latristereina:On this day in history (7th December 1492) an assassination attempt on Ferdinand II of

latristereina:On this day in history (7th December 1492) an assassination attempt on Ferdinand II of Aragon “The Catholic” took place.On October of 1492 Isabel and Fernando had entered Barcelona in state. There Isabel saw her son received as heir apparent by the often truculent Catalans. There too, on December 7, Fernando presided over a regular Friday dispensing of public justice. Then afterward, as he descended a staircase, he was savagely attacked. He was felled by a knife thrust in the back of the neck. Only the heavy gold chain he wore, in deflecting the blade, prevented the amputation of the royal head.So wrote Pedro Mártir to Talavera and Tendilla the next day, and Mártir continued to keep them informed. The king’s life was despaired of. The assailant, a Catalan peasant, one Joan de Canyamás, was taken alive and readily confessed: he had been told by a demon to kill the king so that he himself might claim the kingdom that was rightfully his. Upon hearing of the assault, the queen “flew in search of her husband,” but fearing a plot, she first commanded that war galleys be rowed to the embankment before the royal residence in order to protect Prince Juan, who was heir to Aragón should his father die. “An entire battalion of doctors and surgeons has been called,” said Mártir; “we lurch between fear and hope.”3 Nine days later, Mártir wrote again to Talavera. While the king seemed out of danger, his tongue was terribly swollen and his cheeks burned with fever; still, he was taking food from the queen’s own hands. On December 23 Mártir reported that Fernando was still housebound, and that people were undertaking pilgrimages to pray for his life, “through mountains, valleys, coasts and wherever there is a sanctuary. The entire royal family has gone on foot to [the shrine of Our Lady of] Montserrat.”4On December 13 Isabel had her secretary, Alvarez, inform her deputy in Castile that she had ordered an investigation by members of the Royal Council and the dignitaries of Barcelona, and that they had learned from the prisoner himself, through torture and otherwise, and through reputable witnesses, that he was subject to fits of temporary and violent insanity. He had further confessed that a diabolic spirit had moved him. It was decided that he must do penance in all his erring members. On December 12, upon a high platform visible to everyone, punishment was meted out: the right hand that had wielded the knife was removed, as were the feet by which he had come to do it, the eyes by which he saw the way, and the heart that had prompted him. Pincers tore the flesh from all his body and then it was turned over to the people to be stoned and burned, for everyone wished to have vengeance on it. “And so that traitor met the end he merited.” In truth it was a marvel, Mártir commented, that the prisoner had not been torn to pieces on coming out of the jail. The king was much better and sitting up in bed; the queen was reading him letters and keeping him informed of affairs. Another account stated that she had ordered the assailant garroted before execution. Whether or no, a public display of retributive justice was the object. Isabel’s secretary’s explanation for it all was that “it is believed that the Devil had sought through the hand of that man to do that on the person of the king, Our Lord, to see if in that way he could stop all the good that His Highness has continually done.”5Isabel wrote to Talavera personally on December 30, ruefully and revealingly beginning “For since we see that kings can die of some disaster like other people, there is reason to prepare to die well.”6 While she had thought of death often before, “greatness and prosperity has made me think of it and fear it more.” Still, there was a vast difference, she continued, between thinking of death and coming face to face with it. She hoped never to die in such a way, and especially not with her debts unpaid. And so the purpose of that letter: she wanted from Talavera a list of her debts. Isabel wanted to know, that is, her literal debts, the sums she owed on loans received as servicios, how much on wartime indemnities, how much on old juros incurred when she was princess, “and all the things that seem to you must be repaid and satisfied in some way…. It will be the greatest relief in the world to have it.” Tantalizingly, she mentioned that she had incurred other sorts of debts, but she did not say what they were. Sensibly, she appealed to the man who had been both her confessor and chief accountant, who could tally obligations both financial and otherwise. Yet nowhere does her no-nonsense literal-mindedness come clearer; to her, debts were primarily monetary. And ever certain of the omnipresence of divine purpose, she had, as usual, extracted from near catastrophe some practical lessons.Unburdening herself to her old confessor and counselor, she spoke of her own anguish, Fernando’s dire condition and great popularity, and God’s activity: “the wound was so great, according to the physician of Guadalupe, that I had not the heart to see it, so large and so deep, of a depth of four fingers, of such size that my heart trembles in saying it. … But God made it with such compassion that it seems he directed it so as not to prove fatal.” God had then sent a life-threatening fever, like an infernal night. But believe, Father, that never was such [popular concern] seen before anywhere.” Everyone spontaneously prayed or went on pilgrimage for the king’s recovery. Now Fernando was up and about. “The pleasure of seeing him get up was as great as had been the sadness. We are all restored. I do not know why God shows to us this great mercy and not to others of much virtue. … What shall I do, who have none? And this is one of the sorrows I felt: to see the King suffer what I deserved, not meriting it, but paying for me”; it was this that “killed me most of all.” She has prayed to God, she said, that she will serve him henceforth as she ought. Had she a guilty secret? Or was this the sort of expression of pious humility the situation seemed to require? Or was it, as has been said, that in Catholic cultures suffering tends to be seen as a sign of God’s attention and love?7 If so, then about her greater deserving of suffering may there have hovered not only love but competition.Source: „Isabel the Queen” by Peggy K. Liss.Link to the post from recent years: (x) -- source link

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