Open AccessTowards Confessional Reconciliation: The “Protestantization” of Charles V in David Chytraeus’s De Carolo Quinto Caesare Augusto Oratio (1583)
Author(s) -
Isabella WalserBürgler
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
renaissance and reformation
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 5
eISSN - 2293-7374
pISSN - 0034-429X
DOI - 10.33137/rr.v43i3.35302
Subject(s) - emperor , confessional , protestantism , german , humanism , philosophy , humanities , art , classics , history , religious studies , theology , ancient history , politics , political science , law , linguistics
In 1583, David Chytraeus (1530–1600), one of the key figures of north German Protestant humanism, published his Latin biographical oration De Carolo Quinto Caesare Augusto Oratio on Emperor Charles V (Holy Roman emperor from 1520 to 1556). Despite the numerous confessional conflicts between the German Protestants and the former Catholic monarch, Chytraeus presented the emperor in a strikingly favourable light. To which degree and in which respects Chytraeus was thereby driven both as a theologian and as a historian to promote the overcoming of the confessional split—which renders the oration on Charles an intriguing document of sixteenth-century religious discourse—will be investigated in this article.