John of Austria - Post Mortem

Post Mortem

His body was dissected, returned to Spain, reassembled and placed by Philip to rest in the unfinished crypt of the Escorial, not far from their father. In time the body had its own niche and a 19th century marble effigy. Philip, reviewing Don John's papers, found no evidence of disloyalty and put Pérez under arrest.

Don John of Austria's life inspired the 1835 play Don Juan d'Autriche by Casimir Delavigne, which served in turn as a source for two operas, Don John of Austria by Isaac Nathan in 1847 and Don Giovanni d'Austria by Filippo Marchetti in 1879. Lepanto remains his great triumph. G. K. Chesterton in 1911 published a poem, Lepanto, in which he dubbed Don Juan "the last knight of Europe".

In 1956, Louis de Wohl published The Last Crusader: A Novel about Don Juan of Austria, whose ambitions, above all for the Queen of Scots, tend to obscure his talent for statecraft and ability to lead. Frustrated by the religious factiousness in the Low Countries, he began the policies that Farnese would follow in keeping the ten southern provinces, comprising present-day Belgium, Luxembourg and much of the French Netherlands, Roman Catholic and loyal to Philip, and limiting the revolt to the northern seven heavily Protestant areas which eventually became the Dutch Republic.