In such occupations and in such companionship noiselessly glided away the cloister life of Charles V. The benefit which his health had reaped from the fine air of Yuste, was but transient. It began to decline rapidly in the spring of 1558, after the death of queen Eleanor, to whom he was tenderly attached. He caused funeral rites to be performed in her honor, in the church of the monastery, with all the pomp of light and music that the brotherhood could command. Indeed, funeral services were, in some sort, the festivals of his lugubrious life; for whenever he received intelligence of the death of a prince of the blood, or a knight of the Golden Fleece, he caused his obsequies to be celebrated by the Jeromites. He was also very mindful of the souls of his deceased friends, and the masses which were offered day by day up for himself were preceded by some for his father, his mother, and his wife.
As his infirmities increased, his prayers grew longer, and his penances more severe. He wrapped his emaciated body in hair-cloth, and flogged it with scourges, which were afterwards found in his cell, stained with his blood. Restless and sleepless, he would roam, ghost-like, through the corridors of the convent, and call up the drowsy monks for the midnight services of the church. Once he was asked by a slugglish novice, whose slumbers he had broken, why he could not be satisfied with turning the world upside down, but must also disturb the peace and rest which it was reported he had come to seek at Yuste.
From all secular things and persons he kept entirely aloof. Of the events then passing in the world, nothing stirred his curiosity or his interest but the ruthless crusade against heresy, led by Cardinal Valdés, the fiercest inquisitor since the days of Torquemada. For the great northern Reformation had made itself felt, though with feeble and transient effect, even in Spain,—as the Lisbon earthquake troubled the waters of Lochlomond. Strange questions were stirred in the schools of Alcala and Salamanca; new doctrines were taught from the pulpits of Seville and Valladolid; wool-clad wolves were said to lurk even in the folds of St. Francis and St. Dominic; and Lutheran traders ran casks of heretical tracts upon the shores of the bay of Cadiz. Amongst the persons arrested at Valladolid was Dr. Augustin Cazalla, canon of Salamanca, who had been one of the emperor's preachers, and as such, had resided, from 1546 to 1552, at the imperial court in Germany. Though he had distinguished himself in the land of the Reformation by sermons against its doctrines, and had returned to Spain with untarnished orthodoxy, he was accused not only with being infected with Lutheran principles, but of having "dogmatized," as the inquisition happily called preaching, in a conventicle at Valladolid. Charles was much moved when he heard of his arrest, not with pity for the probable fate of the man, but with horror of his crime. "Father," said he to the prior, "if there be any thing which could drag me from this retreat, it would be to aid in chastising heretics. For such creatures as these, however, this is not necessary; but I have written to the inquisition to burn them all, for none of them will ever become true Catholics, or are worthy to live." This recommendation, seldom neglected, was exactly observed in the case of the poor chaplain. Denying the offence of dogmatizing, he confessed having held heretical opinions, and offered to abjure them. Nevertheless he was "relaxed," or in secular speech, burnt, with thirteen companions, at Valladolid, in the presence of the princess-regent and her court.
A more illustrious victim of the holy office was Constantine Ponce de la Fuente, canon of Seville, and famous both as a pulpit orator, and as author of several theological works, which were much esteemed in Italy as well as Spain. He, too, had attended the emperor in Germany, as his preacher and almoner. For him Charles seemed to entertain more respect; for upon hearing that he had been committed to the castle of Triana, he remarked, "If Constantine is a heretic, he will prove a great one." The canon's "merits," for so the inquisition, with a sort of grim humor, called the acts or opinions which qualified a man for the stake, were certain heretical treatises in his handwriting, which had been dug with his other papers out of a wall. Confessing to the proscribed doctrines, but refusing to name his disciples, he was thrown into a dungeon, damp and noisome as Jeremiah's pit, far below the level of the Guadalquivir, where a dysentery soon delivered him from his chains. "Yet did not his body," says the historian[K] of Spanish literature, writing several ages after, with all the bitterness of a contemporary, "for this escape the avenging flames." His bones, and a carefully modelled effigy of him, with outstretched arms, as he charmed the crowd from the pulpits of Seville, figured at the auto-da-fé which, in 1560, illuminated the burning-place, the quemadero, of that city. Another sufferer there, Fray Domingo de Guzman, was also known to the emperor. His arrest, however, merely drew from him the contemptuous remark, that fray Domingo might have been shut up as much for idiocy as for heresy.
In looking back on the religious troubles of his reign, Charles bitterly regretted that he did not put Luther to death when he was in his power. He had spared him, he said, on account of his pledged word, which, indeed, he would have been bound to respect had the offences of Luther merely concerned his own authority; but he now saw that he had erred, in preferring the obligation of his promise to the greater duty of avenging upon that arch-heretic his offences against God. Had Luther been removed, he conceived the plague might have been stayed: now, it was going on from bad to worse. He had some consolation, however, in recollecting how steadily he refused to hear the points at issue argued in his presence. At this price he had declined to purchase the support of some of the protestant princes of the empire, when marching against the duke of Saxony and the landgrave of Hesse; he had declined it even when flying, with only ten horsemen, before the army of duke Maurice. He knew how dangerous it was, especially for those who, like himself, had little learning, to parley with heretics, who were armed with reasons so apt and so well ordered. Suppose one of their arguments had been planted in his soul; how did he know that he could ever have got it rooted out? So have many better men of every form of faith learned to look upon their belief as something external to themselves, to be kept hid away in the dark, lest, like ice, it should melt in the free air and light of heaven.
The grave was now in all his thoughts. One morning, his barber, a malapert of the old comedies, ventured to ask him what he was thinking of. "I am thinking," replied Charles, "that I have here a sum of two thousand crowns, which I cannot employ better than in performing my funeral." "Do not let that trouble your Majesty," rejoined the fellow; "if you die and we live, we will take care to bury you with all honors." "You do not perceive, Nicolas," said the emperor, rather pursuing his own train of thought than replying to the barber, "that it makes a difference in a man's walking, if he holds the light before or behind him." The same opinion had been held by a bishop of Liege, Cardinal Erard de la Mark, whom Charles must have known, and whose example perhaps suggested the idea. For many years before 1558, the year of his death, did this prelate rehearse his obsequies, annually carrying his coffin to the tomb which he had prepared for himself in his cathedral.
Before deciding on the step, however, the emperor determined to submit the question to his confessor, Fray Juan de Regla. They had just been hearing the service for the souls of his parents and his wife. Speaking of such rites in general, he asked the friar if they were most effectual when performed before, or when performed after, death. Fray Juan, after due deliberation, gave his verdict in favor of solemnities which preceded decease. "Then," said the emperor, "I will have my funeral performed while I am still alive."
Accordingly, this celebrated service took place next day, being the 30th of August, 1558. So short a time being allowed for the preparations, they cannot have severely drained the bag of dollars, which Nicholas the barber wished to reserve for other purposes. A wooden monument, however, was erected in the chapel in front of the high altar; the ornaments of the convent were brought out and arranged to the best advantage; and the whole was illuminated with a blaze of wax-lights. The household of the emperor, all in deep mourning attended; and thither Luis Quixada brought Don Juan, from his sports in the forest, to learn his first lesson of the vanity of human greatness. "The pious monarch himself," says the historian of the Jeromites, "was there, in sable weeds, and bearing a taper, to see himself interred, and to celebrate his own obsequies." And when the solemn mass for the defunct was sung, he came forward and gave his taper into the hands of the officiating priest, in token of his desire to yield his soul into the hands of his Maker. High above, over the kneeling throng, and the gorgeous vestments, the flowers, and the incense, and the glittering altar—the same idea shone forth in that splendid canvas of Titian, which pictured Charles kneeling on the threshold of the heavenly mansion.
When the dirge was sung, and the ceremonies over, and Charles had, as it were, come back for a little while to life, he told his confessor that he felt the better for being buried. Of a scene which might well have shaken the nerves of the boldest hunter on the Sierra, he said next day, that it had filled his soul with joy and consolation that seemed to react upon his body. That evening he caused to be brought, from the repository where his few valuables were kept, a portrait of the empress, and hung for some time, lost in thought, over the gentle face, which, in its blue eyes, auburn hair, and pensive beauty, somewhat resembled the noble countenance of that other Isabella, the great queen of Castile. He next called for a picture of our Lord praying in the Garden; and after long gazing, passed from that to a Last Judgment, by Titian. Perhaps this was a sketch or small copy of the great altar-piece, or it may be that he turned to the original itself, which could be seen by opening the window, through which his bedchamber commanded a view of the altar. Having looked his last upon the image of the wife of his youth; it seemed as if he were now bidding farewell, in the contemplation of this masterpiece, to the noble art which he loved with a love that years, and cares, and sickness could not quench, and that will ever be remembered with his better fame. He remained so long abstracted and motionless, that the physician who was on the watch thought it right to awake him from his reverie. On being spoken to, he turned round and said, "I feel myself ill." The doctor felt his pulse, and pronounced him in a fever. He was seated at the moment in the open gallery, to the west of his apartments, into which the sinking sun poured his tempered splendor through the boughs of the great walnut-tree. From this pleasant spot, filled with the fragrance of the garden and the murmur of the fountain, and bright with glimpses of the golden Vera, they carried him to the gloomy chamber of his sleepless nights, and laid him on the bed from which he was to rise no more.
His old enemy, the gout, had not troubled him for several days. The disorder with which he was now attacked was a tertian fever, likewise a malady familiar to his shattered frame. The fits now were of unusual violence, the cold fit lasting twice as long as the hot. His physician twice attempted to relieve him by bleeding, but the operation seemed rather to augment than allay the violence of the disease. Being sensible that his hour was come, and wishing to add a codocil to his will, he dispatched a messenger to Valladolid, to the regent Juana, requiring an authorization for his secretary Gaztelu to act as a notary for the purpose. The princess, seeing the imminence of the danger, along with the authorization, instantly sent off her physician, Cornelio, to Yuste, while she herself prepared to follow. It is possible that she also sent father Borja, to pay a last visit of consolation to his friend.