5. Joana the Mad Slept With Her Hubby’s Corpse
Joanna of Castile, also known as Joanna the Mad (1479 – 1555) was the daughter of Spain’s “Catholic Monarchs”, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castille. As her nickname indicates, Joanna was not all there. Her family had a history of mental illnesses, and Joanna’s marriage to Philip the Handsome, a notorious lecher who cheated on her nonstop, and after whom she lusted nonstop, drove her crazy. Ghoulishly crazy, to the point where she slept with his corpse for years after his death.
When Philip suddenly died in 1506 from typhoid fever, Joana became inconsolably grief-stricken. Finally, unable to bear the separation any longer, she had Philip’s corpse disinterred three months after it was buried. Joanna then had the rotting body embalmed with lime and various unguents, and generously doused with perfumes. As a contemporary described it, the corpse was: “stitched back together, and all its members bound with waxed linen bandages“. During the next three years, Joanna got into the habit of crawling into the casket with Philip’s cadaver, or sleeping with it in her bed. She also took it around with her wherever she went, exhibiting it to all and sundry, to demonstrate just how “handsome” her husband had been.
