Philip the Magnanimous

Count of Hesse (r. 1509-1567)

• Born: November 13, 1504
• Birthplace: Marburg, Hesse (now in Germany)
• Died: March 31, 1567
• Place of death: Cassel (now Kassel), Hesse (now in Germany)

Philip the Magnanimous was perhaps the most significant single political supporter of the Protestant Reformation during the critical early years of the movement in the sixteenth century.

Early Life

Philip the Magnanimous succeeded his father, Landgrave (Count) William II, on the throne of Hesse in 1509, when he was not yet five years of age. For half a century, the principality of Hesse had been riven by dynastic feuds and minority administrations, which had allowed the estates to obtain considerable influence. In 1509, a conflict for control of the regency erupted between the mother of young Philip, Anne of Mecklenburg, and the estates, which resulted in civil war and the intervention of neighboring princes, especially the rival Ernestine and Albertine branches of the House of Saxony.

These conflicts continued throughout the minority of Philip, providing an extremely strife-filled youth for the prince, who was often the object of contention and was shuffled about from one faction to another. Anne was supported by the Albertine duke George the Bearded of Saxony and arranged for the marriage of Philip to George’s daughter, Christine. The Ernestine elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony, on the other hand, supported Anne’s opposition. In 1518, when Philip was but fourteen years old, Emperor Maximilian I proclaimed Philip of age in an effort to restore peace, but the landgrave’s mother continued to dominate the government, and civil conflict would continue until Philip assumed personal control of the Hesse throne in the mid-1520’s.

In 1521, Philip attended the Diet of Worms, at which Martin Luther’s teachings were condemned, and left with a strong attachment to the Wittenberg professor. During the following years, he took part in suppressing the uprising of imperial knights led by Franz von Sickingen and Ulrich von Hutten, and the peasant uprising led by Thomas Münzer.

Philip was a prince of considerable personal charm, with a handsome physique. At least during his youth, he was dynamic and outspoken, even to a fault. At the Diet of Speyer in 1526, for example, he was so eager to testify publicly to his new faith that he dined on an ox on a Friday. His activist nature, joined to the caution of his Saxon allies, often led to divided command in the Protestant camp. Despite the obvious sincerity of his adherence to the Reformation, Philip had strong sensual desires that would lead him into bigamy in 1540. On May 12, 1525, his mother died, and Philip became, for the first time, master of his own house.

Life’s Work

By the time of his mother’s death, Philip was effectively master of his principality and was committed to the Lutheran Reformation. During the winter of 1525-1526, Philip reached an agreement with the elector John of Saxony, cousin and rival of his mother’s supporter, to pursue a common policy in defense of the Reformation at the upcoming Diet of Speyer. At that meeting, the princes, led by John and Philip, were able to prevent the enforcement of the decrees against Lutheranism, obtaining instead an agreement that each prince would act in his own lands “in such a way as everyone trusted to justify before God and the Imperial Majesty.” This gave the princes a free hand in their own territories, setting the precedent for the later principle of state supremacy cuius regio, eius religio adopted by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555.

With this mandate, Philip called a synod of the Hessian church at Homburg in October, 1526, which adopted the Reformatio ecclesiarum Hassiae. This plan, primarily the work of François Lambert of Avignon, a Franciscan friar trained at Wittenberg, would have provided the Hessian church with a democratic structure, consisting of elected clergy and annual synods. On the advice of Luther, this model was rejected in favor of that being developed in neighboring Saxony, under which Philip became the effective head of the new church administration.

Twelve months later, Philip summoned the estates of Hesse for the first time in nine years to consider the disposition to be made of the confiscated monastic properties. This Parliament agreed that 41 percent of these revenues were to be used by the prince, while the remaining 59 percent were to serve pious, educational, and ecclesiastical purposes, including the foundation of the University of Marburg to train future clergymen and officials. It was Philip’s liberal endowment of the new university and various pious and charitable institutions that earned for him the sobriquet “the Magnanimous.”

In the atmosphere of mutual suspicion following the rapprochement between Emperor Charles V and Pope Clement VII in 1528, Philip fell prey to the forgeries of Otto von Pack, a discredited councillor of Duke George. Pack persuaded him that Catholic forces were assembling to exterminate the new heresy, whereupon Philip formed an alliance with John, sent feelers to the emperor’s enemies in France and Hungary, and assembled a significant armed force. Although no actual fighting ensued, Philip’s precipitate action in appealing to the enemies of the emperor weakened the Protestant cause at the next diet, also held at Speyer, where in April, 1529, a new law revoked the concessions made three years earlier, halting all ecclesiastical innovations and restoring the jurisdiction of Catholic bishops. Philip joined with six other princes and fourteen cities in the Protest of Speyer in rejecting this decision, from which the adherents of Luther were known as “Protestants.”

By this time, voices other than Luther’s had been raised demanding the reform of the Church, resulting in divided councils among the Protestants. The major controversy was between Luther and Huldrych Zwingli over the doctrine of the Eucharist. Believing that a common front was necessary to defend the Protestant cause, Philip sponsored the Marburg Colloquy from October 1 to 3, 1529, in an effort to promote harmony. The disputants agreed on fourteen points, but their failure to achieve full agreement on the fifteenth article, on the Lord’s Supper, was also the failure of the Protestant movement to achieve unity.

In 1530, Philip took part in the Diet of Augsburg, where an attempt was made to reach agreement between the Lutherans and the Catholics, and was one of the seven princes to subscribe to the Augsburg Confession presented there. With the failure of these negotiations, the emperor ordered the complete restoration of Catholicism. To defend themselves against this threat, the Protestant princes and the cities of Magdeburg and Bremen formed the military Schmalkaldic League in February, 1531. This league became the major political expression of German Protestantism for a generation.

Philip became the leading spirit in the Schmalkaldic League, overshadowing his more cautious cousin Elector John Frederick of Saxony. With French support, in 1534, Philip made the first significant territorial gain for Lutheranism in southern Germany when he conquered Württemberg from the Habsburgs, restoring the previous ruler, the Lutheran duke Ulrich. Philip then gave support to the prince-bishop of Münster in his conflict with the radical Anabaptists, assisting in the siege of the city, which fell on June 25, 1535. Thus, during the 1530’s, Philip was at the height of his influence.

At the age of nineteen, Philip had married Christine of Saxony, a daughter of his mother’s ally, Duke George. The marriage was not successful. Influenced by Luther’s statement that bigamy was not as serious an offense as divorce, he entered into a second union with Margaret von der Saal, which was soon made public. This not only caused dissension among the members of the league but also, because bigamy was a crime against imperial law as well, gave the emperor considerable leverage with Philip.

A confrontation in Germany had been avoided since 1530, largely because of the emperor’s desire to obtain the support of the princes in his wars with the French and the Turks and because of disagreements with the Papacy. In 1544, with the Treaty of Crépy, peace was concluded with France, and in 1545, the Council of Trent began its deliberations. After failing to convince the Lutherans to attend the council, Charles determined on war. At the Diet of Regensburg in 1546, Philip and John Frederick were placed under the ban of the empire.

In the War of the Schmalkaldic League, the dynamic Philip and the cautious John Frederick shared the command with other allies, which was the major cause of their defeat at Mühlberg on April 24, 1547. John Frederick was captured, and Philip was summoned to surrender, with the promise that his life would be spared; he would not suffer perpetual imprisonment, but he would have to pay a substantial fine of 150,000 guilders. Philip consulted his estates, which advised accepting, and they pledged their loyalty to their prince. A regency under Philip’s eldest son was established, which governed during his five-year imprisonment. Taken to the Netherlands, he was not released until after the Truce of Passau in 1552.

The Peace of Augsburg (1555) ended the wars of religion in Germany for this generation. Chief among its provisions was the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, confirming the authority of the German princes over the Church in their lands. During the remaining years of his life, Philip devoted himself primarily to the governance of Hesse, but he strove to promote unity among the Protestants of Germany and to support the Huguenots of France. After his death in 1567, his lands were partitioned among the four sons of his first marriage.

Significance

Philip the Magnanimous, building on the foundations laid during the regency of his mother, broke the power of the estates of Hesse, creating the strong princely authority that would allow his descendants to play an important role in German affairs into the nineteenth century. More important, his early, ardent, and consistent support for the Protestant cause contributed to its spread and eventual acceptance in large parts of Germany.

Although the sincerity of his religious convictions is manifest, so also are the limitations placed on his contributions by the strength of his emotions. His precipitate action in the Pack affair contributed to the Protestant setback at the Diet of Speyer in 1529. His bigamous marriage in 1540 caused scandal for and within the Protestant forces, while politically neutralizing him for a time. His inability to work in harmony with the more cautious John Frederick contributed to the Protestant defeat in 1547.

Despite these failures, Philip undoubtedly contributed significantly to the success of the Lutheran movement. The Protest of Speyer of 1529, the Augsburg Confession of 1530, and the Schmalkaldic League of 1531 were signed by only seven princes. Other than Philip, the only significant signatory was John Frederick. Without Philip’s support, the Lutheran movement in Germany might have been overwhelmed at this critical time in its development. This, alone, is sufficient to justify the inclusion of Philip the Magnanimous among the leading figures of the Reformation.

Bibliography

Bainton, Roland H. The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century. Boston: Beacon Press, 1952. This work by one of the premier scholars of the Reformation is a significant contribution to the interpretation of the Protestant movement. It contains a brief but insightful discussion of the impact of Philip’s actions on the Diet of Speyer in 1529 and of his bigamy.

Cahill, Richard Andrew. Philip of Hesse and the Reformation. Mainz, Germany: P. von Zabern, 2001. Study of Philip’s rule and his effects on both the Reformation in particular and Protestantism in general. Includes bibliographic references and index.

Carsten, Francis Ludwig. Princes and Parliaments in Germany, from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1959. This seminal work on the estates of the lesser German principalities contains an extremely useful discussion of the troubled regency period in Hesse, of the relations of Philip with his subjects, and of the unilateral actions of the landgrave in introducing the Reformation into his principality.

Grimm, Harold J. The Reformation Era, 1500-1650. 2d ed. New York: Macmillan, 1973. Grimm’s masterful study of the Reformation remains unsurpassed among traditional interpretations for its breadth and objectivity. Contains excellent analyses of the character of Philip, his role in the political events of the age, the Sacramentarian controversy and Marburg Colloquy, and the impact of his bigamous marriage.

Holborn, Hajo. The Reformation. Vol. 1 in A History of Modern Germany. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. Reprint. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982. This classical study of German history is especially useful in placing Philip in his historical context and in developing the influence of individual political actions on the course of the Reformation.

Rittgers, Ronald K. The Reformation of the Keys: Confession, Conscience, and Authority in Sixteenth-Century Germany. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. In-depth study of Lutheran reforms in the practice of private confession and their consequences for the Reformation as a whole. Includes illustrations, map, bibliographic references, and index.

Scribner, R. W., and C. Scott Dixon. The German Reformation. 2d ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Classic reconsideration of the social and cultural genesis and consequences of the Reformation in Germany, revised and updated to take into account early twenty-first century scholarship. Includes two bibliographies and an index.

Wright, William John. Capitalism, the State, and the Lutheran Reformation: Sixteenth Century Hesse. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1988. This work utilizes developments in modern historiography to place both the individual prince and the Protestant movement as a whole securely in their socioeconomic setting.