Joanna of Castile (6 November 1479 – 12 April 1555), historically known asJoanna the Mad (Spanish:Juana la Loca), was the nominalqueen of Castile from 1504 andqueen of Aragon from 1516 to her death in 1555. She was the daughter of QueenIsabella I of Castile and KingFerdinand II of Aragon. Joanna was married by arrangement to the Austrian archdukePhilip the Handsome on 20 October 1496.[1] Following the deaths of her elder brotherJohn, elder sisterIsabella, and nephewMiguel between 1497 and 1500, Joanna became theheir presumptive to the crowns ofCastile andAragon. When her mother died in 1504, she became queen of Castile. Her father proclaimed himself governor and administrator of Castile.[2]
In 1506, Joanna's husband Philip became king of Castilejure uxoris as Philip I, initiating the rule of theHabsburgs in the Spanish kingdoms. Philip died that same year. Despite being the ruling queen of Castile, Joanna had little effect on national policy during her reign as she was declared insane and confined in theRoyal Palace inTordesillas under the orders of her father, who ruled as regent until his death in 1516, when she inherited his kingdom as well. Her sonCharles I became king, and during his reign Joanna was nominally co-monarch but remained confined until her death. Joanna died aged 75 in 1555, at which point her son Charles, theHoly Roman Emperor, became the sole ruler of Castile and Aragon.
She had a fair complexion and brown eyes, and her hair colour was between strawberry-blonde and auburn, like her mother and her sisterCatherine. Her siblings were Isabella, Queen of Portugal; John, Prince of Asturias;Maria, Queen of Portugal; and Catherine, Queen of England.[3]
Joanna was educated and formally trained for a significant marriage that, as a royal family alliance, would extend the kingdom's power and security as well as its influence and peaceful relations with other ruling powers. As anInfanta (princess), she was not expected to be heiress to the throne of either Castile or Aragon, although through deaths she later inherited both thrones.[4]
Joanna's academic education consisted of canon and civil law, genealogy and heraldry, grammar, history, languages, mathematics, philosophy, reading, spelling and writing.[4]: 61 Among the authors of classical literature she read were the Christian poetsJuvencus andPrudentius, Church fathers SaintAmbrose, SaintAugustine, SaintGregory, and SaintJerome, and the Roman statesmanSeneca.[4]: 61
In the Castilian court Joanna's main tutors were theDominican priest Andrés de Miranda; educatorBeatriz Galindo, who was a member of the queen's court; and her mother, the queen. Joanna's royal education included cooking, court etiquette, dancing, drawing,equestrian skills, music, and the needle arts of embroidery, needlepoint, sewing, spinning, and weaving.[4]: 61 She studied theIberian Romance languages ofCastilian,Leonese,Galician-Portuguese andCatalan, and became fluent in French and Latin. She learned outdoor pursuits such as hawking and hunting. She was skilled at dancing and music; she played theclavichord, the guitar, and themonochord.
The marriage contract of Joanna and Philip (1496).
In 1496, 16-year-old Joanna was betrothed to 18-year-old Philip ofAustria, in theLow Countries. Philip's parents wereMaximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, and his first wife, DuchessMary of Burgundy. The marriage was one of a set of family alliances between the Habsburgs and the Trastámaras designed to strengthen both against growing French power.[5]
Joanna entered aproxy marriage at thePalacio de los Vivero in the city ofValladolid, Castile, where her parents had secretly married in 1469. In August 1496 Joanna left from the port ofLaredo in northern Castile on the Atlantic'sBay of Biscay. Except for 1506, when she saw her younger sister Catherine, the then-Dowager Princess of Wales, she would never see her siblings again.
Joanna of Castile and Philip the Fair, stained glass, Basilica of the Holy Blood in Bruges.
Joanna began her journey toBrabant in the Low Countries, which consisted of parts of the present day Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Germany, on 22 August 1496. The formal marriage took place on 20 October 1496 inLier,[1] north of present-day Brussels. Between 1498 and 1507, she gave birth to six children, two boys and four girls, all of whom grew up to be either emperors or queens.[6]
The death of Joanna's brother John, the stillbirth of John's daughter, and the deaths of Joanna's older sister Isabella and Isabella's son Miguel made Joanna heiress to the Spanish kingdoms. Her remaining siblings were Maria (1482–1517) and Catherine (1485–1536), younger than Joanna by three and six years respectively.
In 1502, the CastilianCortes of Toro[7]: 36–69 [8]: 303 recognised Joanna as heiress to the Castilian throne and Philip as her consort. She was namedPrincess of Asturias, the title traditionally given to the heir of Castile.[9] Also in 1502, theAragoneseCortes gathered inZaragoza to swear an oath to Joanna as heiress; however, theArchbishop of Zaragoza,Alonso de Aragón expressed firmly that this oath could only establishjurisprudence by way of a formal agreement on the succession between theCortes and the king.[10]: 137 [8]: 299
In 1502, Philip, Joanna and a large part of their court traveled to Toledo for Joanna to receive fealty from the Cortes of Castile as Princess of Asturias, heiress to the Castilian throne, a journey chronicled in great detail byAntoon I van Lalaing (French:Antoine de Lalaing). Philip and the majority of the court returned to the Low Countries in the following year, leaving a pregnant Joanna inMadrid, where she gave birth to her fourth child, Ferdinand, later a central European monarch andHoly Roman Emperor asFerdinand I.
Upon the death of her mother in November 1504, Joanna became queen regnant of Castile and her husbandjure uxoris its king in 1506. Joanna's father, Ferdinand II, lost his monarchical status in Castile although his wife's will permitted him to govern in Joanna's absence or, if Joanna was unwilling to rule herself, until Joanna's heir reached the age of 20.[11]
Ferdinand refused to accept this; he minted Castilian coins in the name of "Ferdinand and Joanna, King and Queen of Castile, León and Aragon", and, in early 1505, persuaded theCortes that Joanna's "illness is such that the said Queen Doña Joanna our Lady cannot govern". TheCortes then appointed Ferdinand as Joanna's guardian and the kingdom's administrator and governor.
Joanna's husband, Philip, was unwilling to accept any threat to his chances of ruling Castile and also minted coins in the name of "Philip and Joanna, King and Queen of Castile, Léon and Archdukes of Austria, etc."[8]: 315 In response, Ferdinand embarked upon a pro-French policy, marryingGermaine de Foix, niece ofLouis XII of France (and his own great-niece), in the hope that she would produce a son to inherit Aragon and perhaps Castile.[12]: 138 [9]
In the Low Countries, Joanna was kept in confinement, but when her father-in-law Maximilian (in semi-secrecy) visited them on 24 August 1505 she was released to welcome him. Maximilian tried to comfort Joanna with festivities and she spent weeks accompanying him in public events, during which she acted like a wise, prudent queen, as noted by the Venetian ambassador.[a] To entertain Joanna, Philip and Maximilian (who was dressed incognito)jousted against each other at night, under torchlight. Maximilian told Philip that he could only succeed as a monarch if husband and wife were "una cosa medesima" (one and the same). After this, the couple reconciled somewhat. When Philip tried to gain support from Castilian nobles and prelates against Ferdinand though, Joanna firmly refused to act against her father.[14][15][16]
Ferdinand's remarriage merely strengthened support for Philip and Joanna in Castile, and in late 1505 the pair decided to travel to Castile. Before they boarded the ship, Joanna forbade a ship with female attendants to join the trip, fearing that Philip would have illicit relationships with them. This action played right into Philip's and Ferdinand's propaganda against her. Leaving Flanders on 10 January 1506, their ships were wrecked on the English coast and the couple were guests ofHenry, Prince of Wales (later Henry VIII), and Joanna's sister Catherine of Aragon atWindsor Castle. They weren't able to leave until 21 April, by which time civil war was looming in Castile.
Philip apparently considered landing inAndalusia and summoning the nobles to take up arms against Ferdinand in Aragon. Instead, he and Joanna landed atA Coruña on 26 April, whereupon the Castilian nobility abandoned Ferdinand en masse. Ferdinand met Philip atVillafáfila on 27 June 1506 for a private interview in the village church. To the general surprise, Ferdinand had unexpectedly handed over the government of Castile to his "most beloved children", promising to retire to Aragon. Philip and Ferdinand then signed theTreaty of Villafáfila secretly, agreeing that Joanna's "infirmities and sufferings" made her incapable of ruling and promising to exclude her from government and deprive the Queen of crown and freedom.
Ferdinand promptly repudiated the second agreement the same afternoon, declaring that Joanna should never be deprived of her rights as Queen Proprietress of Castile. A fortnight later, having come to no fresh agreement with Philip, and thus effectively retaining his right to interfere if he considered his daughter's rights to have been infringed upon, he abandoned Castile for Aragon, leaving Philip to govern in Joanna's stead.[12]: 139
Joanna the Mad Holding Vigil over the Coffin of Her Late Husband, Philip the Handsome. Juana la Loca de Pradilla byFrancisco Pradilla Ortiz, 1877.
By virtue of the agreement of Villafáfila, theprocurators of theCortes met inValladolid, Castile on 9 July 1506. On 12 July,[7]: 69–91 they swore allegiance to Philip I and Joanna together as King and Queen of Castile and León and to their son Charles as their heir-apparent.[10]: 135 This arrangement only lasted for a few months.
On 25 September 1506, Philip died after a five-day illness in the city ofBurgos in Castile. The probable cause of death wastyphoid fever[17] but there were rumors that his father-in-law, Ferdinand II, had poisoned him.[18] Joanna was pregnant with their sixth child, a daughter namedCatherine (1507–1578), who later became Queen of Portugal. As Joanna had no midwife at the time, she was assisted during childbirth by her lady-in-waiting,María de Ulloa.[19]
By 20 December 1506, Joanna was in the village of Torquemada in Castile, attempting to exercise her rights to rule alone in her own name as Queen of Castile. The country fell into disorder. Her son and heir-apparent Charles, later Charles I, was a six-year-old child being raised in his aunt's care in northern EuropeanFlanders; her father, Ferdinand II, remained in Aragon, allowing the crisis to grow.
A regency council underArchbishop Cisneros was set up, against the queen's orders, but it was unable to manage the growing public disorder; plague and famine devastated the kingdom with supposedly half the population perishing of one or the other. The queen was unable to secure the funds required to assist her to protect her power. In the face of this, Ferdinand II returned to Castile in July 1507. His arrival coincided with a remission of the plague and famine, a development which quieted the instability and left an impression that his return had restored the health of the kingdom.[12]: 139 [9]
Joanna and her husband with their Spanish subjects
Ferdinand II and Joanna met atHornillos, Castile, on 30 July 1507. Ferdinand then constrained her to yield her power over the Kingdom of Castile and León to himself. On 17 August 1507, three members of the royal council were summoned – supposedly in her name – and ordered to inform the grandees of her father Ferdinand II's return to power: "That they should go to receive his highness and serve him as they would her person and more." However, she made it evident that this was against her will, by refusing to sign the instructions and issuing a statement that as queen regnant she did not endorse the surrender of her own royal powers.
Nonetheless, she was thereafter queen in name only, and all documents, though issued in her name, were signed with Ferdinand's signature, "I the King". He was named administrator of the kingdom by theCortes of Castile in 1510, and entrusted the government mainly to Archbishop Cisneros. He had Joanna confined in the Royal Palace in Tordesillas, near Valladolid in Castile, in February 1509 after having dismissed all of her faithful servants and having appointed a small retinue accountable to him alone.[9] At this time, some accounts claim that she was insane or "mad", and that she took her husband's corpse with her to Tordesillas to keep it close to her.[12]: 139
As a result of the death of her father, Ferdinand II, on 23 January 1516, Joanna became Queen of Aragon. Cisneros and the regency council hid the news of her father's death from her, pretending he still lived and ruled. Her then-17-year-old son Charles arrived in Asturias at the Bay of Biscay in October 1517. Until his arrival, the Crown of Aragon was governed by ArchbishopAlonso de Aragón (an illegitimate son of Ferdinand) and her Crown of Castile was governed by Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros. On 4 November, Charles and his sisterEleanor met their mother Joanna at Tordesillas – there they secured from her the necessary authorisation to allow Charles to rule as her co-King of Castile and León and of Aragon. Despite her acquiescence to his wishes, her confinement would continue and Charles expanded the deceptions surrounding her, later hiding the 1519 death of EmperorMaximilian from her.[20] The CastilianCortes, meeting in Valladolid, spited Charles by addressing him only asSu Alteza ("Your Highness") and reservingMajestad ("Majesty") for Joanna.[10]: 144 However, no one seriously considered rule by Joanna a realistic proposition.[12]: 143–146
In 1519, Charles I ruled the Crown of Aragon and its territories and the Crown of Castile and its territories, in personal union. In addition, that same year Charles was electedHoly Roman Emperor. The kingdoms of Castile and Aragon (and Navarre) remained in personal union until their jurisdictional unification in the early 18th century by theNueva Planta decrees, while Charles eventually abdicated as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in favour of his brother Ferdinand, and as King of Spain in favour of his sonPhilip – an act that represented the "transition from a universal empire to defence of the interests of the 'Austrian family' (austriacismo), in other words, to a close alliance between two parts of the dynasty, aimed at guaranteeing thehegemony of Catholicism and of the dynasty within Europe".[21][22]
In 1520, theRevolt of the Comuneros broke out in response to the perceived foreign Habsburg influence over Castile through Charles V. The rebel leaders demanded that Castile be governed in accordance with the supposed practices of the Catholic Monarchs. In an attempt to legitimise their rebellion, the Comuneros turned to Joanna. As the sovereign monarch, had she given written approval to the rebellion, it would have been legalised and would have triumphed.
In an attempt to prevent this, DonAntonio de Rojas Manrique,Bishop of Mallorca, led a delegation of royal councillors to Tordesillas, asking Joanna to sign a document denouncing the Comuneros. She demurred, requesting that he present her specific provisions. Before this could be done, the Comuneros in turn stormed the virtually undefended city and requested her support.
The request promptedAdrian of Utrecht, the regent appointed by Charles V, to declare that Charles would lose Castile if she granted her support. Although she was sympathetic to the Comuneros, she was persuaded by Ochoa de Landa and her confessor FrayJohn of Ávila 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.[23] TheBattle of Villalar confirmed that Charles would prevail over the revolt.
Charles ensured his domination and throne by having his mother confined for the rest of her life in the now-demolished Royal Palace in Tordesillas, Castile.[24] Joanna's condition degenerated further. She apparently became convinced that some of the nuns that took care of her wanted to kill her. Reportedly it was difficult for her to eat, sleep, bathe, or change her clothes. Charles wrote to her caretakers: "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".[25]
Her late mother's lady-in-waiting,Catalina de Medrano y Bravo de Lagunas, along with her husband, Hernando de Sandoval y Rojas, took part in the custody and care of Joanna in Tordesillas.[26] Joanna also had her youngest daughter, Catherine of Austria, with her during Ferdinand II's time as regent, 1507–1516. Her older daughter, Eleanor of Austria, had created a semblance of a household within the palace rooms. In her final years, Joanna's physical state began to decline rapidly, with mobility ever more difficult.
The Capilla Real in Granada, where Joanna is entombed
Joanna died onGood Friday, 12 April 1555, at the age of 75 in the Royal Palace at Tordesillas.[9] She is entombed in theRoyal Chapel of Granada in Spain, alongside her parents, Isabella I and Ferdinand II, her husband Philip I and her nephew Miguel da Paz, Prince of Asturias.
As a young woman, Joanna was known to be highly intelligent. Claims regarding her as "mad" are widely disputed.[27] It was only after her marriage that the first suspicions of mental illness arose. Some historians believe she may have hadmelancholia, adepressive disorder, apsychosis, or a case of inheritedschizophrenia.[28]: 9 She may also have been unjustly painted as "mad" as her husband Philip the Handsome and her father, Ferdinand, had a great deal to gain from Joanna being declared sick or incompetent to rule.[29][30][31]
The narrative of her purported mental illness is perpetuated in stories of the mental illness of her maternal grandmother,Isabella of Portugal, Queen of Castile, who, in widowhood, was exiled by her stepson to the castle ofArévalo inÁvila, Castile.[28]: 12
Bethany Aram argues that while she seemed to be unable or unwilling to rule herself, Joanna's major (political) significance lay with her defense of the rights of her descendants and thus the Habsburg dynasty. While she did have affection for Philip, her refusal to bury her husband (and attempt to bring his corpse to Granada so that he would lie beside her mother) was likely an attempt to ward off suitors and create a connection between Charles and Castile. Facing the leaders of the Comunero Revolt, she again chose the Habsburg dynasty over her Castilian heritage. Her fecundity provided Charles with many Habsburg siblings (and by extensions, these siblings' children) who upheld his rule. Sara T. Nalle agrees with Aram that this was Joanna's major success, while pointing out that Aram seems to gloss over the fact that Joanna's contemporaries did see her as different. Nalle opines that overall, Joanna was a troubled individual who, not trained for the political world, found herself surrounded by strong personalities, and had to face a shocking amount of cruelty and deceit.[32][33]
^ [...] the most serene king of the Romans was keeping company with the queen his daughter-in-law, dressed in black velvet and with a fairly good complexion given the illness she has had. And it seemed to me, although it was night, that she was very beautiful, and she had the air of a wise and prudent lady. I made my reverence to her majesty in the name of your sublimity and spoke a few good words well adapted and appropriate to the time and place where we were and these were amiably reciprocated by her majesty."[13]
^abBethany Aram,Juana the Mad: Sovereignty and Dynasty in Renaissance Europe (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins UP, 2005), p. 37
^Bergenroth, G A, Introduction. Letters, Despatches, and State Papers to the Negotiations between England and Spain. Suppl. to vols 1 and 2. London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyerm 1868.https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_9q8MAQAAIAAJ
^Seaver, Henry Latimer (1966) [1928],The Great Revolt in Castile: A Study of the Comunero Movement of 1520–1521, New York: Octagon Books, p. 359
^"Palacio Real".Turismo de Tordesillas (in Spanish). Oficina de Turismo de Tordesillas. Archived fromthe original on 17 January 2020. Retrieved30 October 2018.
^Aram B (2008). "Queen Juana: Legend and History". In Gómez MA, Juan-Navarro S, Zatlin P (eds.).Juana of Castile: History and Myth of the Mad Queen. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press. pp. 33–46.
^abcMenéndez-Pidal De Navascués, Faustino (1999)El escudo; Menéndez Pidal y Navascués, Faustino; O'Donnell, Hugo; Lolo, Begoña.Símbolos de España. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales.ISBN84-259-1074-9
^[1] Image at Santa María la Real Church Facade, Aranda de Duero, Burgos (Spain)
.svg)
.svg)
![[1]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fcommons.wikimedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aSanta_Mar%25C3%25ADa_la_Real_-_Aranda_de_Duero_-_portada_g%25C3%25B3tica_20-07-07_1242.jpg){kind=link}