Philip II of Spain: Champion of Catholicism | History Today - 0 views
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Philip II was a loyal son of the Catholic Church
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It was the 1590s before the Inquisition managed to extend its control over printed materials beyond Castile to the rest of Spain, and any resourceful person with a taste for suspect literature could obtain prohibited texts from Italy, France, and the Low Countries
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Its limited budget and resources (a mere 45 inquisitors were responsible for 8 million Spaniards) meant that it could not possibly carry out this broad range of duties
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the Spanish Church as a whole was unenthusiastic about the monarchy's reforming efforts, only gradually and reluctantly adopting Tridentine standards of education, behaviour and dress
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May festivals were banned, and plays, public meetings, business and games were prohibited inside churches, but the attempt to ban bullfighting on holy days was a miserable
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The government, fearing that the revolt might spread or that it might attract Turkish support, dispatched 20,000 Spanish troops, commanded by Philip's half-brother Don Juan, to restore order
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His long conflict against the Turks was motivated as much by a sense of Spain's strategic needs in the Mediterranean as by any desire to join the Pope on a religious crusade against the 'Infidel'
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After the victory at Lepanto in October 1571, at which 117 Ottoman ships were captured and dozens more sunk for the loss of only 20 Christian ships, Philip's propagandists trumpeted both Philip's faith and the blessings of God upon Spain
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But when Pius V sought to follow up the victory at Lepanto with a crusade against the Turks in the Eastern Mediterranean, Philip demurred, preferring 'to gain some benefit for my own subjects and states from this league and all its expenses rather than employ them in so risky an undertaking as a distant expedition in the Levant
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Yet while religion may not have been dominant in Philip's considerations during the 1570s, it appears to have become more influential towards the end of his reign
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In the 1580s and 1590s Philip allowed himself to be drawn into the French Civil Wars, intervening militarily between 1590 and 1598
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Overall, it seems that, as the reign progressed, Philip allowed religious considerations to loom ever larger in his shaping of foreign policy
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the Pope, as ruler of the Papal States, felt threatened by the power of Spain, which controlled the Italian states of Naples, Sicily, Sardinia and Milan
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The Papacy traditionally sought room for diplomatic manoeuvre by playing Spain off against the other great Catholic power, France, but the weakness of late sixteenth-century France made this impossible, and the Pope's consequent reliance upon Spanish arms against Ottoman and Protestant threats only made him more resentful.
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The Pope constantly hectored Philip to embark upon crusades against the Turks, against Elizabeth of England, against heresy in the Netherlands, but Philip, knowing full well the costs of such an aggressive policy, resisted until the 1580s. Thereafter Philip, at war with England, France and the Netherlands,
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After intervening in France in the 1590s, he was outraged to discover that the Pope recognised Henry IV as the rightful ruler of France and was working to obtain his conversion to Catholicism
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Philip is often portrayed as a 'champion of Catholicism' and the evidence of his religious policy at home and abroad largely bears out this judgement
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The fear of its introduction froze the … heretics of Italy, France and Germany into orthodoxy… It condemned not deeds but thoughts … it arrested on suspicion, tortured till confession, and then punished by fire
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They paint a more positive picture of a regime striving, certainly, to purify the nation, but also to educate and reform its morals and worship
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On the one hand, the power of the State and the Inquisition appears less all-pervasive than we once believed; and on the other, the Spanish people themselves appear as both the agents of the Inquisition and its principal 'victims'