Mariana of Austria

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Mariana of Austria, 1652, portrayed by Diego Velázquez
Mariana of Austria, 1652, portrayed by Diego Velázquez

Mariana or Maria-Anna of Austria (24 December 1634, Vienna, Austria - 16 May 1696, Madrid, Spain) Queen consort of Spain as the second wife of her maternal uncle, King Philip IV. She was the daughter of Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III and Infanta Maria Anna of Spain, Philip's sister.

Mariana was born on 24 December 1634 in Vienna at the court of her paternal grandfather Ferdinand II. Her father, who would become Emperor in 1637, was as yet only the King of Hungary and Bohemia, and was away for most of his wife's pregnancy campaigning in the Thirty Years' War.

Mariana was also a younger sister of Ferdinand IV of Hungary and an older sister of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor. As a child, she was engaged to her Spanish Habsburg first cousin Baltasar Carlos, Prince of Asturias, but when he died at 16 in 1646, Philip IV was left without a male heir and Maria-Anna without a fiancé. In 1649 the king married his 14-year-old niece himself. Although known for being cheerful as a young girl, after her wedding to her uncle she became cold and bad-tempered.

Philip IV and Mariana had two children who survived infancy:

When Philip IV died on 17 September 1665, their only surviving son, Charles II of Spain, was only 3 years old, and Mariana served as Regent until 1675. Charles, at most times unable to walk or speak, needed a regent more than most child kings, and was carried as an infant in arms until he was 10. Mariana served as his regent for much of his life, except when she was successfully driven from Madrid by John of Austria the Younger, an illegitimate son of Philip IV, in 1677 in a palace revolution, due to widespread dissatisfaction at court because of her support for her advisor Fernando de Valenzuela. However, she returned to Madrid upon John's death in 1679. That same year, her son Charles II married the lovely French princess Marie Louise of Orleans. Although he was madly in love with her, their marriage remained childless. Ten years later, in 1689, Marie Louise died under mysterious circumstances and Charles married again, this time a German princess: Maria Anna of Neuburg. However, this second marriage was also childless.

Realizing that her son would never have children of his own, Mariana wanted her great-grandson, Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria, to become the next King of Spain. This made her to argue frequently with her second-daughter-in-law, Maria Anna of Neuburg, who wanted her nephew, Archduke Charles of Austria, to become the next King of Spain. After a lot of unpleasant arguments, the Queen Mother stated: "Two suns cannot live in the same sky". Once during an argument between the two royal ladies, the Queen Mother told her: "Learn to live, lady, and know once and for all that people far higher than you have humbled themselves before me, people over whom you have only one advantage, that you are the wife of my son, an honour which you owe to me alone." The hysterical Maria Anna of Neuburg replied: "That is why I hate you so much!"

Mariana died of breast cancer on the night of 16 May 1696 in Madrid, Spain, at the moment when a total eclipse of the moon reached its maximum and the Spanish capital was completely covered in darkness. Soon after her funeral, some miracles begun to be reported. When her coffin was taken out so the crowds could say farewell, a white dove was seen flying around it and finally disappeared into the heavens. Everyone thought it was an omen. A nun who had attended the Queen Mother at the palace begged a garment for remembrance; she slept in it and next morning awoke cured of a life-long paralysis. The British ambassador in Madrid, Lord Alexander Stanhope, wrote about this subject:

There is now great noise of a miracle, done by a piece of waistcoat she died in, on an old lame nun, who in great faith earnestly desired it, and so sooner applied it to her lips, but she was perfectly well, and immediately threw away her crutches. This, with some other stories, which will not be wanting, may in time grow up to a canonization.

The infamous Countess of Berlips, a German lady living at the Spanish court, wrote the following lines on the subject:

The miracles attributed to her after her death are not yet proved. One knows how easily such things are made up and attributed to people who have been calumniated while alive. There is no doubt that the dead Queen was a saint, because of her irreproachable conduct all her life, but the Spaniards don't deserve miracles from her, since they embittered her existence.

In 1668, a voyage led by Jesuit missionary San Vitores named the Mariana Islands in the North Pacific after the queen regent.

[edit] Bibliography

  • CALVO POYATO, José, La vida y epoca de Carlos II el Hechizado (Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1998).
  • CALVO POYATO, José, Reinas viudas de España (Barcelona: Península, 2002).
  • FISAS, Carlos, Historias de las reinas de España: la Casa de Austria (Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1999).
  • GONZÁLEZ-DORIA, Fernando, Las reinas de España (Madrid: Bitácora, 1990).
  • MAURA GAMAZO, Gabriel, Vida y reinado de Carlos II (Madrid: Espasa Calve, 1942).
  • PFANDL, Ludwig, Carlos II (Madrid: Afrodisio Aguado, 1947).

[edit] Links

http://www.xs4all.nl/~kvenjb/madmonarchs/carlos2/carlos2_bio.htm A biography of Charles II of Spain in Joan's Mad Monarchs Series

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Mariana of Austria
Born: 23 December 1634 Died: 16 May 1696
Spanish royalty
Preceded by
Elisabeth of Bourbon		 Queen consort of Spain
1649-1665		 Succeeded by
Maria Luisa of Orléans
Consort of the Spanish Netherlands
Artois lost in 1659
1649-1665