2023-04-24 02:58:55
The Catholic Monarchs had four daughters and a son, Juan, who was quickly sworn in as Prince of Asturias. The delivery in 1478 was assisted by a Sevillian midwife, known as La Herradera due to the profession of her husband, whom Isabel ordered to turn off the chandeliers in the room to have more privacy. The city of the Guadalquivir celebrated such an important birthday with a joust and with the fight of twenty bulls, each one more brave.
But despite the joy the chronicler Hernán Pérez del Pulgar He noticed a bad prediction: “Between the solemnity of the batting and that of the purification mass, an eclipse of the sun intervened.” And it is that the child was not as beautiful or healthy as the Kings would have wanted. The prince’s arrival into the world had been brought forward by four weeks and, consequently, the baby was underweight. A cleft lip prevented him from speaking properly and his constitution made him flimsy as mud. He ate with difficulty, vomited frequently, and often passed out.
No one was betting too much on a long life for the prince at a time when barely half of the children reached the age of twenty. They tried toning his body with turtle and chicken extract to harden his shell. His mistress, Juana de la Torre, who would be like a second mother, prepared for the creature a medicinal syrup made with honey and rose water that was the hand of a saint. Christopher Columbus, well connected with her mistress, asked her for a good dose of this “pink honey” to provide himself on his voyages.
Juan, blond and delicate, was always “my angel” for Isabel. The Kings spared no expense for the education of the prince called to unite definitively the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile. The actual accounting reveals that they spent 55 pairs a year on shoes alone. Even so, austerity was a fundamental lesson for any son of Isabel. At eight years old, her mother recommended that she not have the coffers in her chamber full of clothes and luxuries, so that one day a year she asked her to distribute her most valuable pieces among her servants.
Humanist education, very popular at the time, was orchestrated by Friar Diego de Dezaa Dominican teacher in Theology of the University of Salamanca who exercised the medieval figure of the wise and pious adviser who tutors the prince in moral matters, while other teachers were in charge of training him in the art of fencing, horsemanship and the use of the crossbow or the bow to hunt. Literature, science, dance, falconry were part of a program worthy of admiration in European courts and for some reason it was imitated when Carlos de Gante established half a century later for the apprenticeship of the future Felipe II.
A future designed in detail
The result of the sumptuous training was a calm boy, with courteous gestures, a great memory, a lover of art and poetry. To judge the Milanese Martyr of AngleríaHe had the three natural gifts that make men consummate and perfect: sharp wit, memory, and greatness of soul. However, so much discipline gave rise to a somewhat inappetent character. The Kings noticed that at eighteen she had the initiative of a seven-year-old, being too obedient and without the desire to challenge the elders that young people at that age come standard with. They could have ordered him to be less obedient, for sure he would have made an effort to comply with the order, but it would have been of little use.
The Kings commissioned him to impart local justice so that he would harden himself in the art of governing and they knighted him during the War of Granada
The house of the Prince of Asturias was fixed permanently in the Palace of the Mendoza de Almazán family, villa soriana that was granted to the prince. The Kings entrusted him with imparting local justice so that he would harden himself in the art of governing and they knighted him during the Granada War so that, commanding a hundred crusaders, he would take his first steps on the battlefields. He took care, however, that the members of his house were chaste and that there were the necessary minimum of women around the boy. Some of the most important nobles of Castile and his children guarded Juan in those years of apprenticeship.
The work represents Queen Isabel the Catholic presiding over the education of her children.
With the intention of isolating France, Fernando closed an agreement with Maximilian of Habsburg, head of the Holy Germanic Empire, to marry Juan and Juana with their children Felipe and Margarita, heirs of the house of Burgundy. Although Juan was a well-educated prince, Margarita was not far behind. This cultured and remarkably attractive princess welcomed the marriage with relief, since she had lived in France until 1493, waiting to reach the age necessary to marry Carlos VIII, who was almost ten years older than her and a few heads of ugliness. . The impatience of the French king, who could not be without an heir, led him to annul the marriage, not consummated, to marry the duchess Anne of Brittany, with whom Carlos could share a bed. Margarita experienced the new marriage with humiliation and she remained at the French court like an amoeba.
On her happy return to the Netherlands a new marriage agreement was communicated to her: John appeared in her life. Chroniclers agree on the good impression made in Spain by Margarita, who had a delicate beauty, blonde hair and slightly slanted eyes. “If you saw it, you would think you were contemplating Venus herself,” he warned. Martyr of Angleria. These same male witnesses raved about the quality of her complexion and the fact that she didn’t wear any makeup.
The young woman with unexpectedly oriental eyes was escorted by King Ferdinand to Burgos, whose cathedral had nothing to envy to those of Paris or Reims. The wedding was celebrated in the great temple at the beginning of April 1497 and rose as the most lustrous event in the recent history of Castile, including among the guests Christopher Columbus. Adding up all the jewels given away, much of it by the queen, she came up with an overwhelming figure of 1,339 medium pearls, 50 “pearls the size of shelled hazelnuts” and another 48 “far larger”.
The young woman with unexpectedly oriental eyes was escorted by King Ferdinand to Burgos, whose cathedral had nothing to envy to those of Paris or Reims.
The guests at the grand gala then passed to the Palace of the Cord belonging to the Velasco family, where, as if it were a modern wedding banquet, the newlyweds and the kings dined on a higher dais than the rest of the lords. After the feast, the hacanea that the prince was riding made a strange turn and threw the rider into a ditch. It was not a good prediction that the prince fell like this in front of his wife, the Kings and the entire court, but the accident was understood as a mere anecdote. Laughter covered the fright and the couple withdrew so that the next night’s ride would be a success. “The most illustrious prince, our son and she, have consummated her marriage,” an inflated Fernando boasted by letter shortly after.
The princes could have lived happily and eaten partridges if it were not for the smallpox that Juan contracted in Medina del Campo that same summer. At first it was not given the slightest importance and, taking advantage of a slight improvement, the entourage moved to Salamanca, where the city presented the newlyweds with magnificent parties in the palace of their former tutor, Fray Diego de Deza. Juan found himself strong enough to see a play entitled ‘The Triumph of Love’, which finished raising his spirits. And there may still be love for Juan, but he was not going to enjoy the triumph.
Isabel and Fernando left their son safely in Salamanca to attend the second wedding of their eldest daughter. They believed, as so often in the past, that the prince’s shabby constitution would absorb the blows. It was not so. Fray Diego de Deza notified the Kings in mid-September that Juan was walking “with his appetite lost” after suffering violent fevers. The King quickly traveled to Salamanca, but Isabel, who had been exhausted after the trip, remained on the border with Portugal celebrating the wedding festivities.
road to the grave
When he saw it with his own eyes, Fernando decided to hide from his wife how serious his angel was. One look from him, penetrating, freezing, was enough to understand that after the days of pleasure usually come those of bitterness. The prince acknowledged to his father that he felt death was near, and begged her with a manly gesture to abide by the designs of God. She only regretted that her “sweet mother” was not going to be at the goodbye.
The Aragonese was pleased to hear from his son the words of an old man and, not without crying like a child, he resigned himself to seeing him die on October 4, 1497. He died the prince of the spains in the arms of his father only six months after his wedding with Margarita, to whom he dedicated his last words: “From now on, my soul lives inside you.” Some wanted to link his extreme love for her with the cause of her death, since many contemporaries were convinced that excessive sexual activity, motivated by the constant and eager rages of his beautiful young wife, had prevented the complete recovery of her life. health of the heir when he most needed rest.
Sepulcher of Prince Juan in the Royal Monastery of Santo Tomás in Ávila.
“Both the doctors and the King advise the Queen that, from time to time, separate Margarita from the prince’s side, that she separate them and grant them truces, pretexting the danger that frequent intercourse constitutes for the prince,” he wrote. Martyr of Angleria. However, Elizabeth replied by pulling liturgy that “what God has joined cannot be separated by man.” She was not one to meddle in the bedside affairs of her son, who probably died of a tuberculosis that he carried from childhood.
Juan was buried in the main chapel of the cathedral of Salamanca, where so many candles were placed that wax had to be brought from nearby towns, and then the body was moved to Saint Thomas of Avila, under a mausoleum that showed him with his bare hands, removed his gauntlets in memory that he had not died in combat. The official mourning in the kingdom lasted forty days, although the memory of his loss survived the years as a sign of all the failed expectations that had been placed on his puny men. According to the Martyr of Anglería, he had died “the hope of Castile”. Fernando waited to give the news to his wife in person. The Queen fell to her knees and wept bitterly, as do mothers unfortunate enough to outlive her children.
However, Castilla soon wiped away her tears to throw herself into the preparations for the delivery of Margarita, who was miraculously pregnant. Juan’s will demanded from his parents that his wife and his possible offspring lacked nothing. However, anxiously awaiting the event, the court received the worst news: «Margarita has had an abortion instead of the desired offspring. The eagerly awaited birth gave us nothing but a formless mass. Retire to a convent or remarry, that is the question for Margarita. Maximilian chose for her and ordered her return to Flanders. She left with the regret of having lost the love of her life and having failed in the posthumous task that Juan assigned her.
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