- Black Legend, what and why?
The Black Legend is defined as all the defamations, slanders or exaggerations of the bad, and minimization of the good that Spain has done. The term arises from the 20th century, with Julián Juderías, although the truth is that all countries have their own, from France, Germany, or Latin America. In addition, Quevedo, Valera, Cadalso, etc. had already acted against the Black Legend. The truth is that propaganda is a key asset, and the Black Legend served to criticize the countries of southern Europe, Catholicism, and argue their inability to live up to history. As we can see, it is something that borders on racism, which has influence today, since even academics have internalized it, and its postulates are often false. And King Felipe II is one of the usual targets of this Black Legend. I clarify that this article does not intend but to highlight the darkest points of King Felipe II, not to explain his entire life.
How does it start, and why this authentic propaganda leviathan? By William of Orange, a respected man in Europe, in the work Apology for him. In it he describes with very little truth how terrible the Spanish are, fanatics, greedy, and xenophobes. Philip II had been declared an adulterer, incestuous, and bigamist. Not only that, but he was accused of murdering the infant Don Carlos and his wife Isabel de Valois. So much so that he began to be called the Demon of the South. This king had lights and shadows, but not even Voltaire believed these things. But operas like Verdi’s, and different works have served to minimize his influence in Europe.
The thing was that with the letters of William of Orange the civilian population of the Netherlands was encouraged to rise up against that cursed imperialist nation. And the French Protestants would fight against the Catholics of their country as they were supported by Spain. Even the Pope was tremendously suspicious of him. And it is that what worried so many was Spanish expansionism, as this was the first Global Empire. Just as Europe never tolerated Louis XIV, Napoleon Bonaparte, or Queen Victoria of England, it would not tolerate Philip II either.
- He would not rule over heretics…neither he nor anyone else
Starting there, Felipe II was someone deeply convinced of his religious ideas. He went to daily mass, often made decisions together with theologians (as well as politicians and soldiers). He also used the Inquisition, like any Spanish monarch, as if he were a Gestapo. That is to say a secret police, to persecute the enemies of the State, see, the King. Of the Inquisition, although he alone would deserve an article, the reality is that his death figures are very low for the time. What horrified foreigners was that state support, that royal machinery that made it the dark armed wing of the Kingdom. In any case, let’s go with the supposed fanaticism of Felipe II.
Mary Tudor, Queen of England, wife of Philip II and nicknamed María la Sanguinaria (Bloody Mary)
Let’s see one of the most well-known phrases of the King in a letter to the Pope about his position before the Calvinist heretics. “And so you can certify to SS that rather than suffer the least bankruptcy in the world in terms of religion and the service of God, I will lose all my states and a hundred lives that I had, because I neither think nor want to be the lord of heretics… and if It is not possible to remedy everything as I wish, without coming to arms, I am determined to take it, and go myself in person to find myself in the execution of everything, without being hindered by danger or the ruin of all those countries. , nor that of all the others that I have left ”. In today’s eyes this seems like a true bigot, but we can never judge yesterday with today’s eyes.
In the first place we must understand something, and that is that ideas such as tolerance, secularism, were crazy values in the best of cases, worse in others. No one doubted that being tolerant was little less than being an accomplice and a traitor to your religious confession, and to your kingdom. And secularism was simply not even considered as a concept, except for a few rare exceptions.
Religion was essential within the State of the Modern Age. As Hobbes said, the Prince had to embody the Leviathan, an absolutely powerful state, and in order not to allow himself to be robbed of power, he had to be the head of the Church. See, if Felipe was the great defender of the Catholics, Catholic lands like Italy or Spain would be very unlikely to rebel. This was also asserted by Machiavelli, explaining that if the power of the Prince emanated from God, this should be a bridge between God and his subjects, a Pontifex. Until well into the seventeenth century this would be, according to Carl Schmitt’s Sociology of Conception, the main motivation of people, the ideology of the state. As strange as it may seem to us, we see that today in the 20th century it is the economic currents and the ideologies that provoke wars. Simply the international mobile has been replaced
However, this is an absolute case of exaggeration of the religious fervor of Felipe II. Yes, he certainly took into account the Catholic cult in his foreign policy, and was once more papist than the Pope. But not necessarily, and we have several samples of the making of it. In the case of England, when Elizabeth of Tudor came to power and converted to Anglicanism, she did not start the war against her. In fact even when she was supporting the rebels in the Netherlands, or paying corsairs to plunder her ships, she did not attack, she did not lift a finger.
And it is that he was waiting for Elizabeth to get rid of Mary of Stuart, Queen of Scots, who, no matter how sovereign Catholic she was, was Frenchified. A united Scotland and England together with a powerful France was something that Philip II could not have been less interested in. Only when in 1585 the excommunicated Isabel I had her head cut off, did the King of Spain react, openly initiating the War of the Armed Forces. War that we will comment on later because the truth of it is for the proper section of this article. And the real goal was the throne of England.
Another case where it is seen that the religion of Philip II did not necessarily have to condition his policy. The French Wars of Religion are armed conflicts in which France lost a large percentage of the population, and was isolated from international politics. The King helped Catherine de’ Medici, an exciting historical figure who was the Queen Mother of France, in her fight against the Huguenots. However, when the Duke of Guise died, a candidate for succession to the French throne by the Catholic party, Philip II revealed his true intentions. His troops entered France with amazing ease, since no one could prevail over the Spanish Tercios, and he proposed his daughter Isabella Clara Eugenia of Austria as the Catholic successor to the throne, against the Huguenot candidate Henry IV. After all, she was the daughter of Isabel de Valois, with which she had more than palpable dynastic rights.
But there Felipe II underestimated the French nobles, who would never accept a Spanish reigning, being puppets of the King of Spain. Thus, with Spanish Imperialism threatening, Henry IV saw his opportunity, “Paris is well worth a mass.” In other words, that he converted to Catholicism to achieve the throne, something that did not like the Protestant radicals, with which the Wars of Religion followed. And even less Felipe, whose plans had been thrown to the ground. But what is really revealing is that in addition to being a convinced Catholic, he was not some idiot blinded by religion, but someone who could be calculating and Machiavellian. And above all, it followed the vocation of the Spanish Empire to be Universal, without understanding that with the appearance of Lutheranism, Enlightenment, etc., that was impossible.
Seeing thus that religion was not the main thing that moved his politics, we have to take a look at his personal life. The truth is that Philip II had his lovers, his fears, his hatred and his envy… But we also see that he was someone tremendously tender with his family, interested in culture, who was disgusted when he saw a battlefield (“and this Is what my father likes?”, he asked when he saw the Battle of San Quentin). He surrounded himself with cultured men, and had the sensitivity and vision to finance the paintings of El Greco, Antonio Moro, El Escorial, and a court of intellectuals, such as Saint John of the Cross, Saint Teresa of Ávila, and a long etcetera. Reducing him to fanaticism is absurd.
And to finish qualifying the claims of his fanaticism, we must understand what Europe was like. Mary Tudor, who was her wife, every time she did not get pregnant with her husband’s visits, she took it up with the Anglicans, initiating religious persecution. In this way, she would earn God’s favor, her advisers told her. And Elizabeth I also persecuted the Catholics as many times as she could. In The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, Catherine de Medicis in France killed 10,000 Huguenots in one night, to what the Pope commented was one of the best days of her life. And if Felipe II did not lose the War of the Netherlands it was because the Catholics, fed up with the abuses of the Calvinists, grouped themselves in the League of Arras, pro-Spanish. What should have been a national war against Spanish fanaticism, Protestant fanaticism turned into a war of religion like any other.
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Thus, we see how normally those who accused him of it were not better, and often worse. The truth is that Felipe II was tremendously intransigent like any king of his time, including his father, although he has very good press. And we must not forget that Charles V was tolerant in Germany because his power there was more nominal than real, and that he was the first to give the order to exterminate those Lutheran-luminist cults of Valladolid and Seville. Said and done, the Inquisition finished with them.
- His bedroom: The infant Don Carlos, Isabel de Valois and the damage Verdi and Schiller did.
Infant Don Carlos
It is curious that we start with Verdi’s opera, whose argument was taken from the famous Don Carlos, a work that every lover of classical music should know. In history, Philip II married the gentile prince’s fiancée, Elizabeth of Valois. This noble heir wished to impose tolerance on Calvinism, and grant freedom to the Low Countries. In addition to this, he maintained relations with Queen Elizabeth, who was dissatisfied with her husband, the intransigent Felipe II. The fact is that they are discovered, and Felipe locks him up under the influence of the Inquisition that intends to kill him. They run for him, and before the duel begins, Carlos V emerges from his tomb and takes him away, sealing the entrance. Thus the curtain closes.
It is a romantic story where the oppressed Dutch people, speaking in code, are the Italian, and the Austrian is the one who oppresses them, the Spanish. The Opera is Verdi’s longest, has many versions, and is based on the plot of Schiller’s opera. The bad thing is that the historical truth is very little, and often defames historical figures and societies like the ones we are dealing with.
In the first place Carlos was not that kind of portrait of his homonymous grandfather in life….