Retha Warnicke
Retha Warnicke believes that Anne Boleyn was not born in 1501, as most historians long assumed, but in the summer of 1507. That single revision, the difference of a few years, sits at the heart of one of the most contested reinterpretations of a Tudor queen. Warnicke, born in 1939, is an American historian and a former Professor of History at Arizona State University. She built her career on a refusal to accept the inherited story.
The popular Anne Boleyn comes with an extra fingernail, with moles, with a reputation for being too flirtatious for her own safety. Warnicke argues that this portrait is wrong, and that it quietly blames a woman for her own execution. Who, then, was responsible for Anne's death, if not Anne herself? And what would it take for a historian to overturn a story this old? The answers run through a defective fetus, a charge of witchcraft, and a feud with rival scholars that played out across decades of argument.
Evansville Central High School was where Retha Warnicke first graduated, before she earned a Bachelor of Arts from Indiana University Bloomington, magna cum laude, in 1961. During her junior year she joined Phi Beta Kappa. In her senior year she was granted the Listenfelt Scholarship, awarded for an outstanding undergraduate history major, and in 1961 she added the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship.
Harvard University took her next, where she earned a Master of Arts in 1963 and a PhD in 1969. Between those degrees she had already begun teaching, working as an instructor at Phoenix College from 1965 to 1966. She then taught at Arizona State University as a lecturer from 1966 to 1967, before leaving to finish the doctorate that would anchor the rest of her academic life.
From 1969 to 1973 Warnicke returned to Arizona State University as a lecturer, then climbed the academic ladder rung by rung. She became assistant professor in 1973, associate professor in 1976, and full professor in 1984. Later she served as director of graduate studies in the history department from 1987 to 1992, and as chair of the department from 1992 to 1998. She retired from ASU on the 1st of January 2018.
Warnicke was the first woman hired in the history department at ASU, and among the first to teach a women's history course there. Her advocacy, lobbying, and work on numerous search committees helped bring women and minority men into the department, which the source describes as nearly half female with a large minority presence. Beyond the department, she gave much of her time to affirmative action and to faculty rights, work that ran parallel to her scholarship on the Tudor court.
Jacobean funerary rites for women form one corner of Warnicke's research, alongside politics and protocol at the Tudor court and women's issues in the Early Modern Period, which she dates from 1400 to roughly 1700. She wrote articles with pointed titles, among them "Inventing the Wicked Women of Tudor England: Alice More, Anne Boleyn and Anne Stanhope" and "Sexual Heresy at the Court of Henry VIII".
Seven monographs carry her name. They include The Marrying of Anne of Cleves: Royal Protocol in Tudor England, published by Cambridge University Press in 2002, and Mary, Queen of Scots, published by Routledge in 2006. Wicked Women of Tudor England: Queens, Aristocrats, and Commoners followed from Palgrave Macmillan in 2012.
Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law: Fashioning Tudor Queenship, 1485 to 1547 is her most recent book, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2017. It examines Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII, alongside her six daughters-in-law, the six queens of Henry VIII. Warnicke compares them as mothers, diplomats, and domestic managers, and as participants in social and religious rituals.
The mid-1980s saw Warnicke outline her controversial theories about Anne Boleyn in articles including "Anne Boleyn's Childhood and Adolescence" and "Sexual Heresy at the Court of Henry VIII". She built on and elaborated them in her 1989 book The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family politics at the court of Henry VIII.
Rumours of deformities, Warnicke insists, are incorrect, because such rumours only began after Anne's death and no-one who met her ever remarked on them. As she put it, "the two descriptions cannot logically be reconciled to each other. Had there been even a hint of a deformity in Anne's appearance, the Venetian, as well as the Imperial ambassadors...would have eagerly revealed this intriguing fact to their respective governments."
Responsibility is the deeper stake. "For many historians Anne remains the lady with the extra fingernail who was too flirtatious, even if in a harmless courtly way, for her own safety and well being," Warnicke wrote. "The result of this interpretation is that the responsibility for her tragic death resides with her, the victim, rather than with the king and his ministers, the ones who orchestrated her execution."
Most important is her argument about January 1536, when she says Anne miscarried a deformed fetus. In Warnicke's reading, this fueled 16th-century fears of witchcraft and sexual deviance and led to Anne's execution. Henry VIII, she argues, viewed the miscarriage as an evil omen for his lineage and his kingdom. He then accused Anne of illicit sexual acts with five men, and fostered rumours that she had made him impotent and conspired to poison his daughter Mary and his illegitimate son, Henry, Duke of Richmond.
E. W. Ives and George W. Bernard were the historians who criticised Warnicke's theories most harshly. She answered them in a 1993 article, "The Fall of Anne Boleyn Revisited", though she did not press every point as rigorously as before.
Ives had argued that Anne's fall came from foreign policy and palace politics. Warnicke countered that his theory rested on an over-reliance on Spanish sources, and she called his account of Anne's youth ridiculous. She was harsher still with Bernard, who had suggested Anne might have been guilty of adultery in 1536. Warnicke labelled that a "dubious assertion" with no reliable documentary proof.
Her conclusion was a warning to her field. "As long as the lurid charges against the Queen exist only in unsubstantiated indictments and contradictory diplomatic writings, historians ought to remain sceptical about factional theories of her adulterous guilt or of factional politics. At the least, they owe it to the past not to further obscure the facts."
Philippa Gregory credited Warnicke directly in the author's note to her bestseller The Other Boleyn Girl, saying the novel's conclusion was based on Warnicke's findings in The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn. The acknowledgment carried Warnicke's scholarship into the hands of readers who would never open a monograph.
Warnicke did not welcome the association. She has publicly distanced herself from the novel and from its presentation of the Boleyns, a reminder that a historian's careful argument and a novelist's dramatisation are not the same thing, even when one points to the other.
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Common questions
Who is Retha Warnicke?
Retha Marvine Warnicke, born in 1939, is an American historian and former Professor of History at Arizona State University. She specializes in politics and protocol at the Tudor court, women's issues in the Early Modern Period, and Jacobean funerary rites for women.
What is Retha Warnicke's theory about Anne Boleyn's death?
Retha Warnicke argues that Anne Boleyn miscarried a deformed fetus in January 1536, which fueled 16th-century fears of witchcraft and sexual deviance and led to her execution. She contends Henry VIII viewed the miscarriage as an evil omen and then accused Anne of illicit sexual acts with five men.
When does Retha Warnicke believe Anne Boleyn was born?
Retha Warnicke argues that Anne Boleyn was born in the summer of 1507, not around 1501 as most historians assumed. She rejects the popular rumours of deformities, noting they only began after Anne's death and that no-one who met her ever commented on them.
What books did Retha Warnicke write?
Retha Warnicke is the author of seven monographs, including The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn in 1989, The Marrying of Anne of Cleves from Cambridge University Press in 2002, Mary, Queen of Scots from Routledge in 2006, and Wicked Women of Tudor England from Palgrave Macmillan in 2012. Her most recent book is Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2017.
What was Retha Warnicke's career at Arizona State University?
Retha Warnicke was the first woman hired in the history department at Arizona State University, becoming professor in 1984 after serving as lecturer, assistant professor, and associate professor. She was director of graduate studies from 1987 to 1992, chair of the history department from 1992 to 1998, and retired on the 1st of January 2018.
Which historians criticised Retha Warnicke's theories on Anne Boleyn?
Retha Warnicke's theories were harshly criticised by E. W. Ives and George W. Bernard. She defended her arguments in a 1993 article, "The Fall of Anne Boleyn Revisited", calling Bernard's suggestion that Anne committed adultery a dubious assertion with no reliable documentary proof.
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4 references cited across the entry
- 3newsShe opened her own doors: ASU history professor retires from pioneering careerAnne Ryman — January 1, 2018
- 4webThe Other Boleyn GirlPaul Byrnes — March 13, 2008