Spain and the Protestant Reformation: The Spanish Inquisition and the War for Europe by Wayne H. Bowen (review)

Reviewed by: Spain and the Protestant Reformation: The Spanish Inquisition and the War for Europe by Wayne H. Bowen Andrew Wilson Spain and the Protestant Reformation: The Spanish Inquisition and the War for Europe. By Wayne H. Bowen. London and New York: Routledge, 2023. 188 pp. A synthetic work, Bowen's monograph argues that, despite their small number in Spain, Protestants held outsized influence on Spain's aggressive actions across Europe during the sixteenth century. Spain's confessing Protestants and their prosecution by the Inquisition get treatment along the way, but this book is mostly about the self-understanding of the Hapsburg monarchy during the sixteenth century. Two concepts determined the otherwise incomprehensibly wasteful policies of Charles I (V) and Phillip II: crusade and universal Christian monarchy. Charles V's auspicious election as Holy Roman Emperor was to have set the stage for the final crusade. With the Jews expelled and the Muslims defeated in 1492 at Granada and with American gold and silver starting to flow, the time was ripe for Spain to fulfill its destiny and retake Jerusalem. To this, Luther and his progeny were an "existential threat." Enter the Inquisition, which by sixteenth-century standards was a model of leniency and compassion. Conceived to root out crypto-Judaism, it stood ready to face the Protestant wave. Bowen suggests that Spain's notorious dearth of Protestants is thanks to the ever-vigilant holy office and its independent power. No one, from Charles's confessor Constantino Ponce de la Fuente to his son End Page 95 Phillip's chaplain and leading prelate Bartolomé de Carranza, was immune. It worked in England, too, where during the short reign of "bloody" Mary and her Spanish consort Phillip II, it "nearly overcame the establishment of Protestantism by Henry VIII" (88). The Inquisition also helped, especially under the uncompromising reign of Phillip II, to galvanize much of Europe against "universal Catholic monarchy" and its meddling methods. The Dutch wars both sucked Phillip dry of cash and also nudged neutral nobles, notably William the Silent (1533–1584), to adopt decentralized Calvinism, paving the way for Europe's next national success. The bankrupting sequence of battles completely squandered Spain's American windfall. William apparently offered forty tons of gold to Phillip if he would merely tolerate Calvinists. Phillip refused and William converted. For Phillip, Protestants were traitors, whose presence contradicted his house's claims to rule. It did not help that such traitors also dared contemplate, let alone enact, alliance with his other archenemy and barrier to Jerusalem, the Ottoman Turks (though the Catholic French did so as well). As an outline of these grand tendencies, Bowen's work is worth a read, with chapters 1 ("Spain and the World in 1516") and 5 ("Phillip II and the Spanish Inquisition") the most helpful for those better versed in Luther's realm. The study, however, suffers from overreliance on secondary, even tertiary, sources. There are very few citations of inquisition cases, and most of those are taken from other studies. On any particular topic (the inquisition, Hapsburg Monarchy, Ottoman threat), better treatments exist, some of which Bowen cites, many of which he does not. Werner Thomas's weighty tomes, La represión del protestantismo en España, 1517–1648 (2001) and Los protestantes ye la Inquisición en España en tiempos de Reforma y Contrarreforma (2001) are mentioned only once, and somehow did not make it into the bibliography. The book itself is produced on par with current print-on-demand academic publishing, but the paper is a cheap, finer type of newsprint, which my nose reminded me each time I cracked it open. Librarians beware. For those interested in the reception of Protestantism in End Page 96 Spain, the reaction of the Inquisition, and the self-consciousness of Hapsburg Monarchy, at a tight 188 pages the book is an accessible, easily read introduction. It will leave you hungering for more. Andrew Wilson Japan Lutheran College and Seminary Tokyo, Japan Copyright © 2024 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.