Historical difficulties and contested events

by Octave Delepierre

The name even of the monastery has been transformed. Sancho Martin, a Spanish gentleman, presented a small piece of land to some monks in 1408; a convent was built upon it which was called Yuste, from a small stream of that name that trickled down the rocks and watered the garden of the monks. It is this stream, the Yuste, that merged its cognomen, even in Spain, into St. Juste or Justo, leading one to suppose that the monastery was dedicated to a saint of that name.

Charles V. did not live with the monks, as is commonly asserted; he never wore the habit of the order; and he never ceased to wield the imperial sceptre de facto and to control the affairs of the state. He had, moreover, a residence built for himself, detached from the convent but communicating by passages with the cloister and the church.

Except in Titian’s portrait the Emperor was never seen in the habit of St. Jerome. He always retained his secular dress, which was a single black doublet, exchanged during periods of illness and déshabille, for rich wadded silk dressing-gowns, of which he possessed no less than sixteen in his wardrobe, if we may believe the inventory made after his death. In his letters to intimate correspondents we continually find the following observation: “I shall never become a monk, notwithstanding my respect for the children of St. Jérome.”

Far from adopting an appearance of poverty, or limiting his attendants to twelve in number, as Sandoval and Robertson have asserted, the household of the Emperor consisted of more than fifty individuals, the chief of whom was the major-domo, Luis Quijada. Their annual salaries amounted to above 10,000 florins, equal to £. 4,400 of the present day.

The profusion of plate taken by the Emperor to the monastery was employed generally for the wants of the establishment, and for his personal use. The dishes and ornaments of his table, the accessories of his dressing-table, which betokened the recherché nature of his toilet, the vases, ewers, basins, and bottles of every shape and size in his chamber, utensils of all sorts for his kitchen, his cellar, his pantry and his medicine chest, were made of solid silver, and weighed upwards of 1,500 marks.

All these details, which are derived from authentic documents in the archives of Simancas, bring Charles V. before us in his convent of Yuste in a very different light from that in which we have usually seen him. Neither must we picture to ourselves the convent in Estramadura as the gloomy and solitary residence it had been up to this time. It now became a centre of life and action. Couriers were continually arriving and departing. Every fresh event was immediately reported to the Emperor, whose opinion and whose commands were received and acted upon in all important matters. He was the umpire in every dispute, and all candidates for favours applied to him. In spite of the gout with which he was continually afflicted, he spent whole hours in reading despatches; in fact he was almost as much immersed in public affairs in his retreat, as he had been while actually on the throne. Although he had delegated all official authority, he retained the habit of command, and was emperor to the last.

Another error propagated by Robertson and several subsequent writers is, that the intellect of Charles V. deteriorated until he became a mere second-rate amateur of clocks and watches, and that Torriano, who held the title of watchmaker to the Emperor, worked with his master at the trade. The truth is, that Charles V. had a great natural taste for the exact sciences, which is corroborated by the variety of mathematical instruments enumerated in the inventory of his effects taken after his death. Torriano, far from being a mere clockmaker, was a first-rate engineer and mathematician, and was called by the historian Strada the Archimedes of his age. His mechanical inventions gained him a reputation for sorcery among the monks of Yuste. With regard to the reported collection of clocks, we only find mention of four or five in the long inventory. The Emperor was a very exact observer of time, but no contemporary writer has authorised us to suppose that he took especial pleasure in amassing a variety of watches and time-pieces.[35]

Let us now examine the account given by Sandoval and Robertson of the famous funeral ceremony of the 31st August 1558. The Scotch historian, with a sublime indifference to facts, informs us that Charles V., in the last six months of his life, fell into the lowest depths of superstition. He describes him as seeking no other society but that of the monks; as continually occupied in singing hymns with them from the missal; as inflicting on himself the discipline of the scourge, and lastly, as desiring to rehearse his own obsequies. A desire which could only have originated in an enfeebled and diseased brain. Such are the events contained in the introduction to Robertson’s romance. He goes on to say that: “The chapel was hung with black, and the blaze of hundreds of waxlights was scarcely sufficient to dispel the darkness. The brethren, in their conventual dress, and all the Emperor’s household clad in deep mourning, gathered round a huge catafalque shrouded also in black, which had been raised in the centre of the chapel. The service for the burial of the dead was then performed, and was accompanied by the dismal wail of the monks’ prayers interceding for the departed soul, that it might be received into the mansion of the blessed. The sorrowing attendants were melted to tears at this representation of their master’s death, or they were touched, it may be, with compassion by this pitiable display of his weakness. Charles, muffled in a dark mantle, and bearing a lighted candle in his hand, mingled with his household, the spectator of his own obsequies; and the doleful ceremony was concluded by his placing the taper in the hands of the priest in sign of his surrendering up his soul to the Almighty.”

Such is the account given by Robertson, and it has been still further embellished by later writers. Not only have they represented Charles V. as assisting at his own funeral, but they have extended him in his coffin like a corpse. In that position he is reported to have joined the monks in chanting the prayers for the dead. Another writer (Count Victor Duhamel, Histoire constitutionelle de la Monarchie Espagnole) goes still further: “After the service,” says he, “they left the emperor alone in the church. He then arose like a spectre out of his bier, wrapped in a winding-sheet, and prostrated himself at the foot of the altar. This ceremony was succeeded by fearful delirium caused by an attack of fever. The Emperor,” he continues, “at length regained his cell, where he expired the following morning.”

Here the horrible and the absurd seem to vie with one another. But these descriptions are in complete contradiction with the strength of mind really displayed by Charles V. in his last moments; and are moreover contrary to his character, his habits, and mode of life, and with his sentiments as a man and as a Christian on the solemnity of death, and the gravity of the burial service. His dependants, who never left his side, and who have transmitted the minutest details of his life, would surely have been cognizant of these imputed eccentricities, and would doubtless have alluded to them. But their testimony, on the contrary, contradicts everything told by the monks, and their records differ materially in regard to dates.