Philip of Spain

by Henry Kamen

  In the light of all this, there is no reason to believe that Philip was inordinately suspicious.93 The image of him always suspecting his ministers was first created by a Venetian ambassador. It doesn't stand up to scrutiny. He extended his confidence, as his correspondence shows, without questioning loyalty. But he reserved his right to evaluate positions. The information he accepted in the 1570s from fray Lorenzo de Villavicencio included vicious and poisonous attacks on individuals such as Hopperus, yet it did not make him withdraw his confidence from Hopperus. Well aware that officials might lie to him, he was grateful for alternative reports on their conduct. By the same token, he insisted on all his ministers telling the truth. It was a lie, we have seen, which destroyed cardinal Espinosa. Both ministers and court nobles were pressed to speak freely on all matters. It is one of the significant peculiarities of Philip's rule that flattery was unknown at his court. When a priest began an interview by praising him the king cut in. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘leave that and tell me your business.’94 At the same time he adamantly refused to accept hearsay or calumny. It was a fundamental principle of social relations that the source of information must be identifiable. Anonymous libels could, in the legal practice of the time, attract the death penalty. The king was quite willing to accept documents from the public, provided they were signed, but he had a firm rule that all unsigned papers should be destroyed on receipt.95 In retrospect, the way he managed to distance himself from colleagues would do credit to a twentieth-century business executive.

  He was an uncompromising partisan of absolute confidentiality in matters of state, a cardinal rule he enjoined on all his secretaries, senior officials and ambassadors.96 ‘Secrecy is essential: without it nothing can be effected,’97 a norm that today is accepted as essential in politics. In the Spain of his day it was difficult to enforce. Philip was merciless with ministers who leaked confidential information related to their duties. The most notable case was that of Antonio Pérez. In 1579 he was unable to take any action against Pérez because the secretary and his wife hung on to confidential papers which they threatened to use against him. He did not make the same mistake twice. Just before the Portuguese campaign in 1580 the secretary for Church affairs, Gaztelu, died. Philip ordered ‘that all notes in His Majesty's hand be put together in a locked case, and kept until His Majesty orders to whom they should go’.98

  Quite logically he extended the practice of secrecy into the ordinary conduct of diplomacy and state affairs. Ministers were often instructed, in a favourite phrase, to proceed ‘with all dissimulation’. The word, literally translated into English, implies ‘deceit’. The king's usage carried, rather, the meaning of ‘circumspection’, not betraying one's purpose. The insistence on state secrecy had no uniquely Spanish moral overtones of secretiveness or deception. The practice of ‘dissimulation’ in politics was accepted at the time as necessary by a number of commentators, among them the English savant Francis Bacon and the Dutch scholar Hugo Grotius.99

  Disinclined to speak, Philip always felt more at ease expressing himself on paper. When under stress, or seized by enthusiasm, he could hardly restrain his pen. If an idea gripped him, he could cover reams of paper as his thoughts flowed. The poor legibility of his hand is notorious. It can be blamed in part on his refusal when young to acquire a well-formed script. In part it may also have been a nod to the fashion, then current among many nobles, of writing badly, ‘as if [wrote a critic of the fashion] nobility consists in writing badly’.100 The fact is that there were periods when his script was perfectly neat and legible, which leads to the unexciting conclusion that his poor hand was simply the result of sloppiness or haste.

  Although he worked hard, he took as much leisure as possible. He enjoyed company: his personal role in night excursions, entertainments and masquerades continued into the 1560s. He indulged in the revelry of Carnival in Barcelona in 1564. Long after that, well into his years of illness and old age, he was present at masquerades and mass entertainment. But he also appreciated ‘rest and solitude, above all in summer; in this part of the year he never grants audiences on affairs of state’.101 In 1557 in Flanders his favourite reading was history. He also tried his hand at sculpting and painting.102

  A recurring legend is that of the king's cruelty. No contemporary cites any acceptable evidence for it. As a dispenser of justice he appears to have been rock-hard: there is no record of him ever issuing a pardon after condemnation. But he restrained the severity of his officials on numberless occasions. As a person he was more gentle. He disliked war and violence yet he revelled in the games of war which were an essential rite of male chivalry. And, in common with other members of his class and time, he adored hunting. Though a great devotee of hunting animals, he always managed to distance himself from the suffering of humans. His one direct contact with the horrors of war, the taking of St Quentin, did not make him desire to repeat the experience. Even the sufferings of certain animals gave him no pleasure. Like his great-grandmother Isabella of Castile, he disliked bull-runs103 and usually avoided them, but took no steps to impose his preferences on Castillans. He prohibited the sport when asked to do so by specific communities (for example the citizens of Ocaña in 1561).104 On the other hand, when in 1566 the Cortes of Madrid asked him to prohibit bull-runs generally, he refused to do so on the grounds that it was a traditional custom.105 In 1568 he allowed the publication in Spain of a papal decree of 1567 outlawing them, but otherwise remained neutral on the matter.106 On great feast-days he would remain all alone in the palace working, ‘while everybody else went to the bull-run’.107 On the feast of San Juan in 1565 one was put on for the court. The three royal princes – Don Carlos, Don Juan of Austria and Alessandro Farnese – went to it; but not the king.108 At his wedding to Anna in 1570, he disallowed the running of bulls.109 In September 1576 at the Escorial Don Juan of Austria arranged for bull-runs to be put on to entertain the royal family and the townspeople. But the king would not go. ‘He had his own good reasons for not going,’ commented a friar.110 Instead the king went with the prior to see how the building work was progressing. His attitude did not prevent him assisting out of courtesy at bull-runs put on for the court.

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  Philip was not an intellectual. His views followed theories commonly expressed at Spanish universities, and medieval ideas about the reciprocal duties of rulers and ruled. When staying in Salamanca prior to his marriage to the princess Maria, he is said to have listened entranced to the professors as they gave their lectures. He may even have assisted at the lectures of the great master Francisco de Vitoria. But if he absorbed any theory, he made little specific appeal to it. The dominant tradition of political thought in Castile, accepted by the universities, by Charles V, and by Philip himself, asserted that all earthly power came from God, who distributed it to societies and communities. In order to be governed, the community invested this power in a ruler. The ruler derived his authority from the community, but his position made him responsible only to God.111

  Philip took seriously his direct responsibility to God. Successive Cortes of Castile in the fifteenth century had repeated as an established principle that God ‘made kings his vicars on earth’.112 It became accepted that kingly power drew its origin from God and was based on divine right. Moreover – and Philip demonstrated his belief in this repeatedly – it was undivided power, not to be shared with any person or institution. As the Cortes of Toledo in 1559 stated: the king's authority ‘is by nature indivisible, and by both public and royal law must be considered as entire and without division’.113 But this power brought with it certain duties. Philip's instructions to his viceroys (drawn up by others, but always reflecting his ideas) are a useful guide to his thinking. ‘Kings and princes,’ he observed in 1559, ‘are instituted primarily to govern, to administer justice to their subjects, and to defend them from their enemies.’ The statement, a commonplace in the political theory of the time, implicitly rejects absolutist attitudes. It recognises that rulers have one sole duty
: to those they rule. Princes have to make laws, but may also change them: ‘we are obliged to abrogate or reform those in existence if we know they are harmful to the state’.114

  Nowhere among Philip's statements is there any unusual emphasis on the rights of kings. Like most rulers, he was attributed ‘absolute’ power. The concept of poderío absoluto in Spain was late medieval in origin, and implied no more than the independence (or indivisibility)115 of royal power. It was employed habitually by kings of Castile in the fifteenth century, and appeared several times in the will of Isabella the Catholic.116 It was also applied to Philip when he resumed the government of Spain on his return from Flanders in 1551.117 In his last testament, over a generation later, he referred to ‘my absolute power’, but he did not use the phrase during his reign. Charles V had paid little attention to the concept, but encouraged the use of the title ‘Majesty’, little known in Spain until then.118 ‘Majesty’ was also claimed for Philip in the year that he became king, by a Spanish humanist writing in the Netherlands.119 But he had little need for theory. While university professors in Spain debated political theory, the king avoided any theoretical discussion of his powers, exercised his authority within traditional limits, and was eventually (in 1586) even to discourage the title ‘Majesty’.

  Occasionally, in moments of crisis, he allowed himself to appeal to the traditional ‘absolute’ right of life and death which a lord could exercise over his subjects. He made use of this approach only when there was no obvious alternative. His theologians and lawyers advised him in 1590, quite fairly, that he could use it to pursue Antonio Pérez. It would be ‘by laws of good government, when punishment cannot be effected through ordinary channels’.120 Later, during the events of Aragon in 1591, his lawyers again confirmed that he could act without due judicial process. Beyond these cases, which were exceptional, he seems not to have appealed to the right. All the executions known to have taken place during his reign (including that of Montigny) were carried out after due legal process and with the participation of the royal council. Only the mysterious execution of Martín de Acuña (the agent Philip used for negotiations with Turkey), carried out in the fortress at Pinto on 4 February 1585 (the same week as the final arrest of Antonio Pérez), invites speculation.121

  Many feudal lords, especially in Aragon, claimed to have power of life and death over their vassals. Philip never exercised it over his own vassals, but he acted rigorously in each and every case where his great nobles tried to use it over theirs. His severity in these matters gave him a reputation for firmness which few dared challenge. He never, at any moment of his reign, tolerated rebellion. It was the most profound of all his political convictions. He never pardoned those arrested for it. In his young days, he accepted without reproach the Lutheran companionship of Maurice of Saxony, but never forgave him his subsequent treachery against the emperor. With the unique exception of Martín Cortes in the Mexican conspiracy of 1566,122 he always approved the execution of rebel leaders. When criticised for his firmness in dealing with the sedition in Avila in 1591, he retorted, ‘They know now that words will be translated into actions.’ Reminded that Avila had given him many loyal soldiers, he said, ‘That is true; but didn't they depose king Henry [IV of Castile] there, and support the tyrant Juan de Padilla?’123 The memory of the Comuneros never faded from his mind.

  Despite his firm belief in royal power, the king made no attempt to mystify it. Previous rulers of Castile and Spain had consciously rejected many of the symbols of power used by monarchies outside the peninsula.124 They did not consider their office sacred, did not claim (like the rulers of France and England) any power to heal the sick, and enjoyed no special rituals at the time of their birth or crowning125 or death. The imagery of magical power, common in other monarchies, was notably absent in Spain. Philip followed this tradition perfectly. He encouraged no cult of his person, as Elizabeth of England did in subsequent years and as Louis XIV was to do on a grand scale later. Like his predecessors, he firmly asserted his authority to rule, and the trust he received from God, but he did not inflate these claims into a mystique of royal power. A pragmatic attitude to kingship accorded perfectly with the businesslike approach he preferred. He never encouraged royalist imagery. In 1555, after his marriage to Mary Tudor, he had a medal struck in which he was presented as Apollo, the sun god. The device ran, ‘lam illustrabit omnia’. The emblem never came to acquire special significance, and in subsequent years he did not develop this or any other imagery of his power.126

  He neither needed nor used special powers to express his displeasure. All who knew him were unanimous in affirming that he never displayed anger. Rarely expressed orally, it was in contrast frequently committed to the annotations on his letters. His desk was a world where he was momentarily isolated and as a consequence could give vent to emotions he would consider wrong to display before others. The Venetian ambassadors are the source for the belief, to be found in most of their reports, that Philip dissimulated grudges until the time was right to strike. ‘They say in Spain,’ they stated, ‘that it is a short distance from the king's smile to his dagger.’ The saying was applied to Philip by ambassadors Donato in 1573 and Morosini in 1581.127 It is likely that some courtiers said it and believed it, but more difficult to find any concrete justification for it.

  Philip never accorded special treatment to his own person. The royal portraits show that he never dressed sumptuously, nor did he accept gaudy settings for paintings done of him. The courtesies decree of 1586, in the making for ten years, expressed perfectly his wish to downplay formality. He took no special measures for his own safety,128 despite the attempt on his life in Lisbon. He had no bodyguards. In 1578 an official expressed anxiety that the king went about ‘alone and without any of the measures that are normally taken to put fear into someone with bad intentions’.129 When in the country, he would wander about alone, without any guard. He also gave audiences alone and unarmed.

  While rejecting ‘absolutism’ of the type claimed by rulers of France, the Spanish monarchy was happy to accept the images of power diffused by the Renaissance. During his visits to the Low Countries, Philip was depicted on triumphal arches as a partner in the glories of his father. In the years after his return to the peninsula, the arches and decorations repeatedly insisted on the themes of justice, religion, triumph and power. Statues from classical mythology mingled with figures from Castilian history, to celebrate the universal status of the crown. No one was more conscious than Philip of this universality. Interestingly, it never led him to try to increase his political power. Philip had long since left behind him the dream, which he no doubt entertained briefly in the early 1550s, of succeeding to the Holy Roman Empire, as the family agreement made at Augsburg in 1551 had stipulated. In 1558, in line with the Augsburg agreement, he approached the emperor Ferdinand about being invested officially as vicar of the empire in Italy. Ferdinand's reply to his nephew, who was then in Flanders, gave clear hints about the uproar that might follow among German princes. However, he said, he was willing to comply with the Augsburg accord, which had supposed that the vicar would reside in Italy. On these conditions then, we give our solemn word that the moment His Highness goes to Italy we will send him our patents.’130 Philip returned to the subject in 1562,131 but did not insist too strongly. Had he ever seriously lusted after the title, he already (in secret) possessed it. The title of vicar which his father had given him at the abdication in 1556, and which on Granvelle's advice he kept secret, gave him perpetual authority over the territories of the Holy Roman Empire in Italy.132

  The stories which circulated a few years later among Italian diplomats, to the effect that Philip still yearned for the title of emperor and was thinking of declaring himself emperor of the Indies, were pure gossip.133 The desire for the supreme title may have existed, but the king seems never to have done anything to realise it. Contemporaries who persisted in fostering the image of a king who lusted after kingdoms and titles either did not know Philip or
were deliberately distorting the truth. Philip had no interest in ruling over Germany. ‘As to the succession to the Empire,’ he reminded his ambassador to Vienna in 1562, ‘in the present state of affairs it is not in my interest to claim it, and I wish to help the king [of Bohemia, Maximilian] obtain it.’134 Because Germany was vital to his general security, however, he pursued an active diplomatic policy there. He was later to get involved in claims to the thrones of Portugal, England and France, but in each case it was because a doubtful succession and pressing reasons of security obliged him to play his hand. A firm anti- expansionist, he felt that each ruler, heretic or not, should rule his country in peace without interfering in the affairs of others. At no time in his life did he express support for the principle that heretics had no right to rule. He was never, in this sense, anti-Protestant. Apart from Elizabeth of England, whose regime he explicitly supported for some twenty years, he had good relations with the Lutheran kings of Scandinavia and several Lutheran princes in Germany.

  An astonishing aspect of the Spanish monarchy, especially after union with Portugal in 1580, was the relative absence of triumphalism in literature and the arts. The achievement of peninsular unity fed Castilians with the illusion that they were now masters of Spain. But the resort to ritual celebration was surprisingly muted. Philip had made a great display at his entry into Lisbon in 1581. The occasion, recalling previous entries into Spanish cities and the great triumphal entrées of the Renaissance which he had experienced in Italy and Flanders, was quite exceptional, and not repeated during his reign. While the French monarchy in these years was stepping up its ostentations of power, in Spain the trend was the reverse. Even before the entry into Lisbon, Philip in 1579 looked into the possibility of simplifying the ceremonial of precedence at court. With Granvelle's help, he initiated a review of past and present practice,135 and in 1584 set up a committee of three on the matter.136 This bore fruit eventually, in September 1586, with the decree on courtesies or forms of address (cortesías) in official letters. The most fundamental change (one which went against the trend in all other western monarchies) was that the king should no longer be addressed as ‘Majesty’ but only as ‘Sir’ (Señor).