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Philip II (21 May 1527 – 13 September 1598), also known as Philip the Prudent (Spanish: Felipe el Prudente), was King of Spain from 1556, King of Portugal from 1580, and King of Naples and Sicily from 1554 until his death in 1598.
- Cultural depictions of Philip II of Spain - Wikipedia
Philip II of Spain has inspired artistic and cultural works...
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Philip II of Spain (21 May 1527 – 13 September 1598) was,...
- Cultural depictions of Philip II of Spain - Wikipedia
- Overview
- Finance and imperial policy
- The Moriscos
- Portugal and Aragon
When Charles abdicated his various lands (1555–56), Philip II (1556–98) succeeded to all his father’s dominions except Germany. His empire in Europe, now without the imperial title, was still only a loose union of independent states recognizing the same head. Philip, a great traditionalist, was not the man to inspire his different subjects with a new unifying idea, though he improved the central administration of his empire by the creation of the Council of Italy (1558). But his own Castilian upbringing and preferences increased the tendency toward transforming the Holy Roman Empire into a Castilian empire. Six of the nine viceroys Philip appointed to govern Sicily were Spaniards, as were all those of Naples with the single exception of one, Antoine Cardinal Perrenot de Granvelle, and 10 out of 13 governors of Milan. In the Spanish viceroyalties of Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, and Navarre and in those of Mexico and Peru, none but Spaniards, preferably Castilians, were ever thought of at all, with the exception of one or two Italians. These were the key figures in Philip II’s empire, and they were backed by the commanders of the Spanish regiments. Fortresses were nearly always governed by Castilians. It was necessary to appoint natives to military commands only in the Low Countries (Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands).
When the viceroys and governors were appointed, they were given “secret” instructions—in short, ones not meant for purely propagandistic purposes. These instructions reflected the current commonplaces of Christian government that could be found in scores of “Mirrors of Princes” (handbooks of government popular at the time) published in the 16th century and that Philip had made his own. The governors were to represent the king—not the state or the Spanish empire—as if he were present in person; it was stressed that they were not appointed for their own benefit but for that of the community they were sent to govern; they were to watch so that the king’s subjects might sleep in peace and quiet and to dispense equal justice to rich and poor.
Many of the Castilian grandees who were appointed to these high offices undoubtedly strove to live up to these precepts. In practice, however, their success depended largely on the strength of the local opposition they met: there was, for example, a great deal of local opposition in Sicily, which had gained the reputation of being “fatal to its viceroys,” but very much less in Naples, about which at least one viceroy remarked that no one should wish to be viceroy there, because of the pain he would have to suffer when he had to leave that post at the end of his term. A great part of the viceroys’ difficulties, however, stemmed from the unreliability of the king himself. Philip was always anxious to maintain the dignity of their office, but he encouraged the local ministers and officials to report on their viceroys behind their backs, and he had no compunction about recalling a viceroy, governor, or minister when it suited him in this way to appease local opposition.
The king kept control over his viceroys and governors by weekly, sometimes daily, correspondence, carried by the excellent postal service that the house of Austria had organized in Europe. All important political decisions were thus taken in Madrid, and there the king relied almost entirely on Spaniards for advice. Only one non-Spaniard, Cardinal Granvelle of Franche-Comté, was ever summoned to Madrid to play a leading role in the king’s inner councils (1579–86). It was Granvelle who had earlier, as the king’s chief minister in the Netherlands, reminded his master of the international character of his empire. He advised a more international dispensation of royal patronage, as, for instance, the appointment of the Prince of Orange (William I the Silent) to the viceroyalty of Sicily so that Netherlanders and Italians would no longer think that the king regarded only the Spaniards as his “legitimate subjects.” But Philip had refused to listen, and the bitter Castilian hostility to Granvelle at court ended by making the cardinal’s ministry in Madrid less and less effective in the last two or three years before his death in 1586.
Philip II inherited from his predecessor an unfinished war with France and a debt of some 20 million ducats. While his ally England (to whose queen, Mary Tudor, Philip was married) lost Calais, Philip’s own armies won considerable victories, and he was able to conclude the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis with France (1559), which confirmed Spanish possessions and hegemony in Italy and which left the frontiers of the Netherlands intact. But the financial position had deteriorated irretrievably, and Philip’s governments, both in Madrid and in Brussels, had to declare a moratorium on their debts, or rather a forcible lowering of the very high rates of interest on government loans and a rescheduling of the repayments of short-term loans. It was the first of three such moratoriums in Philip II’s reign—the other two were declared in 1575 and 1596—and it set the tone for the remainder of Habsburg rule in Spain, marked by growing disparity between the monarchy’s imperial policies and the financial resources at its disposal to carry out these policies. For the rest of the 16th century this disparity was still largely masked by the fluctuating, but generally increasing, shipments of silver from the New World. These shipments inspired both the king and his German and Genoese creditors with the perennial hope of new treasure to pay off ever growing debts. But the armies and navies continued to swallow up more than the stream of American silver. Much of the money was already spent in the ports and coastal areas where the troops assembled and waited for embarkation to Italy or the Netherlands. Moreover, successive naval building programs provided further economic stimulus to the peripheral areas of the peninsula rather than the centre, Castile—which, however, had the highest rates of taxation. Thus, the financial burden of empire fell more and more on Castile, and it was these conditions that did much to determine the course of Spanish history for the next 100 years.
When Philip II returned to Spain in 1559, he still faced a naval war with the Turks, and in the following year his galleys suffered a humiliating and costly defeat at the island of Jarbah (off Tunisia’s east coast). In 1566 the steadily deepening crisis of the Netherlands came to a head when groups of radical Protestants ransacked Roman Catholic churches, desecrating hosts, smashing stained-glass windows, and breaking sacred images. In that year Sultan Süleyman I (the Magnificent) died, and for a time the Turkish danger faded into the background. Philip could therefore risk sending his commander Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel, 3er duque de Alba, with his best Spanish and Italian troops to the Netherlands (1567) to settle the problems of that dominion once and for all. Alba was to root out heresy, punish those responsible for the rebellion, and impose taxes sufficient to relieve Castile of the need to send any more financial help to the government in Brussels. It was the king’s most terrible miscalculation, for rebellion now became revolt and involved Spain in the Eighty Years’ War, 500 miles from its own borders (1568–1648). It was in the pursuit of this war that the Spanish empire in Europe eventually foundered.
The most immediate problem was that of the Moriscos of Granada. The attempt to Christianize and assimilate them had proceeded only very slowly. In the 1560s the ineptitude and the wrangling among the different public authorities in Andalusia brought government to a virtual standstill. The captain general of Granada, in charge of defense and interna...
The question of the complete unification of the Iberian Peninsula remained. In the case of Portugal, Philip’s opportunity came when his nephew, King Sebastian of Portugal, lost his life and a great Portuguese army in an ill-prepared Crusade at the Battle of the Three Kings in northern Morocco (1578). During the short reign of Sebastian’s old uncle, King Henry (1578–80), Philip carefully prepared his ground in Portugal by intrigue and bribery. Nevertheless, when Henry died, the opposition to Castile was still so strong in Portugal and the attitude of France and England so threatening that it was necessary for Philip to send Alba with an army to conquer Portugal in 1580. Although Philip respected the laws and privileges of his new subjects and left them to administer their own colonial empire, the union increased rather than diminished the old hostility between the Castilians and the Portuguese.
Philip II’s last action in the peninsula was against Aragon. It was precipitated by a court intrigue that led to the flight (1590) of the king’s secretary, Antonio Pérez, to Aragon. Since Pérez was unlikely to be convicted in the justicia’s court there, the king demanded his transfer to the court of the Inquisition. The populace of Zaragoza (some 160 miles west of Barcelona) rioted, freed Pérez, and killed the king’s special representative (1591). To the Aragonese this meant the defense of their liberties; to Philip it meant open rebellion. A Castilian army marched into Aragon (1591), and Philip made a number of constitutional changes. The justicia was from then on removable at royal pleasure; the viceroy could be a Castilian, and the principle of majority voting was substituted for that of unanimity in the Aragonese Cortes. These changes gave the crown the ultimate power of decision in Aragon but preserved the kingdom’s autonomy.
Philip II (21 May 1527 – 13 September 1598), also known as Philip the Prudent ( Spanish: Felipe el Prudente ), was King of Spain from 1556, King of Portugal from 1580, and King of Naples and Sicily from 1554 until his death in 1598.
2 de abr. de 2014 · King Philip II of Spain, also known as Philip the Prudent, ruled one of the world's largest empires. His reign as Spain's king began the Golden Age, a period of great cultural growth in...
15 de sept. de 2021 · Philip II, King of Spain (1527 - 1598) | National Gallery, London. 1527 - 1598. Born in 1527, Philip became King of Spain on the abdication of his father Charles V. He ruled over a unified Spain and all its dominions in the New World, as well as the Netherlands and Naples and Sicily.
