Eduardo González
The Spanish Kings in the 17th century intensified their diplomatic efforts and negotiations with the Holy See to have the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin declared a dogma of faith, an initially religious objective that ended up becoming a real matter of state.
The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose feast day is celebrated today, was not declared a dogma of faith until 1854, but her worship existed for many centuries before that. In the case of Spain, the Immaculate Conception acquired a lot of popular fervour in the Middle Ages thanks, above all, to the preaching of the Franciscans, but over time it spread to royalty.
The first known cases of devotion were those of Ferdinand III of Castile and James the Conqueror of Aragon, both from the 13th century, but their example was continued, to a greater or lesser degree, by other monarchs, such as Peter IV the Ceremonious, John I of Aragon or Elizabeth the Catholic, who in 1484 managed to get Pope Innocent VIII to authorise the “immaculist” order par excellence of his reign, the Conceptionist nuns. Their successors, Charles V and Philip II, even had the image of the Immaculate in some of their armour.
Throughout the 17th century, there was a heated debate within the Spanish clergy between the “Immaculists” and those opposed to devotion to the Immaculate Conception (the “Maculists”), and the Kings decided to take sides in favour of the former in an area which was specific to them: diplomacy, especially before the Holy See, the only institution with the capacity to declare the Immaculate Conception a dogma of faith.
According to an extraordinary study by Professor José Antonio Peinado Guzmán of the University of Granada, behind this debate lie the foreign policy problems of the so-called Habsburg Minor, who, knowing that militarily they no longer held the power they once did, wanted to take advantage of their traditional good relationship with the Papacy to obtain European credit. It was a great privilege to have the papal favour at that time and “to make such a properly Spanish devotion into a dogma of faith was more than a religious disquisition”.
Philip III and Philip IV
The first serious steps were taken by Philip III who, under pressure from the fervent archbishop of Seville, Pedro de Castro, wrote to Pope Paul V in 1617 to define the Immaculate Conception as a dogma of faith. Such was the diplomatic pressure exerted by the King to try to break the Pope’s will that, according to a Spanish cardinal of the time, Paul V “entered into a great rage”. As a result, Philip III was forced to give in, although in the last moments of his life he regretted not having made more effort to achieve his goal. According to the author, Paul V decided not to get involved in this affair so as not to upset France, which was not prepared to accept that the Pope would make a decision on doctrine without convening an ecumenical council.
Philip IV also showed great devotion to the Conceptionist mystery and took this task very seriously from the very year of his arrival on the throne in 1621. His first decision was to replace the Duke of Alburquerque as ambassador to Pope Gregory XV with the Duke of Pastrana, whom he ordered to continue to lobby the Holy See. However, the Pope’s death cooled spirits and relations between Philip IV and his successor, Urban VIII, were not very friendly and forced the Monarch to stop insisting for a while.
The death of Urban III and the arrival at the Holy See of Innocent X (1644) intensified the diplomatic efforts and “a flood of embassies, in the end sterile, followed one another in Rome with the sole aim of achieving the dogmatic declaration”, according to the author of the study. Despite the dispatch to Rome of the Admiral of Castile, the Count of Siruela as the new ordinary ambassador or the Bishop of Malaga and the Duke of Infantado as extraordinary ambassadors, little progress was made. Nor was much achieved with the new Pope Alexander VII (1655), despite his initial support for the “immaculist” cause.
Charles II and the Bourbons
On the death of Philip IV in 1665, the regent Marianne of Austria, a great devotee of mystery, continued diplomatic pressure and her son Charles II even asked for the support of the King of France, Louis XIV, but the latter excused himself to avoid controversy. The Bewitched man entrusted his successor (whoever he was) with the mission of continuing to ask the Holy See to define the Immaculate Conception as a dogma of faith and the truth is that the two suitors, Philip V and Archduke Charles, were very devoted to the mystery and placed themselves under the protection of the Immaculate Conception in their battles (the first Bourbon King even declared the Immaculate Conception patron saint of the Infantry after his victory in the battle of Villaviciosa). However, Philip V’s two embassies in Rome were unsuccessful. Charles III tried again in 1760, but his decision to expel the Jesuits did not exactly ease his relationship with the Pope.
Finally, the Immaculate Conception was declared a dogma of faith in 1854, during the period when the Spanish monarchy was least influenced by the Holy See and, curiously, thanks to the efforts of the French Episcopal Conference.
