Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations and maps
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Rebirth of the Caesars
- 2 The Return of Caesar: The Hybrid Empire of Charles V, 1517 to 1556
- 3 The Spanish Empire, Apex of the Imperial Renaissance
- 4 The Renaissance of Empire in France
- 5 Britain as Late Renaissance Empire
- Conclusion
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- References
2 - The Return of Caesar: The Hybrid Empire of Charles V, 1517 to 1556
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations and maps
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Rebirth of the Caesars
- 2 The Return of Caesar: The Hybrid Empire of Charles V, 1517 to 1556
- 3 The Spanish Empire, Apex of the Imperial Renaissance
- 4 The Renaissance of Empire in France
- 5 Britain as Late Renaissance Empire
- Conclusion
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
What security, what certainty was (Pope) Clement (VII) able to have that Caesar, not only in name and title Caesar, but (also in) theory, authority, and power similar to the ancient Caesars, did not aspire to restore to the imperial crown its pristine majesty and dignity?
Francesco Guicciardini describing the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in The Political DiscoursesRoughly two centuries after Petrarch had urged the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV to imitate the ancient Caesars, there appeared on the European stage a new emperor, Charles V, who most closely resembled the Caesars of old in “theory, authority, and power.” This was not a claim made lightly or rhetorically by a champion of an imperial revival as the elder Petrarch had been. Rather, it was the judgment of a former servant of the Florentine Republic who longed for its restoration, Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540). As the author of The History of Italy, the Political Discourses, and On the Discourses of Machiavelli, among many other writings, the humanist-statesman was the principal sixteenth-century architect of the Italian national narrative that blamed foreigners like the kings of France and Spain for all of Italy’s troubles after the French invasion of 1494.
He was also one of the central examples of a Renaissance historian who, following the ancient models of Livy, Tacitus, and others, embraced a hard-edged political realism in his analysis. His judgment of the power of Charles V was the result of more than three decades of political experience that spanned the period from 1512 to his death in 1540. His work included a term as ambassador to the Spanish court for the Republic of Florence (1512), courtier and military general for the Medici popes Leo X and Clement VII, governor of Modena for the Republic of Florence, and officeholder under the restored Medici government in the 1530s. His assessment and fear of the imperial power and agenda of Charles V was thus based on his first-hand knowledge of the emperor’s actions and their consequences for Italy during the first half of his reign. It was also the result of a cold look at his vast political inheritance and pretensions in Italy.
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- Information
- The Renaissance of Empire in Early Modern Europe , pp. 74 - 137Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
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