Charles V, Emperor

CARLO V, IMPERATORE. — Born in Ghent on 24 February 1500, died at S. Giusto on 21 September 1558. Son of Filippo il Bello, Archduke of Austria, and Giovanna la Pazza, he inherited the Habsburg possessions from his paternal grandfather Massimiliano d’Austria (d. 1519), the possessions of the House of Burgundy from his paternal grandmother Maria di Borgogna (d. 1482), the kingdom of Aragon with its possessions in Italy from his maternal grandfather Ferdinando il Cattolico (d. 1516), and the kingdom of Castile with its possessions in America from his maternal grandmother Isabella di Castiglia (d. 1504). His father Filippo had predeceased his paternal grandfather in 1506; Giovanna had lost her mind that same year.

His early education took place at the splendid Burgundian court (among his principal advisers was Guglielmo di Crov, lord of Chièvres). His first stay in Spain found him disoriented, both by the formalism and severity of the court and by the opposition of the nobility, firmly attached to its own «national» concerns. His political training continued under Cisneros and then under Mercurino da Gattinara: the latter had, in the spiritual and political-moral formation of C., an impor-

(phot. Bildarchiv d. Ö. Nationalbibliothek)
CARLO V, IMPERATORE - Portrait of his youth with the Golden Fleece («Goldenes Vliess»). Engraving from a portrait by an unknown Flemish artist, preserved in the Louvre.

a decisive importance, precisely because he directed C.’s lofty feeling of pride and his desire for bonneur et réputation toward the grandiose myth of empire; it was Mercurino who, against the interests and sentiments of the Spanish court, urged the sovereign to resolve European policy by making the “garden of the empire”—that Italy which had given Mercurino birth—its centre. The most concrete result of Mercurino’s policy was C.’s imperial election (28 June 1519), an election obtained by C. through the corruption of the electors and not without threats: by then, the myth of universal monarchy had entered C.’s mind, to be revived and advocated in theory and implemented in practice by every means. The outcome of the election now placed the two great rivals definitively and to the death face to face: C. and Francis I, the former intent on upholding that imperial dream, the latter on defending more realistically a policy of equilibrium that would at least preserve the kingdom of France. The struggle between the two protagonists, logically, was not merely a contest between two personalities, but unfolded within the broader history of Europe: the Battle of Pavia (1525), in which Francis I was taken prisoner; the Treaty of Madrid (1526), by which the king of France was released, on the condition, however, that he surrender his rights over Italy and hand Burgundy over to C.; Francis’s repudiation of the treaty, his alliance with Venice and the Pope; the sack of Rome (1527) by the mercenary Landsknechts in the emperor’s service; Andrea Doria’s defection from the French camp to the imperial one and the failure of the French expedition to Naples; Francis’s alliance with the Turks and C.’s concerns, which prompted him to sign the Peace of Cambrai (1529); C.’s coronation by Clement VII and the restoration of the Medici in Florence (1530); the resumption of the war and C.’s weakness, as he was pressed by Francis, the Barbary corsairs, the Turks, and the expansion of the Protestant revolution; C.’s halting of the Turks, peace with the Turks themselves, and the subsequent peace with Francis at Crépy (1544).

C.’s position in relation to the Protestant revolution oscillated between Christianity and political Europe, between the defence of Catholic tradition and the implementation of that raison d’état which in the sixteenth century was beginning to find its theorists and advocates; on the one hand, his sincere Catholic desire to destroy heresy, on the other, his concessions as a politician seeking a balance of forces and the weakening

of the German princes (and, in order to weaken them, he proceeded cautiously to prevent a powerful counter-offensive on their part that would have placed him in a desperate situation). He dreamed of being Luther’s definitive exterminator, but in the meantime did not put his proud resolve into practice; thus he proclaimed himself the guardian of orthodoxy, but did not oppose Henry VIII for fear of seeing him abandon his political and military neutrality; he declared himself, and was, devoted to the papacy, but—despite the fact that the actual guilt lay with the undisciplined troops—his anti-curial policy at a certain point indirectly caused the devastation of Rome in the terrible sack of 1527. By the Diet of Speyer in 1526 he undertook to permit the Lutherans to practise the reformed confession until the convocation of the Council; in 1529 he sought to withdraw their freedom, but then confirmed it out of fear of war; he displayed great hesitation over opening the Council as Rome had proposed it, and even after the collapse of the Schmalkaldic League he did indeed desire the restoration of religious unity, but wished to retain for himself a “civil” supremacy over Christendom.

A sincerely religious spirit and a man of honour: this is how Marino Cavalli, the Venetian ambassador to him, describes him in a splendid passage: “His Majesty is very religious: he hears two Masses every day; vespers and sermons only on feast days; he says many prayers; he confesses and receives Communion four times a year; and as far as can be seen, he lives as a Christian and as a private gentleman. He has no imperfection whatsoever, abstaining from all vices; and in all his actions, down to the smallest, he is so composed and well ordered, so attentive and judicious, that no one could desire anything more, with certain gestures and certain words so prudent that they deserve to be admired by everyone. He always speaks humanely, never grows angry, never rages; but always has justice on his lips, hope in God, and grounds his affairs in reason. He is unyielding on points of honour and on every minor detail contained in the peace treaties and alliances he has with others. He postpones or forgives the injuries done by his men and those done to himself when it serves his greater convenience. He is fixed in his opinions; he never apparently does anything under compulsion, and would rather let the world perish than do anything by force” (E. Alberi, Le Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato durante

the sixteenth century, 1st series, II, Florence 1841, pp. 213–15). The ambassador’s passage dates from 1551, that is, from the time when a complex mystical experience had gained ascendancy in the emperor’s soul, an intimate and penetrating awareness of human frailty; that sad sense of death, which he had breathed in the youthful restlessness of the Burgundian milieu, grew with the years and disappointments; that feeling had been veiled by his ardent chivalric spirit, by his constant desire to “ganar honra y fama perpetua,” which he also inculcated in his son (K. Brandi, Berichte und Studien zur Geschichte Karls V., XII, in Nachrichten der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, 1935, p. 58); certainly he must also have absorbed much from the broad and sometimes subterranean Spanish mystical movements, but the matter should be thoroughly re-examined (for example, it appears that under him the movement of the alumbrados was fiercely opposed: cf. Alonso de S. Cruz, Crónica del Emperador Carlos V, III, Madrid 1922, p. 19 ff. It is certain that the milieu was also saturated with revivals of non-heterodox mysticism: Francesco de Ossuna, Bernardino da Laredo, etc.). Above all, when hope for the dream of universal monarchy faded, a broken sense of the transience of human affairs took hold in the heart of the weary emperor, who abdicated in 1556 and withdrew to a monastery; although flashes of his former valour had not entirely died out, and he continued to formulate political advice for his son Philip II, a practice that in any case continued the painstaking instructions he had given concerning his son’s education when the latter was still young (cf. J. M. March, Niñez y juventud de Felipe II, I, Madrid 1941, pp. 81–212, 271–335; II, ibid. 1942, pp. 5–39). – Vedi Tav. L.