A Brill Calendar: October 25

Charles V, Phillip II and the Destiny of the Low Countries

Few stately ceremonies in the history of the Low Countries had more important and irreversible consequences than the one held in Brussels, Friday, October 25th, 1555; and none were more graced by pomp & circumstance.

Charles V of Habsburg (Ghent, 1500) abdicated his government over these northern possessions and solemnly transferred the responsibility of ruling them to his son, Philip II (Valladolid, 1529). The old German Emperor and King of Spain, now stepping down from his worldly functions, was to all practical purposes an invalid, wrecked by financial worries, ubiquitous religious strife and ceaseless travelling on horseback all over the European part of an Empire in which the sun, after 1492 (and all that), never set.

His personal advisor and confidant, Wilhelmus, Prince of Orange (Nassau, 1533) had to support the worn-out monarch during the event. Charles’ son shared with his father an appreciation and esteem for the German aristocrat. When Philip left the Netherlands for good - to rule his native Spanish Kingdom ‘in situ’ - he delegated all practical, daily affairs to ‘Willem’, who represented interests of the absentee Lord of the Lands in the small worlds of a few dozen economically significant, self-interested cities who recognized and acknowledged Philip, who (to all intents and purposes) ruled worldly affairs by the Grace of God Almighty.

It is seldom that absenteeism so unobtrusively produced alienation and animosity between an absolute monarch and his initially loyal subjects. The rebellion, starting more than a decade later (1566) after a gruelling year of hunger and starvation throughout Europe, nevertheless continued to see in the King of Spain the legal Head of State; right up to 1588 in fact. Leyden University, a prime catalyst for a new era, was founded in 1575; and, curiously enough, was formally sanctioned by the regal authority of Philip II: an act necessary for so prestigious a new institution.