Philip of Spain

by Henry Kamen

  Twelve months later, on 10 May 1528, representatives of the Cortes met in the monastery of St Jerónimo in Madrid and recognised the infant as heir to the throne of Castile. They also recognised the empress Isabel as regent of the realm during Charles's impending absence. On 27 July 1529 the emperor set sail from Barcelona. He was not to return until 1533.

  Every aspect of the prince's upbringing was catered for with great care. Isabel's circle was largely Portuguese. It gave to her son a propensity for things Portuguese which he never lost. Of the many nurses assigned to him the most influential was the Portuguese Leonor Mascarenhas, in her twenties when she began to care for him.4 Philip's affection for and confidence in her made him appoint her, years afterwards, as nurse to his son Don Carlos. He was also assigned ‘governors’, the first of whom was Pedro González de Mendoza, son of the duke of Infantado. From abroad Charles kept in close touch with all those in charge of the heir to his Spanish throne. Infant mortality in those times was a permanent threat. It carried off the majority of the royal children in Spain, and in the population as a whole eliminated one out of every two infants. As a consequence, questions of health featured prominently in letters sent to the emperor. Isabel's own private correspondence expressed her fears. ‘The prince my son is ill with fever,’ she wrote to a friend in mid-June 1532, ‘and though the illness is not dangerous it has me very worried and anxious.’ Three weeks later Philip was ill again: ‘I'm very anxious,’ she wrote.5

  Shortly before Charles's departure, a daughter, María, was born to the empress on 21 June 1528 in the royal palace of the Alcázar in Madrid. Mendoza in 1531 informed the emperor that ‘the Infanta grows bigger and fatter by the day, and the prince entertains her like a genteel gallant’. But the prince was not always a model of gentility: ‘he is so mischievous that sometimes Her Majesty gets really angry; she spanks him, and the women weep to see such severity’.6 Mother and son seem to have had a good relationship. Isabel gave him the only semblance of a family circle he was to have in his childhood. Deprived of a father, he looked only to her as the example for his character and conduct. On his side, unfortunately, a child's respect never had the opportunity to mature into abiding affection: her early death cut that link.

  When Charles returned to Spain in April 1533 it was time to begin the next stage in the training of the prince. In July 1534 he appointed a tutor for Philip, ‘to teach him to read and write’. Juan Martínez de Siliceo, aged forty-eight at the time of his appointment, was a priest and graduate of Paris and Salamanca. The next year the prince was given a new governor, Juan de Zúñiga, a noble companion of the emperor who from 1532 enjoyed the title of grand commander of Castile. Charles left Spain again in April 1535 and was periodically absent for the next few years (he was abroad when Isabel gave birth on 24 June 1535 to their third child, Juana). Before leaving, he arranged for the prince to have his own separate household. This meant that he had lodgings, attendants and chapel independent of the queen. Siliceo and Zúñiga were entrusted with his education.

  Booklets on reading and grammar were specially written for Philip's instruction by a humanist member of the royal household, who also translated Erasmus's Institution of a Christian Prince into Spanish for the same purpose.7 Illness occasionally interrupted his schooling, but he made fair progress. Siliceo commented in November 1535 that ‘he shows promise of learning a lot in a short time’.8 By February 1536, ‘he has made a lot of progress in reading and learning prayers in Latin and Spanish’. By September that year, ‘he knows the conjugations and some other principles; soon he will start to study authors, the first of whom is Cato’. By March 1540, ‘he has improved a lot in speaking Latin, and speaks no other language during classes … He has started to write in Latin.’

  An important place in the prince's education was assigned to music. The aristocratic households of this time – the great Mendoza family is an example – had their own musicians and put on musical entertainments. Spain could draw on its own popular songs, on Moorish music, and on imported influences from Italy, France and the Netherlands. Inevitably, music was central to the activities of the royal court. Each of the royal households had its own chapel, with accompanying musicians and choristers. Both in chapel and out, the tastes of the court were especially influenced by foreign styles. Philip's sisters learned to dance in the French way. The prince was always interested in music. Around 1540 the Granada composer Luis Narváez was his music tutor and taught him to play the guitar (vihuela). Significantly, Philip appears in these years in the dedication of several books on guitar music.9

  Non-academic interests soon asserted themselves, as Siliceo's letter of June 1540 pointed out. ‘Though hunting is at present what he is most inclined to, he doesn't neglect his studies a bit. And we have to be grateful that at this age of fourteen when the weakness of the flesh begins to assert itself, God has given the prince such a passion for hunting that he spends most of his time in this and in his studies.’ In September, ‘his favourite pursuits after study are going hunting and jousting’.10 It is fair to doubt whether Siliceo was right to think that the sexual urges of adolescence were wholly consumed by hunting and study.

  Shortly after, in February 1541, Siliceo was appointed bishop of Cartagena. The fact is that Charles was not satisfied with Philip's educational progress. He told him flatly that Siliceo ‘has not been nor is the most suitable teacher for you; he has given in to you too much’.11 The tutor's appointment to Cartagena paved the way for his removal, though he did not leave for his see till 1544. In 1541 Cristóbal Calvet de Estrella12 was appointed to teach Philip Latin and Greek, Honorat Juan to teach mathematics and architecture, and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda to teach geography and history. These illustrious humanists and scholars were, however, unable to bring the prince to the level of excellence desired by his father.

  Philip, like any normal schoolboy, did not like school. ‘He studies well enough when he is in school,’ Zúñiga wrote to the emperor in 1535, ‘although when he has to go there he resembles his father at the same age.’13 By the same post he sent Charles the first of several letters written by the prince ‘in his own hand’. None of these appears to have survived. Zúñiga received reports from Siliceo and sent them on to Charles, together with comments on the progress made by the prince in other matters. From the grand commander Philip picked up a passion for hunting. ‘He continues with his studies as when Your Majesty was here, and in the hunting season goes to the country twice a week,’ wrote Zúñiga in January 1540. Two weeks later Philip ‘went to Alcalá for four days … He enjoyed himself greatly, specially in the woods, where he killed nine rabbits with the bow, and nicked others.’ A week later, ‘yesterday he went hunting and killed four fowl and brought down another two’. In the following week, ‘he went to the Pardo and shot two arrows … He came and went by litter, but in the country was a good six hours on horseback, which seemed to him like two and to me more like twelve.’

  Zúñiga was aware of the importance of studying Latin. ‘I consider it essential that a prince be a good Latinist, to be able to discipline both himself and others, especially one who is going to rule over so many different tongues’. Sepúlveda too was concerned that through Latin the prince should learn to speak to ambassadors directly and so avoid interpreters.14 It was a goal which the emperor enjoined on the prince repeatedly. But in classes when his humanist tutors addressed him in Latin, Philip insisted on replying in Spanish. The prince was neither a model pupil nor in any way outstanding. His command of Latin remained always average, his literary style at best mediocre, and his handwriting generally ill-formed. Educated as a humanist, he never became one. His Greek always remained very rudimentary. When his then secretary Gonzalo Pérez in 1547 dedicated to him his Castilian translation of the Iliad, he hoped that Philip ‘may see in his own tongue what many famous princes have read in Greek’.15

  But his refusal to become a scholar did not mean that he could not appreciate the value of scholarship. His tutors, notably Calvet
de Estrella, were given funds to build up a library for the prince. Philip grew up surrounded by books written by the geniuses of western civilisation. Among volumes acquired for him by Calvet in 1545, bought in Salamanca and Medina del Campo but for the most part printed abroad, were items by Sophocles, Virgil, Aquinas, Boccaccio, Savonarola, Petrarch, Vitruvio, Copernicus, and the collected works of Erasmus.16 His library in 1553 contained ‘books in different subjects and languages’, including works by Dürer, Dante and Machiavelli.17 The collection grew over the years, as he continued to purchase items on his special interests: architecture and art, music and warfare, magic and theology. The prince undoubtedly dipped into the volumes. The rich selection also stimulated his urge to collect further.

  From 1535, when Philip was put under Zúñiga's care, his classes included a number of noble pages. Among them was Zúñiga's son Luis de Requesens, who was mercilessly teased by the others for his strong Catalan accent. The group in 1537 totalled six. ‘Of those who study with the prince,’ reported Zúñiga's wife Estefania in 1537, ‘little Luis is the youngest … Two days ago the prince and six other children took part in a prank.’18 From a very young age, the prince organised infant tourneys and dances among his group. In 1537, for example, ‘a little joust and in the evening a dance … the prince and the Infanta danced’.19 Philip was to remain for the rest of his life a devotee of dancing, court festivities, and rites of chivalry. When he was sixteen Zúñiga claimed that he was ‘the most accomplished man of arms in this court, and this can be said without flattery; this week he and the duke of Alba put on a contest in the country’. He was ‘very good at fighting both on foot and on horseback’, he added.20

  Through his childhood years the prince seems to have suffered periodic illnesses, which Zúñiga took care to report in detail to the emperor, since they concerned his only male heir. It is doubtful if we should conclude that he was sickly by nature. He led an active, vigorous life, and took part in all activities. His constitution and diet laid him open to digestive ailments and fevers, but he resisted severe illnesses successfully.

  His major privation was the absence of his father, which Isabel endured with difficulty. ‘The empress and her children are very well,’ reported Estefania in 1538, ‘but Her Majesty is pained by the emperor's departure, for fear that he will be absent longer than he says; and she is right, for her life is very dreary when he is not here.’21 Charles returned that summer, and at the end of October was in Toledo to take part in the Cortes called for those weeks. It was one of the decisive political moments in Castile's history. The nobles stubbornly refused to grant any money towards the emperor's campaigns in Germany. Charles angrily dissolved their session and they were never again summoned to a meeting of the Cortes. ‘You are not required any longer,’ the cardinal of Toledo, Tavera, informed the grandees, ‘you may go home or wherever you wish.’

  Shortly after, during spring 1539, Isabel fell ill in Toledo. At the end of April she suffered a miscarriage, from which she died on 1 May. Philip at the time was almost twelve, possibly too young to appreciate the blow. Charles, who despite his long absences (and occasional dalliances) abroad, loved his wife deeply, was grief-stricken.22 He immured himself in a convent for seven weeks. On 2 May the empress's body was accompanied to the outskirts of the city by ministers and grandees. Philip was unwell and went only part of the way with the procession. He withdrew and took to his bed. From the city border Isabel's body was accompanied to the royal resting-place at Granada (where the tombs of Charles's grandparents Ferdinand and Isabella also were) by members of her household and other officials, led by the marquis of Llombay, Francisco de Borja, equerry of the empress. Two weeks later the prince presided over the solemn obsequies held for the empress in the church of San Juan de los Reyes.23

  No sooner did Charles emerge from his convent at the end of June than he received news of a revolt in his home city of Ghent, in the Netherlands. In November, as a consequence, he had to leave once again, this time at the head of a small force which passed through France on its way to Ghent. Before he did so he left a short written Instruction to guide his son. Government was left in the hands of cardinal Tavera as regent, with the duke of Alba and Francisco de los Cobos as his colleagues. Philip, for the first time without either parent to turn to, remained under the capable guidance of Zúñiga, from whom he seems to have picked up the traits of seriousness and piety that marked his character in later years.24 Zúñiga was the prince's decisive support throughout his early development, helping him both in personal matters and in decisions of state. It was not the best of times for a child to be handed responsibility. The year 1540 was one of famine and misery throughout most of Castile.25

  Charles's main preoccupations in the north of Europe were the German princes and the king of France. The princes questioned his authority in German politics, and many gave their support to Luther's Reformation. France, concerned to restrict the apparently immense power of the emperor, encouraged them in both their political and religious aspirations. The French also had claims on Italian territory, principally the strategic duchy of Milan, which Charles controlled.

  From about 1540 the Turkish question, a constant threat, became more menacing. The armies of the Ottoman empire, under their ruler Suleiman the Magnificent, had so far failed to break through the line of Christian defences on the Danube. But in the Mediterranean they were considerably more successful. Spain was in the front line of the conflict. Muslim corsairs, led by Khair al-Din Barbarossa and Dragut, used the north African coast as the base for their attacks on Christian shipping in the western Mediterranean. In 1535 Charles had won a famous victory by capturing Tunis and the fort of La Goletta from the corsairs. Now in 1541 he planned a similar descent on Algiers. In October he arrived in Mallorca from Italy, in the fleet of the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria. A general rendezvous was set for the coast south of Algiers. It was a vast international force of 65 galleys and 450 other ships, with 24,000 troops from Italy and Spain. Among the Spaniards were the duke of Alba and Hernán Cortés the conqueror of Mexico. Unfortunately, a violent storm wrecked the vessels before the attack could start. With difficulty Charles made his way to the safety of Bougie,26 and from there to Cartagena in early December. Travelling overland, he was met at Ocaña, south of Aranjuez, by Philip, who accompanied him back to Valladolid.

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  By May 1541 Philip had spent two years in official mourning for his mother. He was given permission by Charles to exchange his black garments for more colourful ones, and to wear gold. He was also now, at fourteen, deemed to be of age, and so made his first communion that year. Looking over this period of his mother's death and his coming of age, it is difficult to believe that Philip had any real experience of childhood or domestic affection. His distant father, for whom he always retained an unshakeable respect, was an object of reverence rather than of tangible love. His need for love from his mother was, because of her early death, never allowed to mature. His affections settled, as a consequence, exclusively on his sisters María and Juana. The three shared a deep dedication to each other that lasted all their lives. The only other persons for whom he felt a bond of familial affection were the Catalan household of Zúñiga, his wife Estefania and their three sons, who were all destined to become Philip's friends and collaborators. Whenever he went to Barcelona he made a point of visiting Estefania and her family.

  The lack of a loving childhood was not unusual in the sons of kings. They were brought up to be men rather than children. Love was not one of the emotions normally permitted to men of state. There is no doubt that for years after his mother's death Philip faithfully controlled and repressed his instinct for affection. This by no means made him overly serious or old beyond his years: he was capable of all the pleasures and distractions to which young men devote themselves. But childhood was a phase lost somewhere in the process of growing up.

  Emergence into manhood was signalled by plans to find him a wife. The candidate chosen by his father was the prin
cess of Portugal, Maria, to whom he became formally betrothed in December 1542, an agreement ratified on 13 January 1543.

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  From this point forward he was rapidly propelled into the role prepared for him. From 1541 he was given his own personal secretary, the humanist Gonzalo Pérez, a gruff and bossy career priest who served him faithfully for the next twenty-four years. In 1543 his small private household, presided over by Zúñiga as chamberlain, was made up of personnel assigned to cater for his daily needs: porters, a clerk, a physician, stable hands. He had his own kitchen staff. The two largest groups in his household were those in the chapel (Siliceo and ten other chaplains, with several attendants), and his bedchamber. He also had the occasional services of seventy-three pages, sons of the aristocracy and of bureaucrats. The personnel came in all to some no persons.27 The running cost in 1543 appears to have been 32,000 ducats a year, one-eighth the cost of the king's own much larger household.28

  The prince's eating habits followed normal practice for noble households. His kitchen accounts for January 1544 reveal a daily diet based on a lot of meat (‘for stewing, roasting and soup’), backed up by bread, chicken, and eggs. Fish, consumed in the coastal areas of Spain rather than inland, never featured. Twice a week lettuce and endives were bought. Once a week the royal table had fruit (melon, oranges). In summer the diet varied little (pears replaced oranges).29 In 1549 in the Netherlands he continued to have fruit, cheese and salads.30 During those months in northern Europe, beer appeared on the table, but it is likely that Philip never took to it. The item disappeared from the accounts after 1551, when he returned to Spain.31 From 1550 wine, which he had drunk occasionally before, was a regular item with meals.

  In these early years the prince became perfectly acquainted with the royal residences, particularly the hunting estates, of central Castile. He knew most of the principal towns in the centre of the peninsula. But he was ignorant of the rest of Spain. On 22 May 1542 his father, who had returned the preceding December from his disastrous expedition to Algiers, set out with him from Valladolid. It was a formal trip that involved taking with them a huge number of officials and attendants. The emperor, who spent most of his life on the move, was familiar with the routine. He was always accompanied, for example, by officials from the different realms he ruled; among them were several secretaries, to whom he dictated in the different languages of his territories.