The King’s Other Body: María of Castile and the Crown of Aragon by Theresa Earenfight (review)

REVIEWS 241 cruciform were intrinsically important to the religious life of Anglo-Saxon peoples . Crosses—architectural, monumental, pictorial, literary, formal, and imaginary—were abundant and ubiquitous, and this implies that Anglo-Saxon religious life can be characterized as “cruci-centric.” More important, all three volumes—and, indeed, the SCHR itself—represent an example of successful interdisciplinary and collaborative academic work, the likes of which the humanities rarely see. This research initiative has been made all the more compelling by the multidisciplinarity of these collaborations. If one wants to see a roadmap of the future of the historical profession, then this collection is it. The publisher, too, deserves special accolades; footnotes are preserved, the typeset —being of an older style—gives the impression of authority and permanence , and the appendices and gorgeously-rendered plates are grouped with their relevant essays. I anticipate the publications of this research initiative— and this volume in particular—will become very important to the field of Anglo -Saxon studies. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to all students of Anglo-Saxon history, researchers of medieval visual culture, and Old English language enthusiasts. J. MICHAEL COLVIN, History, University of Southern California Theresa Earenfight, The King’s Other Body: María of Castile and the Crown of Aragon (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2010) xii + 242 pp., maps. In The King’s Other Body, Theresa Earenfight introduces scholars of the Middle Ages to an unexpected protagonist in the political drama of fifteenth-century Iberia, María of Castile (1401–1458). Born into the great Trastámara dynasty , she is queen of the Crown of Aragon, daughter of Henry III of Castile, wife and cousin of Alfonso V “the Magnanimous” of Aragon (1396–1458). Unlike most queens of her age yet in the spirit of several of her Aragonese predecessors, she was no mere consort: she governed twenty-six years as lieutenant general appointed by her husband while he ruled from his ultramarine capital of Naples. The sixth of seven Aragonese queen-lieutenants, she held two lieutenancies, 1420–1423 and 1432–1453, during which she exercised full and legitimate political authority as conferred by the king, often amid crises domestic and foreign , with only the fewest prerogatives reserved to her husband, with whom she maintained fluent correspondence. From the administration of the three realms of the Aragonese empire (Catalonia, Aragon, and Valencia), to the captivity and ransom of her husband after the Battle of Ponza (1435), to the controversial liberation of the remença peasants (1448–1453), she governed ably and admirably , as Earenfight presents, and her conduct gives much cause for the revaluation of the queen-lieutenant. María of Castile, Earenfight argues, is a figure whose political accomplishments have not fully received their due attention. Most histories of Aragon concentrate on Alfonso and his rule, and perhaps also on that of his brother and successor John II, yet for all of María’s administration of the realm, to which ample archival evidence bears witness, Earenfight finds “no detailed study of the political events or issues in Catalunya during María’s lieutenancy” as products of María’s administration (8). While there are commendable character REVIEWS 242 studies of the Queen, such as that of Francisca Hernández-León de Sánchez, they do not discuss her role as “the king’s other body,” which Earenfight proposes to do: “long on governance and short on culture and ceremony,” her study intends to be “both empirical and theoretical, a political biography and an institutional history” (9). Composed of six chapters, The King’s Other Body proceeds in a partially chronological fashion, examining major episodes in the history of María’s lieutenancies. The first chapter serves as an introduction to the thesis that guides the work. Chapter 2, the most biographical, recounts her family history and explores the queenly preparation that would have been hers as a presumed queen-consort. The third chapter presents María’s first lieutenancy and the subsequent events, which in turn lead to her second and longer lieutenancy, of which the first part is the subject of chapter 4. Chapter 5 considers the latter part of the same lieutenancy, in which she...