The Pope Who Loved Me: Sixtus V and Elizabeth October 7, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Sixtus V (the last of his name) was a grumpy counter-reformation pope who got mixed up with Philip II’s planned invasion of England: the invincible Armada. However, Sixtus, who hated Philip and saw the Spanish Empire as the greatest obstacle to the extension of his own power, made some strange conditions for lending money to the Spanish crown. First, Spanish troops had to actually come ashore in England before any money would be forwarded and, second, Sixtus wanted Elizabeth I to be sent on to him in the Vatican: ‘take order for the conveyance of her person to Rome, to the purpose that His Holiness the Pope should dispose thereof in sort, as it should please him.’ [52] But why was Elizabeth to be tied to a horse and brought across the Channel and the Alps? Was Sixtus planning a particularly gruesome public death for the heretic queen? Or was it a private papal kink: Sixtus would walk past the torture chamber and peep through the bars, mewing like an excited cat? In fact, it seems to have been something altogether more bizarre for a sixteenth-century pope: a kind of schoolboy crush. Nothing like Philip’s unfeigned hate for Elizabeth, who the Spanish king believed he had saved, many years before, from his then wife, Mary.
We, in any case, have a series of conversational snatches from Sixtus that give a sense of his undying admiration for the red-headed Tudor harridan. When, for instance, Elizabeth tried to bribe the Turks to cause havoc against Spain in the Mediterranean:
She is a great woman and were she only Catholic she would be without her match and we would esteem her highly. She omits nothing in the government of her kingdom and is now endeavouring by way of Constantinople to divert the King of Spain from his enterprise. [86]
Or, at a later date:
She certainly is a great queen. Were she only a Catholic, she would be our dearly beloved. Just look how well she governs. She is only a woman – only mistress of half an island – and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all. She enriches her kingdom by Spanish booty, besides depriving Spain of Holland and Zeeland. [87]
Then, as the countdown to the Armada’s launch:
…the queen acts in earnest. Were she a Catholic, she would be our best beloved, for she is of great worth. [155]
Beach’s personal favourite is this one:
What a valiant woman – she braves the two greatest kings by land and sea. A pity we cannot marry, she and I, for our children would have ruled the world. Hibbert, Virgin Queen, 80
It is often argued by historians that Elizabeth was a stick that Sixtus used to beat Philip and his ambassadors. But Sixtus was no diplomat, nor was he a Machiavelli:
Words gushed from him in a torrent, spontaneous, uncalculated, recklessly emotional, apparently utterly revealing. And yet, revealing almost nothing. Not, one guesses, usually from any intent to deceive but rather because this spate of language gave relief to all those surface impulses which his stern inner concentration prevented from finding an outlet in action. (Mattingly, Defeat of the Spanish Armada).
Even a casual reading of Sixtus’ comments, combined with Sixtus’ creepy hope of making Elizabeth into his Vatican lapdog suggests that he was interested in Elizabeth for Elizabeth’s sake. Of course, had Sixtus ever come face to face with the fifty-five year old virgin queen it might have been rather different, particularly had she been in a bad Tudor mood. But Drake’s fireships, Parma’s double dealing and Atlantic storms did for that…
Other proof for Sixtus’ unlikely love for Elizabeth: drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com
All citations unless otherwise referenced from Hutchinson, The Spanish Armada.
