Charles V

Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1519-1556)

• Born: February 24, 1500
• Birthplace: Ghent, Duchy of Burgundy (now in Belgium)
• Died: September 21, 1558
• Place of death: Monastery of San Jeronimo de Yuste, Extremadura, Spain

Charles V initiated one hundred fifty years of Habsburg dynastic hegemony in Europe, stopped the Turkish advance in Europe, promoted reform, and expanded Spanish colonization in the Americas.

Early Life

Charles V was born in Ghent, the ancient capital of Flanders and the heart of the duchy of Burgundy. In 1477, Burgundy escheated to Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, of the house of Habsburg. Maximilian’s rivalry with the French over the Burgundian lands led to an alliance with Spain that resulted in the marriage of his son, Philip, to Joan, daughter of Ferdinand II and Isabella I. Charles, as the eldest son of the couple, became duke of Burgundy in 1506, king of Spain in 1516, and Holy Roman Emperor in 1519.

When Charles entered Spain in 1517, he could not speak the native language and was surrounded by a Flemish court that sought to monopolize high offices in the Spanish church and state. Physically, Charles appeared rather awkward, a lanky teenager with the jutting Habsburg jaw. After two years of ineffective kingship in Spain, Charles was elected Holy Roman Emperor to the dismay of many Spaniards, who believed that Charles would relegate their country to a peripheral province to be drained of wealth for imperial ambitions. Thus, almost immediately after Charles left Spain for his coronation, the Castilian cities initiated the Comunero Revolt (1520-1522) to force Charles’s return and a reform of political administration.

The imperial election brought Charles problems outside Spain as well. Since the Investiture Conflict of the twelfth century, the powerful German princes, especially the seven imperial electors, had limited the emperor’s power through the Germanic Diet, the major representative and administrative institution of the Holy Roman Empire. In addition, Germany’s political weakness meant that its church was more directly under the control of the Papacy and, therefore, paid a disproportionate amount to the papal treasury. The desire of some of the princes to end papal taxation, obtain vast church lands, and maintain a decentralized political administration quickly merged with Martin Luther’s call for a doctrinal reform of the Church following his attack on the sale of indulgences in Germany in 1517.

Charles held a diet of the Holy Roman Empire at Worms in 1521 to determine the fate of Martin Luther and his princely supporters. After listening to Luther speak, the emperor had the diet condemn the reformer with an imperial ban, though by that point most Protestant princes had left the meeting and, therefore, considered the ban nonbinding on them. Charles could not take action against the Protestants because of the Comunero Revolt and a simultaneous French attack in Italy that aimed to regain Naples from Spain.

Life’s Work

In 1522, Charles returned to Spain and began his life’s work, the forging of Habsburg hegemony in Europe based on Spanish wealth and power. At Worms, he had received reports from Hernán Cortés about his conquest of Mexico. From that point, Charles’s new empire in the Americas contributed its silver to the protection of his European inheritance. Cortés would be followed by Francisco Pizarro, conqueror of the Incas, and a host of lesser-known conquistadores. Charles reformed his court and from then on Spaniards predominated in high offices throughout his empire. His residence in Spain led Charles to appoint his brother Ferdinand as regent in Germany. Charles’s decision to make Spain the center of his empire contributed to a resounding victory in Italy over the French king, Francis I , at the Battle of Pavia in 1525.

Charles could not enjoy his victory long, as a new and more dangerous enemy appeared to threaten his empire, Süleyman the Magnificent , sultan of the Ottoman Empire . The Ottoman Turks mounted the greatest Muslim attack on Christendom since the eighth century. In 1529, Süleyman led a huge army into Austria (personal lands of the Habsburgs) and laid siege to Vienna; only inclement weather prevented the fall of the great city. Sensing an advantage, Francis renewed his attacks, forcing Charles to fight in Italy and Burgundy as well as southern Germany. The French and Turkish cooperation led to their formal alliance in 1535.

The Franco-Turkish War forced Charles to adopt a more conciliatory policy in regard to the religious conflict in Germany. (He was influenced as well by his own reform inclinations, which were similar to those of Desiderius Erasmus, the famous Humanist and counselor to the emperor.) Charles sanctioned a series of diets in Germany to reach a settlement on the religious conflict in order to meet the Turkish threat. The diets of Speyer (1526) and Augsburg (1530) failed to achieve agreement, but they recognized the legal existence of the Lutheran religion pending the convocation of a general church council that Charles pledged to convene. In return, the German princes, Protestant and Catholic, rallied to Charles’s war against the French and the Turks. As a result, the Turkish advance into Central Europe was finally halted during a decisive campaign in 1532.

Pope Clement VII sided with France during the war in order to avoid the emperor’s pressure for a general council that might reduce the pope’s authority. This proved disastrous as a combined German-Spanish army marched on Rome and sacked it in 1527. Clement agreed to call a general council, though it failed to materialize because of the renewal of war between Charles and Francis over Milan in 1535.

As the Franco-Turkish Alliance became operative during the war, Charles decided to deliver another blow against the Turks. In 1535, he organized a massive armada and captured Tunis, the base of Turkish power in the western Mediterranean. Following his victory, Charles triumphantly marched through Italy and appeared at the papal court, where he spoke in Spanish condemning the French for their alliance with the Turks and preventing the convocation of a general council. Charles finally secured a favorable peace with the Franco-Turkish Alliance in 1544 and gained the support of Francis for a general council. Charles then turned his attention toward resolving the religious conflict in Germany.

Pope Paul III recognized the urgent need to reform the Church but wanted to avoid any diminution of papal authority and any doctrinal compromise with Protestantism that might result from a general council. He sanctioned the Jesuit Order (founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola), whose schools cleansed Humanistic studies of paganism and used them to reinforce Catholic doctrine and improve the quality of the clergy. Having earned the reputation of a reformer, Paul agreed to call a general council in the city of Trent on terms that ensured papal domination of the council.

Charles tried to create a sympathetic atmosphere for a religious compromise at the pending council by convening the German Diet in Regensburg in 1541. Papal and Lutheran representatives agreed on several points, including a compromise position on faith and justification (double justification), but failed to settle issues surrounding the role of the Sacraments. In the end, even the agreement on double justification met with condemnation by the pope and Luther.

Charles abandoned his policy of peaceful negotiation in 1545 for three reasons: The Lutherans refused to participate in the Council of Trent because they correctly believed that it would be dominated by the pope, the French and Turks were no longer threatening, and Charles feared that the spread of Lutheranism among imperial electors would lead to the election of a Protestant emperor. Charles believed that with a victory over the Schmalkaldic League, the alliance of Protestant princes, he could force the Lutheran princes to cooperate with the Council of Trent and reunite the Church.

The Schmalkaldic War (1546-1547) ended with a dramatic victory for Charles at the Battle of Mühlberg. Yet the fruits of victory were spoiled at the Council of Trent, where the pope, fearing an overly powerful emperor, rejected Charles’s demands to move slowly, saving doctrinal issues for later discussion with Lutheran representatives. Instead, Paul enumerated and condemned Protestant doctrines and clarified traditional Catholic orthodoxy. The initial decrees of Trent meant that Charles would have to pacify the religious conflict in Germany himself.

The result was the Augsburg Interim of 1548, which provided for clerical marriage, communion in two kinds, and the half-Protestant doctrine of double justification. Otherwise, the interim reimposed the rites of the old religion. The interim applied only to German Protestants and was almost universally hated: The pope believed that it was a usurpation of his authority, the Lutherans viewed it as the reimposition of a foreign (Roman) church, and it failed to bring about the religious reunification of Germany sought by moderates. The breach was irreconcilable.

Even princes who were neutral during the Schmalkaldic War grew impatient with Charles’s German policies. Political concerns loomed as large as religious ones. Charles had humiliated great princes with arrest and imprisonment. Following the war, his attempts to create an Imperial League and to make the imperial office hereditary threatened the princes’ traditional predominance in the Holy Roman Empire. In order to regain their religious and political liberties, Protestant princes struck an alliance with the young French king Henry II in 1552. In return for helping to secure Protestant liberty, France gained the strategic fortress cities of Metz, Toul, and Verdun in the Rhineland; thus, the gates into Germany were opened to French influence. In order to defend his lands from French attack, Charles quickly made peace with the Protestant princes. The final religious settlement for Germany was the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, which stated that each prince in the Holy Roman Empire would determine whether his state would be Catholic or Lutheran. The settlement also ended Charles’s attempts to create strong monarchical power in the Holy Roman Empire.

Charles did not sign the Peace of Augsburg, as he began divesting his authority in Germany to Ferdinand. He divided his lands between Ferdinand and his son Philip: Ferdinand was given Germany and the imperial title, while Philip received Spain, Naples, the American colonies, Burgundy, and Milan. Following the territorial division, Charles abdicated the Spanish throne in 1556 and retired into a Spanish monastery, San Jerónimo de Yuste, where he studied religious works and contemplated his failure to maintain the religious unity of Christendom. He died two years later.

Significance

At Yuste, Charles V considered his reign a failure. Yet his moderate policy toward the Protestants prior to 1545 was essential for the defeat of the Turks and the reform of the Catholic Church. He led Spain into its Golden Age (1500-1650), when it became, for the first time in its history, the dominating political and cultural power in Europe.

Philip II became the sword of the Counter-Reformation, while Spanish spirituality, exemplified by the Jesuits, was its soul. The Council of Trent represented a crucial turning point for Catholicism, as internal reform was essential for the reversal of Protestant gains in France, Poland, Hungary, and southern Germany.

If Charles was depressed for having lost part of Europe to Protestantism, he could take comfort in his opening of two new continents to Western influence. The colonial enterprise represented more a drain than a boon to Spain’s resources prior to the 1530’s. Given Charles’s European commitments, he might have stalled the conquests rather than encouraged them. Mexico, Central America, and most of South America were all conquered during Charles’s reign. He began the institutionalization of the colonial empire by creating the Council of the Indies and formulating the New Laws of 1542 and 1543, which aimed to make the assimilation of native South, Central, and North Americans more humane.

Charles was both the end of one chapter in European history and the beginning of another. He was the last Holy Roman Emperor to dominate Europe and the last monarch to adhere to medieval ideals of chivalry. On the other hand, the division of his empire and development of Spain encouraged the emergence of the European state system and began a process of global Westernization that has continued into the twenty-first century.

Bibliography

Blockmans, Wim. Emperor Charles V, 1500-1558. Translated by Isola van den Hoven-Vardon. London: Arnold, 2002. Blockmans attempts to survey the scope of the vast territory and diverse culture of the Holy Roman Empire by analyzing the relationship between Charles as an individual and the complex, rigid, yet unstable power structures within which he governed. Includes illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, index.

Brandi, Karl. The Emperor Charles V: The Growth and Destiny of a Man and a World Empire. Translated by C. V. Wedgwood. 1939. Reprint. London: J. Cape, 1963. This is a standard biography though somewhat slanted toward Charles’s German concerns. Contains a detailed account of Charles as a classic Renaissance monarch who ruled each realm through traditional institutions but integrated them through dynastic policy. The thesis that Charles desired a world empire has long been contested.

Fernández-Santamaría, J. A. The State, War, and Peace: Spanish Political Thought in the Renaissance, 1516-1559. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1977. An excellent analysis of the impact Charles V’s imperial policies had on the evolution of Spanish political thought. Argues that Charles’s elevation of Spain led to a modern theory of state and empire. Also provides a detailed analysis of debates arising from American conquests over the legitimacy and extent of Spanish authority in the New World.

Fischer-Galati, Stephen A. Ottoman Imperialism and German Protestantism, 1521-1555. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959. A survey of Charles’s relations with the Turks and how they influenced his policies toward the Lutheran princes. Argues that early Protestant success was dependent on Turkish advances. Temporary guarantees of security granted in 1526 and 1532 could not be revoked because of the continued pressure of the Franco-Turkish alliance.

Koenigsberger, Helmut B. “The Empire of Charles V in Europe.” In The Reformation, 1520-1559. Vol. 2 in The New Cambridge Modern History, edited by G. R. Elton. 2d ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. A good, short survey of political administration in Charles’s heterogenous empire. This is the best place to begin a study of how Charles governed his empire: the type of institutions he had to work through in each area and the amount of revenue they contributed. This is also a good insight into Charles as the model Renaissance monarch, neither an absolutist nor a feudal monarch.

Lynch, John. Spain, 1516-1598: From Nation State to World Empire. Cambridge, Mass.: B. Blackwell, 1991. This revised edition of the first volume of Spain Under the Habsburgs provides a topical survey of Spain during the reigns of Charles and Philip. Particularly good on economic and social developments that contributed to the decline of Spain in the seventeenth century. Also demonstrates the impact of the American colonies on the Spanish economy and Habsburg military campaigns. Good synthesis of a vast amount of secondary scholarship.

Maltby, William. The Reign of Charles V. New York: Palgrave, 2002. Monograph balances biography of Charles with broad analysis of his foreign and domestic policies and their historical consequences. Includes maps, bibliographic references, index.

Tracy, James D. Emperor Charles V, Impresario of War: Campaign Strategy, International Finance, and Domestic Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Examination of the financial and political consequences of Charles V’s military campaigns. Discusses Charles as a field commander of his armies, as well as the international financial community that loaned Charles the money to pay for battles and thereby gained control over parts of his lands. Also discusses the local governments within the empire that learned to exploit Charles’s need for money. Includes illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, index.

Wallenstein, Immanuel. The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press, 1974. This book argues that Charles’s empire and the impact of American silver contributed to the shift of Europe’s economic axis from the Mediterranean to a northwestern European core, which fostered the development of capitalist nation-states and an international division of labor based on peripheral reaction to core demands. An intriguing argument but difficult reading for the novice in history and economics.