Download PDF | Gillian B. Fleming - Juana I_ Legitimacy and Conflict in Sixteenth-Century Castile-Palgrave Macmillan (2018).
365 Pages
Preface
In December 2003, in his column in El Mundo, a well-known Spanish writer, journalist and polemicist, who had recently seen and enjoyed Vicente Aranda’s flm Juana la Loca, was moved to declare that the “whole of Spain is Juana la Loca.” Francisco Umbral argued that great and lucid locos have tried, and invariably failed, to rule or infuence a land that remains, stubbornly and ungovernably, in the grip of a disparate multitude of regionalisms and particularisms. He used Juana as a metaphor for a madness and failure that is, in some sense, both heroic and inevitable.
Although the “beautiful madness” of Umbral’s Juana is not the subject of this book, it does accept that failure, heroic and inevitable or not, is at least as important a subject as success. The focus here is on Juana as a political fgure; on the strategies she pursued; and on the long crisis of legitimacy that arose out of her political marginalisation. In other words, it focuses on Juana I rather than Juana ‘the Mad.’ Popular as that latter fgure became, refected back to us by ‘historical’ painters of the nineteenth century such as Pradilla Ortíz, Rosales and Vallés, these convey far less about the reality of the situation than, say, Velázquez’ Black Servant, or Kitchen Maid with Christ at Emmaüs—a painting which, as Norman Bryson writes in his magnifcent book of essays, Looking at the Overlooked (1990), expresses, perhaps more eloquently than any other, “the suppression and confnement of those outside the charmed circle of history or greatness.” Like Velázquez’ black servant, Juana was eventually confned to her “woman’s things,” to the rhyparos of everyday life, so that she could not fully grasp—though perhaps overheard—the subjects of great import being discussed in the other room. Nonetheless, she belongs within the charmed circle of history to the extent that she, and her use and representation of power, mattered to her kingdoms a great deal. The purpose of this monograph is to explore how and why.
The natural constraints imposed by the choice of a relatively narrow focus on a multi-dimensional subject have obliged me to deal only summarily with much that a traditional biography would include, such as Juana’s early childhood experiences and education; the personal and cultural aspects of her life; the different milieux in which her six children were raised; her queenly patronage; the successive households built around her, but with which she had little contact; the impact of her marriage and motherhood on the world beyond Castile, and so forth. As the title indicates, the focus here is on the realms of Castile, not those of Aragon, nor the lands that Juana knew in her capacity as countess of Flanders, duchess of Burgundy and archduchess of Austria; nor yet the lands across the ‘Ocean Sea,’ from which, in her feeting period in government, she drew fnancial support.
Evidently, in the realms and crown territories of Aragon and elsewhere there was also great confict, and I am well aware of the continuing need for an in-depth examination of the impact, whether direct or indirect, of Juana’s life on such areas. Given that her political role remains widely unknown, I have adopted a chronological and narrative structure on which to base an analysis of her use and experience of power at a time of tremendous dynastic and political crisis. The unevenness of pace and time span in the narrative refects the uneven pace of Juana’s own life. Some chapters are densely packed with signifcant events that tumble together within a brief period; others cover years in which Juana was imprisoned and isolated from events and the 1540s remain largely a blank. Very few letters emerge from the palace of Tordesillas during that decade and very little directly affecting her was reported.
One exception is the royal family’s concern with the queen’s irregular and unsatisfactory spiritual practices, and the two last chapters explore further the effects on Juana of her imprisonment and its connection to the concepts of ‘melancholy,’ ‘possession’ and ‘penitence.’ As regards the use of sources, I would echo the former director of the Archivo General de Simancas, José Luis Rodríguez de Diego, when asking how it is possible, with respect to Juana, to “follow the vital trail of a person isolated and marginalised, on whom silence and confnement were imposed.” Important letters of Juana’s were sometimes deliberately destroyed, and the problem of her documentary footprint was compounded by her sense of the traps and fctions that beset her, and her refusal to sign acts of government while a prisoner. The sixteenth-century Aragonese historian, Zurita, who manipulated a vast mass of archival documents, nonetheless refers to the baffement of those who “knew that the Queen wrote letters with such facility and ease that few of the kings of Castile and Aragon, her antecedents, could write better.” Precious material then available to him and stored in the Diputación Provincial de Zaragoza perished in fames in 1809; only a small fraction of Zurita’s original ‘Alacena’ remains.
An inventory of Juana’s possessions in 1545 indicates the existence of chests and letter cases full of writings (escrituras). Of these only a few are specifically mentioned, such as “a royal order (cédula) that the queen our lady sent to the bishop of León”; a navigation map; a “brief that the cardinal of Santa Cruz sent to her highness”; a “memorial that her highness wrote for the testament of the king her father about certain things that she had to send,” and so on. References like this one, from Ferrandis, suggest that Juana, at least for part of her life, was a more active correspondent than we know. While material may yet come to light, not least from private archives currently unavailable to researchers, the paucity of letters to and from Juana inevitably shifts attention to other, less direct sources, including Royal Council provisions; private correspondence; key Cortes and Junta proceedings; histories, chronicles and despatches. But diplomats were only extremely rarely granted access to Juana, whereas they enjoyed constant access to her husband, father or son, and relied greatly on hearsay.
Nonetheless, some of the information conveyed by envoys and ambassadors is invaluable, not least when it is the only source for a particular event or expression of opinion. This monograph uses a variety of documents in their source languages (Spanish, Italian, English, French and German), feshing out the bones of a doctoral thesis awarded by the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2012. Some sources are inevitably familiar. Others have been widely overlooked in previously published studies. They include a series of recently restored and transcribed letters from Simancas, addressed to Juana as archduchess (for which all credit is due to Rodríguez de Diego); John Stile’s despatches and other English contemporary accounts; formerly unpublished material from Diego de Guevara’s despatches and Pedro Fernández de Velasco’s memorial about his uncle, the constable of Castile. I have also consulted a manuscript in the British Library, which differs, if only slightly, in wording and spelling from the Relación del discurso de las Comunidades, edited and published by Ana Díaz Medina, and which includes a number of interesting letters. I would also mention the royal provisions from the time of Juana’s personal rule; the marquis of Priego’s appeal of 1509; and the crucial letter from Luis Ferrer to Fernando of 10 August 1511.
The despatches of the Venetian ambassador, Francesco Corner, relatively little known, but of much interest for the transitional period between 1508 and 1509 are, like those of his counterpart, Vincenzo Querini, held in the archives of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice. Where Querini is concerned, we also have Constantin von Höfer’s published transcriptions and Rawdon Brown’s unpublished translations into English over a wider timescale, and housed at the National Archive in Kew (London). The sheer brevity of Juana’s effective reign did not allow for the appointment of chroniclers of her own, who could rely on her favours. The royal chroniclers accepted a priori Juana’s inability to rule; to do anything else would have been tantamount to sedition, since those who governed for her did so on grounds of her continuing incapacity. Kagan, in Clio and the Crown (2009), his study of the offcial histories of Spanish monarchs between medieval times and the mid-eighteenth century, has highlighted the particular importance of chroniclers to Spanish monarchs. He notes that, as monarchs who attached great importance to the writing of history and left little to chance, Isabel and Fernando oversaw, coordinated and dismissed their chroniclers, who were expected to act as temporal evangelists, immortalising the fama of their employers and sharing their goals.
In the circumstances, and given that Juana was, throughout her reign, the prisoner of kings and emperors who exercised power in her stead, it is hardly surprising that contemporary writers paid her so little serious attention. Even so, they offer glimpses of the queen and are essential for an understanding of the period. I am grateful to many people for their help in the course of preparing this book—frstly, and most especially, for the invaluable advice, erudition, generosity and patience over time of Maria-José RodríguezSalgado, professor of international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science. I have also benefted greatly from the advice, kindness and encouragement of Dr. John Edwards of Oxford University. Dame Janet Nelson, emerita professor of King’s College, London, gave generously of her time and expertise in looking at early chapters and Dr. Jenny Stratford, senior research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, London, helped open up the mysteries of paleography and the wonderful world of illuminated manuscripts.
I am indebted to Dr. Raymond Fagel of Leiden University, and owe much to Isabel Aguirre Landa, jefe de sala of the Archivo General de Simancas. I am also beholden to Miguel-Ángel Zalama, professor of art history at the University of Valladolid, and to his work and conferences on Juana. The stimulating series of symposia on different aspects of the comunero uprising that Dr. Istvan Konrad Szászi León-Borja and María Jesús Galende Ruíz have spent so much time and labour organising at Villalar de los Comuneros in conjunction with the Ayuntamiento of Villalar and the Fundación Villalar, have been a magnet for historians throughout Spain and beyond, myself included. I have received much help and courtesy from archives and libraries in Spain, Venice, France and the UK, and, among a number of others, most particularly from the Archivo General de Simancas (Valladolid); the Archivo de la Diputación Provincial de Zaragoza; the Real Academía de la Historia and Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid); the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (Venice); the Archives du Département du Nord (Lille) and British Library (London).
I am most grateful to the editors and production team at Palgrave Macmillan for their unfailing help and guidance. Last, but by no means least, I owe much moral support and encouragement to Ann Walker. The dates of editions given in the bibliographical references are those of the editions I have consulted and not always the dates of frst publication. All translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated. Decisions on nomenclature are seldom easy or satisfactorily consistent. Where individuals are concerned, I have generally adopted the baptismal name. But Philip is probably more familiar than Phelippe or even Philippe. Katherine, queen of England, is evidently more familiar outside Spain than Catalina. Juana’s younger son is called Ferdinand (although baptised Fernando), not only to distinguish him from the king of Aragon but because, torn out of his native land at an early age, he became eventually, and universally, known as Ferdinand I.
Juana’s parents were more than simply the ‘Catholic Kings,’ for they were the monarchs of non-Catholics too. At the same time, the term expresses, better than any other, certain important things about them. Use of the word ‘Spain’ for this period is not always entirely anachronistic. While Juana’s long list of titles shows that she was nominally queen and mistress of numerous realms and lands within the two crowns of Castile and Aragon, and ‘Spain’ was not yet a juridical concept, it has sometimes been used here to refer to both these kingdoms at once, and often at the time expressed an idea and aspiration. When referring to his annexation of the kingdom in Navarre in 1512, Fernando, for example, referred to its importance for completing the Spanish project (“lo que el reino de Navarra importa para cerrar la idea de España”). Brighton, UK 2017 Gillian B. Fleming
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