Philip I of Castile
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Philip and his wife Joanna of Castile |
Philip the Handsome (
July 22,
1478 –
September 25,
1506),
(Felipe el Hermoso - Philipp der Schöne) was the son of the
Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. Through his mother
Mary of Burgundy he inherited the greater part of the
Burgundian state and through his wife
Joanna the Mad he briefly succeeded to the
kingdom of Castile. He was the first
Habsburg prince in
Spain and his successors reckoned him as
Philip I of Spain.
Philip was born in
Bruges, in today's
Belgium. In 1482, upon the death of his mother
Mary of Burgundy, daughter of
Charles the Bold, he succeeded to her
Burgundian possessions under the guardianship of his father. In
1494 he came of age and took over the rule of the Burgundian lands himself. On
October 20,
1496, he married
Joanna, daughter of
Ferdinand of Aragon and
Isabella of Castile, in
Lier, Belgium. The marriage was one of a set of family alliances with
Austria and
Portugal designed to strengthen Spain against
France. The death of
Juan, the only son of Ferdinand and Isabella, opened the succession to the Spanish Crown to Joanna.
In 1502 she and her husband received the homage of the
cortes of
Castile and of
Aragon as heirs. Philip returned to
Flanders before the close of the year. His life with Joanna was rendered extremely unhappy by his infidelity and by her jealousy, which, working on a neurotic temperament, precipitated her insanity. The princess gave way to paroxysms of rage, in which she was guilty of acts of atrocious violence. Before her mother's death, in 1504, she was unquestionably quite insane, and husband and wife lived apart.
When Isabella died, Ferdinand endeavoured to lay hands on the regency of Castile, but the nobles, who disliked and feared him, forced him to withdraw. Philip was summoned to Spain, where he was recognized as king. He landed, with his wife, at
La Coruña on
April 28,
1506, accompanied by a body of German mercenaries. Father and son-in-law mediated under
Cardinal Cisneros at
Remesal, near
Puebla de Sanabria, and at
Renedo, the only result of which was an indecent family quarrel, in which Ferdinand professed to defend the interests of his daughter, who he said was imprisoned by her husband.
A civil war would probably have broken out between them; but Philip, who had only been in Spain long enough to prove his incapacity, died suddenly at
Burgos, apparently of
typhoid fever, on September 25, 1506. His wife refused for long to allow his body to be buried or to part from it. Philip was the father of the emperors
Charles V and
Ferdinand I.
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