The Year of Isabella I of Castile – Catherine of Aragon, “A great delight” (Part one)

On 16 December 1485, Queen Isabella I of Castile gave birth to her final child – Catherine – at the Palace of Alcalá de Henares. At the time of her birth, she had four living siblings: Isabella, John, Joanna and Maria. Catherine was received with “great delight”, and a banquet was hosted in her honour.¹

Shortly after her birth, Catherine was baptised by the Bishop of Palencia, for which she wore a gown of white brocade trimmed with gold lace and lined with green velvet. She was assigned a maid, Elena de Carmona, who slept beside the cradle.² It is not clear if she immediately joined her parents when they travelled or if she remained behind.

The children were certainly all together in Córdoba in March 1487. Depending on their age, they had their lessons or played. When the plague arrived in Córdoba that October, the nursery was packed up and moved. As she grew up, Catherine studied Latin, history, law, scripture, hunting, sewing, embroidery, dancing, and music. She would later also pick up her mother’s habit of sewing her husband’s shirts.

Negotiations for Catherine’s marriage started as early as the spring of 1489 when a delegation of King Henry VII of England arrived, seeking a bride for Arthur, Prince of Wales. The delegation later reported, “It was beautiful to see how the queen held up her youngest daughter, the Infanta Dona Catherine [who was to be], Princess of Wales.”³ An alliance was made, although the date of her departure was not fixed. but it was meant to be “as soon as she had completed her twelfth year of her age.”⁴ The signing finally took place in September 1490.

All of Isabella and Ferdinand’s children were part of marital alliances. Catherine’s eldest sister, also named Isabella, was married in 1490 to Afonso, Prince of Portugal, but he tragically died in 1491. After much soul-searching and pressure from her parents, she remarried in 1497 to Manuel I, King of Portugal. Her brother John and sister Joanna were married in a double alliance to Margaret of Austria and her brother Philip in 1496 and 1497, respectively. Maria would later marry her sister’s widower, King Manuel.

Tragedies began piling up soon after the weddings. In August 1496, Joanna left Castile to be married to Philip, and the wedding took place on 20 October 1496. A few months after their wedding, Philip’s sister Margaret was sent to Castile to marry John. On 19 March 1497, Margaret and John were married, although they had to wait two weeks to consummate the marriage as it was Lent. They took to each other immediately, and physicians began to worry about the time the couple spent in bed together. Margaret wrote home to her father how happy she was and that her tears “were not out of sadness.”⁵ Prince John was “a prisoner to his love for the lady, our young prince is once more too pale.”⁶ Physicians advised to separate the two from time to time, but Isabella told them that it was not right for man to separate what God has joined.⁷ And so, John’s health declined at an alarming rate.

Meanwhile, Queen Isabella continued to negotiate with Manuel for him to accept Maria, but he still refused, wishing only for Isabella. Eventually, Isabella agreed to the match, though she asked for as little festivities as possible. She also requested that Manuel would expel all the Castilian conversos (those who had fled from Castile to Portugal due to the Inquisition), and he agreed. He also agreed to expel Jews and Muslims. As her second wedding approached, it became clear that John was very ill. Manuel kept the news from her so that she would not delay the wedding, and they were married on 30 September 1497.

On 29 September, Queen Isabella was informed that her son was dangerously ill, and King Ferdinand arrived just in time to say goodbye to his dying son. On 4 October 1497, John died at the age of 20 at the Bishop’s Palace in Salamanca. They had just learned of Margaret’s pregnancy.

Isabella devoted herself to looking after Margaret. She and Ferdinand wrote, “Our devotion to the princess only grows, as she tries hard and so sensibly, just as [the person] she is, and we will work to console her and to make her happy as if she had lost nothing. She is healthy with her pregnancy, thank God, and we that – by His mercy – the fruit that emerges from her will be consolation and repair for our woes. We care and will care for the princess just as if her husband were still alive, for we hold her in that place and love forever.” ⁸

After a pregnancy of seven months, Margaret went into premature labour. In April 1498, a stillborn daughter was born. One courtier bluntly wrote, “Instead of bearing the much-desired offspring, she offered us a dead child.”⁹ This left the younger Isabella as heir to the throne.

By the time Manuel and Isabella returned to Castile to be sworn in as heirs to Castile, she was pregnant. This was a relief for the Aragonese, who would have preferred a man to inherit. If Isabella had a son, he would inherit everything. While at Zaragoza to discuss this matter, Isabella went into labour and gave birth to a son on 23 August 1498.

Part two coming soon.

1. Catherine of Aragon by Amy Licence p.34
2. Catherine of Aragon by Amy Licence p.35
3. Catherine of Aragon by Amy Licence p.58
4. Catherine of Aragon by Amy Licence p.60
5. Margareta van Oostenrijk by Johan de Cock p.30
6. Isabella of Castile: Europe’s first great queen by Giles Tremlett p.399
7. Isabella of Castile: Europe’s first great queen by Giles Tremlett p.399
8. Isabella of Castile: Europe’s first great queen by Giles Tremlett p.403
9. Isabella of Castile: Europe’s first great queen by Giles Tremlett p.404