The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe

315 Pages·2002·1.888 MB·English

by  Sharon L. Jansen (auth.)

THE MONSTROUS REGIMENT
OF WOMEN
TH E MON STROUS REGIMENT
OF WOM EN
FEMALE RULERS IN EARLY
MODERN EUROPE
S H A R O N L . J A N S E N
THE MONSTROUS REGIMENT OF WOMEN
Copyright © Sharon L. Jansen, 2002.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2002 978-0-312-21341-1
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or repro-
duced in any manner whatsoever without written permission ex-
cept in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or
reviews.
First published 2002 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™
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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the
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registered trademark in the European Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-0-230-62119-0 ISBN 978-0-230-60211-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230602113
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jansen, Sharon L., 1951-
The monstrous regiment of women : female rulers in early mod-
ern Europe / Sharon L. Jansen.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Women heads of state—Europe—Biography. 2. Queens—
Europe—Biography. 3. Europe—Kings and rulers—Biography.
4. Europe—Politics and goverment—1492-1648. 5. Europe—His-
tory—15th century. I. Title.
D226.7 .J36 2002
940.2’1’0922—dc21 2002025395
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Li-
brary.
Design by Publishing Synthesis Ltd.
First edition: October 2002
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
October 2002
For my mother, Helen Jean Jansen,
and my son, Kristian Jansen Jaech
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
A Note on Names xi
Introduction Redrawing the Lines of Power 1
Chapter One Fifteenth-Century Foremothers 7
Chapter Two The Daughters of Isabella of Castile:
Queens and Regents in Spain and the
Habsburg Empire 67
Chapter Three The Daughters of Margaret Beaufort:
Queens and Regents in England and Scotland 111
Chapter Four The Daughters of Caterina Sforza: Rulers and
Regents in Italy 155
Chapter Five The Daughters of Anne of France: Queens and
Regents in France and French Navarre 181
Chapter Six The End of an Era 223
Notes 229
Select Bibliography 293
Index 301
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Early in 1996, I spent several weeks at the British Library, still at its Great
Russell Street location, reading the extreme, sometimes violent, arguments
about female rule penned by John Knox, Jean Bodin, Robert Filmer, and
Bishop Jacques Bossuet, among many others. As I called up manuscript
volumes, paged through collections of letters, and slowly deciphered early
printed books, all the while consulting a variety of reference books and
modern historical studies, I moved back and forth between the Manuscripts
Students’ Room, the North Library, the North Library Reading Gallery,
and the Main Reading Room. I would like to express my gratitude to the
British Library for providing access to all of these resources. Staff members
were always helpful, courteous, and efficient, even while they were in the
midst of preparing for their move to a new location.
Once I returned home, I turned to librarian Laura Lewis for assistance.
I would like to express my deepest appreciation to Laura, whose ability to
locate and produce even the most obscure material in a timely fashion has
made my work much easier.
For their efforts in bringing this book to print, I would like to thank
Michael J. Flamini, senior editor, and Amanda Johnson, assistant editor, of
the Scholarly and Reference Divison at St. Martin’s Press, which produced
this book under its Palgrave imprint.
On a more personal note, I am grateful to my dear friend Tom Campbell,
who always calls just when I need him and who is always interested in the
details.
A NOTE ON NAMES
I have tried to refer to the many women in this study by the name most
familiar to English readers, even when this results in some inconsistencies.
Thus, I use Caterina Sforza rather than “Catherine,” though I refer to
Catherine de’ Medici rather than the Italian “Caterina.” When the woman
is less well known to English readers, I have retained the name reflecting
her linguistic background, thus “Blanca,” “Blanche,” and “Bianca” all
appear in these pages.
I have been much more consistent in my effort to retain women’s
original names and titles rather than adopting the names or titles they
acquired through marriage. Thus I have preferred “Anne of France,” for
example, to the equally common “Anne of Beaujeu,” and “Margaret of
Austria” to “Margaret of Savoy.”
The question of names does remain problematic, however, and I
sincerely apologize for the inconsistencies or inconveniences that almost
inevitably result from my decisions.
I N T R O D U C T I O N
REDRAWING THE LINES OF POWER
To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire
above any realm, nation, or city is repugnant to nature, contumely to
God, a thing most contrarious to His revealed will and approved ordi-
nance, and finally it is the subversion of good order, of all equity and
justice.1
REDRAWING THE LINES OF POWER
This uncompromising assessment of a woman’s right to govern was made
by the Protestant reformer John Knox. When Mary Tudor became queen
of England in 1553, the succession of a woman to the throne horrified
many, including Knox, who argued that any woman who presumed to “sit
in the seat of God, that is, to teach, to judge, or to reign above a man” was
“a monster in nature.” Women were incapable of effective rule, for “nature
. . . doth paint them forth to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish,
and experience hath declared them to be unconstant, variable, cruel, and
lacking the spirit of counsel and regiment.”
Knox published this blistering assessment of female rule, The First Blast
of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, in 1558; his bitter
indictment of “gynecocracy” was quickly followed in print by a series of
pamphlets that echoed, expanded, disputed, and countered his argument
that female rule was unnatural, unlawful, and contrary to scripture.2 From
Knox’s point of view, the political situation could hardly seem worse. Not
only had Mary Tudor succeeded to the throne of England, but Mary Stuart,
wife of the dauphin of France, had become queen of Scotland, while her
mother, Marie of Guise, was acting as regent in Scotland on Mary’s behalf.
Unfortunately for Knox, though, the political situation could get worse,
and did, almost immediately. When Mary Tudor died only a few months
after the Blast appeared, her half-sister Elizabeth succeeded her as queen of
England. In France, following the death of her husband Henry II, Catherine
2 / THE MONSTROUS REGIMENT OF WOMEN
de’ Medici attempted to become regent of France for her son, Francis II.
Outmaneuvered in 1559, she succeeded a year later when Francis died and
the dowager queen assumed the regency for her second son, Charles IX.
Thus, by 1560, England, Scotland, and France were under the direct
“regiment” of women.
When I began to think about making my own addition to the discussion
of this “monstrous regiment,” I wanted to write a series of biographical
portraits of the remarkable women whose lives had inspired the debate,
exploring the way each of these women achieved, maintained, and manip-
ulated her position even as her right and her ability to do so were contested.
I was at first uncertain about how to proceed. Aside from Mary and
Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart and her mother, and Catherine de’ Medici,
I knew of only two other women to include in my project: Margaret of
Austria, regent of the Netherlands, and Jeanne d’Albret, the Protestant
queen of Navarre, whose son had become Henry IV, king of France. Would
it be possible, I wondered, to find enough female rulers to make a “series”
of such profiles possible?
But the more I thought about my project, the more I came to see what
had been there all along. These weren’t the first powerful women in early
modern Europe.3 Any analysis of female rulers in the period should really
begin by focusing on the lives of four formidable women who died early
in the sixteenth century: Isabella of Spain (d. 1504), who inherited the
throne of Castile; Lady Margaret Beaufort (d. 1509), who chose not to press
her own claims to the English throne in order to promote the cause of her
son, Henry Tudor; Caterina Sforza (d. 1509), who seized power in Imola
and Forlì ostensibly to preserve it for her son, Ottaviano; and Anne of France
(d. 1522), who acted as a shrewd and politically adept regent for her brother,
Charles VIII. The careers of these powerful and successful women seemed
to me to provide models for the women who were to follow in the next
generation.
Still, as notable as they were, these weren’t the only women to whom
Mary Tudor or Catherine de’ Medici could look for example. As I searched
the indexes of political histories and biographies, I began to find the names
of women about whom I knew little or nothing. Despite arguments like
Knox’s against female rule and despite the ordinary descent of political
power from one man to another, it became clear to me that a whole range
of “dynastic accidents” in early modern Europe had resulted in a surprising
number of women ruling as queens or functioning as regents.4 It became
equally clear that the lives and political careers of these sixteenth-century
queens were hardly without precedent.5 Yet I could find little more than
names at first. How many Isabellas of Aragon were there? Of Castile? Of
Portugal? Were Charlotte of Savoy and Bona of Savoy related? If so, how?