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Authors: Sarah Gristwood
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would prove something of a pre-emptive strike, explaining why Protestantism would never make any real incursion on the Spanish peninsula.
The impetus for change came from Isabella herself. She boasted that in her eagerness to root out other, heretical strands of faith: âI have caused great calamities and depopulated towns, lands, provinces and kingdomsâ. The human cost of her actions was high. A priest who observed the expulsion of Jews, whose families had lived in Spain for centuries, recorded the emigrants collapsing, giving birth, dying by the roadside âso that there was no Christian who was not sorry for themâ. Nevertheless, after her death, there were moves for Isabellaâs canonisation.
This was the spirit and the lesson that her daughters carried abroad, as they were married off to spread the influence of Isabella and Ferdinandâs dynasty. Margaret of Austria, as she arrived in Spain, had the chance to meet at least some of her new sisters-in-law. The eldest â named Isabella for the mother whose heir she was â had years earlier been married to the heir of the King of Portugal. Her young spouse was killed in a riding accident after they had been married a mere seven months, and after years of family pressure Isabella was persuaded in 1497 to marry Manuel, who had replaced her first husband as Portugalâs king. As Margaret of Austria arrived in the country, Isabella was departing, while Juana had already left for the Netherlands. 1
Margaret of Austria certainly met her youngest sister-in-law, who was preparing to eventually leave the Spanish court. The marriage of Katherine of Aragon to the English Prince Arthur was becoming ever more pressing. On July 1498, Spainâs ambassador in England wrote that:
The Queen and the mother of the King [Elizabeth of York and Margaret Beaufort] wish that the Princess of Wales [Katherine] should always speak French with the Princess Margaret [of Austria] who is now in Spain, in order to learn the language and to be able to converse in it when she comes to England. This is necessary, because these ladies do not understand Latin and much less, Spanish.
Margaret was warmly welcomed in Spain despite a certain clash of cultures. The seventeenth-century Jesuit author Pedro Abarca, in his Reyes de Aragon , wrote that although Margaret was allowed all her habitual servants, freedom and diversions, she was warned not to treat grandees âwith the familiarity and openness usual with the houses of Austria, Burgundy and France but with the gravity and measured dignity of the kings and realms of Spainâ.
Just months after his marriage to Margaret, in the autumn of 1497, the frail, over-solemn Juan died and Margaret (âso full of sorrowâ, as she described herself, âthat there was no room for any more griefsâ) lost the baby she was carrying. Her court poet Jean Lemaire, in Couronne Margaritique , later wrote that she endured a labour of twelve days and nights without food or sleep. 2
Margaret told her father that Queen Isabella never left her and that she would have died were it not for her mother-in-lawâs care. Ferdinand and Isabella wrote to Maximilian that Margaret was âas strong and full of courage as you would wish her to be and we try to console her . . . we have and will have as much care of her as we would have if her husband were aliveâ. A generous reaction, given that many contemporaries believed Juan had been killed by overindulgence in âthe pleasures of marriageâ with the hot-blooded Margaret.
Margaret of Austria now had no real role in Spain, any more than she had had in France after Charles VIII abandoned her. Again, however, Margaret stayed for a time in her new country, where she had found great popularity. Her departure was delayed while her father-in-law and her father haggled over her dowry, her future marriage possibilities, her best deployment in the ongoing tug-of-war
The impetus for change came from Isabella herself. She boasted that in her eagerness to root out other, heretical strands of faith: âI have caused great calamities and depopulated towns, lands, provinces and kingdomsâ. The human cost of her actions was high. A priest who observed the expulsion of Jews, whose families had lived in Spain for centuries, recorded the emigrants collapsing, giving birth, dying by the roadside âso that there was no Christian who was not sorry for themâ. Nevertheless, after her death, there were moves for Isabellaâs canonisation.
This was the spirit and the lesson that her daughters carried abroad, as they were married off to spread the influence of Isabella and Ferdinandâs dynasty. Margaret of Austria, as she arrived in Spain, had the chance to meet at least some of her new sisters-in-law. The eldest â named Isabella for the mother whose heir she was â had years earlier been married to the heir of the King of Portugal. Her young spouse was killed in a riding accident after they had been married a mere seven months, and after years of family pressure Isabella was persuaded in 1497 to marry Manuel, who had replaced her first husband as Portugalâs king. As Margaret of Austria arrived in the country, Isabella was departing, while Juana had already left for the Netherlands. 1
Margaret of Austria certainly met her youngest sister-in-law, who was preparing to eventually leave the Spanish court. The marriage of Katherine of Aragon to the English Prince Arthur was becoming ever more pressing. On July 1498, Spainâs ambassador in England wrote that:
The Queen and the mother of the King [Elizabeth of York and Margaret Beaufort] wish that the Princess of Wales [Katherine] should always speak French with the Princess Margaret [of Austria] who is now in Spain, in order to learn the language and to be able to converse in it when she comes to England. This is necessary, because these ladies do not understand Latin and much less, Spanish.
Margaret was warmly welcomed in Spain despite a certain clash of cultures. The seventeenth-century Jesuit author Pedro Abarca, in his Reyes de Aragon , wrote that although Margaret was allowed all her habitual servants, freedom and diversions, she was warned not to treat grandees âwith the familiarity and openness usual with the houses of Austria, Burgundy and France but with the gravity and measured dignity of the kings and realms of Spainâ.
Just months after his marriage to Margaret, in the autumn of 1497, the frail, over-solemn Juan died and Margaret (âso full of sorrowâ, as she described herself, âthat there was no room for any more griefsâ) lost the baby she was carrying. Her court poet Jean Lemaire, in Couronne Margaritique , later wrote that she endured a labour of twelve days and nights without food or sleep. 2
Margaret told her father that Queen Isabella never left her and that she would have died were it not for her mother-in-lawâs care. Ferdinand and Isabella wrote to Maximilian that Margaret was âas strong and full of courage as you would wish her to be and we try to console her . . . we have and will have as much care of her as we would have if her husband were aliveâ. A generous reaction, given that many contemporaries believed Juan had been killed by overindulgence in âthe pleasures of marriageâ with the hot-blooded Margaret.
Margaret of Austria now had no real role in Spain, any more than she had had in France after Charles VIII abandoned her. Again, however, Margaret stayed for a time in her new country, where she had found great popularity. Her departure was delayed while her father-in-law and her father haggled over her dowry, her future marriage possibilities, her best deployment in the ongoing tug-of-war
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