Still another agency of the Counter Reformation consisted of the Inquisition. This was a system of church courts for the discovery and punishment of heretics. Such courts had been set up in the Middle Ages, for instance, to suppress the Albigensian heresy. After the Council of Trent they redoubled their activity, especially in Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain.
INFLUENCE OF THE INQUISITION
The Inquisition probably contributed to the disappearance of Protestantism in Italy. In the Netherlands, where it worked with great severity, it only aroused exasperation and hatred and helped to provoke a successful revolt of the Dutch people. The Spaniards, on the other hand, approved of the methods of the Inquisition and welcomed its extermination of Moors and Jews, as well as Protestant heretics. The Spanish Inquisition was not abolished till the nineteenth century.
236. SPAIN UNDER PHILIP II, 1556-1598 A.D.
ABDICATION OF CHARLES V, 1555-1556 A.D.
In 1555 A.D., the year of the Peace of Augsburg, [25] Charles V determined to abdicate his many crowns and seek the repose of a monastery. The plan was duly carried into effect. His brother Ferdinand I succeeded to the title of Holy Roman Emperor and the Austrian territories, while his son, Philip II, [26] received the Spanish possessions in Italy, the Netherlands, and America. There were now two branches of the Hapsburg family—one in Austria and one in Spain.
PHILIP II
The new king of Spain was a man of unflagging energy, strong will, and deep attachment to the Roman Church. As a ruler he had two great ideals: to make Spain the foremost state in the world and to secure the triumph of the Roman Catholic faith over Protestantism. His efforts to realize these ideals largely determined European history during the second half of the sixteenth century.
[Illustration: PHILIP II
After the portrait by Titian.]