ILLNESS AND DEATH OF ISABELLA
[1503-1504 A.D.]
In the beginning of 1503 she had declined so visibly that the cortes of Castile, much alarmed, petitioned her to provide for the government of the kingdom after her decease, in case of the absence or incapacity of Juana. She seems to have rallied in some measure after this; but it was only to relapse into a state of greater debility, as her spirits sank under the conviction, which now forced itself on her, of her daughter’s settled insanity.
Early in the spring of the following year (1504) that unfortunate lady embarked for Flanders, where, soon after her arrival, the inconstancy of her husband and her own ungovernable sensibilities occasioned the most scandalous scenes. Philip became openly enamoured of one of the ladies of her suite; and his injured wife, in a paroxysm of jealousy, personally assaulted her fair rival in the palace, and caused the beautiful locks which had excited the admiration of her fickle husband to be shorn from her head. This outrage so affected Philip that he vented his indignation against Juana in the coarsest and most unmanly terms, and finally refused to have any further intercourse with her. The account of this disgraceful scene reached Castile in the month of June. It occasioned the deepest chagrin and mortification to the unhappy parents. Ferdinand soon after fell ill of a fever, and the queen was seized with the same disorder, accompanied by more alarming symptoms. Her illness was exasperated by anxiety[60] for her husband, and she refused to credit the favourable reports of the physicians while he was detained from her presence. His vigorous constitution, however, threw off the malady, while hers gradually failed under it. Her tender heart was more keenly sensible than his to the unhappy condition of their child, and to the gloomy prospects which awaited her beloved Castile.
Her faithful follower, Martyr,
p was with the court at this time in Medina del Campo. In a letter to the count of Tendilla, dated October 7th, he states that the most serious apprehensions were entertained by the physicians for the queen’s fate. “Her whole system,” he says, “is pervaded by a consuming fever. She loathes food of every kind, and is tormented with incessant thirst, while the disorder has all the appearance of terminating in a dropsy.”
On the 12th of October she executed that celebrated testament which reflects so clearly the peculiar qualities of her mind and character. She begins with prescribing the arrangements for her burial. She orders her remains to be transported to Granada, to the Franciscan monastery of Santa Isabella in the Alhambra, and there deposited in a low and humble sepulchre, without other memorial than a plain inscription on it. “But,” she continues, “should the king my lord prefer a sepulchre in some other place, then my will is that my body be there transported, and laid by his side; that the union we have enjoyed in this world, and, through the mercy of God, may hope again for our souls in heaven, may be represented by our bodies in the earth.” Then, desirous of correcting by her example, in this last act of her life, the wasteful pomp of funeral obsequies to which the Castilians were addicted, she commands that her own should be performed in the plainest and most unostentatious manner, and that the sum saved by this economy should be distributed in alms among the poor.
Isabella
(From an old print)