Philip of Spain
Page 48
From 1592 onwards, Catalina's letters were preoccupied with the Spanish-Savoyard invasion of Provence.76 While the duke was away at the front, she took over the effective government of the duchy, presiding over tribunals and directing ministers. But family matters were still the principal theme of her correspondence, and at regular intervals she gave news of her latest childbirth.77 Philip in January 1596 routinely congratulated Carlo Emanuele on ‘the latest granddaughter’.78 Catalina's continuous and virtually annual pregnancies contributed to her poor health and eventually to her death. Her last surviving letters to her father are four missives, all written on the same day, 12 October 1597.79 She died on 7 December giving birth to a baby girl.
The premature death of this intelligent, lively and beautiful woman at the age of thirty devastated husband and father alike. The duke, grief- stricken by the loss of ‘all that I had’, fell ill and withdrew for three months from his affairs.80 When Philip received the news in San Lorenzo he immediately called Isabel and the prince to his bedside. The family remained closeted with their grief for three hours.81 The king was totally shattered. ‘Never before or again,’ a courtier observed, ‘would they see him express such grief as now, not in the death of his sons nor in that of his wife nor at the loss of the Armada … and so this deprived him of many days of life and of health.’82 A special memorial service, presided over by the prince, was held in the chapel. Isabel and the king watched from the chancel. The king ordered theatres to be closed in mourning. The closure had far-reaching consequences, since it unleashed a flood of impassioned debate about the morality of the theatre. The result was an unprecedented ban, issued in May 1598, on all public theatre and comedies.
The reign was drawing to its close in disaster and defeat. Peace talks between France and Spain were held in secret during 1597 and continued early the next year, openly, at Vervins. The archduke Albert negotiated on behalf of both Spain and the Netherlands. On 2 May 1598 the peace of Vervins with France was signed. One of Henry IV's ministers described it as ‘the most advantageous peace France had secured for five hundred years’.83 At the court of Spain it was recognised for what it was: a humiliation rather than a peace. Spain gave up all its gains, including Calais. ‘Here there are no signs of rejoicing,’ the Venetian envoy Soranzo reported, ‘nor has the peace been even published, nor will it be. The ministers declare that there is no need to publish, as war was never declared. When I asked the count of Fuentes if the peace would be published he replied, “It will not be published at all, for we are ashamed of it”.’84 It was in fact published, to the ambassador's surprise, in the first week of September.
Four days after the peace of Vervins, on 6 May 1598, Philip signed the act handing over the Netherlands to Albert and Isabel, who were to be married as joint sovereigns. The act did not in fact concede independence. If there was no issue of the marriage (as indeed there was not) the Netherlands were to revert to Spanish control on the death of the sovereigns. A proxy marriage was to be celebrated, but it was put off until after the death of Philip.
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The king was now in the final stages of his illness. During 1597 the gout broke out in four sores on the middle finger of his right hand, and three on the index finger. There was a similar sore on the small toe of his right foot.85 In September ‘the gout attacked his neck and caused him some difficulty in eating. He had a high fever accompanied by great weakness, loss of appetite and loss of sleep.’86 At the end of June 1598 he insisted, against the doctors' advice, on being taken from Madrid to San Lorenzo. He was transported in a specially adapted form of the chair designed by Jean Lhermite.87 When extended, it became a litter. It took the attendants four days, with overnight stops, to carry the king to his destination. Lhermite, who accompanied the group, recorded that the heat was unbearable. ‘He arrived almost prostrate in his chair,’ a friar of the Escorial reported. ‘When asked how he felt he replied, with a show of cheerfulness, “Very well”.’88 He was in better condition than expected. Moura reported some days later that ‘His Majesty arrived quite well after the journey, and he was also well here to the extent that we had hopes of improvement. Afterwards he suffered relapses.’89 The effort of the journey brought on a severe fever, which became particularly serious after mid-July. At the end of June an abscess formed on his right thigh just above his knee, and further small abscesses continued to develop on his body. The ulcerous sores on the fingers of his right hand, and on his foot, continued to get worse. At the same time the swelling of his stomach and thighs contrasted with the rest of his body, which appeared to be reduced to skin and bones.90
The agony suffered by the king was so great that the doctors dared not move him. He had to lie on his back in bed. For the fifty-three final days91 of his illness he could not move from this position. The attendants could not change the bedsheets or the king's clothes. When the doctors opened his sores to control the pus in them, the smell that came out was overpowering. The king had to evacuate in his own bed, soiling his sheets, which could not be changed. The sick-room consequently had a ‘foul smell’. He had always been meticulous about cleanliness, reported his confessor, and his filthy bed was not the least of his terrible sufferings. The fever never left him. He suffered in addition an insatiable thirst, caused by the dropsy and the fever. The pain was unceasing.
Philip's fortitude was incredible. He put up, when he could, with the surgeon's knife, but could not stifle his groans of agony when they touched him. He drew his strength in these days entirely from religion. The bedroom was filled, wall to wall, with holy images and crucifixes.92 On 8 August he instructed his confessor fray Diego de Yepes and the prior of the Escorial to bring him a number of relics and sacred stoles. They presented themselves before the king, one with an arm of St Vincent Ferrer, the other with a knee of St Sebastian. The appropriate prayers were said, the king's affected leg was touched with the relics; and the clergy retired.93 Philip also made generous use of holy water, which was sprinkled regularly on his body. His last communion was on 8 September. Thereafter his doctors prohibited it, for fear that he would not be able to swallow the host. Since he could not hold a book, he also received the ministrations of readers to help him pass the time. In his last years the bookshelf in his small room was limited to about forty items, largely spiritual.94 The works of Teresa of Avila, of fray Luis de Granada and of the Fleming Louis Blois featured among them. The texts he chose to be read to him included passages from the Bible, and fray Luis de Granada. Among the helpers was the Infanta Isabel, who came frequently to read to him.
On 12 August Soranzo, the Venetian ambassador, wrote that ‘the fever is continuous and with violent paroxysms. His strength is failing. The doctors declare that they have little more hope.’ Two weeks later the king called in the prince and the Infanta. He gave the prince two sealed packets with instructions to open them after his death. Soranzo was among those deeply impressed by Philip's courage. ‘His Majesty has displayed incredible patience in his acute sufferings caused by the gout and the numerous sores all over him. His courage has never deserted him. He has made himself most familiar not only with the thought of death but with the details of all that should be done after he is gone.’95
The king told his clergy to give him extreme unction ‘while he is still conscious and can make the responses’. On 1 September the sacrament was administered. The king ‘asked for the cross which his father the emperor held when he was dying. He sent for the prince and told him to remain during the ceremony and contemplate this example of worldly misery.’96 The solemn ceremony, a final leave-taking, was also witnessed by the archbishop of Toledo, fray García de Loaysa, who officiated, and twenty-two other clergy, attendants and councillors of state. After the proceedings, Philip asked everybody to withdraw except his son. He then explained to the prince that he had wanted him to see ‘the end to which everything comes’.97 He also enjoined him to be a protector of religion and justice. On Friday, 11 September, the prince and Infanta went to take their leave of the
dying king. Philip expressed to Isabel his regret that he would not live to see her married, but asked her to govern the Netherlands well with the help of Albert.
Meticulous to the last, the king in his last weeks had planned everything down to the details of his own coffin. He arranged to die holding in one hand a candle dedicated to Our Lady of Montserrat, and in the other the small crucifix which his father had held in Yuste. He ordered a coffin to be made like that of his father, and stipulated that he be wrapped well in cloths and placed first in a case of lead, well sealed so that no odour could escape.
The night before he died his councillors and clergy were in attendance. At midnight they attempted to position him for the end, but he murmured ‘It's not yet time.’ At about three in the morning he said ‘Give it to me, it's time.’ His attendants supported the Montserrat candle in one of the king's hands, and the crucifix in the other. The archbishop of Toledo read from the Passion according to St John, and the prior of the Escorial, on bended knee, recited the prayers for the dying. Philip's last words were that he died in the Catholic faith and obedience to the Church of Rome. As the clergy prayed, he slowly slipped away. He died as the first rays of the sun came over the horizon, at five in the morning on Sunday, 13 September.98 In the chapel below, the choristers were singing the first mass of the day.
‘The king is dead,’ Soranzo wrote home. ‘His Majesty expired at the Escorial this morning at daybreak … Although change is usually popular, yet nobles and people, rich and poor, universally show great grief.’ ‘Those of us who were present there,’ a witness wrote later, ‘greeted his passing with floods of tears. And for many the weeping will not end until life itself ends.’99
‘He was a prince,’ the ambassador commented, ‘who fought with gold rather than with steel. Profoundly religious, he loved peace and quiet … He held his desires in absolute control and showed an immutable and unalterable temper … He hated vanity …’100 The state funeral was held the following day, Monday morning. The coffin, carried on the shoulders of the grandees and nobles of the late king's household, was borne in through the main entrance of the church of San Lorenzo. Mass was celebrated, followed by the funeral rites. The new king then accompanied the coffin to the vault of kings. Here Philip II was laid to rest in the place he had chosen, at the side of his wife Anna.
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Epilogue
No sooner was the king dead than the criticism and quarrelling began. ‘There was a great division among those who served him, and some began to show their true colours.’1 Philip had governed for over half a century. Much had changed in that period, and many Spaniards now wished to breathe a different air. There was public mourning, much of it undeniably genuine. Sermons delivered in pulpits throughout the country were full of praise.2 One of the late king's longest-serving ministers, then in Lisbon, could hardly believe the news, even though everybody had been expecting it for months. ‘The news arrived here on the nineteenth … It left me almost stunned, considering that I had served him abroad and at his side for fifty years.’3 But the praise was also accompanied by a sense of relief. A fortnight after the king's death Soranzo wrote:‘I myself have heard the Adelantado of Castile declare that they would see what the Spanish were worth, now that they have a free hand and are no longer subject to a single brain that thought it knew all that could be known, and treated everyone else as a blockhead’.4 The tension in the capital, where ministers waited for the inevitable changes in government, was palpable. Out in the provinces the impact was much less. ‘King Philip the Second has died in Madrid,’ a village priest in Catalonia noted in his journal. The only comment he saw fit to add was that ‘in the country there is good health and no talk of wars’.5
The king's long illness, economic problems, rising taxes, the failure of the grain harvest, lent substance to the feeling of popular dissatisfaction. A reign of triumphs, but also of disappointments, was ending in disillusion, the keynote of the following century. Madrid had its own particular problems. The plague epidemic which had affected the northern provinces reached the capital in the autumn of 1598. In 1599 the death rate soared. In this climate of misery, grievances were written down and circulated. In October 1598 a tract on the ‘confused government’ of the late king went round Madrid in different versions.6 It claimed to show ‘how blind and mistaken the late government was’. The author was arrested and imprisoned. Criticisms were also disseminated by the writer Baltasar Alamos de Barrientos. In a discourse of October 1598 he painted for the new king a dramatic (and exaggerated) picture of a Castile in ruins. ‘The cities and big towns are empty of people, the smaller villages completely depopulated, the fields with scarcely anyone to till them … There is no spot untouched by this misery, which comes principally from the burden of taxes and from spending all the proceeds on foreign wars.’7 All the burden of the monarchy had fallen on Castile alone. ‘In other monarchies the limbs contribute to maintain the head, and in ours it is the head that labours so that the limbs are fed and sustained.’8
Alamos was a lawyer and friend of Antonio Pérez. He was also a proponent of the vogue, then spreading through educated circles in Europe, for the ideas of Tacitus. Tacitean precepts implied for these men an injection of reason into politics.9 By extension, it implied a rejection of the aspects – war, fanaticism, tyranny – that seemed to have gained the upper hand in the late sixteenth century, not only in Spain but throughout the continent. There were still many diehards, particularly in the Church. But, like Alamos, others felt it was time for a new beginning. In the last years of Philip many writers had been developing more liberal ideas. Best known of them was the Jesuit historian Juan de Mariana, who expressed firmly his opposition to tyranny and racism. The strain, repeated everywhere in Madrid, was now in favour of economy, reform, and peace.
It had been a time of war; now the aspiration was only for peace. Spain had been humbled enough. ‘The name Spaniard,’ the writer Mateo Alemán noted in his 1599 novel Guzmán de Alfarache, ‘is now of almost no consequence.’ We Spaniards, a commentator of those years complained, ‘are detested and hated, and all because of the wars’.10 Peace with France had been the first step. Then in August 1604 the treaty of London brought about peace with the England of James I. The Netherlands was the last big stumbling-block, but it was not insuperable. A writer claimed that Philip II ‘sank over 300,000 millons in the bogs of Flanders, the schemes in France and the disasters in England’. ‘If 200,000 Spaniards, not to mention other nations, have been deliberately led like sheep to the slaughter to be killed in the bogs of Flanders’, then the late king was ‘worse than Nero’.11 The urge for peace was strong enough to influence Spanish negotiators eventually in April 1609 to accept a twelve-year truce with the Dutch.
It had been a time for defence of the Catholic faith. Now the trend was towards recognising the reality that faith could not be imposed. Members of the Cortes had already argued that the Netherlanders could not be forced into their religion. Spaniards who knew of events in France were impressed that king Henry IV should receive implicit papal support for his toleration of Huguenots. This, many felt, was a possible way forward. ‘Your Majesty is not compelled,’ the Constable of Castile said to Philip III in the council of State, ‘to force England and France to be Catholic if they do not want to.’ The problems of English Catholics, he said, ‘came from the protection of His late Majesty’.12 The new attitude was reflected in the truce agreed with the Dutch, which deliberately left the question of religion to one side.
It had been a time of absolute power in the hands of one man. Now the trend was to constitutionalism. All political power, some now argued, comes from God but through the people. It is the people who concede power to the king. The king has no absolute power. ‘The concept of absolute power,=’ argued the theorist Pedro Agustin Morla in 1599, only one year after Philip II's death, ‘is, more exactly, tyranny, and was invented by the flatterers of kings.’13 The king's power, others argued, was limited by tradition and by fundamental laws. �
��The king,’ stated Juan de Mariana in a famous treatise The King published in 1599, ‘must be subject to the laws drawn up by the state, whose authority is greater than that of the king.’ The ideas were not new. They were current in the later years of Philip II, who did not frown on them. But they gained force within the context of a reaction against the previous reign. In the Castilian Cortes, too, there were moves, foreshadowed in the final Cortes of Philip II, towards greater autonomy for the representatives of the realm. The democratic notion of a pact between monarch and kingdom was invoked by the deputy Melchor Dávila in 1599.
Some ministers, like some taxpayers, had long since lost faith in their own government. Spaniards were, as always in times of crisis, merciless in their self-criticism. Astonishingly, ministers who had little but reproach for the late king were second to none in their admiration for Elizabeth of England. In 1587 it was observed that at court ‘everyone is amazed to see how cleverly that woman manages in everything’. ‘The Spanish say that the king thinks and plans while the queen of England acts.’14 In Armada year, 1588, the pope himself had not disguised his admiration for Elizabeth. ‘She certainly is a great queen,’ he said, ‘and were she only a Catholic she would be most dear to us. Just look how well she governs. She is only a woman, mistress of half an island, yet she makes herself feared by all.’15 The year after the Armada a minister of Philip II, Juan de Silva, count of Portalegre, commented that ‘only England preserves its spirit and increases its reputation. I think that other princes should exchange advisers with the queen, because she alone assaults with impunity the most powerful crowns of the world.’16 The late king's ministers joined in the paean of praise. Silva wrote to his friend Cristobal de Moura: ‘these last twenty-two years that the queen of England has spent in the service of the world, will be the most outstanding known of in history’.17 Moura wrote back, heartily endorsing this opinion of the queen. In his residence Silva displayed prominently two highly prized portraits, of the queen and of Drake. These two persons, he told Moura, ‘have done more for our knowledge of the world than fray Luis de Granada’.18