The Diet of Worms

 

Somehow, despite the visit of my cousin and her family and the surrendering of our bedroom to their crew, I managed, to finish off a biography of Charles V this weekend.  Geoffrey Parker has recently written “Emperor: A New Life of Charles V.”  I’ve enjoyed, though it was a bit jarring to have quotes from Game of Thrones, appear at the outset of numerous chapters.  The first time it was witty.  Then tiresome. 

Charles V, with crosscutting inheritances wound up with more of Western Europe under management than anyone since Charlemagne.  I was particularly intrigued by his encounter with Martin Luther who seems to have won verbal a joust with the emperor.  Chuck, only nineteen at the time, had been flummoxed considering Martin the monk there at the Diet of Worms.  A man of his word, he let Martin Luther the heretic leave unmolested and so began the Reformation.  I only knew of this atmospherically and enjoyed considering the moment in some detail, imagining a scene somehow like Wuer Kaixi confronting Li Peng. 

 

Before this, I’d read “Isabel, The Queen” by Peggy Liss from 1992.  There’s a new biography out there, but more then a few reviews suggested it hadn’t surpassed what Ms. Liss had done.  This is really another world.  Her and Ferdinand still straddle the Middle Ages where the story and the kingdoms and the adversaries and the assumption are all comparatively clear.    Then the Columbus lives returns from and Caribbean and sets off again and returns again and again.  Muslim rule and Jewish communities are over.  An inquisition, begins.  

Intellectual history’s a fine steel rail, sometimes.  Isabel and Ferdinand had kids.  One of them beget Charles the V.  Chuck sired a bunch of kids, as a stud might, purposefully.  One of them was Philip.  I’ve less than a week left until we take off and today, I’ve vowed to get a hundred pages or so into “The Imprudent King” by Geoffrey Parker.  This is perhaps the pick of the trio in terms of terse, engaging writing.  And now, how thoroughly the world has changed.  Phillip rules more of the world than anyone since Genghis Khan and for the first time the sun truly never sets on the holdings of one person.  I don’t think I’m intending to continue this detailed a look onward into the seventeenth century. 

 

 

 

Monday, 08/09/21