Chapter 2 - Four weddings and too many funerals
Joanna was an impertinent girl who spoke with firmness and clarity, stubborn and rebellious, but considered the most intelligent of the children of Isabella and Ferdinand. She had been educated with care. Even as a child she was more fond at the father that at the mother, who showed herself as a resolute and invincible warrior, portrayed anywhere with a long sword in her hands, the helmet and the breastplate. Growing up, the temper of Joanna had stiffened. He had become taciturn and preferred to be alone. Fascinated by the spirituality of the mystical, tried to escape from the common and public religiosity.
At sixteen, Philip (IV) of Burgundy had been declared an adult and on 9 June 1494, with «Joyeuse Entrée» at Louvain, had taken possession of full sovereignty. Raised as the head of the House of Burgundy, and not of Austria, by his step-grandmother Margaret of York, Philip did not know a word of German. Neither very smart, nor cultured, he sought only the fun and was very easy plagiarise him.
On 31 January 1495 in Valladolid the Infanta Joan married by proxy Philip of Burgundy, who was «physically beautiful, brisk and vigorous» (Vincenzo Querino, Venetian ambassador), muscular, arrogant, nonchalant, with long blond hair and blue eyes, but with a few teeth and a rickety laugh.
On 5 November in Malines Margaret of Burgundy, a petite and plump little girl, irresistibly pretty, married by proxy John of Spain.
In the summer of 1496, a mighty Spanish fleet brought Joanna in the Netherlands and then would bring Margaret in Spain. On 21 October Philip had married in person Joanna in Lier.
In early January of 1497 Margaret of Burgundy had left for Spain, disembarking at Santander in March. Terminated the Lent, John of Spain married Margaret in person in Burgos on 3 April 1497. Soon thereafter, however, the Crown Prince had been hit by violent fevers, perhaps smallpox.
Between 1496 and 1497 started the negotiations for the marriage of the Infanta Maria with King James IV of Scotland, and of the Infanta Catherine with the Prince of Wales Arthur. Ferdinand and Isabella thought if Maria had become Queen of Scotland, the two sisters would have kept the peace between their husbands, and detach Scotland from the alliance with France (Auld Alliance), while Henry VII had joined the Holy League (October 1496).
Meanwhile, the Infanta Isabella, after seven years of insistent courting, had accepted to remarry with the new king of Portugal, Manuel of Aviz, a cousin of her late husband, as had been agreed in a clause of the first marriage contract. The wedding was celebrated on 30 September in Valencia de Alcántara.
On 4 October in Salamanca died the Crown Prince John of Spain. The widow, Margaret of Burgundy, was pregnant and would give birth in December. But, after the funeral, on the way to Granada, during a stop at the royal palace of Alcalá de Henares, she had given birth to a dead child.
The death of the beloved brother had devastated Joanna, who shown the first worrying signs of her dangerous hysteria.
Unexpectedly Philip of Burgundy had appointed himself «Prince of Asturias» and heir of Castile. For Isabella and Ferdinand instead the only heirs to the throne of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon were the eldest daughter Isabella and her husband, the King of Portugal. Urged to reach Spain, only in the spring of 1498 they started, reaching Toledo, where on 29 April the Cortes of Castile, gathered in the cathedral, swore allegiance to them. In Zaragoza, however, the Cortes of Aragon did not recognize Isabella as heiress because they held that the succession in their kingdom were only in the male line; being the queen of Portugal pregnant, this finally resulted in a compromise: if was born a male, they would recognize the child as their own heir.
Isabella was humble and obedient, with a temperament dull, pious and sanctimonious. She was terrified by the pregnancy. She was terrified of dying in childbirth.
On 24 August 1498 in Zaragoza was born on Prince Michael of Peace, the heir to the throne of the kingdoms of Portugal, Castile and Aragon. Isabella, deeply debilitated by childbirth, was nearly died. From that day she was adamant in not wanting more have other pregnancies, doing everything to not sleep with her husband.
In the Netherlands, meanwhile, the spiritual and physical health of the Duchess Joanna (in the throes of a deep jealousy against the husband who neglected her, and, it was said, beat her) worried her parents in Spain. She was pregnant and on 15 November in Brussels was born a girl, named Eleanor in honor of the Portuguese mother of Maximilian of Hapsburg.
On 24 February 1500, feast of St. Matthias Apostle, during a big party with a banquet in the city of Ghent, had given birth, retreating into a latrine, a son. «A woman giving birth in a toilet a future king and emperor, is capable of anything», exclaimed with satisfaction the Duke Philip. The child had been called Charles, as Charles the Bold, and titled Duke of Luxembourg.
On 20 July in Granada the Crown Prince Michael of Peace died due to sudden and violent intestinal fevers. Immediately Isabella and Ferdinand had explained to their daughter Isabella the urgency to procreate another heir, but she was still terrified by the previous birth and the danger of dying.
On 19 May 1499, Pentecost Sunday, in Bewdley (Worcestershire), the Prince of Wales Arthur, Prince of Wales married by proxy the Infanta Catherine (the ceremony will be repeated in Ludlow, on 11 November 1500, after that the prince turned fourteen, the canonical age for marriage). On 20 July 1499, in Stirling Castle King, James IV of Scotland married by proxy the Infanta Maria. The two princesses, in their turn, were married by proxy in a double ceremony on 24 August 1500 in Granada, then embarking in La Coruña at the end of September 1501.
Catherine landed in England on 2 October 1501, at Plymouth. The next month the couple met each other for the first time at Dogmersfield in Hampshire (4 November), and on 14 November 1501 the marriage ceremony finally took place at Saint Paul's Cathedral in London; Maria, however, continued her journey to Scotland by marrying in person James IV on 10 December at Holyrood Abbey, Edinburgh.
On 18 July 1501 in Brussels was born the third daughter of Philip and Joanna of Burgundy, Isabella. In the meantime it had happened a danger rapprochement between the Duke of Burgundy and the King of France, so that in December of that year Philip and his wife had paid a visit to King Louis XII at the Château de Blois.
In March 1502, the Princes of Wales Arthur and Catherine fell ill of a malign fever, and unexpectedly Arthur died on 2 April 1502 at Ludlow, while Catherine recovered...
The Queen Elizabeth of York, who at the same time was pregnant, died on 11 February 1503 after she gave birth a daughter (2 February), named Katherine, died a few days afterwards.
Following the death of his queen, Henry VII initially considered marrying Catherine himself, but the opposition of her parents and potential questions over the couple's issue and Catheine's position as future Queen Dowager (and not as Queen Mother) have aborted the idea. The King of England, however, entertained the project of remarriage to renew the alliance with Spain with Joanna of Naples (1479–1518), Dowager Queen of Naples (niece of Ferdinand II of Aragon and childless widow of her nephew Ferdinand II of Naples), suggested as a potential bride by Isabella and Ferdinand, who probably wished to divert Henry VII's interest from their daughter Catherine.
In the end, to settle the matter, it was agreed that Catherine would marry Henry VII's second son, Henry, Duke of York, new heir of the Crown. But this marriage, even if Catherine testified that her marriage to Arthur was never consummated, depended on the Pope granting a dispensation (for the union between brother-in-law and sister-in-law, not very common, but not absolutely unprecedented) [1].
The betrothal contract between the Prince Henry and Catherine was signed on 23 June 1503.
During an extended stay at the Court of Bourg-en-Bresse, in Haute-Savoie, where lived Margaret of Burgundy, who in second wedding had been married to the Duke Philibert II of Savoy, the Duchess Joanna had given birth to her fourth son on 10 March 1503, baptized with the name of Frederick in homage to the paternal great-grandfather.
On 14 June 1503 in Alcalá de Henares Queen Isabel of Portugal, after a difficult birth which again put at risk her life, bore a second child. She had made a vow to the Virgin of Guadalupe that if she had given birth a healthy son and if she survived childbirth, she would devote her life to chastity, no longer sleeping with her husband. But it was not necessary: she died. And, unfortunately, she given birth a daughter, named Isabella as her.
In Rome, meantime, Pope Alexander VI died on Friday 18 August at the hour of vespers, after have confessed, received the Holy Eucharist and the Extreme Unction. The Cardinal Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini was elected on 22 September 1503, naming himself Pius III, succeeded, after his sudden death, by the Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, elected the 1st November 1503 as Julius II.
[1] In the Bible, a text forbade a man to marry his brother's widow (Leviticus, 18:16), but another text explicitly prescribed this between the duties of the younger brother (Deuteronomy 25:5-6, «Levirate marriage»).