"In fact, the piece of wood had belonged to a Portuguese galleon, the Cinco Chagas (Five Wounds) and after seeking it high and low, it was found as a sitting bench at the entrance to the refectory of the poor and it was also on this odd beam that the poor would sit to have their meals. The king's coffin was then built using this wood." - Alfonso Davila in his 1900 biography of Don Cristobal de Moura, commenting on the origin of the coffin of Philip II of Spain.

Philip II of Spain died a slow and agonizing death which gave him ample time to plan a series of symbolic acts of to be performed on his dying hours and on

his funeral. These were to be a culmination of the pious life of a man who seemingly thought

his purpose on earth was to eradicate protestantism or, at the very least, protect the Catholic

faith from contamination. The testimonial accounts of his last hours compiled by the contempor

ary historian Luis Cabrera de Cordoba show a dying man obsessed with acquiring salvation, desperate to have communion against his doctors advice and kissing crucifixes with devoted passion.

It comes as no surprise then, that in between giving instructions regarding his shroud and praying, he may have concocted how his coffin could also achieve a symbolic value. Philip II is a social iconographer's dream: hardly any step in this complex and prolonged funerary rite is meaningless.

The wood his coffin was built from belonged to the wreckage of a Portuguese galleon whose captain and crew had fought valiantly against the so-called English Corsairs - the Earl of Cumberland's squadron to be more precise - off the coast of the Azores islands of Corvo and Faial. What was in fact an act of piracy - the Portuguese galleon was full to the brim with the riches of India and loaded with slaves - had been turned into an event of religious significance. According to the rather exciting accounts of the battle which read like Victorian adventure books for boys, the brave Portuguese Catholics would rather let the boat sink and perish with it than surrender it to the devilish Luterans. After twenty four hours of fighting against three English ships, the Cinco Chagas went up in flames and exploded when the fire reached the gunpowder storage area. Only thirteen of the presumed six hundred people on board survived. Thus, the sailors were transfigured into martyrs and the remains of the galleon into an unofficial holy relic. How the keel of the ship surfaced in Lisbon it is not known. The accounts that proclaim that the keel of the ship had been in Lisbon for 20 years before being reclaimed for funerary material is at odds with the date of the sinking - 1594 - but symbolism doesn't depend on authenticity as most saint's relics attest.

Not only was Philip II to be buried in a symbol of resistance to the Protestants, the wood used to build the ship - and the coffin - was said to be from the aptly named Tree of Paradise, a tree from the East Indies whose wood was rather durable, everlasting even. The name of the galleon, Five Wounds, alluded to the sufferings of Christ and, fittingly, to the wounds that covered the body of the disease ridden Philip. Considering salvation was a substantial point of discord between Catholics and Protestants, Philip seems to have tried to cover each theological possibility minutely in a last paroxysm of devotion. The rest of the wood beam that was not used in the coffin ended its days as crucifixes for the Monastery of San Lorenzo's church.

Even before the Reformation ships were seen as relics - either of the missionary efforts or of explorations of the world God created and which human engineering and cunning allowed. When the navigator Americo Vespucci died in 1512 - and as described by Bandini in Vita e Lettere - King Manuel I of Portugal ordered that pieces of the ship Vespucci captained should be hanging from the ceiling of Lisbon's Cathedral as a monument to his exploits.

If you walk into the Science Museum in London and admire the piece of Moon rock brought to Earth by an Apollo 15 astronaut, it begs the question. Is it the modern equivalent of Vespucci's hanging pieces of wood or is it more akin to Philip II as a symbol of the American eforts in the Space Race over the USSR?

For accounts of the sea battle that sank the Cinco Chagas see Southey's Lives of the British Admirals (in English) and Brito's História Trágico-Marítima (in Portuguese). For the last pious days of Philip II see Jose de Siguenza's Como vivió y murió Felipe II (in Spanish). For a modern take in English see Carlos Eire's From Madrid to Purgatory.