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 In the 16th century the republic was practically a protected state under the power of Spain, the Genoese being the bankers of the monarchy and having entire control of its finances. Several of the younger brothers of Ambrose Spinola sought their fortune in Spain, and one of them, Frederick, distinguished himself greatly as a soldier in Flanders. The eldest brother remained at home to marry and continue the family. In 1592 he was married to Joanna Bacciadonna, daughter of the count of Galerrata. The houses of Spinola and Doria were rivals for authority within the republic. Ambrose Spinola continued the rivalry with the count of Tursi, then the chief of the Dorias. He was not successful, and having lost a lawsuit into which he had entered to enforce a right of pre-emption of a palace belonging to the Salerno family which the Dorias wished to purchase, he decided to withdraw from the city and advance the fortunes of his house by serving the Spanish monarchy in Flanders. In 1602 he and his brother Frederick entered into a contract with the Spanish government—a “condotta” on the old Italian model. It was a speculation on which Spinola risked the whole of the great fortune of his house. Ambrose Spinola undertook to raise 9000 men for land service, and Frederick to form a squadron of galleys for service on the coast. Several of Frederick’s galleys were destroyed by English war-ships on his way up channel. He himself was slain in an action with the Dutch on the 24th of May 1603. Ambrose Spinola marched overland to Flanders in 1602 with the men he had raised at his own expense. During the first months of his stay in Flanders the Spanish government played with schemes for employing him on an invasion of England, which came to nothing. At the close of the year he returned to Italy for more men. His actual experience as a soldier did not begin till as general, and at the age of thirty-four, he undertook to continue the siege of Ostend on the 29th of September 1603. The ruinous remains of the place fell into his hands on the 22nd of September 1604. The archduke Albert and the infanta Clara Eugenia, daughter of Philip II., who then governed Flanders and had set their hearts on taking Ostend, were delighted at his success, and it won him a high reputation among the soldiers of the time. On the close of the campaign he went to Spain to arrange with the court, which was then at Valladolid, for the continuance of the war. At Valladolid he insisted on being appointed commander-in-chief in Flanders. By the 9th of April he was back at Brussels, and entered on his first campaign. The wars of the Low Countries consisted at that time almost wholly of sieges, and Spinola made himself famous by the number of places he took in spite of the efforts of Maurice of Nassau to save them. In 1606 he again went to Spain. He was received with much outward honour, and entrusted with a very secret mission to secure the government of Flanders in case of the death of the archduke or his wife, but he could not obtain the grandeeship which he desired, and was compelled to pledge the whole of his fortune as security for the expenses of the war before the bankers would advance funds to the Spanish government. As he was never repaid, he was in the end utterly ruined. The Spanish government began now to have recourse to devices for keeping him away from Spain. Until the signing of the twelve years’ truce in 1609 he continued to command in the field with general success. After it was signed he retained his post, and had among other duties to conduct the negotiations with France when the prince of Condé fled to Flanders with his wife in order to put her beyond the reach of the senile admiration of Henry IV. of France. By 1611 Spinola’s financial ruin was complete, but he obtained the desired “grandeza.” In 1614 he had some share in the operations connected with the settlement of Cleves and Juliers, On the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War he made a vigorous campaign in the lower Palatinate and was rewarded by the grade of captain-general. After the renewal of the war with Holland in 1621 he gained the most renowned victory of his career—the capture of Breda after a long siege (Aug. 28, 1624–June 5, 1625) and in spite of the most strenuous efforts of the prince of Orange (Frederick Henry) to save it. The surrender of Breda is the subject of the great picture by Velasquez, known as “Las Lanzas”; the portrait of Spinola is from memory.

The taking of Breda was the culmination of Spinola’s career. Utter want of money paralysed the Spanish government, and the new favourite, Olivares, was jealous of the general. Spinola could not prevent Frederick Henry of Nassau from taking Groll, a good set-off for Breda. In January 1628 he left for Spain, resolved not to resume the command in Flanders unless security was given him for the support of his army. At Madrid he had to endure much insolence from Olivares, who endeavoured to make him responsible for the loss of Groll. Spinal was resolute not to return to Flanders. Meanwhile the Spanish government added a war over the succession to the duchy of Mantua to its other burdens. Spinola was appointed as plenipotentiary and general. He landed at Genoa on the 19th of September 1629. In Italy he was pursued by the enmity of Olivares, who caused him to be deprived of his powers as plenipotentiary. Spinola’s health broke down, and, having been robbed of his money, grudged the compensation he asked for his children and disgraced in the presence of the enemy, he died on the 25th of September 1630 at the siege of Casale, muttering the words “honour” and “reputation.” The title of marquis of Los Balbases, still borne by his representatives in Spain, was all that his family received for the vast fortune they spent in the service of Philip III. and IV.

Don A. Rodriguez Villa has published a biography well supplied with original documents—Ambrosia Spinola, primer marques de los Balbases (Madrid, 1905).

 SPINOLA, CRISTOVAL ROJAS DE (d. 1695), Spanish ecclesiastic, was general of the Franciscan order in Madrid. He went to Vienna as confessor to the Spanish wife of Leopold I., and became bishop of Wienerisch-Neustadt in 1685. He endeavoured to reconcile the Protestant churches with the Roman Catholic, and at a conference at Hanover in 1683 presented his Regulae circa Christianorum, omnium ecclesiasticum reunionem. The Helmstädt theologians, represented by Gerhard Molanus (1633–1722), at the same time put forward their Methodus reducendae unionis. The discussions were approved by the pope and the emperor, but had no popular feeling behind them, and though the negotiations were continued for ten years, especially between Molanus on the one side and Bossuet on the other, no agreement was reached, for the Protestants could not accept the Council of Trent as authoritative or surrender the matter of communion under both species. Spinola died on the 12th of March 1695.

SPINOZA, BARUCH (1632–1677), or, as he afterwards signed himself, Benedict de Spinoza, Dutch philosopher, was born at Amsterdam on the 24th of November 1632. His parents belonged to the community of Jewish emigrants from Portugal and Spain who, fleeing from Catholic persecution in the Peninsula, had sought refuge in the nearly emancipated Netherlands. The name, variously written Espinoza, De Spinoza, D’Espinoza and Despinoza, probably points to the province of Leon as the previous home of the family; there are no fewer than five townships so called in the neighbourhood of Burgos. The philosopher’s grandfather appears to have been the recognized head of the Jewish community in Amsterdam in 1628, and his father, Michael Espinoza, was repeatedly warden of the synagogue between 1630 and 1650. The father was a merchant in fair circumstances. He was thrice married and had six children, all of whom predeceased him save a daughter Rebekah, born of the first marriage, and Baruch, the son of his second wife. Spinoza’s mother died in 1638 when the boy was barely six years old, and his father in 1654 when he was in his twenty-second year. Spinoza received his first training under the senior rabbi, Saul Levi Morteira, and Manasseh ben Israel, a theological writer of some eminence whose works show considerable knowledge of philosophical authors. Under these teachers he became familiar with the Talmud and, what was probably more important for his own development, with the philosophical writings of Ibn Ezra and Maimonides, Levi ben Gerson, Hasdai Crescas, and other representatives of Jewish