Heretic Queen (9 page)

Philip had inherited one of Europe's premier university cities in Louvain. Rising high above the River Dyle in Flanders, Louvain's four colleges that comprised its university were a magnet for all scholars who sought an academic life, regardless of nationality, so long as they espoused the Roman Catholic faith. By the 1530s, the general college, known as the Castle, attracted students for the study of medicine, canon law, civil law, and theology. The likes of the great mapmaker Mercator, Charles V's physician Vesalius, Mary Tudor's beloved teacher Juan de Vives, and the politician-turned-theologian Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle all studied there. By 1560, when Philip II of Spain had the brain wave to use Louvain to his own ends, the university had already celebrated its one hundredth anniversary.
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This “Belgian Athens,” as Louvain was sometimes called, was so sought after that only Paris could rival it in its voracious quest for top professors, and in the 1560s, English professors were the flavor of the moment for Louvain's putative benefactor, Philip of Spain. Through the good offices of Sir Francis Englefield, Louvain's ranks swelled with Catholic professors from Oxford and Cambridge, one of the most notable of whom was Oxford's professor of Hebrew, Thomas Harding.
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These English Catholic exiles, who nicknamed Louvain the “Catholics' Oxford,” would serve their new master Philip in many ways. Often they kept tabs on the thousands of young, troublesome intellectuals speaking every European language crammed into Louvain's city walls and reported their gossip back to their master. Sir Francis was particularly well qualified to carry out this task. After all, while Englefield was a privy councillor in Mary Tudor's reign, he learned from Nicholas Bacon's template
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how to improve universities and create an education system for the masses.
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Understandably, England's Catholic professors were more than happy to answer Englefield's call. His star recruit, Thomas Harding, had written
An Answer to Master Jewell's Challenge
in response to the bishop of London's Easter sermon at St. Paul's Cross that year. This was the first of dozens of religious tracts intended to stir the English masses and Europe's leaders into action against the slanderous activities of the new Anglican Church. In fact, many of Harding's words found their way into official correspondence between Philip II and his ambassadors throughout the 1560s. These stirring words had little impact inside England, however, for Cecil ensured that “no such book written in English by the Catholic party should be received and read in England under great threat of punishment.”
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Yet before his death in 1572, Harding would prove invaluable to the Catholic cause in helping a little-known priest, Father William Allen, establish the English College at Douai in the Low Countries.

Well aware of the development of these university seminaries, Elizabeth and her Privy Council saw that their best weapon of defense against the Catholic backlash would be a broad policy of educating both England's children and, more significantly, its adults. It would no longer suffice for average English people to rely on their local church as the primary source of knowledge about the world, as the vicars could not always be trusted to convey the dangers that faced them from Catholic Europe. Thus Bacon's original plan to teach the basics of reading and writing to the masses, proposed during Elizabeth's sister's reign, was once again considered.

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Naturally, Philip lamented
the censorship of fine Catholic sentiments in England while applauding the ban on the dissemination of heretical Protestant texts in his territories. His bitter enemy, the recently deceased pope, had had still other views on how to spread “the Word.” The pope had shown his mistrust of Philip's motives, recognizing the Spanish king's desire to dominate in nearly every sphere, just like his father. In fact, while Philip's father, Charles V, still ruled the Holy Roman Empire as well as Spain and her colonies, Cardinal Carafa—as the pope was then known—had been feared by even the most highly regarded of Catholic ministers. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, had fallen out with Carafa when the cardinal was the Inquisitor of Venice. “Every bone in my body trembles,” Loyola avowed, “at the news of Carafa's election [as pope].” Carafa was so fierce an opponent of any who stood in his way that it was widely rumored “sparks flew from beneath his feet as he walked.”
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It is little wonder that Philip vowed not to leave anything to chance on Carafa's death in August 1559. While pope, Paul had blocked Philip's reconvening the Council of Trent, abandoned since 1545, for fear that if such a council were geographically remote from Rome, papal authority would be usurped by secular voices—meaning Philip's. The pope's solution for the reunification of the church was to set up a reform commission of sixty bishops under direct papal authority. This would have the effect of isolating Philip from any decisions regarding the Catholic Church. Paul's sudden death therefore proved a godsend to the Spanish king. Under cover of the violent outbursts that erupted in Rome with the pontiff's demise, Philip began to weave his magic. Through bribery, blackmail, and coercion the Spanish ambassador let the conclave know that if it wanted cooperation with the breadbasket of Rome—meaning Philip's kingdom of Naples—as well as Spain's protection from the Ottoman Turk in the Mediterranean, there would be a significant price to pay. Only those cardinals whose names appeared on Philip's approved list could be put forward for election as pontiff.
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With little pretense of resistance, the conclave accepted the Spanish king's terms. It was into this brave new world that Gian Angelo de' Medici was elected and took the name Pius IV. In the absence of a papal nuncio to England and the exchange of an English ambassador to Rome, Elizabeth could only look on, hope for good intelligence, and pray for wisdom in keeping Philip as her friend, when in fact she suspected he was her most intransigent enemy.

Though Pius was acceptable to Philip, he was nonetheless something of a throwback to a bygone era. He would be one of the last popes to acknowledge paternity of his children and felt that what he lacked in common sense and diplomacy he could make up for in bluster. His Italian power base was due, in large part, to the fabulously wealthy Farnese family, but he longed to show his worth in the international arena. If it meant that he must toe the line—for a little while—and accede to Philip's wishes to become the favored candidate for the papacy, then so be it. After all, a pope who could be sympathetic to the Spanish king was a thing of considerable value, and Pius IV knew it.

Philip's own brand of messianic imperialism was just beginning to flower. Soon he would be known as “holier than the pope.” In a few years he would preach to the Holy Roman Emperor that “to believe that a passion as great as the one which surrounds the choice of religion … can be settled by gentleness and concessions, or by other means that avoid firmness and punishment, is to be greatly deceived.”
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The Catholic faith, and its sustained influence in the world, was at the heart of all that Philip held dear. Catholicism and conquest, or perhaps conquest for Roman Catholicism, became the main driver for his own forty-three-year rule.

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Notwithstanding this, the
Protestant Elizabeth represented a very useful counterfoil to French influence on the Continent and, of course, in Scotland. If Philip had to bend his short-term view of the English and Scottish Protestant threat to contain the imperialistic inclinations of France's king and queen, not to mention Mary's Guise uncles, then he would.
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While Philip's Spain only experienced six months without war in his long rule, he had resolved on a diplomatic solution to masterminding the changing, and at times unknown, forces in Europe at the end of 1559. After all, he was marrying the young and pliable Elisabeth of France, the fourteen-year-old daughter of Catherine de' Medici and sister of Francis II. By keeping on good terms with France
and
Elizabeth of England, he could at a stroke neutralize Mary Queen of Scots and France and placate his increasingly hostile Protestant subjects in the Low Countries.

That was a longer-term strategy, though. In the autumn of 1559, Philip needed to turn his attention to the papacy and the Italian peninsula. A “General Visitation” of his three Italian possessions was ordered, cataloging, mapping, and capturing on canvas all that he owned, while the cardinals continued to bicker over who would be the next pope able to satisfy the Spanish king's commands.

Feeling the force of Philip's power in neighboring Naples could only serve to remind the conclave that Spain had long held a unique position within the Roman Catholic world. When Charles V (Philip's father) had been king of Spain, his boyhood tutor had become Pope Adrian VI. In thanks for his advancement, purchased dearly by Charles, of course, Adrian had granted Spanish kings from 1523 the right to appoint all bishoprics within his realms.
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The arrangement had been reached on the understanding that it would avoid corruption within the church and eliminate half the bribery for offices. In a final grab for power from the church, Charles V had also agreed with the pope that the king of Spain could scrutinize any papal bull in advance of its publication in perpetuity, ostensibly to avoid the embarrassment to both parties should these documents contradict the laws and customs of Spain. This would become a crucial concession within the first twelve years of Elizabeth's rule.

Still, for all his unbridled inherited power, Philip respected the office of the papacy, after his own personal fashion. This was best manifested through his use of religious monies collected. The
subsido,
or subsidy, came from rents of church lands and buildings or any other form of income enjoyed by the Spanish clergy—all of whom had been appointed by the Spanish king, and not the pope.
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The
cruzada
was an agreed form of taxation on the church and its revenues conceded to Ferdinand and Isabella in the late fifteenth century in their crusade that drove the Moors—and the Jews—from Spain.
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Though seen as a “national” levy, it was the
cruzada
that effectively held the greatest sway Philip wielded with the papacy—as well as with his uncle Ferdinand, Holy Roman Emperor. While many Moors had been driven from Spain, and the Inquisition continued to ensure
la limpia de sangre,
or “the purity of blood,” of the Spanish people, the threat of the Ottoman Turk remained a clear and present danger in the Mediterranean and held the awesome menace of knocking on the gates of Vienna itself. It was the Ottoman threat that gave Philip his real leverage with Rome. A crusade against “infidels” slowly became an all-inclusive blunt instrument used by both the papacy and Spain for the next forty years against all breakaway sects of Christianity in addition to Jews, Moors, and Ottoman Turks. This naturally included the English church. Of all the Catholic heads of state, only Philip held the power to engage in this “crusade” militarily on a massive scale. So whatever opposition Rome, or for that matter any other country, voiced against Philip, the might of Spain remained in high demand by the Vatican.
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Nowhere is this uneasy
relationship as obvious as in the early days in the proposed reconvening of the Council of Trent for the reformation of the Roman Catholic Church. The newly elected Pius IV believed that any such council, if held outside of Rome, must reopen all issues on reformation in order to attract the breakaway Christian “sects” back to the Roman Catholic fold. Philip disagreed. For him, any new council must only be a continuation of the one adjourned in 1545, during which it had been decided to take a hard line with any country that did not recognize the supremacy of Rome and the Catholic faith. Pius IV, for all his good intentions to remain independent, would soon realize that despite being head of the Church of Rome, he would need to placate the Spanish king.

Their first crossing of swords occurred on May 4, 1560, over the choice and timing to send a papal representative to Queen Elizabeth. Pius, who had only been in the job for five months, decided in clear defiance of Philip's wishes to appoint a nuncio to invite the queen of England to a completely new Council of Trent. Outraged, the cardinal archbishop of Milan (who had hoped to be elected pope himself) wrote to the papal nuncio in Spain that

you must know that the Pope has resolved to send a nuncio to the Queen of England, to try to bring her back to the bosom of the Church and the obedience of the Holy See; for the garboils [tumult or confusion] in which the Queen at present finds herself afford him hope that the enterprise may be honored by success. For this purpose, his Holiness has selected Abbot Parpaglia, whom he has already furnished with money for the journey … His instructions are to travel through France, and do all … to procure from their Majesties all such assistance as he may deem most serviceable in the affair.
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Abbot Parpaglia did in fact travel through France to the Low Countries to advise Margaret of Parma, Philip's half sister and governess of the Spanish Netherlands, of his mission. When the pope called in Spain's ambassador, Francisco de Vargas, to make him aware as well, the obvious but undesirable result occurred. While Pius continued his diplomatic conciliatory efforts with Elizabeth, Vargas brewed his own brand of poison by letter to Philip. Within two weeks of the pope's initial decision to send Parpaglia to England, two papal newsletters declared “it is not yet decided who is to go to England in place of the Abbot … who some think, may after all be sent, as the Pope does not consider the objections of Vargas sufficient for his unfitness for the mission.”
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By June 29, such was the power of the Spanish king that all had been resolved to Philip's satisfaction. “As to Abbot Parpaglia, the Pope has taken his Majesty's observations in good part,” the missive begins, “and has forthwith sent word to the Abbot that, if he have [sic] not already crossed to England, he must await further orders; and if he have [sic] … he is to enter upon no negotiation without the participation, consent and approval of his Catholic Majesty's ambassador in that kingdom.”
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