That is the grand question. Was her marriage to Arthur consummated? Let's face it, teens are sexual whether we like it or not. The old days were no different. How likely is it that she lied about her virginity to secure a marriage to Arthur's brother?
IMO, no.
Here is some good websites on the subject
http://historyhoydens.blogspot.dk/2009/03/did-they-or-didnt-they-brief -marriage.html
http://www.thetudorswiki.com/page/Queen+Katherine+of+Aragon+Controvers ies
http://spartacus-educational.com/TUDaragon.htm
I doubt we'll ever know.
Love isn't what you say or how you feel, it's what you do. (The Last Kiss)
Yes. I believe she was a virgin. Consummation was timed according to the perception of the participants' maturity. While Catherine was mature, Arthur wasn't. Especially given the imagined circumstances of Catherine's brother's death and Margaret Beaufort's inability to have more children after Henry VII, I'd imagine that there would be more caution rather than less regarding when Arthur and Catherine should do the deed.
Also, the woman was ridiculously devout. She wouldn't endanger her soul and degrade her position as princess dowager to marry Henry.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
Also, the woman was ridiculously devout. She wouldn't endanger her soul and degrade her position as princess dowager to marry Henry.
Yes, I believe she was... for several reasons, including their young age, her brother's death (which was blamed on him being "too vigorous" with his new young wife), and the fact that she was indeed ... devout. To a level most modern people cannot comprehend. If she wasn't a virgin, her marriage to Henry would have been seen as incestuous, and her faith would never have allowed it.
I believe, if I remember right, she even got Henry to admit in private that she was a virgin ... but, as the miniseries states, "that's not the point."
I believe she was. I don't think Arthur was in any condition to have any sexual relationships, he was too ill or too drunk!
shareEven if she was desperate to get married at the time, she seems too devout to risk her soul by lying about it.
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Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that I'll be over here looking through your stuff.
I absolutely believe she was a virgin when she married Henry.
Besides the fact that she and her then-husband Arthur were very young, he died too soon, she was very pious, etc, I don't like the assumption that just because teenagers are capable of being sexual that automatically means that they act on it 100% of the time.
Even today there's a sort of negative stigma associated with people who are still virgins past age 18, especially if you're male and/or not religious. (And if you're a virgin past age 21 people are convinced that there is something pathologically wrong with you.)
And considering that way back when within royal families that marriages were often arranged for political reasons and young couples didn't even meet each other face to face until days before the actual wedding. And even after the betrothed met in person there's nothing that guarantees that they actually found each other attractive.
Also I imagine that young people were not always given adequate sex education in those times: the young men were just expected to get the job done with no further instruction and the young women I expect were just told to let the guy do whatever he wanted. So unless you had a man who was older and had been married before and was now marrying a young girl/woman who had never been married, you basically had a couple of kids who don't even know each other being told they have to have sex ASAP and neither of them is up to the task.
Taking all that into consideration, yes, I believe CoA was a virgin when she married Henry VIII.
Yeah but they were being told to have sex ASAP. It's kind of your main duty is to create heirs. It's not like sex education teaches people how to have sex. People have been figuring it out how to have sex since before public school deemed sex edu action important in last few decades. I don't know why you are mentioning a modern day stigma. Maybe if you go around telling people you are a virgin at any age, maybe they are weirded out you are sharing that. It's not like these two would have thought "oh no the peasants are going to totally think we are uncool is we don't do it." If these two didn't have sex, it wasn't because they wanted to stand up to social pressures.
I think saying just because they were inexperienced they probably didn't act on it is fairly stupid. This isn't the first royal arranged marriage or even one for young adults or teenagers. They were married six months. Sure I doubt any two teenagers left alone are going to immediately fornicate, but when you know it's your duty to God and country, you're going to do it, attraction or not, if you are able.
Granted between the pressure and the illness, I can buy Arthur was just unable to perform in the six months of marriage. Now it certainly in Katherine's well being to lie and get married to Henry. She really didn't have much options between the arguments over dowry. She really was poorly treated between marriages. She DID get pregnant very quickly, within a couple of months, with Henry. Neither of them would have had any experience. Unless Henry was just so much more attractive or they knew each other better, which I don't think is really true. Henry was a couple of years older, but wasn't ill, so they did their duty. Arthur couldn't, so they didn't. I guess if they had, Catherine would have really been screwed as neither wanted back by Spain or by England. It certainly immensely benefitted her to say she was a virgin, but what I gather from her piety is she'd rather suffer on Earth than lie and go to hell, and so I believed they didn't because they couldn't, but I'm positive if Arthur could have, he would have. Love and attraction were not important to royals making babies, so they would have tried no matter feelings if they could have.
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Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that I'll be over here looking through your stuff.
Yeah but they were being told to have sex ASAP.
In an age when marriages were frequently contracted for reasons of state between children or those hovering between childhood and adolescence, more care rather than less was taken over the timing of consummation. Once the marriage was officially completed, some years might pass before the appropriate moment was judged to have arrived. Anxious reports might pass between ambassadors on physical development; royal parents might take advice on their offsprings' readiness for the ordeal. The comments sometimes remind one of those breeders discussing the mating of thoroughbred stock, and the comparison is indeed not far off. The siring of progeny was the essential next step in these marriages, so endlessly negotiated.
Where an heiress was concerned, her 'spoiling' by being obliged to have sex and bear children too young might have important consequences. The physique of the great heiress Margaret Beaufort was considered to have been ruined by early childbearing. She bore the future Henry VII when she was only thirteen, and never had any other children in the course of four marriages. Henry survived, but the existence of a single heir was in principle a great risk to any family in this age of high infant mortality, as the shortage of Tudor heirs would continuously demonstrate. Negotiations for the marriage of James IV King of Scotland and Arthur's sister Princess Margaret had begun in 1498. The trouble was that the bride was only nine, while the King of Scots was twenty-five. Both Princess Margaret's mother and her grandmother Margaret Beaufort - the latter with an obvious grim interest in the subject - worried about the age gap and pleaded for the marriage ceremony itself to be held off lest consummation follow; "they fear the King of Scots would not wait, but injure her, and endanger her health." (They were finally married in 1503 when Princess Margaret was fourteen).
The health of the bridegroom was taken equally seriously. For instance, it was firmly believed by the Spanish court physicians that Catherine's brother, the late Infante Juan, had weakened himself by spending so much time in bed with his wife - with disastrous consequences. Henry Fitzroy Duke of Richmond, illegitimate son of Henry VIII, was married off to Lady Mary Howard when he was fourteen, but the marriage remained unconsummated at his premature death (of tuberculosis) three years later; no doubt it was thought that the act would prove too taxing for one of doubtful health. Mary Howard's brother, Thomas Earl of Surrey, lived with Lady Frances Vere for three years after marriage before consummation when they were both fifteen.
In the case of Arthur and Catherine, all four parents apparently agreed that nothing should be rushed. Henry VII and Elizabeth of York were anxious to protect their son's health, while Ferdinand and Isabella made it clear that they too would 'rather be pleased than dissatisfied' if consummation was delayed for some time, in view of Arthur's 'tender age'. These were the instructions relayed to Dona Elvira, which, as a resolute duenna, she could be trusted to carry out.
Even if she was desperate to get married she knew that she would either remain in England and marry Henry VIII, or be sent back to Aragon and marty someone else. Katherine was still young and pretty so her father would have found someone else for her.
[love]
Kades! [/love]
I just started The Tudors again, and looked through some of the threads here and saw this. And I don't know very much about the true history at all. I do know that (as has been stated here by some) one of the most commonly offered arguments against the Katherine/Arthur marriage ever being consummated is, "she was so devout, she would have never lied about that." Anyway, while reading the replies here and skimming the three linked articles, something occurred to me that I had never considered. Yes, her strong religious belief and practice make her sound like someone who would never willingly commit a serious sin.
But it also makes her sound like someone who has committed a serious sin and is desperately trying to make up for it.
So my question, for those who do know the true history, is this. When did she become as intensely religious as she was? If she was always that way, then the conventional argument makes sense. But if she only became that fervent after marrying Henry ... or even more tellingly, after marrying him and then having a few dead or dying kids ... she might well have reflected that, "yes, Henry and I have a papal dispensation, but then again, popes are pretty accommodating when it comes to kings and queens and have been known to bend the rules; and whatever the Church says, it sure doesn't seem like God's too happy with this situation."
As the daughter of Isabella of Spain, yes, Katharine was very religious her entire life. She only became more devout as she got older -- but the Pope showed concern about her "excessive piety" even when she first married Henry, since she insisted on fasting every five days. So, yes, she took her faith extremely seriously -- and throughout her life, was continually nudging Henry toward greater piety since she seemed concerned over his attentiveness to worldly pleasures.
shareCatherine was very devout and I doubt she would have lied about so serious a matter. It was not particularly unusual in those days for consummation to be delayed in the case of very youthful martiages - people were aware that it could be risky for a girl to get pregnant too young. Besides, I don't think she had any very urgent reason to lie - the dispensation granted by the pope was valid whether the marriage had bern consummated or not. So the marriage could still have gone ahead. Catherine could hardly have known that 20 years later it would become an issue.
shareThere's no proof one way or the other but I honestly wouldn't be surprised to find out the marriage was consummated. As for what Catherine said or did later I think people will say and do a lot if they believe their or their children's survival is at stake.
Remember, when Arthur died Spain was not as powerful as it had been because Catherine's mother had died and Castille and Aragon were no longer united and thus she wasn't quite the prize she had been on the marriage market. If you are told your whole life your destiny is to be Queen of England that has to be a hard thing to let go of, especially if you believe in your heart and soul it is what God ordains. Many people might fudge the truth in that circumstance. We also don't know how much pressure Henry VII might have put on her to say that the marriage wasn't consummated. Catherine was basically his prisoner at this point, it might be a prisoner in a silver cage but she was in England and there was no going elsewhere unless Henry allowed it or her father started a war to reclaim her. I admit, I have always found it interesting that people at the time, including her own servants watched her for months after Arthur's death to see if she was pregnant. If these people had know for certain that she was a virgin wouldn't they have immediately told Henry VI that fact?
And of course, once we get to the divorce trial Catherine is really between a rock and a hard place. We all know what became of Catherine when Henry threw her over. She wasn't stupid, I'm sure Catherine knew Henry's character well enough to know that once she was gone he would never think about her or concern himself about her well being again and who knows what he would do to Mary. I imagine the horrible life she led after Arthur's death and before Henry married her must have been on a constant loop in her memory. It would be entirely normal and human to wonder if she and Mary would be forced into the same or worse circumstances.
I think Catherine was more shrewd than people usually give her credit for and I also think she wasn't above lying if it meant securing the safety and well being of her only child.
Freedom of religion means ALL religions not just your own.
Catherine was basically his prisoner at this point, it might be a prisoner in a silver cage but she was in England and there was no going elsewhere unless Henry allowed it or her father started a war to reclaim her.
In the spring of 1509 Catherine's spirit finally gave way. In a letter to her father of 9 March, she broke down and told him that she could no longer combat the petty persecutions of Henry VII. Only recently he had told her that he was under no obligation to feed either her or her attendants; he added spitefully that her food was being given to her as alms. Her health was recovered since another recent bout of illness; now she wanted to return to Spain and spend the rest of her life serving God. This was the final expression of despair on the part of Queen Isabella's daughter, who had been trained to believe that life on the throne, not in the convent, was the destiny for which God had sent her on earth.
The next month Fuensalida began the process of dispatching Catherine's belongings to Bruges. And then, suddenly, Catherine was no longer in King Henry's power. On 21 April, after a short illness, he died. It was almost exactly seven years since the death of Prince Arthur. The spell was broken.
When King Ferdinand, shortly after Arthur's death set himself to establish whether his daughter's marriage had been consummated or not, he was not interested in her physical wellbeing. That fact was that the Princess Dowager of Wales had the right to demand back the 100,000 crowns paid at the first installment of her dowry, even before she received the stipulated one-third of the revenues of Wales, Cornwall and Chester, if the marriage had been completed in this respect. But as we have seen, it had almost certainly not. And Dona Elvira swore categorically to that effect. It is important to bear in mind for the future that when Dona Elvira swore so firmly that consummation had not taken place, she was not giving the answer then most convenient to the Catholic Kings in Spain. Nevertheless her version of events convinced King Ferdinand: 'God had taken Arthur to himself too soon'.
I've found to many issues with Fraser's other works to totally trust her take implicitly, it's why I started branching out and reading other authors. I find I far and away prefer David Starkey's book on the Six Wives of Henry VIII to Fraser, who I think falls into following established Victorian stereotypes about the wives. I have found Starkey to be much more even handed and he brought up many points in his book that I find Fraser ignored or pushed under the rug. His take on the politics going on both between Henry VII and Ferdinand and within Catherine's own household most especially between Dona Elvira and Catherine's confessor are especially interesting and I think shed a whole new light on the situation. It's a large book but if you haven't read it I highly recommend it.
Freedom of religion means ALL religions not just your own.
The best thing to do is read both, then cross-reference with other biographies from the period for the big picture (I've learned stuff included in "The Sisters of Henry VIII" that directly refer to events both Fraser and Starkey glossed over or ignored; the same goes for books on Isabella of Spain, as pertaining to her daughter's marriages; I expect to learn even more from this winter's biographies about Margaret Pole and Charles Brandon).
Starkey's obvious anti-religious bias influences his interpretations of all the various wives, but in general he's thorough.
I guess the medical knowledge was not there to determine her virginity?
shareI guess the medical knowledge was not there to determine her virginity?
Yes, but if a doctor could have determined that Catherine's hymen was intact, that would be evidence in her favor.
shareI have read them both as well as several others and that's why I think it's impossible to determine if Catherine was a virgin or not.
Freedom of religion means ALL religions not just your own.