Matters were still extremely strained between Philip and the pope, Paul IV., when, almost simultaneously with the king’s departure from Flanders, the pontiff died (August 15, 1559), and during most of the rule of his successor, Pius IV. (Angelo de Medici), Philip had a ready and pliant instrument in the chair of St. Peter.
The gradual slackening of the bonds which bound the Spanish Church to the papacy, and the laxity of the ecclesiastical control which was a consequence, had brought about scandalous corruption amongst the higher and cloistered clergy. The general tone of religion, indeed, at the time seems to have been one of extreme looseness and cynicism, accompanied by a slavish adherence to ritual and form. The terms in which the king and his ambassadors in their correspondence refer to the pontiffs and to the government of the Church in Rome, are often contemptuous in the last degree. They are always regarded as simple instruments for forwarding the interests of “God and your Majesty,” the invariable formula which well embodies Philip’s own conception of his place in the universe. Nothing is more curious than the free way in which religious matters were spoken of and discussed with impunity, so long as the speakers professed profound and abject submission to the Church, which in this case really meant the semi-political institution in Spain.
The Inquisition had from the first been jealously guarded from any real effective interference on the part of the pope, and by the time of Philip’s return to Spain had already begun to assume its subsequent character as a great political instrument in the hands of the monarch, working on ecclesiastical lines. So far as Philip’s personal experience extended, nearly all resistance to authority had begun with heresy, and, with his views as to the identity of his interests with those of the Almighty, it was evidently a duty to crush out ruthlessly any manifestation of a spirit which tended to his prejudice.
There had gone with Philip to England as one of his confessors a learned and eloquent friar named Bartolomé de Carranza, of the Order of Preachers. He had been active in his efforts to bring England into the Catholic fold, and had especially devoted himself to refuting the arguments upon which the reformers depended. By his zeal and ability he had gained the good-will of Philip, who had, after his return to Brussels, raised him to the archbishopric of Toledo and the primacy of Spain. He shortly afterwards left for his diocese, with instructions to visit the emperor at Yuste on his way thither. He found Charles dying, and administered the last consolations to him, whilst another monk, a spy of the Inquisition, knelt close by, storing up in his mind for future use against him the words of hope and comfort he whispered to the dying man. It was afterwards alleged that he had dared to say that we might hope for salvation and justification by faith alone. Previous to this (1558) he had published in Antwerp a work called Commentaries on the Christian Catechism, in the preface of which certain words of a somewhat imprudent tendency were employed. “He wished,” he said, “to resuscitate the antiquity of the primitive church because that was the most sound and pure”; and in the body of the book certain propositions were cautiously advanced, which, however, nothing but the keenest sophistry could twist into heresy.
Carranza was at Alcalá de Henares in August 1559, shortly before Philip left Flanders, when he was summoned by the Regent Juana to Valladolid. The archbishop had known for some time that the spies of the Inquisition were around him, and endeavoured diplomatically to delay his journey until the king should arrive; but Philip had deferred his departure for a fortnight, because a soothsayer had predicted heavy storms at sea, and before he could arrive the archbishop, who had then reached Torrelaguna, was taken from his bed at one o’clock in the morning and carried to the dungeons of the Inquisition at Valladolid. His arrest caused the greatest dismay throughout Spain. Contemporaries made no secret of their belief that he was not imprisoned for religion at all. His catechism was unanimously approved of by the pope, and by the Congregation of the Index in Rome. The Council of Trent solemnly and repeatedly protested against his arrest, and for many years it was a pitched battle between the Inquisition and the king on the one hand, and all the Catholic Church on the other. The documents in the case reached 25,000 folios of writing, some of the allegations against the archbishop being quite ludicrous in their triviality and looseness. In all probability the first cause of Carranza’s arrest was the jealousy of Valdes, Archbishop of Seville, the inquisitor-general. He was, like all the chief inquisitors, a Dominican, and during the many years he had been at the head of the Holy Office had become intolerably overbearing and ambitious. Carranza, on the other hand, was a much younger man (fifty-five), and had, after several years’ absence from Spain, been suddenly lifted from the position of a simple friar to that of Primate of Spain, the holder of the richest ecclesiastical benefice in the world. That Valdes should be jealous was only natural, and in the absence of any adequate reason for his imprisonment in Carranza’s writings, it is almost certain that the cause for his first detention must be sought in this direction. Feria, who, of course, knew him well, writing from Brussels at the date of his first arrest to Bishop Quadra in England, says: “Things are going so badly in Spain, and they are coming to such a pass, that we shall soon not know who are the heretics and who the Christians. I will not believe evil of the archbishop, or of his companion, or of the Archbishop of Granada, who has also been summoned by the Inquisitors. What drives me crazy is to see the lives led by the criminals (i.e. the accused) and those led by their judges, and to compare their respective intelligence.” The bishop’s (Quadra’s) reply to this is almost as bold; and a priest sitting at table in Ruy Gomez’s house is reported to have said without rebuke, speaking of Carranza, “We shall see by and by whether he is a heretic, but we already see that he is being persecuted by envy.” When Philip arrived in Spain the archbishop was in the dark dungeon, where he stayed for two years, and churchmen everywhere were murmuring at the fate of the primate. Then the matter assumed a very different complexion. It was now a question of the vindication of Philip’s favourite tribunal against the demands of Rome, and for many years Philip held out, making use of every procrastination and subterfuge of which he was a master, until Pius V. in 1566 threatened to excommunicate Philip unless Carranza were sent to Rome. Then after some further delay Philip thought wise to cede the point, and the archbishop left in April 1567. But his troubles were not at an end. After a weary delay in Rome, he was fully absolved and restored by the pope, and the decision sent to Spain for the king’s ratification. This was deferred until Pius V. died (1572), whereupon the new pope, Gregory XIII., commenced another interrogatory, which lasted three years. This ended in the absolution of the archbishop after a light penance, at the end of which, in a few days, Carranza died. Through all this the monarch seems to have had no personal feeling against the primate, but it was necessary at all costs to strengthen the Inquisition.
On the arrival of Philip in Spain in the autumn of 1559, his methods and character were well matured, and he began the regular routine of government which continued unbroken almost for the next forty years, endeavouring to rule his wide-spreading dominions from his desk, and trying to make puppets of all men for his own political ends. The government was divided into eleven departments, distributed between four secretaries of state. Letters and documents, after being deciphered, were sent to the king by the secretary of the department to which they belonged, often accompanied by a note explaining them or recommending a particular course. Every letter, to the most trivial detail, was read by Philip himself, who scrawled over the margins his acceptance or otherwise of the recommendations, or ordered them to be submitted to the inner council of state, Ruy Gomez, Alba, the confessor, and one or two other persons. The results of the conference were sent to the king in a memorandum from the secretary, and were once more considered. Every paper was therefore before the king several times. All letters or replies sent were submitted to him in draft, and frequently amended by him. At the same time his secretaries kept up a copious semi-private correspondence with all the Spanish ambassadors and governors, which was also perused by the king, and frequently contained matters of the highest importance in secret diplomacy, which it was unadvisable to send by the usual official channels. It will be seen that this cumbrous system, by which every individual point was brought before the king’s personal consideration, entailed an immensity of work, and made prompt action impossible, even if the king’s own character was capable of promptitude. Ruy Gomez, Duke of Pastrana and Prince of Eboli, was high-chamberlain and state councillor, the inseparable friend of the king, over whom his influence was great. He had taken care to place around the king secretaries of state attached to his party, the principal of whom were Eraso and the two Perezes successively—Gonzalo and Antonio. The Duke of Alba, unlike the other political advisers of the king, was a great noble, ambitious, harsh, and turbulent, but partaking of Philip’s own view of the sacredness of the power of the crown. We have seen that Philip in his youth had been warned by his father not to trust Alba, or any other great noble, with power in Spain, and he never did. But the duke was useful in council, because he always opposed Ruy Gomez, whose soft and peaceful methods he contemned. This exactly suited Philip, who invariably wished to hear both sides of every question, and followed his father’s advice to keep rivals and enemies near him, in order that he might hear the worst that was to be said of each, whilst he held the balance.
The king loved to surround himself with mystery, to be unseen by the crowd except on occasions of great ceremony; and as he got older he became in public graver and more reserved than ever. He had by this time probably persuaded himself that he really was a sacred being, specially selected as the direct representative of the Almighty, to whom Popes and Churches were merely tools. Certain it is that he considered it unfitting in him to exhibit any of the usual emotions of humanity. On his marble mask anger, surprise, or joy left no sign.
Philip landed in Spain on September 8, 1559, in great danger, the ship and all her rich freight sinking immediately after he left her. He had previously instructed the Regent Juana that heresy must be pursued without mercy in Spain, and she and young Carlos had sat through the horrors of a great auto de fé in Valladolid at the beginning of June, where some of the principal ladies of her own court were cruelly sacrificed. But this did not suffice for Philip. If he was to dominate the world from Spain, that country, at least, must be free from stain or suspicion. So the first great public ceremony he attended in the country that welcomed him was another stately auto at Valladolid. On Sunday, October 18, he sat on a splendid platform in the open space opposite the church of St. Martin. The judges of the Holy Office surrounded the throne, and the multitude, frantic with joy to see their beloved Philip again, and to enjoy a brilliant holiday, had flocked in for many miles around, attracted by the festival, and the forty days’ indulgence promised to them by the Church as a reward for their presence. Before the assembled multitude Philip solemnly swore to maintain the purity of the faith and to support the Holy Office. As the condemned criminals passed his platform, one of them, a gentleman of high birth, married to a descendant of the royal house of Castile, cried out to the king, “How is it that a gentleman like you can hand over another gentleman such as I am to these friars?” “If my son were as perverse as you are,” said Philip, “I myself would carry the faggots to burn him.” Twelve poor wretches were then handed over to the civil power for execution, with a canting request for mercy from the Inquisition, for the Holy Office itself never officially carried out the last sentence, and invariably begged hypocritically for mercy for the poor wracked bodies it had doomed to the fire.
It is probable that Philip’s object in thus celebrating his return to his country was intended to give additional prestige to the institution which he intended to use as a main instrument in keeping his country free from the dissensions, such as he saw spreading over the rest of the world. But it will be a mistake to conclude that his proceeding, or even the Inquisition itself, was unpopular with Spaniards. On the contrary, Philip seems in this, as in most other things, to have been a perfect embodiment of the feeling of his country at this time. The enormous majority of Spaniards exulted in the idea that their nation, and especially their monarch, had been selected to make common cause with the Almighty for the extirpation of His enemies.