Caesar's conscience counsel and crisis in the Hispanic world 1500--1560

Despite enormous geographic barriers and communication obstacles, subjects of the Emperor Charles V inundated the court with solicited and unsolicited advice, and they frequently clashed with each other to convey information to their itinerant ruler. The unifying theme of this correspondence was counsel. More than simply the art of advising princes, counsel referred to the function of rational thought and deliberation (consilium) through which the intellect discerned the truth and ruled the soul and body in accordance with it. This dissertation explores the discourse of counsel in the first half of the sixteenth century, using printed books and archival sources from Castile, Rome, and Spanish America. In so doing, it redefines the notion of empire, not as a collection of disparate territories and legal systems, but as a metaphysical realm, the conscience, in which the government of reason struggled to dominate its recalcitrant subjects, the passions.;The first chapter examines texts of the specula principum genre, interpreting them, not as political advice manuals, but rather as blueprints of the psyche and tools for analyzing and correcting behavior. Subsequent chapters reveal how the emperor, his counselors, and his subjects inserted themselves into this discourse. From their perspective, the worst crises of the early sixteenth century reflected an internal war within the body and soul, which, in turn, mirrored an external battle between the mystical bodies of Christ and Satan. Chapter 2 examines correspondence from the tumultuous first half-decade of the reign of Charles V in Castile, which culminated in the War of the Comunidades (1520--1522). While most historians depict this conflict as a constitutional crisis, this chapter argues that the chronic absence of the monarch fomented a crisis of counsel in which rival groups fought to control the truth that the ruler perceived. Chapter 3 analyzes the correspondence of Cardinal Garcia de Loaysa, the personal confessor to Charles V, who espoused a unique vision of Universal Monarchy, based, not on temporal dominion, but rather on the equilibrium of the soul. Chapter 4 examines the trans-Atlantic debate on the New Laws of 1542, integrating the well-known debates on the rationality and humanity of indigenous peoples into the larger discourse on the government of mind and body, which did not discriminate among human beings. In Peru, the controversy over the New Laws descended into civil war when settlers led by Gonzalo Pizarro overthrew the viceroy in the name of the emperor and God. Chapter 5 offers a revisionist interpretation of this event, portraying it less as a conventional military conflict than a war of communication. While allies fabricated an image of a virtuous ruler, enemies painted Pizarro as a maniacal tyrant based on the archetypes of contemporary literature. Chapter 6 reconstructs how Charles V and his counselors justified war against a supposed madman of far greater prominence, Pope Paul IV, as a way of extinguishing the internal "fire" that raged within the head of Christendom.;These case studies link various discourses that scholars have, until now, examined in isolation. At the same time, they challenge the prevalent notion that the Renaissance witnessed the emergence of a modern political ethic, based on pragmatism and necessity, as opposed to the trite, dogmatic moralism of the Middle Ages. This new "reason of state," often traced to the composition of Machiavelli's The Prince in 1513, could not have emerged as early as historians suggest, because an alternative philosophy of mind had not yet been developed.