Philip of Spain

By Henry Kamen

Book Overview

Philip II of Spain--ruler of the most extensive empire the world had ever known--has been viewed in a harsh and negative light since his death in 1598. Identified with repression, bigotry, and fanaticism by his enemies, he has been judged more by the political events of his reign than by his person. This book, published four hundred years after Philip's death, is the first full-scale biography of the king. Placing him within the social, cultural, religious, and regional context of his times, it presents a startling new picture of his character and reign.

Drawing on Philip's unpublished correspondence and on many other archival sources, Henry Kamen reveals much about Philip the youth, the man, the husband, the father, the frequently troubled Christian, and the king. Kamen finds that Philip was a cosmopolitan prince whose extensive experience of northern Europe broadened his cultural imagination and tastes, whose staunchly conservative ideas were far from being illiberal and fanatical, whose religious attitudes led him to accept a practical coexistence with Protestants and Jews, and whose support for Las Casas and other defenders of the Indians in America helped determine government policy. Shedding completely new light on most aspects of Philip's private life and, in consequence, on his public actions, the book is the definitive portrayal of Philip II.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300078005
• ISBN13: 9780300078008
• Release Date: February 1999
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.21 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.2" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

A book about Philip of Spain cant get < 5 stars, but..

In too many ways, this more "modern" and "accurate" biography of the sixteenth century Spanish monarch proved *personally* disappointing, or at least anticlimactic. Contrary to the author's claim, it focuses primarily on the politics and environment of the period, rather than on its subject. This is not undesirable in itself - yet in doing so, it shattered the perceptions I'd formed of Philip II, perceptions that had passed beyond the realm of rational understanding into something subjective and quite emotionally volatile. Somehow, through overactive imagination and through older, less dispassionate texts, I had come to view him as the romanticized, psychologically repressed, tragic anti-hero from Schiller's Don Carlos, a repository of my deepest obsessions and insecurities, a target of self-righteous admiration and of equally self-righteous pity. This particular analysis, with its emphasis on facts and objectivity, has made me all too aware that, despite my mental gymnastics, Philip II is still ultimately an unknown and unknowable man who died some four centuries before my birth, entirely without connection to me personally, lost in the obscurity of history. Well researched but... kind of depressing.

Written without imagination or flair

As a once-historian of Latin American Colonial History I had hoped for an insightful adition to my library, but instead I found a badly written book, without any imagination or effort to make the material interesting: just a chronological list of events!

Balanced and Intelligent review of the age

Kamen touches on all aspects of Philips life with great intuity. He exposes a man that was emotionally scarred more than once in his life, a man that worked incessently for the good of his country and of his religion. As well as being a pious and hard working man he was also a lover of fun, a side rarely seen in a personage of such stature. This book is a wonderful read and cannot fail to leave the reader wondering about Philip II of Spain, a monarch that until now has been over shadowed by his father Emperor Charles. On top of this Kamwen examines many of the aspects that affected the political events of the age.