iberia, cleanse the seas of Muslims, and 'rejuvenate the old dream of domination and liberation of the Holy City'. He would then surely have his throne in Jerusalem, be crowned High Emperor, and fulfill all prophecy. See Charles F. Fraker, Jr., 'Gon9alo Martinez de Medina, the Jeronimos, and the Devotio Moderna\ Hispanic Review 34 (1966): 197-217; and Fraker, 'Prophecy in Gon9alo Martinez de Medina', Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 43 (1966): 81-7. 29 Pablo de Santa Maria, Siete Edades del Mundo, edited by M. Jean Sconza (Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1991); see also Judith Gale Krieger, 'Pablo de Santa Maria: His Epoch, Life, and Hebrew and Spanish Literary Production', Ph. D.

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emphasized the founding role of the stalwart Goths, found current Spanish analogy to the dream in Daniel of successive empires, and on occasion cited the sibyls and Merlin as authorities. To Santa Maria, king and people were one in the Old Testament sense, and Castile a nation synonymous with Spain. Castile-Spain had been prefigured by the Jewish and Roman monarchies. Its royal house descended from Adam and Eve and also from David, Roman emperors, Goth kings, and medieval emperors. Everything that had happened in the world had been leading up to the reign of the Trastamara dynasty and its current representative; the dedication to Juan II tells him, echoing St. Paul, that 'we are those in whom the end of all the centuries is now come'.30 The poem's final stanzas compare Juan to 'Our Lord in his coming'; all Castilians are to be liberated by his birth.31 This of course is to conflate the final kingdom with the happier messianic aspects of the endtime envisioned by Isaiah and under the book of Revelation's seventh seal. Such, then, was Spain's history as imparted to Juan II, embedded within it grandiose explication of the royal role and the royal mission. During Juan's reign too, Alfonso de Cartagena, Santa Maria's son and his successor as bishop of Burgos, based a legal argument on that inflated sense of Spain's past and prominence. In 1434, as Spanish representative at the church council of Basle, he argued from the reality of the Isidorian vision and the Visigoth achievement to establish that the antiquity and scope of Spain was far greater than England's, that accordingly, Spain's emissaries must take precedence over those of England. His line of argument attested to those myths having become accepted at home and abroad as national history.32 Juan II proved a weak and irresolute king; nonetheless, that hallowed history enabled royal pronouncements and publicists to assert time-honored claims of absolute monarchy and newer rhetoric of absolute sovereignty, and to invoke historical precedent for them.33 It also provided patterning for positive thinking concerning present problems. Juan's reign was beset by squabbling nobles and outbreaks of civil conflict. Such wars, ongoing into his daughter Isabel's formative years, were interpreted as Spain once again being punished by an angry God for its present failings. In his 'Lamentation for Spain', Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, Marques de Santillana, powerful magnate, royal advisor, and poet, informed Juan that Spain had lost all sense of national purpose and would be destroyed again as in 711. Yet there was a remedy, a traditional one: king and people must reform and again pursue the reconquest. Santillana, resorting to what had become the traditional Spanish verdissertation, UCLA, 1988; and Alan Deyermond, 'Historia universal e ideologia nacional en Pablo de Santa Maria', mHomenaje a Alvaro Galmes de Fuentes (Oviedo, 1985), II: 31324. 30 Siete Edades, s. 54; Krieger, Table de Santa Maria', 317. 31 Siete Edades, s. 332. 32 Alfonso de Cartagena, Discursos sobre la precedencia del Rey Catolico, in Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles, vol. 106. 33 See Jose Manuel Nieto Soria, Fundamentos ideologicos del poder real en Castilla (siglosXII-XVI) (Madrid: EUDEMA, 1988), 247-8, on sovereignty, and passim.

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sion of the jeremiad, invoked the fall of the Goths as the first destruction of Spain. The second now loomed.34 His son, Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, who became Isabel's principal minister, displayed much the same concern with the welfare of nation and crown and subscribed to the same remedies in ending internal strife and promoting strong rule. Isabel owned copies of Santillana's works, paid much attention to his son's advice, never questioned the divine and absolute nature of royal authority, and believed it her duty as ruler to end civil strife, take up the reconquest, and move Spanish history along its well-marked path. In the two greatest architectural monuments she commissioned, she chose, however, to emphasize less her own role than the gender-spanning dynastic one. The Queen expressed to contemporaries her commitment to Spain's mission as assigned to her dynasty very clearly in the church of San Juan de los Reyes in Toledo and the Cartuja de Miraflores outside Burgos. Planned in 1477, San Juan de los Reyes was meant as a victory shout—proclaiming her successful ascent to the throne and triumph over her enemies, as well as a program announcement, to be carried out in accord with the dictates of history and the royal mission within it. Originally she proposed that the church be called San Juan de la Reina and intended it as a royal pantheon, by its nature honoring a royalty culminating in her forebears and herself.35 As completed, however, it celebrated what she had come to insist on, the inseparability of the King and Queen and the dynasty they shared. Everywhere on its walls are their entwined initials and their devices, while seemingly endless repeats of an eagle sheltering under its outstretched wings, their combined coats-of-arms, alternate with figures identifiable as sibyls.36 Moreover, the San Juan referred to there was John the Evangelist, the patron saint of her father whom Isabel had taken as her own and whose symbol is the eagle, at once a religious and an imperial motif. Across Spanish society, how Spain's militant mission and glorious destiny were envisioned owed much to the apocalyptic scenario of final times set out in John's book of Revelation; it was the best-known book of the Bible in medieval Spain. San Juan de los Reyes displayed Isabel's awareness of the value of employing a rhetoric of symbols and images blending popular beliefs and royal constructions of reality she viewed as history. Planned in 1477 as well, and built between 1489 and 1493, were the tombs of Isabel's parents in the charterhouse at Miraflores outside Burgos. Miraflores announces that Juan II of Castile had become in death what he had never been in life: a stellar exemplar of Castilian monarchy and its religious mission. In the design of her parental 34

Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, Marques de Santillana, 'Lamentacion . . .' in Obras Completas, edited by Angel Gomez Moreno, et al. (Barcelona: 1988), 410-13. 35 Jose Maria de Azcarate, 'Sentido y significacion de la arquitectural hispano-flamenca en la corte de Isabel la Catolica', in Boletin de seminario de estudios de Arte e Arqueologia (Valladolid, 1971), 201-7; and Azcarate, 'Datos historico-artisticos de fines del siglo XV y principios de XVI', in Coleccion de documentos para la historia de arte en Espana (Madrid and Zaragoza: 1982), II: 242-3. 36 The excelentes then coined bore the same image with the motto: 'Under the shade of your wings protect us'.

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tombs and the surrounding sculpture, Isabel grandly makes her own heritageaffirming statement. Splendid effigies of her parents, Juan II of Castile and Isabel of Portugal, lie below the altar within a great, free-standing, star-shaped marble confection. They are ringed by the cardinal virtues personified, prominent among them the figure of Justice, holding two swords. There too are Old Testament prophets and angels. The four evangelists guard the corners of the tombs and San Juan is most carefully carved, as is his attendant eagle. High above are other eagles ending the ceiling vaults, their wings sheltering the royal coat of arms. As to the encompassing star, it was readily understood as a commonplace messianic symbol, as biblical prophecy and subsequent interpretation had pronounced it, and as such it was interchangeable with the sun. The splendid altarpiece forms a golden disc reminiscent of the sun, its shape reflected in the halo-like circle discernible surrounding King Juan's head.37 The star spoke of other stars, those surrounding the Woman of the Apocalypse; it would have called to some minds Astraea, equated with the constellation Virgo, whose descent Virgil, Ovid, and Dante saw as heralding the return of a golden age of justice. A court poet would parallel Astraea's descent with Isabel's birth.38 Yet star and sun carried further implications in Isabel's Spain. In a history published in Rome in 1470, the royal secretary and bishop, Rodrigo Sanchez de Arevalo, in commenting on the Spanish capture of Gibraltar from Muslims, proclaimed that 'In the West the sun of righteousness has risen'.39 Years later, Antonio Nebrija, in the preface to his Decadas, affirmed what that pronouncement had alluded to; Nebrija expounded on the commonplace that just as the heavens and stars move from east to west, so the monarchy of the world is to move. Empire had gone from the Assyrians to the Medes to the Persians to the Macedonians to the Romans to the Germans and Gauls, and now, he proclaimed, it is the destiny of the Spanish monarchs that follows the course of the stars.40 Nebrija's version of the old belief in translatio imperil builds upon the assumption of Alfonso X that empire must move westward through history as did the sun, to come to its final emanation in Spain. All this meaning adhered to the symbols of sun and star. By extension, they also referred to expectation of a last world emperor who would come from Spain and achieve a truly universal Christian empire. 37

Joaquin Yarza Luaces, 'La imagen del rey y la imagen del noble en el siglo XV, in Realidad y imageries del poder. Espana a fines de la Edad Media, edited by Adeline Rucquoi (Valladolid: Ambito, 1988), 269-71. 38 Diego Guillen de Avila, Panegirico . . . en alabanza de la mas catholica Princesa y mas gloriosa reyna de todas las reynas, la reyna dona Isabel (Salamanca, 1499; Valladolid, 1509; facsimile edition, Madrid: 1951): 'La virgen Astrea descendio del cielo . . . nascida esta reyna, do haganmorada . . .' 39 See R. B. Tate, 'Rodrigo Sanchez de Arevalo (1404-1460) and His Compendiosa Historica Hispdnica\ Medieval Studies 4 (1960): 58-80. In that history, the kings of Leon and Castile descended from the brave and virtuous Goths in unbroken line, and so were rightful heirs to the lands the Goths held. 40 Tate, 'Mythology', 14; see also R. B. Tate, 'An Apology for Monarchy. A Study of an Unpublished Fifteenth-Century Pamphlet', Romance Philology 15 (1961): 112.

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The tableau at Miraflores is a visual reclamation: here Isabel has aggrandized her undistinguished parents and, implicitly, herself. Miraflores speaks of her royal lineage and her dedication to meeting her father's imperial responsibilities and to fulfilling the blighted promise of another Isabel, her mentally ill mother. Miraflores also represents a successful royal bid to surpass all other funerary structures, especially the recent ones built by nobles. Miraflores, in symbols readily understandable to Isabel's generation, visually proclaims an elect dynasty, chosen to forward God's design. By 1480, Isabel had firmly identified herself and Fernando with pursuing a master plan, Spain's messianic mission. Whether or not royal measures and policies were conceived as stepping stones to fulfilling historical prophecy, or as part of a grand scheme, they appeared as such. By then she and Fernando had brought stability to the land, been blessed with a royal heir, and proposed to cleanse society of heresy through the Inquisition. Now, in the cathedral of Toledo in 1480, she and Fernando jointly and dramatically promised to return to the business of reconquest, to go against Muslim Granada. For the next decade, Isabel personified the soul of that holy war. She insisted on annual campaigns, saw to funding and provisioning the armies, planned strategy with Fernando who led the armies, and she encouraged him. Isabel joined him in the field at crucial moments, at Malaga, Granada, and elsewhere, her presence reinforcing everyone's sense of purpose and raising morale. During the decade at war, disseminated in prophecy and celebrated in verse was the royal desire not only to conquer Granada, but to go beyond, cto annihilate the sect of Mahomet' and to retake Christ's tomb in Jerusalem. Victories by 1486 were advertised as prophecy being fulfilled. Fernando was said to be that warrioremperor destined to redeem Jerusalem. Concomitantly, a knight at court, Pedro de Cartagena, said of Isabel in a poem dedicated to her: 'You will not be well content until the royal standard is raised in Jerusalem'. The T in Isabel, he stated, stood for Imperio, empire.41 The vitality and idealism projected by the royal couple impelled poets, chroniclers, and popular prophecies to announce the dawning of a golden age. It was a message that Isabel welcomed and conveyed as well. San Juan de los Reyes and the tombs at Miraflores were completed during the war. Moreover, in instituting the Spanish Inquisition and expelling the Jews, although done for several reasons, she showed herself as readying the elect nation for the time of a single faith. With victory in 1492 came international acclaim of 'the Spanish kings', as Francis Bacon spoke of them in English, as well as royal plans to extend the Spanish mission overseas, to advance toward that ultimate goal, Jerusalem, through Africa and possibly by Columbus finding a back door across the Atlantic ocean. While circumstances intervened with the African expedition, the vision of a golden age now dawning persisted. Friars carried it to America. Moreover, with the fall of Granada, Isabel occupied a prominent place within a broadening and more 41 Pedro de Cartagena, in Cancionero Castillana del sigh XV, edited by F. FoulcheDelbosc, 2 volumes (Madrid: 1915), I: 520-21.

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imperial frame of reference in which classical allusions proliferated. She was Astraea and a Minerva, or 'the very resplendent Diana'. And she was compared, not unfavorably, to the queen of the Amazons.42 After 1492, a new generation of royal historians and publicists, notable among them humanists trained in Italy—Antonio Nebrija, Pietro Martire d'Anghiera, and Lucio Marineo Siculo—also referred to a blend of classical and Christian prophecy in celebrating the extension of heaven-favored Spanish empire overseas by Christopher Columbus. At the same time, Isabel pursued more intensely what she saw as incumbent in her divinely-dictated royal role, the business of reforming the realm morally, excising heresy, and expelling unbelievers—Jews in 1492 and Muslims in 1502. Her sponsoring of the voyages of Christopher Columbus was presented as saving souls as well as extending Christian conquest and Spanish empire. Yet as the century turned, Isabel was plagued by failing health and dynastic peril, for her heirs died in rapid succession—her son Juan, her daughter Isabel, and her baby grandson Miguel—leaving the realm, the Spain she had done so much to place at the culmination of history, in the hands of the recalcitrant and mentally unsound Juana. As for Isabel's most promising remaining child, Catalina, she went to England to marry its crown prince, Arthur Tudor, and after his death his brother, Henry VIII. For Catherine of Aragon, in the end the religion undergirding almost everything her Spanish mother represented came to damn her—and then her daughter and Isabel's granddaughter, Mary, known to history as Bloody Mary—in the eyes of her adopted subjects. Ironically, it is Mary's successor, her half-sister, Elizabeth I of England, who evoked some remarkable parallels in representation to those of Isabel I of Spain.

III. Through her coronation pageantry in 1558, Elizabeth I promised to embody England, and she kept her word. She chose not to marry; she was the Virgin Queen. She was also hailed as the English Deborah, judge and leader of her godly people, guiding them onward and upward, ushering in universal days of glory. She was acclaimed a Minerva and a Diana. She was also the 'fair Queen of Brut's New Troy', in reference to Britain's legendary founder, Brut or Brutus, descended from Aeneas, who had come to England by way of Rome.43 She inspired a veritable cult and did her best to live up to the lofty images projected of her.44 English 42

See Liss, Isabel, ch. 14, for ideology and events from 1492 touched on here and below. See Geoffrey of Monmouth, Histories of the Kings of Britain, translation and introduction by Lewis Thorpe (London: 1966), 65-6. In the twelfth century Geoffrey, building on early British histories, also described England as an idyllic land, reminiscent of Isidore's Spain. 44 See Roy C. Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986). 43

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Protestants in Geneva, in dedicating to her their translation of the bible, unfazed by gender saw in the accession of a Protestant ruler Israel's return from exile and declared her 'our Zerubbabel'—the king who rebuilt Solomon's temple in Jerusalem.45 Nor would it pass unnoticed that Elizabeth was born on the feast of the eve of the Virgin Mary's birth and died on the eve of the festival of Mary's assumption into heaven. As the Virgin Queen, this paragon of rulers was declared the earthly counterpart of the Queen of Heaven.46 Moreover, she personified as did Mary the true Church, that 'hath from the begyinning of the worlde bene victorious, and shall be everlastingly'.47 She came to personify her realm and its championing of the true and pure Church, the Church of England. And she evoked that figure emblematic of both holy Mary and the Church, the Woman of the Apocalypse. During her reign the English laid claim to America. So in 1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert was certain that England, in taking possession 'of vast and pleasant territories' in the New World was fulfilling the prophecy that the word of God, originating in the East must move ever westwards.48 The following year Richard Hakluyt, Anglican minister, geographer, and historian of European voyages of discovery, in a discourse prepared as a state paper and presented to Elizabeth, argued that the English must move into America, where they were to counter Catholic Spain and to spread the glorious gospel of Christ, introduce the true faith, and lead out millions of souls 'from the deep pit of hell to the highest heavens'.49 In 1599 he added that in establishing settlements there Her Majesty would benefit herself and the Church. She would 'increase her dominions, enrich her coffers, and reduce many pagans to the faith of Christ'.50 Samuel Purchas, the continuator 45

The Geneva Bible, edited by Lloyd Eason Berry and William Whittingham (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969; 1560), fols. ii-iiiv; see also Richard Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse (Appleford: Sutton Courtney Press, 1978), 125^4; and Dale Hoak, 'The Iconography of the Crown Imperial', in Tudor Political Culture, edited by Dale Hoak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 120-32. 46 Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth, 126: Catholics saw in the cult of the Virgin Queen an attempt to supplant the cult of the Virgin Mary, especially in her role of Queen of Heaven. See also Yates, Astraea, 87; and Helen Hackett, Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen: Elizabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (London and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995). 47 Edward Hellwis, cited in Bernard Capp, 'The Political Dimension of Apocalyptic Thought', in The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature, edited by C. A. Patrides and Joseph Wittreich (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 98. See also Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth, 187. 48 Cited by Mircia Eliade, 'Paradise and Utopia: Mythical Geography and Eschatology', in Utopias and Utopian Thought, edited by Frank Manuel (Boston: 1965): 263. 49 Richard Hakluyt, A Discourse on Western Planting (1584), edited by Charles Deane (Cambridge, MA: Maine Historical Society, 1877), 10, and passim. See also Louis B. Wright, Religion and Empire: the Alliance between Piety and Commerce in English Expansion (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1943), 43-8. 50 Dedication to Sir Robert Cecil (1599), in The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts, edited by E. G. R. Taylor (London: 1935), II: 457. David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University

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of Hakluyt's voyages, looked forward eagerly to the coming of the universal kingdom of God on earth and singled out his countrymen as divinely delegated to further its arrival. God, Purchas told his many readers, granted the English the opportunity to sail everywhere so 'that in the Sun-set and Evening of the World, the Sunne of righteousnesse might arise out of our West to illuminate the East'.51 England's geographical situation and its overseas expansion made it prime candidate for the final godly kingdom, that empire prophesied to arise in the West, which was to spread over the world. In 1588, the English received glorious confirmation of all previous signs of divine favor in the providential defeat of, or anyway deliverance from, the Spanish Armada. Assuredly, with heaven's help they and their queen had triumphed over Antichrist, as represented by Catholic Spain. They had struck mightily against tyranny and evil and affirmed the old saying, 'the kingdom of England is the kingdom of God'.52 Anglican preachers extolled Elizabeth's deliverances of her people, likened them to those of David, declared she resembled Old Testament kings in fighting Antichrist, and concluded that 'the brightness of God was shining upon her'.53 It was recalled that the Tudor dynasty was destined to fulfill prophecies associated with imperial Rome. In particular, alluded to was the prediction in Virgil's Fourth Eclogue that Astraea, Justice personified and associated with the constellation Virgo, would come down to herald a new golden age of peace on earth under Rome's imperium. Elizabeth was sometimes referred to as Astraea before 1588; afterwards such references multiplied. That Astraea was spoken of as a virgin was no deterrent. She, Astraea, in the person of Elizabeth was now about to usher in the final era, a universal empire consonant with both Virgil's prescience and the triumph of the true Church.54 Civic pageantry, poets, and painters, as well as Elizabeth herself, played on this bundled symbolism, which also included the astrological association of Virgo with Venus, and, in the 1490s, portrayed the aged queen as the eternally young Goddess of Love. Elizabeth's representation had ranged across the biblical and the classical from the beginning of her reign, its imagery remarkably like that associated with Isabel. Press, 2000), 70-5. 51 See Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes (London: 1625) in Hakluytus Posthumus, 20 volumes (Glasgow: 1905-1907), 1: 52-3, 66-7, 74, 87, 164, 173, 207, 251; 19: 218-67. In 1587, Hakluyt had published at Paris a revised edition of Pietro Martir d'Anghiera's De Orbe Novo, the first account of the New World, written by a humanist at Isabel's court; at Hakluyt's recommendation, too, it was later published in English. 52 Capp, 'Political Dimension', 96-101; Bauckham, 235-6; Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood, Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 53-5, 82-3; and A. N. McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 238-41. 53 Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth, 125-7. In an Accession Day sermon, the Anglican apologist, Bishop Jewel, referred to the four monarchies, viewed England as the reformed empire and Elizabeth as empress who wielded the Pauline restraining power of 2 Thessalonians in holding back the forces of Antichrist. 54 Yates, Astraea, 50-52; 29-38; and Capp, 'Political Dimension', 95, 98-9.

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But after 1588 her imperial image—like that of Isabel's after 1492—became more pronounced. In his widely read Book of Martyrs, John Foxe, amid hundreds of tales of pious lives and grisly deaths and visual renderings of terminal suffering, had conveyed a British-centered, patriotic, and message-bearing view of universal history, a history culminating in Elizabeth.55 The English Reformation, said Foxe, had marked the triumphant return of the true Christian emperor who was England's ruler. In the dedication to Elizabeth of the edition of 1563, he stated the Queen was in no way inferior to the emperor Constantine (whom, said Foxe, had been born in Britain); she was his successor 'through whose true, natural and imperial crowne, the brightnesse of God's word was set up again to confound the dark and false-vizored Kingdom of Antichrist'.56 Invested with great authority, that huge and hugely popular book formed and disseminated an English-centered Protestant version of the Christian appropriation of Rome's world empire. And amid postArmada jubilation in 1589, a new abridged and yet more accessible edition reaffirmed Foxe's dual religious and political message. After 1588 too, the Christianized, imperial, and pointedly political forecasts of the sibyls were referred to in England as more timely than ever—the career of the last emperor as prophesied by them was proving aptly analogous to that embarked upon by Elizabeth. The Queen was acclaimed a new Constantine, as well as another Lycurgus, a Romulus, an Alexander. Elizabeth, with no king-husband, had the field to herself.57 Clearly, the two world-class queens, Elizabeth and Isabel, along with their publicists, relied on some remarkably similar imagery and motifs in representing their queenly selves. They projected a resemblance to the same exemplary biblical and classical women, and men too. Both evoked the heavenly figures of Astraea, the Woman of Revelation, and Holy Mary—and their myriad connotations. Both came to personify the exalted trajectory of their country's history, from glorious past into imperial future. Moreover, Spanish and British histories alike reflected pride in Trojan ancestry and an imperial trajectory bound up with yet overtaking and outshining the Roman empire. Rhetorical elements of Spain's mission of reconquest and then expansion overseas re-echoed in the Elizabethan contest with the Spain of Philip II and in England's overseas ventures. A hundred years after the fall of Granada, the Muslim Turks still posed a threat to European Christians and were classed among the cohorts of Antichrist; moreover, Roman Catholic Spaniards and the Protestant English, then lumped one another with the godless Muslims as threats and followers of Antichrist, much as Isabel and her 55

Its proper title is Acts and Monuments. John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe with a Preliminary Dissertation (London: 1837), 7: 466. The first letter of that dedication is a decorative C for Constantine, and within it Elizabeth is shown treading on the pope. The revised dedication in the 1570 edition added that 'Christ, the Prince of all princes', had placed her on the throne 'under Him to govern the church and realm and England'. Moreover, Foxe implied that reform in England signaled that of the Church universally. 57 Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth, 121. Merlin, while popular, was becoming problematic as mythical to court-oriented Renaissance scholars; since there had unquestionably been ancient sibyls; the prophecies attributed to them were less suspect. 56

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administrators had come to refer to judaizing converts and Jews. Elizabeth and Isabel, all told, were associated with some remarkably similar rhetoric and imagery of mixed political and religious content and connotation. Some of this similarity undoubtedly had to do with Charles V as intermediary, and not only for imperial Habsburg ideological elements but for royal Spanish traditions, for he drew on both. Yet just as Isabel referred to Spanish history in the first instance, Elizabeth relied strongly and most directly on the British past and its traditions. Scholars corroborate that medieval English chroniclers too began their accounts with Genesis and\or ancestral Troy, wrote of the various island 'kingdoms' as a unity—one that had in fact existed, but only in ecclesiastical organization, pointed to the evolution of a common language, and perceived the past as the epic story of a single people united in fighting foreign invaders.58 While Henry VII, Elizabeth's grandfather, has been called 'the true architect of the symbolism of Tudor "imperial" kingship', he did not build with new materials. But neither did he construct solely on a British foundation. Thus, he appears an imperial monarch on coinage of 1489, an image taken from the coins of Maximilian of Habsburg and in turn derived from the enriques of Isabel's halfbrother and royal predecessor, Enrique IV of Castile.59 Beyond national tradition, monarchs engaged in borrowing from other courts. Moreover, while Elizabeth and her publicists, like Isabel and hers, relied strongly on their nation's history and traditions in representing the queen to her people, the similarities observable in historical motifs and in those representations had deeper roots and broader ramifications. IV.

Many of the traditional touchstones both queens referred to in representing themselves had not originated in their country's histories. While presented as culled from national memory, the shape and much of the substance of those traditions drew on an international stockpile. Throughout the West, as the Middle Ages waned and the modern era emerged, social and political power resided, as John Elliott has said, 'in a complex network of personal relationships ultimately converging on the person of the monarch'.60 58 Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain was the most ambitious and influential of these accounts. The English also had one unifying tradition lacking in Spain, one that intensified during Elizabeth's reign, a belief in a common law existing since time immemorial. See J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 59 Hoak, cThe Iconography of the Crown Imperial', 101. Henry VII commissioned those coins while Maximilian was not yet emperor and on the same day Isabel and Fernando of Spain ratified the terms pledging their daughter, Catherine, in marriage to Henry's threeyear-old son, Arthur. See also Sydney Anglo, Images of Tudor Kingship (London: 1992). 60 J. H. Elliott, CA Question of Upbringing?' The New York Review of Books, June 11, 1987, p. 40.

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Yet wise rulers also understood they had to court what is now called public opinion, that society at large exerted its own power. And those leaders who forged a sense of social unity by appearing to personify their people most effectively did so through exerting strong personalities and by advancing centralizing programs which, however, they presented as dictated by an overarching communal imperative. They presented themselves and their programs in terms of glorifying the national past, present, and future. Communal imperative framed their master fiction of politics; their ideologies entailed a course of action. Nor was it only the Spanish and the English who drew on a familiar spectrum of language, symbols, and imagery associated with patriotic endeavor and religious inspiration to propound a national mission statement. Ruling authorities, perhaps the world over but certainly in Europe, conveyed political power, communal purpose, and religious sanction in the best-known and most potent of commonplace terms available to them. Moreover, customary in the Western world by Isabel's time was the political employ of apocalyptic imagery to situate the ruler and community at the center of a divinely driven universal history. The Spanish or English, or French, were God's own people, individually and collectively charged by heaven to bring about human history's splendid culmination, which, as it happened, depended upon that elect polity coming to dominate the world.61 That set of essentially imperial beliefs and the energizing near-messianic mission they entailed, itself had a history traceable back to the Bible and imperial Rome. It is, however, a history not of the working out of the divine plan but a story of the adventures of language and its meanings within political theologies. It goes this way. In the Old Testament patterning of the history, the prophesied future took on an apocalyptic and messianic cast; this became intensified in the New Testament with expectation of Christ's second coming, and particularly in the graphic visions of endtime events in the book of Revelation. The Old Testament tells a political as well as a religious story. The New Testament tells of Christians opposed to all political authorities, and particularly to Rome—although Paul advises rendering unto Caesar. Christian sentiments regarding contemporary Rome altered among patriarchic commentators and especially after the Roman emperor Constantine became a Christian. Moreover, Constantine, mingling elements of imperial and Christian political theology having universal application in promoting his self-image, set what proved a useful precedent for subsequent Western kings. As new political units, kingdoms, formed in the Western regions of the old Roman empire, representations of ruler and community moved beyond Lombard, Visigothic, Prankish, or Anglo-Saxon custom and traditions to draw both on symbols of the cult of the emperor and the promise of final messianic kingdom or empire foretold in the Bible. Moreover, some time and somewhere during late antiquity the prophecy of a final world emperor had emerged from this convergence 61 There are striking similarities in conceiving of the community and its mission in other European places and elsewhere as well; how those ideologies interrelate with specific histories is another matter, beyond the scope of this essay. I address some of them in my recently-completed history of the political use of political theology in the West.

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and come to receive broad circulation in oracles, Christian and otherwise, attributed to ancient sibyls. As yet, however, it was not coupled with the trajectory of empire. Still, sibylline books were greatly respected by patristic writers as witnesses to the universality of divine revelation. Tertullian and Lactantius cited the sibyls extensively, as did Augustine, in similar inclusive universalist spirit, and within a coopting of authoritative pagan voices.62 Even so, exalted concepts of political empire scarcely correlated with the views of the early Church Fathers. The mighty Augustine allowed only policing powers to all earthly authority. He took great pains to counter the widespread belief, fed by Virgil, of Rome as eternal and its golden age as yet to come, appealing to the gospel of Luke (1: 33): c . . . only of the Kingdom of Christ it can be said: "There shall be no end.'" As to Rome, Augustine observed, it had some good qualities but, rather than ascending to Virgil's golden age, it had been in decline since before Christ. The world along with Roman domination of it would indeed end, and with great tribulation, although it was futile to calculate just when. Despite Augustine, the widespread belief in Rome the eternal lived on, to be applied to Christian Rome, including by some patristic writers who were, unsurprisingly, native to the Latin West. Jerome, in a commentary on Daniel, understood Rome to be the fourth world empire that was destined to crumble and be superceded by a fifth and final kingdom of God. Yet Jerome also discerned westward movement in world dominion, from Medes to Persians to Macedonians to Rome. Jerome further conflated the biblical and the classical in ways that would be taken up by Western authorities, among them Isabel and Elizabeth. He likened this translatio imperil to the course of the sun, an analogy not conducive to denigrating political power nor to dampening prophecy of that final kingdom as coming on earth and in the far west. Jerome was a Roman, and in his Roman world, ritual in the royal cult had until relatively recently compared the emperor with the sun. There was, too, the pagan assumption that Roman emperors on their deaths might become eternal shining and guiding stars. And Virgil's Aeneid foresees imperial Rome as eternal, the final messianic kingdom. The Aeneid, becomes sanitized as Christian prophecy and widely read, has that analogue of the sun, a star, the star of Venus, show Aeneas, whose destiny it is to found Rome, the way west from Troy to Italy (bk. 1: 382).63 The star and the same message is represented in his Fourth 62

See Paul J. Alexander, The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985); and Alexander, cThe Legend of the Last Roman Emperor and its Messianic Origin', Journal of Warburg and Courtould Institutes 41 (1978): 1-15. Based on surviving texts, he dated the earliest Christian sibylline prophecy of a Last Roman Emperor to the fourth century. While he could find definite evidence only in the seventh century, he concluded that cthe conversion of Constantine, in particular, must have served as a catalyst for the substitution of a powerful Roman Emperor for the nebulous King of the Jews in Christian eschatology [. . .] It is [. . .] not unreasonable to surmise that during the reign of Constantine the Great at the latest, in Christian eschatology a Last Roman Emperor took the place held in Late Jewish apocalyptic by a Jewish king' (p. 10). 63 Aeneid, book 1, 382; see also book 2, 681-700; and Sabine MacCormack, Art and

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Eclogue by the figure of Astraea, subsequently useful to regnant women. The star was also a Jewish and Christian messianic symbol; and in Europe it would remain identified with the sun and its westering course.64 Bolstering belief that world empire had a future and was to move westward, a Spanish Roman cleric, Orosius, although a disciple of Augustine, nonetheless wrote a history declaring Rome to be the last and most glorious universal empire, and that 'When Rome falls, the world does too'. This was to blur the old line between the fourth empire, Rome, and the fifth and final kingdom, of God. It was also to conflate the course of Roman empire and Roman Church. And, although Orosius did not mention an East to West trajectory of world empire, he did refer to the succession of four empires, observe that 'when the might of the East declined that of the West arose', and clearly saw in Christian Rome the final and westernmost empire that was to complete history, both mundane and sacred.65 Further, he was certain that it was God's will there be one source of political power, that all kingdoms should be under one ruler, and he described Augustus Caesar as the first Roman world emperor, his reign possessing providential and miraculous aspects. The reigns of Augustus and Jesus Christ had then coincided according to Orosius, making the earthly and heavenly princes of peace contemporaries at the moment when all prophecy had converged.66 Moreover, building on Constantine's biographer and publicist, Eusebius, Orosius expanded the concept of imperial Christian Rome as the new Israel, the elect nation, progressing towards Ceremony in Late Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981), 45, 140. Seneca (C. E. 4-75), in Medea, had indicated westward movement in history in foreseeing a time coming when, 'Thule [ultima Thule, to Romans the land lying at the western end of the world] is no longer the furthest land'. That prediction became a staple in prophecies of new lands to be discovered and became correlated to empire's destined westward course. 64 See John J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star (New York, 1995). 65 Orosius, Seven Books of Histories against the Pagans, translated by R. I. Woodworm (New York: 1936). Theodor E. Mommsen, 'Orosius and Augustine', in Mommsen, Medieval and Renasisance Studies, edited by Eugene F. Rice, Jr. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1959; reprint, Westport, CT: 1982), 338. Orosius saw the course of history as a succession of four main kingdoms at the four cardinal points of earth: Babylon-east, Carthage-south, Macedonia-north, Rome-West. Yet he also took up the connection of western location to final imperial power. 66 Mommsen, 'Orosius', 278-345; and Mommsen, 'Aponius and Orosius on the Significance of the Epiphany', in Medieval and Renasisance Studies, 299-34. Mommsen, in 4St Augustine and the Christian Idea of Progress. The Background of The City of God\ in Medieval and Renasisance Studies, 282-5, observes that Eusebius had earlier viewed as concurrent the life of Christ and the universal empire of Augustus, a confluence arranged by God, and found it highly significant. To corroborate his interpretation he referred to Old Testament prophecies cited by Church Fathers as foretelling the future messianic kingdom, particularly in Psalm 72:7 and Isaiah 2:4; and he saw parallel between the victory of Christianity and the growth of Rome's empire: 'two great powers' that sprang from one stream and gave peace to all. There had been advances in both since Christ and more were to come.

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Christian universality. 'These two writers—Eusebius and Orosius—created the framework within which medieval thinkers viewed the meaning of history'61 Both men avowedly wrote religious, or ecclesiastical, history, that of the progress of a Church that was synonymous with Christendom and slated to encompass the world. Even so, unable to resist pointing to the triumphs and promise of Christianity on earth, Orosius conveyed an essentially materialist and progressive view of human history. He became a major source for subsequent universal histories, as well as an authority cited to corroborate much prophetic lore. He, and Eusebius, became favorite models for medieval chroniclers, whose universal narratives tended to culminate in their own rulers and nations, and who, like Alfonso X, a direct source for Isabel, underscored such national election with biblical allusion and reference to universal Roman empire.68 Although Roman imperial power dwindled in the West, that a distinctive Roman Christianity was gathering strength there was a circumstance highly conducive to belief in the westward movement of heaven's favor. At the same time, as has been said, 'Christian culture in the early medieval centuries became essentially and radically biblical in a way it had not been before'; indeed, it 'was being drained of secularity'.69 Within that ideational context the influential pope, Gregory the Great, viewed society as a natural divinely-imposed hierarchy, emulating heaven, at its top were directors, rector-es, who were to rule on earth so that they might help souls on to salvation. Gregory, bent both on inducing all earthly powers to advance heaven's purposes and on circumscribing the emperor and religious authorities in the East, provided theory and sanction for investing the new Germanic kings of the West with divine authority. In Spain, Isidore of Seville took a similar view of royal power but went further, in avowing Visigoth kings to be directly guided by God and largely independent of both the emperor and the pope. In France, where chronicles drew parallel between Constantine's battlefield conversion and that of Clovis and claimed Trojan ancestry for his Franks, royal alliances with the papacy left the Prankish church effectively under royal aegis. Isidore's Visigoths disappeared in short order, but elsewhere a Prankish king came to rule most of western Europe. Charlemagne, the self-styled emperor in the west, adapted Constantine's stance as imperial overlord and as champion and 67

Marjorie Reeves, The Originality and Influence of Joachim of Fiore', Traditio 36 (1980): 269-316, esp. 271; Mommsen, 'Orosius', 348: 'Consequently, we find that most medieval universal histories set forth ideas and judgments and reflect a philosophy of history [. . .] which rightly may be called Orosian'. Orosius also indicated that Rome's ongoing history could be interpreted typologically to reveal the unfolding of the divine plan. This was to give mundane history scriptural stature. Orosius became a popular and principal authority on universal history in the medieval West and beyond: In eighteenthcentury America, John Adams would still cite his authority. 68 Mommsen, 'Orosius', 326, 331-2. Ironically, Orosius also became a prime interpretive source for Augustine's City of God, even though in his history human beings were still to make progress through time, if with divine help. 69 R. A. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 226-8.

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arbiter of the Church. Subsequently, he came to exemplify imperial kingship: to his Carolingian successors who, having less power, nevertheless elaborated on the imperial model; to the Saxon Ottomans who became Holy Roman Emperors; to Alfonso X of Castile who aspired to that title, and to any number of rulers and people in Europe's emerging nation-states. At the same time, Gregory's concept of rectores continued to legitimate the political power of those wielding it at whatever level. With the Crusades, rhetoric of spiritual Christian militancy became literal, invoking a broadly Western sense of Christian mission and crowd-rousing calls to holy war against Muslims and, often, Jews; all non-Christians and heretics became minions of the archenemy, Antichrist. Charlemagne himself, legend had it, had led an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem; it was prophesied he might return to lead another. French kings especially enhanced patriotic sentiment and their own image in crusading, as did other rulers on occasion, and the Spanish crusaded in advancing into Muslim al-Andalus. Western rulers employed similar ideology in crusading, but none so literally nor consistently nor in such apt circumstances; for in Spain as nowhere else in the Christian West royal legitimacy was bound up with actively battling God's enemies on what was considered native soil. The French and Germans and the papacy also adapted holy war rhetoric to situations closer to home and to their infighting. German emperors and French kings each claimed their subjects to be the New Israel and represented themselves through language and imagery associated with the last world emperor. In the doing they came to rely strongly on the ancient sibyls as prophetic authorities and also on a relative newcomer as well, the seer Merlin.70 By the time Enrique de Trastamara battled his half-brother Pedro for the crown of Castile, the prophecy of the last emperor—the Lion King—had become an allusive staple in the political theology employed by European courts. It was a messianic and millennial prediction adapted and applied to present or future kings and often foresaw the return of a hallowed royal figure of the past. It attached to Spanish kings and gravitated especially to Enrique II and his dynasty, down to Fernando of Aragon. As for Isabel of Castile, she was known to be dedicated to fulfillment of that prophecy. There was little or no gap between what she believed a ruler must do and how she presented her convictions. That confluence owed much to ideology of Spanish kingship that had become embedded in the history 70 Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969): new versions of Sibylline oracles, Tiburtine and Cumaean Sibyls, gained wide currency in the twelfth century and were taken seriously. See also Colette Beaune, The Birth of an Ideology. Myths and Symbols of Nation in Late-Medieval France, translated by Susan Ross Huston (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991); Anne D. Hedeman, The Royal Image. Illustrations of the Grandes Chroniques de France, 1274— 1422 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991); and Joseph Strayer, Trance: The Holy Land, the Chosen People, and the Most Christian King', in Strayer, Medieval Statecraft and the Perspectives of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 300-14. A number of pertinent texts are collected in Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979).

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and culture of her Spain. Against this extended background, the fall of Granada in 1492, along with the departure of the Jews and imperial expansion enabled by Columbus, could not but appear to confirm Spain as final world empire and ratify the messianic role of its rulers.71 Isabel did not live to see the trappings of worldwide rule appropriated by her grandson, Charles V, but would surely have expected that king of Spain who was also Holy Roman Emperor to utilize to the fullest both Spanish and imperial symbolism, just as he did. From all accounts, Isabel la Catolica, ruling on the cusp of Middle Ages and the Renaissance, saw forwarding the divine plan revealed in history and focused on Spain as the reason for being of Spanish rulers and the highest calling in the world. In Isabel, conviction and self-representation were of a piece. Their resonance is unmistakable in the stance of the emperor Charles, her grandson, who declared her an inspiration. Moreover, there are striking similarities between Isabel's public representation and that of the later, more internationally oriented, more this-worldminded, and assertively sole, monarch, Elizabeth I. Both enjoyed being eulogized in a mix of biblical and classical allusion, as Deborah, Minerva, Diana, Astraea, and Mary, Queen of Heaven. At the same time, both took to heart histories boosting their nation's independence, prestigious ancestry that antedated Rome, and prophesied a pre-eminent future, a future envisioned as involving a national mission and as culminating the divinely-established trajectory of empire that had become a major theme in medieval Western political theology. That future had long figured prominently in what Frank Kermode has called the sense of an ending, in this case a glorious climax to human history. Both Isabel and Elizabeth extracted a pertinent version of the historical future as mission statement from their respective national chronicles, popular lore, and legal treatises; both queens projected a God-given mission to ruler and people to make of themselves a final empire and a last emperor. Those projections had some common broadly Western sources and allowed both Isabel and Elizabeth to go beyond male or female prototypes and associate themselves with national ideals of monarchy and their imperial implications. For even while the two queens employed words and images filtered through centuries of application to their own countries and peoples, they relied on accreted traditions of Western political theology. At bottom, what Isabel and Elizabeth shared with many kings as well was a determination to be seen as leading and personifying a place and people engaged in a great enterprise, a people at the helm of history. Sending that message required building on the known and esteemed, political precedent, the universal, and, underlying all, the sacred.

71

That there existed this common Western stockpile goes far to explain how Columbus, an Italian (and not a Jew), could be so attuned to providentialist aspects of Isabelline ideology and their scriptural associations. See Liss, Isabel, ch. 16; and Alain Milhou, Colon y su mentalidad mesidnica en el ambiente franciscanista espanol (Valladolid: Casa Museo de Colon, 1983).

CHAPTER NINE

Choices and Consequences: The Construction of Isabel de Portugal's Image Jorge Sebastian Lozano

'Muito isenta da sua condi^am': fully conscious of her condition, so was described Isabel de Portugal (1503-39) by her contemporaries.1 Born in Portugal, married to Charles V in 1526 and therefore, queen of Spain and empress, she was above all a Habsburg woman, one that contributed to shape the feminine models ruling within that dynasty during the following decades. This study aims to provide some references for the visual and material expressions of her high condition. Her role as regent of Spain—during the long absences of her husband from the Iberian Peninsula—gave her ample occasion to leave an imprint on the artistic realizations of her time, although she did so only to a small extent, in terms of artists' patronage. Of greater relevance were her collecting activities, more centered on costly and rare objects than in pieces of solely aesthetic value. These elements were essential for the self-fashioning of her queenly image. Nonetheless, such image was displaced since very early times by a posthumous one, made for Charles V by Titian. The following pages are an attempt to understand the different strategies adopted by each imperial partner for the construction of Isabel's image, as well as the consequences of those choices, both within the larger historical context and in the particular field of art historical enquiry.2

Damiao de Gois, Cronica do felicissimo Rei D. Manuel, quoted in Vasco Grac. a Moura, Retratos de Isabel e outras tentativas (Lisbon: Quetzal Editores, 1994), 152. 2 The author wishes to acknowledge the following individuals for their guidance and support in pursuing this research: Dagmar Eichberger, Miguel Falomir, David Freedberg, Fernando Marias, Paul Matthews, Maria Jose Redondo Cantera, David Rosand, and Karl Schiitz. I am particularly indebted to Annemarie Jordan for her continuous help, generosity, and encouragement. This essay draws upon material gathered for my doctoral dissertation on the representation of Habsburg royal women through the arts in sixteenth-century Spain. For the sake of brevity, the critical apparatus has been reduced here to the minimum. A fuller development is available in the dissertation.

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Figure 9.1

QUEENSHIP ESf MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN

Titian. Portrait of Empress Isabel de Portugal, 1548, oil on canvas, 117 x 98 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

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Figure 9.2 Portrait of Empress Isabel de Portugal, undated, oil on wood, 87.5 x 66.5 cm. National Museum, Poznan (Poland).

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Absent Majesty: Isabel between Charles V and Titian Today, our main visual reference of Empress Isabel is Titian's magnificent portrait hanging in the Prado Museum (Figure 9.1). He painted it nine years after the death of a woman he had known through the exchange of some gifts, but never met in person. Other painters had portrayed her during her lifetime, or shortly thereafter. Those portraits have been strenuously examined in the search for the one that Titian reportedly used as a model.3 In overview, four main typologies can be established among those portraits. The main one consists of bust or half-length portraits showing Isabel in three quarters, over a neutral background (Figure 9.2).4 A second type is formed by a profusion of small-size diptychs of the imperial couple, something quite common for illustrious couples at that time.5 These first two varieties could sometimes be synonymous, since originally separated portraits may be joined to form a diptych, or vice versa. Moreover, completely separate paintings of the imperial couple are sometimes inventoried one next to the other, meaning that they may have been seen as pendant pieces. Miniature portraits, on 3 See Anne Cloulas, 'Les portraits de 1'Imperatrice Isabelle de Portugal,' Gazette des Beaux-Arts 93 (1979): 58-68, for an excellent summary of all previous research. According to her, Titian's model was a portrait by Guillim Scrots, very similar to the one today in Poznan (Poland). The similarity between that painting and the first executed by Titian, as well as the fact that, in 1556, both Mary of Hungary, his patron, and Charles V owned portraits of Isabel by Scrots seem to account for him as the author of the model. Maria Kusche, 'Der christliche Ritter und seine Dame, das Reprasentationsbildnis in ganzer Figur: zur Entstehung, Entwicklung und Bedeutung des weltlichen Bildnisses von der karolingischen Buchmalerei iiber die Augsburger Schule bis zu Seisenegger, Tizian, Anthonis Moor und der Spanischen Hofinalerschule des 16. und 17. Janrunderts', Pantheon 49 (1991): 4-35; quote on 27. Nonetheless, it remains an open question. See notes 14, 17, and 21 below. On the other hand, Miguel Falomir has insightfully commented upon this particular portrait in various recent exhibitions: see note 14 for some remarks. 4 For example, the one formerly in Peter Jones's collection and currently in William Merton collection, Thatcham (Paul Matthews kindly provided me with updated provenance information for this work), attributed to Jan Vermeyen or his workshop. Gustav Gliick, 'Bildnisse aus dem Hause Habsburg I: Kaiserin Isabella', Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien N. F. 7 (1933): 183-210, especially 198; Hendrik J. Horn, Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen, Painter of Charles V and His Conquest of Tunis: paintings, etchings, drawings, cartoons & tapestries (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1989), 61 n. 50. Also, two portraits, one today in the National Museum, Poznan, the other formerly in the Gavet collection, both dubiously attributed to Guillim Scrots. Jan Bialostocki, 'The Empress Isabella, Titian and Guillim Scrots (Notes on the Flemish Portrait of Isabella in Poznan)', Oud Holland 69: 1 (1954): 109-15; Wilhelm Suida, 'Titian's portraits. Originals and reconstructions', Gazette des Beaux-Arts 29 (March 1946): 139-52. Finally, the drawing by Jacques le Boeucq in the Recueil d'Arras, very similar to the latter. Cloulas, 'Les portraits', 58. 5 One extant example is reproduced by Gliick, 'Bildnisse aus dem Hause Habsburg F, 199. They were abundant, however, as Charles himself had five in Brussels (painted by Scrots and, probably, Lucas Cranach the Elder), and Mary of Hungary another one. Gliick, notes 52 and 51. Fernando Checa Cremades, Carlos V: La imagen delpoder en el Renacimiento (Madrid: El Viso, 1999), 186.

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vellum or wood, constituted another class, although they share the same basic compositional features as the previous two.6 Finally, donor portraits, although showing full-length figures, are subordinated to the overall, predetermined composition.7 Apart from these categories, very few pieces can be singled out.8 This outline of Isabel's portraits by artists other than Titian can be summarized as perfectly coherent with the hesitating imperial image prior to the decade of 1540, mostly shaped by Northern models. The vast majority of these portraits were carried out by Flemish artists, all of them formerly under the patronage of Margaret of Austria or Mary of Hungary, who would provide them with chances to work for the Emperor. It is interesting, in this regard, to learn about Lope de Salinas's 1534 report to Ferdinand I on the possibility of obtaining a portrait of the Empress: 'I will search for it, though it will be hard to find, since, as you know, it is not something usual here . . . and there is great need of painters in Burgos; in Miraflores there seems to be one portrait, albeit from her youth'.9 Thus, a lack of qualified painters in Castile during the regency of Isabel was undoubtedly another reason to bestow the task of her portrayal on foreign artists,10 in spite of the fact that she never left the peninsula. Here we first touch on the central problem of Isabel's portraiture: her absence from the painters' scope of action. In other words, how to portray the spouse to the most powerful ruler of the time, without ever having seen her? Titian had to address this problem, too, compounded with the sitter's death years before. Charles first commissioned from him a portrait of Isabel in 1543, during a week-long meeting between the Emperor and Pope Paul III in Busseto (21-25 June). Charles supplied the painter with the unknown model portrait, which he described as 'very much lifelike, although by a trifle painter' ('molto 6

See note 44. To the same genre belonged the four miniature portraits that Philip II commissioned to Diego de Arroyo shortly after Isabel's demise. Gliick, 'Bildnisse aus dem Hause Habsburg F, 203; Cloulas, 'Les portraits'. 7 As in Orley's Fons Vitae altarpiece in Porto, and the vitrals he designed for Saints Michael and Gudule's church, Brussels. Gliick, 'Bildnisse aus dem Hause Habsburg I', 186 ff; Moura, Retratos de Isabel, 157; Checa Cremades, Carlos V, 172, 177. 8 Jean Mone carved an alabaster relief with an atypical depiction of the imperial couple in affectionate embrace. Although it bears the date of 1526, the year of Charles's and Isabel's marriage, it probably dates from 1529 or later, since the emperor appears in the short haircut he had not adopted before that time. Carmen Bemis, Indumentaria espanola en tiempos de Carlos V (Madrid: Institute Diego Velazquez del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1962), 64—5. It was probably made without actual knowledge of Isabel's appearance. 9 Cloulas, 'Les portraits', 66, note 11: 'Yo la buscare, aunque creo que sera mala de haber; porque, como V. M. sabe, aca son poco amigos de tal cosa . . . y hay muy gran falta de oficiales en Burgos; en Miraflores creo que tienen un retrato, aunque es del tiempo de mocedad' (all translations into English are mine). As will be mentioned, Titian had promised Ferdinand a portrait of the Empress at about the same time (see note 41 below). 10 It was also due to the long-standing preference of Spanish rulers (since at least the reign of the Catholic Kings) for foreign artists, either Remish or Italian.

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simile al vero, benche di trivial pennello'.11 Titian's painting was lost in the 1604 fire at El Pardo, but its appearance is known through some copies and an engraving.12 Isabel, her lap full of roses, is shown at half-length, sitting by a windowsill on which her imperial crown rests.13 Charles reportedly liked this portrait, and in their next meeting (at Augsburg, from January to September, 1548) had Titian paint some others. One was the portrait currently in the Prado, which maintains the three-quarters, half-length composition of the first painting, removing the crown and the roses and introducing some changes in props and clothing. A third, lost version, is known through a copy by Rubens (now in Duke of Alba's collection, Madrid). In it, Titian represented the imperial couple sitting at a table. For Isabel, he took elements from both of the previous portraits, whereas for Charles's image he mostly used the same composition as in the portrait of the Emperor seated, now in Munich. Finally, recent scholarship has convincingly argued the existence of a fourth, fulllength portrait of the Empress by Titian, as the common source for a number of very similar portraits in Austria and Spain.14 Whatever the number of portraits finally accomplished by Titian, it is clear that their being truthful likenesses was a main factor for their commission. The Emperor used these and other portraits to keep his dead spouse alive in his memory. One month after her death, he wrote to his sister Mary, and begged her to search the portrait gallery that had belonged to their aunt Margaret of Austria. A portrait of Isabel was found and sent to Charles, only to his disappointment at its lack of likeness.15 Regarding Titian's portraits themselves, the Emperor showed concern for the 11

Pietro Aretino, Lettere, edited by Paolo Procaccioli, Edizione nazionale delle opere di Pietro Aretino, vol. 4 (Rome, Salerno: 1997), III: 42, July 1543. 12 The engraving was made by Pieter de Jode the Younger after a (lost, too) copy by Rubens. Extant copies in the collection of the Marquis de Santo Domingo (Cloulas, 'Les portraits', 67 n. 25), in Charlecote Park (Warwickshire), and in the Hispanic Society in New York. Harold E. Wethey, The paintings of Titian. I: The religious paintings. II: The portraits. Ill: The mythological and historical paintings. 3 volumes (London: Phaidon, 1969-75), II: 200, III, 268). 13 This painting is the source for Leone Leoni's first depictions of the Empress: two medals cast in 1546 and 1549, and a cameo today in the Metropolitan Museum of New York. Another early portrait by him is a profile bas-relief in a richly decorated frame, today in El Prado. Cloulas, 'Les portraits', 65. 14 Kusche, 'Der christliche Ritter', 27. The Kunsthistorisches Museum holds four copies in its various collections. The best is on permanent show at Schloss Ambras (inv. no. 3999); a miniature, belonging to Archduke Ferdinand II's collection, can be seen at the Kunsthistorisches Museum's Munzsammlung (inv. no. 4665); two other minor copies in storage (nn. 3436 and 8116). There is another full-length copy in Salzburg, Stadtisches Museum. In Madrid, the two versions of the Leonis' sculpture of Isabel, first in bronze (155564) and then in marble (1555-72; both in El Prado). Cloulas, 'Les portraits', 65. All of them share basic features in clothing and coiffure, as well as the pose (Isabel holds in her right hand an extreme of her girdle). 15 Checa Cremades, Carlos V, 275.

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delays in the completion of the first. He felt very attached to the model he had sent, so much so as to ask for it to be returned to him since the painter no longer needed it.16 The fact that the model was a very good likeness (probably the best, since he sent it for Titian to copy) is the obvious reason for Charles's affection for it. He also liked Titian's first portrait, although he found it wanting in that particular respect: likeness. He deemed it important enough to keep the painting for more than two years until Titian himself could repaint the nose.17 Further proof of the personal use of those portraits by Charles is found in the weeks prior to his death in Yuste. At one point, the Emperor had his servants bring him Isabel's portrait,18 which he contemplated in silence for some time, and then did the same with the Prayer in the Garden and the Glory (which, incidentally, shows Titian's last portrait of Isabel). All this evidence confirms what may seem obvious; her portraits by Titian lent themselves to a private use, as reminders of the deceased Empress. Nonetheless, in Yuste we also find some of the traces that tell us a fairly different story. Charles showed there an unforeseen predilection for the commission of new portraits of Isabel. Shortly before his death, he commanded some Flemish painters visiting Yuste to copy portraits from him and the Empress.19 He also wished to have two sculpture portraits made for the tabernacle of the church. They should represent the imperial couple as they appear in Titian's Glory, reenacting the presence of the king's eternal body. Evidently, he conceived of those images as his memorial for future generations, and wanted to make Isabel part of that eternal image. This impersonal view of Isabel's portraits is easily applied to those carried out 16

Matteo Mancini, Tiziano e le corti d'Asburgo: net documenti degli archivi spagnoli (Venice: Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 1998), 159. 17 Writing about Titian's portrait, Falomir has seen Isabel's portraits by Titian as an idealized re-creation of her image. According to him, this would have involved the 'correction' of Isabel's countenance, eliminating her aquiline nose. While finding it difficult to arrive at a positive conclusion on that particular detail, I fully agree with his overall interpretation of these portraits as 'el proceso ideal de aprehension de la imagen de Isabel por parte de Carlos'. Miguel Falomir Faus, 'Imagenes de poder y evocaciones de la memoria. Usos y funciones del retrato en la corte de Felipe IF, In Felipe II, un monarca y su epoca. Un principe del Renacimiento (Madrid: Museo del Prado, 1998), 202-27, esp. 203^; idem, 'En busca de Apeles. Decoro y verosimilitud en el retrato de Carlos V, in Carlos V. Retratos de familia, edited by Fernando Checa Cremades, Javier Portus, and Miguel Falomir Faus (Madrid: Sociedad Estatal para la Conmemoracion de los Centenaries de Felipe II y Carlos V, 2000), 157-79, quote on 177. 18 Cloulas, 'Les portraits', 68 n. 47. The frequent assertion that Charles looked to Isabel's portrait as he lay in his deathbed is somewhat inexact, since this happened on 31 August, right before he said he was feeling unwell. In fact, he lived for another three weeks, until 21 September. Domingo Sanchez Loro, La inquietud postrimera. Vol I. Trdnsito ejemplar de Carlos V, desde la fastuosidad cortesana de Bruselas al retiro monacal de Yuste, 1st edition (Caceres: Jefatura Provincial del Movimiento, 1957), 335, 349, 364. 19 Quoted in Fernando.Checa Cremades, Felipe II: mecenas de las artes (Madrid: Nerea, 1992), 470, n. 28. Notice the customary preference for Flemish artists, even at this late date.

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by Titian. It was by no means the only time the Venetian painter portrayed an absent sitter. In fact, he took pride in his ability to recognize the characteristic features of any person merely judging from another artist's portrait. He portrayed Francis I from a medal, and Isabella d'Este from a two decades old portrait.20 Such creative power was not exclusive to Titian: in fact, it was a quite common requirement for painters. Of all the Flemish artists who portrayed Isabel, only Antonio de Holanda is reported beyond doubt to have done so from life. Bernard Orley and Joos van Cleve painted portraits of her without ever traveling to the Iberian Peninsula.21 In brief, it was common practice to portray a remote sitter. This opens ample room for the painter's creative power, but also for idealization. In Titian's case, however, this talent was far more marked. He made it part of his artistic persona, in his own motto. Natura potentior ars meant, among other things, that even the dead could be risen again to life. He was applying himself a classical topos, formulated before by Alberti: 'the face of the dead lives through painting a lasting life'.22 This challenge to death is ill-fated, of course, and the inevitable end is indirectly acknowledged by some 'reminder': a clock, in the double portrait of the imperial couple. Moreover, these images played a public role, as made clear by their insertion in portrait galleries. Although quite probably they were neither commissioned nor conceived as pendants for specific images of Charles,23 they were certainly paired in most collections during the Emperor's lifetime and afterwards. Once more, the portraits of the Dukes of Urbino were Titian's own models. Conceived separately, they 'complement each other [in] a union of polarities': the warrior, and the lady of the dukedom.24 The same dialectic between active masculinity and passive femininity is present in Titian's portraits of Charles and Isabel. Conventions and traditions were constantly at play, therefore, and Titian was most creative within them. He departed from the Northern, late medieval models for the image of the ruler, and created what is usually known as the state portrait. For his first portrait of Isabel, that meant maintaining the bust figure in three 20

Wethey, The Paintings of Titian, II: 95-6. It is a matter of contention whether Scrots or Vermeyen met her between 1526 and 1530. Gliick, 'Bildnisse aus dem Hause Habsburg F, 190-91, 200; Suida, Titian's Portraits', 149; Bialostocki, 'The Empress Isabella', 109; Horn, Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen, 60 n. 48. Taking Scrots as author of the model for Titian implies acceptance of an undocumented (in spite of Gliick and Suida's claims on the contrary) journey to Spain. Regarding Mone, during 1526 and 1527 he did not receive his usual stipend from the city of Malines, which supports an otherwise undocumented travel to the Emperor's wedding in Seville. 22 'II viso di chi gia sia morto, per la pittura vive lunga vita'. David Rosand, 'Alcuni pensieri sul ritratto e la morte', in Giorgione e Vumanesimo veneziano, edited by Rodolfo Pallucchini (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1981), 293-308, esp. 296. 23 There are different hypotheses concerning the pairing of these portraits in Charles's and Mary of Hungary's collections. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian, II: 85-7, 110-11, 193^4, 200-203; Cloulas, 'Les portraits', 67-8, n. 30 and 33; Kusche, 'Der christliche Ritter', 24-7. 24 Luba Freedman, Titian's Portraits through Aretino 's Lens (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 89-90. 21

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quarters (as in the Poznan painting), and adding some representational elements: the chair, the brocade tablecloth and cloth of honor, the roses on her lap, and the imperial crown on the windowsill. In later versions, he suppressed the roses and the crown, incorporating a landscape through the mirror, as well as an occasional book of hours.25 Titian also appropriated a previous, Italian tradition, 'a topos of beautiful, virtuous brides' established by Raphael's celebrated Joanna ofAragon.26 This ideal was strong enough to shape not only Titian's portraits of Isabel, but also a later bridal portrait of Mary Tudor by Antonis Mor. It also succeeded in characterizing the sitters as beautiful, whatever their actual physical appearance. Which leads us to the rather important matter of beauty. In this context, what made a woman look beautiful?27 Ideal, even if physical, beauty was connected to moral virtue. For Renaissance culture, 'all good women are beautiful', since outward appearance was but a manifestation of inner character.28 For example, Aretino wrote a letter to Isabel, praising her beauty in such traits as 'la semplicita de la fronte', 'i vostri occhi girati da vergognosi movimenti', 'le vostre guancie fiorite', and the like.29 Needless to say, he had never seen her. Aretino knew the expectations of his readers, and adapted his writing to them. What really mattered was the moral effect that her countenance was supposed to have on the viewers in real life.30 In the process, the links to her real appearance became so tenuous as to almost disappear, but that did not prevent his message from getting to the readers. The same thing happened when the model was not 'real', but a painted portrait. Aretino composed encomiastic descriptions of portraits not already begun, 1 or, in the case of Isabel's first portrait, when it was still one year away from completion.32 In fact, the poet applied the same rhetorical language to many of Titian's feminine portraits regardless of the actual character or look of the sitter.33 Rhetoric supplied a convenient substitute for appearance. The effect the portrait should have on the viewers was far more important than its actual look; the ideal, rather than the real; convention, rather than likeness. Nonetheless, it served 25

The roses conveyed a specific allusion to conjugal love, as well as to Isabel's name-saint Elizabeth of Portugal. Joanna Woodall, 'An exemplary consort: Antonis Mor's portrait of Mary Tudor', Art History 14: 2 (June 1991): 193-224, esp. 210. 26 Woodall, 'An exemplary consort', 208. 27 See Rona Goffen's excellent analysis of this question. Titian's Women (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 81-103. 28 Goffen, Titian's Women, 64. 29 Aretino, Lettere, I: 174, 20 August 1537. 30 The same indifferentiation of physical and moral traits can be found in Santa Cruz's description of Isabel, quoted in Cloulas, 'Les portraits', 67 n. 27. 31 Freedman, Titian's Portraits, 88. 32 A close analysis of Aretino's letter III, 102 (October 1544), regarding his description of Isabel's portrait, although very fruitful, would take us too far. Let me just point to the main issues: a minimal knowledge of the painting's appearance (the flowers in her lap); the constant moral overtones to her physical features; the open awareness of the 'second-hand' character of Titian's portrait. 33 Freedman, Titian's Portraits, 87.

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its purpose. Charles affirmed34 that he had obtained consolation from Aretino's funeral letter for Isabel, written in his usual, overblown style.35 Is it strange that Titian could be equally conventional in portraying her? Charles V succeeded in developing a coherent imperial portraiture only during the 1540s.36 For that process, Titian was a key element in that, although he was not the only portraitist to the Emperor, he was by far his favorite. Interestingly enough, Charles chose to include Isabel in this project, even posthumously. As Fernando Marias insightfully remarked, it was precisely the Empress's first portrait that initiated Charles's properly imperial iconography, which was to be culminated by his equestrian portrait in memory of Miihlberg, and later by Pompeo Leoni's sculptures of Charles and Isabel for El Escorial.37 Paraphrasing Aretino, one could say that Titian showed Isabel herself to Charles'.38 It was him who supplied the image of Isabel that the Emperor wanted, even though he had not known her. Thus, Charles ensured that she was perpetually remembered by his side, as a feminine paradigm that, although highly ideal, was at the same time convincingly real. In Renaissance artistic theory, the concetto of the portrait was the vehicle to solve this tension. It worked to accommodate an individual within his socially representative type. No contradiction was perceived between both extremes, and the artist was expected to reconcile them.39 In fact, it is probably our own biased preference for an allegedly 'pure' or 'direct' description of reality that makes us wary of ideals, conventions, or models, which, whether we notice them or not, are always at work in our representations. The Empress's (Self-)Fashioning Let us now examine the degree to which Isabel played an active role in the fashioning of her image, and, in fact, of her own person. Her efforts were conceived within the larger context of the imperial image, and therefore subordinated to Charles's self-promotion through the arts. Nonetheless, she was also able to characterize herself as the center of the peninsular court, through an unparalleled display of magnificence and lavish consumption. In this regard, she was following previous queenly models, both Castilian and Portuguese, while at the same time articulating practices with great later resonance. Concerning Titian's role as the main imperial portraitist, it is clear that it was the Emperor's personal taste that gave the Venetian painter precedence over all the other artists who had portrayed him. Nonetheless, an attentive reading of the 34

Aretino, Lettere, III: 42, July 1543. Aretino, Lettere, II: 104, 31 May 31 1539. 36 Checa Cremades, Carlos V, 273. 37 Fernando Marias, El largo siglo XVI: los usos artisticos del Renacimiento espanol (Madrid: Taurus, 1989), 357-8. 38 As in Aretino's claim about Titian's portraits showing 'Cesare istesso a Cesare proprio'. Aretino, Lettere, I: 307, 18 December 1537. 39 Freedman, Titian's Portraits, 27, 33. 35

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correspondence of the Spanish ambassadors to the Venetian republic shows the involvement of the Empress in the efforts to bring the painter to Spain. These sustained efforts proved to be useless, as they conflicted with the painter's desire to remain in his city, continually concealed in various excuses. Lope de Soria was obliged to remind the Senate that any other painter could take charge of the completion of the decorations in Palazzo Ducale, unlike Titian, 'to whom the Majesties of the Emperor and Empress want for nothing else but painting portraits'.40 One year later, the same ambassador wrote in haste to Ferdinand I, begging him to help Titian's younger brother resolve as soon as possible his rights to the proceeds from woodcutting in some Tyrolese forests, 'because the Emperor and Empress wish Titian to depart as soon as possible, which I urge him to do, but he says he cannot leave until his brother's return'41. This insistence that both the Emperor and the Empress want Titian as portraitist in residence does not appear in any of the other imperial commissions to the Venetian master. There is further evidence of Isabel's direct knowledge of it Titian's work. The painter, following Aretino's advice, made a gift of an Annunciation to the Empress. Isabel responded to the gift with a very generous payment, and the present of a golden chain for Aretino.42 The chain was perceived as only a beginning, since Aretino commented at about the same time that it had been given to him 'with prospects of better things'.43 A second painter to have seemingly enjoyed a privileged position in Isabel's entourage was Antonio de Holanda. She summoned this Portuguese miniature painter to Toledo in 1529, to portray the Emperor before departing for his coronation in Bologna.44 On that occasion he also depicted the Empress with prince Philip (aged two at that time) in her arms, in a clear parallel of Virgin Mary's images with the Child. It must have been one of the first cases of 'divine portraits' 40

'Al qual las Magestades del Emperador y Emperatriz no quieren sino para hazer retratos', as Lope de Soria recounts to Francisco de los Cobos in his September 3, 1533 letter. Mancini, Tiziano, 136. 41 Torque el Emperador y la Emperatriz desean, que vaya presto el dicho Ticiano, e yo le doy priessa para que se parta y el dize que no puede partir hasta que vuelva el dicho su hermano': Lope de Soria to Ferdinand I, 8 October 1534. Shortly afterwards (4 November 1534), Soria mentioned some portraits of the Empress and the prince that Titian would supposedly send to Ferdinand after traveling to Spain. Mancini, Tiziano, 140-41. 42 Isabel took the Annunciation to the chapel in the palace at Aranjuez. Freedman, Titian's Portraits, 16; Mancini, Tiziano, 1998, 146ff. The painting is lost, but we know its composition through an engraving by Caraglio. 43 Aretino, Lettere, 1:168,25 July 1537. 44 Jorge Segurado, Francisco d'Ollanda: da sua vida e obras: arquitecto da renascenqa ao servigo de D. Joao III: pintor, desenhador, escritor, humanista: 'fac-simile' da carta a Miguel Angela, 1553 e dos sens tratados sobre Lisboa e desenho [1571] (Lisbon: Edi^oes Excelsior, 1970), 504-5; Maria Jose Redondo Cantera, 'Artistas y otros oficios suntuarios al servicio de la emperatriz Isabel de Portugal', paper presented at the 2nd Congreso Internacional de la Asociacion de Historiadores del Arte de Portugal, Porto, 2001 (publication forthcoming). Prof. Redondo has definitely assigned this trip to 1529. My knowledge of Isabel's portrait 'a lo divino' is also due to her kindness.

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('retratos a lo divino'), a genre that proliferated in the Spanish court during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She owned two altarpieces by the same artist, and paid him for various services during that year of 1529. So close was this relationship, that it was later continued with Francisco de Holanda, Antonio's son. In 1537, on his way from Portugal to Rome, the young Francisco visited the Empress in Valladolid. She asked him to make secretly ('como furtado') a portrait of the Emperor, then in Barcelona, and have it sent back to her. On his visit to Barcelona, he requested from Charles a chance to portray him, but the Emperor courteously refused, claiming to be too old to be portrayed as the Empress wanted.45 Another foreign painter to work for Isabel was Seisenegger. He stayed at the Spanish court in 1538-39, portraying the imperial family for his master, Ferdinand I of Austria. New documentary evidence shows what was to be supposed: that Isabel commissioned him portraits of her children, Philip, Maria and Juana.46 These were part of her painted portraits' collection. It consisted of a few portraits of her husband and children, as well as of her closest Habsburg and Aviz relatives.47 While it seems safe to suppose that most of the Habsburg portraits could be attributed to Seisenegger, and the Portuguese to Antonio de Holanda, no archival proof has been found so far. These three foreigners carried out particular works for Isabel, at specific times, never entering her personal service. A fourth character was a Spaniard, Diego de Arroyo, who did belong to Isabel's large household, even if only as a chapel servant. In fact, he was the only visual artist at her permanent service, authoring miniature decorations for books, small portraits, and other heraldic decorations.48 All this shows us a princely woman who is quite aware of the formalities involved in the patronage of artists. Nevertheless, this should not lead us to take her as a great patron of painters, nor an art collector: the individual who undoubtedly played that role in the imperial entourage was Mary of Hungary, the 45

In Holanda's words: the Emperor 'se me tornou a desculpar dizendo: que era ja velho para me consentir que o Retratasse como a Imperatriz pedia.' He recounts the event in the seventh chapter of his Da sciencia do desegno. Segurado, Francisco d'Ollanda, 243. 46 Archivo General de Simancas (ACS), Casa Real, legajo 67-4, f. 127: 29 July 1539, payment 'a Jacob Sais Niguer [of] CCL ducados que se le devian por seis rretratos que hizo del principe y de las senoras infantas por mandado de su magestad.' It is one of Isabel's posthumous debts. See also Redondo Cantera, 'Artistas y otros oficios suntuarios', note 31. 47 In addition to two portraits of Charles, she had others of Ferdinand and Anna of Austria, the prince Philip, the infantas Maria and Juana, as well as the children of Ferdinand. From Portugal, portraits of Joao III, the queen Catherine, princes Luis and Fernando (Isabel's brothers) and princess Maria or Beatriz. Annemarie Jordan, 'O Retrato no Renascimento Portugues', in Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, edited by Jose Luis Gordo Porfirio (Lisbon: Edi^oes Inapa, 1999), 177-9; Redondo Cantera, 'Artistas y otros oficios suntuarios'. 48 She must have kept him very active. AGS CR, leg. 61-4, f. 135 (25 April 1540): 'Otro [mandato] para que el tesorero pagasse a Diego de Arroyo Cmil [maravedis] por las yluminaciones que hizo por mandado de su Magestad'; this meant a higher amount than that owed to Seisenegger, a famed, international court artist. See also Redondo Cantera, 'Artistas y otros oficios suntuarios', note 33.

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Emperor's sister. The question, however, could be another: why did she have to be a collector of 'art' in the first place? As Maria Jose Redondo's research has already made clear, painting played a very small role in her possessions. These were extraordinary, truly outstanding, in other fields, such as jewelry, clothing, and furnishing. Her dowry included an impressive array of gold and silver work, amounting 64,500 of the dowry's total 900,000 doblas. The sheer opulence of this ensemble marveled the Spanish court.49 It was later increased by further presents and acquisitions, as well as by the continuous production of Isabel's gold- and silversmiths: Luis Fernandez, Hernan Perez, Francisco de Leon, Alejo Ortiz, and especially Jeronimo Gonzalez.50 In this way, Isabel kept a Portuguese flair in her queenly identity, since the Portuguese court was renowned for its luxury. In the same sense can be understood her leaning for exotic objects, mostly Asian, whose best examples were distributed in Europe through Lisbon. What I would like to stress, however, is the extraordinary importance she attached to costumes.51 Although they cannot be compared, in strict monetary terms, to the value of her jewels, those were her most cherished belongings. Moreover, while her jewels usually left the royal collection as required by Charles's many military enterprises, clothes or fabric were seldom pawned, and thus formed a more permanent, though changing possession. They were important enough to deserve a separate, detailed inventory, containing all clothes that she brought from Portugal, as well as the transformations made to them.52 This is totally exceptional in the documentation given to us about Spanish queens of early modern times, and shows the careful control of her wardrobe. Costumes were not universal: chroniclers observed the slight differences 49

ACS, Patronato Real, leg. 14-193. See Jose Martinez Millan, editor, La cone de Carlos V, 5 volumes (Madrid: Sociedad Estatal para la Conmemoracion de los Centenaries de Felipe II y Carlos V, 2000), I: 236, n. 528, for a summary of its parts and relative worth by Felix Labrador, who is currently researching the Empress's household. Maria Jose Redondo Cantera, 'Formacion y gusto de la coleccion de la Emperatriz Dona Isabel de Portugal', in El arte en las cones de Carlos Vy Felipe II, edited by Centro de Estudios Historicos Departamento de Historia del Arte 'Diego Velazquez', Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (Madrid: Alpuerto, 1999), 225-36. esp. 226-8, offers a stylistic and functional overview. 50 Redondo Cantera, 'Formacion y gusto', 230; Redondo Cantera, 'Artistas y otros oficios suntuarios'; ACS CR leg. 61-4, f. 130. 51 Maria del Carmen Mazario Coleto, Isabel's best biographer so far, already remarked her passion for clothing and rich fabrics. Isabel de Portugal: Emperatriz y Reina de Espana (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1951), 88-92. Such preference cannot be said to include the tapestries in her collection, certainly noteworthy, but not extraordinary. Redondo Cantera. 'Formacion y gusto', 229, 234. 52 AGS, Contaduria Mayor de Cuentas, P epoca, leg. 465: 'Relacion y quenta que dio gil sanchez de bazan escribano de camara de la enperatriz nra sa de las rropas que se truxeron de Portugal quando su magd vino a castilla y de las que se hicieron en ella hasta principio del ano de MDXXDC que se comedo el libro de la camara y de las ropas que se hizieron y de lo que se hizo dellas'. Further information about clothes is contained in legajo 464 of the same series, and also in AGS CR leg. 67-3.

15 g

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between Portuguese and Spanish fashion and, although Isabel quickly adapted herself to Spanish and Flemish ways, she also kept Portuguese traits in her clothing.53 Far from being only a matter of personal likings and taste, dowries and costumes had clear political overtones.54 Attention was paid to this particular in her very marriage agreements.55 Isabel was herself an avid buyer of rich fabrics, mostly Venetian. Her orders in 1532 included damask, satin, velvet, many times in the most expensive crimson dye; various types of brocades, some of them spun with gold or silver; pure gold thread.56 The ambassadors and her merchants reported on the negotiations and searches for the best quality available in the market.57 She even paid some painters in Lucca and Florence for their designs for heraldic decorations in brocades that were later produced in Genoa.58 As regards complete clothes, the aforementioned inventories describe an overwhelming variety of clothes, in abundance of rich textiles, in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French and Flemish fashions, whose transformations were often recorded in detail.59 After her death, her possessions were mostly divided among her son and daughters. Costumes received the usual attention from her. In her will, she gave great importance to her wish to donate three of her best clothes and a golden bracelet to the monastery of Guadalupe (Figure 9.3), as well as other pieces to two Portuguese convents.60 That is almost her only explicit, material legacy (leaving aside those within the royal family). In this way, what had been her bodily adornment in life was transformed into a sacred vestment after her death, returning to God some of the secular glory that had been temporarily diverted from him. She 53

Bernis, Indumentaria espanola, 24; Ruth Matilda Anderson, Hispanic Costume 14801530 (New York: Hispanic Society of America, 1979), 182. 54 "The size of dowries and the sartorial splendour of weddings and trousseaus was at this time one of the politically measurable signs of status, and that conspicuous spending was a sign of liberality, one of the cardinal virtues of successful rulers'. Ivana Elbl, '"The Elect, the Fortunate, and the Prudent": Charles V and the Portuguese Royal House, 1500-1529', in Young Charles V, 1500-1531, edited by Alain Saint-Saens (New Orleans: University Press of the South, 2000), 87-111, esp. 108-9. 55 Corpus documental de Carlos V, edited by Manuel Fernandez Alvarez (Salamanca, 1973), I: 108: 'Otrosi es concordado y asentado que el dicho senor rey de Portugal y de los Algarbes, etc., nuestro senor, haya de atauiar y aderes9ar a la dicha senora Ynfanta de vestidos y atauios de su persona y camara y casa, segund cuya hermana es, y con quien casa'. 56 See especially ACS, Estado, leg. 25-72 and 73. The orders here gathered, extraordinary even for her, amounted to 4440 ducados and 3250 Genoese scudi. 57 AGS, Estado, leg. 25-94, also from 1532. 58 Redondo Cantera, 'Artistas y otros oficios suntuarios'; AGS, Estado, leg. 25-72. The first notice of these orders was given in Mazario Coleto, Isabel de Portugal, 88. 59 AGS CMC 1465 and 464; AGS CR 67-3: ff. 96-146. 60 Her testamentaries chose which pieces to send to Guadalupe: two mongiles (of gold and silver cloth each) and zfaldrilla (underskirt) in gold cloth (AGS CR 67-4: 107; AGS CMC1 464: 257, 240). Although their price is not given, the detailed descriptions and the precious materials indicate they must have been truly outstanding.

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Figure 9.3 Dalmatic made from the Empress's gift of clothes to the monastery of Guadalupe in 1539, gold brocade. Monastery of Guadalupe.

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also had some nuns in Madrigal prepare extraordinarily rich ornaments, to be sent to the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. She carried out herself a piece of sacral clothing, the alb that her husband wore at his coronation in Bologna. 61 It seems clear that Isabel invested costumes and textiles with a personal significance, to a greater extent than jewels or other precious and rare objects.62 She was not alone in this regard: Charles himself made a habit of presenting highrank women with the best Spanish brocades, in what almost became a Habsburg feminine hallmark.63 In the already amazingly rich fashions used by European aristocracy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Spaniards and Portuguese stood out by their own merit. The formation of a dazzling appearance for the royal person and her surroundings was an art mastered in the Iberian courts.64 In part, previous queens had set the model for Isabel. In Spain, Isabel la Catolica had formed the most powerful image of a ruling woman for the coming centuries. She also had a taste for sumptuous costumes, and she bequeathed some of the best to the monastery of Guadalupe, too.65 Both queen and empress could spin, and did occasionally so with their maids, fulfilling biblical roles of wifely virtue. Taking into consideration what has been said in the last pages, my former question about collecting might now be answered. If we search for paintings and sculptures, Isabel's possessions are completely secondary. If we rather take into account the context of her times, other practices appear in which she did excel among her generation; practices not mainly linked to ideals of aesthetic value, but rather to those of majesty, wealth, and magnificence. In that regard, the question about her status as an 'art' collector may just be out of focus, and slightly unfair. It may be more balanced to say that she followed some traditions and reshaped them according to her own circumstances and ability, but not necessarily in the direction that the future would favor. Choices and Consequences I have consciously emphasized here the importance of her costumes, since that of her jewelry had already been remarked upon. Returning to a broader context, it will seem clear by now that both were Isabel's main resources for the adornment of her own person, resources complemented with the elaboration of a luxurious environment, through precious devotional jewels, tapestries, and lavish fabrics. Such features correspond quite logically with the character of the Empress's 61

Anderson, Hispanic Costume, 28. She used to give some of her own clothes to her maids upon their marriage. For instance, the posthumous gift to dona Mencia de Mendoza, in ACS CR leg. 67-4, fol. 126. 63 Florence Lewis May, 'Spanish brocade for royal ladies', Pantheon 23 (1965): 8-15. (1965, 12-13) mentions Eleonora de Toledo and Mary Tudor. 64 See Bernis, Indumentaria espanola, 7-8, and Anderson, Hispanic Costume, 28, for some comments on the lavish appearance of Spanish aristocrats at Charles's crowning in Bologna. 65 Diego Angulo Ifiiguez, Isabel la Catolica, sus retratos, sus vestidos y sus joyas (Santander: 1951), 16-26; May 1965, 8) 62

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itinerant court. She was the first acting queen in Spain (or Castile, at least) for twenty years, in the wake of Isabel la Catolica's strong authority She shaped her image, during the 1520s and 1530s, along the lines of magnificence and luxury predominant in early Renaissance courts. She formed a certainly large household, in accordance with her position as regent, through a peculiar mixture of Castilian and Portuguese traditions.66 Nonetheless, she did not have a fixed residence during her thirteen years as imperial consort, during half of which she ruled the peninsular kingdoms on behalf of the absent Emperor.67 In those circumstances, the formation of large collections, or the decoration of great palace ensembles, was hardly feasible. Isabel's preferences thus follow the pattern of some late medieval and early Renaissance collecting, keen on lavish and precious objects rather than on works of artistic worth (although the latter were not absent from such collections).68 Her sister-in-law Catherine, queen of Portugal, made a similar choice based on the availability of exotic wares from overseas.69 On these accounts, extreme luxury and conspicuous appearance were the most useful alternatives in order to serve Isabel's representational needs, and the ones that Charles V initially adopted for himself. Had she lived longer, she may (or may not) have participated too in the 'painterly turn' taking place at the imperial court during the 1540s. Nevertheless, her case shows that the options were far from obvious, and signals the importance of fields so far less documented and studied: material and visual culture at large. Some later circumstances have contributed to darken and dismiss the results of her choice. First, the unstable nature of costumes and jewels, easily subject to deterioration and further transformations, thus making difficult their conservation. Second, the evolution of early modern collecting, with its preference for painting and what we call art, as exemplified by Mary of Hungary, the best known of Isabel's sisters-in-law. Finally, the cult to the artist-genius (Titian, in this case) which we art historians so frequently indulge in, to the detriment of anonymous artisanship that built most of the visual and material environment of Renaissance courts, thus perpetuating a view of their culture that is radically incomplete and biased. The best proof of the early triumph of the model based in the artistic image comes to us in the words of Prudencio de Sandoval, as he recounted Isabel's first appearance at the Spanish court: The Empress seemed to all one of the most beautiful women on earth, as she was according to those who saw her, and is 66

Martinez Millan, La cone de Carlos V, II: 97. Mazario Coleto, Isabel de Portugal, 167-8. 68 As opposed to the stable reign of Philip II, or to Mary of Hungary's regency in the Netherlands. Checa Cremades describes the coexistence of these two models of collecting during the first half of the sixteenth century. Carlos V, 188. 69 See Annemarie Jordan, 'Portuguese Royal Collecting after 1521: The Choice between Flanders and Italy', in Cultural links between Portugal and Italy in the Renaissance, edited by K. J. P. Lowe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 265-93, esp. 283-6, for an excellent balance of her collecting activity. 67

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shown in her portraits'.70 Paradoxically, Titian's posthumous, real and rhetorical portraits had come to be seen as the truth standard of Isabel's image—and her beauty—only 65 years after her death. That it happened in this way is a sign of the changing nature of historical perception, but also a tribute to the power of the imperial image constructed by Charles V and Titian.

70

'La Emperatriz parecio a todos una de las mas hermosas del mundo, como a juicio de los que la vieron lo era, y se muestra en sus retratos.' Quoted in Moura, Retratos de Isabel, 151. Prudencio de Sandoval lived between 1553 and 1620. His Cronica del Emperador Carlos V was published in Valladolid in 1604-6.

CHAPTER TEN

Conspicuous in Her Absence: Mariana of Austria, Juan Jose of Austria, and the Representation of Her Power Eleanor Goodman

A late-seventeenth-century satirical riddle about Queen Mariana of Austria (1634-96) aptly addresses the difficulty of assessing her role on the Spanish political stage. 'Question: Why is the Queen like an egg? Answer: Because she is neither fish nor fowl.'1 The riddle underscores the difficulty of defining Mariana's identity at the Spanish court and the uncertain nature of her power. Her identity was complex and the nature of her power never fully established. When her husband and uncle, King Philip IV (1621-65) died in 1665, Mariana became the Queen Regent of Spain, a position she maintained tenuously during the minority of her frail son, Carlos (later Carlos II, 1661-1700). For reasons outlined below, Mariana never possessed full sovereign authority over Spain, nevertheless she exerted substantial influence at court. Against considerable odds, she established her favorites in positions of power, held substantial control over Carlos II, and deflected repeated attempts by Don Juan Jose of Austria (1629-79) to situate himself at court. In 1677, however, Juan Jose, Philip IV's ambitious illegitimate son, prevailed over Mariana and her supporters and claimed control of the Spanish monarchy for the next two years, sending the Queen Regent into exile. Over the years, the troubled relationship between Juan Jose and his stepmother, aunt, and cousin Mariana played out not only at court proper, but also on other stages. This essay will consider the connection between political power and the visual arts at the Spanish royal palace-convent Nuestra Senora de la Consolation (known as the Descalzas Reales), with a particular emphasis on the function and resonances of portraiture. Both Mariana and Juan Jose had an interest in the function of art at the Descalzas Reales, and during Juan Jose's two years in control of the monarchy he commissioned changes and additions to the artistic program there.

1

'P[regunta]. ^,En que se parece la Reina Nuestra Senora al huevo?—R[espuesta]. En que ni es carne ni pescado.' Biblioteca National de Espana (BN) Ms. 2582, fol. 203, cited by G. Maura Gamazo, Carlos Ilysu corle, t. II, (Madrid: Liberia de F. Beltran, 1915), 497.

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Artistic patronage is frequently associated with wealth and power in a general sense. Juan Jose's involvement with the decorations, however, may be understood to have derived in part from more complex motivations. The history of Spanish rule following King Philip IV's death is long, tangled, and well known. Briefly, when Philip IV died in 1665 he left the government in the care of a ruling coalition or junta, the members of which he designated in his will.2 The king's heir, Carlos II, who was still a small child, would not come of age until 1675. Philip left executive authority in the hands of his wife and niece Queen Mariana with the caveat that she heed the junta's advice. Juan Jose, in contrast, is only briefly acknowledged in Philip's will and his future role is left decidedly unclear.3 (Moreover, as he was dying the king rebuffed his illegitimate son's repeated attempts to see him in 1665.4) Although the Queen's degree of governmental power was clearly tempered by the presence of the junta, she retained a certain degree of privilege. Don Juan was granted no formal role in the Spanish government by the terms of Philip IV's will, implying that Philip did not believe Juan Jose well-suited to govern.5 Tensions between Juan Jose and Mariana were fully established at the outset of the regency. Not content to rely solely on the junta, Mariana was determined to appoint her Austrian confessor Everard Nithard (1608-71) to an official governmental position, and through a complex set of negotiations she successfully circumvented clause 33 in Philip's will, which proscribed foreigners from participating in government councils.6 She arranged for the controversial Jesuit to be naturalized and Nithard joined the junta in 1666. The ensuing years were tumultuous and uncertain, filled with negotiations, betrayals, executions, reprisals, and shifts in the balance of power.7 In 1669, 2

Testamento de Felipe IV, introduction by A. Dominguez Ortiz, (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1982), clause 22. Testamento, clause 57. Domingez Ortiz, xlviii; Henry Kamen, Spain in the Later Seventeenth Century, 1665-1700, (London and New York: Longman, 1980), 328, 330. Maura Gamazo, Carlos IIy su corte, 1.1, 113. 5 John Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964),357. Testamento, clause 33; see also Kamen, Spain in the Later Seventeenth Century, 1665— 1700,331. 7 See Biblioteca del Palacio Real MS 2, B, 4, Papeles que un criado del Virrey de Mejico envio, impresos en el ano de 1669; que contienen las materias politic as del gobierno de la Reina Madre Dona Mariana de Austria, privanza del Padre Everardo y su tirania y la expulsion dimanada de la oposicion del Sr. D. Juan de Austria a quien persequia. . . , translated into French in and published in the Netherlands in 1677 and into English and published in London in 1678 by William Cademan and Simon Neale. For recent accounts of Spanish history and politics during Mariana of Austria's regency and the reign of Carlos n see particularly Kamen, Spain in the Later Seventeenth Century, 1665-1700, as well as Maura Gamazo's exhaustive and still essential Carlos II y su corte. See also, John Lynch, The Hispanic World in Crisis and Change, 1598-1700, (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1992); Albrecht, Graf von Kalnein, Die Regentschaft in Spanien, 1665-1677: Schwachung

CONSPICUOUS IN HER ABSENCE

\ 55

Nithard was expelled from Madrid by the junta (the decree was signed by Mariana 'weeping') in order to avoid bloodshed when Don Juan marched on the city and refused negotiation.8 In the 1670s Mariana's new favorite emerged—the unpopular Fernando de Valenzuela (1636-89), who was appointed Prime Minister in 1676— and the junta effectively dissolved.9 But at the heart of the political wrangling lay the relationship between Mariana and Carlos II, who appear to have been emotionally dependent upon each other, although their relationship was tense. Regardless of the extent of the support Juan Jose garnered among the nobility and the people of Castile, the prince understood that his political ambitions could only truly be realized by fostering a useful relationship with the young king Carlos II, who reached his majority (age fourteen) in 1675.10 Carlos had reluctantly agreed to an extension of the regency until 1677, and consequently became the center of a tug-of-war between his halfbrother and his mother. Although at times the king attempted to remove himself from his mother's influence, even calling upon Don Juan for assistance, Mariana ultimately held sway over his decisions. Don Juan was vehement that Carlos II be extricated from Mariana's grasp and soon after achieving control of the Spanish government in 1677, he had her removed from Madrid altogether. She was sent to live in the Alcazar in Toledo.11 Despite all Juan Jose's best efforts, however, he could not prevent Mariana from writing imploring letters to Carlos, and the bond between mother and son was never entirely broken.12 'Para la Reina hay Descalzas'—This telling line is from an anti-government pasquinade that was nailed to the door of the royal palace in 1669, the year of Nithard's exile.13 Henry Kamen translates the line loosely as: 'the Queen will be put into a convent'.14 But that translation overlooks a central element; the satirical poem does not refer to just any convent, it names the Descalzas Reales (Nuestra Senora de la Consolacion), a Franciscan convent that like the Hieronymite monastery El Escorial

der Krongewah und politische Alternativen, (Saarbrucken: Verlag Brietenbach, 1992); R. A. Stradling , Europe and the Decline of Spain: A Study of the Spanish System, 1580-1729, (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981); J. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 356-73. Kamen, Spain in the Later Seventeenth Century, 336. Immediate opposition to Valenzuela (whom Kamen describes as a 'petty favorite of no historical importance', 340) eventually provoked the revolt of the grandees in November 1676 and Valenzuela was exiled soon thereafter. See Kalnein, Die Regentschaft in Spanien, 391; Lynch, The Hispanic World in Crisis and Change, 368. 10 Kamen, Spain in the Later Seventeenth Century, 342. 11 Maura, CarlosIIy su corte, t. n, 362. 12 Maura, Carlos IIy su corte, t. E, 450 ff. 13 The entire poem reads: Tara la Reina hay Descalzas/y para el Rey hay Tutor,/si no se muda el Gobierno/desterrando al Confessor' cited in Kamen, Spain in the Later Seventeenth Century, 334. See also Maura Gamazo, Cariosity su corte, 213. 14 Kamen, Spain in the Later Seventeenth Century, 353 n. 23.

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maintained a dual function as Spanish Habsburg palace and religious institution.15 Despite its negative connotations, the line indicates that the Descalzas Reales and the women of Spanish royal family were certainly connected in the minds of the populace of Madrid in the seventeenth century.16 The pasquinade's content is also typical of the numerous satirical poems and commentaries that circulated during the decades of political turbulence that followed the death of King Philip IV—in this case in support of Philip's ambitious illegitimate son, Don Juan Jose of Austria, and against Philip's niece and widow, the Queen Regent Mariana of Austria and the ruling junta, specifically her confessor and favorite, Nithard.17 The connection the poem draws between the Queen and the Descalzas Reales is especially ironic when we consider how the struggle for control of the Spanish monarchy played out in the context of the visual arts at the royal convent, where expressions of Habsburg dynastic identity pervade its decorative programs as a whole. In 1678, ten years after the anti-Mariana pasquinade was written, and the year after Juan Jose successfully seized control of Spanish monarchy and exiled Mariana, he commissioned a major fresco decoration at the Descalzas Reales that included his own likeness alongside that of the young King Carlos II. Juan Jose commissioned the court painters Francisco Rizi, Juan Carreno, and Dionisio Mantuano to provide the decoration for the Capilla del Milagro—where a powerful panel painting of the Virgin and Child was housed (Figure 10.1).18 The 15 The mendicant Franciscan Convent of Nuestra Senora de la Consolacion, Order of St. Clare, was founded in 1556 by Juana of Austria (1535-73), daughter of Charles V and Isabella of Portugal and widow of John of Portugal. The Princess of Portugal and Regent of Spain chose as the location the site of her birth, which had once housed the Imperial Treasury, but by the time of Juana's birth had been converted to a palace belonging to Philip IPs Minister of Finance, Alonso Gutierrez. 16 Kamen notes that much of the satirical invective written during this period, both for and against Mariana, Carlos It, and Juan Jose 'may well have been written to order and not been of popular origin', Spain in the Later Seventeenth Century, 334. On the Spanish Habsburg women and Descalzas Reales, see Magdalena Sanchez, The Empress the Queen and the Nun, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); Eleanor Goodman, Royal Piety: Faith, Religious Politics, and the Experience of Art at the Convent of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 2001. 17 The first pasquinade against Juan Jose of Austria appears in 1677. M. Etreros, La satira politica en el siglo XVII, (Madrid: Fundacion Universitaria Espanola, 1983); C. GomezCenturion Jimenez, 'La satira politica durante el reinado de Carlos IT, Cuadernos de Historia Modernay Contemporanea 4 (1983): 11-33. J. de las Hebas, Historia breve de la portentosa imagen de Nuestra Senora del Milagro que se venera en el religiosisimo Convento de las Senoras Descalzas Reales en esta Corte (Madrid, 1742; 1793), 113-14. Hebas, 111, ascribes the commission of the chapel to Carlos E. On Dionisio Mantuano's participation in this commission, E. Gonzalez Asenjo, 'Artifices y tasadores de la capilla de Nuestra Senora de la Conception, mas conocida como capilla del Milagro de las Descalzas Reales (l61%y,Archivo Espanol deArte 288 (1999), 583-9.

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Figure 10.1 Francisco Rizi, Juan Carreiio, and Dionisio Mantuano. Capitta del Milagro (ceiling), fresco. Convent of the Descalzas Reales, Madrid.

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Figure 10.2 Follower of Pablo de San Leocadio. Nuestra Senora delMilagro, oil (?) on panel, early 16th century. Convent of the Descalzas Reales, Madrid.

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fresco includes a double portrait of Juan Jose and Carlos II worshiping before the panel painting of the Virgin and Child known as Our Lady of the Miracle (Nuestra Seiiora del Milagro) (Figure 10.2), an image to which Mariana was especially devoted.19 In the early modern European world, a portrait functioned as more than a simple likeness referring to the sitter. Rather, portraits, royal portraits in particular, often served as an embodiment of the subject, and were imbued with his or her power.20 In essence, Juan Jose was now permanently present in the very location to where the pasquinade had recommended Mariana herself retire. Through the Descalzas commission, Don Juan claimed for himself a space associated with Mariana—in the royal convent, and her place by Carlos IPs side. The motivations behind the commission were multivalent. Certainly, Don Juan had personal ties to the convent: his illegitimate daughter, Sister Margarita de la Cruz, had professed her faith at the Descalzas. Juan Jose's decision to decorate the chapel was intended in part as an expression of devotion, but the images in the frescoes also bear a relationship to the political climate of the time and certainly represent a pointed display of both personal and political power. The number of powerful objects housed within or associated with the Descalzas Reales, the manner in which they were described, used in rituals, displayed, and understood signifies the Spanish royal family's faith and sense of dynastic, religious identity. The miraculous images and relics at the Descalzas are part of an intricate demonstration of belief, devotion, and power reflecting the piety of individual members of the royal family, and reinforcing the Spanish Habsburg identity as Catholic rulers and as the embodiment of the state and empire. Miraculous sculptures and paintings associated with the royal convent served practical and often very public functions, such as combating plague or drought, or aiding a military victory. The royal family called upon the power of miraculous images to act on behalf of themselves, Madrid, and the Spanish Empire. The miraculous painting of Nuestra Seiiora del Milagro was important to the Spanish royal family as a whole, and Mariana of Austria was especially devoted to the image. The visually unassuming, half-length representation of the Virgin and Child known as Nuestra Senora del Milagro was brought to the convent from Gandia in the sixteenth century, apparently having been bequeathed to Princess Juana of Austria, founder of the Descalzas Reales, by Dona Leonor de Borja or possibly Francisca de Borja.21 Nuestra Senora del Milagro, by all accounts powerful, was predominantly 19 M. L. Sanchez Hernandez, Patronato regioy ordenes religiosas femeninas en el Madrid de losAustrias, (Madrid: 1997), 280. 20 Joanna Woodall, 'Introduction: Facing the Subject', in Portraiture: Facing the Subject, edited by Joanna Woodall (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1997), 3. 21 J. de Carrillo, Relacion historica de la Real Fundacion de Monasterio de las Descalzas de S.Clara de la Villa de Madrid . . . (Madrid: 1616) indicates that the painting came to the Descalzas from Leonor. G. de Quintana, A la muy antigua, noble y coronada villa de Madrid. Historia de su antgvedad, nobleza y grandeza (Madrid: 1629, facsimile edition Madrid: 1980),

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available for the devotional and therapeutic use of the Spanish royal family and presumably the nuns of the convent.22 Although the painting was periodically displayed on the high altar of the church, especially in moments of need, it was generally enshrined in the cloister.23 As mentioned above, the frescoes in the chapel include the life-size double portrait of Juan Jose and Carlos II worshiping before the altar. Not unsurprisingly, the Queen Regent's likeness is absent from this tableaux; she has been fully removed from proximity to the painting that was so important to her. Philip IV and Mariana of Austria maintained special devotions to Nuestra Senora del Milagro. Philip IV reportedly called upon her to intercede in the political realm, 'negocio de la Monarquia'.24 Earlier, Philip and his first queen, Isabella of Bourbon, placed all their children under the protection of the image. Philip IV caused a standard to be made in Milan: 'of silk and gold, with marvelous embroidery done with the finest needles', with an image of Nuestra Senora del Milagro on one side and the arms of the Spanish crown on the other.25 This standard was carried in procession at the Descalzas eveiy year on 12 July by the members of the confraternity devoted to the image.26 On this day, the church of the Descalzas was decorated with flowers. The painting was brought into the convent church at nine in the morning, and remained there until eight in the evening. After the day of masses and music the painting was carried back to the chapel in the cloister.27 The procession occurred upon the conclusion of a novena which took place from 3-11 July and included masses dedicated

fol. 414v attributes Francisca as the source. Quintana clearly relies heavily on Carillo for most of the information he provides about images at the Descalzas Reales. We do not know the story of the origin of the painting's powers. In seventeenth-century accounts it is described simply as c muy antigua de pine el'. The main reason for the original acceptance of the painting as an agency of the miraculous appears to have been based upon the Virgin's tendency to raise and lower her eyes in response to prayers. Carrillo, Relation historica, fol. 53r; Quintana, A la muy antigua, noble y coronada villa de Madrid, fol. 414v; Hebas, Historia breve, ch. 1. The painting is generally attributed to Pablo de San Leocado or his circle. See X. Company, Pintura del Renaixement al Ducat de Gandia (Valencia: 1985). The painting was first attributed to Pablo de San Leocadio by E. Bertaux, 'Monument et souvenir des Borgia dans le Royaume de Valence', E, Gazette des Beaux Arts 39 (1886): 214. 22 The miraculous nature of the painting is discussed in a number of accounts, including Hebas's, which is devoted solely to the history of Nuestra Senora del Milagro. See also Carillo, Relation historica, APM 7140/1, and Palma particularly. 23 At least since the nineteenth century, the painting has been replaced by a copy in the Capilla del Milagro and the original is now displayed on the high altar of the convent church. 24 Hebas, Historia breve, 103. 25 Hebas, Historia breve, 105-11; the work no longer exists. 26 I have been unable to determine when the confraternity dedicated to Nuestra Senora del Milagro was established; nor the special feast in her honor. Presumably though, it was sometime in the seventeenth century, when Philip IV caused the standard to be made. 27 M. L. Sanchez Hernandez, Patronato regioy ordenes religiosas femeninas en el Madrid de losAustrias (Madrid: 1997), 280.

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to each of the principal Marian feasts. Mariana of Austria had instituted the novena after Nuestra Senora del Milagro was believed to have protected a fleet of Spanish ships from English pirates.28 When, in 1678, Don Juan Jose de Austria commissioned the lavish decoration of the Capilla del Milagro where the painting was to be housed, he was assuredly well aware of its importance to the monarchy and to Mariana in particular. As mentioned above, the tiny, domed Capilla del Milagro is frescoed with virtuosic paintings by Rizi, Carreno, and Mantuano. The decorations represent subjects from the life of the Virgin and the Nativity, as might be expected in a chapel dedicated to Mary. In addition, in the little antechapel, putti flutter about on the ceiling, carrying the emblem of the Habsburgs. Over the doorway through which the visitor enters and exits is an inscription commemorating the 1678 commission.29 The location of the donor inscription makes certain that the visitor knows the patron of the magnificent chapel she has just experienced: Don Juan Jose of Austria. The inscription also asserts Don Juan's royal lineage, implying his right to rule. Inside the chapel proper, the dome is decorated with the Assumption of the Virgin. On either side of the door are painted sculptures of Temperance and Fortitude. Over the niche is a faux canvas; this represents the Presentation of Christ. Above this is an actual window, letting light into the chapel. The Capilla del Milagro was decorated with careful symmetry. For example, the wall to the left of the retable has an illusionistic doorway, mirroring an actual door on the opposite wall. The illusory doorway opens into another chapel in which there is an altarpiece with figures of John the Baptist and John the Evangelist and the latter's vision of the lamb and the apocalyptic woman. The apocalyptic woman from Revelation refers directly to the Virgin Mary; but Revelation, written by John, also refers to Don Juan, the patron. The 'doorway' is flanked by two 'carved' figures of virtues, Prudence to the left, Justice to the right. Over the painted door is a faux canvas of the Annunciation. Above the Annunciation is a painted window, matching the actual window on the other wall, through which the portraits of Carlos II and Juan Jose de Austria view Nuestra Senora del Milagro in the chapel below. The wall through which the visitor enters is of lesser interest, for it possesses only illusionistic architectural motifs, as well as an actual little viewing balcony. The figures representing Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance emphasize the qualities of Habsburg rule in general, and Don Juan's leadership in particular. Don Juan's commission conferred homage to a miraculous image central to Habsburg devotion. The inclusion of the speaking likenesses of Juan Jose and Carlos 28

Sanchez Hernandez, Patronato regio, 280. The inscription reads: 'DOM/D.D. IOANNES AUSTRIACUS/PHTLIPI QUARTI fflSPANIARVM/REGIS CONOCOMENTO MAGNI/FILIVS MERETISSIMVS/HVCE SANCTISSIMA VTRGINIS/MARIA MAGINI A MRACVLO/A DEVOCATIONE LNSIGNIT^/CREBRIS Q MRACVLIS ILLUSTRI/HOC ORNATISSIMVM SACELLVM/DICAT SACRAT Q ANNO DNI/ MDC LXX VBT. 29

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II in the chapel falls within the long tradition of donor portraiture, but it also raises important questions about Don Juan's motivations. Nuestra Senora del Milagro is an image that served the needs of the Spanish royal family as a whole, protecting it and, by association, Spain. Juan commissioned the chapel's decorative program during Mariana's enforced residence at the Alcazar in Toledo. Juan Jose no doubt wished to express his devotion to the image and to assert his rightful place in Spanish Habsburg dynastic succession. He also commented upon his relationship with Mariana of Austria. Juan Jose compelled Mariana's absence from Madrid and allied himself closely with her son, his half-brother the king. Simply put, through the decoration of the Capilla del Milagro Don Juan appropriated the space. Through the vehicle of the chapel frescoes, especially the portrait, Juan Jose extended his domain to include the royal palace-convent. He emphatically asserted his own (male) presence—and Mariana's absence—at the Descalzas Reales, an institution closely associated with the women of the Spanish royal family. The portrait of Juan Jose and Carlos II should not be understood as a single, discrete image, a simple assertion of their paired appearance in the royal convent. Its layered meanings may be negotiated through the intersection of its physical characteristics, its qualities as a part of a the larger fresco program, its juxtaposition with the other images within the Capilla del Milagro—the miraculous image in particular, and its dynamic connection to portraits displayed elsewhere in the convent. Much of the portrait's meaning is located within the chapel itself, but any viewer, whether nun or privileged outsider, would have passed through other parts of the convent to reach the Capilla del Milagro and that progression, inevitably surrounded by other works of art, and other royal portraits, would decidedly affect his or her experience of the image. It is essential to mention here that distinctions between convent and palace were never strongly defined at the Descalzas Reales and the walls were both permeable and flexible. The relationship between the public and private parts of the cloister is highly complicated, and the metamorphosis from palace to convent was never total. Rather, the Descalzas Reales maintained a dual function as palace and as religious institution. In its royal identity, the convent was a retreat for noblewomen throughout the latesixteenth and seventeenth centuries, some who took vows, others who did not.30 Breaking the enclosure to allow outsiders to enter would have been wholly in keeping with the complex nature of the institution. The frescoed likenesses of Juan Jose and Carlos II adoring the miraculous image of the Virgin are animated, life-sized, and permanently present.31 In location and 30

The foundation charter specifically states that a woman had to be a member of the nobility in order to profess as one of the thirty-three nuns at the Descalzas Reales See Alvarez SolarQuintes, Reales Cedulas de Felipe IIy adiciones de Felipe III en la escritura fundacional del Monasterio de las Descalzas de Madrid (1556-1601) (Madrid: 1962), 25-6. 31 The term 'permanent' is technically inaccurate, but I use it here to stress the fixed quality of a fresco in contrast to the portability of an easel painting.

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overall demeanor, the two figures fit generally within the tradition of donor portraiture, wherein the donor's gaze is focused on the sacred image, underscoring his or her devotion, and precluding any significant interaction with an outside viewer.32 Indeed, upon first observation the figures of Juan Jose and Carlos II appear involved in a dynamic but closed relationship with the painting displayed on the altarpiece. A viewer may join the pair in worshiping the sacred, but they do not engage the viewer directly. The portrait in the Capilla del Milagro fits into a tradition of representations of the Spanish Habsburgs as the Catholic monarchs shown at once devotionally and dynastically triumphant—group portraits in which the King and members of the royal family are represented praying in the chapels and churches central to their identity, notably the palace-monasteries of El Escorial and the Descalzas Reales.33 An important precedent, despite its funerary associations, is Pompeo Leoni's sculpture group at the Escorial (Figure 10.3), where life-size bronze images of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and his family kneel at the left of the basilica's high altarpiece, and Philip II and his family kneel at the right. Closer to hand are the royal devotional images located throughout the convent of the Descalzas, such as Leoni's marble effigy for princess Juana of Austria's tomb (Figure 10.4). Like her relatives in the basilica of the Escorial, Juana kneels in eternal veneration before the high altar of the church of the Descalzas Reales. Another royal, group portrait is included in Peter Paul Rubens's c. 1625-27 Triumph of the Eucharist tapestry series, which was commissioned specifically for use in the lower cloister and church of the Descalzas Reales (Figure 10.5). When the tapestries were in place for the processions and celebrations of Holy Week and Corpus Christi, a panel representing the Secular Hierarchy kneeling: the then Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, Philip IV (in armor, representing the Church militant), and Isabella of Bourbon would face the high altar. The tapestry allowed the Spanish monarchs to be present and adoring the Eucharist even before their actual, physical arrival in the church. Because the tapestries were intended to be displayed during Coipus Christi and Holy Week year after year, even after their deaths Philip and

32

For the implications of the indirect gaze in early modern European portraiture see, H. Berger, Jr. 'Fictions of the Pose: Facing the Gaze in Early Modern Portraiture', Representations 46 (Spring 1994): 87-120. For a discussion of earlier donor portraiture in Spain, see M. A. Raquejo Grado, CE1 donante en la pintura espanola del siglo XVT; su ubicacion en el espacio ficticio', Goya 164-5 (Sept-Dec 1981): 76-87. 33 See E. Sullivan, Baroque Painting in Madrid: The Contributions ofClaudio Coello, with a Catalog Raisonne of His Works (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1986), 66. Interestingly, outside devotional settings, group portraits or even double portraits of the Spanish Habsburg royal family are rare; LasMeninas is the most notable exception to the rule.

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Figure 10.3 Pompeo Leoni. Philip II and Family, bronze. Basilica of El Escorial, San Lorenzo El Escorial.

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Figure 10.4 Pompeo Leoni. Juana of Austria, marble. Church of the Descalzas Reales, Madrid.

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Figure 10.5 Designed by Peter Paul Rubens. Ferdinand II, Philip IV, Isabella of Bourbon, tapestry. Convent of the Descalzas Reales, Madrid.

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] 77

Isabella continued to join their successors in adoration of the Eucharist in the church of the Descalzas. These three examples of earlier Spanish Habsburg portrait groups show the individuals in question kneeling, emphasizing their Catholic devotion and the triumph of the Catholic faith. Since the Spanish monarchs understood themselves as the defenders of the Faith, the triumph of Catholicism is closely allied with Habsburg dynastic power and triumph. The portrait of Juan Jose and Carlos II is related to such images, but with an important difference: the two are not kneeling—they stand at balcony like the actual one that would be used by royal visitors to the chapel (including the subjects themselves). The prince and king honor the chapel with their presence and are visually allied with the important and powerful image Nuestra Senora del Milagro. The fresco portrait in the Capilla del Milagro is fixed in place, but the miraculous image of the Virgin and Child is not. Consequently, there would be times when Juan Jose and Carlos II would be gazing not at a holy image, but at an empty space where it had been. Throughout the Marian novena established by Mariana, Nuestra Senora del Milagro was placed on the high altar of the convent church. The painting was always returned with great ceremony to the Capilla del Milagro at the novena's conclusion, and always brought back to Juan Jose's and Carlos IPs constant presence, reinforcing Juan Jose's claim to the image. Tension resonates between Mariana's devotional statement—the novena dedicated to the Virgin Mary inspired by the painting's miracles—and Juan Jose's—the decoration of the Capilla del Milagro. Arguably the prince has supplanted Mariana and claimed both the space and the devotional expression for himself. The double portrait in the Capilla del Milagro maintains an ongoing relationship with other portraits in the Descalzas Reales, and we need to consider it in the context of the decorative programs of the convent as a whole.34 What portraits, for example, would a visitor see and in what order as he or she moved through cloistered and palace spaces at the Descalzas? One of the first images a late-seventeenth-century visitor would have encountered was the group portrait of Philip IV, Mariana of Austria, Prince Felipe Prospero, and Princess Margarita that is incoiporated into the magnificent fresco cycle decorating the convent's main staircase. The staircase, while 34

Like today, the nuns may have on occasion removed to more fully cloistered spaces, thus allowing visitors the most impressive entrance possible. Furthermore, it seems doubtful that the king and queen would be expected to reach the royal apartments through a back staircase. Indeed, there is an intriguing reference in the etiquetas describing the King's participation in the funeral ceremonies at the Descalzas Reales: 'When they [honras] are celebrated in the Descalzas [Reales], His Majesty comes out from the quarters he has in that convent and descends by the staircase that gives on to the cloister'. Biblioteca Nacional de Espafia (BN), MS 1044, ch.87, fols. 148v-149r; BN MS 10,616, fol. 378r. Cited in and translated by Steven Orso,,4r/ and Death at the Spanish Habsburg Court; the Royal Exequies for Philip IV, (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989), 119.

Convent of the Descalzas Reales

A Church B Nuns' Cloister C Main Staircase D Royal Apartments Figure 10.6 Floorplan. Convent of the Descalzas Reales, Madrid.

Mezzanine

c •I

A

B

A Staircase B Salon de Reyes C Royal Apartments Figure 10.7 Floorplan. Mezzanine level, Convent of the Descalzas Reales, Madrid.

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A

Upper Story Fourth Floor

To main staircase

A Chapel of the Miracle Figure 10.8 Floorplan. Upper story, Convent of the Descalzas Reales, Madrid.

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ostensibly situated within the cloister, was available to privileged visitors ascending to the royal apartments, and of course to members of the royal family (Figures 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8). The frescoes include not only the portrait of the royal family, but important religious subjects, and the program reflects significant Habsburg political themes. As the visitor ascends the staircase at the Descalzas, floor to ceiling trompe de I 'oeil frescoes surround him or her. On the lower level, doors open out and curtains are drawn back to show further staircases descending to gardens. Above the garden views, resting on the backs of imperial eagles, are niches containing single figures, in full color, of the seven archangels, the guardian angel, and the guardian angel of the convent. All the angels are approximately life-size (in human terms), are labeled with their names and hold identifying attributes. The iconography of the staircase, and the inclusion of the seven archangels in particular signifies the Habsburg's divine right to rule. The fresco emphatically links the hierarchy of heaven and the political hierarchy of earth, or rather, the Spanish Monarchy.35 The Spanish royal family itself reigns among the archangels in a painted opening at the top of the second flight of stairs, just before the upper cloister of the convent. The half-length figures sit on a balcony and oversee the staircase. Above the portrait is a cartouche within which is written expression of faith: ET PROCIDEN./TES ADORAVE/RUT EVM/EX MATH. ( c . . . and [they] fell down and worshiped Him', Matt. 2: 11). The portrait of the royal family at the top of the staircase would likely be the first portrait a visitor to the palace-convent would see. Queen Mariana is a member of the royal group. Through the medium of fresco, her presence is permanent. Mariana cannot be eliminated entirely from the Descalzas, despite Juan Jose's apparent efforts to the contraiy. By the time the visitor reaches the Capilla del Milagro, however, Mariana has been succeeded by Juan Jose.36 When Juan Jose commissioned the chapel decoration, Mariana was still alive. Under less dramatic circumstances, Mariana, as an immediate member of the royal family, would be included in the painting in the chapel. After climbing the staircase, a visitor would reach what is now called the Royal 35

The relationship between the archangels and the Habsburgs was discussed in a body of contemporary literature, such as Fr. F. de Blasco Lanuza, Patrocinio de Angeles y combate de demonios contiene dotrina grande, y general para todo genero de estados y personas, 1652, and I. E. Nieremberg, De la devocion y patricen de San Miguel principe de los angeles. Antiguo tutelar de los godos, y protector de Espana . . ., (Madrid: 1643). For a detailed discussion of the archangels and the Descalzas staircase decoration, see Goodman, 'Royal Piety', chapters. 36 In a charged political situation, portraits might be replaced rather than added in order to make a dramatic statement of succession. For example, when Elizabeth I of England died her portraits were immediately replaced with images of Mary Queen of Scots. J. Peacock, 'Politics of Portraiture', Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England (Stanford: Stanford University Press), 199.

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Gallery (Salon de Reyes), a space filled with portraits of members of the Habsburg family dating back to the sixteenth century, including Juana of Austria, the Empress Maria of Austria, Archduchess and nun Margarita of Austria (Sister Margarita de la Cruz), the Archdukes Albert and Isabella Clara Eugenia, Philip III, and so on. The core of this portrait collection was brought to the Descalzas by Juana of Austria and the Empress Maria of Austria (who retired to royal apartments in the convent) and added to over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.37 The gallery includes works and copies of works (as Elias Tormo y Monzo described them, 'copias de copias de copias") by such luminaries as Antonio Moro, Alonso Sanchez Coello and Peter Paul Rubens.38 In a portrait collection like the one at the Descalzas, the subjects of the portraits could be just as important as the hands of the artist. Such collections, which generally developed additively, emphasized genealogy, lineage, dynasty, legitimacy: 'the blood-right to rule.'39 In the case of the collection at the Descalzas Reales, many of the portraits also underscored the nuns' noble privilege to profess to the order of St. Clare at the royal convent.40 Richard Brilliant wrote about group portraits that they 'are not random collections of persons, but deliberate constructions of the significant relations among them'.41 This idea can be expanded profitably to include groups of portraits. Although the images in the Salon de Reyes may be viewed as a self-contained collection, they are also part of a larger dynastic grouping that includes all the royal portraits displayed throughout the palace/convent, regardless of medium. Like any work of art, the meaning of a portrait is mutable, and is affected by its relationship to and juxtaposition with other images. Portraits that make up part of a larger collection may change in meaning as the collection grows and as the circumstances surrounding the collection changes.42 Much as a portrait of an individual relates to the construction of that individual's identity, so the identity of the sitter is affected by the portraits with which it is grouped. The gathering of easel portraits in the Descalzas Reales reinforces each sitter's royal identity and legitimate presence within the Habsburg palace and convent. Arguably, the Descalzas portrait collection extends beyond the space containing the formal gallery to include other royal portraits present in the convent, 37

Fernando Checa Cremades, Felipe II: Mecenas de las Artes, (Madrid: Editorial Nerea, 1992), 177-83; idem, 'Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales: origenes de su coleccion artistica,' RelesSitios,l989,24. E. Tormo y Monzo, En las Descalzas reales, estudios hist6ricos,iconograficos y artisticos, i. 1, (Madrid: Blass y Cia, 1917), 21. 39 Woodall, 'Introduction: Facing the Subject', 3. Also, L. Klinger-Aleci, 'Images of Identity: Italian Portrait Collections of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries', The Image of the Individual: Portraits in the Renaissance, edited by N. Mann and L. Syson (London: British Museum Press, 1998), 72. 40 See above, note 28. 41 Richard Brilliant, Portraiture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 92-3. 42 Peacock, 'Politics of Portraiture', 212,215.

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regardless of medium. The portrait frescoes incorporated into the decorations of the central staircase and the Capilla del Milagro are situated at either end of a nonchronological sequence of images representing the members of the Habsburg dynasty individually, as a group, and emphasizing the Catholic monarchs' divine right to rule. As a visitor or member of the royal family ascended the central staircase of the Descalzas, he or she would encounter a dramatic vision of the Spanish Habsburgs triumphant, on equal footing with the archangels. The group portrait of Philip IV, his queen and niece Mariana, and the prince and princess is at the top of the staircase. In the staircase portrait, Mariana, as Philip IV's queen, is part of the dynastic succession. Her individual identity is subordinate to the identity of the royal family as a whole. (Nowhere in the Descalzas, in fact, is there an individual portrait of Mariana.) From the staircase, the viewer would move through the royal rooms hung with portraits of Habsburg emperors, empresses, princesses, archdukes and duchesses. Likely, he or she would move on to the Capilla del Milagro to see Nuestra Senora del Milagro, surrounded by the frescoes described about and including Don Juan's portrait with Carlos II. Through association with the other portraits in the convent, the portrait in the chapel functions as the illegitimate prince's assertion of legitimacy. Juan Jose arranged for his likeness to be added to the extensive portrait collection at the Descalzas Reales, an institution central to the Spanish Habsburg's construction of royal and religious identity, thus visually implying his own right to govern at the king's side as a member of the Habsburg family. In the commission for the Capilla del Milagro, however, Mariana is not part of the family group. Juan Jose eliminated and replaced her, in effect playing out in the painted image her forced removal from the court of Madrid. Juan Jose of Austria conspicuously emphasized Mariana of Austria's absence with his presence. Like Juan Jose's uncertain government, this new construction of Spanish Habsburg family identity was tenuous at best. On 17 September 1679 the illegitimate prince died unexpectedly, his 'golpe de estado* over almost as soon as it was achieved. Four days later, on 21 September, Carlos II called his mother back to his side, where she remained until her death in 1696. Eventually, Mariana's reinstatement at Carlos's side was assured visually through the inclusion of her portrait in the elaborate fresco decoration painted by Luca Giordano at El Escorial, the palacemonastery most emblematic of Spanish Habsburg identity. In 1692 Carlos II commissioned the Neapolitan artist to paint extensive frescoes at the El Escorial. The decoration over the Imperial Staircase is a statement of Habsburg dynastic triumph, a dramatic swirl of saints and martyrs, with Charles V and Philip II adoring the Trinity (Figure 10.9).43 Joining their predecessors are the speaking likenesses of Carlos II, his second queen Mariana of Neuburg, and his mother, Mariana of Austria.

43 Jonathan Brown, The Golden Age of Painting in Spain, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 304-6.

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Figure 10.9 Luca Giordano. Carlos II, Mariana ofNeuberg, and Mariana of Austria (detail), fresco, 1692-94, Imperial Staircase, Basilica of El Escorial, San Lorenzo El Escorial.

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. Els Trastdmares, el segleXV. Barcelona: Editorial Teide, 1956. Vidal Beltran, E. Valencia en la epoca de Juan I. Valencia: 1974. Vincke, Johannes. 'Der Eheprozess Peters II von Aragon (1206-1213)'. Spanische Forschungen der Gorresgesellschaft. Ser. 1,5(1935): 108-89. Wethey, Harold E. The Paintings of Titian. I: The Religious Paintings. II: The Portraits. Ill: The Mythological and Historical Paintings. 3 volumes. London: Phaidon, 1969-75. Wiesner, M. E. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Weissberger, Barbara. "'Me atrevo a escribir asi": Confessional Politics in the Letters of Isabel I and Hernando de Talavera'. In Women at Work in Spain: From the Middle Ages to Early Modern Times. Edited by Marilyn Stone and Carmen Benito-Vessels (New York: Peter Lang, 1998. 147-69. Woodall, Joanna. 'An exemplary consort: Antonis Mor's portrait of Mary Tudor'. Art History 14:2 (June 1991): 192-224. . 'Introduction: Facing the Subject'. In Portraiture: Facing the Subject. Edited by Joanna Woodall. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1997. Wolff, Philippe. 'The 1391 Pogrom in Spain: Social Crisis or Not?' Past and Present 50 (1971): 4-18. Wright, Louis B. Religion and Empire: the Alliance between Piety and Commerce in English Expansion, 1558-1625. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1943. Yarza Luaces, Joaquin. 'La imagen del rey y la imagen del noble en el siglo XV. In Realidad y imdgenes del poder. Espana fines de la Edad Media. Edited by Adeline Rucquoi. Valladolid: Ambito, 1988. 269-71. Yates, Frances. Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century. London: Routledge, 1975. Ybarra, Fernando de. Matrimonios reales hispano-britdnicos en el medievo. Volume. II: La reina de diamantes. Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia, 1999. Zanger, Abby. Scenes from the Marriage: Nuptial Fictions and the Making of Absolutist Power. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Zmora, Hillay. Monarchy, Aristocracy, and the State in Europe, 1300-1800. London and New York: Routledge, 2001.

Index Place names are noted in their current forms; for variant spellings, see brackets following the spelling used in the text. Personal names are indexed by the name used by the authors. The following variant forms noted in Spanish, Catalan, and English may appear in the various essays. Alfonso, Alfons, Alphonse Leonor, Elionor, Eleanor Enrique, Enriq, Henry Jaime, Jaume, James Juan,Joan, John Maria, Maria, Marie Martin, Marti, Martin Pedro, Pere, Peter Violante, Violant, Yolande (also Yolanda) Abbreviations: abp. = archbishop; bp. = bishop; c. = count; ctess. = countess; d. = duke; emp. = emperor; k. = king; q. = queen; vet. = viscount. Abenmarvez, Astruga 76 Abenmarvez, Salamo 76 Adelantats 67, 70 Adele of Champagne, q. of France 37 n. 17 Adultery, 24-6 Aeneid 140; see also Virgil Afonso III, k. of Portugal 30 Agnes of Aquitane, q. of Leon 27 Agnes of Castile, ctess. of Montpellier 6 Agout, Brianda d', ctess. of Luna 80, 88 n. 35 Agreda 94 Aguilo, Francesc 67 Alatzar, Jahuda 58, 62n.30, 65, 76 Al-Azraq ll6-17 Alba, d. of 151 Albert, Archduke 182 Alberti, Leon Battista 152 Albigensian Crusades 3, 16-19 100, 102 Alcantara, Order of 100-101, 103, 105 Alfons[o] I, k. of Aragon xiv, 27, 96; see also Urraca, q. of Leon-Castile

Alfons[o] IV (III), k. of Crown of Aragon xx n.26, 38, 56; see also Leonor of Castile Alfonso V (IV), k. of Crown of Aragon, xx, 34, 40-7, 77; see also Maria of Castile Alfonso VI, k. of Leon-Castile 27 Alfonso VII, k. of Leon-Castile 27, 96 Alfonso VIII, k. of Castile 27-8, 32, 112, 128 n. 24; see also Eleanor Plantagenet Alfonso IX, k. of Leon 28-30, 96; see also Berenguela Alfonso X, k. of Castile-Leon xxi, xxiii, 21-3, 25, 27, 29-30, 34 n.3, 115, 126-9, 132, 142-3; see also Especulo, General Estoria, Siete Partidas, Violante of Castile Alfonso XI, k. of Castile-Leon xix n.23, 31-2, 36 n.13, 122, 128-9; see also Maria de Molina, Alfonso de Cartagena, bp. of Burgos 130 Almazan 94 Almenara 59-60

INDEX

Almohads 28 Alzira 61-3, 65 Amazons 127, 134 America 133, 135, 142 n. 67 Amicie, daughter of Simon de Montfort 16 Ampurdan 49 Annunciation in Capilla del Milagro 111 painting by Titian 155 Andalucia 99 n. 33 Antequera 99 Aragon, Crown of xiv, xix-xxi, 3-4, 9, 11, 15, 17, 20, 30, 33-49, 55, 78-9, 81-2, 85, 87-90, 91-2, 96, 100-104, 109, 114, 112n. 10, 114, 129 Aragon, kingdom or territory xiv, xxvii n. 17, 27, 30, 33-49, 56, 78-9, 80 n.8, 83, 84 n.17, 92, 95, 101-2, 105, 113, 116, 120, 121, 126 Aretino, Pietro 153-5 Arroyo, Diego de 149 n.6, 156 Astraea 132, 134, 136-7, 141, 144 Asturias 91, 95, 125-6 Atienza 94 Audiencia 43 Aurembiaix 15 Avignon 84, 89, 101-2 Aviz, dynasty of 156 Ayala, Maria de 95 Ayala, Teresa de 95 Badge, worn by Jews 71-3 Barcelona abp. 18 city 4, 33 n.2, 34, 39, 43, 47-9, 82-4, 86, 156 county 4, 9, 34 Barral, vet. of Marseilles 5 Bayonne 49, 94 Beatrice, q. of Leon-Castile, wife of Alfonso VI27 Beatrice of S wabia, q. of Castile, wife of Alfonso X 29, 32 Beatriz, q. of Portugal, wife of Afonso III 30 Benavente 93-1 Benedict XIII, pope (Pedro de Luna) 39,

203 84-5, 101-2, 105 Berenguela, q. of Castile-Leon, wife of Alfonso IX 28-30, 32 n. 13, 36, 96; see also Fernando III Bernard IV, c. of Comminges 5, 14, 17 Berta of Tuscany, q. of Leon-Castile, wife of Alfonso VI 27 Beziersll, 15-16 Biblical allusion 142 Blanca of Castile [Blanche], q. of France, wife of Louis VIII28-9, 32 Blanca of Naples, q. of Crown of Aragon, wife of Jaume II xx, 34-5, 38 Blanca, q. of Navarre, wife of Juan II of Aragon xx, 47, 86-7 Boniface VIII, pope 31 Borja, Francisca de 169 Borja, Leonor de 169 Borriana 58, 61, 63 nn. 31 and 32, 65 Brilliant, Richard 182 Burgos 93, 129, 130-31, 149 Calatayud 14, 76 Calatrava, Order of 92, 100-105 Capilla del Milagro 166-7 (fig. 10.1), 171-3, 177, 181, 183; see also Annunciation, Juan Carreno, Dionisio Mantuano, Francisco Rizi Capitualtions of Vilafranca del Penedes 48 Carbonell, Johan 76 Carcassonne 16 Carillo de Cuenca, Gomez 103 Carillo de Huete, Gomez 93 Carles of Viana 40 n. 31, 43, 47-8 Carlos I, k. of Spain [Charles V], Holy Roman Emp. xix, xxii, xxvii, 50, 120, 138, 144-54, 156, 158, 160-62; see also Isabel de Portugal, Felipe II Carlos II, k. of Spain xix, 163-6, 169-73, 177, 183-4; see also Mariana of Austria Carlos 77, Mariana ofNeuberg, and Mariana of Austria 184 (fig. 10.9); see also Luca Giordano Carmona, Juan de 102

204

QUEENSHIP IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN

Carreno, Juan 166-7 Carrion de los Condes 94-5 Castello 58 Castile xiii-xiv, xvi-xvii, xix-xxv, 21, 23, 27-32, 34-6, 38-9, 41-2, 47-50, 55, 59, 61, 91, 94-100, 102, 112, 114-6, 120-23, 12632, 138, 143, 149, 161, 165 Catalina of Lancaster, q of Castile, wife of Enrique III xix, xxiv, 91-105 Catalunya xx, xxiv, 37-8, 40-42, 44-5, 47-8, 126 Catherine of Aragon, q. of England 134 Catherine, q. of Portugal, wife of Joao III 161 Cerdanya 49, 65 Cervello, castle of 65 Chronique romane 1 Church Fathers 140-41 Classical allusion 134, 144 Cleve, Joos van 152 Coello, Alonso Sanchez 182 Columbus, Christopher 133-4, 144 Comminges 4 n. 2, 5, 14, 17, 19 Communal privileges 8 Consell de Cent (Barcelona) 43 Conrad III, emp. 27 Constance of Burgundy, q. of LeonCastile, wife of Alfonso VI27 Constantin, Mosse 76 Constantine 121, 137, 139, 141-2 Constanza of Castile, wife of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster 91, 94 Converse 66, 71-7 Corsica 37, 84 Cortes of Aragon 49, 83, 88 of Castile xxi n. 28, 31, 34 n. 3, 83, 95-8 Cons of Crown of Aragon 38-47, 71 Co-rulership xv n. 5, xix, 33, 35, 37-8, 40, 45, 47-9; see also Lieutenant Crusades; see also reconquest of Spain holy war 121-3, 125, 143 within Spain 122-3, 125 David, Hebrew king 22 Descalzas Reales, Convent of 163-84 Desclot, Bernat 6, 109-10 d'Este, Isabella 152

Deza 94 Dionis, c. of Hungary 115 Dominicans 95 Eiximenis, Francesc 85 Eleanor of Aquitaine 27, 128 Eleanor Plantagenet, q. of Castile, wife of Alfonso VIII 27, 31,112 n. 13, 128 n.24 Elionor, q. of Crown of Aragon, wife of Jaumelxxiii, 112-14, 116, 119 Elionor of Sicily, q. of Crown of Aragon, wife of Pere III xxi-xxii, xxiv, 38-9, 55-66, 72, 77, 80 Elizabeth, q. of Leon-Castile, wife of Alfonso VI27 Elizabeth I Tudor, q. of England xv, xxv, 120-21, 134-38, 140, 144, 181 n. 36 Elliott, (Sir) John H. 138, 166 England xiii, xv, xxi n. 27, 27, 29, 93, 120-21, 128, 130, 134-7, 184 Enriq, c. of Empuries and Segorb 49 Enrique I, k. of Castile 29, 96 Enrique II, k. of Castile 91, 94-5, 129, 143 Enrique III, k. of Castile xxiv, 36 n. 13, 91-103, 105, 129; see also Catalina of Lancaster Enrique IV, k. of Castile, 123, 138 Enrique de Villena 100-102 Escorial 95, 155, 167, 175, 186 Especulo xxi, xxiii, 21-2, 24-5; see also Alfonso X Eudocia Comnena 5 Eusebius 141-2 Eve, Isabel of Castile as second 122-3 Extremadura, Castilian 29 Fac.an, Jacob 68-70, 74 Fadrique de Trastamara 94 Favorites xv, 87n.32, 89, 93 n.11, 163 Fawtier, Robert 29 Felipe II, k. of Spain 50, 137, 149 n. 6, 156, 161 n. 68, 166 n. 15,173-4, 183 Felipe III, k. of Spain 174 Felipe IV, k. of Spain xv, xxvii, 163^, 166, 170, 173, 176-7, 183; see also Mariana of Austria

INDEX

Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emp. 149, 155-6 Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emp. 173, 176 Ferdinand II, Philip IV, Isabella of Bourbon 176 (fig. 10.5); see also Peter Paul Rubens Fernandez, Luis 157 Fernando I, 'of Antequera', k. of Crown of Aragon xxiv, 55, 91-2, 95-103; see also Leonor of Albuquerque Fernando II, k. of Aragon xiv, xxv, 47-50, 71, 96, 120-21, 126, 133, 143; see also Juana Enriquez, Isabel 'la catolica' Fernando III, k. of Castile xix n. 23, 28-30, 32, 96, 126; see also Beatrice of Swabia, Berenguela Fernando IV, k. of Castile-Leon xix n. 23, 22, 30-32, 36 n. 13-see also Maria de Molina Fernando, Infante, son of Alfonso VIII and Eleanor Plantagenet 28 Ferran, abbot of Montearagon 117-18 Ferrer, Vicent 55 Foucault, Michel xviii Fradenburg, Louise xvi Francis I, k. of France 152 Frederick Barbarossa, emp. 29 Gac.6, Barthomeu 74-5 Garci I Sanchez, k. of Navarre xix n.23, 36 n.13; see also Toda Asnurez Garcia de Cuellar, Alonso 93 Garcia de Villalobos, Fernan 101 Gascony, duchy of 27 Gaston, c. of Foix 48 General Estoria 127; see also Alfonso X of Castile Gil de Vidaure, Teresa 114 Giordano, Luca 184-5 Girona 40, 48 Glory, painting by Titian 151-2 Gonzalez, Jeronimo 157 Granada conquest of xxv, 137, 144 Muslim kingdom of 30, 92, 123, 126, 128, 133 war against 95, 97-8, 100-102

205 Gregory IX, pope 114 Guadalajara 94, 98 Guadalupe, monastery of 159-60 Guillem VIII, lord of Montpellier 5-7, 19 Guillem IX, lord of Montpellier 6-7, 18 Henry I, k. of England 27 Henry II, k. of England 27, 128 n. 24 Holanda, Antonio de 152, 155-6 Holy Roman Emperor 27, 29, 50, 120-21, 126-7, 143-4, 149-52, 154-6, 162, 173. 183 Huete 94 Hug de Angelsola 36 n.15 Infantes de la Cerda 30 Innocent III, pope 13, 18-19 Inquisition xxiv, 75-7, 125, 133 Inquisitors, papal xxiv, 55, 66, 70, 73-5, 77 Isabel I, 'la catolica', q. of Castile, wife of Fernando II of Aragon xiiixiv, xvi, xx-xxii, xxiv-xxv, 40, 49, 120-44; see also Fernando II of Aragon Isabel de Portugal, empress of Spain, wife of Carlos V xix, xxii-xxiii, xxvi,50, 132, 145-62, 166 n.15 Isabella of Bourbon, q. of Spain, wife of Felipe IV 170, 173, 176-7 Isabella Clara Eugenia 182 Isidore of Seville 124-5, 127, 142 Jaca 14, 89 n. 36 Jaume I, k. of Crown of Aragon xxi, xxiii,4, 15-17, 20, 30, 34 n.3, 38, 109-19; see also Leonor of Castile, Marie of Montpellier, Violant of Hungary Jaume II, k. of Crown of Aragon xxi, 34, 38, 89; see also Blanca of Naples Jaume IV, k. of Mallorca 65 Jaume, c. of Urgel 99 Jean de Joinville 29 Jeanne of Ponthieu, q. of Castile-Leon, wife of Fernando III 29 Jerusalem 13, 36, 125, 127-9, 133, 143, 160 Jews xx, xxiv, 55-77, 125-7, 130,

206

QUEENSHIP IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN

133-4, 138, 141, 143-4 badge worn 71-3 of Morvedre xxi, xxiv, 55-77 Jimena Gonzalez xix n. 23, 36 n. 13 Joan I, k. Crown of Aragon 34, 38-9, 56, 61, 65-6, 68-9, 71, 73, 78, 80-84; see also Violant de Bar Joan of Arc xxv, 122 Joanna of Aragon 154; see also Raphael John VII, abbot of Morimond 101, 105 John of Gaunt, d. of Lancaster xxiv, 91, 94; see also Catalina of Lancaster Juan I, k. of Castile xxiv, 94 Juan II, k. of Castile xix, xxiv, 93, 95, 97-9, 102-3, 105, 129-32; see also Catalina of Lancaster Juan II, k. of Navarre and Crown of Aragon xix, 34, 40-41, 47-9; see also Juana Enriquez Juan Jose of Austria xxvii-xxviii, 163-6, 169-77, 181-3; see also Mariana of Austria Juana of Austria 169, 173, 175, 182 Juana Enriquez, q. of Crown of Aragon, wife of Juan II xx, 34, 40, 48-50 Juana, 'laloca', q. of Spain xxv, 134 Justice 121-3, 132, 136, 171 Justicia, Aragon 43 Justiciar, England 36 Kamen, Henry 165 Kermode, Frank 144 Kingship xv-xviii, xxiii, xxv, xxviii, 33, 44-5, 138, 143 Ladies-in-Waiting 25-26, 88 Languedoc 3, 8, 10, 15, 17-19 Larraga 49 Las Huelgas de Burgos, Cistercian abbey 27-8 Las Navas de Tolosa Battle of 18-19, 28 Last World Emperor, prophecy of 128-9, 143 Leon, Francisco de 157 Leoni, Pompeo 154, 173-6 Juana of Austria 175 (fig. 10.4) Philip Hand Family 174 (fig. 10.3) Leonor, daughter of the Duke of

Benavente 93 Leonor of Albuquerque, q. of Crown of Aragon, wife of Fernando I 35 n. 11, 96 Leonor of Aragon, wife of Gaston de Foix 48 Leonor of Castile, q. of Crown of Aragon, wife of Alfonso III 56 Lieutenant governmental xx, 34-8, 42-5, 79, 81, 82, 85 Lieutenant General 38, 40-50 queen-lieutenant xix-xx, xxiii-xxiv, 34-51, 79, 81-2, 85-7 See also Blanca of Naples, Juana Enriquez, Margarida de Prades, Maria of Castile, Maria de Luna, Teresa d'Entenga, Violant de Bar Lisbon 157 Lleyda [Lleida, Lerida] 14, 43 Llibre dels Feyts xxi, xxiii, 110-11, 113, 116-18 Lima 58, 64 n. 37 Llupia, Hug de, bp. of Valencia 75 Lopez de Cordoba, Leonor 93, 98 Lopez de Estuniga, Diego 96-8 Lordship xxii, xxiv, xxvii, 93-4, 104 Louis VIII, k. of France 28-9 Louis IX, k. of France 29 Louis XI, k. of France 49 Lucas of Tuy, Chronicon mundi 29, 126 n. 18, 127 n. 23 Luna, county 90 Luna family; see also Maria de Luna Agout, Brianda d', ctess. of Luna 80, 88n.35 Fadrique de 90 Ferran Lopez de 86-7, 89 n. 36 Lope, c. of Luna and lord of Segorb 80 Pedro de, Pope Benedict XIII 39, 84-5, 101-2, 105 Madrigal 160 Maguelone, bp. of 13-14 Maimonides, Moses Mishneh Torah 67 n. 49 Mallorca 33 n. 2, 36 n. 15, 37-8, 40, 42, 65 Mais usos 84-5

INDEX

Mantuano, Dionisio 166-7, 171 Manuel Comnenus, Byzantine emp. 5 Manuel, Juan Sanchez 94 Manuel, Juana 94 Manuel, Leonor 94 Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands 50, 149-50 Margarida de Prades, q. of Crown of Aragon, wife of Marti xx n. 26, 34 Margarita de la Cruz 169, 177, 182 Marguerite of Provence, q. of France 29 Maria of Castile, q. of Crown of Aragon, wife of Alfonso V xx, xxiii-xxiv, xxvi, 34, 40-48, 50, 85, 97, 100; see also lieutenant Maria, q. of Sicily, wife of Marti the Young 81 Maria de Luna, q. of Crown of Aragon, wife of Marti I xx-xxiv, 34, 39, 45, 55, 66, 77, 78-90; see also lieutenant Maria de Molina, q. of Castile, wife of Sancho IV xix n. 23, 30-32, 36 n. 13, 96; see also queen-regent Maria de Padilla, q. of Castile, wife of Pedro the Cruel 94 Mariana of Austria, Empress of Spain, wife of Felipe IV xix-xx, xxiii, xxvi, xxvii-xxviii, 163-84 Mariana of Neuberg, q. of Spain, wife of Carlos II 184 Marias, Fernando 145 n. 2, 154 Marie de Montferrat 7, 13, 17 Marie de Montpellier, q. of Crown of Aragon, wife of Peter II xxixxiii, xxvii-xxviii, 3-20 Marseilles 4-5 Marti I, 'the Humane', k. of Crown of Aragon xx, 34, 39, 55-6, 66-8, 70-71, 73-90; see also Maria de Luna Marti the Young, k. of Sicily 39, 55-81, 86-8 Mary I Tudor, q. of England 134, 153; see also Felipe II Mary of Hungary 50, 149-50, 153, 157, 162; see also Carlos V Matilda, Empress 27 Mayorga 95

207 Mayorga, Juan Alfonso 94 Maximilian, emp. 50, 138 Medina del Campo 94, 96 n. 20 Melgueil, county of 10-11 Mendoza family ffiigo de (friar) 122 Inigo de, marques de Santillana 130-31 Juan Hurtado de 93-4 Pedro Gonzalez de 131 Menorca 65 Merlin 128-30, 143 Metge, Bernat, Lo Somni 83 Mieres, Tomas, Apparatus super Constitutionibus Curiarum Generalium Catholonie 45 Mira 74-6 Miraflores, Carthusian monastery 131-3 Monarchy, see kingship, queenship Monc,6, Corts of 76 Montesa, Order of 71 Montfort, Simon de 15-9 Montpellier 4-20 Mor, Antonis [Antonio Moro] 153 Morocco 28 Morvedre xxi, xxiv, 39, 55-77 Aljama of 55-58, 60-74, 76-7 Castilian occupation of 55, 57, 60, 62 y^na of 55, 57, 70, 73, 75 Jurats of 71-3 Prohomens of 73 Motherhood 9, 36, 39, 78-9, 83, 116, 122 Mudejars 30, 32, 34 Muhlberg, battle of 154 Muntaner, Ramon 109-10, 119 Murcia97, 126 Muslims xiv, 26, 30, 55, 100, 110-11, 116-17, 122-3, 125-9, 132-4, 137, 143 Naples xx, 40-41, 45, 47-8 Narbonne 10-11, 15 Navarre, xix n. 23, 36 n. 13, 15, 39, 43, 49, 86, 96, 126 Nebrija, Antonio 132, 134 Nieto Soria, Jose Manuel 31 Nithard, Everard xxvii, 164-6 North Africa 74, 125, 128

208

QUEENSHEP IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN

Nuestra Senora del Milagro 168-72 (fig. 10.2), 177, 183 Nuns 22, 25-7, 31, 160, 170, 172, 177 n. 34, 182 Occitania 4, 15 Olmedo, battle of 42 Onda71 Orley, Bernard 152 Orosius 141-2 Ortiz, Alejo 157 Ossorio, Juan Alvarez de 93 Pallars 15, 49 Paul III, pope 149 Pedro I, k. of Castile xxiv, 91, 94, 96 Pefiafiel 96 Pere II (I), k. of Crown of Aragon xxi, xxvii, 3-20, 38; see also Marie of Montpellier Pere III (II), k. of Crown of Aragon 38 Pere IV (III) 'the Ceremonious', k. of Crown of Aragon 38-9, 55-62, 65-7, 68, 78, 80, 87, 89, 100, I I I ; see also Elionor of Sicily, Leonor of Castile Perez, Hernan 157 Peronella, q. of Crown of Aragon, wife of Ramon Berenguer IV 33 Philip of Swabia, emp. 29 Ponza, battle of 41 Portrait of Empress Isabel de Portugal 146, 148-55 (fig. 9.1); see also Titian Portraiture xxvii, 149, 154, 163, 172-3 Portugal 93, 126, 145, 156, 158 Prado Museum 146, 148, 150 Prayer in the Garden 151; see also Titian Princess xiii-xiv, xxiii, 24-6 Privilegio 38, 40-41, 44; see also Maria of Castile Procuradors General 38; see also Maria of Castile Proixida, Micolau, lord of Almenara 59-60 Prophecy 121, 128-9, 132-5, 140-41, 143 Prospero, Felipe 177 Provence, county of 10-11

Queen as dowager 21, 29, 56, 79; see also Mariana of Austria as mother xiii, xix, xxii, xxiv, 6, 21, 29-31, 33, 50, 78-9, 116; see also Catalina of Lancaster, Isabel 'la catolica', Maria de Luna, Mariana of Austria, Marie of Montpellier as wife xix Queen lieutenant xix-xx, xxiii-xxiv, 34-51, 79, 81-2, 85-7, see also Blanca of Naples, Juana Enriquez, Margarida de Prades, Maria of Castile, Maria de Luna, Teresa d'Enten$a, Violant de Bar Queen regent xix, xxiv; see also Berenguela of Leon, Blanca of Castile, Catalina of Lancaster, Isabel de Portugal, Jimena Gonzalez, Juana Enriquez, Maria de Molina, Mariana of Austria, Toda Asnurez, Urraca Fernandez Queen regnant, see Urraca of LeonCastile, Isabel 'la catolica', Elizabeth I Tudor Queenship xiii-xxviii et passim Raimond IV, c. of Melgueil 10 Raimond VI, c. of Melgueil 10-11 Ramon Berenguer IV, c. of Barcelona 33; see also Peronella Raphael, Joanna of Aragon 154 Rau, David el 69 Raymond, c. of Burgundy 27; see also Urraca of Leon-Castile Reconquest of Spain 122-3, 125 Redondo, Maria Jose 145 n. 2, 157 Regency xix-xx, 37 Remenqa peasants xxiv, 39, 44-8, 84 Remirez, Remiro 69 Requesens, Galceran de 36 n. 15, 47 Reyes Catolicos, los 120; see also Fernando of Aragon, Isabel 'la catolica' Rica, q. of Castile-Leon, wife of Alfonso VII27 Rizi, Francisco 166-7, 171 Robles, Feman Alfonso de 93 Rodriguez, Joan 101

209

INDEX

Rojas, Sancho de 98-9, 101 Rome 18, 126-8, 132 134, 136-7, 139^41, 144, 156 Rossello [Roussillon] 6, 65 Rubens, Peter Paul xxvi, 150, 173, 176, 182 Ferdinand 11, Philip IV, Isabella of Bourbon 176 (fig. 10.5) Triumph of the Eucharist 173 Salinas, Lope de 149 Salon de Reyes 182 Salvador, Manuel [Mahir Suxen] 76 San Juan de los Reyes, church of 131, 133 San Julian de Pereiro, order of 100 San Leocadio, Pablo de, follower of 168 (fig. 10.2) Sancha, daughter of Peter II of Aragon 8, 10-11 Sancho III Garces, 'el Mayor', k. of Navarre xix n. 23, 36 n. 13 Sancho IV, k. of Castile-Leon xix n. 23, 22, 30-2, 36 n. 13; see aIso Maria de Molina Sandoval, Prudencio de 162 Santa Maria la Real de Nieva 92 n. 4, 95 Santa Maria la Real de Valladolid, convent 31 Sant Feliu, Bernat de 67 Sant Feliu, Bonafonat de 59, 63 Santamaria, Pablo de, bp. of Burgos 95 Santiago Master of 102-103, 105 Order of 100-101 Sardinia 33 n. 2, 37, 62, 81, 84 Scott, Joan Wallach xvii Segovia 93, 95, 97-8, 121-2 Seneschal 35-6 Sicily 33 n. 2, 37-9, 81, 82, 84, 86-7, 90 Siete Partidas xxi, xxiii, 21, 24, 26, 123, 126; see also Alfonso X of Castile Sistema central 97 Sogorb [Segorbe] 68, 74 bp. of 74 ct. of 49 Soldevila, Ferran 118 Soloman, King (Hebrew) 22, 24 Soria 94

Sotomayor, Juan de 103, 105 Star, as symbol 132, 140-41 Suarez de Figueroa, Gomez 93 Suarez de Figueroa, Lorenzo 102 Suxen, Astruga 76 Suxen, Jamila 76 Suxen, Mahir 76; see also Manuel Salvador Suxen, Samuel 76 Sword, as symbol 121-2, 132 Tapestry 173, 176; see also Rubens, Ferdinand II, Philip IV, Isabella of Bourbon 176 (fig. 10.5), Triumph of the Eucharist 173 Templars 14 Teresa d'Entenga, q. of Crown of Aragon xx n. 26, 34, 38; see also Alfonso III of Aragon Titian xxii, xxvii, 145-6, 148-55, 162 Annunciation 155 Glory 151-2 Portrait of Empress Isabel de Portugal 146, 148-55 (fig. 9.1) Prayer in the Garden 151 Toda Asnurez xix n. 23, 36 n. 13; see also Garcia I Sanchez Toledo 95, 126, 131, 133, 155, 165, 172 Abp. of 99, 101 Tormo y Monzo, Elias 182 Torres, Ines de 93 Toulouse 4, 10-11 Ctof4,8, 10-12, 19 Translatio imperil 132, 140 Trastamara dynasty 82, 90-91, 94, 99, 102, 129-30, 143 Treason 22, 24-6, 48, 83, 94 Triumph of the Eucharist 173; see also Peter Paul Rubens Turks 123, 137 Urbino, d. of 152 Urgel [Urgell], ct. of 15, 99; see also Jaume of Urgel Urraca Fernandez xix n. 23, 36 n. 13 Urraca, q. of Leon-Castile xiv, xiii, xxi, 27, 32, 96; see also Alfonso I of Aragon Valencia, bp. of 75; see also Hug de

210

QUEENSHIP IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SPAIN

Llupia Valencia, city 55, 57, 60-62, 65, 82, 85-6,110-11,116 A(/a/fMw58,61,65,76 Censals 68-9 Cises 69 Clavari 70-71 Confraternities 67 Inquisition in 55, 66 Municipal government 70, 87 Tercer 70 Valencia, kingdom xxi, 33 n. 2, 37-40, 42-3, 47, 55-7, 77, 79-81, 85, 90,116-17 Jews in xiv, 55-77 Valencia, Union of 55-6 Valenzuela, Fernando de 165 Valladolid 31, 96, 101, 103-4, 156 Velasco, Juan de 96-8 Vilafranca del Conflent 14 Vilanova, Ramon de 61-2 Vila-real 58

Violant de Bar, q. of Crown of Aragon, wife of Joan I xx n. 26, 34, 39, 80,83 Violant of Hungary, q. of Crown of Aragon, wife of Jaume I xxi-xxiii, 29-30, 32, 34 n. 3, 109-19 Violante, q. of Castile, wife of Alfonso X 34 n. 3 Virgil 128, 132, 136, 140 Aeneid 140 Virgin Mary xxv, 121-2, 126, 135, 137, 144,156,171,177 Visigothic kingdom xxv, 124-5, 128, 130, 139, 142-3 Woman of the Apocalypse 132, 135 Yuste, monastery 151 Zayyan 110-11