{"id":18859,"date":"2022-07-07T16:46:33","date_gmt":"2022-07-07T16:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/womenmag.net\/news\/decoding-the-defiance-of-henry-viiis-first-wife\/"},"modified":"2022-07-07T16:46:38","modified_gmt":"2022-07-07T16:46:38","slug":"decoding-the-defiance-of-henry-viiis-first-wife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/womenmag.net\/news\/decoding-the-defiance-of-henry-viiis-first-wife\/","title":{"rendered":"Decoding the Defiance of Henry VIII\u2019s First Wife"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It has lengthy been a beguiling and mysterious treasure of the British Museum: a group of sketches for jewellery and different lavish ornaments, commissioned throughout the reign of Henry VIII from the artist Hans Holbein, for a time the courtroom painter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A number of the designs are ciphers, or coded symbols, entangling the initials of Henry and his many paramours. A number of the most elaborate have by no means been decoded.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">This spring, whereas ending a chapter of her dissertation, Vanessa Braganza, a Ph.D. candidate in English at Harvard and a self-described \u201cguide detective,\u201d grew to become fascinated by one significantly dense tangle of letters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">By the tip of the afternoon, Braganza thought she had figured it out in her pocket book, through a trial-and-error course of she in comparison with \u201cearly trendy Wordle.\u201d The cipher, she concluded, spelled out HENRICVS REX \u2014 Henry the King \u2014 and KATHERINE \u2014 his first spouse, Catherine of Aragon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Nothing exceptional there, maybe. However Braganza argues that the pendant was commissioned not by Henry however by Catherine throughout the interval when he was attempting to divorce her and marry Anne Boleyn, as a brazen assertion of her lifelong declare to be his one true spouse and queen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIt\u2019s a gateway into her considering,\u201d Braganza mentioned of the pendant. \u201cIt\u2019s simply sitting there, daring you to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Tudor courtroom and its ruthless intrigues have been a supply of public fascination lengthy earlier than Hilary Mantel\u2019s best-selling \u201cWolf Corridor\u201d trilogy or the pop-feminist Broadway musical \u201cSix\u201d (which reimagines Henry\u2019s ill-fated wives as a Spice Women-esque squad taking again the narrative).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Even outdoors the pages of \u201cThe Da Vinci Code,\u201d generations of students have studied the way in which codes and ciphers formed almost each side of Renaissance tradition (as a 2014 exhibition on the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington put it), from diplomacy and warfare to the rise of postal programs and the artwork of literary interpretation itself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">And the topic isn\u2019t simply educational. In our personal time, Renaissance scholarship helped encourage World Struggle II code breaking, whereas navy cryptology methods have been in flip tailored as instruments of literary evaluation.<\/p>\n<div>\n<section role=\"complementary\" aria-labelledby=\"styln-toplinks-title\" class=\"css-1iamamn\">\n<h2 id=\"styln-toplinks-title\" class=\"css-4od1bx\">The Nice Learn<\/h2>\n<h3 class=\"css-9a1njc\">Extra fascinating tales you may\u2019t assist however learn all the way in which to the tip.<\/h3>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Braganza\u2019s work is a part of what could be seen as a extra feminist flip, as students have more and more thought of how ciphers and different types of hidden communication protect the misplaced voices of girls.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWhat\u2019s particularly compelling, and sometimes transferring, is the truth that Vanessa is specializing in voices that may\u2019ve been in any other case silenced or caricatured,\u201d James Simpson, a Harvard literary scholar and certainly one of Braganza\u2019s dissertation advisers, mentioned.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Some girls\u2019s ciphers are well-known. \u201cElizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens,\u201d a latest exhibition on the British Library, consists of an examination of the ciphered letters written by Mary, Queen of Scots, in addition to the coded messages used to ensnare her in a plot to assassinate Elizabeth I, which led to Mary\u2019s beheading.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">However there have additionally been new discoveries. Final 12 months, a researcher at Hever Citadel in England used X-ray imaging to uncover erased inscriptions in a prayer guide that had belonged to Anne Boleyn, which revealed a community of secret feminine possession throughout generations, in defiance of Henry\u2019s efforts to destroy all the pieces related along with her.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Students have additionally examined the messages encoded in girls\u2019s needlework, miniatures, inside design, even the colour of silk floss used to \u201clock\u201d letters to guard them from prying eyes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIt\u2019s not a shock that ladies exercised their company in uncommon and inventive methods on this interval,\u201d Heather Wolfe, affiliate librarian and curator of manuscripts on the Folger Shakespeare Library, mentioned. \u201cThey did need to work outdoors the conventional channels to get their messages out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The broader scholarly world has but to guage Braganza\u2019s claims in regards to the pendant, or weigh its significance. However the Harvard scholar Stephen Greenblatt, one other adviser, referred to as her analysis \u201cfascinating.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He mentioned he had seen elaborate ornamental designs embossed on previous books \u201cmany, many occasions,\u201d however by no means actually questioned what, if something, they meant.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cVanessa is extraordinarily resourceful and crafty,\u201d he mentioned. \u201cThis work takes loopy quantities of persistence, and an actual eye for element.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Untangling a knotty Sixteenth-century monogram is hardly cracking the Engima code. Braganza describes it as a matter of noticing \u201cwhat\u2019s hiding in plain sight.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As an undergraduate, Braganza wrote her senior thesis on the phrase \u201ccipher\u201d in Shakespeare\u2019s performs. As a graduate pupil, she took an interest within the issues themselves.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Her first cipher-related discovery got here in 2019, at an antiquarian guide honest in London. She was strolling the aisles \u201cfeeling hangry,\u201d she mentioned, when she noticed an intricate ornament stamped on the duvet of an previous quantity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Instantly, she acknowledged it because the monogram cipher of Girl Mary Wroth, a up to date of Shakespeare\u2019s thought of England\u2019s first feminine fiction author. Wroth had additionally been celebration to a scandalous affair along with her cousin, the third Earl of Pembroke, which she fictionalized in her two-volume romance, \u201cUrania.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">5 years earlier, Braganza had seen {a photograph} of the cipher \u2014 which intertwines the initials of the fictional names Wroth gave herself and the earl \u2014 on the duvet of a certain manuscript of certainly one of Wroth\u2019s performs, which Wroth had given to her lover as a present.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Wroth\u2019s private library had been destroyed in a hearth, with no volumes recognized to outlive. However right here, unbeknown to the supplier, seemed to be a survivor, bearing the identical coded image of her love for the person who had died with out acknowledging their youngsters collectively.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThis was a guide that wasn\u2019t speculated to exist,\u201d Braganza mentioned. (The quantity, a biography of Cyrus the Nice of Persia, is now owned by Harvard\u2019s Houghton Library.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Catherine\/Henry cipher got here to her consideration this spring, by means of an identical second of serendipity. When finishing a chapter on the proliferation of ciphers at Henry\u2019s courtroom, she regarded up the digitized photos from the \u201cJewelry Ebook,\u201d as the gathering of drawings by Holbein on the British Museum is understood.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As she idly puzzled over them, one oval-shaped tangle specifically tugged at her. She began with the letters that needed to be there, based mostly on the pen strokes, then labored by means of different prospects. After a day, she had it: HENRICVS REX and KATHERINE.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Henry had three wives named Catherine, however solely Catherine of Aragon was round when Holbein was at courtroom. As for the spelling, whereas Catherine\u2019s title was spelled varied methods throughout the interval, Braganza mentioned that manuscripts signed by Catherine present her writing it with a Ok. Moreover, she notes, a portrait of the younger Catherine reveals her sporting a choker with the letter \u201cOk\u201d embedded within the chain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">After assembling a file of proof, she confirmed it to Simpson, who mentioned he discovered it \u201ccompletely persuasive.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">So why does Braganza assume Catherine, slightly than Henry, commissioned the pendant?<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Primarily based on the dates of Holbein\u2019s presence at courtroom, she dates the sketch to round 1532, when Henry\u2019s lengthy push to finish his marriage to Catherine, who had did not ship a male inheritor, was close to its completion. He secretly married Anne in January 1533, and had his marriage to Catherine annulled by the archbishop of Canterbury 5 months later.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Henry, Braganza mentioned, \u201cwould haven&#8217;t any incentive\u201d to fee the pendant. However Catherine, who died of pure causes in 1536, by no means stopped insisting she was Henry\u2019s sole spouse and queen. (As her Beyonc\u00e9-inspired character in \u201cSix\u201d sings of his push for annulment, \u201cThere\u2019s no no no no no no no method.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Braganza sees the pendant \u2014 which she argues, based mostly on a small loop on the high, was meant to be worn in public \u2014 as an act of \u201csecrecy courting revelation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIt actually helps us perceive Catherine as a extremely defiant determine,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It\u2019s unclear if the pendant (or less complicated ones sketched by Holbein becoming a member of Henry\u2019s initials with these of different wives) survives, or was ever made. A lot jewellery from the interval was melted down, the metallic and gems repurposed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">However Henry is well-known for having tried to obliterate all traces of his ex-wives. After Anne was convicted of treason and beheaded in 1536, Henry destroyed the information of the courtroom proceedings, her letters and most portraits. He additionally got down to erase the various symbols linked along with her from public buildings, with solely partial success.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Within the chapel at King\u2019s Faculty, Cambridge, their linked initials are seen on the elaborately carved choir display screen. However at Hampton Court docket, in London, guests can nonetheless see empty spots the place they have been chiseled away, together with a number of examples that have been missed, nonetheless linked with a lover\u2019s knot.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Whereas the pendant within the \u201cJewelry Ebook\u201d could not transform the story, Braganza mentioned, it does recommend how far more of the silenced voices of Henry\u2019s wives \u2014 and different girls of the interval \u2014 stays to be discovered.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThat\u2019s the factor about ciphers \u2014 you set them free, after which you may\u2019t eradicate all of them,\u201d she mentioned. \u201cThey wait to be found, centuries later.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p>Supply: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/07\/07\/arts\/ciphers-henry-viii-catherine.html\">NY Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It has lengthy been a beguiling and mysterious treasure of the British Museum: a group of sketches for jewellery and different lavish ornaments, commissioned throughout the reign of Henry VIII from the artist Hans Holbein, for a time the courtroom painter. A number of the designs are ciphers, or coded symbols, entangling the initials of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenmag.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18859"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenmag.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenmag.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenmag.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenmag.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/womenmag.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18860,"href":"https:\/\/womenmag.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18859\/revisions\/18860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenmag.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenmag.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenmag.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenmag.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}