Philip the Tetrarch

“ It is difficult to give credit to a story so monstrous, repeated though it has been by successive writers without the least distrust of its correctness. Not that anything can be too monstrous to be believed of the Inquisition. But it is not easy to believe that a sagacious prince like Philip the Second, however willing he might be to shelter himself under the mantle of the Holy Office, could have lent himself to an act as impolitic as it was absurd ”

“ Soon after the prince's death, Philip retired to the monastery of St. Jerome, in whose cloistered recesses he remained some time longer secreted from the eyes of his subjects. "He feels his loss like a father," writes the papal nuncio, "but he bears it with the patience of a Christian." [1537] He caused despatches to be sent to foreign courts, to acquaint them with his late{490} bereavement. In his letter to the duke of Alva, he indulges in a fuller expression of his personal feelings. ”

“ ASCENDANCY OF THE NOBLES.
In a letter to his sister, the regent, written some two years after this period, Philip says: "I have never had any other object in view than the good of my subjects. In all that I have done, I have but trod in the footsteps of my father, under whom the people of the Netherlands must admit they lived contented and happy. As to the Inquisition, whatever people may say of it, I have never attempted anything new. With regard to the edicts, I have been always resolved to live and die in the Catholic faith. ”

“ Whenever princes, nobles, or knights set out for the holy war, they made their wills, as if they were certain never to return to Europe. When Philip came back to his capital, he declared his last will, and regulated, for the period of his absence, the administration of his kingdom, which he confided to Queen Adela, his mother, and his uncle, the Cardinal de Champagne. After having fulfilled the duties of a king, he laid down the sceptre, to take, at St. Denis, the staff and scrip of a pilgrim, and went to Vézelay, where he was to have another interview with Richard. ”

“ The only claimant whom Philip had now to dread was Antonio, prior of Crato.63 He was the illegitimate son, by a converted Jewess, of Lewis, Duke of Beja, the great-uncle of Sebastian, but he had been secretly legitimised by his father, had entered the order of St. John of Malta, and was prior of the rich commandery of Crato. If his legitimacy could be established, no doubt he was the next male heir. Philip, however, refused to allow his claim,Philip claims the crown, and sends an army under the Duke of Alva. ”

“ Thus, before ascending the throne of Spain, he had vindicated his claim to the title of Catholic, so much prized by the Spanish monarchs. He had won a triumph greater than that which his father had been able to win after years of war, over the Protestants of Germany; greater than any which had been won by the arms of Cortés or Pizarro in the New World. Their contest had been with the barbarian; the field of Philip's labors was one of the most potent and civilized countries of Europe. ”

“ Though no other man should hold out in the Alpujarras, I would rather live and die a Mussulman than possess all the favours which King Philip can heap on me. At no time, and in no manner, will I ever consent to place myself in his power. ”

“ But the whole matter rests on the inclinations of Philip; for if he be faithful to our government, he will afford us a passage, and provisions and all things which support and aid an army on a long march. But if he should fail in this, you will find no safety in any part of Thrace. In my opinion, therefore, the king’s disposition ought in the first place to be discovered. He will be best tested if the person who shall be sent will come suddenly upon him, doing nothing by a preconcerted plan. ”

“ It is doubtless true, that procrastination and distrust were the besetting sins of Philip, and were followed by their natural consequences. He had, moreover, as we have seen, a sluggishness of nature, which kept him in Madrid when he should have been in Brussels,—where his father, in similar circumstances, would long since have been, seeing with his own eyes what Philip saw only with the eyes of others. But still his policy, in the present instance, may be referred quite as much to deliberate calculation as to his natural temper. ”

“ However willing Philip may have been that his concern for the interests of religion might be seen of men, it is no less true that, as far as he understood these interests, his concern was perfectly sincere. The actual state of England may have even operated as an inducement with him to overcome his scruples as to the connection with Mary. "Better not reign at all," he often remarked, "than reign over heretics." But what triumph more glorious than that of converting these heretics, and bringing them back again into the bosom of the Church? ”

“ The object which he chose for himself in the commonwealth was noble and just, the defense of the Grecians against Philip; and in this he behaved himself so worthily that he soon grew famous, and excited attention everywhere for his eloquence and courage in speaking. He was admired through all Greece, the king of Persia courted him, and by Philip himself he was more esteemed than all the other orators. His very enemies were forced to confess that they had to do with a man of mark; for such a character even Aeschines and Hyperides give him, where they accuse and speak against him. ”

“ Yet the bereavement seems to have had little power to soften his nature, or incline him to charity for the misconduct, or compassion for the misfortunes of others. It was but a few months after the death of his wife, that, on occasion of the insurrection of Ghent, he sought a passage through the territory of his ancient enemy of France, descended on the offending city, and took such vengeance on its wretched inhabitants as made all Europe ring with his cruelty. [21]
Philip was too young at this time to take part in the administration of the kingdom during his father's absence. ”

“ The state of affairs imperatively demanded Philip's presence in the Netherlands, and, after a residence of less than four months in London, he bade a final adieu to his disconsolate queen, whose excessive fondness may have been as little to his taste as the coldness of her subjects.
Nothing could be more forlorn than the condition of Mary. Her health wasting under a disease that cheated her with illusory hopes, which made her ridiculous in the eyes of the world; her throne, her very life, continually menaced by conspiracies, to some of which even her own sister was supposed to be privy ”

“ That must not be, Philip. Do you think he could be otherwise than wretched in England?"
"He is wretched now," said Philip, as the recollection of the poor, persecuted outcast of the little hamlet came vividly to his mind.
"I will make him a rich man," said his father, "rich and prosperous. He shall have all his heart can desire; but I cannot acknowledge him as my son."
"Oh, father!" exclaimed Philip, "no money can undo the wrong you have done him. He has led the life of a brute, and is as ignorant as a brute. He has been browbeaten and trampled on all his life. ”

“ And amidst the festivities and stage plays, the poetical recitals, the battues that stood for sport, and the autos-de-fe that stood for holiness, "Philip the Great" moved like a demigod, knowing in his heart of hearts that all was hollow—his wealth a lie, his dignity a mask, and he himself but a poor sinning trifler whose coward conscience denied him even pleasure in his sin.
Philip's love for ostentation had full opportunity for its exercise in October 1629, when, six months after the birth of his son by the Calderona, an heir was born to the Spanish crowns. ”

“ THE SACRED WAR.—A pretext for interfering in the affairs of Greece, Philip found in the Sacred War in behalf of the temple of Delphi, which had been forced to loan money to the Phocians during a war waged by them against Thebes, to throw off the Theban supremacy. Athens and Sparta joined the Phocians. The Thessalian nobles sided with Philip. He gained the victory in his character of champion of the Amphictyonic Council, and took his place in that body, in the room of the Phocians (346 B.C.) . ”

“ Thus all the concessions of Philip, not merely his promises of grace, but those of abolishing the Inquisition and mitigating the edicts, were to go for nothing,—mere words, to amuse the people until some effectual means could be decided on. The king must be allowed, for once at least, to have spoken with candor. There are few persons who would not have shrunk from acknowledging to their own hearts that they were acting on so deliberate a system of perfidy as Philip thus confided in his correspondence with another. ”

“ Having a great passion for distinction, his fear was, that if another general were commissioned to carry on the war, the honor even of what was passed, would be lost to him; and his friends transacted matters so well on his behalf, that Philip was unsuccessful in his proposals, and the management of the war was confimied in his hands. He no sooner received the senate's determination, but, big with hopes, he marches directly into Thessaly, to engage Philip; his army consisting of twenty-six thousand men, out of which the Ætolians furnished six thousand foot and four hundred horse. ”

“ In a letter from Philip to his brother, dated from the Escorial, the twenty-ninth of November, he writes to him out of the fulness of his heart, in the language of gratitude and brotherly love:—"I cannot express to you the joy it has given me to learn the particulars of your conduct in the battle, of the great valour you showed in your own person, and your watchfulness in giving proper directions to others—all which has doubtless been a principal cause of the victory. ”

“ While Philip spoke the Duke never took eyes from his face—that face so facile in the display of feeling or emotion. The voice also had a lilt of health and vitality which rang on the ears of age pleasantly. As he listened he thought of his eldest son, partly imbecile, all but a lusus naturae, separated from his wife immediately after marriage, through whom there could never be succession—he thought of him, and for the millionth time in his life winced in impotent disdain. He thought too of his beloved second son, lying in a soldier's grave in Macedonia ”

“ Of the triumph of honour and humanity over the dictates of superstition, there occurs not a single instance in the whole reign of Philip; who violated the most sacred obligations as often as religion afforded him a pretence, and exercised, for many years, the most unrelenting cruelty, without reluctance or remorse. Few princes have been more dreaded, more abhorred, or have caused more blood to flow, than Philip II. of Spain. ”

“ Leovogild, a Visigothic king of the sixth century, having taken prisoner his rebel son, threw him into a dungeon, where he was secretly put to death. The king was an Arian, while the young prince was a Catholic, and might have saved his life if he had been content to abjure his religion. By the Church of Rome, therefore, he was regarded as a martyr; and it is a curious circumstance that it was Philip the Second who procured the canonization of the slaughtered Hermenegild from Pope Sixtus the Fifth. ”

“ A letter from the secretary, Armenteros, speaks of the difficulty he finds in fathoming the designs of the prince of Orange,—a circumstance which he attributes to his probable change of religion. "He relies much," says the writer, "on the support he receives in Germany, on his numerous friends at home, and on the general distrust entertained of the king. The prince is making preparations in good season," he concludes, "for defending himself against your majesty." [780]
Yet Philip did not betray any consciousness of this unfriendly temper in the nobles. ”

“ No: he is actually detaching forces, supplying money, and is himself expected at the head of a formidable army. The Lacedæmonians, therefore, the enemies of Thebes, he now infests. And will he then restore the Phocians, whom he has but just now ruined? Who can believe this? I, for my part, can never think, if Philip had been forced into those former measures, or if he had now abandoned the Thebans, that he would make this continued opposition to their enemies. ”

“ Philip would certainly never have prevailed at sea and come to Attica with a fleet, nor would he have marched with a land-force by Phocis and Thermopylae: he must either have acted honorably, observing the peace and keeping quiet, or been immediately in a war similar to that which made him desire the peace. Enough has been said to awaken recollection. Grant, O ye gods, it be not all fully confirmed! I would have no man punished, though death he may deserve, to the damage and danger of the country. ”

“ The intelligence was received with the joy usually manifested by loyal subjects on like occasions. The emperor seems to have been particularly pleased with this prospect of an heir, who, by the terms of the marriage treaty, would make a division of that great empire which it had been the object of its master's life to build up and consolidate under one sceptre. The commons, soon after, passed an act empowering Philip, in case it should go otherwise than well with the queen at the time of her confinement, to assume the regency, and take charge of the education of her child during its minority. ”