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“By Your Loving Mother”: Lessons in Queenship from Catherine of Aragon to Her Daughter, Mary

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Mary I in Writing

Part of the book series: Queenship and Power ((QAP))

Abstract

In April 1534, Queen Catherine of Aragon wrote to her daughter Mary, then living apart from court after her father, King Henry VIII had divorced Catherine to marry Anne Boleyn. This letter, presumably a reply to a letter from Mary to Catherine, has been used to explore Catherine’s emotional state and questions of Mary’s legitimacy, but never as a lesson in statecraft. This is curious, because Catherine is advising the 18-year-old Mary on how best to navigate dangerous political dynamics. This short letter is an important political statement of queenship written at a key moment in English history. I argue that it is a maternal lesson such as that written by Catherine's contemporary, Anne de France for her daughter, and it encapsulates Catherine’s notions of queenship.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Timothy Elston, “Transformation or Continuity? Sixteenth-Century Education and the Legacy of Catherine of Aragon, Mary I and Juan Luis Vives,” in “High and Mighty Queens” of Early Modern England: Realities and Representations, ed. Carole Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney, and Debra Barrett-Graves (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 11–26.

  2. 2.

    Juan Luis Vives, The Education of a Christian Woman: A Sixteenth-Century Manual, ed. and trans. Charles Fantazzi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).

  3. 3.

    Aysha Pollnitz, Princely Education in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

  4. 4.

    Anna Dronzek, “Gendered Theories of Education in Fifteenth-Century Conduct Books,” Medieval Cultures 29 (2001): 135–159; Anne de France, Anne of France: Lessons for my Daughter, ed. and trans. Sharon L. Jansen (Rochester: Boydell and Brewer, 2004); and Tracy Adams, “Appearing Virtuous: Christine de Pizan’s Le livre des trois vertus and Anne de France’s Les Enseignements d’Anne de France,” in Virtue Ethics for Women 1250–1500, ed. Karen Green and Constant Mews (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), 115–131.

  5. 5.

    María Isabel del Val Valdivieso, “La educación en la corte de la Reina Católica,” Miscelánea Comillas: Revista de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, 69, no. 134 (2011), 255–273; Emma Cahill Marrón, “Serenissimae Anglie Reginae Erasmus Roterdami dono misit: Catalina de Aragón y la comisión de obras humanistas,” Titivillus: International Journal of Rare Book: Revista Internacional sobre Libro Antiguo (2015): 227–36; and Theresa Earenfight, “Regarding Catherine of Aragon,” in Scholars and Poets Talk about Queenship, ed. Carole Levin and Christine Stewart-Nuñez (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 137–157.

  6. 6.

    Aysha Pollnitz, “Christian Women or Sovereign Queens? The Schooling of Mary and Elizabeth,” in Tudor Queenship, ed. Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 127–142; Valerie Schutte, “‘To the Illustrious Queen’: Katherine of Aragon and Early Modern Book Dedications,” in Women during the English Reformations: Renegotiating Gender and Religious Identity, ed. Julie A. Chappell and Kaely A. Kramer (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 15–28; and Lorraine Attreed and Alexandra Winkler, “Faith and Forgiveness: Lessons in Statecraft from Queen Mary Tudor,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 36, no. 4 (2005), 971–89.

  7. 7.

    Garrett Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon (Boston: Little Brown, 1941), 230–231, 406–408.

  8. 8.

    Cahill Marrón, “Serenissimae Anglie Reginae,” 976.

  9. 9.

    Catherine’s tutors were Andrés Miranda, a Dominican at the monastery of Santo Domingo (Burgos), Beatriz Galindo (la Latina, “the Latinist”), and the brothers Antonio and Alessandro Geraldino. Val Valdivieso, “La educación en la corte,” 255–273.

  10. 10.

    Theresa Earenfight, “Two Bodies, One Spirit: Isabel and Fernando’s Construction of Monarchical Partnership,” in Questioning the Queen: Isabel I of Castile 500 Years Later, ed. Barbara Weissberger (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2008), 3–18; Elston, “Transformation or Continuity?,” 11–26.

  11. 11.

    Isabel continued to pay annuities to Alessandro Geraldino (“maestro de las ynfantes”) until her death in 1504. Antonio de la Torre and E. A. de la Torre, eds., Cuentas de Gonzalo Baeza, tesorero de Isabel la Católica, 2 vols. (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1955), vol. 2, 332–333; and Peggy Liss, Isabel the Queen: Life and Times, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 16–20.

  12. 12.

    Rafael Domínguez Casas, “Las Casas de las Reinas hispano-portuguesas de Juan II a los Reyes Católicos,” in Las relaciones discretas entre las Monarquías Hispana y Portuguesa: Las Casas de las Reinas (siglos XV–XIX), ed. José Martínez Millán and Maria Paula Marçal Lourenço (Madrid, Ediciones Polifemo 1, 2008, 233–274; Tess Knighton, “Isabel of Castile and Her Music Books: Franco-Flemish Song in Fifteenth-century Spain,” Queen Isabel I of Castile: Power, Patronage, Persona, ed. Barbara F. Weissberger (Woodbridge, Tamesis, 2008), 29–52.

  13. 13.

    Bethany Aram, Juana the Mad: Sovereignty and Dynasty in Renaissance Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 24–27; Liss, Isabel the Queen. 286.

  14. 14.

    Dronzek, “Gendered Theories of Education,” 135–159.

  15. 15.

    Elston, “Transformation or Continuity?” 11–26; Aram, Juana the Mad, 23; Núria Silleras Fernández, Chariots of Ladies: Francesc Eiximenis and the Court Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015).

  16. 16.

    Emily Francomano, ed. and trans., Three Spanish Querelle Texts: Grisel and Mirabella, The Slander against Women, and The Defense of Ladies against Slanderers (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 51.

  17. 17.

    Retha M. Warnicke, Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law: Fashioning Tudor Queenship, 1485–1547 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); and Michelle L. Beer, Queenship at the Renaissance Courts of Britain: Catherine of Aragon and Margaret Tudor, 1503–1533 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2018).

  18. 18.

    Charles Beem, The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History (New York: Palgrave, 2006), 25–62.

  19. 19.

    Barbara F. Weissberger, Isabel Rules: Constructing Queenship, Wielding Power (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 28–68.

  20. 20.

    Warnicke, Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law.            

  21. 21.

    Unknown artist, illumination of Thomas More, “Coronation Ode,” 1509. British Library, London, Cotton MS Titus D iv, fols. 2–14, image on fol. 12v.

  22. 22.

    Judith M. Richards, Mary Tudor (London: Routledge, 2008), 48.

  23. 23.

    Schutte, “‘To the Illustrious Queen,’” 24; Elston, “Transformation or Continuity?”.

  24. 24.

    Vives personally gave a copy of the De ratione studii puerilis to Catherine on a visit to Oxford. Elston, “Transformation or Contiuity?,” 11–26; and Pollnitz, Princely Education, 106–138.

  25. 25.

    David Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 31.

  26. 26.

    Cambridge University, Emmanuel College MSS 3.2.30, 1526. In 1526 a deluxe presentation copy of the manuscript with a handwritten dedication was given to Catherine. James P. Carley, The Books of King Henry VIII and his Wives (London: The British Library, 2005), 119.

  27. 27.

    Charles Beem, “Princess of Wales? Mary Tudor and the History of English Heirs to the Throne,” in Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte, eds, The Birth of a Queen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 13–30.

  28. 28.

    Richards, Mary Tudor, 31–44.

  29. 29.

    Calendar of State Papers, Spain, Volume 4, Part 1, Henry VIII, 1529–1530, ed. Pascual de Gayangos (London, 1879), 71.

  30. 30.

    Jeri McIntosh, “A Culture of Reverence: Princess Mary’s Household, 1525–27,” in Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, ed. Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock (New York: Palgrave, 2010), 113–126.

  31. 31.

    Transcription in Henry Ellis, ed., Original Letters, illustrative of English history, 11 vols. (London: Dawsons, 1969), letter 107, 19–20; original letter in London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian F, XIII, fol. 72.

  32. 32.

    Thanks to María Bullon-Fernández for their expertise Middle English. See Joseph M. Williams, “‘O! When Degree is Shak’d’: Sixteenth-Century Anticipations of Some Modern Attitudes Toward Usage,” in English in Its Social Contexts: Essays in Historical Sociolinguistics, ed. Tim William Machan and Charles T. Scott (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 90–94.

  33. 33.

    Foster Watson, ed. Vives and the Renascence Education of Women (New York: Longmans, Green, 1912), p.148.

  34. 34.

    There is lively scholarly debate about when Henry began his relationship with Anne. Retha Warnicke argues that began in the early 1520s, see The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). But her interpretation is challenged by G. W. Bernard, Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 19–36; and Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 85–91, who argue for a later date.

  35. 35.

    Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, 263–294.

  36. 36.

    Warnicke, Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law, 100; Loades, Mary Tudor, 72; Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, 363–65, 374–375.

  37. 37.

    Michelle L. Beer, “A Queenly Affinity? Catherine of Aragon’s Estates and Henry VIII’s Great Matter,” Historical Research 1, no. 253 (2018): 426–445.

  38. 38.

    25 H 8, c 22 in Statutes of the Realm, 11 vols. (London: Dawson’s, 1810–1828), vol. 3, 471–474.

  39. 39.

    Transcription in Gilbert Burnet, ed., The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, ed. Nicholas Pocock, 7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1865), vol. 5, 363–364; manuscript in British Library (London) Arundel MS 151, fol. 194.

  40. 40.

    Mattingly argues that it was sent in April 1534, after the Act of Supremacy, but Loades thinks it was sent much earlier, when her household was diminished. Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, 406–408; Loades, Mary Tudor, 77–79.

  41. 41.

    I am grateful to Talia Zajac for her advice on this passage.

  42. 42.

    Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, 11–22, 5–122.

  43. 43.

    Beer, “A Queenly Affinity?”, 426–445.

  44. 44.

    Isabel de Villena, Portraits of Holy Women: Selections from the Vita Chrisi, ed. Joan Cubert, trans. Robert D. Hughes (Barcelona: Barcino, 2013); Valerie Schutte, “Queen Mary I's Books at Lambeth Palace Library,” Journal of the Early Book Society 17 (2014), 348–351; and Carley, Books of King Henry VIII, 110.

  45. 45.

    Schutte, “‘To the Illustrious Queen,’” 24; Helen Matheson-Pollock, Joanne Paul, and Catherine Fletcher, “Introduction,” in Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe, ed. Matheson-Pollock, Paul, and Fletcher (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 1–14.

  46. 46.

    Attreed and Winkler, “Faith and Forgiveness,” 976–987; and Judith M. Richards, “‘To Promote a Woman to Beare Rule’: Talking of Queens in Mid-Tudor England,” Sixteenth-Century Journal 28 (1997): 101–121.

  47. 47.

    Beer, Queenship at the Renaissance Courts, 17, 20, 26, 60–69, 110, 149–153.

  48. 48.

    Adams, “Appearing Virtuous,” 115–131.

  49. 49.

    Attreed and Winkler, “Faith and Forgiveness,” 980–989.

  50. 50.

    Earenfight, “Two Bodies, One Spirit,” 3–18.

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Earenfight, T. (2022). “By Your Loving Mother”: Lessons in Queenship from Catherine of Aragon to Her Daughter, Mary. In: Schutte, V., Hower, J.S. (eds) Mary I in Writing. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95128-3_2

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