Maternity, Medicine, and Sanctity in Catherine of Aragon's Quest for a Tudor Son

For a queen, the political and social consequences of not bearing a healthy son, what is euphemistically called “dynastic failure,” could be catastrophic. Most work on the maternal history of queens considers the political, cultural, personal, and social consequences but few have used medical sources to understand the reasons for royal infertility, miscarriages, and stillbirths. This paper addresses this problem by focusing on Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536), whose problems conceiving a son are well known. She was pregnant at least six times but only a daughter, Mary, survived to adulthood and ruled as queen. Catherine went to great lengths to ensure a healthy pregnancy, turning to both medical and non-medical practices to improve her chances of pregnancy but little of this evidence has been studied. The accounts of Catherine’s pregnancies are rich with medical detail, but have been analyzed superficially and do not consider recent work by historians of medicine. The evidence from non-medical sources—letters, chronicles, monastic records, wardrobe accounts, her testament, and accounts of visits to royal dynastic cults and religious shrines—has not been studied at all. Taken together, this evidence reveals what she knew about pregnancy and the steps she took to bear a healthy son, and in turn, this contributes to our in knowledge and practices of medicine, maternity, and fertility in late medieval and early modern England.