The Giants’ War (1519–1520)

Abstract

The previous chapter charted the growing unrest in the Spanish kingdoms after Fernando’s death. In this chapter, I show how the events of 1519–1520 kindled an already explosive situation. In June 1519, following the death of Maximilian I, Charles was elected to the imperial crown. He hurried back to Castile from Aragon in preparation for his coronation journey to Aachen, and, after summoning a Cortes to Galicia, left Spain in the grip of the comunero uprising, or war of the Comunidades. The giants’ war of the chapter title refers to the contemporary work by Alonso de Castrillo, comparing the uprising to the Gigantomachy of Greek myth. At its heart was the figure of the imprisoned queen. In August 1520, talks between the queen and local officials were followed by the entry into the town of the militias of Toledo, Madrid and Segovia. Juana’s meeting with the militia captains and subsequently with the procurators of what became known as the Cortes and General Junta took place in a euphoric atmosphere. This, however, quickly deteriorated, with the Junta refusing to grant Juana’s demands and the queen refusing to endorse their acts of government. I demonstrate how the Junta’s claim to represent royal legitimacy masked an impossible struggle between queen and comuneros, with Juana constantly re-asserting her right to govern by summoning the Royal Council, and the Junta refusing to accept the Council’s (and, by extension, the queen’s) authority. Despite the increasingly revolutionary nature of the Junta’s political vision, the enduring importance of the queen for the comuneros, and their belief that “the root and first cause” of Castile’s misfortunes was Juana’s ill health, are shown by their various attempts to ‘cure’ her, including by exorcism.

11.1 Tyrants and Traitors

After much argument and some violence, Charles was sworn-in as king, co-regnant with Juana, at the Corts of Zaragoza on 29 July 1518. He did not reach Barcelona until the new year. There he was told of Maximilian’s death, at Wels, in Austria, on 12 January. Maximilian had spent huge sums persuading the seven imperial electors to accept Charles as his imperial heir, but had died with the issue still open.

Although essentially Burgundian, Charles had German blood and his Hausmacht, together with Margaret’s tireless work, gave him a head start over his main rival, François I. The deciding factor, however, was his Spanish ‘coronation’ and the money and metals it brought him, of which no reminder was more spectacular than the gold and silver fruits of the ‘Indias’ displayed (to Dürer’s admiration) during the electoral period. Charles spent colossally and his main creditor, merchant and financier, Jacob Fugger, was paid with Castilan funds, including tax income from Spain’s extensive territories, and control of its silver and mercury mines. In 1525, the Fuggers were granted the income from the Spanish military orders for three years.

Charles was elected at Frankfurt am Main on 28 June 1519. He cut short his stay in Aragon, suspended the Corts of Valencia and returned, via a smouldering Castile, to prepare his coronation journey to Aachen, city of Charlemagne. Inevitably, his election changed his relationship with Spain. Henceforth, he was to be addressed as ‘Sacred Catholic Caesarean Majesty,’ not, according to Spanish tradition, as ‘your Highness.’ From September 1519, his imperial title preceded Juana’s on government documents. The reference to Juana was sandwiched uncomfortably between repeated references to himself:

“Don Carlos por la graçia de Dios Rey de Romanos, Emperador semper augusto, doña Juana su madre y el mismo don Carlos por la divina clemençia reyes de Castilla, de Aragón, de las dos Seçilias, de Iherusalén …”, and so on.

The imposition on Castile of an alien and plundering government of Flemings, Burgundians and Germans had been Juana’s main political concern in 1506. Now blatant examples of malpractice again fuelled resentment. The settlement of Castilian income on German bankers and Charles’ acquiescence in granting Cisneros’ mighty see to a young kinsman of Chièvres cut to the quick of Castilian sensitivities. An ironic rhyme about the increasing rarity of the high-value gold ducados de a dos, minted during the dual monarchy, captured popular concern about the draining away of wealth. The Spaniard who finds the precious coin in his hand lifts his bonnet in greeting, with the words:

Salveos Dios ducado de a dos,

Que monsieur de Xevres no topó con vos. ¹

Eager to combine further funds with a swift departure, Charles snubbed tradition by summoning a Cortes to Galicia. Conflict broke out in Toledo, whose procurators, instructed to oppose demands for a new emergency tax (servicio), hesitated to depart. Charles summoned three of the city’s most militant regidores, including militia captain Juan de Padilla, to Galicia. But crowds blocked their path. Men disguised and with lanterns went by night around the houses of political leaders, “persuading them to liberty.” ² A furious crowd besieged the alcázar, symbol of royal authority and the corregidor fled two days later.

Salamanca’s procurators were expelled from the Cortes for refusing to swear allegiance to Charles unless he met their demands. Meanwhile, rebellion spread to Segovia. On 29 May, Hernán López Melón, a police functionary who antagonised critics of the absent corregidor, was lynched and strung up on an improvised gallows. A colleague called Portal met the same fate. So, later, did one of Segovia’s procurators, Rodrigo de Tordesillas, who braved an enraged crowd on his return from Galicia. The record of his deliberations at the Cortes was torn from his hand and a noose thrown around his neck. Despite desperate interventions on his behalf, he was strangled and hung upside down beside the others.

Throughout Castile, events followed a similar pattern. On 10 June, the procurators of Burgos fled; their houses were razed and the fortress, symbol of royal authority, was occupied. Garci Jofré de Cotannes, a royal purveyor of French origin to whom Charles had controversially granted tenancy of the fortress of Lara, was beheaded, hung upside down and his house set alight. Guadalajara’s fortress was attacked and, although the procurators escaped, their properties were gutted and decontaminated with salt. The effigies of Zamora’s absent procurators were dragged through the streets and burned in the plaza. These ferocious acts were also rituals, imitating the customary practices of the ruling elite. To seize a fortress was to proclaim its occupants traitors. Upside-down hangings and the burning and salting of houses were recognised punishments for treason. On 1 June, the poet and royal physician, Francisco López de Villalobos, wrote from Valladolid that the “republic of Spain” had been turned topsy-turvy, with defendants sentencing judges and lords serving their vassals. Even the most ruinous villages gave themselves airs. ³

This was the background against which Charles set sail, leaving Adrian to the thankless task of damage-limitation. Persisting unease about Charles’ seizure of the crown combined with his bobito image and insatiable retinue to light a long fuse that, as we have seen, had been laid years before, winding from Toro through Tórtoles to Tordesillas. Clearly, many different social and economic factors contributed to the explosive situation in 1520. Unease with foreign rule and fear of heavy fiscal measures were but the catalysts for an uprising that Fernández-Armesto is among other historians to describe, inter alia, as the consequence of years of accumulating resentments, including “the unfulfilled rebelliousness of two generations of declining civic autonomy.” ⁴

The imprisoned Juana—whether as individual, symbol or embodiment of a dream—was at the heart of this agitation, which began to assume revolutionary proportions. In Galicia, the procurators again demanded that her household be placed “in the order that her royal person and the honour of these kingdoms require.” ⁵ Humanist cleric Juan Maldonado noted that, in Toledo, Padilla was declaring that Charles reigned unjustly as long as Juana lived, and again, that everyone aimed “a que reinase la democracia mientras la reina Juana viviese.” The inhabitants of Zamora “ran in arms, appealing to queen and people.” ⁶ Fearing that a successful appeal to Juana would encourage the cities to defend their demands in blood, Adrian sought to divide and rule by offering protection to those willing to declare their loyalty to Charles. ⁷

Preachers linked Juana directly with the events that became known as the war of the Comunidades. In May, a priest proclaimed Charles a tyrant and usurper, born not of Juana, but a slave; Juana’s rightful heir was Ferdinand. ⁸ In July, a friar from Valladolid was gaoled for preaching that Charles had bought an empire his heirs must not inherit. ⁹ In September, the influential Dominican, Alonso de Medina, declared in Valladolid that Juana was issuing orders in the interests of the realm. ¹⁰ Enthusiastic in Juana’s support, he was later blacklisted as “one of the principle traitors and subversives of the whole kingdom,” along with bishops Acuña and Villaescusa and a host of clergy and “bad monks throughout the kingdom.” ¹¹

Mounting agitation was often expressed in terms of wounded honour—that keyword of the emotional and political vocabulary of the time. Demands from successive Cortes had linked it with the restoration of the queen’s household, and the libelles diffamatoires mentioned by Vital also referred to it. But ‘community,’ ‘commune,’ comunidad—the ‘open councils’ of ‘good men’ and taxpayers (pecheros)—was the word on everyone’s lips. These councils had flourished, if unevenly, in areas under crown control before being gradually replaced by a more restrictive, authoritarian system of urban regimiento under the dual monarchy. But by 1519–1520, the crushed seeds of comunidad began to blossom again as city, town and village councils, cathedral chapters and communities of friars formed around specific political demands and goals. In the spring of 1520, the word appeared in a manifesto from Franciscan, Augustinian and Dominican friars at Salamanca. This, widely disseminated, contained two main demands, fiscal and political, and a warning: there must be no fresh servicio. If Castilian resources were squandered for Charles’ personal, dynastic and imperial purposes, the comunidades would take matters into their own hands. ¹²

The comunero movement was diverse and, as the character known as the ‘Toledan’ points out in Maldonado’s contemporary book about the uprising, involved all classes. It attracted “Old Christians” alongside conversos and moriscos ; lords as well as peasants and artisans; bishops and mendicant monks. The involvement of women from all social ranks was remarkable. Its nature remains controversial. Nineteenth-century supporters of a liberal constitution saw it as the embryonic expression of patriotic nationalism and liberty, stifled by Habsburg despotism. For others it was an essentially rear-guard response by traditionalists with vested feudal interests. Pérez places it within a panoramic context of conflicting social and economic forces. Elliott, while remarking on its positive elements, sees it as a largely confused and often negative revolt. Maravall emphasises its strikingly progressive political objectives: a detailed written constitution and the formation of a group of institutions designed to protect the public interest against imperialism. ¹³

Certainly, the existence in comunero ranks of numerous traditionalists does not infer lack of radicalism. Revolutionary movements look back, as well as forward, to reclaim lost or disappearing rights and privileges, real or imagined, both as a means of expressing what might otherwise be almost impossible to express, and of driving forward fresh agendas for political, economic and social change. Comunero leaders, drawn from the patrician elites of Castile’s heartland—as well as similar leaders of the Germanías of Aragon—looked to forms of medieval communitarian self-government as antitheses of absolutism and to the golden myth of Italy’s communes. ¹⁴ In general, the uprising stemmed from a movement in which a strong sense of the historic memory, however recreated, was used to propose a strengthening and reshaping of a broken contractual relationship—that contrato callado, drawn to Charles’ attention in 1518, between rulers and res publica. Although the movement was suppressed before it could flower into full-blooded revolution, it was unquestionably powered by a revolutionary energy that drove demands for specific reform into subversive, wide-ranging projects, affecting the whole nature of government and monarchy. In this sense, it can be seen as a precursor of the English, American and French revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Despite the growth in comunero demands to limit the monarchy’s power, the movement cannot be called anti-monarchist as such; nor was it anti-imperialist in principle. That is to say, it opposed Castile’s submergence in the Holy Roman Empire rather than the process of Hispanic expansionism already underway during the dual monarchy. It became increasingly anti-aristocratic, despite the active involvement of some members of the nobility and the initial neutrality of various magnates, unhappy with Charles. During this period a number of behetrías, targeted by predatory lords and caught in their crossfire, sought royal status and protection. Such was the case of Becerril de Campos, caught between the Manriques and Velascos. In 1507, Juana had confirmed her parents’ decision to bring Becerril under crown protection. Now the town again found itself up against the Velascos. ¹⁵ There were armed uprisings in Madrigal, Arévalo, Olmedo and elsewhere. The early modern chronicler of Segovia, Diego de Colmenares, refers to the particular hatred inspired by the Moyas, “sons of the Bobadilla,” and seen as tyrants who had extended their territory by force and intimidation. ¹⁶

Against the advice of some fellow councillors, Antonio de Rojas, archbishop of Granada and hardline Council president, urged Adrian to exact severe reprisals against the perpetrators of the lynchings in Segovia; otherwise the “carders of Segovia and bonnet-makers of Toledo” would think they could act with impunity. ¹⁷ As judge Ronquillo (who, in 1507, had been sent against Acuña) bore down on Segovia, its militia, under Juan Bravo, formerly a captain of Cisneros’ failed Gente de Ordenanza, joined with the militias of Toledo and Madrid, led by Padilla and Juan Zapata, to block his path.

On 8 June, Toledo outlined five objectives: annulment of the servicio voted at La Coruña; re-introduction of the encabezamiento, under which taxes were paid per head of population; restriction of public posts and ecclesiastical benefices to Castilians; prohibition on the export of currency; and designation of a Castilian to head the government in Charles’ absence. Subsequently, Toledo appealed to sister cities to gather in Ávila, couching its call to arms in loftier terms. This was an attempt to renew the initiative taken in June 1517 by Burgos, Valladolid, León and Zamora, and build on the precedent set by Cisneros in 1506. But Toledo’s appeal was more radical yet, seeking to distance the monarchy and common good from a tyrannical, even demonic, Royal Council and repudiating outright the Council’s participation in the Junta. Toledo’s leaders declared they were not the slaves of Chièvres but the subjects of the king. They were not mutineers but “otros Brutos de Roma” and saviours of the patria. They were not traitors but would live on as immortals. They might lose everything. But in danger was safety, in theft wealth, in exile glory, in defeat victory and in persecution a crown. ¹⁸

On 29 July, in Ávila’s cathedral sacristy, representatives from Toledo, Segovia, Salamanca, Toro and Zamora gathered around a table, on which they placed the gospels and a cross, and swore to defend and reform Castile in God’s name. “From henceforth,” writes Sandoval, “the members of the Comunidad called those of the Council tyrants, and the members of the Council called those of the Comunidad traitors.” ¹⁹ Pedro Laso de la Vega, Toledo’s honey-tongued regidor, and Alonso de Pliego, dean of Ávila, presided over the assembly, soon to be termed the Junta General or Holy Junta.

Adrian and Rojas hoped that, with only a handful of cities responding to Toledo’s call, a hard response to Segovia might stamp the uprising out. But the treasury had been drained by Charles’ insatiable demand for funds and military forces had to guard the ever-sensitive borders of Navarre from French depredations. The artillery was stored at La Mota of Medina del Campo and would be hard to extract. Adrian finally ordered Charles’ captain general, Antonio de Fonseca, to move on Medina. Fonseca’s troops, reinforced by Ronquillo’s, reached the city on 21 August. The corregidor welcomed them, but the city in general did not. A parley achieved nothing. Fonseca’s adjutants decided that to reach the artillery they would need to cause a distraction. It was a fateful decision. A fire deliberately lighted in the street of San Francisco, where the merchants stored their wares between the international May and October fairs, consumed the whole town. Few have described it more passionately than Pedro de Ayala, comunero count of Salvatierra, who, in language characteristic of the contemporary rhetoric, told the Junta that: “neither Mohammed nor his hosts of Moorish dogs, nor pagan Nero nor accursed Herod committed such cruelties against their enemies … as these … against their fellow Christians …”. ²⁰ Maldonado describes women abandoning their children to the flames amid lugubrious howls and ululations as they urged their menfolk to protect the artillery. The fire raced toward the convent of San Francisco, which it devoured, together with houses, workplaces and merchants’ stores. The sacred host was snatched from the blaze and placed in a tree hollow in the convent orchard, where it became a focus for prayer and imprecation. Fonseca fled to Portugal and from there to the Low Countries, where Ronquillo joined him.

The conflagration, from which Medina del Campo would never fully recover, set Castile alight. In Valladolid, there were sackings and burnings and a community was established under Juan, infante of Granada, descendant of its last Nasrid kings, who sent three procurators to Ávila. One after another, and as far as Extremadura, Murcia and Andalucia, new communities sprang up. The balance of power swerved toward the Junta. Militia captains Padilla, Bravo and Zapata arrived at Medina on 24 August and, from the smoking ruins, looked northward across the plain to the rocky outcrop of Tordesillas. With the new community established there, and with the Junta, they discussed Juana’s liberation. If they could convince her of the rightness of their cause, then victory, surely, would be theirs.

11.2 The Appeal to Juana I

Calderón de la Barca’s philosophical play, La vida es sueño, written over a century later, describes a conflict between the forces of predestination and free will. Fearing the prophecy that his son and heir, Segismundo, will become a tyrant, the king of Poland imprisons him in a tower. When Segismundo is momentarily released, the gaoler kneels before him, pleading that he has acted purely in his interests. Later, Segismundo is returned to captivity as unfit to govern and his reflections give rise to the play’s most famous lines, in which he concludes that dreams are life and life a dream. But the people refuse to accept the alternative: foreign rule. As tumult spreads, a group of militiamen visit Segismundo to beg him to claim his inheritance. Instead, the prince imprisons his liberators as traitors, and offers allegiance to the father against whom he had earlier sought vengeance. The king confirms Segismundo’s succession and dynastic values are upheld. Whether Calderón had Juana and the comuneros in mind when he wrote his masterpiece, striking parallels between Segismundo’s situation and the queen’s in 1520 cannot have escaped him.

Opinions with respect to Juana’s role in the uprising diverge widely. Prawdin believes the struggle between comunero leaders and Castile’s governors to win over the queen was of greater transcendence than any battle waged outside Tordesillas. Pérez states that Juana’s confused obstinacy saved Charles, while “the comuneros who desired most ardently to confer power upon her had to renounce their wish. Is that not the best proof of the queen’s incapacity?” Haliczer sees a “convalescent” queen, “eager to play a part in the kingdom’s affairs once again,” and whose refusal to sign comunero documents showed a recovery of sanity. For Zalama, she was “a person incapacitated to govern the fate of a kingdom, even though her own.” Aram stresses Juana’s “apparent support for the imperialist cause.” Espinosa sees Juana as sympathetic to comunero grievances, without questioning her madness. ²¹ Given such diversity of views, it is important to look attentively through the window opened into the palace of Tordesillas in 1520.

This was an increasingly surreal world, in which a caged queen struggled to make sense of exchanges with her captor. She knew that Denia withheld information vital to her interests but her repeated attempts to draw him out or break him down proved fruitless. When she demanded to go to Valladolid, he told her she could not do so without Fernando’s permission. When she asked for funds so that she could carry out her regal duty to grant favours, Denia told Charles: “I am of the opinion that no money should be given to her … Everyone here must know that he has to serve her Highness but the rewards are to be received from your Majesty …”. ²²

Denia’s responses filled the queen with anguish. Why continue denying that Fernando was dead when the matter affected her so crucially? Why, if Charles was going to the Low Countries, could the infante not return? What of Eleanor? And how could the grandees go abroad without seeking her permission? Though she added: “It’s such a long time since they were here it’s no wonder they go without my leave.” She wanted to summon them. Denia insisted she had first to obtain permission from Fernando or Charles. ²³

Adrian and Rojas meanwhile knew that a royal order signed by Juana and sanctioning reprisals against Segovia would deal a heavy blow to the comuneros. Though surely aware that this amounted to accepting Juana’s ability to govern, they probably thought it a risk worth taking in the belief that, with a return to normality, the royal initiative would be forgotten. Once Rojas met Juana, in August 1520, Fernando’s death could no longer be concealed. Juana welcomed the deputation. But the sudden, formal revelation of what she had long suspected shook her to the core. Like Segismundo she felt she was dreaming:

she complained, saying that for fifteen years she had been lied to and her person not treated as it should have been. And turning to the Marquis of Denia, who was present, she said: ‘Foremost of the liars is the marquis.’

The marquis knelt and, with tears in his eyes, said: ‘It is true, señora, that I lied to you; but I did it to prevent you succumbing to your passions, but I must confirm that the king your father is dead and I buried him.’

She answered: ‘Bishop, believe me, all I see and am told is like a dream.’

The president replied: ‘Señora, in your hands, after God’s, lies the remedy for these kingdoms, and Your Highness would perform a greater miracle in signing [these papers] than St Francis.’ ²⁴

The captive queen showed how closely she clung to Isabel’s world. When Rojas asked if he and his delegation could sit, she ordered: “Not chairs, benches, as in the time of the Queen my lady, and give the Bishop a chair.” Rojas begged her to sign the measures. She prevaricated. The next day, she presided a six-hour meeting but remained wary, insisting that, on so serious a matter, the whole Council should come to a decision before she approved it. ²⁵ Juana may have wished to prolong and savour this opening to the outside world. But on 23 August, before Rojas could return, the inhabitants of Tordesillas rose, clamouring to “see their Queen.” Denia could not prevent a meeting between Juana and local officials, who offered her an utterly different version of events. Unsure what to believe, Juana asked her treasurer to send for Villaescusa and royal councillors Polanco, Aguirre and Zapata. ²⁶ Both Martire and the author of the “Relación de las Comunidades” mention that these talks took place. Martire states that nothing much came of them, but peace-making initiatives were almost certainly discussed with Juana and may well have influenced Villaescusa’s subsequent attempts to bring opposing sides together. ²⁷

News came of an uprising in Jaén, supported in the first instance by Rodrigo de Mexía, the procurator who had met the admiral on the road to Mucientes in the summer of 1506, and had helped defend Juana at the Cortes of Valladolid; “and what is worse,” reported Adrian, “they are appealing in everything to the Queen’s authority …”. Yet, he added, they could hardly be called rebels while claiming to obey her. ²⁸ The militias of Toledo, Segovia and Madrid marched to Tordesillas, entering the town on 29 August. Padilla told Toledo that:

Her highness went to one of the corridors that overlook the plaza between the palaces and the river and ordered the whole army to pass before her, and her Highness stayed watching for two hours, looking at all the infantry and cavalry … and as I passed with these general captains of Segovia and Madrid before her Highness, and made the reverence due to her Majesty, her Highness ordered us to come up [to her apartments]. And not content with that, she summoned us with a gesture of the hand, although we could not hear her words over the great hubbub of people … ²⁹

Elliott describes Padilla as “disgruntled and embittered,” slighted in the distribution of favours, goaded on by an ambitious wife. ³⁰ This was also the (predictable) view of Charles’ supporters. Yet Padilla’s charisma is evident and his father-in-law, count of Tendilla and governor of the Alhambra, describes his conversation as “so sweet that we all adore him.” ³¹

Padilla, who would have remembered Juana from the tumultuous summer of 1506, surely introduced himself in words not dissimilar from those imagined by a poet of the comuneros:

Señora, Juan de Padilla,

que os presenta sus respetos,

es hijo de Pedro López

quien os salvo del encierro

hace ya catorce años,

exponiéndose a ser muerto … ³²

Padilla realised how little the queen knew of “all the deceptions that had been practiced on her until now …”. She had, he writes, received them “with increíble alegría” and he begged her to “visit and console the cities” and govern. His lengthy conversation with her filled him with emotion: “as regards all that her Highness said I have never heard anything better or more considered.” Juana also spoke to Bravo and Zapata, then to “all our captains and their people.” Padilla was struck by her regal memory for people and places: to each she “said something in particular, and spoke so well that there was no one without tears in his eyes.” Juana’s ladies looked “the most glad and delighted in the world, all saying aloud … that they need no longer be deceived or imprisoned.” ³³ She met the captains again for two hours on 1 September, together with the corregidor and others.

When she refused to sign the order approving the Junta’s transfer to Tordesillas, notaries recorded her words: “Let them come here, I want that,” and again, “Yes, let them come.” This was interpreted as an order to the Holy Junta to gather at the palace as the Cortes and General Junta of Tordesillas. ³⁴ At an inquiry into the Denias’ treatment of Juana, members of her household testified that she had been forcefully held “as if not in her right mind, but she is of sound mind and as prudent as at the outset of her marriage,” and as willing and ready to govern as Isabel. ³⁵ The inquiry ended with the Denias’ expulsion from the town on 20 September.

On 24 September, procurators from fourteen Cortes cities gathered at Tordesillas in an atmosphere of public euphoria. ³⁶ “The people,” writes Sandoval, “thought it a miracle that the Queen, after so many years of imprisonment, so far removed from government affairs that she was seen by almost no one, should sally forth at this moment of such need, with such lucidity and clarity of judgment, to govern these realms …”. ³⁷ Beside Juana were Catalina, Fray Ávila and some ladies. She faced over fifty officials, procurators and regidores, ranging from deans and noble knights to chandlers and drapers. In extraordinary circumstances, attempts were made to follow traditional procedure. Pedro Laso spoke at length, declaring that Toledo, first and principal city of Castile, had risen in her service and the kingdom’s, and entreating her to take confidence and govern.

Dr. Alonso de Zúñiga, a cleric and law professor from Salamanca, seems to have particularly impressed the queen. Holy zeal and divine inspiration had, he said, inspired the procurators to visit their lawful sovereign. The foreigners who had entered Castile after Fernando’s death—“foreigners whom your highness knows better than anyone”—had left her subjects almost penniless and their native queen a captive. Now her subjects “humbly beseech your highness to take courage, to rule and govern and command your kingdoms, for there is no one in the world to forbid or impede you. As the most mighty queen and lady in the world, you can command in everything, and should not forsake all your kingdoms and subjects, who are ready to die for you and in your service. On this point I appeal to the royal conscience of your highness.”

Juana, who was standing, with Zúniga at her feet, was visibly moved. “Stand up,” she interjected at one point, “so I can hear you better.” She turned to her attendants: “Bring me a cushion because I want to sit and listen to him properly.” Zúniga resumed his speech—again falling to his knees—and the queen looked “very pleased” with it. His appeal to her to inaugurate her personal rule elicited a response that the Junta’s secretaries, Juan de Mirueña and Antonio Rodríguez, describe as “long and very detailed” and which they summarised and signed. ³⁸ This is the only known record of a speech by Juana, unless one includes Querini’s bullet-point summary of her dealings with the procurators at Mucientes in 1506.

Despite Juana’s bitter criticisms of Fernando, made privately to Ferrer, Juana upheld the royal and dynastic practice of defending family members in public, and praised Fernando, as Isabel was wont to do, at her own expense. ³⁹

After God took to himself the Queen my lady I always obeyed and respected the King my lord and father, for he was my father and husband of the Queen my lady and for as long as he lived I had no concerns regarding him because no-one would have dared act wrongly and when I was told that God had taken him I was very sorry and should have preferred not to know and that he was alive and I there [in his place], for his life was more necessary than mine, but since I needed to know of [his death] I would have wished to know it sooner in order to remedy everything that it was in my power to do …

Yet she had never really understood Fernando’s treatment of her, and wondered if Germaine (“la mujer”) had played a part:

I love all the people very much and am deeply sorry for any injuries and wrongs they have suffered, but I have always had bad company. I have been fed falsehoods and lies and been deceived with double-dealing. I always wanted to be in a position where I could occupy myself with the affairs that concerned me, but since the King my lord put me here – whether because of the woman who took the place of the Queen my lady, or for other considerations that [only] his highness would know I could do nothing more.

She rebuked the procurators, whether or not wittingly deflecting onto them the phrase about desire and ability that had so often been used to disqualify her from government:

By the time that I heard of the influx of foreigners they were already here, and it much aggrieved me and I was under the impression that they had come here to protect my children’s interests. But that was not the case, and I am greatly surprised that you have not avenged such ill-doing for had you wished to do so you should have been able to do so (quyen quyera lo pudieran hazer)…

Juana then returned to her own faults, raising the possibility that fear of possible repercussions on her children had played a part in her hesitations about seizing the initiative:

If I have not take the initiative in this it is because I was afraid that, here or there [in the Low Countries], they might harm my children and even now, although I am assured they have gone, I can hardly believe it; and [you should] try to see whether any are still here, although I cannot believe that harm will come to them, for I am the second or third proprietary queen and mistress and the fact that I am the daughter of a King and Queen should alone have sufficed to ensure that I was not ill-treated. And I am very pleased with you for taking it upon yourselves to remedy such wrongs and if you fail to do so it will be on your consciences …

She promised to involve herself in “these matters” as much as she could, whether in Tordesillas or elsewhere. She warned that she would also “need time to comfort my heart and console myself for the death of the king,” by whom she presumably meant Fernando, whose death had just been confirmed to her, and asked them to choose “four of the wisest among you” to confer with her whenever necessary. When Fray Ávila attempted a clarification—“Your highness will hear them once a week”—she repeated: “I shall speak with them as often as necessary.” ⁴⁰

From this and Padilla’s euphoric letter—an extremely rare example of juanista (if also comunero) propaganda—the emerging picture is of a cautious but sympathetic monarch, who welcomes the comuneros as assistants in a reform process she will encourage as best she can. According to the author of the Relación de las Comunidades , the comuneros used Padilla’s letter as a template on which to found their “diabolic and disloyal attempt to tyrannise the kingdom.” ⁴¹ Some have queried whether Juana’s speech was truly hers. However, its general tone and register; the personal detail; the simplicity; the occasional tone of bewilderment, naiveté and confusion; the fact that, here and there, words seem only half-heard, give it the ring of authenticity. Had the speech been fabricated, it would probably have conformed more exactly to a coherent political text.

11.3 Juana I and the Junta of Tordesillas

Juana’s speech contained an implicit hint that her swings of mood might not allow her to be consistently or regularly involved in the process of political reform but that she would do what she could and what she thought right. Yet, from the outset, she found herself facing dissension in comunero ranks—dissension stemming as much from internal differences of view about the queen’s status as from her failure to sign Junta documents.

The eight letters drafted by the community of Jaén after joining the Junta reflect the confusion about whom to address. One was addressed to Juana; others to her chaplain; the archdeacon of Jaén; the Junta; the procurators of Toledo and Valladolid; and Villaescusa. A seventh, to Charles, lamented that he could not hear in person the grievances of Andalucia, while the eighth asked Adrian (as well as Juana) to approve the procurators’ nominations. ⁴² Many early comunero letters and documents, like Toledo’s patriotic appeal to sister cities, and the Capítulos de los que ordenaban de pedir los de la Junta—probably drawn up at the time of the Junta of Ávila and before the appeal to Juana was made—refer to, or address, only Charles. In any case, the Capítulos were not exactly written with Juana’s approval in mind, given that they begin by demanding an end of the right of women to succeed to the throne. ⁴³ On 23 September, before Juana’s meeting with the procurators, Adrian reported that the Junta was deliberating whether orders should be issued only in Juana’s name. ⁴⁴ On 24 September, Zúñiga addressed Juana as “the most powerful Queen and mistress of the world” and referred to Charles as “prince.” But only a day later, he was involved in the drafting of a document that referred to Charles as “king,” and, although Juana never publicly rejected Charles’ claim on the title, it is unlikely that this was her doing. In whose name, then, were acts of government to be issued? Leaders in Toledo, Salamanca, Madrid and Segovia led a majority urging the exclusive use of Juana’s name. But Valladolid asked a commission of jurists to clarify, inter alia, whether Juana’s authority sufficed. On 8 October, the Burgos city élite, traditionally pro-Flemish, argued that Charles, though absent, had the right to appoint whomever he wished.

Although the Junta sought to legitimate itself through the queen, it was not she who sanctioned the changes to her household (see Chapter Sect. 12.3) or the decision of 11 October to replace Padilla as captain general with Pedro Girón, son of the count of Ureña. Nor did she give Padilla, whom she liked, licence to withdraw from her side. ⁴⁵ It is likely that she became rapidly aware that decisions were being taken behind her back, and that her strongest advocates were Charles’ most vehement adversaries. But, despite the private rebukes she had formerly made to those who referred, in her presence, to Charles as king, he remained her heir and she defended him publicly from the charge of usurpation. One anti-comunero source has her declare that: “no one turns me against my son, and everything I have is his.” ⁴⁶ According to another, she justified Charles’ action from precedent: “in the states of Flanders there is a land called Friesia and the lord of Flanders is called king of Friesia.” When her interlocutors testily objected that Charles was calling himself king of Castile, not Friesia, she replied that: “when the proprietary queens of the kingdom became widows their eldest sons always called themselves kings of Castile.” She cited Urraca’s son, Alfonso, and Berenguela’s son, Fernando. ⁴⁷

This reads as though she had studied the arguments made by the Royal Council in 1516 after Charles had overridden its initial objections. This is, of course, highly improbable. While Juana may have had some knowledge of Castilian history, and the apparent uncertainty arising from her speech as to whether she was “second or third proprietary queen” may have related to understandable confusion over the circumstances in which, in 1217, Berenguela had conferred the kingship on her son as soon as she herself was declared sovereign, we cannot be sure that Juana used these precedents to justify Charles’ conduct. What is clear is that she had no wish to abandon her royal prerogatives and continued to see the Royal Council as the backbone of government. Since she wanted the Junta to work in partnership with the royal councillors, she attached importance to her right to summon them and, if she thought necessary, dismiss some and appoint others, as she had done or tried to do in 1507. In other words, she attached important to her right to govern. But the Junta accused the Council, under the intemperate presidency of Rojas, of driving the repression of just demands, and even of outright malevolence. ⁴⁸ Many nobles broadly agreed. Rojas wanted only to “slash and burn,” Velasco wrote. Enríquez claimed the Council had “destroyed the kingdom.” ⁴⁹

Juana’s engagement with the Junta was complicated by the fact that, while she seemed amenable to discussion of reform, a radical shift in events took place only a day after the opening of the Cortes, with the order to dissolve the Royal Council. The queen insisted that only she had that power. The Junta thought otherwise. On 30 September, it sent a delegation to Valladolid to arrest those councillors who had not already fled. On 20 October, the Junta, now known as Cortes and Junta General, drew up a plan envisaging a Cortes with authority drawn directly from the cities (although only those same eighteen cities that traditionally had votes in the Cortes). After urging that Charles return to Spain and marry and, again, that the queen’s royal household be restored, the Proyecto de Ley Perpetua, or Capítulos de Tordesillas , proposed that the cities assemble every three years, or as often as desired, without the need for royal sanction or the royal presence. The cities (or those, at least with votes in the Cortes) would determine taxation and act as a check and balance on government activity. The law envisaged, inter alia, the introduction of justice reforms, with an automatic appeal mechanism in cases of sentences of death or mutilation. Cities, towns and communities would themselves decide whether to accept corregidores and all awards grants or mercedes made by Charles, Philip and Fernando since the reign of Isabel would be revoked. ⁵⁰ The revocation of Philip’s mercedes was, it will be remembered, the cornerstone on which Juana had tried to form her government in 1506–1507. In short, the Proyecto envisaged a real structural shift in Castile’s political fabric, with legitimacy passing from the monarchy to the Cortes as ultimate body of authority and voice of the kingdom.

The revolutionary tenor of such proposals alarmed peripheral communities like Burgos, which withdrew from the Junta. A contemporary work by Trinitarian friar Alonso de Castrillo reflects a movement divided against itself. His Tractado de República, published at Burgos early in 1521, shares general grievances and expresses a belief in the undesirability of perpetual or dynastic governance, whether royal or not. But it compares the uprising to the doomed Gigantomachy of Greek myth. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the rebel giants “gathered themselves together in concert and maintaining that there was no reason for the supremacy exercised by the heavens over the earth sought to storm the former, intending to precipitate Zeus from his throne and the minor gods from their houses.” Piling mountains together, raising them to the stars, they were eventually crushed beneath the weight of their own hubris. ⁵¹

Sensing the serious implications for royal authority of comunero actions, Juana clung to a defence of the status quo (ante)—the Castile of the Catholic Kings as she had known it. A secret report attributed to Fray Francisco de León, and enclosed with a covering letter of 13 November from Adrian to Charles, shows Juana reading, or having read to her, the acts she was being asked to sign and arguing over them at length:

her Highness, seated on her estrado, was talking with them a long time, as they read out their provisions before bringing them to her to sign, and after they had read everything, she told them that before she could sign them the provisions must be signed on the back by the members of the Council, and [only] afterwards could her Highness sign them, and that was why she had to communicate with the [royal] councillors, and her Highness said she had sent for them and they would soon arrive, and she said this because her Highness had secretly ordered a servant of hers to go in search of them, but he never went. ⁵²

Juana tried to defend the reputations of the royal councillors and of Adrian and Iñigo Fernández de Velasco, who had succeeded his brother as constable. She pointed out that the councillors:

dated from the time of the Catholic king. They could not be bad, or at least there must be some who were good, and that was why she wanted to speak and communicate with them, because they were experienced people and knew the form of good government from the time of the Catholic kings, and if there were some who were bad, her highness [not the Junta] would order their punishment.

The procurators objected that there was no need for the Council; she had legal experts at Tordesillas who knew how to govern. That, Juana insisted, was for her to judge. Repeatedly the procurators returned to the fray. At the same time, she faced pressure from some household members to withhold her signature. Adrian told Charles that, had she not been warned of the difficulties that might follow, she would have signed the Junta’s documents long ago, adding in cipher, “[and] all the kingdoms would have mutinied.” ⁵³

León’s account shows that, seasoned by an interminable series of conflicts and arguments throughout her reign, Juana fielded pleas and demands with caution, skill and subterfuge, and repeated attempts at dialogue as well as with an insistence on the pre-eminence of her royal authority. But, while the Junta agreed to talk to councillors as individuals, it objected to Juana’s attempt to summon the entire Royal Council, as she had asked Rojas to do before the Junta’s arrival, so that she herself could discuss matters with councillors and decide, as in 1506–1507, who to keep or discard and what to do next.

Thus, if a first distinction should be drawn between Juana’s defence of Charles and her belief in her own right to govern, a second should be drawn between the comuneros’ wish to exploit her authority and grant her real power. There is no indication that Juana was being offered the genuine freedom of manoeuvre that Pérez imagines or that Prawdin envisages when referring to the comuneros’ offer of “Freiheit, Reich und Krone.” ⁵⁴ Had they capitulated to Juana’s desire to recall familiar advisers, royal councillors and grandees they would have run the risk of surrendering everything so far gained. Had Juana, on the other hand, awarded the Junta procurators the charismatic weapon of her signature, she would have risked becoming the cipher of forces beyond her control.

The Junta’s claim to represent royal legitimacy masked an impossible struggle between queen and comuneros that continued through the late summer and autumn. ⁵⁵ Some believed that the queen’s failure to support them by signing their acts of government could only be explained in terms of demonic possession. If Castile was to be saved, heavenly forces had to be called upon to help the Junta rescue the queen from herself.

11.4 Juana I and the Body Politic

Juana’s mental health had been a key component of successive power struggles within the wider crisis of legitimacy and the opening lines of the Junta’s Provisión , addressed to Valladolid on 26 September, place the question at centre stage: “It is well known to everyone that the root and first cause of all the evils and injuries suffered by these kingdoms has been the lack of health of the queen our lady …” [my emphasis]. The Provisión declares a threefold remedy by “humane” means. Following the Denias’ expulsion from Tordesillas, all the “most distinguished and excellent” doctors in the realm would be invited to advise the Junta and priests would be asked to hold “solemn and devout processions” throughout Castile to pray for Juana’s health. ⁵⁶

For years, the queen’s mental health had been plotted upon a gendered graph of female obedience. Every sign of improvement or deterioration was judged in terms of the degree of cooperation, obedience and respect she showed to father, husband and son. Thus, in December 1506, Conchillos had referred to Juana’s decision to depart for Granada as an act of insanity that would bring ruin on her kingdom. In August 1507, by contrast, her alleged capitulation to Fernando at Tórtoles was interpreted as a sign of health and intelligence. In 1520, many comuneros saw the transgressions of the body politic reflected in Juana’s years of ill treatment and consequent indisposition.

In her biography of Juana, Aram adapts the idea of the king’s two bodies to the notion of a divergence between Juana’s “personal and institutional selves” that sanctioned the rule of others in her name. But, as shown above, Juana herself fought to retain the right to exercise royal power, while the concept of the ‘mystical body’—the notion that Juana formed a single inextricable link with her kingdom and, indeed, embodied it—seems particularly appropriate to the situation in 1520.

The idea of the ‘mystical body’ was rooted in classical Greek literature and early Church exegesis, notably in the writings of Paul. Adaptations of the corporal metaphor abound in medieval writings, including the Siete Partidas, where kings, as God’s deputies, are compared to the head that animates the limbs of the body politic. When the ‘farsa’ of Ávila of 1465 tore royal attributes from an effigy of Enrique IV, González de Mendoza declared that: “every kingdom is held to be a natural body, and we regard the king as its head, and the rest of the kingdom as its members. And if the head, because of some inability (ynabilidad) is sick, it would seem better counsel to apply those medicines which reason suggests than to remove the head, which nature forbids.” ⁵⁷ The king’s ‘illness’ or ‘inability’ not only contributed to, but reflected, the illness and division of the kingdom, just as the wound or mysterious lethargy of the Fisher King of the Grail legends, reflected the wasting of the land. Early in her reign, Isabel had lived the corporal metaphor in her own person, galloping alone to the admiral’s fortress of Simancas to secure the punishment of his son (the current admiral). Believing that an act of serious disobedience had affected the health of the body politic, Isabel then went to bed, declaring: “My body suffers from the blows that Don Fadrique delivered yesterday against my guarantee.” His punishment (imprisonment, followed by a period of exile in Sicily) brought Isabel’s recovery. ⁵⁸

The Provisión follows immediately after the declaration, on 25 September, of a “perpetual union and brotherhood” of confederated cities and towns, according to which, if one town or city were attacked, the rest must come to its defence with arms. ⁵⁹ The notion that the towns and cities of Castile formed an organic whole—an idea notably discussed in Sánchez de Arévalo’s fifteenth-century work, Suma de la Política—is vividly encapsulated by a letter of 24 August 1520 from the community of Segovia to Medina del Campo, immediately after Medina’s devastation: “Let our Lord God be witness that, as the houses of that town [Medina] were set alight, so our own entrails burned … But, señores, be assured that, as Medina perished for Segovia, so the memory of Segovia will either perish or Segovia will avenge Medina …”. ⁶⁰ In a later letter to Burgos, on the verge of breakaway, the Junta recalled the views of Athenian statesman and legal reformer Heredotus Solon, hero of ancient Greek democracy: “Solon said that the city or the kingdom was a body, and thus that when one member of the body hurts, so do all.” ⁶¹

The declaration of an alliance of cities, together with the contents of the Proyecto de Ley Perpetua, appear to see the Junta as the commonwealth’s embodiment, effectively replacing Juana or Charles in that role. On the other hand, the Provisión, in identifying the evils and injuries suffered by Castile with Juana’s ill-health, draws a sympathetic equation between the burning entrails of Castile’s communities as they wept for the destruction of Medina del Campo and the queen’s melancholic distress. It remained, nonetheless, at a loss to know how best to cure and treat her. On 30 August, Martire characteristically declared that affairs of state meant as much to Juana as the “birth of new stars.” ⁶² On 6 November, English prelate and diplomat Cuthbert Turnstall wrote to cardinal Wolsey about rumours of comunero disillusionment: “the queen of Spain … hath not such use of reason as they had [been told], so that by her they might have colored an[d] supported their said rebellion as they intend[ed], now begin to repent of their folly.” ⁶³

A more complex picture emerges from Tordesillas itself. It had long been known that Juana responded well to external stimulation and she had been “much seen and visited, especially by one of those letrados they [the Junta] had here, to the extent that every day and every hour they wanted to talk to her Highness …”. ⁶⁴ On 19 September, Portuguese ambassador João Rodrigues reported that it was the “greatest novelty” to “see what the Queen does.” She was listening to many and her responses were “not altogether beside the point.” Her rooms were clean and well appointed; she had ordered new clothes and headgear. ⁶⁵ She had become accessible, wrote a Venetian agent, “and they say she is in good form.” ⁶⁶ On 8 October, Adrian reported (from Valladolid) that Juana had never been in so poor a state, surrounded by plates of cold and rotting food. Yet on 13 November, he observed that “on many matters her Highness speaks very sensibly …”. On 16 November, he reported that she was wearing fine clothes and dressing Catalina well, so that the infanta could accompany her to Santa Clara. ⁶⁷ Two days earlier, the Junta wrote to the Merindades, encouraging visits to Tordesillas, where Juana’s health had much improved. Venetian secretary Geronimo Dedo reported rumours from Naples that Juana had written to the viceroy and city that she wanted to govern (“lei vuol essere Raina”) and was allowing the cities control over municipal government and revenues. She had been asked to visit Valencia. ⁶⁸

The variation and chronology of these reports demonstrate the essentially intermittent nature of Juana’s ‘illness’ or ‘illnesses.’ She functioned at times effectively, at others not. It is also possible that Juana used ‘illness’ strategically, as various female descendants would do. Adrian, who did not know her in person, took her incurability for granted; yet his letters, and Fray León’s report, suggest that, when unable to control matters or exert authority, Juana used ‘tiredness’ and ‘illness,’ as well as the weapon of her signature, in a tactical sense, adapting the wits evident in her tussles with Denia to a drawn-out strategy of evasion, alternately raising and dashing hopes.

A commission of three—Toledan deputy Pedro de Ayala; a canon of León, Juan de Benavente, and Fernán Diáñez de Morales, dean of Soria—was set up in October to investigate the queen’s health. It decided to call on a renowned Aragonese exorcist. He and his team duly arrived, but concluded that Juana was not possessed, and that “for what she was suffering there was no remedy.” ⁶⁹ This perplexed Junta members, who persisted to the end in their belief that a cured queen would endorse their actions and that her restoration to health was essential to the welfare of the body politic. As the admiral later put it, when the cities lost her they felt it “to the depths of their soul.” ⁷⁰

Notes

• 1. ‘God bless, ducado de a dos/for escaping the clutches of M. de Chièvres.’

• 2. BL, Ms. Egerton 309, ‘Relación,’ f. 35v.

• 3. Villalobos (SBE, ed. 1886), XIII, 7 June 1520.

• 4. Fernández-Armesto (Carr, ed. 2000), 131.

• 5. Sandoval, (ed. 1955–1956), 216.

• 6. Maldonado (Fernández Vargas, ed. 1975), 71, 109, 148.

• 7. AGS, Estado 8, f. 113 [deciphered fragment]. Also in Danvila (ed. 1897–1900), I, 444–445, as part of a letter of 28 July 1520 from Adrian to Charles.

• 8. Danvila, IV, Adrian to Charles, 23 May 1521.

• 9. Danvila, I, Adrian to Charles, 24 July 1520.

• 10. Danvila, II, Adrian to Charles, 1 November 1520.

• 11. AGS, Estado 8, f. 171, “Memorial de los malos asi eclesiásticos y Religiosos como cavalleros y letrados y otras personas” [undated]. The list is headed by Acuña (‘el peor de todo el Reino’), followed by Villaescusa (‘no tan malo, pecó por liviandad’).

• 12. Pérez (2001), ‘Carta de los frailes de Salamanca.’

• 13. Pérez (1999), Elliott (1990) and Maravall (1963).

• 14. Danvila, 1, 30 June 1520.

• 15. Gutiérrez Nieto (1973).

• 16. Colmenares (Baeza González, ed. 1970), 196; see also Gutiérrez Nieto.

• 17. Santa Cruz (Laiglesia y Auser, ed. 1920), 1, 239.

• 18. Ferrer del Rio (2007), ‘Carta de Toledo a las demás Ciudades, invitandandolas a reunir en Junta’ (1520), 326–327.

• 19. Colmenares; Sandoval, LXXX, 271.

• 20. Danvila, II, Salvatierra to the Junta and others, 22 September 1520.

• 21. Prawdin (1938), Pérez (1999), Haliczer (1981), Zalama (2010), Aram (2005) and Espinosa (2009).

• 22. AGS, Estado 5, f. 287, [May?], 1520; CSP (Queen Juana), Bergenroth, ed. 49.

• 23. AGS, Estado 5, f. 288, [May?], 1520; CSP (Queen Juana), 50.

• 24. Sandoval, 271–272.

• 25. Ibidem.

• 26. AGS, PR 3, f. 20, “Cartas de Alonso Martyn de Balboa para el Obispo de Cuenca y los licenciados Zapata, Polanco y Aguirre,” 23 August 1520; Danvila, I, “Testimonio de la entrevista que el teniente corregidor, Alonso Saravia … tuvo con la Reina Doña Juana el 23 de agosto de 1520,” 467–469.

• 27. Martire (López de Toro, ed. 1953–1957) 12, 684. For Villabrágima, see Chapter 12.

• 28. Danvila, II, 4 September 1520.

• 29. BL, Egerton 390, ‘Relación,’ ff. 59v.–60.

• 30. Elliott (1990), 150.

• 31. Fink de Backer (Nader, ed. 2004), 71–92.

• 32. López Alvárez (1977), 34.

• 33. BL, Ms. Egerton 309, ‘Relacíon,’ ff. 59v.–61, Padilla to Toledo, 1 September 1520.

• 34. ‘y vengan aquí que yo huelgo dello’; ‘sí, vengan’. AGS, PR, CC 4, f. 73, 1 September 1520.

• 35. Danvila, II [undated; September 1520]; AGS, PR 2-1, f. 18, Adrian to Charles, 4 September 1520; AGS, PR 2-1, f. 20, to Charles, 14 September 1520.

• 36. There was no representation from the south. As Maldonado observes, this did not imply a lack of comunero agitation, but it had been stifled ‘ya con promesas, ya con el terror …’ (112).

• 37. Sandoval, 279.

• 38. AGS, PR 4, f. 75, ‘De lo que pasó con la Reina nuestra señora,’ 24 September 1520; CSP (Queen Juana), 61. See also Sandoval, 276–279. For Dr. Zúñiga, see Möller (Szaszdi León-Borja/Galende Ruiz, eds. 2015), 499–524.

• 39. After the attempted assassination of Fernando in 1492, Isabel told Talavera, “And this is one of the sorrows I felt: to see the King suffer what I deserved, not meriting it, but paying for me …”. Ochoa (ed. Epistolario Español, 1850), 14–15, Liss (2004), 349 and Sesma Muñoz (2006), 191–193.

• 40. AGS, PR 4, f. 75.

• 41. BL, Ms. Egerton 309, ‘Relación’ ff. 61v.–62.

• 42. Arboledo (1993).

• 43. “Sucesión. La primera [condición] que después dél [Charles] no pueda suceder muger ninguna en el reino: pero que no habiendo hijos, que puedan suceder hijos de hijas é de nietas siendo nacidos é bautizados en Castilla; pero que no puedan suceder sino fueren nacidos en Castilla” (Capítulos).

• 44. CSP Sp. 2, 60, Adrian to Charles, 23 September 1520.

• 45. BL, Egerton, Ms. 309, ‘Relación,’ f. 61v.

• 46. AGS, PR 2, f. 36, Lope Hurtado to Charles.

• 47. BL, Egerton Ms. 309, ‘Relación,’ f. 55.

• 48. Pérez (2001), Provisión de la Santa Junta a la Comunidad de Valladolid, 26 September 1520, 90–93.

• 49. Danvila, I, to Charles, 24 June 1520.

• 50. Carretero Zamora (Martínez Gil, ed. 2002), 245–256; Martínez-Sicluna y Sepúlveda (Szaszdi León-Borja/Galende Ruiz, eds. 2015), 451–484.

• 51. Fernández-Santamaria (1977).

• 52. AGS, PR 2-1, f. 166, Fray Francisco de León to Adrian (November 1520).

• 53. AGS, PR 2-1, f. 169.

• 54. Prawdin, 296.

• 55. In his book about Juana of Castile (“la Beltraneja”), Azcona considers the possibility that some comuneros, either during a mission to Portugal, or in exile, “fluttered like butterflies around the flame of the Excelente Señora.” (Azcona 2007), 250.

• 56. Pérez (2001), ‘Provisión de la Santa Junta,’ 90–93.

• 57. Pulgar (Mata Carriazo, ed. 1943), I; McKay (1985).

• 58. Pulgar, I, 441–444.

• 59. Danvila, II, ‘Alianza y hermandad jurada que las ciudades y villas del Reino realizaron en Tordesillas el 25 de septiembre de 1520,’ 76–81.

• 60. Sandoval, 249.

• 61. Danvila, II, 30 October 1520.

• 62. Martire, 12, 51, 30 August 1520.

• 63. Brewer (ed. 1920), 3, 1043, 384.

• 64. AGS, Estado 8, f. 32, Licenciate Polanco to Charles, 17 January 1521.

• 65. Partially cited in Pérez (1999), 194n; in full in Aram (Szászdi León-Borja/Galende Ruíz, eds. 2013), 51–57.

• 66. Sanuto (Fulin, ed. 1969–1970), 24, 7 September 1520, 290.

• 67. Danvila, II, to Charles.

• 68. Sanuto, 24, 3 November 1520, 406.

• 69. Portuguese ambassador’s letter, 28 October 1520, in Alba (1975), 122–123 and Aram (2013), 57–60.

• 70. Danvila, II, admiral to Luis de la Cuvea (undated).