The Castilian version of her name was Juana. In English, she is usually known by the Latin form of her name, Joanna. English equivalents of the name include Jane and Joan.
Marrying the Duke of Burgundy
In 1496 at Lier, just north of Brussels, Joanna married the Archduke Philip the Handsome, son of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I and his first wife, Mary of Burgundy. Between 1498 and 1507 she gave birth to six children, two emperors and four queens. Arguably the most important one was Charles V in 1500.
The deaths of her brother John, Prince of Asturias, eldest sister Isabella of Asturias, Queen of Portugal, and then Isabella's infant son Miguel, Prince of Asturias, made Joanna the heiress of the Spanish kingdoms. Her remaining siblings were Maria of Aragon and Catherine of Aragon, three and six years younger than Joanna. In 1502, the Castilian Cortes of Toro [2][3] recognized Joanna as legitimate heiress to the Castilian throne, and Philip as her legitimate consort. She was named Princess of Asturias, the title traditionally given to the heir of Castile.[4] Also in 1502, the Aragonese Cortes gathered in Saragossa, alleged oath to Joanna as heiress, but the Archbishop of Saragossa expressed firmly that this oath could not establish jurisprudence, that is to say, without modifying the right of the succession, but by virtue of a formal agreement between the Cortes and the King.[5][6]
Joanna was said to pine day and night for her husband while he was overseas, and when she eventually joined Philip in Flanders, her passionate jealousy and constant suspicion of him made her notorious, if not necessarily beloved, in the local court. In 1503, Joanna and Philip traveled to Spain for Joanna's swearing-in as heir to Castile. Expecting her fourth child, Joanna despaired when Philip suddenly decided to return to his own kingdom. She refused to eat and wept continuously, and was not comforted by the birth of a healthy son. One night, she ran out of the castle, and refused to come back inside despite the freezing weather. After spending thirty-six hours by the castle gates screaming, she was known as "Juana la Loca" by her people.[7]
Queen of Castile
Struggle for the crown
Juana and her husband with their Spanish subjectsJoanna as the Duchess of Burgundy
Upon the death of her mother, Isabella of Castile, in November 1504, Joanna became Queen regnant of Castile, and her husband de jure uxoris King. Joanna's father, Ferdinand, lost his title of 'King of Castile', although his wife's will permitted him to govern in Joanna's absence, or, if Joanna was unwilling to rule herself, until Charles reached the age of 20. Ferdinand refused to accept this: he minted Castilian coins in the name of "Ferdinand and Joanna, King and Queen of Castile, Léon and Aragon", and in early 1505, persuaded the Cortes that Joanna's "illness...is such that the said Queen Doña Juana our Lady cannot govern"; the Cortes then appointed Ferdinand as Joanna's guardian, and administrator and governor of the kingdom. However, Philip the Handsome was unwilling to accept any threat to his own chances of ruling Castile, and this way, he also coined coins in name of "Philip and Joanna, King and Queen of Castile, Léon and Archdukes of Austria, etc".[8] In response, Ferdinand embarked upon a pro-French policy, marrying Germaine de Foix, niece of Louis XII of France (and his own great-niece), in the hope that she would produce a son to inherit Aragon, and perhaps Castile. [9]
Ferdinand's remarriage merely strengthened support for Philip and Joanna in Castile, and in late 1505, the pair decided to travel to Castile. Leaving Flanders on 10 January1506, their ships were wrecked on the English coast and the couple were guests of Henry VII at Windsor Castle. They were only able to leave on 21 April, by which time civil war was looming in Castile: Philip apparently considered landing in Andalusia and summoning the nobles to take up arms against Ferdinand. Instead, he and Joanna landed at Coruña on 26 April, upon which the Castilian nobility abandoned Ferdinand en masse. Ferdinand met Philip at Villafafila on 20 June 1506, and handed over the government of Castile to his "most beloved children", promising to retire to Aragon. Philip and Ferdinand then signed a second treaty, agreeing Joanna's mental instability made her incapable of ruling, and promising to exclude her from government. Ferdinand then proceeded to repudiate the agreement the same afternoon, declaring 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 be infringed, he abandoned Castile, leaving Philip to govern in Joanna's stead.[10]
Philip the Handsome and Joanna the Mad, ca 1500: details from the wings of the Last Judgement Triptych of Zierikzee, by the Master of Afflighem (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium)
Philip's death
By virtue of the agreement of Villafáfila, the procurators of the Cortes met in Valladolid on 9 July. On 12 July[11], they swore Philip and Juana together as kings, and their son Charles as their inheritor.
[12] This arrangement did not last long. On 25 September1506 Philip died suddenly of typhus fever in Burgos. Joanna, pregnant with her sixth child, then made attempts to secure her rights to rule alone, in her own name; however her arrogance and coldness made some of the important people in the realm resent her, which along with the rumours of her mental instability and the unwillingness of the men around her to accept her rights doomed the endeavour. By 20 December1506, she had quietly abandoned Burgos, heading for the village of Torquemada. By now, she was being characterised as "lost, without any sense", although among others her Secretary, Juan Lopez, declared her "more sane than her mother". She refused to trust Spanish women, even going so far as sending for a midwife from Flanders to assist in her delivery, and was characterised as refusing to abandon her dead husband's corpse. Meanwhile, the country fell into disorder. Her heir, Charles, was a six-year old child being raised in his aunt's care in far-off Flanders; her father, Ferdinand, remained in his own dominions, allowing the crisis to reach a head. A regency council under Archbishop 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; and the Queen was unable to secure the funds she required to shore up her power. In the face of this, Ferdinand returned to Castile in July 1507: a coincidental remission of the plague and famine quieted the instability, but left an impression that the health of the Kingdom had been restored by the return of Ferdinand.[13]
Father's regency
Ferdinand and Joanna met at Hornillos on 30 July 1507; Ferdinand then constrained her to yield up power to himself. On 17 August she summoned three members of the royal council and ordered them to inform the grandees, in her name, of Ferdinand's return: "That they should go to receive his highness and serve him as [they would] her person and more." She refused to sign the instructions: a last gesture of defiance, and a statement that she did not as Queen regnant endorse the surrender of her own royal power. Nonetheless, she was thereafter Queen only in name, and all documents, though issued in her name, were signed with Ferdinand's signature, "I the King". He would be named administrator of the kingdom by the Cortes of Castile in 1510, although he would entrust the government mainly to Cisneros. Joanna he would eventually confine in Tordesillas, near Valladolid, in February 1509, after having dismissed all of her faithful servants and appointing a small retinue faithful to him alone. [4] By this time, she would appear to have been almost completely mad: some accounts claim that she took her husband's corpse with her to Tordesillas, to keep it close to her.[10]
Ferdinand would die in 1516, an embittered man: his second wife, Germaine, had failed to provide him with a male heir, leaving his daughter as his heiress. Ferdinand resented that Aragon and - in theory on the death of Joanna, in reality upon his own death - Castile would pass to this foreign grandchild, to whom he had transferred his hatred of Philip; instead, he nurtured hopes that his younger grandson and namesake, Ferdinand, who had been born and raised in Spain, could succeed, even naming Ferdinand as his heir in his will before being persuaded to revoke it and name Charles as his heir instead. When he died, Aragon and its associated crowns passed to Joanna,[14] being governed in his absence by Ferdinand's bastard son, Alonso de Aragon. Castile, still nominally subject to Joanna, continued to be governed by Cisneros due to the Queen's continuing insanity, although a group of nobles, led by the Duke of Infantado, attempted to proclaim the Infante Ferdinand as King of Castile. The attempt failed, and in October 1517, Charles arrived in Asturias. On 4 November, he and his sister Eleanor met Joanna at Tordesillas – there they secured from her the necessary authorization to allow Charles to rule as her co-King in Castile. Despite her acquiescence to his wishes, her imprisonment would continue; although the Castilian Cortes, meeting in Valladolid, would spite Charles by addressing him only as Su Alteza ("Your Highness") and reserving Majestad ("Majesty") for Joanna[15], no-one seriously considered rule by Joanna a real proposition.[16]
In 1520, the Revolt of the Comuneros against Charles and perceived foreign influence over Castile broke out. The rebel leaders demanded that Castile be governed in accordance with the supposed practices of the Catholic Kings; in an attempt to legitimize their rebellion, the rebels turned to Joanna. As theoretical sovereign monarch, if she gave written approval of the rebellion, it would be legalized and would triumph. In an attempt to prevent this, Don Antonio de Rojas, Bishop of Mallorca, led a delegation of royal councilors to Tordesillas, asking her 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 city (which had been left practically undefended) and requested her support (prompting Adrian of Utrecht, the regent appointed by Charles, to declare that the emperor would lose Castile if she did so). Persuaded by Ochoa de Landa and her confessor, Fray Juan de Avila, she showed sympathy to the comuneros, but refused to sign: to do so, she was persuaded, would cause irreparable damage to her kingdom and to her son's rights. Charles repaid her loyalty to him when he quelled the uprising, having her locked up for the rest of her life in a windowless room in the castle of Tordesillas. There, her condition degenerated further. She was convinced that the ladies of the household were plotting to kill her, and by willful preference was hungry and dirty. Her courtiers reported consistent difficulty getting her to eat, sleep, or change her clothes.[17] She died on Good Friday, April 12, 1555 at age 75.[4]
Madness
Most historians believe she suffered from schizophrenia and she was kept locked away and imprisoned. However, there is debate about her condition considering her symptoms were only apparent when she was being controlled or confined. Some historians[who?] argue she suffered from either manic depression or clinical depression, worsened by her situation and the treatment she received from her husband and father, both of whom wanted her out of the way in order to assume rulership for themselves. To legitimize the claims of her father and son to the throne, Joanna only nominally remained Queen regnant of Castile until her death.
She is entombed in the Capilla Real of Granada, alongside her parents, her husband, and her nephew Miguel.
Joanna in literature, art, music, film and other media
F.Pradilla Ortiz: Juana la Loca Depicts Queen Joanna in vigil over her husband's coffin.
The figure of Queen Joanna attracted authors, composers, and artists of the romanticist movement, due to her characteristics of unrequited love, obsessive jealousy, and undying fidelity. Many later authors have followed this trend of portraying Joanna as a lovesick, and later griefstricken, woman, preferring to focus on her love for her husband than on her mental illness. An incomplete list of these works follows:
Felipe el Hermoso (1845) — Eusebio Asquerino and Gregorio Romero. A play in four acts.
El Pergamino de la Seducción (2005) — Gioconda Belli. Novel in Spanish.
The Last Queen (2007) — C.W. Gortner. Novel in English and Spanish
The Bugle (2007-) TimesOnline podcast with John Oliver (comedian) and Andy Zaltzman. Joanna has been a long-time recurring figure, mainly in the 'Hotties from History' competition, in which she was chosen by John Oliver as his all-time favorite nominee in episode 59.
Juan-Navarro, Santiago, Maria Gomez, and Phyllis Zatlin. Juana of Castile: History and Myth of the Mad Queen. Newark and London: Bucknell University Press, 2008.
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