As death loomed close, a procession brought from Madrid to his bedside the incorrupt body of Isidore the Labourer, an 11thcentury farmworker known for having performed several miracles in his lifetime, but yet to be a saint. In 1619, 57 years after the episode of Prince Don Carlos, Philip III, the successor of Philip II, fell gravely ill when he travelled from Portugal to Madrid, and had to be tended in the town of Casarrubios del Monte. The image of the 18-year-old prince sharing his bed with the shrivelled corpse of a man yanked out of the grave at the king’s orders is nothing short of shocking, but it wouldn’t have been an unusual sight in the court of the Spanish Habsburgs. Prince Don Carlos receiving the the mummy into his bed (1622). His miraculous recovery was attributed to the relics’ sacred power, and the friar was later canonised. He told his father that he’d dreamed of Diego, who said he would live. Since he had been dead for a hundred years the friar couldn’t perform a miracle in his living presence, but perhaps his corpse would.Īt the orders of the king, Fray Diego’s sarcophagus was opened so his mummified remains could be brought to the prince’s room, where they were ceremoniously laid next to him. Instead, the king’s confessor, Bernardo de Fresneda, suggested they seek the intercession of local miracle-maker Fray Diego de Alcalá. However, their alleged healing properties, a deeply-rooted Christian belief , didn’t work on young Don Carlos. The king was a devout Catholic, known for his “holy greed for relics”: his collection, which he kept close to his bedchambers, included 12 whole skeletons, 144 heads, and thousands of bones from all known saints, except three. Since science had failed, the royal confessor resolved, perhaps they should seek help from Heaven. He gathered the most eminent doctors and anatomists around his son’s bed, yet none of them were able to find a cure. It was 1562, and if anyone had the means to save someone from the clutches of death, it was Philip II of Spain, the king of the Empire where the sun never set. The war ended via the ‘Treaty of Utrecht,’ with Austria victoriously claiming a lot of territories.When Prince Don Carlos, the son of the most powerful man in the world, took a bad fall, it was feared that the festering wound on his forehead would bring his short life to an end. There was a lot of dispute over the succession, and it eventually led to the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701. According to his will, his successor was Philip of Anjou, the grandson of Louis XIV. He could never recover and eventually died. One of his wives claimed he was impotent. He suffered from diarrhoea throughout his life. He could not walk properly because his legs did not support his body. Throughout his life, he could not speak properly due to his over-sized tongue. His ancestors preferred to marry their cousins or nieces. His physical disabilities were believed to be the result of inbreeding. Also known as “the Bewitched” or “El Hechizado,” Charles II is mostly remembered for his ill-health that led to his death at the age of 38, without any heir. Charles II of Spain was the last ruler of the Habsburg dynasty, a powerful dynasty that destroyed itself through inbreeding.
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