For medieval Iberian queens, love was a dangerous sickness
In a newly published history of the region’s female monarchs, Ҵýƽ scholar shows the connections between love, grief and madness
Like many of their royal European counterparts of the time, the medieval queens of Spain and Portugal often married for politics, but rarely for love.
Instead, their marriages generally embodied the political intrigue facilitated by personal relationships in hereditary monarchical power structures. During a time of religious conflicts between Christian and Muslim kingdoms, as well as cultural and philosophical developments spurred by the rediscovery of Aristotle, their marriages were more political maneuvering than swooning.
And even when love was involved, it rarely ended well.
Núria Silleras-Fernández
In a newly published exploration of emotion and political power in the medieval Iberian Peninsula, which is composed largely of peninsular Spain and continental Portugal, University of Colorado Boulder scholar Núria Silleras-Fernández, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese, analyzes a time and place and the royal women who navigated the treacherous territory between heart and state.
In her book The Politics of Emotion: Love, Grief, and Madness in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia, Silleras-Fernández focuses broadly on these powerful emotions through the individual stories of three queens, whose stories in some ways presage the issues that women in politics still face today.
Somewhat confusingly for the reader, several were named Isabel, so Silleras-Fernández gives each woman a brief distinguishing title: Isabel of Portugal (1428–96), who was the grandmother of Isabel of Aragon (1470–98) and Juana of Castile (1479–1555).
A comparative study of the three women, whom historians had not previously put together, is informative not only because their lives tell us about the politics and culture of their society, but because—despite facing similar tragedies—Juana, Isabel of Aragon, and Isabel of Portugal’s lives took very different directions.
‘El amor es un gusano’
According to Silleras-Fernández, these three women “suffered from very intense grief following the death of their spouses.” Their grief was ultimately viewed as excessive, in part because of the cultural attitude towards love— expressed in the poem , Silleras-Fernández says. “She describes love as un gusano, a worm.
“In medieval times, passionate love was seen as a sort of affliction. When someone was really in love, it was seen as dangerous.”
This is not to say that love had no place in court culture; in fact, according to a historian whom Silleras-Fernández cites, it was fashionable for Spanish lords to pretend to be in love.
In The Politics of Emotion: Love, Grief, and Madness in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia, Ҵýƽ scholar Núria Silleras-Fernández notes that in medieval times, passionate love was seen as an affliction.
Nonetheless, authentic, passionate love was seen as a personal affliction, a spiritual danger and a political vulnerability. “Passionate love was even medicalized,” Silleras-Fernández says, and in a way, it “was seen as an affliction that was tied to melancholy,” with unrequited passions causing lovesickness.
When it came to medieval Christian culture in Spain, she explains, “there was something called the religion of love. For men, their lady was not merely the object of their desire, as in courtly love; she became more important to them than God.” This was understood as a form of idolatry and therefore a violation of the second of the 10 commandments from the Bible.
Moreover, Silleras-Fernández says, “royal marriages were arranged for political purposes, so it was common for women not to be in love with their husbands. The idea was that the couple would enjoy some sort of affection and collaborate in ruling the kingdom and producing heirs.”
To the extent that it interfered with remarriage, love was even an obstacle to the political maneuverings of the royalty. Ultimately, then, passionate love “was seen as dangerous, and it was not encouraged for royal partners.”
Conflict at court
Isabel of Portugal, who was born in Portugal but became Queen Consort of Castile and León through her marriage to King Juan II (as opposed to becoming a queen regnant in her own right by inheriting the throne), exemplified the dangers of “loving too much.”
According to Silleras-Fernández, the chronicles of her life suggest an unusually intense love for her husband. The conflict between her and Álvaro de Luna, the royal favorite and Constable, is an example of this.
Both Isabel and Álvaro exercised significant influence over Juan, Silleras-Fernández says: “Álvaro de Luna’s role as adviser put him in clear competition with the functions of the queen.” Isabel and her faction within the nobility and Juan’s entourage eventually won out, and she convinced the King to have Álvaro executed.
While overtly political, this situation may not seem at first to involve love. However, according to Silleras-Fernández, Álvaro wrote a letter to Juan’s advisors from prison, asking them to prevent the king from having too much sex, arguing it could compromise his health. This suggests the intimate nature of Álvaro’s interference with the king and queen’s relationship and demonstrates the importance of love to a queen consort’s political power.
Perhaps more illustratively, Isabel “felt such great pain at the death of her husband that she fell into a sickness so grave and long that she was never able to recover,” Silleras-Fernández writes, and lived the rest of her life without much political influence.
Mixing politics, religion and grief
Isabel of Aragon, one of Isabel of Portugal’s grandchildren, also suffered greatly after the death of her first husband. She became Princess of Portugal through her marriage to Crown Prince Afonso, and this marriage was, by all accounts, happy, Silleras-Fernández says—if brief.
"Infanta Isabel de Trastámara," artist unknown.
Unfortunately, Afonso died young, which caused national grief and inspired a series of consolatory texts by noted clergymen. Isabel of Aragon was “presented with works explaining that his death should be seen as an opportunity for her to become a better Christian, and that she needed to remember that it was important to love God above anyone else,” Silleras-Fernández explains.
Like her father-in-law, João II, Isabel received letters from important clergymen blaming the bereaved for the death of their loved ones, Silleras-Fernández explains. João was even accused of loving his son more than God, and informed that his son’s death was a form of retribution for this sin.
Despite Isabel’s continued mourning, she was a princess and therefore a political asset for the Catholic monarchs, most especially because she could secure a marriage alliance for them. Whether because she did not want to remarry, or because the religious messages in the consolatory letters had heightened her Catholic convictions, she requested, as a condition of her planned second marriage to Manuel I, that all the “heretics” be expelled from his kingdom, Portugal.
The exact meaning of “heretics” here is unclear, but according to Silleras-Fernández, “it probably meant that she wanted the expulsion of the Jews, the Muslims, and all the recent converts from Judaism to Christianity who had been prosecuted by the Inquisition.”
Regardless of Isabel’s motivations, it is clear that grief played a role. Hence, Silleras-Fernández says, grief and other emotions can have serious consequences when they interact with politics and religion, which were closely related in medieval and early modern times.
Juana the Mad
“Most people knew about Juana,” Silleras-Fernández says, “because she is famous as Juana the Mad.” Like Isabel of Aragon, she was a daughter of Isabel the Catholic, and she was the mother of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Like Isabel of Portugal, her grandmother, Juana was ultimately alienated from the political power she once possessed, Silleras-Fernández explains, spending the rest of her life put away.
“The difference between her grandmother and Juana’s eldest sister Isabel was that both of them were queen consorts, while Juana was queen in her own right, and she needed to rule.”
Perhaps the most extraordinary story of Juana’s grief—also incited by the unexpected death of her husband—was her insistence on personally accompanying the king’s remains to Granada, a trip of more than 400 miles, while she was in the third trimester of pregnancy. This trip was a perpetual funerary procession, taking more than two years and including religious services at every stop.
Juana is reported to have become ill along the way, and began to not change her clothes, as well as eat and sleep on the floor. After this, her father, King Fernando, sent her to a palace in Tordesillas where she was confined for the rest of her life.
"" by Lorenzo Vallés (1866)
When she finally returned from her husband’s burial, she was in a bad place emotionally and mentally, but her condition improved. “If you read the letters that the people who were living with her sent to her son, Charles V, it was obvious that she was feeling better.
“The problem was that, when you send someone away because you have decided that person cannot rule, you cannot easily reestablish that person as a viable ruler,” Silleras-Fernández continues. “Neither her father nor her son was interested in rehabilitating Juana because they were already doing Juana’s job.” They had taken over out of necessity while Juana was gone and did not want to give up power. For her family to continue ruling, she had to be put away.
According to Silleras-Fernández, what makes her situation different from those of Isabel of Portugal and Isabel the Catholic is that the Isabels had more freedom as queen consorts. Since they were not formal rulers, they were not seen as a threat to the status quo, but “because Juana had the potential to personally take charge of the kingdom, she was dangerous.”
‘Backwards and wearing high heels’
These three Iberian queens embody the lesson that, as a ruler, “one needed to be perceived as someone could control their emotions, because they served as a mirror for their subjects,” Silleras-Fernández says. “A ruler needed to be in control, and the ruler needed to demonstrate balance and stability—what Aristotle called the golden mean.”
It was particularly difficult for women to present themselves this way because, she says, “as in the eyes of Aristotle, women were seen as imperfect males. It was harder for them because they were asked to perform like men but were not valued like men. At the same time, of course, women had to adhere to the standards and preconceptions of the time regarding gender. It’s a little bit like the old saying that Ginger Rogers had to dance as well as Fred Astaire, but in her case, going backwards and wearing high heels.
“In many ways, this is a period that is very far from today’s reality, but you would be amazed how much of the dynamics and prejudices surrounding gender and emotion are similar and how— despite the fact that we live in an age of science—medicine and health are still socially and culturally constructed. I expect that with recent events, we will see all of these dynamics at play today in the USA over the course of the next four months.”
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