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| Convent Atrio de las Claras |
Incarceration
Ferdinand acted as regent from 1507–1516 during which his
daughter was allegedly insane.
Reports filtered back to England in the person of Henry VIII’s agent John
Stiles and the Venetian ambassador to Spain was no less busy in his reports to
the Senate. He
informed them that Juana was considered mad;
‘The king [Ferdinand] says so……She expects her husband to come to life
again and carries his body about with her in a coffin. She says this
resurrection will take place at the end of ten years.’[i]
Ferdinand was clearly ensuring that his regency was
viewed as legal in the eyes of the world. He was very successful.
Ferdinand dismissed all of Juana’s servants and appointed
a small retinue accountable to him alone.
Juana
had her youngest daughter, Caterina, with her at Tordesillas under the care of
one of her father’s men, one Mosen Ferrer. Prince Ferdinand remained in the
care of his grandfather.
Juana’s rooms overlooked the river Douro and she was
surrounded by many of her most treasured possessions including a set of
tapestries she’d given to her mother and returned to her when Isabella died. Ferdinand
visited his daughter occasionally and sent her jewellery. Juana had over 100
books in her possession, many of them religious works, including Books of Hours.
On rare occasions Juana was allowed to visit the convent
to take solace in prayer with the nuns. She apparently retained an interest in
the affairs of the convent for some years. Reportedly it was difficult for Juana
to eat, sleep, bathe, or change her clothes. When she became frustrated Juana
reverted to the behaviour of her youth that had won her her own way in years
past.
The Outside World
 |
| Isabella of Austria |
On 11 July 1514 Isabella was married by proxy to King Christian II of Denmark, with her grandfather Maximilian
standing in for the king. Isabella remained in the Netherlands, but was said to
have fallen in love with her spouse when she saw a painting of him. A year
after the wedding, the Archbishop of Nidaros was sent to
escort her to Copenhagen. The marriage was an unhappy one.
On 22 July 1515 Juana’s daughter Maria was married to the
heir of the king of Hungary; Prince Louis. The couple were married in St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna. At the
same time, Louis' sister Anne was
betrothed to an as yet unspecified brother of Mary, with Maximilian once again
acting as proxy.
Anne eventually married Mary's brother Ferdinand and came
to Vienna, where the double sisters-in-law were educated together until 1516.
That year, Mary's father-in-law died, making Louis and Mary king and queen of
Hungary and Bohemia. Mary moved to Innsbruck, where
she was educated until 1521, when she was finally enthroned as queen of
Hungary. Louis died in August 1526 in the aftermath of the battle of Mohács during
an Ottoman
incursion into Europe.
King of Half the World
 |
| Charles V |
Charles became co-monarch of Castile and Aragon with
Juana when Ferdinand died on 23rd January 1516. On 3rd
March 1516 Charles marched out in procession from the ducal palace in Brussels, with
his fellow knights of the
Golden Fleece to the cathedral where
he was pronounced King of Spain with his mother.
‘Long live their catholic Majesties Queen Juana and King Charles.’[ii]
Rumours of Juana’s ill-treatment came to Charles’ ear and
he dismissed Ferrer and replaced him with the Duke of Estrada. Ferrer wrote to
Charles asking for his job back and blaming Ferdinand for the treatment meted
out to Juana;
‘The King her father could never do more until, to prevent her destroying
herself by abstinence from food, as often as her will was not done, he had to
order that she was to be put to the rack to preserve her life. Was that my
fault?’[iii]
Charles travelled to Spain, landing on the Asturian coast
in September 1516 and it took six weeks for the royal entourage to reach
Tordesillas. On 4th November, he and his sister Eleanor met their
mother Juana for the first time since 1506. Charles untruthfully assured Juana that
he had come to Spain solely for her sake and was determined to ensure that any
complaints she had about her treatment be dealt with.
Coercion?
 |
| Eleanor of Austria |
Charles and Eleanor secured from their mother the
necessary authorisation to allow Charles to rule as her co-King of Castile and
León and of Aragon, although at no time was Juana informed that her father was
dead. Despite Juana’s acquiescence to Charles’ he continued to keep his mother
confined. He did however change Juana a new jailer in the Marquis of Denia who,
like Charles, was more concerned with his charge’s soul than her life on earth.
Beyond ensuring that Cisneros, who had been given
oversight of Juana’s care, ensured that Juana was not ill-treated, Charles was
not predisposed to free his mother. He wrote to Denia;
‘It seems to me that the best and most suitable thing for you to do is to
make sure that no person speaks with Her Majesty, for no good could come from
it.’[iv]
His greatest concern was that his mother and sister took mass
and the fact that she dined only once every two days was of far less interest
to him. Juana was kept starved of information from the outside world; any of
her women likely to inform her of the doings in Torsellidas were dismissed.
Denia even stopped Juana’s infrequent visits to the convent, no matter how much
she pleaded for them.
Rebellion
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| Toledo |
On the 12th January 1519 Charles became Holy
Roman Emperor following the death of his grandfather, Maximilian. The following
year in 1520, the Revolt of the Comuneros broke
out, originally in Toledo[v],
in response to valid perceptions of foreign Habsburg influence over Castile.
The rebel leaders demanded that Castile be governed in accordance with the supposed
practices of the Catholic Monarchs.
They objected to, amongst other financial burdens,
Castile bearing the expenses of Charles election as Holy Roman Emperor. In an
attempt to legitimize their rebellion the Comuneros turned to Ferdinand and
Isabell’s heir, Juana. To stop the revolt Don Antonio de Rojas, Bishop of Mallorca, led a
delegation of royal councilors to Tordesillas. They asked Juana
to sign a document denouncing the Comuneros. She demurred, requesting that de Rojas
present her specific provisions.
 |
| Adrian (as Pope) |
Before this could be done the Comuneros in turn stormed
the virtually undefended city and requested Juana’s support. The request
prompted Adrian of Utrecht[vi], the
regent appointed by Charles V, to tell Juana that Charles would lose Castile if
Juana supported the rebels.
Charles was still demanding money from his Spanish subjects to forward his interests in the Holy Roman Empire. On 25th August Adrian wrote to Charles;
‘Your Highness is making a great
error if you think that you will be able to collect and make use of this tax;
there is no one in…..Seville or Valladolid or any other city who will ever pay
anything of it; all the grandees and members of the council are amazed that
Your Highness has scheduled payments from these funds.’[vii]
Although Juana was sympathetic to the Comuneros, she was persuaded by her confessor Fray John of Avila that supporting the revolt would irreparably damage the country and her son's kingship and she therefore refused to sign a document granting her support. The Battle of Villalar signaled the defeat of the revolt.
Children
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| John III of Portugal |
The Infanta Caterina was finally released from incarceration with her mother, when she married her cousin, King John III of Portugal, on 10 February 1525. The following year, on 10th March 1526, Charles married John’s sister Isabella[viii]. Charles, who believed he cared deeply for his family, had ensured that Caterina’s apartments at Torsellidas were richly appointed and suitable for a royal princess.
The loss of Caterina can only have increased Juana’s mental instability. When Caterina had been removed from her care at the age of eleven for a few months Juana had declared to Denia that she was afraid that;
‘The
King, my lord, will take her from me as he has taken the Infante [Ferdinand].’[ix]
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| Caterina |
In July 1523, Eleanor was engaged to Charles III, Duke of Bourbon, in an alliance between Charles and Bourbon against France, but the marriage never took place. In 1526, Eleanor was engaged to King François I of France during his captivity in Spain. She married François on 4 July 1530[x].
On 3 January 1531 Charles requested that his sister Mary assume the regency of the Netherlands. Charles was ruling a vast empire and was constantly in need of reliable family members who could govern his remote territories in his name. Mary reluctantly accepted on Charles' insistence. On 6 October 1537, from Monzón, the Emperor wrote to his sister:
 |
| Capilla Real |
‘I am only one and I can't be
everywhere; and I must be where I ought to be and where I can, and often enough
only where I can be and not where I would like to be; for one can't do more
than one can do.’[xi]
In his own interests Charles continued to keep his mother
imprisoned until her death on 12th April 1555 at the age of seventy
five, by which time she had been confined nearly fifty years[xii]. Latterly
Joanna's physical state declined rapidly as she became ever more immobile.
In
her final years Juana was so frail that her attendants were unable to change
her soiled bedlinen. Juana was buried in the Royal Chapel of Granada (la Capilla Real) in Spain
alongside her parents, her husband Philip I and her nephew Miguel da Paz.
Bibliography
Sister
Queens – Julia Fox, Ballantine Books 2011
Ferdinand
and Isabella – Melveena McKendrick, Cassell 1969
Six Wives –
David Starkey, Chatto & Windus 2003
Catherine of
Aragon – Giles Tremlett, Faber & Faber 2010
The Wives of
Henry VIII – Alison Weir, Pimlico 1992
The Hapsburgs
– Andrew Wheatcroft, Folio Society 2004
Poor Juana...
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