La rivoluzione di Doña María Pacheco a Toledo: riflessi letterari e costruzione storica

This article analyses the defamatory legend which arose around an exceptional woman, Doña María Pacheco y Mendoza. A member of one of the most powerful families in Spain and the wife of Juan de Padilla, leader of the revolt of the Comunidades, María organized, after the death of her husband, the military and political resistance of the city of Toledo, which faced the imperial troops of Charles V for ten long months. In Counter-Reformation Spain, where ever more doors were being closed to women, María was the awkward example who overturned conventional gender roles: a noble and cultivedted women who dominated a weak husband; a politically active woman who rebelled against her sovereign and was capable of frging dangerous alliances: a female soldiers who left aside Christian piety and did not hesitate to sequester ecclesiastical goods in order to continue the armed struggle. In addition to the damnatio memoriae whcih she suffered due her political defeat, there has been a persistent and violent move to condemn her morally, transforming her into a symbol of unrestrained and malevolent female ambition