The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300-1800

by William Monter

  At this point, chaos ensued because James's chief adviser and a Mameluke interpreter had outbribed his sister's representatives among the emirs.37 “Then some veteran Mamelukes extended their hands against the adversaries of Jakum among the Franks. They inflicted blows and lacerations upon them, tearing up the robe [of honor]. They called in one voice that they wanted nothing but the confirmation of this Jakum in his father's place. The tumult heightened, leaving the sultan no recourse but to yield immediately, deposing the queen and acclaiming Jakum. Thus was Jakum confirmed in spite of the sultan. The sultan immediately enrobed Jakum. He ordered the departure of an expedition of officers to invade Cyprus and to proceed with Jakum to Cyprus.” Twelve days later “the sultan summoned the sultani Mamluks to the royal courtyard. He designated a group of them for the jihad, that is: to depart in the company of Jakum al-Firanji for Cyprus.”

  This jihad was successful. By November 1460 Mameluke military muscle had enabled Jakum to gain the upper hand on Cyprus, pinning his sister's loyalists into an impregnable coastal fort. He spent three years rallying support among the Cypriot barons and finally forced his sister and her Savoyard husband off the island. Once firmly in control, James massacred his remaining Egyptian elite troops in cold blood and sent an emissary to Cairo accusing their commander of “abducting comely youths from their parents.” Relating this tale, the Cairo chronicler expresses skepticism before concluding laconically, “Jakum took possession … on the grounds that he was the sultan's viceroy. In any case, [he] remained as ruler of Cyprus.” On the Christian side, his sister found shelter with the Knights Hospitallers on Rhodes, and the papacy refused to acknowledge the island's new monarch.

  James had no fleet, and his island kingdom required protection from Venice; he therefore decided to marry the daughter of a prominent Venetian aristocratic family with many investments on the island and few scruples about his right to rule Cyprus. In July 1472, two months before she sailed to Cyprus, the Republic of St. Mark officially adopted his bride, Caterina Cornaro. This ceremony, unique in the Republic's long history, sufficed to give legal footing to another unprecedented event after James died in 1473. When Queen Charlotte tried to persuade a Venetian fleet that “James, now dead, was a bastard and held the kingdom wrongfully, for it is wrong that while the heir is alive others should take the kingdom … in justice, you are bound to help her win [the kingdom],” the commander refused because James was “the king appointed by the sultan.”38 Instead of restoring the heiress, the Most Serene Republic proclaimed the pregnant widow of the sultan's king the new ruler of Cyprus. Charlotte sent another embassy to Egypt, but her claim was refused and her emissary sent in chains to her female rival.

  After the infant son of King James died in 1474, his teenaged widow became the island's official sovereign. Money was coined and decrees were issued in the name of Catherine of Venice, Caterina Veneta. The pope and the sultan were duly informed of her elevation; the sultan sent an official robe and asked for his unpaid tribute. She herself enjoyed scant respect. Her father received permission to visit her soon after her proclamation (she was Europe's first titular female monarch with a living father) and complained that she was treated worse than her married sisters. Theoretically, she ruled Cyprus for fifteen years, until the Most Serene Republic, upon hearing rumors of her projected remarriage, sent her brother to force her resignation. This constitutional charade ended when, for the only time in European history, a large, powerful republic swallowed a small, weak monarchy: on February 13, 1489, the Lusignan standard was lowered on Cyprus and replaced by the Lion of St. Mark. Unlike accounts of her official adoption, elaborate descriptions of her abdication ceremony have been preserved. In return for her cooperation, Venice permitted her a dignified retirement at full salary governing the minuscule lordship of Asolo, while the republic ruled Cyprus for more than seventy years.

  Successful Joint Rule in Castile

  The thirty-year reign of Isabel I of Castile (1474–1504) is deservedly far better known than those of her late medieval female predecessors. It marked the first time a woman had exercised supreme authority for such a long time in one of Europe's largest kingdoms; not only was Castile vastly larger and more powerful in 1474 than when Urraca had inherited it in 1109, but Isabel's kingdom increased greatly in size and influence during her reign. It has also been noticed that a sudden development in the game of chess, involving the greatly increased powers of the only female piece on the board, the queen, originated in Castile shortly after Isabel's greatest military success, the conquest of Granada; the new rules were first described in a treatise dedicated to her son.39 In the history of female kings, both the beginning and the end of this well-studied reign hold special significance. It began with a succession disputed between partisans of two women that was resolved only after a lengthy civil war, and it ended with one woman leaving her kingdom to another woman, the only such occurrence in European history until the twentieth century. On both occasions Isabel's husband proved indispensable both in ensuring victory over her niece and in preserving Isabel's Castilian heritage from their politically incompetent daughter thirty years later. To a degree not always recognized by current scholarship, he proved no less indispensable throughout the long period between these events. The Catholic kings enjoyed the most successful truly joint reign in European history.

  Isabel's marriage in 1469 to Ferdinand, her slightly younger second cousin and crown prince of Aragon, required elaborate prenuptial arrangements—particularly since her brother, the king of Castile, opposed it and soon used her disobedience as reason for disinheriting her. Seen in the context of similar arrangements between her fiancé's father and his first wife and those involving another Navarrese heiress in 1485, its provisions do not seem unusual. Its most important clauses required the husband to spend most of his time in his wife's kingdom; he could not remove her or their children from it without express permission. Royal authority was to be held jointly: they must share all titles and sign all documents together. The agreement employed the plural form throughout.40 Ferdinand's father donated the Sicilian crown to enhance his son's rank and forged a papal dispensation. They married and soon had a daughter.

  Five years after this marriage, Isabel's brother died after having repudiated her as his heir. She immediately claimed the Castilian throne, arranging an official proclamation in Segovia while her husband was in Aragon. Isabel acted so hastily because she knew that her brother's only child, her unmarried thirteen-year-old niece, would also claim his throne once she became a legal adult. Surprised by Isabel's gesture, Ferdinand returned to Castile and soon assured Aragonese authorities that he had been quickly confirmed as its king: “In the field, I was sworn, received, and raised as king of these realms.” Under emergency conditions, their prenuptial contract obviously required some retouching, although its essential provisions required only minor modifications: for example, his name preceded hers on joint declarations, but her coat of arms preceded his on the attached seals. A few months later, as war was breaking out, this revised arrangement was updated a second time, giving her husband power to make appointments “without my intervention, consultation, or authorization.” For his part, Ferdinand made a testament leaving his titles to his daughter with Isabel, who must also raise her husband's two previous illegitimate children.41

  The ensuing civil war became Europe's last lengthy struggle between rival female claimants to a major throne (in 1553 England had one that ended within a few days). Each side exercised the prerogatives of sovereignty by issuing decrees and coining money. In important ways this conflict mirrored that between Portugal and Castile ninety years before, but with the protagonists reversed. Both times, a very young heiress lost her kingdom after being forced to marry a neighboring older king who already had a male heir; both times, the women who lost ended up in convents in their husband's kingdom; and both times, prominent noblemen and church prelates who backed the losing side became permanent exiles.

  One major difference is t
hat in the 1470s, as Carrasco Manchado has emphasized, the older woman manipulated various strategies of legitimation throughout the struggle, even turning military setbacks into propaganda victories after her husband's first campaign ended in failure. It took four years to conclude the fighting (the Castilians eventually did better), but Isabel won the peace quickly. In 1479, with her husband away reorganizing his dead father's kingdom (this was also the moment when Ferdinand's widowed half sister successfully claimed the kingdom of Navarre), Isabel personally handled negotiations with Portugal. Preoccupied with permanently neutralizing a dangerous niece whom she never referred to by name (Juana was always aquella, “that woman”), Isabel insisted on forcing her into a convent. Subsequently known in Portugal as the “excellent lady,” “aquella” apparently never stayed in a convent and long outlived her aunt; she eventually donated her Castilian rights to the Portuguese crown in 1522. But Isabel won the representational war so thoroughly that her unlucky rival's story has not been pieced together until quite recently.42

  After Ferdinand and Isabel emerged victorious, this power couple drove the last Muslim government out of western Europe, sent Columbus on multiple voyages to explore a new continent, and opened a new chapter in religious persecution via the Spanish Inquisition. Their reputation as joint rulers is substantially correct because they worked tirelessly to implement their famous slogan to “command, govern, rule, and exercise lordship as one” (mandar, gobernar, regir, y señorear a una). In several ways they were the ultimate and certainly the most successful embodiments of a general late medieval phenomenon: the heiress with a husband possessing royal authority in her kingdom.

  They differed from the Navarrese model because of the exceptional political activity and talent of the heiress. Their political relationship is represented with didactic clarity on their various gold coins, from early castellanos issued during the civil war to their dazzling new excelentes of 1497: all of them depict both as crowned monarchs, either seated or facing each other, with him in the position of honor on the left and his name preceding hers. But their most remarkable coin was not struck in Spain. Their silver carlino, made in 1503 for the recently conquered kingdom of Naples, was the first two-headed male and female coin seen in the Mediterranean world since the time of Antony and Cleopatra, and its single continuous inscription covering both sides represented Europe's closest numismatic approximation to gender parity during the high Renaissance (see fig. 4).

  Castilian chronicles, composed by Isabel's well-paid officials and often published in the vernacular, tend to emphasize her role over her husband's. Juan de Flores, her first official chronicler, said that Isabel ruled “like a powerful man” (como esforçado varón). “It may be,” he reports her as saying, “that women lack the discretion to know things and the strength to stand up to others, perhaps even the language to express themselves properly; but I have discovered that we have the eyes to see.” And to read a great deal: Isabel read so many letters and documents that she became the first female monarch to own several pairs of spectacles. She also read printed books, relatively new cultural products that reached her kingdom during her reign. It is no accident that one of the earliest preserved portraits of a European female monarch, made about 1490, shows Isabel holding one of these.43

  Contemporaries disagreed about which half of the Catholic kings was the dominant force in their partnership. In 1526 a Venetian diplomat praised Isabel as “a rare and most talented [virtuosísima] woman, who is universally spoken of throughout Spain much more often than the king [Ferdinand], although he also was very prudent and rare in his time.” Two years later, another Italian diplomat, Baldassare Castiglione, raised the issue of her husband's influence in his famous Book of the Courtier but gave the longest speech to Isabel's champion rather than to her husband's. However, Ferdinand of Aragon also had Italian admirers; the most famous, Machiavelli, praised him as “almost a new Prince.”

  Ferdinand's grandson, Emperor Charles V, certainly believed the king was the dominant force in the partnership. When arranging the marriage of his son Philip to his cousin Mary Tudor, Charles advised him to imitate his Aragonese great-grandfather by acting "so that while he in reality does everything, the initiative should always seem to proceed from the Queen and her Council.”44 Some seventeenth-century Aragonese authors, led by Baltasar Gracián, reduced Isabel to her husband's collaborator and subordinate; but after the French Bourbons, who had cause to dislike Ferdinand, claimed the Spanish throne, Isabel's moral preeminence has dominated the couple's posthumous reputation.

  How did their much-praised joint rule actually work? The subject has not yet been adequately studied, despite (or perhaps because of) a superabundance of documentation.45 Joint rule should not be confused with equality or even symmetry. When she first visited his lands in 1481, Ferdinand gave his wife a few unusual privileges, but there was no symmetry between his authority in her kingdom and her authority in his. Every Castilian coin after 1474 bears his name, but no Aragonese coin uses hers. In Castile, this famous couple apparently behaved similarly to their younger counterparts in the small neighboring kingdom of Navarre, which was also being ruled at the end of the fifteenth century by an heiress and her husband. In both places, jointly proclaimed decrees outnumbered those issued by either sovereign alone, and the husband issued more individual decrees than his wife. In the 1480s Ferdinand usually handled certain types of routine royal business that generated lucrative fees, such as legitimations of bastards or appointments of public scribes. Much Castilian international business was signed by Ferdinand alone, even when Isabel was present, although the reverse was occasionally true.46

  In some other areas of state policy, Isabel's participation consistently outstripped that of her husband. Although they remain jointly famous as the Catholic kings, a title officially given them in 1496 by the Spanish-born pope Alexander VI, she took a far more sustained interest than her husband in improving the educational and moral level of senior appointments in the Castilian church. In Aragon, on the other hand, Ferdinand made his nine-year-old bastard son archbishop of Saragossa and later approved the nomination of the pope's bastard son, the notorious Cesare Borgia, as bishop of Valencia. At another point where religion intersected with politics, Isabel manipulated the incorporation of Castile's three great chivalric knightly orders into the royal domain by employing some remarkable displays of female authority over these supposedly entirely masculine organizations. The process began during the civil war, in 1476, when she personally attended the meeting to elect a new Master of the Order of Santiago (her husband, of course, was chosen). It concluded seventeen years later, when she persuaded the papacy to grant her the administration of all three orders—something “against all law,” grumbled papal officials, “and a monstrous thing that a woman could administer such Orders.”47

  The most famous, or notorious, intersection of religion and politics in Isabel's kingdom was undoubtedly its new royally controlled Inquisition, founded in 1478. She personally conducted some of the necessary high-level diplomacy: after a papal suspension of its proceedings in Aragon in 1482, Isabel, not Ferdinand, signed a long letter to Rome defending inquisitorial procedures in both of their realms and eventually received a satisfactory answer. Nevertheless, as Henry Charles Lea demonstrated over a century ago, Ferdinand intervened far more often than his wife in the Inquisition's early affairs in Castile, frequently writing in the first person singular, while some of Isabel's interventions attempted to protect her converso officials.48

  Burgundian and Castilian Heiresses, 1477–1506

  When her father was killed in battle early in 1477, nineteen-year-old Mary of Burgundy became the richest heiress in Christendom, inheriting a total of thirteen provinces with more than sixty-three hundred parishes. An embryonic great power, created essentially after 1430 by two ambitious Burgundian dukes in the Low Countries along the border between France and the empire, its constituent parts were vassals of these great overlords; Flanders, the largest and wealt
hiest province, was legally divided between them. This unmarried heiress, aided primarily by her shrewd stepmother, Margaret of York (sister to Edward IV of England), struggled to retain control of her sprawling inheritance. Despite an eloquent plea to the authorities of the Duchy of Burgundy, from which her house took its name, she was unable to prevent its reabsorption into France. Other parts of her father's possessions located in what is today France were also lost in 1477, some in the south permanently, others temporarily. Farther north, things went better. In exchange for extending local privileges which her father had infringed, Mary collected political and financial support from the core provinces of the Low Countries, but sometimes their loyalty was negotiated only after serious bargaining: for example, Holland, her third most important province, insisted on replacing court French with the local Low German dialect as its official language.49

  Threatened by the French king Louis XI, who proposed to marry her to his son and heir, Mary needed a husband to provide military leadership to defend what remained of her patrimony. She and her stepmother quickly concluded an arrangement with her father's preferred choice, Maximilian of Austria, the eighteen-year-old heir of the Holy Roman emperor. In a region already famous for its elaborately opulent public ceremonies, they were married with minimal pomp at a moment when making war was more urgent than making love. It was a union of political equals; in 1479 a highly unusual two-headed medal depicted them with similar inscriptions on each side. Afterward, Maximilian did what was asked of him both by fathering heirs (three children in four years) and by winning a major victory against the French in 1479. Advised by his wife's stepmother, he also reorganized Burgundy's famous chivalric order, the Golden Fleece, after a five-year hiatus. However, Burgundian coinage testifies that Maximilian never enjoyed the official rank of other contemporary royal husbands like Ferdinand of Aragon in his wife's possessions. Burgundy's heiress managed many internal affairs in her remaining lands and attended any political assembly where she and her husband needed to raise revenue.