Spain

D4

b

European Power

Spain’s expansion in Europe began even before the new wealth from the Americas became available. Ferdinand’s brilliant use of diplomacy and military power were central to Spain’s transformation into a world power. Spain’s main opponent in Europe was France, both along the frontiers that separated the two states and also in Italy, where Aragón’s traditional interests were threatened by French efforts to dominate the peninsula. Under Ferdinand, Spain succeeded in winning control of southern Italy, all Navarre south of the Pyrenees, and farther north, the regions of Cerdagne and Roussillon.

Ferdinand arranged strategic alliances with other royal houses hostile to France. He married one daughter, Catherine of Aragón, to the heir to the English throne, Henry VIII. He married another daughter, Joanna the Mad, to a member of the Habsburg royal family, Philip of Burgundy (later King Philip I of Castile).

Isabella’s death in 1504 greatly complicated the process of Spanish expansion as Castile’s crown passed to Joanna, who was mentally deranged. Ferdinand and Philip agreed that Joanna was incapable of ruling. Ferdinand served as regent until Philip and Joanna returned from Flanders, at which time Philip became king consort and regent. An alliance between Philip and powerful Castilian nobles forced Ferdinand to withdraw from Castile. In 1506, shortly after taking power, Philip died suddenly. A special council recalled Ferdinand to Castile, although he was denied the full powers of regency, including control over foreign affairs. Despite a contentious aristocracy, Ferdinand eventually regained full control over Castile. Upon his death in 1516, Ferdinand was succeeded by his grandson, Charles, son of Joanna and Philip. As legal heir to both Castile and Aragón, Charles became the first king of a united Spain.

D

5

Charles V

With Ferdinand’s death, Charles inherited a vast amount of territory. In addition to Spain—which he ruled as Charles I—and its possessions in Italy and the Americas, he inherited the Low Countries (what are now Belgium, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg) through his father. The accession of Charles to the throne also made Spain the largest and most important domain of the Habsburg family, which ruled the Holy Roman Empire. Habsburg kings would rule Spain for nearly 200 years, until 1700. When his paternal grandfather, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, died in 1519, Charles inherited Habsburg lands in what are now Germany and Austria. Later that year Charles was elected Holy Roman emperor as Charles V, making him the nominal ruler of Germany. Charles emerged as the most powerful monarch in Europe.

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Charles was just 16 years old when he became king of Castile and Aragón. Reared in Flanders, Charles could not speak Spanish, and he tried to rule Spain through foreign advisers. Charles quickly provoked resentment among the Castilian nobility and towns by granting offices to his followers and demanding new taxes. In 1519 this resentment exploded into the comunero revolt, which began in Toledo and quickly spread to other towns. The revolt was suppressed in 1521 with help from the nobility. To alleviate the concerns of his Spanish subjects, Charles agreed to give court positions to Castilians and he negotiated a system of tax payments that satisfied the towns. These compromises proved durable, and Spain’s interior remained peaceful for much of the next two centuries.

After a difficult start, Charles became a popular monarch. Spain’s imperial accomplishments in Europe and the Americas were a source of great pride. In addition, Castile grew increasingly prosperous under Charles’s rule, benefiting from American mineral wealth as well as remarkable growth in population, agricultural output, and manufacturing.

Charles brought Spain into many wars to defend his vast collection of territories. During his reign, Spanish soldiers and wealth were used to fight the Protestant Reformation sweeping northern Europe, the Ottoman Empire in the western Mediterranean, and the French in Italy and the Rhineland. The wars against France eventually made Spain a dominant power in northern as well as southern Italy. However, Charles failed to halt the advance of the Ottomans. Also of significance, he was unable to prevent the establishment of Protestantism in Germany. Under the terms of the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, German princes seeking autonomy won the right to choose between Lutheranism and Catholicism for their subjects.

The political difficulties that the Reformation created for Charles in much of Europe did not develop in Spain. The Spanish Catholic Church was one of the least corrupt in Europe. Church reforms implemented by the Spanish Inquisition had removed many of the abuses that infuriated Martin Luther and other European religious reformers. As a result, Protestantism had far less appeal in Spain than in much of Europe. Charles successfully promoted additional reforms and prodded the papacy into summoning the Council of Trent, which clarified Catholic beliefs and reformed the education of priests. At about the same time a former Spanish soldier, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founded the Jesuits, a Catholic religious order. The Jesuits set about making converts to Catholicism in Spain’s European possessions and in the Americas.

In 1556 Charles divided his empire, which had proven so difficult to defend. He relinquished the greater part of his realms, including the Spanish throne, to his son, Philip II. He also resigned as Holy Roman emperor in favor of his brother, Ferdinand I, who inherited the Habsburg lands in central Europe.

D

6

Philip II

Spain reached the peak of its power during the rule of Philip II. Philip’s reign began with a financial crisis and royal bankruptcy as the new king consolidated the divided empire left by his father. Domestically, Spain was stable, and unprecedented amounts of American silver poured into Castile. Spain’s Golden Age of art and culture began under Philip, and it would continue for a century. In foreign affairs Spain enjoyed some successes. The Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559 ended the exhausting wars with France, and for the next four decades France was too divided by civil wars and religious turmoil to challenge Spanish interests. However, Spain soon had to confront a major rebellion in the Low Countries as well as the renewed expansion of the Ottoman Empire in Mediterranean lands. Deeply religious, Philip was committed to the eventual triumph of Roman Catholic rule in Europe. However, much of Philip’s long reign was marked by failures that weakened the Spanish empire. At his death in 1598 Philip left a nation with a declining economy and a powerful, but precarious, international position.

D6

a

Spain’s Golden Age

Spain’s intellectual life flourished throughout much of the 16th and 17th centuries. Generous patronage by the crown, church, and aristocracy stimulated creative work, and Spain earned world renown as a center of learning, literature, and art. Several of Europe’s leading universities were in Spain. The University of Salamanca in central Spain was at the forefront in the new fields of economic and political theory. The University of Alcala, founded by Isabella I, became a center of Renaissance scholarship on the Bible. Experts in Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and other languages created the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, which compared the best versions of the Bible in several languages.

Literature produced the incomparable Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. His novel, Don Quixote (Part I, 1605; Part II, 1615), a satire of the outmoded values of the Spanish elite, is considered one of the great books of Western literature. In drama the plays of Lope de Vega and Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Henao were enormously popular and influenced many European dramatists.

The era of Philip II witnessed perhaps the greatest painters identified with Spain. El Greco, an immigrant from Crete, produced paintings that emphasized religious themes. The emotional intensity of El Greco’s work gave inspiration to the expressionist painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (see Expressionism). The Spanish baroque artist Diego Velázquez, who served as court painter for Philip IV, produced a spectacular series of paintings. Velázquez was part of a remarkable school of Spanish painting that also included Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Francisco de Zurbarán, and Claudio Coello. After 1665, patronage of art lost its direction and for a time Spain produced few works with broader appeal.

D6

b

International and Domestic Affairs

International affairs dominated Philip’s reign, and his successes were notable. In the Battle of Lepanto (1571) Philip led the Holy League, an alliance of Spain, Venice, Genoa, and the Papal States, to a decisive naval victory over the Ottoman Empire. The battle was the first major victory of Christian forces against the Ottoman Empire. Ten years later Philip made himself king of Portugal, after overcoming rival claimants to the throne. Because Portugal controlled territories in Asia, Africa, and Brazil, its union with Spain put the Iberian Peninsula at the center of the largest and most far-flung empire in the world.

Despite these successes, Philip’s troubles gradually accumulated. Zealously religious, Philip was dedicated to defending his Catholic empire against the advance of the Protestant Reformation. Philip’s efforts to prevent the spread of Protestantism in the Low Countries proved disastrous. His use of the Inquisition to persecute Protestants in The Netherlands led to open revolt there in 1567. This conflict continued for more than a half-century, draining Spanish resources. It also led to war with England. Under Queen Elizabeth I, England was a Protestant power. England’s foreign policy included unofficial support for the Dutch rebels and for English mariners who raided Spain’s colonies and treasure fleets in the Americas. In 1588 Philip sent a huge naval fleet, the Spanish Armada, to conquer England and reconvert it to Catholicism. However, the armada was defeated in the English Channel, and many remaining ships were wrecked in a storm off the Hebrides. The destruction of the armada reduced Spain’s ability to wage war abroad. Despite this defeat, Spain was able to send another large fleet to Ireland in 1596 in an ill-fated attempt to capture that country. The war between Spain and England continued until 1604.

As Spain struggled with costly military operations abroad, the nation’s domestic situation deteriorated. American treasure alone could not support Spain’s wars. Philip was forced into bankruptcy three times. Crippling taxation caused extreme poverty and brought Spaniards to the point of revolt. Adding to the hardships, a series of epidemics swept Spain in the 1590s, greatly reducing the population. At the same time, Philip strengthened the Spanish Inquisition to crush any threat of Protestantism being imported. Intellectual life, in the midst of a great flowering, became narrower and less open to new currents of thought.

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