The Birth of Modern Belief: Faith and Judgment from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment

Abstract

to emigrate on the grounds of religion. One of the most striking developments of Charles’s reign was the colonization of Mexico and parts of South America. This should be considered as a rape of these regions, since Charles used treasure and resources shipped over to Europe to fund his wars across the European continent. Little survives concerning the Americas in Charles’s letters, but the conduct of the conquistadors clearly troubled him. He decreed that the book, Spain Victorious by Francisco López de Gómara, about the conquest of the Americas, should not be sold or read. In 1529, Charles accepted the recommendation of his council of the Indies that Peru should be settled, and that Pizarro should be entrusted with the task, but with respect. Pizarro defeated Atahualpa in 1532 and executed him, having first collected enormous quantities of gold and silver as ransom. Appalled by such reports, Pope Paul III issued a Bull in 1537 proclaiming that native Americans were full members of the human race and so not enslaved. The rape of these areas by Charles and his European subjects is utterly unacceptable to modern thinking. Could Charles have done more to stop it? It is difficult not to conclude that the emperor was blinded by European activity – he could have done more. Charles met his end at Yuste where he lived in seclusion, adding two wings to the Jeronymite monastery there. He contracted malaria and died in 1558. During his life, Charles ruled over vast territories. The size of his possessions was to prove a challenge for his successors, for the empire was broken up after his death. His personal rule of such enormous territories made them, as Professor Parker notes, an impossible empire. It can be argued, as Professor Parker does, that the reign of Charles V marked the point when maintaining the balance of power in Europe became the defining problem of western politics because Habsburg hegemony was unacceptable to the international community. Emperor: A New Life of Charles V is a magnificent achievement. It is beautifully illustrated with thirty-nine colour plates, including work by Titian. After Charles’s death, his son Philip left Titian’s great canvas of Charles V at the battle of Mühlberg (plate 25) in the storeroom of the Madrid Alcázar. Such an ungracious act underlines the contrasting opinions with which Charles was viewed by his contemporaries. He ruled a great empire, but at a cost in the Americas and in Europe which twenty-first century society is still having to address.