File 54
>> In Protestant countries, the political authorities
were very important in implementing the ideas of Luther, Calvin,
and the rest. In fact, in some respects the Protestant movement
would have been much more limited were it not for the impact of
politicians and government leaders. Did political leaders also
have this much influence in Catholic countries, or could the
pope just dictate what was supposed to happen? What role did
politicians play in helping Catholicism remain such a prominent
place in Christianity?
>> Nick, it's absolutely the case the political leaders
were as important for the Catholic reformation as were political
leaders for the Protestant reformation. Church officials, even
Popes, could say everything they wanted to say about what should
be done. Unless the heads of Christian states, Catholic states,
embraced what was said by Popes and councils, no changes would
be effected.
You needed the leadership of a Christian state to
implement the kind of reforms that had been promulgated by Trent
and by the reform-minded papacy. In order to illustrate that
truth, I would like to talk about one such Catholic leader here
in the 16th Century, really the dominant political figure in
Europe in the course of the 16th Century, and that man is the
king of Spain. His name is Philip II.
Now, Philip was the son and heir of Charles V. But you
recall when Charles V gave up being king and so forth, he really
divided his empire into two halves. Half for his son, and
another part for his brother, his brother Ferdinand who became
emperor and ruler of the Hapsburg territories in Austria and
places around Austria and Germany.
Philip, on the other hand, the son, really received the
much wealthier and more prosperous part of Charles' domains. He
became not only king of Spain, but also ruler of other
territories in Europe like the Netherlands, a very prosperous
part of Europe there in the northern part of Europe at the mouth
of the Rhine River near the North Sea. Also, parts of Italy came
into Philip's hands. He also was the heir of the overseas
Spanish empire which was in the process of being built up over
the course of the 16th Century.
So that Philip had at his disposal resources from not
just Europe but from other parts of the world and was a very
wealthy and powerful individual. Of course, if you rule a lot of
territories, you also have a lot of responsibilities. So it
wasn't simply a matter of enjoying the monarchy. In fact, in
Philip's case, it was a matter of working very hard at that
monarchy, and that's one of the things that we want to note
about Philip, is that he had a strong character, was dedicated
to his job, worked very long hours as king, and ruler of this
kind of far-flung empire that he possessed.
We also want to note about Philip that he was a very
dedicated Catholic, very much dedicated to the Catholic religion
as a result of which he was a strong opponent of Protestantism.
This meant that in his own territories like Spain, he was a
strong supporter of Catholic authorities, and working to snuff
out heresy wherever it might appear, and Spain became a strong
Catholic country, probably the strongest Catholic country of the
period, the backbone of the counter-reformation. It also meant
that Philip was willing to use his resources to suppress and to
fight Protestantism in other places. So, for example, Philip
backed the Catholic side in the wars of religion in France
during the second half of the 16th Century. This, he thought,
was a part of his obligation as a Christian prince or a
Christian ruler. The true religion, the true church needed to be
defended, and advanced, and he, as a Christian ruler, was in a
position to do that.
Now, one of the places within his empire that political
and religious questions really came to the fore in combination
and that resulted in conflict was in the Netherlands. Now, the
Netherlands historically consisted of 17 different little
territories. We talk about the 17 provinces of the Netherlands.
By the late middle-ages, they had come to be ruled all by the
same feudal nobleman, someone, for want of a better term, we can
call the Duke of Burgundy. And then the Dukes of Burgundy had
married into the House of Hapsburg. And by the time we get to
Charles V, the Netherlands territories are all ruled by the
Hapsburgs, that is the Emperor Charles V, and then they pass
along to Philip II.
But they have their own histories, their own traditions,
and their own laws. And one of the things that they very quickly
came to resent about their king, Philip, was that he seemed to
be more interested in the Spanish part of his domain than he was
in the Netherlands part. He appointed, for example, Spaniards as
high officials within the Netherlands. And then he sought to
implement policies, both tax policies and church policies, that
seemed to contradict kind of the traditions and the rights and
privileges of the peoples, and especially the leaders in the
Netherlands. So fairly early in his reign, he began to have some
problems in the Netherlands.
Now, Philip, himself, was not personally present. He
didn't visit the Netherlands after 1559, so he had to put into
place others who kind of would rule and exercise authority in
his name. And early in his reign, the regent was from the
Netherlands, Margaret Parma, and she was concerned about the
measure of disobedience that she was seeing. As a result, one of
her advisors is said to have said, "Madam, don't concern
yourself with these beggars."
Well, when word of this came to the opponents, they
adapted the name "beggar" as a sign of their rebellion. So
beggars came to be known as the name for the rebels against
Philip in the Netherlands. Now, as I indicated, this had a
strong political component, and all during the reign of Philip
II, those in the Netherlands who resisted his policies, resisted
his rule could be doing it for simply political reasons. That
is, it was a battle for their liberties, their old liberties
that they had enjoyed prior to the reign of Philip II, and that
meant that Catholics as well as Protestants could be a part of
that rebellion.
But it was also true that there was a strong religious
component, and in the Netherlands, in the second half of the
16th Century, Protestantism was growing stronger and stronger,
especially in its reformed variety.
So here, as we have seen elsewhere, France, Scotland
particularly, reformed Protestantism participated in a rebellion
against monarchs, against political authorities. It was probably
1556 that the religious element started to come to the fore, and
in the summer of 1556, Protestants basically -- Protestants
basically went on the rampage against Catholic practice and
Catholic piety in something that we call iconoclastic riots in
which statues are destroyed, stained glass was destroyed,
consecrated hosts were destroyed. The material things that were
an essential part of Catholic worship became the object of
hatred and destruction by Protestants throughout the
Netherlands, but especially here.
When word of this came back to Philip, he decided to
take a strong measure, and he sent as governor of the
Netherlands one of his strong advisors, a good military man, the
Duke of Alva, and he brought with him a Spanish army. And they
sought to impose obedience to the Catholic church and the king
of Spain by means of force.
To that end, the ruler set up a special judicial
commission that Protestants nicknamed the Council of Blood
because it went after many people. In fact, thousands of people
were put to death by this council as rebels against the king.
Well, obviously, this is going to have some effect, but
it proved impossible actually to suppress the rebellion
entirely. For one thing, a leader emerged who continued to kind
of rally the people behind the rebellion. This was a nobleman
from the Netherlands. His name was William, and his family was
Orange, so it's William of Orange, and eventually, the House of
Orange would produce the kings of the Netherlands, but that's a
long time in the future. But really here we have kind of its
origin as a special dynasty among the people of the Netherlands.
So William of Orange emerged as their great leader. Sometimes he
is called in history William the Silent, and that's apparently
because for some period of time he was silent about his
religion, and wisely so because he wanted as broad a base of
support for the rebellion as he could obtain.
The other thing that's noteworthy about the rebellion
and why it was not fully suppressed was the fact that the Dutch,
particularly on the coast, were good seamen, and they could
function as pirates, or navy, whichever term you prefer, against
the Spanish and the Spanish shipping. They were known as the sea
beggars, and they proved a continuing thorn in the side of
Philip as he tried to suppress the rebellion.
It's also true that the English were willing to provide
some aid and some help the rebellion. It's also true that there
were even some efforts from the French in that same direction.
Well, for a variety of factors, then, Philip was unable to
suppress the course of the rebellion. As a matter of fact, at
one point looked as if he was going to lose the entire province.
But at length he found a man, the Duke of Parma, actually,
another member of the Farnese family who was not only a good
military man, but also a skilled diplomat. And in the 1580s the
Duke of Parma actually defeated some of the rebellious forces,
especially in the southern part of the Netherlands. The city of
Antwerp was taken by the forces of Philip, and those southern
provinces were basically kept under Spanish rule.
It proved impossible, however, for Parma to gather much
success in the northern part of the Netherlands, the northern
seven provinces. This is where the Dutch people lived. And it
was in this period that the Dutch began to implement their
abilities on the seas, actually developing a commercial and
trading empire by the course of the 17th Century upon which they
would ultimately become one of the wealthiest parts of Europe,
and Amsterdam would become one of the largest, most important
cities in Europe.
Well, they were able to use their resources not only on
the seas, but also to actually hire soldiers to continue
fighting against the forces of Philip II. The English, as I
mentioned before, were also supportive of the rebellion. You
will recall when we talked about Elizabeth, one of the things
that Philip tried to do in the 1580s was to knock the English
out of the war by sending the Spanish Armada, and eventually
what he wanted to do was to send his fleet through the English
Channel, they would pick up the army of Parma, take it over to
England, defeat the English and so to knock the English out of
the war.
As we discussed previously, that didn't happen. The
Spanish Armada was defeated, and that meant that the war would
continue in the Netherlands the way that it had before, and,
therefore, the forces of Spain never could defeat those northern
seven provinces.
When Philip died in 1598, the rebellion was still
ongoing. It was only under his son, Philip III, that a truce was
finally agreed to in 1609. By that time it was becoming pretty
clear that the Netherlands were going to be in two sections, and
in point of fact, Spanish rule persisted in the south for more
than a century, and that southern part of the Netherlands would
eventually, in the 19th Century, become the country of Belgium.
It would remain Catholic.
As far as the north was concerned, however, the north
would eventually win its independence. The north's war for
independence would continue after the truce and become part of
the Thirty Years’ War, but finally in 1648 the independence of
the north was recognized. We call them the United Provinces, or
the Dutch Republic, and although there were a lot of different
religions represented among the Dutch people, it was the
reformed faith that actually became the state religion.
So the revolt of the Netherlands was a failure from the
standpoint of Philip. He was unable to keep the Netherlands in
his domain. He was unable to keep the northern Netherlands as a
part of the Catholic church.
Now, in many respects, Philip's foreign adventures were
failures. His side did not win in France. He wasn't able to
defeat the English. The Dutch earned their independence. So in
many respects his foreign policy was a failure. But there was
one place in which it was a powerful success, and that was in
the Mediterranean because still another problem that Philip had
to address was the problem of Turkish advances from the east
into the western part of the Mediterranean. The Turks were a
strong power, and they had advanced up the Danube River, taking
off chunks of land like Hungary, and placing that under Turkish
rule, but they also advanced in the Mediterranean.
Well, it was in 1571 that the combined forces of Spain
and Venice and the papacy, and even the empire, those forces
under the leadership of Philip's brother, Don Juan, actually
defeated the naval forces of the Turks in the Battle of Lepanto
just off the coast of Greece, in one of the decisive battles
between the church and western Christendom. So that was an
important foreign policy success during the reign of Philip II,
and it was, of course, important religious overtones in the fact
that the Muslims therefore would basically be kept in the
eastern part of the Mediterranean instead of expanding even
further west.
In short then, Philip II's reign is characterized by a
great deal of conflict. Much of it based in reformation and
religious issues, Philip II using the resources of the monarchy
to advance and to defend the interest of the Catholic church. He
is really a great example of what we mean by the dependence of
even the Catholic church upon the rulers of Christendom.