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The forgery of Queen Juana’s signature

On 26 November, 1504 Queen Isabel died leaving the twenty-five year old Juana as Queen of Castile. Juana was in Brussels, where all the cards were held by her husband Philip. Gender ensured that it was Philip who made the decisions. Juana was largely isolated; she had no power in Burgundy and no influential supporters. Making arrangements for the journey to Spain was a slow business, and in the meantime she remained in Philip’s power. And he was saying that she was out of her wits. Ironically, Philip’s efforts to blame Juana for the unhappy marriage had worked against him. Fernando clinically started the process of disinheriting his daughter. At the Council of Toro in 1505, he secured what amounted to a regency over Castilian lands. To do so, he presented evidence to the councillors that Juana was unfit to govern herself, thus invoking Isabel’s will. Fernando made public a diary written by the Juana’s least favorite servants, Martín de Móxica, and signed by Philip, describing her outbursts.

Upon learning that Móxica’s report, designed to justify Philip’s actions in Flanders, instead had undermined his rights in Castile, the Burgundian launched an ambitious counterattack. Philip criticized Fernando’s efforts “to make his daughter crazy,” and declared that Móxica’s testimony contained nothing to suggest that Juana might be insane. The counterattack continued when Philip’s advisors claimed to have prepared six times a missive that Juana refused to sign -but repeatedly edited- the famous letter to de Veyre, Philip’s ambassador to King Fernando, on 3 May 1505. The letter asked de Veyre to intercede with King Fernando to dismiss rumors that Juana “lacked sense.”

Monsieur de Veyre…it seems right that I should say a word on my own behalf…But since a matter of so much importance is at stake, and evil rumours are rife at so critical a moment, I pray you to convey a message from me to the King, my lord and my father, since those who spread these rumours do so, not against me alone, but also against His Majesty; for some of these false witnesses declare that he himself spreads this report in order to make himself ruler of our realm, which tale I do not believe, the King being so great and so Catholic and I his so dutiful daughter.

I know well that the King, my lord and husband, wrote to Spain, complaining of me in some sort, in order to justify himself. But that matter ought not to go beyond us parents and children…

She continues in the letter to discuss her own jealousy as well as that of her mother, how God had healed her mother’s jealousy and would heal her own also. She would never deprive her husband, nor their sons or offspring, the right to be King and to rule the realm. The spurious epistle politically nullified Juana. Its inclusion in the royal register suggests that the letter found general acceptance in Castile, notwithstanding objections from Fernando. Philip’s subsequent dispatches to Spain, in his name and Juana’s, included complaints against Fernando and orders to suspend the Inquisition until they arrived. Juana was pressured by Philip and his advisors to sign the letter or her signature is a forgery?

Professor Bethany Aram, Juana’s biographer, has compared the autograph of this letter to other examples of the queen’s signature, among them thirty-five original documents that Juana signed between February 12, 1506, and July 30, 1507. Alongside these autographs, the 1505 signature appears invalid.

Juana’s signature on each of the papers from 1506 to 1507 bears little resemblance to the 1505 autograph.

Sources:

Bethany Aram, Juana “the Mad’s” Signature: The Problem of Invoking Royal Authority, 1505- 1507. The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), pp. 331-358

Linda Andrean, Juana “the Mad”: Queen a World Empire. Center for Austrian Studies. October, 2012

Julia Fox, Sister Queens: The Noble, Tragic Lives of Katherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile. Weidenfeld & Nicolson,2011.