In the Middle Ages, the sexual lives of kings were the subject of public debate. It was because of what was political, at a time when legitimacy was inherited and diplomacy was carried out to a large extent through consanguinity.
The case of Enrique IV of Castile (1425-1474) is paradigmatic, whose memory has been forever affected by the opprobrious nickname of “the Impotent”. In it the two meanings of the word meet: that of the one who is incapable of begetting children and that of the one who lacks the power to do something.
Since Dr. Gregorio Marañón wrote his Biological Essay on Enrique IV of Castilla and his time (1930), a not very optimistic diagnosis of the vigor of the monarch, there have been studies that place trauma due to its supposed anomaly as the cause of his psychological problems, and, by extension, his pusillanimity, his inability to prevail against powerful nobles and rival courtiers who did what they wanted with his kingdom.
But, precisely for this reason, there is a reasonable doubt: he had enemies interested in making believe that he could not breed. His death was what caused the War of the Castilian Succession (1475-1479), which pitted the supporters of Isabella I of Castile, her half-sister, with those of Juana, her daughter.
The former called her "la Beltraneja", a nickname that came to say that she was actually the daughter of Beltrán de la Cueva, Enrique's favourite. If true, she Juana could not inherit the rights to Castilla.
The girl had taken seven years to be born since Enrique married Juana of Portugal, in what was the king's second marriage. Already from the very day of the wedding, in May 1455, there were reasons for suspicion. Breaking custom, the groom had refused to display the wedding sheet, proof that there had been intercourse.
It got worse, because in the following years documents were circulated in which they went to the extreme of describing their private parts and why they would not be functional. And it seems that this was in the public domain, since Hieronymus Münzer, an Austrian traveler who was in Spain, echoed the matter. According to him, the real member was narrower at the base than at the tip, so that it could not be straightened. They would have also tried masturbation – to practice insemination – but the sperm was, according to Münzer, “too watery”.
It is hardly credible that an outsider knew anything of the king's sperm. They were insidious, and behind them were Juan Pacheco and a group of nobles who wanted to disinherit the newborn in order to place one of Enrique's brothers on the throne. Pacheco was disgusted, because shortly before he had been displaced from the position of his favorite in favor of Don Beltrán de la Cueva and some other nobles, all of medium lineage. Politics again.
However, what is important here is Enrique's first marriage, which in 1453 was declared void for not having been consummated. We are interested because it is when people began to talk about impotence.
The first wife had been Blanca II of Navarra, daughter of Juan II of Aragon. The idea behind the link was to get closer to the side of the infantes of Aragon (King Juan and his brothers, always involved in Castilian politics) and ensure peace between the two kingdoms.
But that was cut short in 1451, when Enrique –who was then a prince– changed faction by supporting Carlos de Viana in his struggle with his own father, Juan II of Aragón, for the Navarrese throne.
A departure from Aragon and a rapprochement with the neighboring Atlantic kingdom was brewing, which was confirmed with the king's second marriage, to Juana of Portugal. This is how the famous marriage annulment process was reached, a vaudeville that would delight the current tabloids.
The monarch had to claim that he had tried unsuccessfully to consummate the marriage for three years, the minimum period then required by the Church. Now, what he could not do was declare himself incompetent in perpetuity, since then Bishop Luis de Vázquez de Acuña could hardly justify the permission for a second marriage.
The lawyers came up with a solution: that of claiming that a curse had made him impotent, but only with Doña Blanca. To support this, the testimonies of some prostitutes who said they had slept with the person concerned were provided.
On the other side, however, they accused him of having completely neglected his wife. Some, like Alfonso de Palencia, even dared to call him a homosexual. This matter raged for centuries, so much so that even Gregorio Marañón had to add some reference to his work, only to conclude that there was no proof. Of course, the word of Alfonso de Palencia is not enough, since he dedicated himself to accusing anyone who got in the way of his cause, which was that of the future Queen Isabella, as effeminate.
Despite the bizarre defense raised, Enrique got the annulment, and even that Pope Nicholas V ratified it. Even so, and as we have seen above, the issue was far from being settled.
When Juana was born years later, the king's opponents had him on a platter to justify his illegitimacy. Not only because they said that she was the daughter of Don Beltrán, to whom the monarch would have offered to become intimate with his wife, but because they affirmed that the annulment of the marriage with Blanca had been granted unjustifiably.
In short, that there was interest in saying that he was impotent. But was it? The only sure thing is that his stepsister Isabel ended up being Queen of Castile.
