Charles V, Monarchia Universalis and the Law of Nations 71 Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis/Legal History Review 2003

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71 Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis 79 (2003)
Charles V, Monarchia Universalis and the Law of Nations

handle is hein.journals/tijvrec71 and id is 89 raw text is: CHARLES V, MONARCHIA UNIVERSALIS AND THE LAW OF NATIONS
(1515-1530)
by
RANDALL LESAFFER (Tilburg and Leuven)*
Introduction
Nowadays most international legal historians agree that the first half of the
sixteenth century - coinciding with the life of the emperor Charles V (1500-
1558) - marked the collapse of the medieval European order and the very first
origins of the modem state system'. Though it took to the end of the seven-
teenth century for the modem law of nations, based on the idea of state sover-
eignty, to be formed, the roots of many of its concepts and institutions can be
situated in this period2.
While all this might be true in retrospect, it would be by far overstretching
the point to state that the victory of the emerging sovereign state over the
medieval system was a foregone conclusion for the politicians and lawyers of
* I am greatly indebted to professor James Crawford (Cambridge), professor Karl-
Heinz Ziegler (Hamburg) and Mrs. Norah Engmann-Gallagher for their comments and
suggestions, as well as to the board and staff of the Lauterpacht Research Centre for Inter-
national Law at the University of Cambridge for their hospitality during the period I worked
there on this article.
1. W.G. Grewe, Was ist klassisches, was ist modernes V5lkerrecht?, in: Idee und
Realitat des Rechts in der Entwicklung internationaler Beziehungen, Festgabe fir Wolfgang
Preiser, eds. A. B6hm, K. Liudersen and K.-H. Ziegler, Baden Baden 1983, p. 11-131;
idem, Epochen der Vrlkerrechtsgeschichte, Baden Baden 1984, p. 33; A. Truyol y Serra,
Histoire du droit international public, Paris 1992, p. 38-46; K.-H. Ziegler, V6lkerrechts-
geschichte, Ein Studienbuch, Munich 1994, p. 120-121 and p. 145-146.
2. Before the twentieth century, most scholars held to the opinion that the modem law
of nations originated from the seventeenth century with the writings of Hugo Grotius (1583-
1645) and the peace treaties of Westphalia (1648) as starting points. The revaluation of the
role played by the Spanish neo-scholastics such as Francisco de Vitoria (ca. 1480-1546)
and Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) was seminal to putting backwards the beginning of the
epoch of modem international law by more than a century. On that: W.G. Grewe, Vom
europdischen zum universellen Volkerrecht, Zur Frage der Revision des europazentrischen
Bildes der Vdlkerrechtsgeschichte, Zeitschrift ftir auslindisches 6ffentliches Recht und
V61kerrecht, 42 (1982), p. 449-451; idem, Grotius - Vater des Vlkerrechts?, Der Staat,
23 (1984), p. 161-178; W. Preiser, Uber die Ursprunge des modernen V6lkerrechts, in:
Intemationalrechtliche und staatsrechtliche Abhandlungen: Festschrift fir Walter Schatzel
zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. E. Bruel, Disseldorf 1960, p. 373-387; C.R. Rossi, Broken Chain
of Being: James Brown Scott and the Origins of Modern International Law, The Hague,
London and Boston 1998; K.-H. Ziegler, Hugo Grotius als 'Vater des Vrlkerrechts', in:
Gedachtnisschrift fiir Wolfgang Martens, eds. P. Selmer and I. von Munch, Berlin and
New York 1987, p. 851-858.