Catherine of Aragon

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536), the youngest child of the newly dominant Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella. When she was 3, her parents contracted her to marry Arthur, Prince of Wales, the heir to the Tudor king Henry VII in order to strengthen Spain’s alliances, since Henry’s kingdom was a longstanding trade partner and an enemy of Spain’s greatest enemy, France. For the next decade Catherine had the best humanist education available, preparing her for her expected life as queen and drawing inspiration from her warrior mother. She arrived in London to be married when she was 15 but within a few months she was widowed, her situation uncertain and left relatively impoverished for someone of her status. Rather than return home, Catherine stayed and married her late husband’s brother, Henry VIII. In her view and that of many around her, she was an exemplary queen and, even after Henry VIII had arranged the annulment of their marriage for the chance of a male heir with Anne Boleyn, Catherine continued to consider herself his only queen.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Lucy Wooding 2 episodes
  Langford Fellow and Tutor in History at Lincoln College, University of Oxford and Professor of Early Modern History at Oxford
• Maria Hayward 2 episodes
  Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Southampton
• Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer No other episodes
  Lecturer in Global Medieval and Early Modern History at the University of Bristol

Reading list

• Queenship at the Renaissance Courts of Britain: Catherine of Aragon and Margaret Tudor, 1503-1533
  Michelle Beer (Royal Historical Society, 2018) Google Books →
• The King's Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church
  G. R. Bernard (Yale University Press, 2007) Google Books →
• Spanish Fashion at the Courts of Early Modern Europe
  Jose Luis Colomer and Amalia Descalzo (eds.) (Centro de Estudios Europa Hispanica, 2014) Google Books →
• Catherine of Aragon: Infanta of Spain, Queen of England
  Theresa Earenfight (Penn State University Press, 2022) Google Books →
• Ferdinand and Isabella: Profiles In Power
  John Edwards (Routledge, 2004) Google Books →
• Catherine of Aragon
  Garrett Mattingley (Random House, 2000) Google Books →
• Henry VIII
  J. J. Scarisbrick (Yale University Press, 1997) Google Books →
• Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII
  David Starkey (Vintage, 2004) Google Books →
• Catherine of Aragon: Henry's Spanish Queen
  Giles Tremlett (Faber & Faber, 2011) Google Books →
• The Education of a Christian Woman: A Sixteenth-Century Manual
  Juan Luis Vives (trans. Charles Fantazzi) (University of Chicago Press, 2000) Google Books →
• Catherine of Aragon: The Tragic Story of Henry VIII's First Unfortunate Wife
  Patrick Williams (Amberley Publishing, 2013)
• Henry VIII
  Lucy Wooding (Routledge, 2009) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m0027twc

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0027twc

Auto-category: 940.2 (History of Europe: 1450-1600)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. Catherine of Aragon, 1485 to 1536, was born to greatness, with her parents ruling most of Spain and her siblings marrying into the great royal families of Europe.