Absent in (life and) death? Examining the tombs of Navarre’s regnant queens and the shaping of their memory

ABSTRACT

Navarre has long been seen as a liminal state, torn between influence and interference from its French and Iberian neighbors. The five regnant queens of Navarre exemplify this situation through their own lives which saw them pulled politically and even physically between France and Iberia—from Juana I who lived the whole of her life in France, to queens like Juana II and Catalina I who moved back and forth over the Pyrenees during their reign, to the queens Blanca I and her daughter Leonor who spent their reigns (though not their whole lives) largely in Iberia. The diverse location of these queens’ death and burial reflect the geographical context of their lives—significantly, none of the regnant queens of Navarre are buried in their own capital city of Pamplona and only one is buried in Navarre itself. This article will examine the tombs of these five women, unpicking the situational, dynastic and political context which resulted in their virtual absence from the kingdom they ruled in death and the individuals and factors involved in the shaping of their memory.

KEYWORDS:

• Queenship
• Navarre
• medieval
• tombs
• memory

The kingdom of Navarre has a unique and distinctive history as a political entity that straddled the Pyrenees, influenced by French, Basque and Iberian culture, language and customs. As Beatrice Leroy has noted, it also existed as a sovereign kingdom entirely, within the Middle Ages before it was annexed by its neighbor Castile in 1512.¹ A distinctive feature of its history is that between 1274 and the annexation of 1512, five women ruled the kingdom as regnant queens: Juana I (r. 1274–1305), Juana II (r. 1328–1349), Blanca I (r. 1425–1441), Leonor (r. 1479) and Catalina (r. 1483–1512/17) (Table 1).²

Table 1. Abbreviated genealogy of the Regnant Queens of Navarre.

These women not only inherited the mix of French and Iberian territories which made up the kingdom’s holdings, they arguably further complicated the situation through the lands that their husbands, the kings consort of Navarre held, which the ruling couples administered jointly and their successors inherited. This meant that the regnant queens of Navarre were not only deeply involved in the political machinations of both France and Iberia as the rulers of a strategic, liminal state between them, but had to divide their time between the entirety of their holdings, which for the majority of their reigns were geographically disparate. As a result, some of these regnant queens spent a great deal of their time on the move and were often far from the capital of Pamplona—indeed it is highly likely that Juana I, who was born and lived the entirety of her life in France, may never have physically visited the Iberian kingdom. Given this context, it is hardly surprising perhaps that the tombs of the regnant queens of Navarre are themselves geographically disparate—only one of the five women can be confirmed to have been buried in the kingdom itself (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Place of death and burial sites of the Regnant Queens of Navarre.

This article builds on the idea which Diane Booton introduced regarding individuals who became a “shaper of memory” by creating tombs for themselves or for family members.³ It also builds on existing studies of royal funerals and burials in Navarre, filling a gap in the literature, as the tombs of its regnant queens have not yet been looked at comparatively and, as noted by Eloísa Ramírez Vaquero, Merche Osés Urricelqui and Susana Herreros Lopetegui, more study is needed on Navarrese rulers buried outside of Navarre itself.⁴ Through a series of chronological case studies for each of the regnant queens of Navarre we will examine the tombs of these five women, analyzing the situational, dynastic and political context which resulted in their virtual absence from the kingdom they ruled in death and consider how these tombs functioned in the long-term shaping of their memory. Each case study evaluates three factors which came into play in terms of the location and iconography of the tombs: the queen’s wishes for her burial, dynastic desires to use the queen’s tomb for their own messaging regarding throne right and continuity, and situational factors. The impact of later generations is also explored in terms of the memory of these queens. In the concluding section, the case studies are brought together to demonstrate their significance as a group and reflect on who was responsible for the shaping of the memory—the queens themselves, the wider members of their dynasty or other forces entirely.

Case studies: the life and death of Navarre’s regnant queens

Juana I: Navarrese sovereign, French consort

As the only surviving child of Enrique I (r. 1270–1274), Juana assumed the throne of Navarre as an infant upon her father’s death in 1274. Juana was born in her father’s dominions in Champagne in January 1273 and there is some doubt as to whether Juana ever spent time in the country during her infancy. Her mother, Blanche of Artois, was designated regent but the queen mother was faced with a difficult situation with both Castile and Aragon aggressively pressing alternative claimants and matrimonial offers for the young queen which would have compromised the realm’s sovereignty.⁵ In response, Blanche went to France to seek the help and support of her cousin, Philip III (r. 1270–1285), ultimately signing the Treaty of Orleans in 1275. The treaty provided for a marriage with the French king’s son (later Philip IV) which took place in 1284, when Juana was deemed to have reached majority age. The following year, on the death of Philip III, the young couple became the rulers of France, in addition to the queen’s territories of Navarre, Champagne and Brie. During their reign, Navarre was administered by French governors on the couple’s behalf, although there is clear evidence that Juana was more directly engaged with her territories of Champagne and Brie.⁶

Although the power-sharing dynamic of the two sovereigns was decidedly skewed in favor of France and Philip IV, the royal couple appear to have ruled together harmoniously during their twenty-year marriage.⁷ The couple had four surviving children; three sons, Louis, Philip and Charles, each ruled in turn France as well as Navarre, Champagne and Brie.⁸ Their daughter Isabella became queen consort of England in 1308 and famously deposed her husband Edward II in 1327.⁹

Juana died on 2 April 1305 at Vincennes, leaving a will which had been drafted the previous month during her final illness. This was not the only testament she drafted; an earlier version had been made the previous year, which could indicate that the queen had been unwell for an extended period.¹⁰ Juana’s will is a rich testament which, as Elizabeth A. R. Brown notes, gives us a window into the queen’s personality through the people and projects which she prioritized for bequests, such as the Collège de Navarre in Paris which became a leading educational establishment.¹¹

For the current study, the items of greatest interest are the queen’s wishes for her burial and tomb. These were not expressed in her testament but in what Brown refers to as “litteras furtivas,” where Juana noted that she preferred to rest in a Franciscan institution, the Cordeliers convent in Paris, following her mother’s example of being buried in a Clarissan foundation and her own patronage of the Franciscan order in her lifetime.¹² This pattern of Franciscan burial sites was observed in the next generation as well: Juana’s daughter Isabella of France also chose to be buried at the Franciscan foundation of Greyfriars in London, following the example of her mother, as well as that of her aunt, Margaret of France, second wife of Edward I of England, who was also buried before the main altar at Greyfriars.¹³ Other French queen consorts followed Juana’s lead: Marie de Brabant and Jeanne de Bourgogne also chose the Cordeliers convent in Paris for their own tombs, as did some of Juana’s male descendants.¹⁴ Philip IV appears to have acted on his wife’s wishes, in spite of his own desire to have her buried at Saint-Denis, but her tomb is no longer extant, due to a destructive fire at the site on 19 November 1580.¹⁵ While an inscription at a church in Avon, near Fontainebleau claims that Juana’s heart was buried there alongside Philip IV’s, Elizabeth A. R. Brown has argued convincingly that Philip’s heart was actually buried at Poissy and that Juana “was interred, undivided, in the church of the Franciscans” two days after her death, just as she had requested.¹⁶ Thus it appears that Juana’s choice was to remain in Paris after death, where she had spent the majority of her life as both regnant queen of Navarre and as consort queen of France. She did not choose to divide her body to be with her husband Philip IV, nor to be partially interred in her territories in Champagne and Brie, where she was sovereign countess, nor in Navarre, where again she may not have ever set foot during her lifetime. Juana’s desire to leave her body whole might have stemmed from the 1299 bull of Boniface VIII which forbade divided burial, Destestande feritatis, which could be seen as a critique of Philip IV’s controversial decision to bury his father’s heart separately.¹⁷ Yet on 18 April 1304, the year before Juana’s death, Philip had obtained a dispensation which allowed for himself and his wife to have a divided burial, making it even more surprising perhaps that Juana appears to have chosen to reject this option and be buried entire.¹⁸ Anna Duch has noted that separate heart burials were a way of creating a permanent link or association with another individual or the dynasty itself, and thus Juana’s refusal to have her heart buried with her husband could also be a matter of proclaiming her own identity as separate from Philip IV, perhaps affirming her role as regnant queen of Navarre over that of being Philip’s queen consort even if she was buried in Paris.¹⁹ Another significant aspect of her burial was that Juana not only set a precedent that other members of her family and French queen consorts followed to be buried in a Franciscan foundation, she also set a precedent of being buried outside the kingdom of Navarre that other regnant Navarrese queens unwittingly followed.

Juana II: from northern France to Iberia—and back again

The second regnant queen of Navarre was Juana I’s granddaughter and namesake, Juana II. Although she was the only surviving child of Louis X of France (Luis I of Navarre), Juana was not able to successfully claim her paternal inheritance upon her father’s death in 1316, becoming the test case for female succession in France which eventually resulted in the application of Salic Law to prevent female rule.²⁰ While Juana was bypassed for the thrones of France and Navarre by her uncles Philip and Charles, by 1328 both men had died, leaving only female claimants, which forced the French to appoint a cousin, Philip de Valois, to the French throne. Since the Valois had no claim to Navarre and the Navarrese fueros allowed female succession, it was agreed that Juana and her husband Philip d’Evreux would become the new rulers of the Iberian kingdom, ending the personal union of the crowns of France and Navarre which had begun under Juana I and Philip IV in 1285.

Juana II and Philip d’Evreux (Felipe III of Navarre) were formally crowned in Pamplona in March 1329. Although they split their time between the Pyrenean kingdom and the Evreux domains in northern France in order to govern both territories, the couple co-ruled effectively, even swapping places at times, with Juana administering her husband’s patrimony in northern France while Philip ruled in Navarre. Even during periods of absence, the royal couple were deeply engaged in the rule of Navarre in matters such as crime and justice, spearheading reform programmes, such as the amejoriamiento of the fueros and working to repair political relationships with their Iberian neighbors.²¹

At the point of Philip d’Evreux’s death in 1343, Juana was in northern France and remained there for the final years of her life, while continuing to rule both her own kingdom of Navarre and administer her husband’s territories on behalf of their young son and heir, Carlos (later Carlos II el Malo). Juana died, on 6 October 1349 in Conflans, just northwest of Paris, and was survived by three sons and three daughters.²²

At the time of Philip’s death in 1343, he was in Iberia, engaged in a campaign with Alfonso XI of Castile-León (r. 1312–1350), besieging the Muslim port city of Algeciras.²³ Philip’s body was interred in the cathedral of Pamplona, as befit a king of Navarre, yet not all of the previous kings of Navarre had been buried there; royal tombs can be found in a number of cities and monastic institutions throughout the realm. Julia Pavón Benito has highlighted the significance of Philip’s burial in Pamplona, given the paucity of royal burials from the Champenois dynasty and the absence of Juana I and her sons, the Capetian kings of Navarre. Pavón Benito argues that Philip’s burial in the cathedral was “una declaración de intenciones” for the Evreux dynasty and their renewal of the physical connection between the monarchs and the Iberian realm, presaging the burials of his son Carlos II and grandson Carlos III in the kingdom.²⁴

Rather than underlining her status as the regnant queen of Navarre with a burial in Pamplona, Juana was ultimately buried at the Capetian necropolis at Saint Denis, permanently marking her familial ties to the royal house which had passed over her claims to the French throne. Even though the couple were buried separately in two different kingdoms, they were reunited symbolically in a joint heart burial at the church of the Jacobins in Paris, following the practice of other Capetians for divided burial.²⁵ While only the heads from Juana and Philip’s effigies have survived (now in the collection of the Louvre), a drawing of their joint tomb at the Jacobins from 1700 shows that the couple were depicted lying side-by-side with their hands clasped in prayer.²⁶

Their daughter Blanche, second wife of Philip VI of France, can be credited both with Juana’s tomb at Saint Denis and with her parents’ joint heart tomb at the convent of the Jacobins. Marguerite Keane notes that, in creating these tombs for her parents and for her husband, who died less than a year after her mother Juana in August 1350, Blanche was both honoring their memory and enhancing her own prestige by association with her illustrious royal relatives.²⁷ Ultimately, the heart burial at the Jacobins created an eternal association between husband and wife as well as underlining their membership in the Capetian dynasty through the practice of divided burial. The locations of both burials of Juana II were significant as prominent burial grounds of French royalty and to locations which were associated with her grandmother and namesake, Juana I. The Jacobins was also located in close proximity to Juana I’s tomb at Cordeliers, her foundation of the Collège de Navarre, and to the Hôtel de Navarre, the palace that Juana I had used as a residence and had bequeathed to fund the establishment of the Collège.²⁸

The words chosen by Blanche for the inscription on her mother’s tombs at the Jacobins and Saint Denis also underscore her royal status and Capetian lineage. While the inscriptions are not completely identical, both address Juana as “Jehanne, by the grace of God, queen of Navarre, and countess of Evreux, daughter of Louis, king of France, eldest son of king Philip the Fair [IV].”²⁹ While Juana was firmly acknowledged as the queen of Navarre, it was not her descendance from her grandmother Juana I—who passed that title to her eldest son Louis—but rather Louis’ position as the eldest son of Philip IV which was mentioned, subtly signal Juana II’s position as a bypassed claimant, perhaps even the rightful heir, of the French crown. The question is whether Blanche made these choices to stress her mother’s Capetian lineage or if the impetus came from Juana’s own wishes, possibly communicated on her deathbed or in her will, which has not survived.³⁰ Juana did stress her connection to the French royal line during her lifetime, beginning some of her letters with Jehanne fille de roy de France [“Juana, daughter of the king of France”] before her Navarrese and comital titles.³¹ Both Keane and Tania Mertzman have noted that Juana also stressed her Capetian lineage through the deliberate choice of Saint Louis [Louis IX of France] for the dominant image cycle in her Book of Hours, possibly as a means of asserting the claim of her own son Carlos II of Navarre to the French throne.³² Blanche was also buried at Saint Denis with her own daughter, Jeanne de France, who died young on the way to her wedding in 1371. However, Blanche made a point in her will, multiple times, that she wished to be buried entire—Jean Nagle has noted that Blanche felt the division of the body was a sign of earthly vanity.³³ Given how vehemently Blanche felt about divided burial personally, this may suggest that she was indeed carrying out her parents’ personal desires to have divided burials, creating their heart tomb at their express request, even if it contravened her own feelings about the practice. Ultimately, whoever made those choices about the location and design of Juana’s two tombs, it is clear that the primary association is her place as a member of the French royal family, rather than sending her body or viscera to Pamplona to be buried there alongside her husband to affirm her place as Navarre’s second regnant queen.

Blanca I: in the Iberian orbit

Blanca was not expected to become Navarre’s third regnant queen. She was born in either 1385 or 1386, the third child of Carlos III of Navarre and his wife Leonor de Trastámara of Castile.³⁴ In 1401, Blanca was selected as the future bride of Martín of Sicily, heir to the throne of Aragon, and she left Iberia for the island kingdom in 1402. Blanca was entrusted to rule Sicily in her husband’s absence and, following his death on campaign in Sardinia in June 1409, she was appointed Viceroy by the king of Aragon. She held the island for the Aragonese for nearly six years despite considerable opposition from a rebel group headed by Bernardo de Cabrera.³⁵

Blanca’s return to Navarre in 1415 was imperative as her two younger brothers and her two elder sisters had passed away while she was in Sicily, leaving Blanca as the heiress. As she was a childless widow, a second marriage was arranged for her with Juan of Aragon, the second son of the new Aragonese king. The couple were married in June 1420 and produced four children, three of whom survived to adulthood.³⁶

Upon Carlos III’s death in September 1425, Blanca and her husband assumed the Navarrese throne. Their reign was marred by war with Castile which was driven by Juan’s interference in Castilian politics. Blanca worked tirelessly for peace and the Treaty of Toledo in 1436 eventually ended the hostilities between the two realms. The treaty was cemented with a marriage between her eldest daughter and the heir of Castile which took place in 1440; Blanca attended this important event and shortly after died in 1441 while on pilgrimage to Santa Maria de Nieva. While the site of Blanca’s death could be read as a reflection of her piety, a quality for which she was lauded, Eloísa Ramírez Vaquero notes that the queen was not merely on pilgrimage on her final journey but engaged in political labors as well.³⁷

As a queen, Blanca was always “working” up until the moment of her death. She was constantly negotiating for the benefit of her Navarrese kingdom with her relatives and ruling peers. Through blood and marriage she was a key member of the Trastámara dynasty whose branches ruled Castile and Aragon, putting her at center of the cut and thrust of Iberian politics. Yet while she tried to broker peace in life, a codicil in Blanca’s will became the foundation for war. The codicil allowed her widower Juan to retain the title king of Navarre and control of the kingdom, preventing the rightful ascent of their son Carlos to the throne. This eventually triggered a civil war in Navarre between those who supported Carlos and those who favored the continued rule of Juan of Aragon, respectively the Beaumont and Agramont factions. Although Carlos’s untimely death in 1461 allowed Juan to claim the ultimate victory, the rival groups which emerged from this conflict continued to generate conflict and political instability in the realm up to the eventual annexation of the kingdom by Juan’s son by his second marriage, Ferdinand of Aragon, in 1512.

However, our concern here with Blanca’s will is not the provisions she made for the succession but those for her mortal remains. It was written on 17 February 1439; unlike her predecessors Juana I and II, Blanca’s will gives us a clear insight into her wishes, as it contains lengthy and explicit instructions for her tomb and burial.³⁸ The queen expressed her desire to be buried in front of the altar at Santa María de Ujué in a a “well made and orderly” alabaster tomb befitting “the honor of our royal dignity.”³⁹

Blanca’s will delineates the number of wax torches or candles to be placed around the tomb and notes that her tomb should be covered in a particular green and gold cloth from her wardrobe as well as a cloth of gold that she brought with her from Sicily. The queen requested that she be buried in her coronation robes and left extensive sums for masses to be said for her soul at churches and monasteries across Navarre, along with garments for the poor for the day of her interment and provisions for the ecclesiastics holding vigils and masses for her soul.⁴⁰ Blanca’s choices reflected her desire to be buried in a manner befitting her status as a regnant queen, and her devotion to the Virgin as well as her personal experience via the cloth which she had personally brought back from her years in Sicily. It also reflected her familial connections—her grandfather Carlos II had his heart buried at Santa María de Ujué, her parents were buried in an exquisite alabaster tomb in Pamplona’s cathedral, and green cloth was customarily used to drape royal coffins in Aragonese funerary ceremonies and it was also the color which dominated the coronation ceremonies of her mother, Leonor de Trastámara.⁴¹

Yet, Blanca’s detailed instructions did not ensure that her final wishes were respected, as she was not buried at her preferred location of Santa María de Ujué.⁴² Instead, it appears that the queen was buried at Santa Maria de Nieva, where she died. Even though this was not what the queen had stipulated in her will, it could be seen as an appropriate location, given its importance as a site for Marian devotion which was patronized by Blanca’s relatives and contemporaries, the Castilian queens Catalina de Lancaster and Maria de Aragon.⁴³

However, there is a lack of certainty over the fate of Blanca’s earthly remains, as contradictory evidence has suggested that the queen may have been buried elsewhere or that her tomb may have been moved from Nieva. Documentary evidence shows that the queen was given funerary obsequies in Pamplona befitting a Navarrese monarch, which Ramírez Vaquero describes as “a funeral worthy of the highest expressions of royalty” (un funeral digno de la más alta expression de la realeza).⁴⁴ Merche Osés Urricelqui has noted that the ceremonies for the queen’s funeral in Pamplona lasted one month, from 11 April until 9 May 1441, costing nearly 7,000 libras in total.⁴⁵ If Blanca’s remains were still at Nieva, that would not have presented a difficulty as it was not necessary for a body to be present at the funerary ceremonies. Indeed, Blanca herself had ordered obsequies to be celebrated in Navarre for her aunt Joan (or Juana), dowager duchess of Brittany and queen of England when she died in 1437, even if Joan was buried far away in Canterbury Cathedral.⁴⁶ Yet, Ramírez Vaquero notes that the language of the documentation surrounding Blanca’s funeral appears to suggest that there was a royal body lying in state during the queen’s obsequies, and provisions were made for a ceremonial of interment on 21 April, which raises the possibility that Blanca’s body may have been buried at Pamplona instead of Nieva.⁴⁷ An alternative explanation is that this note in the documentation may be seen instead as referring to an acto homenaje presidido por un falso túmulo (“act of homage presided at a false tomb”).⁴⁸ Another possible burial location was suggested by sixteenth-century chroniclers who claim that Blanca’s daughter Leonor moved her body from Nieva to the convent of Nuestra Señora de la Misercordia in Tafalla where Leonor herself intended to be buried.⁴⁹

In recent times the mystery of the queen’s resting place has deepened, and the disputed location of Blanca’s tomb has become enmeshed in issues of regional identity and politics. In October 1994, bones believed to be those of Blanca I were found at Santa Maria de Nieva and were taken to be analyzed. In April 1995, the Gobierno de Navarra asked the Junta de Castilla y León to return the bones to Navarre, citing the queen’s own wishes in her will and testament that she be buried at Santa Maria de Ujué.⁵⁰ Yet these bones were not given over to the Navarrese regional government, but were instead returned to Santa Maria de Nieva, where they were reburied after local documentation signed on 29 October 1994 indicated that “the town of Santa Maria de Nieva was [Blanca’s] legitimate resting place” (el pueblo de Santa Maria de Nieva es su legítmo depositario).⁵¹ The controversy did not end there—in September 2008, the results of forensic analysis of these bones and of the remains believed to be those of her son Carlos, the Principe de Viana, revealed that neither had been correctly identified.⁵² Thus, Blanca’s final resting place remains a mystery.⁵³

Leonor: long-serving governor, short-reigning queen

Leonor was the youngest child of Blanca I and Juan of Aragon. As an unlikely heir to the throne, she was committed at a young age to a strategic marriage with Gaston, the heir to the neighboring county of Foix. She became countess of Foix when her husband acceded to the title in 1436 as Gaston IV. Their marriage was harmonious and prolific with ten children, all but one of whom survived to adulthood.⁵⁴

Leonor and Gaston were beneficiaries of her father’s feud with her brother over the right to be king of Navarre.⁵⁵ Juan appointed Leonor and Gaston as the new heirs to the kingdom with the power to govern the realm as his lieutenants in 1455, ignoring the 1427 agreement for the succession and the claims of her older siblings Carlos and Blanca.⁵⁶ Leonor immediately took up the post and remained in Navarre for the majority of her remaining years but she struggled to maintain peace and govern the country during outbreaks of war between the Agramont and Beaumont factions. The deaths of both of Leonor’s siblings in questionable circumstances cleared possible opposition to her lieutenancy and eventual succession but permanently tarnished her reputation, as she was presumed by some to have been involved or at least partially responsible for their untimely ends.⁵⁷

Juan of Aragon died in January 1479, finally leaving Leonor able to claim the Navarrese crown. She was acclaimed as queen on 28 January but she only ruled the kingdom for a matter of weeks before succumbing to illness on 12 February 1479.⁵⁸ Hers was the briefest reign of all the regnant queens of Navarre, yet Leonor’s burial is the only one securely located in the kingdom itself.

As lieutenant, and during her brief reign as queen, Leonor had not been able to fully control the kingdom, particularly its capital Pamplona. Her power base had been largely in the south of the kingdom, including the cities of Sangüesa and Tudela, where she died in 1479. Ramírez Vaquero notes that Leonor had a special fondness for the city of Tafalla, and in spite of the fact that she had sometimes struggled to impose her will on the local authorities, it was a location that was a favorite residence during her life and where she intended to rest after death.⁵⁹ Leonor founded a Franciscan convent in the city which she intended to use as a pantheon for herself and her successors.⁶⁰ Leonor received a papal bull from Paul II in July 1468 which gave her permission to construct the convent, yet it took another two years for this to be confirmed by the bishop of Pamplona.⁶¹ The city balked at Leonor’s request to annex the existing church of San Andrés—indeed, permission was only given in May 1479, three months after Leonor died. Leonor intended to be buried at the convent of Nuestra Señora de las Misericordias together with her daughter, also named Leonor, who had predeceased her, and possibly also with her mother Blanca, as noted previously. Yet initially at least, her body remained in Tudela, where Leonor died. In 1487 her grandson and heir, Francisco Febo, came to Tudela and desired to move his grandmother’s body to Tafalla to honor her wishes from her last will and testament, made shortly before her death on 10 February 1479.⁶² Apparently the city of Tudela was reluctant for the queen’s body to be moved but the young king’s mandate was honored and a delegation of mourners with three crosses, torches and women clad in black from the city of Tafalla met the royal cortege accompanying Leonor’s body at Olite. The cortege was comprised of the young king himself, his mother the regent Magdalena of France and two of Leonor’s sons, the Cardinal Infante Pedro of Foix and the Infante Jaime, who all participated in the funerary ceremonies.

Leonor and her daughter were buried in a “modest tomb” (modesto tumulo) in the middle of the presbytery, according to José Cabezudo Astráin, with the only signification of their royal status coming from a cloth embroidered with the royal arms draped over the sepulcher.⁶³ Not only was Leonor’s tomb modest, the convent itself appears to have stalled in its development and Leonor’s family felt that the institution was overshadowed by the popular and wealthy cult of Saint Sebastian, as Tafalla had long been a site of pilgrimage for the saint.⁶⁴ Leonor’s son the Cardinal Infante Pedro successfully petitioned Pope Innocent VIII to merge her foundation with the church of San Sebastian in 1489 which led to its renaming as the Real Convento de San Sebastián de Tafalla.⁶⁵ In 1491 the civic authorities noted that further work on the convent was needed “for the honor of the excellent bodies of the queen Lady Leonor and her daughter of glorious memory” (por honor de los excelentes cuerpos de la reyna doña Leonor y su fija de gloriosa memoria).⁶⁶ And there was clearly more yet to be done: in 1499, ten years after the bull of Innocent VIII, Jean d'Albret, king consort to Leonor’s granddaughter Catalina, expressed dismay at the poor state of the convent, which was “little more than a hermitage” (poco mas que una ermita).⁶⁷ Jean and Catalina immediately donated church furnishings and made further donations to the convent in 1511, noting that the convent was hardly befitting a royal necropolis in its current state as “it was not a place in any manner fitting for such persons … as the queen lady Leonor, of glorious memory, our grandmother, and the princess, her daughter.”⁶⁸

In spite of these efforts on the part of Leonor’s descendants to ensure that she was moved to her intended burial site and that the convent she founded had adequate funding to thrive and project her memory as appropriate to her queenly status, her tomb has not survived. As noted above, in 1512, shortly after their donation to Tafalla, Catalina and her husband Jean d’Albret were ousted from power in Navarre and the kingdom was annexed by Castile. This meant that Leonor’s descendants could no longer ensure the development of the convent nor were they buried with her in Tafalla to create the necropolis for her line that Leonor might have desired. The convent itself was later damaged by floods in 1787 and 1795 as well as an earthquake in 1807. Further destruction came to Tafalla with the War of Independence or Peninsular War in the early nineteenth century which effectively destroyed both Leonor’s preferred residence of the Palacio de los Reyes and the convent she had founded. José Cabezudo Astráin notes that documentation about the remains of the site makes no mention of Leonor’s tomb, and it is unclear if her bones and those of her daughter were collected and saved by the Franciscans or if they were deposited in a mass ossuary.⁶⁹

Catalina: the final female sovereign?

Catalina was the second child of Gaston of Foix and Magdalena of France, born in either 1469 or 1470 in Mont de Marsan.⁷⁰ She was the designated heir of her elder brother Francisco Febo, who died unmarried and without issue in 1483. Catalina had difficulty establishing her rule due to the challenge of her uncle Jean of Narbonne to her throne, the continuing instability in Navarre from decades of civil war and opposition from her Navarrese subjects to her marriage to Jean d’Albret, the son of a prominent French lord. It took ten years after their marriage for Catalina and her husband to be secure enough to travel to Pamplona for their coronation, which took place in January 1494.

The other major difficulty which Catalina faced was international politics. The increasing rivalry between the king of France and the “Catholic Monarchs,” Ferdinand and Isabel, left Navarre in a difficult position on the border between two rival states. While Catalina worked strenuously to remain a neutral party and maintain alliances with the Spanish sovereigns, Ferdinand of Aragon’s increasingly predatory behavior after the death of Isabel of Castile and his second marriage to Catalina’s cousin Germana of Foix (daughter of Jean of Narbonne) forced the Navarrese queen to reconsider her alliances. The Treaty of Blois, which she signed with the king of France in 1512, gave Ferdinand a pretext to invade the kingdom and annex Navarre in July of the same year.

Catalina and her husband attempted to regain Navarre with a military campaign and diplomatic efforts but were unsuccessful. Although Catalina and her descendants continued to style themselves as the rulers of Navarre, in reality they were left with their sizable collection of territory north of the Pyrenees, which still gave them considerable leverage in French politics. Although they never regained the Navarrese crown, her great-grandson, Henri III of Navarre became the King of France in 1589 and his descendants, the Bourbon dynasty, eventually claimed the kingdoms of Spain in the War of Spanish Succession.

The annexation of 1512 had a direct impact on Catalina’s burial. Her will of 1504 survives and was included in a printed collection of the testaments of the House of Foix-Béarn-Navarre.⁷¹ The queen is very specific on her desired place of burial:

Item, we choose [to have] our sepulchre in the same Cathedral of Saint Mary of Pamplona, where our predecessors the kings of Navarre, of glorious memory, were accustomed to rest in front of the main altar.⁷²

By choosing this burial site, Catalina sought to permanently link herself to Navarrese rulers of the past after her death, as the cathedral had been an important burial place for rulers of Navarre since García Ramírez was buried there in 1150. While it was not the exclusive burial place of Navarrese rulers, the cathedral was a key royal necropolis; in the words of Ramírez Vaquero, it was “parte de la construcción política de la monarquía.”⁷³ The queen was also attempting to legitimize her rule in her own lifetime by promulgating her will in Pamplona and expressing this desire to be buried and recognized as a Navarrese sovereign, rather than a French countess. The stipulation of the placement near the high altar would have strategically placed her in proximity to her great-great grandfather, Carlos III el Noble, who was seen as a “golden age” king of Navarre. While the location was clearly significant to her, the queen left no specification for the tomb itself, unlike her great-grandmother Blanca I. Like Blanca I, Catalina died outside of Navarre and the political circumstances of the annexation meant that her desired instructions for burial could not be carried out.

Instead, Catalina is buried in Lescar, a necropolis for the House of Foix-Béarn-Navarre where her brother and predecessor, Francisco Febo and her husband Jean d’Albret, as well as her children François, Anne and Henri and his wife Marguerite d’Angoulême were all buried.⁷⁴ Catalina’s brother had also expressed a wish to be buried in Pamplona in his will but his mother Magdalena of France made the decision to bury him as Lescar instead, possibly due to ongoing political instability in Navarre and the proximity of Lescar which is only eight kilometers from Pau where he died in 1483.⁷⁵ Magdalena herself died in Pamplona in 1495, and she lies in a tomb in the Cathedral of Pamplona, the place where both of her children wished to be buried, even though she stipulated in her own will that she wanted to be buried at a Carmelite foundation in Tarbes.⁷⁶

There is a lack of clarity regarding the structure or appearance of the tomb in which Catalina and her husband Jean d’Albret were buried, as it was damaged beyond repair due to neglect and depredations to the church at Lescar in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Another element of mystery, similar to Blanca’s situation, is regarding the current location of Catalina’s remains. Excavations conducted at Lescar in the early twentieth century, which identified the site of the other royal burials in the church, could not identify the bones of Catalina and her husband amongst the remains recovered in the royal crypt.⁷⁷ Indeed, Jésus M. Usunáriz has noted that their remains now lie in a wooden box marked as “indeterminate royal bones” (huesos reales sin determinar).⁷⁸ Yet an alternative suggested by Raoul Anthony posits that Catalina and Jean may have been moved from the royal crypt by their son Henri II of Navarre who built a tomb for his parents, which again has been lost.⁷⁹ Today a modern brass plaque on the floor of the church at Lescar claims to mark the site of the burials of Catalina and her six relatives, in spite of the fact that the queen and her husband’s remains have not been found.

Conclusion: shaping memory

To bring together this survey of the tombs of the regnant queens of Navarre, it is important to return to Booton’s idea, introduced at the outset of this study, and ask who was shaping their memory—the queens themselves, members of their dynasty who survived them or other figures entirely who manipulated their legacy for their own ends.

It is important to note that most of these queens declared a desire for burial in Navarre, even if circumstances prevented their wishes from being honored; only in the case of Juana I do we have evidence that she specifically chose to be buried in France instead. In addition, four of the five queens expressed desires about where they wanted to be buried which was central to their identity and how they wished to be remembered: Juana I, Blanca and Leonor chose religious institutions which they had a relationship with in their lifetime and wished to be buried there in a permanent monument to their patronage. Catalina opted for the Cathedral of Pamplona, reflecting a desire to be remembered as a true Navarrese sovereign. The husband of Juana I, Philip IV of France, carried out her wishes and buried her at the convent of the Cordeliers in Paris as she desired; likewise, Leonor’s grandson and heir, Francisco Febo, moved her body to the Franciscan convent she founded in Tafalla, as requested in her final testament. Both Blanca I and Catalina died outside Navarre and neither appears to have been buried in the location they requested—indeed, in both cases there is a lack of clarity regarding exactly where each of their bodies has been ultimately been laid to rest, in spite of efforts by modern historians and archaeologists to find their remains. Juana II’s wishes for her burial have not been documented—she, too, died outside of Navarre, and we cannot know if she would have preferred to be buried in Pamplona alongside her husband. Instead, Juana II and Philip d’Evreux’s hearts were buried together in Paris, and her body rests in the French royal necropolis at Saint-Denis, as a permanent reminder of her Capetian heritage and perhaps of her denied claim to the throne of France. In this case, we can clearly see her daughter Blanche of Navarre’s role as a shaper of memory, commissioning both the tomb at Saint-Denis and the heart burial at the Jacobins in Paris. However, we cannot be certain whether Blanche was carrying out her mother’s wishes or if Blanche was motivated to choose the site of Juana’s burials in order to reinforce her own status as dowager queen of France.

Beyond highlighting the role of the queens’ immediate descendants in shaping their memory by honoring or failing to execute the wishes of these women for their burial, this study has also demonstrated the long-term impact on the memorialization of a group of regnant queens. All of the queens’ tombs have been damaged or destroyed in the centuries after their deaths. The site of Juana I’s burial was destroyed by fire, and the damage to the tombs has also resulted from the impact of the Reformation, revolution and war. In contrast, the site of Blanca’s possible tomb at Santa María de Nieva has been restored, as has Juana II’s tomb at Saint-Denis. The head of Juana II’s effigy from her heart burial at the Jacobins has been saved as part of the Louvre’s collection even though the convent itself is now lost. Finally, we can see recent interventions to reshape the memory of these queens, including the dispute between Castile and Navarre over the supposed bones of Blanca I and the modern plaque erected at the church at Lescar to emphasize its role as a necropolis for the House of Foix-Béarn-Navarre. In both instances, Santa María de Nieva and Lescar have signage which proudly proclaims that the tombs of Blanca I and Catalina, respectively, are located there, despite the fact that neither queen’s remains have been securely identified.

Ultimately then, it could be argued that no surviving tomb in the realm that they ruled serves as a permanent memorial to the life and reign of any of the five regnant queens of Navarre. We have seen that the circumstances of their death had a major role to play in this, as four of the five queens died outside Navarre for political reasons—Juana I was bound to her husband’s side in France, Juana II also died in France administering her husband’s patrimony, Blanca I was on her way back to Navarre after cementing a major political alliance in Castile, and Catalina effectively died in exile from Navarre after the kingdom was annexed in 1512. Leonor was the only queen to be buried in Navarre, but the annexation meant that her plans for her tomb could not be fully realized by her descendants and, due to later political conflict and natural disasters, the tomb has been lost. It could be argued that these circumstances reflect the key political challenges of their own reigns: the personal union of the crowns of France and Navarre in the reign of Juana I, the efforts of Juana II and Philip d’Evreux to balance the needs of Navarre and the Evreux domains in France, Blanca’s efforts to create peace with Castile and the annexation of Navarre during Catalina’s reign. Their physical absence from Navarre could be seen as a reflections of the wider external political challenges of the medieval monarchs of this kingdom, pulling them between their French and Iberian neighbors, and exacerbated by the internal political convulsions of the realm due to the conflict between the Agramont and Beaumont factions. In spite of the lack of a physical tomb to serve as a focus for memorialization of their role as sovereigns in Navarre itself, their important role in the political history of the kingdom has meant that their lives, reigns and the unusual circumstances of female rule that they embodied have not been forgotten.

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Notes on contributors

Elena Woodacre

Dr. Elena (Ellie) Woodacre is a Reader in Renaissance History at the University of Winchester. She is a specialist in queenship and royal studies and has published extensively in this area including her recent monographs, Queens and Queenship (ARC Humanities Press) and a biography of Joan of Navarre. She is currently leading a project (“The Queen’s Resources”) on the economic aspect of queenship. Elena is the organizer of the “Kings & Queens” conference series, founder of the Royal Studies Network, Editor-in-Chief of the Royal Studies Journal and the editor of two book series with Routledge and ARC Humanities Press.

Notes

1 Leroy, Navarre, 186. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.

2 See Woodacre, Queens Regnant. After the annexation there was one further regnant queen, Juana III or Jeanne d’Albret (r. 1555–1572), who is not included here as she did not hold the Iberian kingdom itself.

3 Booton, “Commemorating Duke John IV,” 157–86.

4 Ramírez Vaquero et al., “Materiales para analizar,” 127.

5 Woodacre, Queens Regnant, 25–29.

6 See Herreros Lopetegui, “Navarra,” 193–208. On Juana’s engagement with her Champenois territories, see Lalou, “Le gouvernement,” 16–30.

7 For a discussion of their power-sharing dynamic and that of the other regnant queens of Navarre and their husbands, see Woodacre, “The Kings Consort of Navarre,” 11–32.

8 Louis X of France (Luis I of Navarre, r. 1305–1316) r. 1314–1316; Philip V of France (Felipe II of Navarre) r. 1316–1322; Charles IV of France (Carlos I of Navarre) r. 1322–1328.

9 For an excellent brief biography of Isabella of France, see Evans, “Isabella of France,” 27–48.

10 The year of Juana’s death is sometimes given as 1304 due to differences in the dating systems and the reckoning of Easter, see Herreros Lopetegui, “Juana I,” 460n7. Juana’s final will of 1305 is reproduced in full in Albertos San José, García-Alonso Montoya, and Ortiz Ibarz, “París 1304,” 58–63. See also Brown, “La mort,” 508–09.

11 Brown, “La mort,” 124–25, gives a thorough discussion of Juana’s will and the action taken after her death by her husband, Philip IV of France, regarding her testamentary wishes.

12 Brown, “La mort,” 136.

13 Slater, “Defining Queenship,” 53–76.

14 Gaude-Ferragu, Queenship, 142. Juana’s son Philip V of France (husband of Jeanne de Bourgogne) had his heart buried at the Cordeliers church, and his son Louis was buried there as well; see Robson, The Franciscans, 168; Brown “Royal Succession,” 275–76, 281–82.

15 Leprévost, “Objets divers,” 549.

16 Brown, Capetian France, 256. For a discussion of the erroneous inscription at Avon, see Leprévost, “Objets divers,” 548–53.

17 See Brown, “Death and the Human Body,” 221–70, and “Authority, the Family, and the Dead,” 803–32, for the controversy surrounding the division of the body and heart burial for those in the French royal family. The text of Detestande feritatis is reproduced in Bande, Le coeur du roi, 79–80.

18 Nagle, La civilisation du coeur, 141.

19 Duch, “My Crown Is in My Heart,” 1–4.

20 See Woodacre, Queens Regnant, 51–63; Whaley, “Salic Law,” 443–64.

21 Beroiz Lazcano, Crimen y castigo; Miranda García, Felipe III y Juana II; Segura Urra, Fazer justicia.

22 While the Black Death is often given as the cause of her death, Miranda García, “Juana II,” 605, notes she had been suffering from ill health previously and had asked the king of Castile in June 1349 to send her his Jewish doctor Salomón.

23 See Azcárate Aguilar-Amat, “Aportación y muerte,” 61–76.

24 Pavón Benito, “Felipe III,” 260.

25 Bande, Le coeur du roi, 101, has noted that the couple, “Sépares par-delà la mort, les deux époux étaient pourtant réunis par leur tombeau de coeur.”

26 Barker, Stone Fidelity, 94–95.

27 Keane, Material Culture, 46–50.

28 My thanks to Tracy Chapman Hamilton for these insights based on the medieval maps of Paris she has created and presented in her paper “Mapping the Global Premodern Woman.” See also Davis, “A Gift from the Queen,” 76.

29 Keane, Material Culture, 49–50. Juana and Philip’s inscriptions from their heart tombs at the convent of the Jacobins are reprinted in Millin, Antiquités Nationales, 80.

30 Ramírez Vaquero, “Memoria del rey,” 293, has noted that neither Philip d’Evreux nor Juana II’s will survives, thus we cannot be certain of their own preferences for burial.

31 Miret y Sans, “Lettres closes,” 56.

32 Keane, “Louis IX,” 237–52; Mertzman, “An Examination,” 19–25.

33 Nagle, La civilisation du coeur, 142. See also Keane, Material Culture, 34, for excerpts from Blanche’s will specifying entire burial. See also Graña, “Isabel la Católica” for a comparison with Isabel I of Castile.

34 The children of Carlos III of Navarre and Leonor de Trastamara were Juana (b. 9 November 1382), Maria (b. 1383/1384), Blanca (b. 1385/1386), Beatriz (b. 1386, possibly one of twins), Isabel (b. July 1396), Carlos (b. June 1397), and Luis (b. 1401).

35 For a brief overview of this period of Blanca’s life and the challenges she faced as viceroy, see Fodale, “Blanca de Navarra,” 311–22.

36 Her children were Carlos, Princípe de Viana (b. 1421), Juana (b. 1423, d. 1425), Blanca, later Princesa de Asturias during her brief marriage to Enrique (later IV) of Castile (b. 1424) and Leonor, later Countess of Foix, governor and ultimately Queen of Navarre (b. 1425).

37 Ramírez Vaquero, “Blanca de Navarra,” 704: “No es casual la muerte de Blanca en Nieva: la villa y santuario está en un punto neurálogico entre los focos principales de la política castellana … La reina no estaba simplemente de camino hacia Navarra, peregrinando como otras tantas veces y al paso de una vista al santuario; estaba allí ejerciendo una labor política … ”

38 For more on the surviving copies of the will and a full transcription of the Pau version, see Virto Ibáñez, “El testamento,” 131–58.

39 See Testament of Blanca I (17 February 1439), in Virto Ibáñez, “El testamento,” 138: “una sepultura de pietra labastro que sia sobre seis colupnas, bien fecha e ordenada, e sobre aquella sia fecha e labrada nuestra ymagin bien e devidamente et alderredor de nuestra dicha sepultura sea [p]uesta una rexa de fierro bien labrada e ordenada, segun cumple a la onrra de nuestra dignidat real.”

40 Testament of Blanca I (17 February 1439), in Virto Ibáñez, “El testamento,” 139. The queen noted she wanted to be seen “as she was on Earth” (e que este assi tanto como sera sobre terra).

41 See Woods, Cut in Alabaster, 193–99. On the significance of green cloth, see Ruiz Domingo, “The Fabrics and Colours of Power.” On Carlos II’s heart burial, see Osés Urricelqui, “Ceremonias funerarias,” 106.

42 Pavón Benito and García de la Borbolla, Morir en la Edad Media, 174.

43 Lucía Gómez-Chacón, Santa Maria la Real de Nieva, 56.

44 Ramírez Vaquero, “Los restos de la reina Blanca,” 357.

45 Osés Urricelqui, “Ceremonias funerarias,” 118.

46 Archivo General de Navarra (AGN). Catálogo, vol. XLIII, no. 224, 30 October 1437, 90–91.

47 Ramírez Vaquero, “Los restos de la reina Blanca,” 352–57.

48 Pavón Benito and García de la Borbolla, Morir en la Edad Media, 58.

49 Ramírez Vaquero, “Los restos de la reina Blanca,” 346–50. See also Moret and Aleson, Anales, 6:335–36.

50 Forjas, “Navarra reclama los restos.”

51 Martín, “Los restos atribuidos a doña Blanca.”

52 Encuentra, “Ni él es el principe.”

53 Encuentra, “Ni él es el príncipe.” Mariona Ibars has suggested that the signage around the tomb at Nieva should be adjusted to reflect these new discoveries, but the official website of Santa Maria de Nieva still claims that the queen is buried at the monastery. See “Monasterio de Santa María,” Portal Oficial de Turismo de la Junta de Castilla y León.

54 Their children were Gaston, Principe de Viana (b. 1444), Pedro (Pierre) (b. 1449, Cardinal), Jean de Narbonne (b. c. 1450), Marie (b. c. 1452; m. William X of Montferrat), Jeanne (b. c. 1454; m. Jean V of Armagnac), Marguerite (b. c. 1458; m. François II of Brittany), Catherine (b. c. 1460; m. Gaston de Foix-Candale), Leonor (b/d young, dates uncertain), Jacques (Jaime) (b. 1469), and Anne (possibly Isabel or even conflated with Leonor above) (dates uncertain).

55 For more on the civil war and Leonor’s life, see Ramírez Vaquero, Leonor.

56 The original 1427 agreement is AGN Comptos, Caj.104, no. 23, 1, dated 9 August 1427 at Pamplona.

57 See Woodacre, “Leonor of Navarre,” 161–82.

58 Lacarra, Historia del reino de Navarra, 341.

59 Ramírez Vaquero, “Leonor, reina titular de Navarra,” 729.

60 Cabezudo Astráin, “Historia del Real Convento,” 166.

61 See documents in Cierbide and Ramos, Archivo Municipal de Tafalla: Papal Bull of Paul II (July 1468), Document 56, 206–07. Permission ratified (28 June 1470), Document 58, 208–11. Consent given by the city to build the convent (18 May 1470), Document 65, 246–49. Confirmation of the city’s renunciation of the church of San Andrés (9 December 1490), Document 70, 262–66.

62 Cabezudo Astráin, “Historia del Real Convento,” 167–68.

63 Cabezudo Astráin, “Historia del Real Convento,” 168.

64 For more on the cult see Marcotegui, “Algunos fundamentos históricos,” 63–84.

65 Bull of Innocent VIII to unite the church of San Sebastian with the convent (14 November 1489), Document 69, in Cierbide and Ramos, Archivo Municipal de Tafalla, 260–61.

66 Tafalla Libro de Actas de 1491, in Cabezudo Astráin, “Historia del Real Convento,” 169.

67 Cabezudo Astráin, “Historia del Real Convento,” 170.

68 Donation of Jean d’Albret and Catalina I to Tafalla (13 November 1511), Document 75 in Cierbide and Ramos, Archivo Municipal de Tafalla, 294–96: no en lugar nj manera condescente a tales personas  … la reyna dona Leonor, de gloriosa memoria, nuestra aguela, y la jnfante, su fija.

69 Cabezudo Astráin, “Historia del Real Convento,” 183.

70 For Catalina’s life and reign see Adot Lerga, Juan de Albret y Catalina de Foix; Usunariz, “Catalina de Foix.”

71 There are two slightly different versions of the will made at the same time, in Pamplona on 25 June 1504, and a 1505 codicil appears to have been lost. Anthony and Courteault, Les testaments des derniers rois, 63–90.

72 Anthony and Courteault, Les testaments des derniers rois, 65: “Item, elegim nostre sepulture en la glisie cathedral de Sancte Marie de Pampalona, ont nostres predecessors reys de Navarre, de gloriosa memori, se an acostumat sepelir au davant de l’autar maior.”

73 Ramírez Vaquero, “Memoria del rey,” 285. See also Ramírez Vaquero, Osés Urricelqui, and Herreros Lopetegui, “Materiales para analizar,” 126.

74 Lamazou-Duplan, “Enterrer les Foix-Béarn-Navarre,” 327.

75 Wills of Francisco Febo (François Phébus), 29 January 1482 and 1483, in Anthony and Courteault, Les testaments des derniers rois, 27. See also Dubarat, “Découverte des tombeaux,” 451.

76 Will of Magdalena (Madeleine) of France, in Anthony and Courteault, Les testaments des derniers rois, 51. See also Lamazou-Duplan, “Enterrer les Foix-Béarn-Navarre,” 327.

77 Anthony, Identification et étude, 48–92, goes into considerable detail enumerating and analyzing all of the individual bones found in the excavations. See also Dubarat, “Découverte des tombeaux,” 462–63.

78 Usunáriz, “Catalina de Foix,” 817.

79 Anthony, Identification et étude, 51–52.