Unlike Elizabeth, he projected a subtle and extremely powerful image of himself through his prolific patronage. Portraiture and architecture have ensured that Philip II remains enshrined as an extremely powerful and succesful monarch.

Philip's accession

The accession of Philip II. (4:11 min)

Philip II took power under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. The empire over which his father Charles V ruled was on the verge of collapse. His great enemy, Henry II of France, had organised an extraordinary coalition which started fighting against Charles V in 1552. Ranged alongside the French there was, on the one hand, the Pope and, on the other, the Ottoman Sultan. There were also a host of rebels from within the empire, as well as some of the Italian princes. Henry II co-ordinated the war and the rebellions in very skilful fashion. When Charles V found himself defeated by a group of German rebels in 1552, it led to his physical and mental collapse: he was unable to cope with the crisis that broke out over the empire and he didn't really start to recover until about 1554.

he had his sister, Mary of Hungary, as regent over the northern states, and his son, Philip, as regent over the Spanish and the Italian states, as well as the Americas. Both were incredibly competent and skilled politicians, and they helped the empire to survive. However, by 1555 Charles V knew he simply could not go on in power and if the Empire was to survive it needed one undisputable leader: that leader was Philip II. Charles divested himself little by little of his various territories, and Philip II took over in the middle of this major war, with a major financial crisis that led to what has been described as the first international bankruptcy of the modern world in 1557. He actually rescheduled his payments. He suspended payments to his creditors. Everything was in a dreadful mess and it was not at all clear that his empire was going to survive intact.

The marriage to Mary Tudor, which was arranged in 1553, was part of an early recovery package. It was an attempt to get allies on line to help them to control or threaten France. Philip managed to get enough resources out of his already quite devastated territories to mount two campaigns, and those campaigns show his military and financial might. Basically, he drew even with France, which was the superpower of the period. This was an extraordinary achievement and so in 1559 they made peace. Philip II was then able to embark on a financial and political recuperation from what had been a devastating start to his rule.

Kingship and image

Philip II's partronage and artistic vision. (8:27 min)

It is important to emphasise that what Philip considers to be his job or function was very traditional. He was a very traditional man in every way and if you put Philip and Elizabeth--or indeed any other combination of the European monarchs of the day--in a room and asked them to discuss their role, you would find that actually they saw it in a very similar fashion, because they drew on the same Christian and Classical traditions of monarchy. Philip's view of the king as the ultimate judge, as the protector of his people and church, was not different from that of any other ruler. He had a particularly difficult empire to rule, certainly, but that didn't affect the fundamental ideas of how he should govern and what he should do in order to become a good monarch.

The court of Philip II reflects the nature of his empire in many ways. It was truly international. He had members of the different parts of his Empire with him. Besides the fact that those surrounding him reflected the various nationalities and linguistic groups, the court itself was a mirror of his mixture of tastes, traditions and also of his extraordinary artistic patronage. Philip II was one of the most renowned patrons of the arts of this period. Indeed, he compares very well with monarchs across all periods. He was a great lover of music, of portraits above all, of books: one of the first things he starts collecting is books. He purchases books wherever there is a major book market and built up a terrific library (and people can still see part of that library in the Escorial). He collected manuscripts as well as printed material in all languages on a phenomenally wide range of subject matter. This included a lot of books forbidden by the Roman Catholic church as well, because he felt that it was important to have a research base where people could study things under controlled circumstances.

	Thinking Point
	Compare and contrast Philip II's and Elizabeth I's activities as patron and control over their own image. Who do you think adopted the more effective, coherent approach?

Philip had a great love of portraits, and those produced in his reign are mainly from an Italian and Flemish tradition. He had painters of both types and he kept very close control over the images that they were allowed to portray. Philip believed that power could be communicated in a very subtle fashion because it was innate in the person who held it. Much of the portraiture that we have related to Philip's court evolves from the tradition that is associated with Titian and Venetian portraiture. It is fairly simple, fairly subtle, very economical in its use of symbols, but it projects an enormously self-confident image of power. He also had portraits painted of himself in armour--very traditional for a monarch--but again he chose not to be shown astride a horse, which was the obvious and cruder option for a monarch. Instead, what we have is a simple image of himself looking at the viewer, with armour, to show his military leadership.

By kind courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Philip II was a voracious patron of the arts and maintained close control over the images that were produced of himself. He was concerned to project an extremely subtle yet forceful image of a monarch supremely at ease with his station in life. This portrait was painted around 1580, eight years before he sent the Armada to England, and shows him in a remarkable suit of gilt-etched steel armour. The fashioning of the armour and of his helmet, which is topped with a somewhat impractical series of plumes, suggests that it was designed for show and not for action. This image portrays Philip standing with his hand resting gently on a helmet probably used for war: a subtle indication that he had mastery over the implements and the arts of war. The artist is unknown. Much of the portraiture that we have related to Philip's court evolves from the tradition that is associated with Titian and Venetian portraiture. It is fairly simple, fairly subtle, very economical in its use of symbols, but it projects an enormously self-confident image of power.

As for the paintings that he surrounded himself with, he created galleries in his palaces. He loved Flemish primitives and Italian portraits. There was an enormous variety, visually and aesthetically around these palaces, built primarily in Flemish fashion because he loved Flemish architecture. Typically of Philip, at the beginning of his reign, he sent a couple of experts around all the great palaces of western Europe to look at them, to paint and portray them so that he could take the best elements and go one up on everyone else. So he was a great builder, but there is no doubt that it was the mixture of Netherlandish and Italian influences that dominated in those palaces.

Religion: the cornerstone of policy

The personal and political religion of Philip II. (9:54 min)

When you examine the role of religion in the early modern period for any monarchy or state it is helpful to look at it under three separate headings. First, it is important to examine the personal element, the personal religion of a ruler or a republican government. The second element relates to religion as an institution within the territories of that ruler, and the third element is religion as a factor within foreign politics. Of course, all of these will link and interact, but it is important to try and see it in these different contexts because separate rules do apply to each of these groups.

If we look at his personal religion, Philip was rather traditional in his beliefs and practices. He was profoundly pious, and drew tremendous spiritual comfort from his faith. There is no doubt that he was a deeply religious man. If you then look at religion as an institution and issue within those states that he governed, you start to see the enormous problems that he faced. It is traditional to think that Philip did not have problems with heresy, unlike every other monarch of his time. This is complete nonsense. Philip had some of the most serious problems in terms of his own states and in terms of religious dissent. Within Spain, it is true that there was relatively little by way of a Protestant threat, but it wasn't absent. Muslim dissent was a major problem in addition to the issue of the Jewish population and Judaism in Spain. There was still a very substantial minority of Hispano-Muslims, ostensibly converted at the beginning of the century but in fact many of them were not fully converted and some of them had managed to combine a mixture of Muslim and Catholic practices. So, he had a major problem to do with the education and full conversion and re-conversion of the Hispano-Muslim minority known as the Moriscos. There were still quite substantial remnants of Judaic practices and beliefs amongst various populations throughout the Iberian peninsula. The Jews had been expelled officially in 1492 but a substantial minority remained. Many of them had converted, some of them not fully and so presented a threat within the kingdom.

There was also the problem of the Americas, where the indigenous populations had a wide variety of religious beliefs. Some of these beliefs were very sophisticated and well developed, others, what we might call very primitive. The Catholic church attempted to destroy these and to educate people into a full Catholic belief. Then there was the Low Countries, which was a major hot spot of Catholic and Protestant war. The only area that was reasonably quiet was the Italian part of his patrimony, but even here problems existed, from small pockets of Jewish settlement to a degree of Protestant infiltration. In the North African possessions he just had to allow a degree of co-existence. In the outposts that the Spaniards had in North Africa there were Jewish populations living alongside Christian populations and Muslims as well.

absolutely believed that he was responsible for the souls of his people and for the well being of the church as an institution. He tried to impose Catholic orthodoxy throughout his realms irrespective of other beliefs. The policy was quite straightforward and he didn't want any kind of compromise for two reasons, one ideological, the other political. Christianity is monotheistic. It believes there is only one God, one church. It cannot in its very nature be tolerant of other churches, particularly those which also believe that there is one God and one way to worship, but that God is not the Christian one. This is a fundamental clash. Philip cannot accept that there are any other ways of worshipping the Christian God any more than he can accept that there is any god but the Christian God. There can be no paganism, there can be no other indigenous religion, there can be no Muslim, Jew or Protestant within his realm. If he doesn't do his best to eliminate these pockets of dissent within his realm, he will be held personally responsible at the end of his life when God judges him.

The political side of this is that he does not believe that there can be such a thing as a loyal subject who does not share your religious creed, an idea very widespread in this time. For him it was all one integrated pyramid, God at the top, the ruler below and below him the people. If you did not believe in the God at the top of the pyramid then how could you believe in the ruler who is below God? For Philip II, religious dissent is a form of political dissent. It is a challenge to him as a ruler, and he cannot tolerate that. So there were political as well as religious elements in his drive for orthodoxy within his kingdom. For the most part he was a great believer in education rather than in the violent suppression of heresy. However, he did not shrink from the use of all kinds of repressive measures if those measures were judged to be necessary.

Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA.

Letter from Philip II, 1592, on the content of books found on his ships.

During the sixteenth century the idea that foreign policy should run along parallel lines with religious ideology was strengthened. It had existed long before in the conflicts between Christians and Muslims or between Christians and Pagans. So the Christian tradition of rule of sovereignty already had at its core this concept of defending the faith against the infidel. With the outbreak of Protestant dissent from the 1520s onwards there was also a growing belief that Catholics should ally with Catholics, and Protestants with Protestants adding another layer of complexity to the political alignments. This was impossible to put into practice partly because Protestantism was a minority religion in some areas and Catholicism was a minority in others. In other words, there was scarcely an area of Europe which could boast of having solely one form of Christian ideology in that particular pocket.

l policy also ran along traditional lines that had been established by geo-strategic factors, and by dynastic alliances. This pressure to guide your foreign policy along ideological lines was present but it was not overpowering. What Philip expresses right from the beginning of his reign is that ultimately he is not responsible for the souls of people outside his realms. Of course he accepts a broad Christian responsibility to advance the Catholic faith but ultimately, as he told German princes in 1562, "I am not responsible before God for the souls of your people." Thus, he could distance himself to a degree from religious issues that were far from his lands. However, religious dissent close to his territories, such as the growth of Protestantism and the existence of an aggressive Islamic regime near his own territories, was a different matter. That bit of foreign policy came under the kinds of rules that he applied for internal policy. You cannot admit dissent. You can't accept the existence of a dissenting group near your borders. Proximity and opportunity are two elements that also affect how he responds to religious divisions or to different religious groups outside his own territories.

	Thinking Points
	What contradictions existed in Philip II's religious policy? Do you think he always placed religion at the top of his foreign policy agenda?

So it was an enormously complex picture and every government in early modern Europe had to balance a number of competing claims and competing pressures. And the answers that they came up with were pragmatic and not ideologically determined. For example, Philip II made peace with the Ottoman Sultan although both of them spent much of their lives impressing on the world that they were the leaders of their respective faiths. Both of them were forced by both internal and external circumstances to come to an agreement. Philip also had to be friendly with Protestant England because only through that friendship could he hope to contain France. He was also friendly with some of the other Protestant states because they were positioned strategically and he could not do without an alliance with them. Ideally he would have loved to have followed a foreign policy that was purely along Catholic lines, allied only with Catholics, fought the major enemies of the faith as he saw them: Protestantism and Islam. But he could not do this. His empire was scattered, it was under threat from many different directions and he had to be pragmatic.