Naples 1536, or rather of nobility, Politics, and noblewomen

At the end of January 1536, Emperor Charles V had been in Naples for over two months, an important step on the journey to Italy undertaken after the conquest of Tunis. The imperial procession traveled through Sicily up to Messina, with stops heavily documented by the correspondence of the major Italian lordships’ ambassadors. Charles remained in Naples for about four months–months in which a bitter struggle took place between the Neapolitan nobility and Charles’ viceroy, Pedro de Toledo, the leading exponent of the Castilian nobility, who was accused of not respecting the autonomies of the kingdom. A fierce competition ensued that emerged in audiences with the emperor, the relations with his ministers, and the celebrations that animated the city; this conflict revealed the ways in which Naples’ great aristocratic culture of Aragonese and Italian origin tried to resist the processes of Castilianization, which was directed at creating new bonds of loyalty to imperial Spain. Prominent in the affair are the roles played by the major noblewomen – Giulia Gonzaga, Maria d’Avalos, Isabella di Sanseverino, and Isabella di Capua – protagonists of the festivities in honor of the emperor and, at the time, of the culture of a South of which they were deeply proud. This was a dynasty of women who were at the heart of important family and political projects in the dynasties they ruled, defending possessions, devising strategies, filling in for male figures where their husbands and sons left to serve the emperor or perished in his service. These were women who ruled dwellings and courts, who inspired the pens of the literati but were concretely active in the maintenance of power. This essay also aims to reexamine, through their eyes, the different ways in which Sicily and Naples aimed at imperial Spain.