Juana Coello (1548 in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

– ?) was the wife of Antonio Pérez, Secretary of State of

Philip II of Spain Philip II) in Spain, while in Portugal and his Italian kingdoms he ruled as Philip I ( pt, Filipe I). (21 May 152713 September 1598), also known as Philip the Prudent ( es, Felipe el Prudente), was King of Spain from 1556, King of Portugal from ...

, famous for having helped her husband escape from prison.

Biography

Coello received good education and married in 1567. Her husband was revealed to be a womanizer; some authors claim that he had sex with the Princess of Eboli, the king's favorite, who put him in jail.

Escape of Antonio Pérez

Juana visited her husband in prison and gave him her clothes, thus facilitating his escape. She remained behind, locked in the dungeon her husband had occupied. In 1585 he went to

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

to see the king. When Juana moved from Aldea Gallega to

Lisbon Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...

, she was seized and imprisoned again in the public jail of Madrid, together with her seven children. All were later transferred to a fortress, where she remained until April 1599, when Philip II was dead. Her children remained behind bars.

Later life

Since that date, little is known. Some authors state that she went to

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to join her husband and died in poverty at 1602. Others say that in 1613 she sought the rehabilitation of their children, to which the

Inquisition The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, ...

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agreed two years later.

References

* Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana, book 13. {{DEFAULTSORT:Coello, Juana 16th-century Spanish people 1548 births 17th-century deaths