Rome

Rome is a political and religious destination in the novel rather than a directly depicted setting. Invoked as the Eternal City, it concentrates papal authority: control of Rome could alter the balance of power in Italy, while appeals to the Pope could affect both international alliances and the private dynastic arrangements of the English court. Its importance lies in the actions carried out in its name, and in the letters that connect it to events elsewhere.

A threatened center of power

The prospect of France advancing into Italy makes Rome the urgent concern of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. Katherine brings news from her father that the Pope has ordered French forces out of Italy and committed papal troops against them; King Louis, in turn, has declared that the Pope should no longer hold office. The political crisis turns on more than a distant military campaign: if France takes Rome, Henry fears, it could impose a Pope dependent on French power. He rejects that possibility and agrees that England should support the Pope rather than continue with the planned crusade.

The shift changes the purpose of an expedition whose English knights have already reached Cádiz. Instead of sailing on to the Holy Land, the English are to assist the Pope and join an alliance against France. Katherine offers to write to her father at once, and Henry proposes that they sign their reply together, presenting the Spanish daughter and English son as united. Rome therefore draws the marriage partnership into public diplomacy: the couple’s agreement becomes part of an effort to defend papal authority and prevent French expansion.

Papal authority reached by letter

Rome also becomes the destination of an indirect appeal over the northern border. Henry fears that conflict with James IV of Scotland could keep him from helping the Pope, but doubts that a complaint would persuade the papacy to intervene. Katherine answers that concern through a letter to Richard Bainbridge, Cardinal Archbishop of York, who is in Rome and is her friend. She begins with ordinary news about London, the weather, the harvest, and wool prices, then describes Scottish hostility, attacks on shipping, and repeated incursions into northern lands.

Her argument links England’s security at home to the proposed alliance abroad: an unsafe border might prevent Henry from coming to the Pope’s aid. Katherine presents the danger to her own realm as a threat to the wider Christian alliance, and imagines Bainbridge carrying her letter to the Pope. The appeal succeeds. The Pope writes to James and threatens excommunication unless he respects the peace and agreed borders of another Christian king. James is forced to apologize for the incursions, though he complains to Henry that the approach to the Pope was made behind his back. In this episode, Rome is less a battlefield than a channel through which Katherine turns private correspondence into diplomatic pressure.

Permission and the royal marriage

Papal authority also shapes the marriage question at the English court. When Henry proposes marriage to Katherine, Rodrigo de Puebla warns that affinity could present an obstacle and that a dispensation would be needed. The dispute depends on the claim that Katherine’s marriage to Arthur, Henry’s brother, was not consummated. De Puebla confirms that claim, but insists that the Pope must still grant permission and that Katherine’s parents must consent to seeking it.

These exchanges do not place the reader in Rome or establish that the proposed petition is made there. They show instead how the papacy’s authority, associated with the city, reaches into royal decisions made elsewhere. The same institution whose support Henry seeks against France can determine whether a marriage carrying dynastic consequences may proceed. Rome’s reach is thus both international and intimate: it bears on the defense of a kingdom and on the legal conditions of a queen’s remarriage.

A city present at a distance

Across these episodes, Rome is defined by what others hope to prevent or obtain there. Henry fears French control of the city and the possibility of a French-aligned Pope; Katherine uses communication with a cardinal in Rome to enlist papal pressure against Scotland; and the marriage negotiations depend on a papal dispensation. None of these scenes requires the city to appear as a physical landscape. Its presence is carried by letters, threatened sanctions, and the expectation that the Pope can authorize or obstruct political plans.

That distance gives Rome a distinctive narrative function. It is both the object of military strategy and the seat of an authority capable of intervening in disputes far beyond Italy. Katherine’s diplomacy makes that authority tangible: a letter written from England can pass through her Roman contact and prompt the Pope to act. Rome consequently serves as a measure of how far political power travels, and of how the personal and the international remain entangled in the novel’s world.