latristereina: The court made its slow, cumber-some way north past the last few olive groves of Anda

latristereina:The court made its slow, cumber-some way north past the last few olive groves of Andalucia and on to the plains of La Mancha in October. The royal family installed itself in the great fortified palace in Alcalá de Henares that had been recently reformed by Cardinal Mendoza. There, ten days before Christmas 1485, Catherine of Aragon was born – the last of five children. Isabel, it is to be presumed, remained as courageous and self-controlled as ever during childbirth. ‘I have been informed by the ladies who serve her in her chamber that, neither when in pain through illness nor during the pains of childbirth … did they ever see her complain, and that, rather, she suffered them with marvellous fortitude,’ one visitor to her court reported later. The child herself was a welcome, if hardly unique, addition to a family with just one male heir and three other girls. She was given the same name as her English great-grandmother, Catherine of Lancaster. Isabel and Ferdinand’s chroniclers, who sometimes had to present their work for royal approval or correction, dutifully reported the event, but showed little excitement. This was, after all, a fifth child and a girl. She hardly looked set to play a part in settling any future succession to the crowns of Castile or Aragon. ‘The monarchs would have been happier with a boy, because having just one male heir was a worry to them,’ noted a chronicler. The one person to pay more than just passing reference to the infant Catherine’s arrival was Gonzalo de Baeza, Isabel’s tesorero, her treasurer. More than any chronicler, it was Baeza who kept a steady eye on Catherine as she grew up. Infantas, as Spanish princesses are known, cost money from the day they were born, or even earlier. And Baeza kept track of it all. It is from his carefully kept accounts books that we learn she was baptised by the bishop of Palencia and that her christening gown was made of white brocade, lined with green velvet and trimmed with gold lace. It was Baeza who paid for the varas (a length of about two and half feet) of fine olanda linen from Holland that was used for her nightshirts, bibs, sheets and pillowcases and for the thicker naval linen from Brittany from which sheets were also made. There was scarlet Florentine cloth to make little tunics and cummerbunds. The newborn child got two pounds of fresh cotton to stuff a newly-made mattress for her crib. The latter does not appear in the accounts, probably making it a handme-down. A little brass basin was bought to wash her in and, in a court which cared about smell, a small perfume sprinkler became one of her first possessions. There was a new bed for the maid who watched over her – though the latter, Elena de Carmona, fell ill and had to be sent home to her southern town almost immediately. There was also a wet nurse. These traditionally played a key role not just in feeding children but, once weaned, in bringing them up. It was an important job and the wet nurse was meant to be ‘good looking and of good stock, with plentiful milk’. Baeza gives us a tiny glimpse into Catherine’s start in life. Her birth was a happy, if largely unremarkable, event at an otherwise unremarkable time. The celebrations coincided with the Christmas festivities. The cardinal of Spain gave a party for the nobles and ladies of the court. There was jousting and more partying in the chilly, muddy streets of Alcalá. There would be more warring to be done the following year but the monarchs took their Christmases, and their leisure, seriously. Catherine of Aragon spent her first Christmas in the warmth of a court, and a monarchy, at rest. Giles Tremlett, “Catherine of Aragon: The Spanish Queen of Henry VIII” -- source link

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