Reprinting Tudor history: the case of Catherine of Aragon.

Juan Luis Vives's Instruction of a Christen Woman (hereafter ICW),(1) the text Ruth Kelso has described as the most influential conduct book for women of the sixteenth century,(2) was printed and reprinted in English over nine times during the course of the century: in 1529, 1531, 1541, 1547, 1557, and 1567 from the shop of the Erasmian printer Thomas Berthelet,(3) in 1585 by Robert Waldegrave,(4) and in 1592, by John Danter.(5) In addition to the widely recognized significance of the often contradictory views of women expressed in ICW, these English editions are significant as an example of an early modern reconstituting of the historical record. Allusions to Catherine of Aragon within these editions reflect swings in Tudor court politics and trace the privatization of this once seemingly powerful woman as she was removed from court and public life.

When Vives composed his Latin text and dedicated it to Catherine in 1523, she was the admired queen of Henry VIII of England, a learned, pious ornament in her husband's dazzling court and a skillful, powerful, and popular political figure. Seemingly secure, she had survived the rigors of an isolated widowhood after the death in 1502 of her husband, Henry's older brother, Arthur (who had been heir-apparent to Henry VII). Her influence on Sir Thomas More's circle was so profound that Watson has, with admittedly some exaggeration, described the years 1523-1538 as the "Age of Catherine of Aragon."(6) As mother of Henry VIII's daughter, the precocious Princess Mary (later Mary I), she seemed likely to fulfill her central function of providing Tudor progeny to succeed to the English throne. By 1527, however, the queen was embattled: her further child-bearing potential seemed far more doubtful, and Anne Boleyn had appeared on the horizon; indeed, Henry's suit for a divorce commenced in that year.(7) In 1529, when Richard Hyrde's English translation of ICW first appeared, Catherine's sad fate was still far from certain and was in fact a major political concern. It appears that several works, including A newe enterlude . . . of Godly Queene Hester and Elyot's Defence of Good Women, were printed during this time as covert endorsements of the queen.(8)

By 1531, when another English edition of Vives's tract appeared, the climate was even gloomier. Catherine's supporters in Sir Thomas More's party had come under a cloud with the "King's great matter" a major interest of the day, and Hyrde was dead, having died of exposure while on an embassy to the pope concerning the divorce. In that year, Catherine was deserted by the king and left first at Windsor and later in Hertfordshire; she was also separated from the Princess Mary, who was ordered to Richmond. In the following year, Catherine was told that she was to call herself princess dowager, as opposed to queen, and her marriage was declared invalid; the treatment of both mother and daughter became increasingly severe. Isolated, but indomitable, Catherine spent most of her hours in prayer until her death in 1536.(9)

Vives's dedication of his tract to Catherine in 1523 was an appeal to his then powerful and beneficent countrywoman for patronage as well as a tribute to her.(10) The majority of his comments on Catherine are contained in his preface, which is rich in praises of the queen. Vives writes, for example, that he intends to portray the ideal woman in Catherine's image:

[T]his worke most excellent and gratious quene, I offre unto you in lyke maner, as if a peynter wolde brynge unto you your owne visage and image, most counyngly peynted. For lyke as in that purtrature you myght se your bodily similitude: so in these bokes shall you se the resemblaunce of your mynde and goodnes. (B4r)

Vives's admiration for Catherine is made even clearer when he continues,

you have handled your selfe in all thordre and course of your lyfe: that what so ever you dyd myght be an example unto other to lyve after. . . no man can preyse the vertues of women, but he must nedes comprehend you in the same preyse: . . . many lyke unto you be preysed here, by name expressely: but your selfe spoken of contynually, though you be nat named. (B4r)

Vives's tract, we may recall, is divided into books on the maiden, the wife, and the widow, reflecting the roles of Catherine who has "ben both mayde, wyfe, and wydowe, and wyfe agayne: as I pray god you maye longe contynue."(11) This comment also reminds us that even a popular queen consort was viewed not only as a royal personage, but also as a sixteenth-century woman who should

both lerne her boke, & beside that, to handle wolle and flaxe: whiche are two craftes yet lefte of that olde innocent worlde, both profitable and kepers of temperance: whiche thynge specially women ought to have in price . . . I wolde in no wyse that a woman shuld be ignorant in those feates, that muste be done by hande: no nat though she be a princes or a quene. (C3v)

Queen Catherine - as complex model - was therefore integral to ICW as Vives composed it. His glowing references to Catherine were retained in the 1529 translation of the Instruction at a time when her patronage could no longer be hoped for, but when his expressions of admiration could still be useful to the queen. These comments, however, were omitted or changed in later editions of the tract.

The very title of the work changes silently, with the words "dedicated unto the quenes good grace" dropped from the edition of 1541. More dramatically, although Vives's preface to the 1529 edition was addressed "unto the moste gratious princes Katharine quene of Englande [emphasis added]," (B1r) and although Vives stated that the text itself was written because he was "moved partly by the holynes and goodnes of your lyvyng, partly by the favour and love that your grace beareth towarde holy study & lernyng" (B1r), the preface to the 1541 edition of the tract is addressed merely to "the most gratious princesse Katharine of Englande" (A2r). More remarkably, the wording of the original preface is further changed so that Catherine is described only as having "bene bothe mayde, wyfe, and wydowe" (A4v), and she is described in the body of the preface, as well as in the lines of address, not as "quene," as she had been in 1529 (B4r, see above), but as "princes" (A4r). There is no mention of her marriage to Henry, and this change from the wording of the 1529 edition is repeated in chapters three and four of the first book, "Of her fyrst exercise" and "Of the lernyng of maydes." In 1529, the relevant sentences in chapter 3 read:

Therfore quene Isabell kyng Ferdinandos wyfe taught her doughters to spynne, sowe, and peynt: of whom two were quenes of Portugal, the thyrde of Spayne, mother unto Carolus Cesar: & the fourth moost holy and devoute wyfe unto the moost gratious kyng Henry the .viii. of Englande. (D1r-v)

In 1541, the text is changed as follows:

Therfore quene Isabell, Kynge Fardinandos wyfe, taught her doughters to spyn, sowe, & peint: of whom two were quenes of Portugal, the thirde of Spayne mother unto Carolus Cesar, And the fourth the most holy and devout wyfe unto the most noble prince Arthure, brother unto oure most gratious soveraygne lord kynge HENRY the .VIII. (B4v)

Similarly, in 1529, a section in chapter 4 reads,

There hath bene seen in our tyme the foure daughters of quene Isabell, of whom I spake a lytle before, that were wel lerned al. It is tolde me with great preyse and marvaile in many places of this countre, that dame Joanne, the wyfe of kynge Philippe, mother unto Carolus, that nowe is, was wont to make answere in latyn, and that without any studye, unto the orations that were made after the custome in townes, unto newe princes. And lyke wyse the Englisshemen [sic] say by theyr quene, sister unto the said dame Joanne. The same sayth every body by the other .ii. sisters, whiche be deed in Portugale: The [sic] whiche .iiii. systers there were no quenes by anye mannes remembraunce more chast of bodye thanne they. (E1r)

In 1541, the language in chapter 4 erases Catherine altogether:

There hath bene sene in our time the foure doughters of quene Isabell of whom I spake a lytell before, that were well lerned all. It is tolde me with great preise and mervayle in many places of this countre, that dame Joanne, the wyfe of kinge Philippe, mother unto Carolus that howe is, was wont to make answere in latyne, and that without any study unto the orations that were made after the custome in townes, unto new princes. The same sayth every body by the other ii systers, which be dead in Portugal. Then which .iiii. systers there were no quenes. . . . (C3v-C4r)

These changes are repeated in the other editions connected to the shop of Thomas Berthelet: in 1547, when Berthelet was still alive; in 1557, when his nephew and heir Thomas Powell, ran the shop; and in 1567, when the work was printed by Henry Wekes, supposedly Powell's apprentice.(12)

In addition to these passages, some attention should be directed to the preface by Richard Hyrde, ICW's English translator, which appears in the editions of 1529 and 1531 and which is at least as fulsome as Vives's preface in its comments on Catherine of Aragon. Indeed, Hyrde, a protege of Thomas More's and possibly a tutor to More's daughters, follows Vives's original work in dedicating his translation of ICW to Catherine, whom he describes as "the moste excellent prynces quene Catharine, the moste gratious Wyfe unto the moste noble and myghty prince kynge Henry the .viii." (A2r).(13) In a sense, Hyrde's dedication is even more easily disposed of than Vives's preface, since it is omitted entirely after the 1531 edition of the tract.(14) This silencing of the voice of the translator seems easily attributable to the fall in fortunes of Catherine and to the troubles of More and his fellow Erasmians. We may seriously miss in the later editions the glowing references by the young scholar to More, whom he terms his "syngular good mayster and brynger uppe" (A3r). More, Hyrde tells us, had strongly approved this project, in good part because of the approval it would win from Catherine, whom Hyrde addresses as "your noble majestie for the gracious zele that ye beare to the vertuous education of the woman kynde of this realme, wherof our lorde hath ordeyned you to be quene" (A3r). We may wonder at the basis for this assessment of Catherine's zeal, since no records have turned up explaining Hyrde's comment. But we may feel quite sure why Hyrde's preface was dropped after the 1531 edition of the tract, with Catherine no longer a public figure and the translator himself dead.(15)

Interestingly, in the 1585 and 1592 editions of the strongly Protestant printers Robert Waldegrave and John Danter, the description of Catherine was changed back to that of the edition of 1529. Anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish feeling had certainly not disappeared in England in the years between the papal bull encouraging Elizabeth's assassination (1570), the Throckmorton and Babington conspiracies, the execution of Mary Stuart, and the mounting of the Armada (1588). But the turnabout in ICW suggests that the Catherine of Aragon celebrated thirty years later in Shakespeare's Henry VIII had become depoliticized by the latter part of the sixteenth century, that she was seen by that time in decidedly non-threatening and non-sectarian terms, and perhaps that the type of pious, learned, and domesticated woman she had come to represent had become more widely celebrated in that age.(16)

Despite the dynastic and religious shifts that seem to have motivated the printers of ICW to make the changes described above, Vives himself did not acquiesce in the rewriting of Catherine's character. Sadly, his well-intended advice to the queen that she hold herself aloof from the divorce proceedings had angered that ill-treated woman so grievously that she had quarreled with the Spanish scholar. Henry, too, had become sorely offended with Vives, who was eventually forced to leave England. But in his second tract on women and marriage, The Office and duetie of an husband (hereafter OD), written in Latin in 1529 but not printed in English until 1555 - when Catherine's daughter Mary was on the throne - Vives courageously and loyally defended Catherine despite her anger with him.(17) He wrote,

Nor Christ wold not that even in our time we should be without an example, the whiche shulde flowe & descend unto our posteritie, left and exhibited unto us by Catharine ye Spaniard Quene of England, and wyfe vnto kynge Henrye the eyghte of moost famouse memorye . . . I am ashamed of my selfe, and of al those that have redde so manye thynges, when I behold that woman so strongly to support & suffer so manye and divers adversities, that there is not one (although he were wel worthy to be remembred & spoken of among our elders), that with suche constancy of mynd hath suffred cruel fortune, or could so have ruled flatterynge felicitie, as she dyd. If suche incredible vertue hadde fortuned then, when honor was the rewarde of vertue, thys woman had dusked the brighthesse of the Heroes, and as a divine thynge and a godlye sente downe from heaven, had bene prayed unto in temples, although she lacke no temples, for there can not be erected unto her a more ample or a more magnificente temple then that, the whiche every man among al nations marveylinge at her vertues, have in theyr owne heartes buylded and erected.(18)

Remarkably, this praise of Catherine was written at a time when the queen was in great disfavor, with her marriage close to dissolution and her cause in such disrepute that Vives, as her ally, was forced to leave England. It is extraordinary that Vives praised Catherine at this time, having aroused her lasting anger.

As noted above, Vives's OD - unlike his Instruction, which appeared in English translation only eight years after the Latin text had appeared - was not printed in English until 1555, some twenty-seven years after its first appearance in print, and after the Catholic Mary Tudor had ascended the English throne. Like the changes in ICW that we have already noted, the delayed appearance of OD is easily explained by political events.

For to side with Catherine was, of course, to stand against Henry. That this sentiment was shared by the popularizers of OD in 1555 is indicated by the preface addressed by the translator, Thomas Paynell, to Sir Anthony Browne, later Viscount Montagu.(19) Writing after the death of Browne's first wife, at a time when Browne was contemplating remarriage, Paynell, explaining the value of Vives's tract, had this to say:

For who can be circumspece ynoughe in the election and choyse of her, whome a man cannot electe by good lawe, tyll death them departe, nor yet refuse, but for fornication, nor at no tyme (she beynge alyve) mary any other withoute the spot and blemishe of adulteri. . . . [C]hoose her . . . as shall geve no occasion of breache, or of divorsement, the whiche (O lorde) is nothynge in these oure dayes regarded: for why? to have many wives at once, or to refuse her by some cautell or false interpretation of gods moste holy worde, that myslyketh, is at this present but (as men call it) a shifte of descante. (A3v)

It is difficult to read this passage as less than an oblique, posthumous criticism of Henry VIII, a sentiment most dangerous to put in print before the reign of Catherine of Aragon's daughter.

NEW YORK CITY 

This essay stems from a collaborative effort by several members of the Folger Colloquium on Women and the Renaissance to produce a critical edition of Richard Hyrde's translation into English in 1529 of Juan Luis Vives's Instruction of a Christen Woman. Inevitably, the essay reflects some of the collective thinking of the participants; I have tried to indicate specific indebtednesses in the footnotes. I wish particularly to express deep appreciation to Richard Landon, Curator of the Thomas Fisher Library at the University of Toronto, and my rare-books instructor at Columbia's School of Library Service, for allowing me to adapt my work for the Vives project to the requirements for my classes, thereby enabling me to continue active participation in the project; this essay draws deeply on my work while I was his student. In shorter form, an earlier version was presented at a workshop at "Attending to Women in Early Modern England."

1 Discussion here is limited to the English editions, entries 24856 through 24863 in A Short-Title Catalogue (2nd edition), 2:429 (hereafter RSTC). Quotations from the texts reproduced in this essay preserve original spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, except for the customary u/v and i/j modernizations; occasional conventional abbreviations are silently expanded. Richard Hyrde, who translated the tract in 1529, based his translation on the 1524 Latin text; the later English editions all derive from Hyrde. On Hyrde's faithfulness to his Latin source, and on changes by Vives to later editions of the Latin text, see Patton.

2 Kelso, 71-74.

3 Berthelet (fl. 1524-1555), most prominent of these men, was appointed King's Printer in 1530, on Pynson's death, thereafter printing "all Acts of Parliament, statutes, proclamations, injunctions, and other official documents " (Plomer, 225). He also printed many books by humanists in the court and More circles (Reed, esp. 157-70; Plomer, 72-73; McConica, 67; Duff, 11). On the accession of Edward VI, he was supplanted by Richard Grafton as King's Printer, not, it would seem, because of his identification with the interests of Catherine of Aragon and her party but because he was identified as a king's man with an inclination for the Erasmian Catholic position. Books printed by Berthelet after 1547 do not bear the colophon "Regius impressor." The printing history of ICW is discussed by Elizabeth H. Hageman in the introduction to the collaborative edition of ICW.

4 The text printed by Waldegrave, the most famous of the Elizabethan book pirates, breaks with the editions from Berthelet's establishment. Waldegrave's religious position caused him a great deal of grief in Elizabethan England and agrees with the somewhat Protestantized nature of ICW in the 1585 edition.

5 Danter (d. 1599), another printer frequently involved in publishing piracy, was assigned ICW by the Stationers' Court, and issued it in 1592. Transcript B., in the only instance I have found in which ICW appears in extant stationers' records, reads "whereas John Danter is appointed to print the instruction of a xpian woman . . . he shall pay vj . . . to thuse of the poore. according to order/" (Greg and Boswell, 42). According to McKerrow, "all his [Danter's] work . . . was very badly printed" (84), but his edition of ICW contains few mistakes. It retains the changes made by Waldegrave in the 1585 edition.

6 Watson's assessment of Vives early in this century is now considered overenthusiastic in its endorsement of Vives's progressiveness. Revisionists include Kaufman and Wayne.

7 Scarisbrick, 152.

8 See Jordan for discussion of the issue and of these works.

9 The standard biography remains Mattingly's.

10 McConica, 80; Norena, 76-104. Vives's own biography is discussed at length by Virginia W. Beauchamp, coordinator of the biographical section of the introduction to the critical edition.

11 B4r. As Margaret Mikesell notes in the introduction to the critical edition of ICW, this is an unusual structuring system. Interestingly, it is employed also in T.E.'s The Lawes Resolutions of Women's Rights (1632), the only legal work of the period directed exclusively to women. The structure of ICW also differs from that of Vives's second marriage tract, Office and duetie (1555), hereafter OD, a shorter and less symmetrically and less complexly plotted work.

12 Of both Powell and Wekes little is known. Powell, heir to Berthelet's business as well as his assistant (Duff, 124), was made free of the Stationers' Company in 1556; his name appears in the incorporating charter of the company (Arber, 1:35; 1:xxxiii). His career as a printer begins in 1556, when Berthelet's widow remarried and Powell "took on the printing office" (Duff, ibid.); after 1563 his name is not found in the records. His output of books was small. Wekes, presented as an apprentice on 15 October 1556 (Arber, 1:41), was made free of the company on 15 August 1565 (ibid., 2:317). Entries in Arber suggest that he was not above bending the rules (1:316; 2:277, 317). His output spans the years 1557-1569; his works were issued from the "Oliphaunt, or Black Elephant, in Fleet Street" (McKerrow, 304), though at some time he occupied "the Roman Lucrece" (Clair, 59).

13 Hyrde, possibly the most progressive of the humanists of More's circle in his thinking on women, probably studied at Oxford; he "'supplicated' for his degree . . . on July 8, 1519" (Watson, 159-60); he apparently served as a tutor or physician in More's household. He helped bring Margaret (More) Roper's 1524(?) translation of Erasmus's Precatio Dominica to light and prefaced it with a letter in praise of Margaret, addressed to Frances Staverton, one of the students in More's 'academy' (McCutcheon). Watson has termed this letter "the first reasoned claim of the Renascance period [sic], written in English, for the higher education of women" (14). Hyrde's translation of Vives's ICW is in keeping with the interest in women's education he expressed in his prefatory letter to Margaret Roper's work.

14 Unfortunately, the British Library copy of this edition chosen for microfilming in the Early English Boobs series lacks quire A, giving the misleading impression that the Hyrde preface was omitted from this edition, as well.

15 According to a letter to Stephen Gardiner which Watson cites, Hyrde died in Orvieto, on Lady Day in 1528, of exposure to cold and wet while on an embassy to the pope. In correspondence written at that time, Gardiner described Hyrde as "a young man learned in physic, Greek and Latin . . . [whose death caused] our great discomfort, as we had great confidence in his learning and experience in physic" (quoted by Watson, 160, from CSPD).

16 Travitsky; Rose.

17 The work was first printed in Latin in Bruges; Paynell's translation provides the only sixteenth-century English edition. The political delicacy involved in translating this text is underlined by the insertion in this English text of the phrase, "of moost famouse memorye," not found in the original Latin, although the rest of the passage is translated quite closely. I thank Elizabeth Patton for her help in locating and examining the Latin text for comparison to the translation.

18 OD, E3v-E4v. Vives's loyalty is not diminished by the fact that this compliment is based on the Aristotelian dichotomy between masculine superiority and feminine inferiority.

19 For Paynell (fl. 1528-1567), an Austin friar and an Erasmian humanist who translated many works, see Pollard and McConica. McConica considers Paynell a member of the conservative wing of Erasmian humanists, noting that he dedicated The piththy [sic] and moost notable sayinges of compilation of pious sayinges of al Scripture to Mary Tudor in 1550, and compiled the index to the 1557 edition of More's English Works. According to Pollard, Paynell's preface to Sir Anthony Browne, who was contemplating re-marriage, dates at least the preface between 22 July 1552 when Browne's first wife died, and 2 September 1554, when he was created Viscount Montagu. Cawood is described on the title page as "prynter vnto the Quenes hyghnes," and Mary ascended the throne in 1553; McConica, possibly nodding, gives the STC date as 1553 (?) and suggests the book appeared under Edward VI (258).

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