Decades of burgeoning humanism, intensifying lay piety, and an increasing anticlerical sentiment, paved the way for Martin Luther's reforming message when it reached the Low Countries in 1519. As ruler of the territory, Charles V resolved to curb the spread of heterodoxy via the promulgation of a series of anti-heresy edicts. Increasing in severity throughout his reign, these edicts gradually removed the prosecution of heresy from the jurisdiction of the church, placing it squarely under the control of secular officials. The success of Charles's religious legislation was therefore contingent upon the cooperation of primarily local, secular rulers. But municipal officials and their subjects viewed Charles's anti-heresy legislation as an unwelcome encroachment on their local autonomy, and a disturbing manifestation of the emperor's centralizing ambitions. Consequently, they formed a resolute front of determined resistance to the imposition of Charles's religious policies throughout his reign. This study examines the motivations underlying this opposition, as well as the specific ways in which such resistance manifested itself.Chronologically, the study addresses the years of Charles's reign (1515-1555) and geographically, the duchy of Brabant. This region, in the southern Low Countries (the modern-day borderland of Belgium and the Netherlands) was home to some of the most important urban centers in Europe. In the chapters that follow, the major Brabantine cities of Antwerp (the most lucrative commercial metropolis of the period), Leuven (home to the Catholic university and an important center of Roman theology), and Brussels (seat, after 1531, of Charles's central administration) will be examined in terms of their role in the religious controversy of the period, and the reactions of their inhabitants to the edicts promulgated by Charles.The anti-heresy edicts of Charles V represent one of the earliest attempts of a European ruler to establish a governmental policy for treating religious difference. This examination of the responses to these legal innovations provides not only a more detailed understanding of struggles for political autonomy, but a more nuanced view of belief and heterodoxy in this crucial period in the history of the early modern Low Countries.

In this thesis I examine the manuscript collection held at the château of Vincennes during the reign of Charles V of France (1364-1380). From the original collection of fifty-six, dispersed after the king’s death in 1380, ten complete manuscripts and one fragment are extant. Through an analysis of the existing manuscripts and information taken from the 1380 inventory of the king’s collections at Vincennes, I consider these manuscripts as a curatorial grouping that forms its own system of meaning, independent of the king’s larger collection of manuscripts at the Louvre. I argue that this collection conveyed a coherent and concerted collection practice, and examine the ways these manuscripts shaped royal identity and animated social memory Charles V “le Sage” was the third of the Valois kings of France and ruled during the Hundred Years’ War. Interestingly, in this time of relative instability, Charles established what is known as his most lasting cultural achievement, a royal library at the Louvre in 1368. All that remains of Charles’s impressive collection of over a thousand manuscripts are detailed inventories compiled by his court officers as well as a limited selection of surviving manuscripts. The royal inventory describes the contents of each volume, the exterior ornamentation and binding, and the interior illumination. Although these records are not detailed enough to reconstruct books that are now lost, it is clear that this collection was extremely luxurious both in the exterior decoration and interior painting. Among the manuscript paintings in this collection there exists a stylistic continuity, with many of the illustrations either executed by or in the style of Parisian illuminator Jean Pucelle. I maintain that this stylistic continuity, among other characteristics, define these manuscripts as a collection. Furthermore, I present an alternative model for interpreting the manuscripts at Vincennes that emphasizes how the works functioned collectively. I argue that all of the unifying characteristics of this collection carried meaning for the reader or viewer at Vincennes. This includes the fact that, according to the specifics of the inventories, virtually all of these manuscripts were originally intended for a reader other than Charles, suggesting a heretofore-unexplored memorial function of the collection. / text

Thesis (M.A.)--Michigan State University, School of Journalism, 1988. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-83).

Charles I, King of Spain, or Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, was the most powerful ruler in Europe since Charlemagne. With a Germanic background, and speaking French, Charles became King of Spain in 1516. Yet secondary sources and available sixteenth century Spanish sources such as Spanish Royal Council records, local records of Castro Urdiales in Castile, and Charles's correspondence show that he continued the policies of his predecessors in Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. He strove to strengthen his power and unify Spain and his empire using Castilian strength, a Castilian model of government, Roman law, religion, his strong personality, and a loyal and talented bureaucracy. Charles desired to be another Charlemagne, but with his base of power in Spain.

Properzia De’Rossi (1490-1530) première sculptrice de la Renaissance italienne naquit vers 1490 à Bologne et mourut en 1530. Elle suscita un grand intérêt non seulement pour ses qualités d’artiste mais aussi pour avoir transgressé les rôles traditionnels de la femme. Nous la connaissons grâce à Giorgio Vasari qui dans la première édition des Vite de 1550, lui consacre une biographie, seule femme à figurer parmi les cent trente-trois biographies d’artistes rassemblées par l’historiographe. Dans la seconde édition de 1568 Vasari accompagnera Properzia De’Rossi de trois autres femmes artistes peintres encore en vie et productives en 1568 : Plautilla Nelli, religieuse, Lucrezia Quistelli et Sofonisba Anguissola aristocrates. Properzia De’Rossi est « hors norme » : ni religieuse ni aristocrate ; elle exerce la sculpture en professionnelle. L’unique œuvre connue avec certitude est son célèbre bas-relief de Joseph et la femme de Putiphar. Œuvre autobiographique d’après Vasari qui suggère le scandale d’une femme mariée ayant un jeune amant. Sa mort précoce en 1530, alors qu’elle est demandée par le pape Clément VII venu à Bologne pour le couronnement de Charles Quint, dramatise sa mort au sommet de sa gloire. Elle travailla sur le chantier prestigieux de San Petronio avec des sculpteurs renommés. Le XIXe siècle l’a perçue comme une héroïne romantique, elle perdit peu à peu son identité de sculptrice. Le XXe siècle la considère comme pionnière dans un monde professionnel masculin. Notre approche, à la croisée des chemins historiques, artistiques et littéraires tente de donner une vision complète de cette artiste talentueuse, dotée d’une forte personnalité, célèbre pour avoir su braver les interdits et exercer son métier de sculptrice. / Properzia De’Rossi (1490-1530) first great sculptress of the italian Renaissance, was born in Bologna around 1490 and died in 1530. She arouses a great interest not only for her artistic qualities but also for having infringed the traditional roles of the woman. She owes her fame to Giorgio Vasari, who in the first edition of Le Vite, 1550, devoted a single biography to her, the only woman to appear among the one hundred thirty three biographies of artists gathered by the historiographer. In the second edition of 1568, Vasari will add three other women painters alive and professionally active in 1568 : the nun Plautilla Nelli, the aristocrats Lucrezia Quistelli and Sofonisba Anguissola. Properzia De’Rossi is outstanding : neither nun nor aristocrat, she practices the sculpture as a professional sculptor. The only single work known with certainty is her famous bas-relief Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. An autobiographical work according to Vasari, who suggests the scandal of a married woman having a young lover. Her premature death in 1530, as she was called by pope Clement VII in Bologna for Charles V’s coronation, dramatizes her death at the height of her glory. Famous in Bologna, she worked with renowned sculptors in San Petronio. The nineteenth century perceived her like a romantic heroin : in love and unhappy. She lost little by little her identity of sculptress. The twenteenth century might see her as pioneer of female work in a male professional environment. Our study at the crossroads of historical, artistic and literary approaches attempts to give a comprehensive vision of this talented artist with a strong personality, famous for having broken the taboos in order to work as a sculptress.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

This study examines the watercolor drawings of indigenous Americans in the Trachtenbuch, a small sixteenth-century manuscript by Christoph Weiditz. The manuscript was titled as a trachtenbuch by the Germanisches National Museum Library when cataloged in 1868, and Theodor Hampe published the first facsimile under this title in 1927. As this title suggests, the manuscript has long been narrowly defined and examined by scholars as a costume book. I argue instead for broadening the reading of the Trachtenbuch from a costume book, a subset of ethnographic documents that identify individuals based solely on systems of dress, to a visual ethnographic collection, which documents individuals in a more holistic fashion; examining them not only through their systems of dress, but also through their customs, actions, and societal roles. By addressing the Trachtenbuch as a visual ethnographic collection, I argue that Weiditz's manuscript visually frames the indigenous Americans as performers and laborers in their new context in Imperial Spain. The Imperial Spanish court was deeply affected both by the discovery and subsequent invasion of the previously unencountered Americas, and it became a site where the flow of new information from the Americas to Europe could be organized and managed. This study suggests that Charles V's presentation of the American natives as his court performers reflects one strategy for propagandizing his control over the Americas and managing the influx of new information by placing the exotic indigenous Americans in the familiar role of court performer, thus neutralizing their foreignness. Weiditz accompanied the court of Charles V as it traveled throughout most of the Iberian Peninsula and on through the Netherlands during the years 1529-1532, and he had the opportunity to view the indigenous Americans first-hand in a setting governed by the emperor. Reading the Trachtenbuch as an ethnographic document allows for broader interpretations based on both the dress and action portrayed in these likely eye-witness images. These depictions indicate that Weiditz internalized Charles V's strategy by juxtaposing the indigenous Americans as performers with Europeans of various occupations or roles, thereby visually assigning the role of court performer to the indigenous Americans. However, through imbuing the images of American natives with similar bodily composition, action, and dress to his depictions of laborers, Weiditz enhances the indigenous American role in Imperial Spain from mere curiosity to both performer and laborer.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

The main focus of interest in this PhD dissertation is the Reformation historian and diplomat Johann Sleidan (1506-1556). Born in Schleiden and brought up together with Strasbourg's famous Jean Sturm, Sleidan soon entered a period of active political life with his employment at the chancellory of Cardinal Jean Du Bellay in Paris in the mid-1530s. There and later in Strasbourg his main concern was to encourage a rapprochement or possible alliance between France and the German Protestants. It was also in Paris that Sleidan discovered history as his second passion. After translating key French historians into Latin, Sleidan moved on to produce his own works of a political-historical nature. His main work, De statu religionis et reipublicae Carolo Quinto Caesare commentarii, 'Commentaries on religion and state under Emperor Charles V', published in 1555, was initially commissioned by the Schmalkaldic League as the official history of the Reformation. Despite early hostile reactions, this history was an immediate success with the buying public, published in numerous editions and by the year 1560 circulated in six different languages. Chapters one to three explore Sleidan's biography in depth. The collection and analysis of contemporary correspondence has provided the cornerstone for a new narrative of Sleidan's life in the second half of this thesis I move to a detailed study of his principal published works. Chapter four concentrates on Sleidan's main work, the Commentaries. After placing this history in the context of contemporary German history writing, I examine this work in detail, treating its genesis, character, and methodology. I examine the unexpectedly hostile reactions to the first edition and its very rapid success with purchasers. I then move on to consider the longer-term reaction to Sleidan's great work, first in Germany and then in France. I explore the controversies aroused by Sleidan's work, among both Catholics and Protestants, and in contrast, the great respect for his scholarship that also straddled the religious confessions. Sleidan provided the context through which I have been able to analyse the life of a scholar in the sixteenth century, and the works of one of the foremost historians of the new evangelical movement. His life and his works have not, until this point, been placed in a broader context. His work as a translator and historian provides an excellent example of the movement of text around the cultural communities of Europe. Sleidan played a vital part in this process by offering Latin translations of leading French historians which would later be translated into other languages, and by publishing his own works in German or Latin, which were then translated into many other vernaculars. But Sleidan was also engaged in the world of public affairs. Sleidan's position in Du Bellay's chancellery in Paris has provided a new picture of French evangelism. This contact was not given up when Sleidan moved to Strasbourg. The Franco-imperial city has been shown again as one of the cultural centres of Europe from where an intellectual and political elite operated on a cross-national and cross-confessional level. Strasbourg with its francophone scholars was also the Schmalkaldic League's gateway to France. Sleidan's connections as a diplomat linked Germany and France, and have formed the basis for a new study of those in the Franco-German world who shared Sleidan's concerns to promote peace across the religious divide.

Mercurino Arborio di Gattinara (1465-1530) est un homme d’État et cardinal piémontais du début du XVIe siècle. Entré au service de Marguerite d’Autriche, duchesse de Savoie, puis de son père, l’empereur Maximilien Ier de Habsbourg, il est dès lors fidèle à cette famille qu’il sert en tant que juriste, conseiller et diplomate. En 1518, il devient le grand chancelier de tous les territoires que Charles Quint a réunis sous son autorité. Chargé par conséquent d’administrer un empire européen, mosaïque de royaumes et principautés morcelés, Gattinara nourrit son action en élaborant l’idée d’une monarchie universelle, directement inspirée de l’Empire romain, dont le Habsbourg serait le monarque unique, le pasteur chargé par Dieu de garantir la paix en Europe et de défendre la république chrétienne. En son cœur, l’Italie, ce « jardin de l’Empire ». Alors, mythe ou réalité ? Simple rhétorique ou véritable politique ? Ce travail entend montrer deux choses. D’une part que l’Empire n’est pas seulement un fantôme qui ressurgit avec l’avènement de Charles Quint, mais qu’il est encore profondément ancré dans les réalités italiennes et que Gattinara a pu s’appuyer sur les ressorts qu’il offrait pour mettre en place sa politique. D’autre part que la monarchie universelle du chancelier n’est pas seulement pure rhétorique, destinée à fournir à l’empire du Habsbourg une propagande et une idéologie commune, mais qu’elle devait également s’accomplir car elle faisait partie d’un schéma divin bien plus large. Le projet de Gattinara n’a en effet pas pour cadre uniquement l’empire de Charles Quint, il prend place dans la conception d’une histoire et d’une vision du monde ordonnée par Dieu et dans laquelle chacun est destiné à tenir le rôle qui lui a été confié. / Mercurino Arborio di Gattinara (1465-1530) is a Piedmontese statesman and cardinal of the early sixteenth century. He entered the service of Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy, then his father, Emperor Maximilian I of Habsburg, and became faithful to this family he serves as a lawyer, adviser and diplomat. In 1518, he became the grand chancellor of all the territories that Charles V united under his authority. Responsible for administering a European empire, mosaic of kingdoms and divided principalities, Gattinara nourishes his action by developing the idea of a universal monarchy, directly inspired by the Roman Empire, of which the Habsburg would be the single monarch, the pastor entrusted by God to guarantee peace in Europe and to defend the Christian republic. He placed Italy at its heart, as "garden of the Empire". So, myth or reality? Simple rhetoric or real politics? This thesis aims to show two things. On the one hand that the Empire is not only a ghost that resurfaced with the advent of Charles V, but that it is still deeply rooted in the Italian realities and that Gattinara was able to rely on the springs that he offered to set up his policy. On the other hand, the Chancellor's universal monarchy is not only pure rhetoric, intended to provide the Habsburg Empire with propaganda and a common ideology, but it must also be fulfilled because it was part of a Divine pattern much wider. The project of Gattinara does not have as a framework only the empire of Charles V, it takes place in the conception of a history and a vision of the world ordained by God and in which each one is destined to take the role which has been entrusted to him.