“In retirement, [Charles V] retreated to the isolated Jeronimite monastery of Yuste in Spain’s Gredos mountains… In between a strict programme of devotions – prayers, readings, sermons and choral performances – he set about trying to arrange his record for posterity, even as his influence waned… Nevertheless, as he lay on his deathbed at Yuste, Charles seemed to have found an unaccustomed ease: dying monarchs were more often to be found scrabbling remorsefully to make peace with their subjects and their maker. Charles, though, seemed unconcerned about the widespread suffering he had inflicted in pursuit of his imperial destiny. One visiting nobleman, astonished, remarked on this imperial tranquillity to the archbishop of Toledo, Bartolomé Carranza, who stood at Charles’s bedside: such serenity, the nobleman marvelled, in one ‘who has done so many things’. The archbishop nodded in grim agreement. ‘Such confidence,’ he replied, ‘does not please me at all.’”
- “Too Much for One Man,” Thomas Penn (on Emperor: A New Life of Charles V).
- “Too Much for One Man,” Thomas Penn (on Emperor: A New Life of Charles V).