The disappearance of Don Carlos, 1568

19^th January 1568 was the last day on which anyone saw Don Carlos, the son of King Philip II of Spain, alive. It is possible that he died on this day, although his death was only announced officially on 24^th July. There is a lot about the story of Don Carlos that lies shrouded in mystery.

It is known that he was born on 8^th July 1545, and that his mother died shortly after his birth, aged only 17. There are stories that he was mentally unbalanced from childhood, but a more likely explanation for his later mental state is that he hit his head after an accidental fall when aged 18.

There is a story that his life was despaired of until somebody had the bright idea of moving the mummified corpse of a long-dead saint to lie alongside him in bed. This sounds not only bizarre but grotesque, but it appears to have done the trick as far as saving his life. However, the powers of the saint do not appear to have extended to mending Don Carlos’s brain as well as his body, because his behaviour after his recovery was extremely odd.

Again, there are stories that can be believed or not, but Don Carlos does seem to have been subject to fits of murderous fury that expressed themselves in sadistic acts performed on people and animals. It seems true that he developed a hatred of his father, possibly because Philip had married 14-year-old Elizabeth of Valois in 1559, and Elizabeth had originally been intended as Don Carlos’s bride.

Whatever the cause of Don Carlos’s anger, Philip took the view that he was far too dangerous to be allowed out in public and his palace rooms became his prison. On 19^th January 1568 Philip personally supervised the arrangements, making sure that all doors and windows were nailed shut. The only people allowed to make contact with Don Carlos, then aged 22, were his jailers.

What caused Don Carlos’s death is another focus for conjecture. Philip clearly had a motive for wanting him dead, which was to exclude an obviously deranged man from his position as heir to the throne. It is entirely possible that Philip had his son poisoned.

The story received considerable embellishment in the play “Don Carlos”, written by Friedrich Schiller, which was first performed in 1787. This formed the basis for several operas, most notably that of Giuseppe Verdi which was premiered in 1867. In these works dramatic reality probably took precedence over historical truth and the actual facts of what happened are still uncertain to this day.

© John Welford

Tomas de Torquemada, the Inquisitor

16th September 1498 was the day on which died one of the most evil men to have ever lived. However, like many such people he was utterly convinced that he was on the side of justice and was doing “God’s will”. It is amazing how religious zeal can persuade some people to act in the most unspeakably cruel and villainous ways.

The man in question was Tomas de Torquemada, a Dominican monk who, in 1483, had been entrusted by Pope Sixtus IV to lead the “Holy Inquisition” in Spain. The aim of this institution was to root out heresy from Spain, which Torquemada understood to mean discovering and punishing “Marranos”, Jews who had ostensibly converted to Christianity but who still practised Judaism in secret.

Torquemada took his work extremely seriously, gathering a network of spies and arming himself with “enforcers” in the shape of 50 armed knights and 200 foot soldiers. There was nothing he would not do to extract a confession, followed by punishment. It is true that not every victim was burned at the stake – this was the fate of possibly as few as 2,000 discovered Jews – but at least 25,000 others received less severe punishments after they had been tortured into confession.

It seems unlikely that Torquemada’s career was unknown to the Nazis of a later age, because there are distinct parallels between their persecutions of Jews. Torquemada confiscated Jewish property, flogged Jews in public and forced them to wear yellow shirts with crosses sewn on them – a chilling precursor of the yellow stars that the Nazis forced German Jews to wear.

He issued guidelines to enable Christians to identify the secret Jews among them. One was to take note of people who wore clean clothes on Saturdays rather than Sundays.

Torquemada even had his own “final solution”. In his efforts to create a “pure-blooded” Spain he concluded that all the Jews must be expelled. He went to the King and Queen and made this demand, but they were also approached by some wealthy Jews who offered them 30,000 ducats if they refused to do what Torquemada wanted.

This was an unfortunate sum to have offered, because it played right into Torquemada’s hands. He challenged the monarchs by pointing out that Jesus had been betrayed by Judas for 30 pieces of silver and now they were about to do the same for 30,000. The jibe worked, and 160,000 Jews were forced to leave Spain within three months. Any left behind would have been executed.

It beggars belief what some people are prepared to do in the name of religion, which is one reason why the current writer would be perfectly happy if the world gave up religion altogether, although I appreciate that this is not likely to happen any time soon! The problem arises when people convince themselves that their religion is the only true one and that everyone else’s must therefore be wrong. It is a short step, in the minds of many, from this position to the belief that the wrongs of others must be corrected in order that they can be “saved”. The lengths to which they go in order to convert others to their point of view are clearly very varied, but it is when “no, I won’t change my religion” is not taken as the end of the matter that the real trouble can start.

As a footnote to the story of Torquemada, there is another parallel to the excesses of the Nazis. One of the worst Jew-baiters, Reinhard Heydrich, was known to have had a Jewish grandmother. The same was true of Tomas de Torquemada.

© John Welford