§ 50. CHARLES Y. 271
restrain his appetite, which feasted on twenty dishes at a single meal. In his autobiography he speaks of a fourteenth attack of gout, which “lasted till the spring of 1548.”
He had taste for music and painting. He had also some literary talent, and wrote or dictated an autobiography in the simple, objective style of Cesar, ending with the defeat of the Protestant league (1548); but it is dry and cold, destitute of great ideas and noble sentiments.
He married his cousin, Donna Isabella of Portugal, at Seville, 1526, and lived in happy union with her till her sudden death in 1539; but during his frequent absences from Spain, where she always remained, as well as before his marriage, and after her death, he indulged in ephemeral unlawful attachments.? He had at least two illegitimate children, the famous Margaret, Duchess of Parma, and Don Juan of Austria, the hero of Lepanto (1547-1578), who lies buried by his side in the Escorial.
Charles has often been painted by the master hand of Titian, whom he greatly admired. He was of middle size, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, with a commanding forehead, an aquiline nose, a pale, grave, and melancholy countenance. His blue and piercing eye, his blonde, almost reddish hair, and fair skin, betokened his German origin, and his projecting lower jaw, with its thick, heavy lip, was characteristic of the princes of Habsburg; but otherwise he looked like a Spaniard, as he was at heart.
Incessant labors and cares, gluttony, and consequent gout, undermined his constitution, and at the age of fifty he was prematurely old, and had to be carried on a litter like a help-
1 English translation, p. 157.
3 Motley (I. 123) says, on the authority of the Venetian ambassador, Badovaro: ‘‘ He was addicted to vulgar and miscellaneous incontinence.’’ On the same authority he reports of Philip II.: ‘‘ He was grossly licentious. It was his chief amusement to issue forth at night, disguised, that he might indulge in vulgar and miscellaneous incontinence in the common haunts of vice.”’ (I, 145.)
272 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1580.
less cripple. Notwithstanding his many victories and successes, he was in his later years an unhappy and disappointed man, but sought and found his last comfort in the religion of his fathers.
§ 51. The Ecclesiastical Policy of Charles V.
The ecclesiastical policy of Charles was Roman Catholic without being ultramontane. He kept his coronation oath. All his antecedents were in favor of the traditional faith. He was surrounded by ecclesiastics and monks. He was thoroughly imbued with the Spanish type of piety, of which his grandmother is the noblest and purest representative. Isabella the Catholic, the greatest of Spanish sovereigns, “the queen of earthly queens,”! conquered the Moors, patronized the discoverer of America, expelled the Jews, and established the Inquisition, —all for the glory of the Virgin Mary and the Catholic religion.2, A genuine Spaniard beheves, with Gonzalo of Oviedo, that “powder against the infidels is incense to the Lord.” With him, as with his Moorish antipode, the measure of conviction is the measure of intolerance, and persecution the evidence of zeal. The burning of heretics became in the land of the Inquisition a sacred festival, an “act of faith;”? and such horrid spectacles were
1 So Shakespeare calls her, and praises her ‘‘sweet gentleness,’”’ “ saintlike meekness,”’ “‘ wife-like government, obeying in commanding.”’
2 The inscription on the tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella in the Capilla Real of the cathedral at Granada is characteristic: ‘‘ Mahometice secte prostratores et heretice pervicacie extinctores Ferdinandus Aragonum et Helisabetha Castelle vir et uxor unanimes Catholici appellati Marmores clauduntur hoc tumulo.”’ The sepulcher is wrought in delicate alabaster ; on it are extended the life-size marble figures of the Catholic sovereigns; their faces are portraits; Ferdinand wears the garter, Isabella the cross of Santiago; the four doctors of the Church ornament the corners, the twelve apostles the sides. Under the same monument rest the ashes of their unfortunate daughter Joanna and her worthless husband. I have seen no monument which surpasses this in chaste and noble simplicity (unless it be that of King Frederick William III. and Queen Louisa at Charlottenburg), and none which is more suggestive of historical meditation and reflection.
8 Actus fidei; auto-defé in Spanish ; auto-da-fé in Portuguese.