by Susan Flantzer
© Unofficial Royalty 2020

Eleanor, Archduchess of Austria, Infanta of Castile was the third wife of Manuel I, King of Portugal, and the second wife of François I, King of France. She was born on November 15, 1498, in Leuven, Spanish Netherlands, now in Belgium. Eleanor (Leonor in Spanish and Portuguese, Eléonore or Aliénor in French) was the eldest of the four daughters and the eldest of the six children of Philip (the Handsome), Duke of Burgundy and Joanna, Queen of Castile and León and Queen of Aragon.

Eleanor’s paternal grandparents were Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, Archduke of Austria and Mary, Duchess of Burgundy in her own right. Her maternal grandparents were Ferdinand II, King of Aragon and Isabella I, Queen of Castile and León. Eleanor and her siblings were nieces and nephews of Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of King Henry VIII of England, and first cousins of Henry VIII and Catherine’s daughter Queen Mary I of England.

Eleanor had five younger siblings. Her two brothers were Kings and Holy Roman Emperors and Eleanor and her three sisters were all Queen Consorts.

• Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Spain (1500–1558), married Isabella of Portugal, had three children who survived to adulthood including King Philip II of Spain
• Isabella of Austria (1501–1526), married Christian II, King of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, had three surviving children, her husband was deposed
• Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia and Hungary (1503–1564), married Anne of Bohemia and Hungary, had fifteen children (all but two reached adulthood)
• Mary of Austria (1505–1558), married Louis II, King of Bohemia and Hungary, no children; Mary was Governor of the Spanish Netherlands 1531-1555
• Catherine of Austria (1507–1578), married João III, King of Portugal, had nine children

Eleanor’s relatives from her father’s House of Habsburg unsuccessfully tried to negotiate marriages for her to King Henry VII and King Henry VIII of England, King Louis XII of France, and King Sigismund I of Poland. When Eleanor was eighteen years old, she wanted to marry Friedrich II, Elector Palatine. Eleanor’s brother Charles, then Duke of Burgundy and King of Spain, discovered her reading love letters from Friedrich. Eleanor and Friedrich had to legally swear that they were not secretly married, after which Charles expelled Friedrich from his court.

Eventually, Charles made a political marriage for his sister Eleanor with King Manuel I of Portugal to avoid the possibility of Portuguese assistance for any rebellion in Castile, part of the Kingdom of Spain. On July 16, 1518, 19-year-old Eleanor became Queen of Portugal when she married 49-year-old Manuel I. Manuel had been married twice before to two maternal aunts of Eleanor, Isabella of Aragon and Maria of Aragon. Isabella had died in childbirth giving birth to her first child who also died. Maria also died in childbirth giving birth to her tenth child who did not survive. However, eight of Maria and Manuel’s children did survive including two Kings of Portugal, King João III and Cardinal-King Henrique I, and Isabella who married her first cousin and Eleanor’s brother Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain. The marriage of Eleanor and King Manuel I of Portugal lasted only three years. On December 13, 1521, Manuel died from the plague and was succeeded by his son with his second wife, King João III.

Eleanor and Manuel had two children:

• Infante Carlos of Portugal (1520-1521), died from a fever
• Infanta Maria of Portugal, Duchess of Viseu (1521-1577), unmarried, was the richest woman in Europe of her time

After the death of King Manuel I of Portugal, Eleanor and her six-month-old daughter Maria returned to the court of her brother Charles, who had been elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1519. When Maria was nine years old, she was moved back to Lisbon, Portugal where she lived at the court of her half-brother King João III for the rest of her life. There were some considerations for her marriage but Maria never did marry.

In 1529, the Treaty of Cambrai was signed ending the Seventh Italian War, also known as the War of the League of Cognac, fought between Charles V’s Holy Roman Empire and Habsburg Spain and François I’s Kingdom of France and his allies. To seal the treaty, François I, King of France, a widower for several years, agreed to marry Eleanor, the sister of Charles V. Eleanor and François were married on July 4, 1530, and Eleanor was crowned Queen of France at the Basilica of Saint-Denis near Paris, France on May 31, 1531. Eleanor was ignored by François who preferred his mistresses. Needless to say, Eleanor and François had no children.

Eleanor served useful as an intermediary between France and her brother’s Holy Roman Empire. She took an active role in the care and education of François’ two youngest daughters, eleven-year-old Madeleine and nine-year-old Marguerite. Their mother Claude of France had died seven years earlier, in 1524. Eleanor played her role as Queen of France on official occasions such as the marriage of François’ heir, the future King Henri II, and Catherine de’Medici in 1533. Eleanor’s second husband François I, King of France, aged 52, died on March 31, 1547, at the Château de Rambouillet. He was buried at the Basilica of Saint-Denis near Paris with his first wife Claude of France.

After being widowed, Eleanor received the Duchy of Touraine as her dower lands, and in 1548, she left France for the court in Brussels, then in the Spanish Netherlands, now in Belgium, where her sister Mary served as the Governor of the Spanish Netherlands. For many years, with the help of her brother Charles, Eleanor unsuccessfully sought the permission of the King of Portugal for her daughter Maria to live with her. Physically exhausted after forty years of ruling, Eleanor’s brother Charles abdicated in 1555 and retired to the peace of the Monastery of San Jerónimo de Yuste in Cuacos de Yuste, Spain. In 1556, Eleanor and her sister Mary decided to follow their brother Charles into retirement in Spain in Jarandilla de la Vera, close to the monastery where Charles retired so they could visit him.

Eleanor had not seen her daughter Maria since 1528. Finally, in 1558, King João III of Portugal agreed to allow his half-sister Maria to visit her mother. Both mother and daughter traveled to the town of Badajoz, Spain, close to the Portuguese border. Eleanor asked Maria to live with her but Maria refused the request and remained with her mother for three weeks before returning to Lisbon. On the return trip from Badajoz, Eleanor died at Talavera la Real, Spain on February 18, 1558, at the age of 59. Her siblings Charles and Mary soon followed her into death. Charles died on September 21, 1558, and Mary died on October 18, 1558.

Eleanor was initially buried at the Cathedral of Saint Mary Major in Mérida, Spain. In 1574, on the order of her nephew King Felipe II of Spain, Eleanor’s remains, along with the remains of other members of the Habsburg family, were transferred to a temporary crypt at the Royal Site of San Lorenzo de El Escorial in Spain which was under construction. In 1586, the remains were transferred to the permanent crypts at El Escorial, which is now the traditional burial site of the Spanish royal family. Eleanor’s remains rest in the Pantheon of the Infantes – Chapel 9 at El Escorial.

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Works Cited

• En.wikipedia.org. 2020. Eleanor Of Austria. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_of_Austria> [Accessed 15 June 2020].
• En.wikipedia.org. 2020. Manuel I Of Portugal. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_I_of_Portugal> [Accessed 15 June 2020].
• Es.wikipedia.org. 2020. Leonor De Austria. [online] Available at: <https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonor_de_Austria> [Accessed 15 June 2020].
• Flantzer, Susan, 2020. François I, King Of France. [online] Unofficial Royalty. Available at: <https://www.unofficialroyalty.com/François-i-king-of-france/> [Accessed 15 June 2020].
• Fr.wikipedia.org. 2020. Éléonore De Habsbourg. [online] Available at: <https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89l%C3%A9onore_de_Habsbourg> [Accessed 15 June 2020].