Abstract
On 24 February 1525, Francis I of France was taken prisoner by the Imperial troops at the Battle of Pavia. In his official account of the battle, Alfonso de Valdés (1490?–1532), Court Latinist and secretary to Charles V, wrote as follows:
It seems that God, by a miracle, has granted the Emperor this victory so that he may not only defend Christendom and resist the power of the Turk, if he should offer to attack it; but that, once these civil wars (for so they should be named, since they take place between Christians) are ended, he may also seek out the Turks and Moors on their own lands and, exalting our holy Catholic faith as his ancestors did, recover the empire of Constantinople and the holy mansion of Jerusalem which for our sins they hold in their possession. Thus it may come about, as is prophesied by many, that under the rule of this most Christian prince, the whole world may receive our holy Catholic faith and the words of our Redeemer may be fulfilled: Fiet unum ovile et unus pastor.
What strikes one here is a complex of attitudes which, in retrospect, can be seen to define a particularly crucial moment in the history of sixteenth-century Spain.
One Monarch, one Empire and one Sword
Hernando de Acuria (1518–80?)
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Further Reading
J. C. Baroja, Los Moriscos del Reino de Granada (Madrid, 1957; 2nd edn, 1976 ).
M. Bataillon, Erasme et l’Espagne (Paris, 1937); trs. A. Alatorre (2nd edn, Mexico, 1966 ).
Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II trs. Siân Reynolds, 2 vols (London, 1975).
J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (London, 1963 ).
Bernice Hamilton, Political Thought in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Oxford, 1963).
Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians (London, 1959).
R. O. Jones, A Literary History of Spain: The Golden Age; Prose and Poetry (London, 1971 ).
H. Kamen, Spain 1469–1714: A Society of Conflict (London, 1983 ).
A. A. Parker, ‘An Age of Gold: Expansion and Scholarship in Spain’, in The Age of the Renaissance, ed. D. Hay (London, 1967 ).
G. Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1639 (Cambridge, 1972 ).
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© 1989 J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring
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Terry, A. (1989). War and Literature in Sixteenth-Century Spain. In: Mulryne, J.R., Shewring, M. (eds) War, Literature and the Arts in Sixteenth-Century Europe. Warwick Studies in the European Humanities. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19734-7_6
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