European societies during the period roughly between 1350 and 1650 did not generally encourage women to demonstrate power or autonomy. With some exceptions, most women could not own property, attend university, or defend their rights in court. The majority lived under the governance of their husbands, fathers, and, in the case of women who entered convents, the church. Further, all of Europe had political traditions that supported male leadership.
For a variety of reasons during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, a number of elite women were able to gain not only personal but also political power, usually through their positions as daughters, wives, or mothers. Such women occupied thrones throughout Europe, including countries with strong central governments such as England, France, Scotland, and Spain, as well as areas of more diversified government such as Italy. To gain and hold onto political power, many women had to take on roles uncharacteristic of most females of their time: giving orders to men, analyzing international relations, forging diplomatic alliances, and cultivating a strong public persona. Conversely, other roles they assumed were typically female, such as representing themselves as steadfast wives and promoting the status of their children. Three subheadings follow: Women and Monarchy; Conjugal Power; Maternal Power.
Women and Monarchy
A number of elite women held political power in their own right by virtue of their birth. In Spain, Isabella, queen of Castile (1451-1504), married her cousin Ferdinand, king of Aragon (1452-1516). She ruled Castile and Aragon together with Ferdinand in a relationship of mutual admiration and respect. Although Isabella chose to share her rule with her husband, she did not relinquish her power to him. Similarly, although they were known throughout their kingdom as joint monarchs and both their faces appeared on their coinage, Isabella did not allow her own identity to be subsumed by her consort’s. To this day, historians portray Isabella as a strong, pioneering monarch.
English queens Mary I and Elizabeth I, half sisters and the daughters of Henry VIII, each ruled their country as queens in their own right after the death of their younger half brother, EdwardVI. Mary I (Bloody Mary, 1516-1558), daughter of Catherine of Aragon, ruled from 1553 until her death. She chose not to rule alone, however, and formed an alliance with Spain by marrying Prince Philip (soon to be Philip II, king of Spain). Many of the hallmarks of her reign—her inability to bear an heir to the throne; her loss of the last English city on the continent; and her heartfelt but unsuccessful attempt to reunite English citizens with the Roman Catholic Church—were distressing to her. When Elizabeth I (1533-1603) took the throne, she did not marry, though she played with the idea of marriage and used courtship as a political tool for the first twenty years of her reign. Her rule endured for nearly half a century until her death in 1603, though she chose to govern alone. Although many of her subjects thought it unusual—even wrong—that a woman should rule without the support and aid of a husband, Elizabeth held firm. She insisted that she was “married” to England and that her “children” were her many subjects. Further, in the latter part of her reign, she developed an image of herself as theVirgin Queen, which became an important aspect of her public persona. Elizabeth’s reign was long and eventful, and even today she is regarded as one of England’s strongest monarchs.
But having the right or entitlement to political power did not guarantee that a woman would be able to retain or exercise that power. Elizabeth I’s cousin, Mary Stuart (queen of Scots, 1542—1587), daughter of James V and Mary of Guise, was raised at the French court from the time she was five years old. After the death of her young husband, Francis II, in 1562, Mary Stuart returned to Scotland to take her place as the country’s ruler because her mother, Scotland’s regent, had recently died. Although she was intelligent and charming, Mary eventually became the center of a number of scandalous events, not the least of which were accusations that she had conspired to kill her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darn-ley. Because of this and other allegations and because she had not been able to gain support from powerful figures at court and elsewhere in the realm, she was forced to abdicate her Scottish crown to her infant son. In 1569, Mary fled to England where she remained as Elizabeth’s enforced “guest,” never regaining her former power. In 1587, Mary was tried and found guilty of involvement in a plot to assassinate Elizabeth. With great reluctance, Queen Elizabeth signed her cousin Mary Stuart’s death warrant.
The Spanish Queen Juana of Castile (1479— 1555), daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile and heir to their crowns, struggled to keep her power under different circumstances. Those around her began, even before the death of her mother made her queen of Castile in her own right, to question her sanity. Indeed, she eventually acquired the sobriquet Juana la Loca (Mad Juana). Although scholars have debated the extent and nature of her mental instability, her political rivals—including her husband, father, and son—were able to use the queen’s supposed madness to their advantage. In 1509, her father Ferdinand had her declared incompetent and ordered her incarcerated in a remote castle in Tordesillas. Yet even in jail, she held power. In 1518, her son, Emperor Charles V, was obliged to visit her in prison to compel her to delegate to him the authority to rule. Juana returned to the throne for a brief interim in 1520 when the people of Castile rebelled against Charles’s absentee rule and set Juana free, but a year later she was locked up again when Charles’s army suppressed the revolt and retook Spain. Ultimately, Juana died imprisoned and alone, clearly insane yet ignored by those in power, including her son.
Conjugal Power
Some elite women were able to share power with their husbands. Depending on the specific situation, this could involve varying degrees of political power, both official and unofficial. Many such women became trusted advisors and friends to their husbands, such as the English queen Catherine of Aragon (1485—1536). She acted for a number of years as her husband HenryVIII’s friend, confidante, and political advisor. In addition to this private, unofficial role, Henry also granted Catherine some specific, official political jurisdiction; she ruled as governor of the realm in 1511 while Henry was away at war in France. Catherine lost whatever political authority she had when Henry divorced her, however, and married Anne Boleyn, whose power was brief.
In contrast, Caterina Sforza (1463—1509), daughter of the duke of Milan, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, first gained political power through her husband, but then continued to hold it herself. After her marriage in 1477 to Girolamo Ri-ario, who was commander in chief of the papal army, Sforza proved her courage when she put down a citizens’ revolt while her huband was away campaigning in Rome. After Riario’s
Death, she governed her kingdom alone. Her reign was not tranquil, however, but plagued by assassination attempts, a popular rebellion, the incarceration of her children who were held as hostages, and, after her husband’s death, invasion and occupation of her territories by the new papal captain, Cesare Borgia. Though she refused to surrender her lands to Borgia, even during the pope’s yearlong internment of her in the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, she finally gave up her rights to her property and spent the rest of her days in Florence working to gain political advantage for her children.
Maternal Power
Many elite women gained political authority through their relationships with their children. The majority of these women already had some political power, or at least potential for power, through their husband’s or their own birth. Although many were motivated by the desire to promote their children’s advancement, others also saw such situations, at least in part, as a way to gain power themselves. In the Italian signory of Mantua, Isabella d’Este (1474-1539) was able to exercise considerable power and control through not only her marriage but also her children. Wed in 1490 to Francesco Gonzaga, lord of Mantua, Isabella cultivated good relations with her subjects, ruled during her husband’s frequent absences, and helped to develop important alliances with surrounding powers. After Francesco’s death, Isabella’s eldest son, Federico II Gonzaga (1500-1540), was named first duke of Mantua, while her second son, Ercole (1505-1563), was elevated to the cardinalate by Pope Clement VII. In 1504, Isabella engineered the betrothal of her daughter, Eleonora (Leonora, 1494-1572), to the powerful duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria della Rovere.
In 1485, Margaret Beaufort acquired substantial political power by helping her son ascend the British throne as Henry VII and then by advising him once he was king. Although a previous act of parliament had declared that no one of Beaufort descent could take the throne,
Margaret was undeterred. She took advantage of her son’s position in a disputed succession and as his advisor gained the power she would otherwise have been denied.
France was perhaps the most difficult region for women to gain political power because of Salic Law, a legal tradition mandating that the crown could not be transferred to or through a woman. Thus, a deceased king’s daughter could never take the throne, even when there were no living sons. Even under this strict law, however, some women gained unofficial power. Catherine de Medicis (1519-1589) exercised considerable power as the mother of three kings of France. After the untimely deaths of her husband, Henry II (d. 1559), and her eldest son, Francis II (d. 1560), she became regent and advisor for her son, Charles IX. After his death in 1574 she helped secure the crown for her son, Henry III. In her role as regent, she was influential in the FrenchWars of Religion (1562-1598) and in the weakening of the conservative Catholic Guise family’s authority in France.
Thus, through diverse means, some elite women of the Renaissance were able not only to access political power but to use it to the advantage of their states and their subjects. Whether or not public opinion about women and power began to change at this time as the result of their example remains an open question.
Amy Gant and Carole Levin
See also Catherine de Medicis; Catherine of Aragon; Elizabeth I; Este, Isabella d’; Mary I; Mary Stuart; Sforza, Caterina.
Bibliography
Primary Work
Marcus, Leah, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth
Rose, eds. Elizabeth I: Collected Works. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Secondary Works
Bucholz, Robert, and Newton Key. Early Modern England, 1485-1714: A Narrative History. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004.
Levin, Carole. The Reign of Elizabeth. New York: Palgrave, 2002.
Levin, Carole, et al. Extraordinary Women of the Medieval and Renaissance World: A Biographical
Dictionary. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.
Liss, Peggy K. Isabel the Queen: Life and Times. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
World History
