#fuensalida

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Calle Toledo, Fuensalida, Toledo, Castile-La Mancha.

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Katherine of Aragon and her scandalous friar

In April 1506, Katherine begged her father to send her a Spanish confessor. She didn’t want an English one, having not mastered the language. She needed one she could communicate with. It was an astonishing sign of just how isolated she remained four years after her arrival. Katherine wanted a confessor from her mother’s favoured order, the Order of St Francis, and someone who was “a man of letters”. Then, sometime before April 1507, she found Fray Diego Fernández, a genuinely cultured man, one who had studied at Salamanca, and risen from a poor background by his efforts. He had been long enough in England to speak English and knew something of the islanders.

Fray Diego appeared in Katherine’s life just at the time she was seeking an emotional raft to cling to, having lost her mother, being neglected by her father, suffering ill health and poverty and with no indication that her marriage to the prince was forthcoming. Poverty and isolation had thoroughly demoralized her little suite. They were divided as ever by jealousy and backbiting, but on one point they were almost all united. They wanted to go back to Spain. Even Katherine’s own ladies in waiting were no longer throughly loyal. No wonder Katherine turned from them to her confessor who, alone, never faltered, who told her with a voice which seemed like an echo ofher own conscience, to trust in God and stay at her post.

Fray Diego wielded significant influence, acting as a gatekeeper and advising her on both spiritual and political matters. This influence, however, sparked controversy, with some accusing him of manipulating her decisions and isolating her. He was certainly not quite as terrible as the Rasputin figure, ‘haughty and scandalous in an extreme manner’, painted by his detractors. There were those who found in him ‘neither learning, nor appearance, nor manners, nor competency, nor credit’. If this was going altogether too far, then neither was Fray Diego the repository of all wisdom and goodness that Katherine believed him to be.

Fray Diego may, indeed, have been a good confessor. He was also vain, arrogant and bullying. Yet if Katherine ever dared to question his decisions, he played upon her piety and convinced her that what she was proposing was a sin: he, after all, not she, was in a position to pronounce upon such matters. Fray Diego’s power was such that Katherine was prepared to snub even King Henry on his command, however much this went against her best interest. The English king, after all, both maintained her and held her future in his hands.

On one occasion in March 1509, when Henry required her presence at Richmond, Fray Diego countermanded his instructions – telling her, at the last moment, that she was too ill to travel. ‘I am well: I do not wish to stay here alone,’ she protested. She had, indeed, spent part of the previous night vomiting but had woken up feeling fine. She had already been to mass and eaten. ‘I tell you that, upon pain of mortal sin, you shall not go today,’ Fray Diego commanded. Katherine, not daring to displease him and so commit mortal sin, chose to obey the friar and offend the king. Princess Mary and her party, who had already been waiting two hours and had seen Katherine at mass and at the breakfast table, set off without her. Henry was livid. When she arrived the following day with Fray Diego and a handful of her household members, the king ignored her.

The Spanish ambassador Gómez de Fuensalida wrote of how the friar was “continually in the palace and amongst the women”, and Katherine turned to Fray Diego for advice on everything, from her personal struggles to matters of state. She even chose to consult him about her marriage contract—something that horrified the Spanish ambassadors, who believed the friar was unqualified and overstepping his role. Well, her mother Isabel of Castile had been impressed by a confessor who made her kneel while he sat.

Fuensalida accused Fray Diego of domineering over Katherine’s household, squandering her money, and encouraging her to ignore the advice of more experienced diplomats. At one point, he even alleged that despite her father’s orders not to sell any of her plate and jewels, Fray Diego convinced Katherine to sell her plate—precious items of silver and gold—to buy books and things for him. A concerned Fuensalida pleaded for the Spanish king to remove Fray Diego and send “an old and honest confessor” in his stead, warning that rumours of impropriety could harm Katherine’s reputation and derail her betrothal to Prince Henry.

The friar had already acquired a reputation as a womaniser, and most of the ladies in the Princess’s household, not to mention some about the court, were a little in love with him. Scurrilous gossip suggested the relationship between friar and princess had crossed proper boundaries. Fuensalida never quite dared to spell it out in his letters to Ferdinand, but the suggestion was undoubtedly that they were having a furtive affair. It is easy to understand how the scandal blossomed. Royalty, religion and illicit relationships made for easy gossip. A young, forceful and attractive Fray Diego, was the only man to whom Katherine could get physically close and with whom she might be alone for any length of time. Confession is, by its nature, an intimate act.

The fleeting gossip that Fray Diego’s influence over the princess was due to some kind of sexual misbehaviour can be confidently dismissed. Katherine’s piety, her lifelong personal chastity, to say nothing of her oft-expressed consciousness of her own virginity, would have made such an episode unthinkable, indeed quite horrifying to her. Katherine’s mother had taught her that appearances counted for almost as much as reality. To be seen as pure was as important as being pure. Fray Diego would have been a foolish priest, indeed, to risk his life by laying a hand on a woman betrothed to the king’s son. The young King Henry VIII didn't believe in gossip because he soon married Katherine after the death of his father.

Katherine was called to see King Henry. He remonstrated with her about Fray Diego with ‘very strong words’. She ignored him. Aware that there was nothing he could do, he eventually appeared ready to allow Katherine to hang herself on the yard-arm of gossip. For a man who liked to store up ways of wriggling out of his treaty agreements, Fray Diego was a potential gift. Henry was also learning that his daughter-in-law could be extremely obstinate. Rather than remove the cause of the scandal, Katherine railed against those who spread the gossip. She leapt to her confessor’s defence.

Taxed by Fuensalida about the gossip, Fray Diego said, “in this house there are evil tongues, and they have slandered me, and not with the lowest in the house, but with the highest.” It was as if he was boasting that his name could be linked to that of the princess. He would have left, he exclaimed, except that there was “no disgrace” in him and only by staying could he prove his worthiness. Fuensalida was so outraged he told Ferdinand that he came “almost beyond power of restraint from laying hands on him.”

Blind to any faults the young man had, Katherine wrote to tell her father that she considered Fray Diego “the best [confessor] that ever woman of my position had, with respect to his life, as well as to his holy doctrine and proficiency in letters.” He served her “with such labour and fatigue as no one else would have undergone,” being “faithful in his office” as well as “giving good advice and good example.” If only she could reward him as he deserved, she would feel less afflicted and grieved. She could not understand why others failed to spot in Fray Diego the same selfless qualities that so enraptured her; Fuensalida behaved “badly” toward him, she reported in astonishment.

No matter what Fuensalida said, Katherine would have none of it. She needed the friar, she dreaded his leaving her. In a letter to her father berating the ambassador, she entreated Ferdinand to write himself to the friar “commanding him to continue and not to forsake” her. “For the greatest comfort in my troubles is the consolation and the support he gives me,” she wrote wretchedly. Despite Fuensalida’s best efforts, though, Ferdinand did not recall Fray Diego.

Fray Diego continued to serve as Katherine's confessor after her marriage to Henry VIII, even comforting her after her first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage in 1510, and encouraged her to support English interests over Spanish ones ‘who has told her that she ought to forget Spain and everything Spanish in order to gain the love of the King of England and the English’. But in 1515, Fray Diego’s behaviour caught up with him. Despite his pleas of innocence and claims that his accuser, the Bishop of Huntly hated him and had it in for him, Fray Diego was found guilty of fornication with women at Windsor by an ecclesiastical court, and forced to leave England.

What we cannot state with complete certainty is whether he was truly guilty or a victim of court intrigue. What is even more interesting is that, despite the ecclesiastical court’s judgement, Katherine recommended him to her father but did not stop his expulsion from England. Katherine would not have dreamed of contradicting Henry, but if she believed her friar was at fault she would hardly have recommended him. So her recommendation suggests she likely did not accept the accusations as entirely just — or at least did not consider them serious enough to ruin him permanently. A way to compensate him for past loyalty.

Sources:

Giles Tremlett, Catherine of Aragon

Garret Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon

Amy Licence, Catherine of Aragon: An Intimate Life of Henry VIII's True Wife

Julia Fox, Sister Queens: The Noble, Tragic Lives of Katherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile

Carol-Ann Johnston, Catherine of Aragon: An Illustrated History

Catherine of Aragon involved in scandal? - The Anne Boleyn Files

When we think of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife, we picture a queen of unwavering faith, dignity, and strength, far removed fr

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Katherine of Aragon and Francisca de Cáceres

Francisca de Cáceres was part of Katherine of Aragon's entourage when she arrived to England in 1501 to marry Prince Arthur, the heir to the English throne. Francisca was responsible for dressing and undressing the princess. Historical account mentions Francisca confiding in other ladies that nothing had passed between Prince Arthur and his wife. Katherine valued Francisca's companionship and relied on her for support and advice.

Francisca was beautiful, determined, scheming, gossipy and spy, a Crown agent. She sent news to the Spanish monarchs through letters written in cipher. According to an account written by her descendants, her skill at Latin meant that she acted as the princess’s secretary, and was thus privy to more information than the other women. But her position came at a cost. She would wait in dread ‘for hours’ lest her letters be discovered, and she was allegedly threatened by Prince Arthur when he suspected her of writing about the princess.

It seems that after the dismissal of Doña Elvira Manuel in 1505 Francisca had developed a leading position within Katherine’s household, and since it appears that she was every bit as domineering a character as Doña Elvira, Katherine came to resent both her authority and her personality. Katherine’s household become a place of power struggle once more, and this time the source was her charismatic, conniving, domineering confessor, Fray Diego Fernández. Particularly he disliked the lady-in-waiting whom he perceived to be the closest confidante of the princess, Francisca de Cáceres.

Francisca de Cáceres visited the Spanish ambassador Gómez de Fuensalida in his lodgings in the house of Francesco Grimaldi, the Genoese banker who was handling the bills of exchange for Katherine’s marriage portion. Francisca as many in Katherine's household preferred to return to Spain, and with that in view she instilled into the ambassador the notion that Katherine’s stubbornness was all owing to Fray Diego’s bad influence. Francisca was the source of Fuensalida’s information, and intrigued with the ambassador to get rid of the annoying friar.

When Grimaldi flirted with Francisca over long summer days in 1508 she returned his attentions. Francisca had about made up her mind that a rich elderly Italian merchant would be no bad substitute for the noble suitors she was missing. Always provided, that is, she could not get back to Spain. According to Fuensalida, Fray Diego actively encouraged Francisca’s marriage to Grimaldi because he wanted to remove her from the princess. The lady was endowed with 4000 ducats, Fuensalida was horrified. The princess’s mother Queen Isabel, he said, had never given more than 2,000 ducats to any lady-in-waiting as dowry. The evidence shows that Grimaldi only ever received 1,000 ducats.

Francisca then wanted to have the wedding at court, as befitted her status as one of the princess’s ladies. Fuensalida thought this was not such a good idea, since the princess didn’t have the means to host those sorts of celebrations, and suggested that they have the wedding at his lodgings in London instead, which they did. This went down poorly with Fray Diego. He and Francisca had a stand-up row in public in front of the princess. Francisca then refused to make her confession to the friar, choosing instead to confess to Henry VII’s own chaplain, an extremely public snub. This so infuriated the princess that she dismissed Francisca that very day.

Katherine wrote to her father that the marriage had taken place against her will. Situated as she is, felt obliged to conceal her feelings. Grimaldi had threatened to take her own dowry money if she did not promise an unusually large sum to Francisca.

Francisca de Cáceres, having married financier Francesco Grimaldi and been summarily dismissed, had not regained her position. She remained in London, but without her husband, who was on his way back to Granada. The ambassador Luis Caroz knew all about Francisca’s former situation as a Crown agent, but he didn’t see this as a division of loyalties. He wrote that she was not only ‘the most devoted’ to the queen, but ‘the most skillful for whatever suits the Queen or the King our Lord’. ‘The friar’, he noted grimly, ‘fears her more than can be said.’

Caroz wanted Francisca back in the palace, whether in the queen’s service or not, for ‘as soon as she is in the palace, she herself will recover her place, and even if she does not recover it, she will render the greatest services’. Without Francisca, he said plaintively, ‘I do not know, as I ought to know, what passes there.’

In 1510 Caroz had wondered whether perhaps Francisca could serve King Henry’s younger sister, Princess Mary. In 1513 this was still a possibility; Princess Mary, betrothed to Charles, Prince of Castile, would need to learn Spanish. Alternatively Francisca could perhaps go to Margaret, Duchess of Savoy. King Ferdinand thought either of these a good idea, no doubt because he wanted Francisca’s skills as a loyal courtier. But Queen Katherine refused to give Francisca a recommendation. ‘It is true that she was my woman before she was married, but now since she cast herself away I have no more charge of her,’ Katherine replied. Cáceres was unworthy of a place in another court, she said imperiously, as ‘she is so perilous a woman that it shall be dangerous to put her in a strange house’. Katherine dared not risk having her former maid of honour gossiping at foreign courts.

The Queen had asked Cardinal Wolsey to return Francisca to Spain. Katherine’s charitable instincts might force her to make sure her former attendant reached home safely, but she saw no need to go further. She certainly would not help her to find a new position. In the end, Francisca’s husband returned to England and took her and their son home to Granada.

Sources:

Nicola Clark, The Waiting Game: The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens 

David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII

Julia Fox, Sister Queens: The Noble, Tragic Lives of Katherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile

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ISABEL

Fernando Guillen Cuervo as Ambassador Fuensalida

Natalia Rodríguez as Catherine of Aragon

Máximo Pastor as Henry VIII

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La Policía de Fuensalida dispone de pistolas táser y se iguala a «cuerpos de vanguardia como el de Londres o Madrid» Se trata de un modelo de muy baja letalidad, que "incapacitan neuro-muscularmente a individuos que opongan una resistencia" https://entomelloso.com/noticias/sociedad/la-policia-de-fuensalida-dispone-de-pistolas-taser-y-se-iguala-a-cuerpos-de-vanguardia-como-el-de-londres-o-madrid/?feed_id=6774&_unique_id=5fde55afb9942

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#FUENSALIDA !!! TOLEDO!! ¡¡Se ilumina por #Duchenne!!! Ayuntamiento de Fuensalida La fachada del ayuntamiento se iluminará de rojo el próximo #7deSeptiembre desde las 12 de la noche y durante todo el día. En el balcón del Ayuntamiento estará colgada una pancarta conmemorativa. MUCHÍSIMAS GRACIAS!!! WorldDuchenneDay.org #DíaMundialPorLaConcienciaciónDuchenne #todossomosduchennebecker #desafioduchenne https://www.instagram.com/p/B1_qrwsC_B6/?igshid=1wjejlk6ul9c0

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La multinacional agroalimentaria Bell creará más de 100 empleos en Toledo.

La multinacional agroalimentaria Bell creará más de 100 empleos en Toledo.

   //pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js// El presidente de Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page ha rubricado un convenio de colaboración con la empresa suiza de jamones Bell Schweiz AG que instalará su nueva planta en Fuensalida (Toledo). Un proyecto que contará con una inversión de 38 millones de euros, la creación de un centenar de puestos de trabajo de forma directa en…

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