JOAN THE MAD WITH THE UNBURIED BODY OF HER HUSBAND.
After a Painting by Pradilla.
A few days afterwards the whole court moved to another small place, called Santa Maria del Campo, a few miles nearer Burgos, Joan, as usual, travelling by night, accompanied by the coffin; and here, at Santa Maria, the grand anniversary funeral service for Philip was celebrated (25th September 1507), and Jimenez received the Cardinal’s hat, though Joan would not allow that joyous ceremony, as she said, to be held in the church that held her husband’s remains. With infinite trouble Ferdinand at length persuaded his daughter to accompany him to a larger town, where more comfort could be obtained, and in early October they set forth, Ferdinand travelling by day and Joan by night. Suddenly, however, Joan guessed that they were taking her to Burgos, that dreadful city where Philip had died. No consideration would induce her to go another step in that direction; and she took up her residence at Arcos, a few miles away, whilst Ferdinand established himself at Burgos with his young French wife, whom Joan received politely.
At Arcos Joan, with her two children, Ferdinand and Katharine, lived her strange, solitary life for eighteen months, broken only when Ferdinand, going in July 1508 to reduce Andalusia to order, decided to take his favourite little grandson and namesake with him. Joan flew into a fury when she learnt that her child was to be taken from her; and there is no doubt that the disturbance thus caused aggravated her malady for a time, although it is said that she forgot the boy in a few days. A curious idea of her life at Arcos is given in a letter sent on the 9th October 1508 by the Bishop of Malaga, her confessor, to the King. ‘As I wrote before, since your Highness left, the Queen has been quiet, both in word and action; and she has not injured or abused any one. I forgot to say that since then she has not changed her linen, nor dressed her hair, nor washed her face. They tell me also that she always sleeps on the ground, as before.’ There follow some medical details, from which the Bishop draws the conclusion that the Queen would not live long. ‘It is not meet,’ he says, ‘that she should have the management of her own person, as she takes so little care of herself. Her lack of cleanliness in her face, and they say elsewhere, is very great, and she eats with the plates on the floor, and no napkin. She very often misses hearing mass, because she is breakfasting at the hour it is celebrated, and there is no opportunity of her hearing it before noon.’[[125]]
Before leaving to suppress the revolt in Andalucia, Ferdinand took effective measures to prevent Joan from being made a tool of faction. He had tried without success to prevail upon her to remove to the remote town of Tordesillas, on the river Douro, where there was a commodious castle-palace fit for her habitation, and the climate was good; but he posted around Arcos strong forces, commanded by faithful partisans, with orders that if the Queen at last gave way to the persuasion of her attendants, and removed to Tordesillas, the troops were to guard her just as closely and secretly there. But Joan obstinately refused to move; and Ferdinand found her still there when he returned from the South in February 1509. Whilst he had been absent, the great magnate in whose district of Burgos Arcos was situated, the Constable of Castile (Count de Haro) had been coquetting with the Emperor Maximilian to displace Ferdinand by his grandson Charles, now nine years old; and the possession of the person of Joan was of the highest importance. Ferdinand decided, therefore, that, either willingly or unwillingly, Joan should be placed where she would be safe from capture by surprise. When he visited her at Arcos, he found her thin and weak with the cold, unhealthy climate.[[126]] ‘Her dress was such as on no account could be allowed, or is fit even to write about, and everything else looked similarly, and as if it would be totally impossible for her to go through another winter if she continued to live in the same way.’
The King stayed with her for some days, without broaching the sore subject of removing her; but on the 14th February 1509, he had her aroused at three o’clock in the morning—since he knew she would not travel in daylight—and told her she must prepare to be gone. She offered no resistance, but only pleaded for one day to prepare, which was granted; and she consented to cast away the filthy rags which she had been wearing, and don proper garments before setting out on the journey to her new home; carrying her little daughter, Katharine, with her; the corpse of Philip on its great hearse drawn by four horses, as usual, leading the way. Although it was evening when she started, great crowds of people had flocked over from Burgos to see their Queen, who had been invisible for so long, and was by many thought to be dead.
As the morning sun on the third day was glinting with horizontal rays the bare brown cornlands that stretch for many miles around Tordesillas on both sides of the turbid Douro, the wan and weary cavalcade rode over the ancient bridge. Between the main street and the river stood a fortress-palace with frowning walls and little windows looking across the road at the convent of Saint Clara, with its florid Gothic church and cloisters. Into the palace rode, by her father’s side, with her face shrouded, Joan, Queen of Castile; and thenceforward, for forty-seven dreary years, the palace was her prison, until, an old, broken woman of seventy-six, but wayward and rebellious to the last, she joined her long-lost husband in the splendid sepulchre in Granada. From the windows of Joan’s early apartment in the palace, she could see the coffin of Philip deposited in the convent cloister, and in the first years of her confinement, she kept her vigil over the corpse in most of her waking hours, as well as on rare occasions, and closely guarded, attending commemoratory services in the convent in honour of the dead, until her undutiful son, the Emperor Charles, either overcoming her resistance, or perhaps finding the dismal caprice outworn, transferred the mouldering remains of Philip the Handsome to its last abiding place; whilst Joan the Mad waited for her release with fierce defiance in her heart, and revilings on her tongue for all that her oppressors held sacred.
It would not be profitable, even if it were possible, to follow closely the monotonous life of Joan during her long years of confinement; but, at certain crises in the political history of her country, her personality assumed temporary importance, and on these occasions a flood of light is thrown upon her, which, to some extent, will enable us to see the reality and extent of her malady, and to judge how far her laxity in religious observance was the cause of her continued incarceration. Mr. Bergenroth, in his introduction to the early volumes of the Calendars of Spanish State Papers, very forcibly urges the view that Joan was not really mad at all, and that she was sacrificed solely to the ambition of her husband, her father and her son, in succession. After carefully considering all the documents adduced by my learned predecessor as Editor of the Calendars, and many in the Spanish Royal Academy of History which were unknown to him, I find myself unable to come to the same conclusion. The separate accounts of her behaviour are so numerous, and many of them so disinterested, as to leave in my mind no reasonable doubt that after Philip’s death, whatever may have been the case before, Joan was not responsible for all her actions. She appears to have been able on many occasions to discuss complicated subjects quite rationally, as is not infrequent with people undoubtedly insane, but her outbursts of rage against religious ceremonies, her neglect of her person, her persistence for days in refusing food, and other aberrations, are not only clearly indicative of lunacy, but were the symptoms repeated exactly in the case of her great-grandson, Don Carlos, who was undoubtedly insane. At the same time it is clear to see that there was no reason for keeping her closely confined and isolated under strong guard, except the dread of Ferdinand, and afterwards of Charles, that leagues of nobles might make use of her to weaken the power of the Castilian crown.[[127]] That this fear was not groundless has already been shown, and at one point, as will be related presently, the peril was imminent. That Joan did not seize the opportunity when it was offered to her after her bitter complaints of her treatment is, in my view, the best proof that she was not capable of independent rule.
Ferdinand died in January 1516, leaving the whole of his realms to his grandson Charles in Flanders, in view of Joan’s ‘mental incapacity.’ He tried almost with his last breath to divide Spain for the benefit of his younger son, Ferdinand; but was overborne by the remonstrances of his Council. Jimenez was appointed to be Regent until the new King arrived; and when Cardinal Adrian, Charles’s ambassador, claimed the Regency in virtue of a secret authority he produced, Jimenez accepted him as colleague, but made him a cypher. Up to this period Joan had been under the care of Ferdinand’s faithful Aragonese friend, Mosen Ferrer, the man whom rumour accused of having poisoned Philip: whilst her principal lady in waiting was the Dowager Countess of Salinas. The personal guard of the Queen was entrusted to the incorruptible Monteros de Espinosa, and there were some companies of Castilians on duty in, and around, the palace. Mosen Ferrer was hated, especially by the townspeople of Tordesillas and by the Castilian attendants of Joan, because it was asserted that he had treated the Queen cruelly, and had not attempted to cure her. He gave strict orders that Joan should not be told of her father’s death; but such news could not be hidden, for all Castile was astir to know what was coming next.
Many of the nobles were around young Ferdinand, and were claiming Castile for him, in accordance with the old King’s penultimate wish; and not a few were looking towards Queen Joan. When she first heard the news she was disturbed to know that Jimenez was not on the spot when the King died, but was tranquilised to learn that he was on the way, and would promptly assume the government. No sooner was it known in Tordesillas that Ferdinand was dead than the townspeople and the Castilian guards endeavoured to enter the Queen’s apartments and expel Mosen Ferrer: but the latter and the Monteros de Espinosa[[128]] stood firm, and for weeks the feud continued. The Guards brought an exorcising priest to cast out the devils that afflicted the Queen; but Ferrer would not let them enter the room; though they got into an ante-chamber, where, quite unknown to the Queen, the exorciser performed his futile incantations through a hole in the door. As soon as Jimenez had established himself in the regency, he sent the Bishop of Majorca to set matters right in Tordesillas. Ferrer, intensely indignant at the accusations against him, wrote a letter to the Regent, which, being read between the lines, tells us much. How could he hope to cure the Queen when her own father could not do so? and how could he be so bad a man as they say, if wise King Ferdinand entrusted his daughter to his care? This does not seem very convincing: but when he tries to excuse himself Ferrer makes matters much worse. It was, he says, only to prevent the Queen from starving herself to death that he had put her to the torture (dar cuerda). He complains bitterly that though he is not dismissed he is not allowed to go near the Queen, for fear he should injure her health. Jimenez, probably recognising that Ferrer had thought more of Aragonese interests than of the health of Joan, thereupon let him go, and appointed the Duke of Estrada to be her Keeper.