Note 1420 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
Another rival appeared, to contest the credit of the cure with the bones of Fray Diego. This was Our Lady of Atocha, the patroness of Madrid, whose image, held in the greatest veneration by Philip the Second, was brought to the chamber of Carlos, soon after the skeleton of the holy friar. As it was after the patient had decidedly begun to mend, there seems to be the less reason for the chroniclers of Our Lady of Atocha maintaining, as they sturdily do, her share in the cure. (Perada, La Madona de Madrid, (Valladolid, 1604,) p. 151.) The veneration for the patroness of Madrid has continued to the present day. A late journal of that capital states that the queen, accompanied by her august consort and the princess of Asturias, went, on the twenty-fourth of March, 1854, in solemn procession to the church, to decorate the image with the collar of the Golden Fleece.