Question 1
Evaluate the interpretations in both of the two passages and explain which you think is more
convincing as an explanation of Philip II’s religious policies.
Passage A
Philip II’s title of ‘Catholic King’ was hereditary. However, his faith was deeply felt, not conveniently affected, after a conversion experience at the end of the 1560s. Yet in his youth he had been quite differently portrayed as a prince of the pagan Renaissance. After his conversion he continued to quarrel with popes, protect heretics when it suited, ally with them at need, and cheerfully secularise church property. His personal spirituality, with its austerity, its Old Testament allusions, and its exercises in mental prayer, had in some ways more in common with the Reformation than with mainstream Catholic practice. His own choice of regular pious reading contained almost nothing that would have offended Luther, but was altogether in the tradition of late-medieval personal piety, mystical devotion and critical self-examination which helped to inspire the Protestant reformers.
At one level, the Spanish defiance of Protestantism seems embodied in the statues over the gate at the Escorial Palace that Philip built, yet they include Protestant heroes from the Old Testament like Josiah and Hezekiah, who humbled the high priests of Israel. Philip’s ecclesiastical policies too resembled those of other sixteenth-century kings. He demonstrated the belief that the State should have supremacy over the Church in ecclesiastical matters by policies such as claiming the right of church patronage for the Crown, enforcing secular jurisdiction on clerics, dissolving houses of religion, and imposing reforms at royal initiative.
Adapted from: Raymond Carr, Spain: A History, published in 2000.
Passage B
Philip saw no difference between his own interests and those of God. In 1573 he reassured an ailing minister, ‘I hope that God will give you good health and a long life, since they are engaged in God’s service and in mine, which is the same thing.’ Two decades later he still used the same rhetoric, calling on the Inquisition to continue doing ‘what is best for the service of God and myself, because one cannot separate one from the other’. Philip’s enthusiasm for punishing heresy constitutes the most famous reflection of his conviction that he knew exactly what God intended. Shortly after his return to Spain in 1559, he attended a great auto-da-fé* in Valladolid and during the ceremony drew his sword and swore that he would always uphold the authority of the Holy Office. And he did. He attended four more autos-da-fé, often accompanied by members of the royal family, and he regularly consulted the Inquisitors-General on a wide range of business.
Philip repeatedly urged other Catholic rulers to keep the faith, and when in 1562 Pope Pius IV agreed to reconvene the Council of Trent, Philip welcomed the decision enthusiastically. The king even claimed that ‘if the state of our affairs would allow, we would attend the council in person’, and although in the event he stayed in Spain, he ensured that as many prelates and theologians as possible from his own dominions attended.
*auto-da-fé – a Spanish religious festival featuring the condemnation of heretics
Adapted from: Geoffrey Parker, Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II, published in 2014.
[30]
Answer
