Early Modern Dynastic Marriages and Cultural Transfer ed. by Joan-Lluís Palos, Magdelena S. Sánchez (review)

This collection commences with an excellent introduction, opening with Maximillian I’s strategy of “making love, not war,” which enabled the Habsburg dynasty to aspire to and attain rapid hegemony across Europe from the sixteenth century onwards by weaving “a web of family connections that spanned the entire continent” (1). Many other monarchs attempted to follow the example of Maximillian’s grandson, and “faithful disciple,” Charles V, with relative degrees of success and some rather notable failures—the most resounding of which was the union between Philip II of Spain and Mary I of England. The collection explores the human dimension of these dynastic marriages and cultural transfers as well as their better acknowledged and studied political and diplomatic dimensions. The essays take considerable account of the ways in which cultural flow—the intense cultural exchange of literature, theater, painting, music, and architecture, occasioned by marriage negotiations and agreements—“produced a true cosmopolitan environment characterized by the integration of experience and knowledge” flowing into polities from diverse locations. (3) This book contains a truly thought-provoking interdisciplinary collection, showcasing innovative research that raises as many questions for further contemplation as it answers.

The book is divided into three coherent parts. Part One tackles the topic of “Princesses Across Borders.” The first contribution, by Magdalena S. Sánchez, explores the ways in which Catalina Micaela, younger daughter of Philip II of Spain and his third wife, Élisabeth de Valois, might or might not have adjusted readily to the “protocol-light” atmosphere of the court of Savoy. Married at the age of twenty-two, the infanta Catalina Micaela travelled to the court of Savoy with a vast Spanish retinue. Sánchez casts her practiced eye over the epistolary exchange between one of Catalina’s mayordomos, Cristóbal de Briceño, and Juan de Zúñiga, mayordomo mayor of Philip II’s children, councillor of state, and principal advisor to Philip II, to document the conflicts over court etiquette in Savoy. The letters themselves span roughly the first year of Catalina’s married life, with Sánchez noting that Briceño’s voice is “decidedly cranky and long-winded” (23), and arguing that he seems to have taken on the burden of ensuring that Spanish court etiquette was adopted in Catalina’s Savoyard household. Sánchez reports that once “off the leash” and away from home, “there is little evidence that she [Catalina] felt displeasure with relaxation of court etiquette; rather she seems to have adjusted fairly well” (37). It was Briceño who noted that “she grows careless” (37) and that her authority was being eroded because she was seen out and about without the retinue due to an infanta of Spain. Catalina and her husband did see to the implementation of Spanish etiquette, but they managed this on their own terms. Rather than becoming careless or lax, Sánchez argues that Catalina adapted culturally in her willingness to modify her natal Spanish practices to fit with the less formal atmosphere of her marital court in Savoy.

In Chapter Two, Mark de Vitis sheds new light upon the queen-consort-ship and diplomatic importance of María Teresa of Spain to the nascent authority and personal reign of Louis XIV. De Vitis dispels the myth of a “mouse” queen, unable to live up to the glory and expectations of her husband-king, le Roi Soleil, to emphasize instead the Spanish infanta’s role as tangible symbol and guarantor of the Peace of the Pyrenees between Spain and France. The wedding itself, and the prospect of a new queen for the French kingdom, was an occasion for furious and considered propaganda “manufactured through the filter of the Bourbon-sponsored press” (49). Details in the pamphlets included the cultural specificity of María Teresa’s garments and hairstyle at the “climactic moment of her transference to the Bourbon...