32. Ramirez Vaquero, Blanca y Juan, 112. Two versions survive: the original at Pamplona (AGN, Casamientos y Muertos Reales, Leg. 1, carp. 18) and a copy at Pau (AD Pyrenées-Atlantiques, E 563).
33. Miguel Ibañez Artica, “Acuñacones de Blanca y Juan II (1425–1441–1479) y de Carlos, Principe de Viana (1441–1461),” in La moneda en Navarra (Pamplona, 2001); Elena Ramirez Vaquero, Blanca, Juan II y el Príncipe de Viana (Pamplona, 1986), 286–87; and her Juan II, Leonor y Gaston IV de Foix, y Francisco Febo (Pamplona, 1990), 303–5.
34. Figures calculated from Alvaro Adot Lerga, Juan de Albret y Catalina de Foix, o la defensa del Estado navarro (1483–1517) (Pamplona, 2005), 301–11; as in the case of their fourteenth-century predecessors, the king issued more documents alone (sixty-seven) than the proprietary queen (forty-two). See also R. Anthony and H. Courteault, eds., Les testaments des derniers rois de Navarre (Toulouse/Paris, 1940), 62–90.
35. Ferdinand's heirs never explicitly renounced this district, but it made no payments to them after 1525 and began acknowledging the traditional House of Navarre in 1528: Susana Herreros Lopetegui, Las tierras navarras de Ultrapuertos (siglos XII–XVI) (Pamplona, 1998), 138–45.
36. The standard account remains Sir George Hill, A History of Cyprus, vol. 3: The Frankish Period, 1432–1571 (Cambridge, 1948). There is a notable lack of biographies of the Greek female ruler of Cyprus, but several of her Italian successor. See also a French version of the great Cairo chronicle of Taghiri-Birdi: M. Tahar Mansouri, Chypre dans les sources arabes médiévales (Nicosia, 2001), 89–95, 123–27.
37. See Latin sources summarized in Hill, Cyprus, 555–57.
38. George Bustron, Chronicle 1456–1489, trans. R. M. Dawkins (Melbourne, 1964), 35 (#113).
39. Marilyn Yalom, Birth of the Chess Queen (New York, 2004), 191–211; Barbara Weissberger, Isabel Rules: Constructing Queenship, Wielding Power (Minneapolis, 2004), 148–53.
40. Compare Peggy K. Liss, Isabel the Queen, 2d ed. (Philadelphia, 2004), 67–8, with Tarsicio de Azcona, Isabel la Católica: Vida y reinado (Madrid, 2002), 124.
41. The tale of Isabel's procession with an uplifted sword, repeated by many biographers, was actually fabricated by one of Fernando's partisans: see Ana Isabel Carrasco Manchado, Isabel I de Castilla y la sombra de la ilegitimitad (Madrid, 2006), 23–37. On Isabel's niece, see Tarsicio de Azcona, Juana de Castilla, mal llamada la Beltraneja (Madrid, 2007); on Ferdinand's position, compare Liss, Isabel the Queen, 113–18, with Azcona, Isabel, 147–55 (en lo camp fom iurat, recebut, elevat per Rey en aquestes Regnes). Both agreements of 1475 were printed by Diego José Dormer, Discursos varios de historia (Saragossa, 1683), 295–305 (quote, 304).
42. During the war, Ferdinand and Isabel stripped silver from churches in order to produce their coins (Azcona, Isabel, 176–78). Juana's official seal survives in a single Spanish municipal archive, but several of her coins are extant (Azcona, Juana, 125–27); on Isabel's propaganda, see Carrasco Manchado, Isabel y la ilegitimidad, 176–95. Almost a century ago a facing set of both women's identical facsimile royal signatures (“I the Queen”) was published in Spain: J. B. Sitges, Enrique IV y la Excelente Señora (Madrid, 1912), 40.
43. Richard Kagan, Clio and the Crown (Baltimore, 2009), 48. Isabel holds books in more than one of her portraits: see Elisa Ruiz García, Los libros de Isabel la Católica: Arqueología de un patrimonio escrito (Madrid/Soria, 2004), 247–49.
44. E. Harris Harbison, Rival Ambassadors at the Court of Queen Mary (Princeton, 1940), 211–12.
45. An obvious starting point is the twenty printed volumes of the Registro del Sello summarizing the Castilian chancery's official actions between 1480 and 1500. Some useful comments in Carrasco Manchado, Isabel y la ilegitimidad, 469–75.
46. In 1485 the Registro del Sello recorded 357 joint decrees, plus 104 signed by Ferdinand alone and 73 by Isabel alone. Thus 70 percent were joint, with a 6–4 ratio between husband and wife. The former ratio is slightly below Navarre's 80 percent, the latter identical (see n. 34 above). In 1480 Isabel approved five legitimations and Ferdinand none; in 1485–6, Ferdinand approved twenty-one legitimations, Isabel none. In 1485–86, twenty-four escribanos públicos were named jointly by both sovereigns, but thirty-seven more by Ferdinand alone and only three by Isabel alone. Compare Azcona, Isabel, 201, and Liss, Isabel the Queen, 213.
47. Azcona, Isabel, 181, 551–52.
48. On Isabel's reponsibility, compare Liss, Isabel the Queen, 191–92, with Azcona, Isabel, 262–63. Henry C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain, 4 vols. (New York, 1906–10), 1:289–92, notes that “there is absolutely no evidence in [Ferdinand's] enormous and confidential correspondence that he ever used it for political purposes” (291); but compare Beatrice Perez, Inquisition, pouvoir, société (Paris, 2007), 92–94, 107–10.
49. On the size of her inheritance, see Monika Triest, Macht, vrouwen en politiek 1477–1558: Maria van Burgondië, Margreta van Oostenrijk, Maria van Hongrije (Louvain, 2000), 44–45 (with map). Her plea to officials in Dijon apparently never reached its destination: Georges-H. Dumont, Marie de Bourgogne (Paris, 1982), 160–61. On Dutch linguistic autonomy in 1477, see Peter Burke, Toward a Social History of Early Modern Dutch (Amsterdam, 2005), 13–14.
50. Her seal is reproduced in Christine Weightman, Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy 1446–1503 (New York, 1989), 133; the medal by Bernd Kluge, Numismatik des Mittelaters (Berlin/Vienna, 2007), 419 (#1101).
51. The official Burgundian version of this ceremony in Jean Molinet's Chroniques, 2:538–44, agrees with accounts from foreign observers: see Nancy B. Warren, Women of God and Arms (Philadelphia, 2005), 1–4.
52. Bethany Aram, “La reina Juana: nuevos datos, nuevas interpretaciones,” in Maria Vitoria López-Cordón and Gloria Franco, eds., La Reina Isabel y las reinas de España: realidad, modelos e imagen historiográfica (Madrid, 2005), 101–3.
53. Bethany Aram, La reina Juana: Gobierno, piedad y dinastía (Madrid, 2001), 234, 278–80; Walter de Gray Burch, Catalogue of Seals of the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London, 1900), 6:630 (#23,077); M. J. Rodríguez-Salgado, The Changing Face of Empire: Charles V, Philip II and Habsburg Authority, 1551–1559 (Cambridge, 1988), 129.
54. José Maria de Francisco Olmos, “Las primeras acuñaciones de Carlos I (1517): Un golpe de estado monetaria,” in Carmen Alfaro, Carmen Marcos, and Paloma Otero, eds., Actas del XIII Congreso Internacional de Numismática (Madrid, 2003), 2 vols. (Madrid, 2005), 2:1471–76; on coins of Juana y Carlos minted at Naples in 1516–19, see Philip Grierson and Lucia Travaini, Medieval European Coinage … in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 14 (Italy III) (Cambridge, 1998), 424–30.
55. Dormer, Discursos, 303–5 (mucho mayor sinrazón y más injusto y deshonesto fue lo que pretendieron las Reynas Juanas de Nápoles, que escuyeron algunos de sus maridos del nombre y regimento del Reyno).
Chapter 4. Female Regents Promote Female Rule, 1500–1630
1. Helmut G. Koenigsberger, Monarchies, States Generals and Parliaments: The Netherlands in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 2001), 91.
2. Dagmar Eichberger, Leben mit Kunst, Wirken durch Kunst: Sammelwesen und Hofkunst unter Margrethe van Osterreich, Regentin der Niederlands (Turnhout, 2002). Her palace at Mechelen – the first ever built by a female regent in Europe – can be viewed at
3. Margaret was painted twice together with her brother, and one of these was certainly sent to Spain during negotiations for their marriages: see Dagmar Eichberger, ed., Women of Distinction: Margaret of York/Margaret of Austria (Louvain, 2005), 142 (#48), 118–19 (#19–20), 83–85 (#18–19, 21).
4. Marguerite Debae, La bibliothèque de Marguerite d'Autriche, essai de reconstitution d'après l'inventaire de 1523–1524 (Louvain/Paris, 1995); Susan G. Bell, The Lost Tapestries of the City of Ladies: Christine de Pizan's Renaissance Legacy (Berkeley, 2004), 72–95; Jean Lemaire des Belges, Oeuvres, ed. J. Stec
her, 5 vols. (Louvain, 1891), 4:69–70.
5. H. C. Agrippa, Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex, ed. Albert Rabil Jr. (Chicago, 1996), 19–21 and nn. 38, 84–85, 88. Agrippa's unorthodox stances on various topics explains why this was among his first works to be printed. By 1544 this work had appeared in French, German, English, and Italian translations.
6. Letter of March 15, 1526, in Orsolya Rethelyi, ed., Mary of Hungary: The Queen and Her Court 1521–1531 (Budapest, 2005), 216.
7. Quote from Pierre de Brantôme, Receuil des Dames, ed. E. Vaucheret (Paris: Pléiade, 1991), 510. On their respective levels of authority, see Laetitia V. G. Gorter-van Royen, Maria van Hongrije, regents der Nederlanden: een politieke analyse op basis van haar Regentschapsordonannties en haar corrrespondentie met Karel V (Hilversum, 1995), 326–39. Gorter-van Royen and J.-P. Hoyois have begun to publish Mary's state correspondence; the first volume, Correspondence de Marie de Hongrie avec Charles Quint et Nicolas de Granvelle (Turnhout, 2009), covering the year 1532, includes over 150 letters to her from the emperor and over 100 of hers to him.
8. Brantôme (Pléiade ed.), 510–11, 516. On Mary's hunting, see Christoph Niedermann, “Marie de Hongrie et la chasse,” in B. Federinov and G. Docquier, eds., Marie de Hongrie: Politique et culture sous la Renaissance aux Pays-Bas (Mariemont, BE, 2008), 115–23; on her military knowledge, see Pieter Martens in ibid., 90–105.
9. Mary intended it for the main hall of her new palace at Binche, alongside an identical statue of her nephew and successor Philip II; both are now at the Prado in Madrid (both reproduced in Federinov and Docquier, Marie de Hongrie, 176). On Mary of Hungary's portraits, see Bob van den Boogert and Jacqueline Kerkhoff, eds., Maria van Hongrije: Konigin tussen keizers en kunstenaars (Zwolle, 1993), esp. 142 (#104), 324 (#222), and 329 (#227); on her musical patronage, see Glenda G. Thompson, “Mary of Hungary and Music Patronage,” in Sixteenth Century Journal 15 (1984), 401–18; on her library, Claude Lemaire, “La bibliothèque des imprimés de la reine Marie de Hongrie, régente des Pays-Bas, 1505–1558,” in Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 58 (1996), 119–39.
10. I use the English translation of her letter of resignation in Jane de Jongh, Mary of Hungary, Second Regent of the Netherlands (London, 1958), 263–66; see also Gorter-van Royen, 9.
11. Thierry Wanegffelen, Le pouvoir contesté: souveraines d'Europe à la Renaissance (Paris, 2008), 156.
12. Reprinted in full by Gorter-Van Royen, 340–49.
13. Ibid., 343–44, 345, 346, 347, 348 (my translations).
14. Antonio Villacorta Baños-Garcia, La Jesuita (Barcelona, 2005), 183–85, 225.
15. Ibid., 226 n. 28, 249–50, 309–10, 335–37; Archivo General de Simancas, Estado, Leg. 103, fol. 310 (20/9/1554).
16. Villacorta Baños-Garcia, La Jesuita, 217–22, 226–29.
17. Ibid., 379. On her portraits, see Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, “Los retratos de Juana de Austria posteriores a 1554: la imagen de una Princesa de Portugal, una regente de España y una jesuita,” in Reales Sitios 39 (2002), 42–65. The ‘hunting-dog’ portrait is available at
18. Ana Isabel Buescu, Catarina de Austria (1507–1578): Infanta de Tordesillas, Rainha de Portugal (Lisbon, 2007), 251–53, 258, 327–48 (also reproduces both of Mor's portraits between 128 and 129).
19. Maria do Rosario Themudo Barata de Azevedo, As regencies na Menoridade de D. Sebastião, 2 vols. (Lisbon, 1992). On her policies toward new Christians, see Francisco Bethencourt, The Inquisition: A Global History, 1478–1834 (Cambridge, 2009), 326, 328.
20. Ruy Gonçalves, Privilegios e praerogativos que ho genero femenino tem por Dereito commum, e Ordenaoens do Reino, mais que o genero masculine (Coimbra, 1557); see the facsimile edited by Elisa Maria Lopes da Costa (Lisbon, 1992).
21. See bibliographical essay; Leonie Frieda, Catherine de Medici (New York, 2005), 117; Thierry Wanegffelen, Catherine de Médicis: le pouvoir au féminin (Paris 2005), 230–35. Her seal is reproduced in Wanegffelen, Pouvoir contesté, 461.
22. J. Boutier, A. Dewerpe, and D. Nordman, Un tour de France royal: Le voyage de Charles IX (1564–1566) (Paris, 1984), 238, 241–46; Wanegffelen, Catherine, 302.
23. Frances Yates, The Valois Tapestries (London, 1959); Clarice Innocenti, ed., Women in Power: Caterina and Maria de’ Medici: The Return to Florence of Two Queens of France (Florence, 2009).
24. Bernard Cottret, La royauté au féminin: Elisabeth Ie d'Angleterre (Paris, 2009), 125–26.
25. Eliane Viennot, La France, les femmes et le pouvoir, vol 1: L'invention de la loi salique (Ve–XVIe siècle) (Paris, 2006), 575–87; Brantôme, Receuil des Dames, 134–35.
26. Compare François Hotman, Franco-Gallia, ed. and trans. Ralph Giesey and J. H. M. Salmon (Cambridge, 1972), chap. 26, esp. 483, with David Chambers, Discours de la legitime succession des femmes aux possessions de leurs parens et du gouvernement des princesses aux Empires et Royaumes (Paris, 1579) (its dedicatory letter was dated August 21, 1573). The copy in the British Library bears the royal bindings “E.R.” Although the principal source on this enemy of England (whose surname is spelled variously as Chalmers and Chambers) is his police file in the papers of Lord Burghley, and although he published nothing in England, Constance Jordan puts Chambers at the conclusion of her classic article “Women's Rule in Sixteenth-Century British Political Thought,” Renaissance Quarterly 40 (1987), 445–50.
27. Chambers, Discours, 14–15v, 16v, 18–19v.
28. Ibid., 24v, 25v, 32v–33.
29. R. J. Knecht, Catherine de Medici (London, 1998), 99. Catherine also suffered from confessional solidarity between female Protestant monarchs. When a third French religious war broke out in 1568, Elizabeth not only loaned money to Jeanne III of Navarre but also sent a hundred so-called volunteeer cavalrymen, including a very young Walter Raleigh, to assist her Huguenots against the French king; see William Camden, The History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth, Late Queen of England, abridged ed., Wallace MacCaffrey, ed. (Chicago, 1970), 124.
30. Portraits: Joanne Woodall, Anthonis Mor: Art and Authority (Zwolle, 2007), 390 (#139), 398 (#146), 403 (#148). Medal: Luc Smolderen, Jacques Jonghelinck: Sculpteur, médailleur et graveur de sceaux (1530–1606) (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1996), 287–92.
31. Geoffrey Parker, Philip II (Boston, 1978), 195–96. Original documents in Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España, 42:218–22 (Philip II's donation), 42:225–28 (Philip III's ratification); seal reproduced in Smolderen, Jonghelinck, plate CIX.
32. On their government, see Geoffrey Parker, “The Decision-Making Process in the Government of the Catholic Netherlands under ‘the Archdukes,’ 1596–1621,” in his Spain and the Netherlands 1559–1659: Ten Studies (London, 1979), 164–76; on their coinage, see André Van Kermuylen, ed., Monnaies des Pays-Bas méridionaux d'Albert et Isabelle à Guillaume Ier (Brussels, 1981), 1–64. Magdalena Sanchez argues that she had “greater powers than those held by any previous Spanish governor in the Netherlands, including her late husband”: see “Isabel Clara Eugenia and Power,” in Anne J. Cruz and Mihoko Suzuki, eds., The Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe (Urbana, 2009), 72–73.
33. Ruth Betegón Diez, Isabel Clara Eugenia: Infanta de España y soberana de Flandes (Barcelona, 2004), 158–60.
34. Ibid., 205, 212; Francis Van Noten, “The Horses of Albert and Isabella: Historical Background,” in Werner Thomas and Luc Duerloo, eds., Albert and Isabella: Essays (Turnhout: 1998), 343–46, 366 (plate 8).
35. Jean-François Dubost, Marie de Médicis: la reine dévoilée (Paris, 2009); Mark Jones, “The Image of a Queen Regent,” in Tony Hackens and Ghislaine Moucharte, eds., Proceedings of the XIth International Numismatic Congress, 4 vols. (Louvain-la-Neuve,
1993), 4:304–5 n. 17, 308; Mark Jones, ed., Catalogue of French Medals in the British Museum, 2 vols. (London, 1987–88), 2:290 (#332).
36. Dubost, Marie, 197 (1609 engraving), 528, 774. On the famous Rubens cycle, see 651–76; the fullest discussion in English is Ronald Millen and Robert Wolf, Heroic Deeds and Mystic Figures (Princeton, 1989).
37. Dubost, Marie, 802–04.
38. Corpus Rubeniorum Ludwig Burchard, XIX, part 2 [Hans Vlieghe, Rubens Portraits in Antwerp, (London, 1987)], #109–12 (three copies exist).
39. Jean-François de Raymond, ed., Christine, reine de Suède, Apologies (Paris, 1994), 136.
Chapter 5. Husbands Finessed
1. Alison Weir, The Children of Henry VIII (New York, 1996), 167–68; Anne Whitelock, “'Woman, Warrior, Queen?’ Rethinking Mary and Elizabeth,” in Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock, eds., Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth (New York, 2010), 175–76. Mary's 1553 sovereign is reproduced in Monter, “Gendered Sovereignty,” JIH 41 (2011), 548.
2. Charles Beem, The Lioness Roared: The Problem of Female Rule in English History (New York, 2006), 63–99, provided a fresh political interpretation of Mary Tudor's reign, now further enriched by Judith M. Richards, Mary Tudor (London, 2008), 121–81. See also Glyn Redworth, “'Matters Impertinent to Women’: Male and Female Monarchy under Philip and Mary,” English Historical Review 112 (1997), 593–613.
3. A detailed paraphrase of their prenuptial agreement appears in David Loades, Mary Tudor: The Tragical History of the First Queen of England (London, 2006), 109–10. Compare the generally similar articles agreed upon by France and England in 1581 for Elizabeth's marriage to Alençon: William Camden, The History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princess Eilzabeth, Late Queen of England, ed. Wallace MacCaffrey (Chicago, 1970), 132–33.
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