Giles Tremlett - Catherine of Aragon: Henry’s Spanish Queen

Dates refer to years of rule

Zaragoza, the Cathedral. 11 June 1531

Salvador Felipe stood at the doors of the great cathedral in Zaragoza and began to read aloud. It was mid-June, 1531, and the infernal summer heat that replaces the biting winter winds of Spains central Ebro Plain must have been settling in. The cathedral had been packed for Sunday morning mass and Felipe should have had a good crowd when he raised his voice to name the king of England, Henry VIII. The English king, Felipe announced, was being summoned before a tribunal in the city. If he wanted to hear what others were saying about him, then Henry must appear at the cathedral cloisters on the following Wednesday. If the king did not wish to come himself, he could send a legal representative.

The summons was extraordinary. Monarchs were not the kind of people to be dragged against their will before the ecclesiastical courts. Even this far away, though, many people would have known that Englands king was proving to be anything but ordinary. His name was already well known to people here in the capital city of the kingdom of Aragon. He was, after all, married to the woman who introduced the kingdoms name into English history Catherine of Aragon. She had left her native land long ago, but people had not forgotten she was the daughter of two great Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile.

Catherine was now at the centre of one of the greatest scandals being gossiped about across Europe. Henry no longer wanted his wife of twenty-two years. He wanted, instead, a clever and ambitious young Englishwoman called Anne Boleyn. Henry was doing all he could to get rid of Catherine, but his wife was proving a formidable opponent. Catherine had dug in her heels. She was fighting for her marital rights with intelligence and, above all, rock-like obstinacy.

This was why Miguel Jimnez de Embum, abbot of the powerful Cistercian abbey at Veruela, fifty miles away at the foot of the imposing Mount Moncayo, had called the tribunal. He was acting at the request of Paulo di Capisuchi dean of the Vatican appeal court of the Rota and, so, ultimately, of the pope. His task was to gather evidence for and give his opinion on what in England was already known as the great matter. This was not a divorce, as it is understood today, though many people used that word to describe it. It was, rather, an attempt to have the pope declare Catherines marriage illegitimate from the very beginning. Henrys determination to wriggle out of a marriage that was as much about European politics as anything else was felt keenly by some proud Spaniards. She had, after all, been a model wife and queen consort. Her husband had even left his kingdom in her hands while he fought in France. As queen regent in his absence, she had inflicted an historic defeat on his Scottish enemies.

Few people would have felt more deeply for Catherine than those listening to Felipe, who was the tribunals herald, in Zaragoza. The cathedrals handsomely decorated walls, with their blue, turquoise and green ceramic tiling inlaid into elaborate patterns of mudjar brickwork, were proof of the citys wealth and importance. Zaragoza sat on the bank of the broad, fast-running River Ebro and at the heart of the kingdom once ruled by her father. Catherine was of the most illustrious Spanish stock. Her mother, the mighty and pious Queen Isabel, had been ruler in her own right of the even greater kingdom of Castile. Her parents had conquered the last remnants of Moorish Spain and brought their kingdoms together to form a new and powerful country. Ferdinand and Isabel having died, this was now ruled by Catherines nephew Charles, the grandly titled Holy Roman Emperor whose lands stretched across swathes of Europe. With this pedigree, Catherine was not a woman who could be cast aside lightly. Nor was she the kind to allow herself to be unceremoniously dumped onto the matrimonial rubbish heap. Her tenacious defence had already seen the case moved from a court in England to the Rota. She had, in fact, kept Henry from getting his divorce for the past four years.