catalina-de-aragon: On Sunday 14th November 1501 the wedding of Prince Arthur of Wales and Infanta K

catalina-de-aragon:On Sunday 14th November 1501 the wedding of Prince Arthur of Wales and Infanta Katherine of Aragon was celebrated splendidly in old St Paul’s Cathedral in London with a huge crowd of spectators and was said to be one of the most expensive royal weddings in history. Stands had been erected in the nave for the most important guests; and for the marriage itself there was a timber platform twelve feet wide and four feet high with steps on every side and covered with red baize. The stone walls of the cathedral were covered with tapestries describing the history of England and there was a red carpeted raised circular dais. Katherine, dressed in a white satin wedding dress was escorted from the Bishop’s Palace to the cathedral door by the ten year old Prince Henry, who would later become her second husband, and Lady Cecily of York carried her train. Katherine’s dress was Spanish in style with a farthingale and “many pleats” and her face was covered with a white silk veil decorated with a border of gold, pearls and gemstones. Her bridegroom, Prince Arthur, was also dressed in white satin.The Princess was received at the Galilee porch at the west end by a fanfare of trumpeters and processed down the long nave between the great Norman pillars hung with tapestry to be married to the waiting Prince by the Archbishop of Canterbury assisted by the Spanish Legate and nineteen bishops and mitred abbots. After this they went from the platform through the rood screen and along the choir with its tall windows to the square east end for high mass at the altar. Then, after Arthur had separately left by the west door to go to the Bishop of London’s palace at the north side of the cathedral to make ready to receive his bride, ‘as the custom of England is,’ the young Prince Henry led her for a banquet there; where a conduit ‘pompously devised to run diverse sorts of good wine’ began to spout as did several others in the capital that day, and dancing and jousting, archery and play-acting and other amusements were organised during the next ten days.The wedding day, there was yet to be another reference to Katherine’s noble origin and role in the alliance with Spain in another pageant that had been set on the west door of the cathedral where wine had been running throughout the whole ceremony. They had built a mountain with three trees, in the first one, the King of France stood next to the tree, fully armoured, «beyng in the mydds of a whight hert, within the body of the seid hert upp to the knees, with a rounde ball of silver on his hand». Beside the second tree that had a dragon on the top, stood the King of England,harnessed complet, with a sword in his hand, beying in the mydds of ashypp, and appiered above the seid shypp by the myddill. The third tre wasalso grene, and is frute was also appals or oranges; and owt of oon of these oranges spronge a red lyon; and annempst the myddill of this tre stode the Kyng of Spayne; in complet harnes, in the mydds of a castell, with a ball of silver in his hand; and evrych of these Kings hade their skochos and armys above their heds.It was clear that the marriage had deep connections with the intentionsof both King Henry and King Ferdinand to suffocate France. The marriage of these fifteen-year-olds was a diplomatic triumph for Henry VII. He had united the house of Tudor with an old and powerful European dynasty which could promote peace and security for his kingdom. Sources:http://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/14-november-1501-marriage-catherine-aragon-arthur-prince-wales/#ixzz3rUf2RyJYhttp://www.historytoday.com/lw-cowie/wedding-prince-arthur-and-catherine-aragonThe Transformation of London for the Legitimisation of the Tudor Dynasty: Catherine of Aragon and Arthur Tudor’s Wedding in 1501 by Emma Luisa Cahill Marrón. https://usc-vlcg.academia.edu/EmmaLuisaCahillMarr%C3%B3n -- source link

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