Astraea - Yates

Frances A. Yates

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134554706
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This is Volume V of selected works of Frances A. Yates. Astraea looks at the Imperial theme in the sixteenth century and includes Charles V and the idea of Empire to the Tudor Imperial Reform and the French Monarchy.

PART I

CHARLES V AND THE IDEA OF THE EMPIRE

In the middle of the sixteenth century, the Holy Roman Empire, which had seemed to be dwindling more and more rapidly into a local German concern, suddenly takes on once more something of its old significance. The century in which a new Europe, with its great states built up on principles of realistic statecraft and infused with national patriotism, was in process of formation saw also a late manifestation of the Monarch, the potential Lord of the World, in the person of the Emperor Charles V. The patterns of the new Europe take their shape under the shadow, or the mirage, of a recrudescence of the idea of the Empire. The revival of imperialism in Charles V was a phantom revival. That he looked so much like a Lord of the World was due to the Hapsburg dynastic marriage policy which had brought such vast territories under his rule, and when, after his death, Phillip II succeeded to the Spanish monarchy whilst the imperial title passed to another branch of the Hapsburg family, the whole imposing edifice of the empire of the second Charlemagne broke down. The transitory and unreal character of the empire of Charles V is the aspect of it usually stressed by modern historians. Whilst not denying its unreality in the political sense, it is the purpose of the present essay to suggest that it is precisely as a phantom that Charles’s empire was of importance, because it raised again the imperial idea and spread it through Europe in the symbolism of its propaganda, and that at a time when the more advanced political thinking was discrediting it.

The following attempt to place the empire of Charles V in a historical context is obviously no more than a slight sketch, or a partial evocation of a vast subject. It is not concerned with political realities, nor with straight political history, but with the idea of empire, or the imperialist hope. As Folz has said, ‘A la différence de la notion politique de l’Empire . . . l’espérance impériale demeure extrêmement fluide; elle se meut toujours sur le plan universel.’¹³ Every revival of the Empire, in the person of some great emperor, carried with it, as a phantom, the revival of a universal imperialist hope. These revivals, not excluding that of Charlemagne, were never politically real nor politically lasting; it was their phantoms which endured and exercised an almost undying influence. The empire of Charles V, being a late revival of the ‘espérance impériale’ in connection with the holder of the imperial title, carried the influence of the phantom on into the modern world.

This is our theme. In order to state it clearly, it is necessary to begin with some discussion, inadequate though this must be, of the medieval imperial idea, and the stages leading to what appeared to be the breakup of the concept under the influences of the new historical and political thinking. In this context, the recrudescence of the imperial idea in Charles V is seen to be a revival of an obsolescent notion.

It is chiefly through its reflection in symbolism and poetic imagery that we shall study the revived phantom of the ‘espérance impériale’ in the second Charlemagne, and this whole essay is really the preparation for the study of the influence of the imperial idea on the ethos and symbolism of the rising monarchies of Europe. For though the empire of Charles V died away at his death, it succeeded in translating the phantom of the ‘espérance impériale’ to the national monarchies, particularly those of England and France with which the later essays in this book will be concerned.

The Imperial Idea in the Middle Ages

Romulus Augustulus, the last Emperor of the West in the old succession, was deposed in 475. Thereafter, the Eastern Empire went on alone whilst Western Europe plunged into the Dark Ages and was without a titular emperor until that solemn Christmas Day of the year 800, when, in St Peter’s, Pope Leo III placed the imperial crown on the head of Charlemagne. This was the first renovatio of the Empire in modern times, and it marked the beginning of modern Europe. The Empire thus renewed in Charlemagne was regarded as indeed the Roman Empire itself through the theory of the translation of the Empire. As Constantine had translated the Empire to the East, so now in Charlemagne it was translated back to the West. Thus Charlemagne’s title carried with it in theory the full Roman headship of the world, the universal world rule.¹⁴

Augustine in his De civitate Dei defines human society as consisting of two cities, the civitas Dei, the City of God, the church; and the civitas terrena, the earthly city, the city of the devil.¹⁵ The earthly city was for him the pagan society, the Roman Empire, the supposed moral virtues of which were incapable of establishing a moral order in this world, given over to the devil, through which the City of God must make its pilgrimage towards eternity. Why, then, did the Pope, the Vicar of Christ, the head of the civitas Dei in its earthly pilgrimage, restore the Empire, the earthly city? The answer is that the Empire thus restored was to be the Christianized Empire; the Emperor was to be the defender of the civitas Dei, and to assist it in carrying the message of the church through the world. It was in this light that Charlemagne, whose favourite book was the De civitate Dei, regarded his imperium, not as a civitas terrena in opposition to the civitas Dei, but as a city representing the earthly portion of the church, the kingdom of eternal peace in this world, as Alcuin said.

Thus the figures of the Pope and the Emperor were to go through the Middle Ages: the Pope, the head of the church; the Emperor, the head of the world. The Emperor never had a real authority in the world comparable to the real authority of the Pope in the church. He ruled only certain territories, mainly in Germany, with a vaguely defined and often disputed sovereignty over other monarchs. Yet, ineffective though he may seem, his very existence witnessed to the truth that all Europe was descended from one root, the Roman Empire, and kept alive the idea of the headship of Rome over the whole world, the idea of world unity. There was a symmetry in the Pope-Emperor relationship. One cannot say that they were a pair, for the Pope was higher than the Emperor, and from the Pope the Emperor received his crown. Yet the Emperor repeats the spiritual pattern in the temporal order. The Pope is the Vicar of Christ, and the Emperor, too, is in some kind of special relationship to Christ, perhaps best realized by mentally visualizing an emperor, in his capacity of a deacon of the church, standing at the lectern with his imperial crown on his head and his drawn sword in his hand to read one of the lessons on Christmas Day: ‘And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.’ Holding the lowest rank in the spiritual hierarchy, that of deacon, and the highest rank in the temporal hierarchy, the Emperor has a responsibility for supporting the entry of Christ into the world with the sword of his temporal justice. The Emperor Sigismund read that lesson on Christmas Day of the year 1414 before those assembled for the Council of Constance.¹⁶ The rights of emperors in the councils of the Church, and their rights to put forward proposals for the reform of the church, the subject of endless controversy in the Reformation period, have their roots in the religious associations of the imperial office.

The sanctification of the idea of the Empire was enhanced by the tradition of the providential rôle of Rome as a historical preparation for the birth of Christ, a tradition which is not really compatible with the Augustinian view of the civitas terrena but which had been elaborated, after the Empire became Christian under Constantine, in the adaptations by Christian apologists, particularly Eusebius and Lactantius, of pagan imperial themes. The age of Augustus was the supreme example of a world united and at peace under the Roman Empire, and to that age had also belonged the supreme honour of witnessing the birth of Christ. By consenting to be born into a world ruled by Roman law under the greatest of the Caesars, Christ had consecrated the Roman world order and the Roman justice. Virgil’s Aeneid, with its glorification of Augustus, thus became a semi-sacred poem glorifying the historical framework of the Saviour’s birth. Moreover, Virgil was believed to have spoken with the inspired voice of a prophet when he proclaimed in the Fourth Eclogue that the golden age was about to return, and with it the reign of the Virgin Astraea, or Justice, and that a child would be born destined to rule a reconciled world. These words were understood to refer to the birth of Christ in the golden age of Augustus.¹⁷ Through such associations, it was possible to use pagan imperial rhetoric concerning periodic renovations of the Empire, or returns of the golden age, of medieval Christian emperors, thus retaining something of the cyclic view of history which such expressions imply, though in a Christianized form. A renovatio of the Empire will imply spiritual renovation, for in a restored world, in a new golden age of peace and justice, Christ can reign.

This mysticism must not obscure the fact that, as interpreted at the time and as other ages interpreted it, it was the power, the imperium in the wordly sense, the right to the world rule, which was renewed or restored in Charlemagne and lived in the medieval emperors. The translation of the Empire was to become the keystone in the traditions of German imperialism, in the form that the Empire was taken away from the Greeks and given to the Germans in the person of Charlemagne. And it was to be the pièce de résistance in the arguments by which the French monarchy claimed rights of leadership in Europe, for was not Charlemagne the King of the Franks?

The bestowal of the imperial crown on Charlemagne, though afterwards to be described as the transference of the Empire to the Germans or the Franks, was not so regarded at the time. There was no conscious purpose of settling the office on one nation or dynasty. But we know that in after times the imperial title was in fact to remain with the northern rulers. It might, therefore, be yet another of the interpretations after the event of the translation of the Empire to define it as a translation of the Empire to the North. It was inevitable at the beginning that this should be so, for – to put the situation which afterwards became so highly theorized on its most obvious level – the reason why the Pope needed an emperor was in order to have a temporal ally for his defence, and the temporal power was in the hands of the northern barbarians.

The ideal of the Emperor takes on a northern tinge in those cycles of epic poetry which afterwards grew up about the name and memory of Charlemagne. In them, the emperor-idea is transposed into a feudal world where the imperial pax and justitia have to be made effective through the fighting qualities of the knights. Thus the Charlemagne of the Chanson de Roland, or the Christian Knight-Emperor of the Arthurian romances, is the ideal world-ruler in his northern and feudal transformation. This shifting of the imperial idea to the northern lands casts a haze of romanticism over the classical figure of the Emperor, and that even in Italian eyes. For medieval Italian imperialism looked towards the North for the return of the Emperor, expecting to see him coming thence at the head of an army of shining knights to bring back the golden age of peace and justice, a pathetic but deep-seated illusion which may still account, even in the late fifteenth century, for the delight and admiration with which Italy received the invading armies of Charles VIII, decked out in all the splendid panoply of French chivalry.

Upon the northern and romantic pattern of the ideal Emperor there was superimposed in later medieval times a very precisely defined theory of the imperial office. Amongst the various influences which produced this development, two may be singled out. On the one hand, the remarkable personal ability of certain emperors of the house of Hohenstaufen gave some factual reality to the phantom imperial title. On the other hand, the revival of Roman law at Bologna provided these powerful emperors with a reasoned legal basis for the imperial title.

In Roman law, the Emperor is styled Dominus mundi, the Lord of the World. Imperialist students of Roman law, pondering over this title, found that it implied overlordship of all the kings of the world. ‘There be many provinces in the Roman Empire, with many kings, but only one Emperor, their suzerain’, says Huguccio of Pisa.¹⁸ Here the feudal principle of overlordship is re-interpreted in terms of Roman law. The feudal overlords, or kings, are provincial governors responsible to the Emperor as the one supreme feudal overlord, the one Roman Dominus mundi or world ruler.

It was the Emperor Frederick II, who, both by his sensational career and by his intellectual grasp of Roman law, became one of the most significant exponents of imperialism in medieval times. His manifestoes riveted the attention of Europe on the idea of the Dominus mundi and its claims, and the counter-manifestoes issued by the papal curia made equally clear the claim of the Pope to be the spiritual Lord of the World. For the thirteenth century was the age of law, and if the revival of Roman law had given new clarity to the position of the Emperor, the perfecting of canon law under the great canonist popes – who were themselves, particularly Innocent III, influenced by the revived Roman law – had equally clarified the position of the Pope.¹⁹ Only if the temporal World Ruler was included within the higher sphere of the spiritual World Ruler in a nicely balanced relation between Pope and Emperor could the medieval ideal of world unity be achieved. If the Pope puts forward a temporal claim encroaching on the Emperor’s sphere, or if, conversely, the Emperor puts forward a spiritual claim, encroaching on the Pope’s sphere, the balance is destroyed. And the more the two spheres are legalized and defined, the greater becomes the danger of a clash.

Through his mother, Frederick II was the inheritor of the Norman kingdom of Sicily, which included Naples and part of southern Italy. This northern Emperor thus had a very definite foothold in the South, and in his southern realm he developed the blueprint of his ideal of imperial government. From his Book of Laws, the Sicilian constitutions or Constitutions of Melfi, from the pronouncements of the imperial chancery, from the letters and writings of his circle, an idea can be gained as to how Frederick envisaged the office of the emperor. The emperor is more than the representative of God’s justice on earth; he is the semi-divine intermediary through whom justice flows from God into the world. To quote Kantorowicz in his book on Frederick:²⁰

All the metaphors of the Book of Laws point in the same direction. The Emperor was the sole source of justice. . . . His justice flows as in a flood . . . he interprets the law . . . From him justice flows through the kingdom in rivulets and those who distribute his rule throughout the state are the imperial officials.

In the model kingdom of Sicily, the law was administered by an official class who had received legal training on the pattern approved by Frederick, and it seems that this new lay class of administrators demanded an almost priestly respect as the channels of the divine imperial justice. New forms and ceremonies were evolved to express this hieratic conception, involving what amounted to a revival of emperor worship. Witnesses have described the Emperor presiding over the courts of justice. ‘The Sacra Majestas of the Emperor was enthroned on inaccessible heights; over his head was suspended a gigantic crown; all who approached him must prostrate themselves before the Divus Augustus.’²¹

The philosophical justification for this imperial law state was based on three forces, defined as Necessitas, Justitia, Providentia.²² The existence of a ruler to guide the affairs of the state is a necessity, a law of nature; it is a divine law that such rule must be just; and through divine providentia, or foresight, the Roman Emperor is the just and necessary ruler. Frederick’s conception is derived partly from Roman law; partly from ancient philosophy coming in from those Arabic sources with which he was very familiar; and partly it is an imitation of the ecclesiastical theory of world government, with the Emperor substituted for the Pope as God’s representative on earth, and the hierarchy of legal officials substituted for the hierarchy of the priesthood.

It may have been Frederick’s dream to enforce the pattern of government which he established in the kingdom of Sicily, and the imperial ideals which it embodied, throughout the whole world, but in fact he was not able to extend it even throughout his own domains. In his northern dominions he was still simply the feudal overlord. One might perhaps say that as a great Hohenstaufen emperor he belongs to the northern, the feudal, the knightly, imperial pattern. But as Monarch of Sicily ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Also by Frances A. Yates
• Contents
• Illustrations
• PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• PART I CHARLES V AND THE IDEA OF THE EMPIRE
• PART II THE TUDOR IMPERIAL REFORM
• ELIZABETHAN CHIVALRY: THE ROMANCE OF THE ACCESSION DAY TILTS
• THE TRIUMPH OF CHASTITY
• PART III THE FRENCH MONARCHY
• THE ENTRY OF CHARLES IX AND HIS QUEEN INTO PARIS, 1571
• THE MAGNIFICENCES FOR THE MARRIAGE OF THE DUC DE JOYEUSE, PARIS, 1581
• RELIGIOUS PROCESSIONS IN PARIS, 1583–4
• CONCLUSION: ASTRAEA AND THE GALLIC HERCULES
• APPENDICES
• Boissard’s Costume-Book and Two Portraits
• Antoine Caron’s Paintings for Triumphal Arches
• INDEX