‘Comme représentant nostre propre personne’-The Regency Ordinances of Charles V as a Historical Source

Abstract

No Holy Roman emperor after him-and few before-held such extensive claims to rule as did Charles V. These claims did not represent a coherent spatial complex; they included a multitude of countries, even leaving aside the American possessions. In kind and in intensity, the emperor’s authority varied between countries as it depended upon constitutional arrangements, and on social, economic and ecclesiastical conditions. This absence of homogeneity within his dominions was one of the fundamental problems the emperor had to face, since his goals were not limited to the simple accumulation of claims to rule over countries with such diverse historical trajectories. In the emperor’s view all his domains existed to serve his goals, the foremost of which were the restoration of his Burgundian inheritance, dominance over Italy as the key to imperial hegemony in Europe, and the internal reform of the Roman Church. A task of this magnitude would raise uncommonly difficult problems of co-ordination and communication; the attempt to solve them, through appropriate institutions and procedures, constituted a fundamental aspect of the political system of Charles V.²