Frasi di Carlo V del Sacro Romano Impero

“[All'inizio del proprio regno, parlando di Francesco I] O io sarò un imperatore da strapazzo, o lui sarà un misero re.”

Attribuite
Origine: Citato in AA.VV., I grandi di tutti i tempi: Carlo Quinto, Periodici Mondadori, Verona, 1965, p. 75.

“Sul mio regno non tramonta mai il Sole.”

Attribuite
Origine: Citato in AA.VV., Storia universale: volume secondo, Rizzoli Larousse, Milano, 1973, p. 323.

“[Ai nobili genovesi] Vi nomino tutti marchesi.”

Attribuite
Origine: Citato in Antonio Brancati, Trebi Pagliarani, Dialogo con la storia 1, La Nuova Italia, Firenze, cap. 20, L'Impero di Carlo V, una formazione anacronistica, p. 263.

“As many languages as you know, so many separate individuals you are worth.”

Carlo V del Sacro Romano Impero: Frasi in inglese

“We are more inclined to marry [your] sister the infanta, Isabella, than anyone else because there is no daughter of a king as ready as her.”

Variante: The more languages you know, the more human you become. <br class="br">Origine: John G. Robertson "Robertson's Words for a Modern Age: A Cross Reference of Latin and Greek Combining Elements" https://books.google.com.ua/books?id=RFqlPtTSB2kC&pg=PA250&lpg=PA250&dq=Quot+linguas+calles,+tot+homines+vales.&source=bl&ots=EtA4qFqwbn&sig=C9citjpkEkL6ZjovF9_4_AQ1cCw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwji4ICXl5XRAhULESwKHRp9C6cQ6AEILjAC#v=onepage&q=Quot%20linguas%20calles%2C%20tot%20homines%20vales.&f=false: "Attributed to Charles V"

“Fortune have somewhat the nature of a woman; if she be too much wooed, she is the farther off.”

“I speak in Latin to God, Italian to Women, French to Men, and German to my Horse.”

Origine: As quoted in The Advancement of Learning (1605), Book II, by Francis Bacon

“My life has been one long journey.”

Charles V may have said something in this general format, but not with this specific wording. Variants have been quoted for centuries, and the earliest known citation, itself a secondary source dating from 40 years after his death, gives two versions that both differ from the modern one. Girolamo Fabrizi d'Acquapendente's 1601 De Locutione gives:

Unde solebat, ut audio, Carolus V Imperator dicere, Germanorum linguam esse militarem: Hispanorum amatoriam: Italorum oratoriam: Gallorum nobilem ("When Emperor Charles V used to say, as I hear, that the language of the Germans was military; that of the Spaniards pertained to love; that of the Italians to prayer; that of the French was noble").

Alius vero, qui Germanus erat, retulit, eundem Carolum Quintum dicere aliquando solitum esse; Si loqui cum Deo oporteret, se Hispanice locuturum, quod lingua Hispanorum gravitatem maiestatemque prae se ferat; si cum amicis, Italice, quod Italorum dialectus familiaris sit; si cui blandiendum esset, Gallice, quod illorum lingua nihil blandius; si cui minandum aut asperius loquendum, Germanice, quod tota eorum lingua minax, aspera sit ac vehemens (Indeed another, who was German, related that the same Charles V sometimes used to say: if it was necessary to talk with God, that he would talk in Spanish, which language suggests itself for the graveness and majesty of the Spaniards; if with friends, in Italian, for the dialect of the Italians was one of familiarity; if to caress someone, in French, for no language is tenderer than theirs; if to threaten someone or to speak harshly to them, in German, for their entire language is threatening, rough and vehement").

“I will not blush like my predecessor Sigismund.”

As quoted at his last public speech, in reference to the peripatetic nature of his reign.

“Leave him alone. He has already met his judge. I wage war on the living, not the dead.”

Contesto: This was supposedly said by Charles when Martin Luther appeared at the Diet of Worms (16 - 18 April 1521) under an imperial safe-conduct; members of the pro-papal party (sometimes Johann Maier von Eck is specified) are supposed to have urged the emperor to seize Luther in despite of the safe-conduct, whereupon Charles alluded to the story that when Jan Huss had appeared before the Emperor Sigismund under a similar safe-conduct and had been arrested anyway, Hus reproached Sigismund, who visibly reddened at his own lack of faith. The quotation appears in various similar forms, e. g., "I shall not blush as Sigismund did at Constance." The saying is attributed to Charles by the French ecclesiastical historian Jacques Lenfant in his Histoire du Concile de Constance (1714) without a specific source.

“Francis and I are in perfect accord. He wants Milan and so do I.”

In response to the Duke of Alva who proposed to desecrate the tomb of Martin Luther, burn his body, and scatter his ashes to the wind.
Origine: Luther and His Times Michael Grzonka

“I have a glove into which I can put your whole city of Paris.”

Origine: As quoted in "The Story of Civilization: The Renaissance; a history of civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D", Will Durant and Ariel Durant

“I was writing to my wife when your letter arrived, and now I want to look at her portrait myself, seeing the great beauty it contains. I am such a devoted husband that other beautiful women now do nothing for me.”

Contesto: Allegedly told to Francis I of France. The glove, gant in French, is a reference to the city of Ghent (Gandes in French), where Charles was born.

“I want to be trusted, and will not bargain with my subjects.”

“Since our Lord, who gave Fernando to us, wished to have him back, we must bend to His will and thank Him and beg Him to protect what is left. With great affection, my lady, I beg you to do this and to forget and leave behind all pain and grief.”

“[Our policy] has always been to deal first with matters which are easiest to resolve and leave the most difficult ones until last.”

“…Begging Your Holiness as earnestly as I can that you convene a general council with the urgency that the situation demands and that for optimal effect Your Holiness should write to other princes and potentates explaining why. Namely the need to create a united front against the expected Turkish attack and to prevent the heresies that have recently appeared from spreading further.”

“Without the prior pacification of Italy, it could happen that as soon as I leave to succer you, Venice, Florence, Ferrara and Francesco Sforza will ally together, pull all their resources and invite the French to support them… Since I will need to take with me to Germany the army besieging Florence, we need a swift decision by His Holiness in this matter.”

“I am wholly decided and resolved to go in person to help my brother because his need is so great and the perils so extreme that it does not merely threaten him but places all Christendom at risk. I cannot and must not abandon him because of the office I hold and because of the obligations of fraternal friendship and also because he is such a good brother to me.”

“In view of Our special love for and inclination to the German Nation and the Holy Roman Empire…as Roman emperor and supreme steward of Christendom, it pertains to Our Imperial office to confess Our obligation to guard, protect, and maintain the holy Christian faith as it has been preserved until now.”

“You know that my ancestors were the most christian emperors of the great nation of Germany, the catholic kings of Spain, the archdukes of Austria, and the dukes of Burgundy, who all were, until death, faithful sons of the Roman Church...I am therefore resolved to maintain everything which these my forebears have established to the present…and to settle this matter I will use all my dominions and possessions, my friends, my body, my blood, my life, and my soul. It would be a disgrace for you and me, the illustrious and renowned nation of Germany, privileged and pre-eminent as protector and defender of the Catholic faith, if heresy, or even just the suspicion of heresy, and the degradation of the Christian religion were to return to the hearts of men in our time to our perpetual dishonour.”

Diet of Augsburg (1530)
Origine: Ruth Kastner, ed., Quellen zur Reformation 1517-1555. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994, pp. 501-20.

“It has brought me the greatest sorrow you can imagine, because he was the most handsome little boy for his age that you could find. I feel his death even more than the loss of my own son [Fernando] because he was older and I knew him better and treated him as my own son. Nevertheless we must accept the will of God. May God forgive me, but I wish He had taken Christian instead of his son.”

Diet of Worms (1521)
Origine: *Detlef Ploese and Guenther Vogler, eds., Buch der Reformation. Eine Auswahl zeitgenössischer Zeugnisse (1476-1555). Berlin: Union Verlag, 1989, pp. 245-53

“These heretics have been so obstonent that no policy has worked or sufficed to get them to recognise their errors… I can see that if there were a way of forcing them we could justly move against them, but that is not the case now, nor do I currently have the means, because I am tired, alone and without help and there are so many of them that great force would be needed to overcome them. The true remedy is to convene a general council.”

“Because we cannot by ourselves give sufficient thanks to God, our creator, for the grace, honour, health and success that He has granted us thus far, nor amass sufficient merit to secure the continuation of His grace in the future… to beseech God to continue to raise us in virtue and good customs, to govern our dominions and subjects in peace, union and concord, and to guide our affairs to His honour, our wellbeing, and the prosperity, utility and tranquility of our said dominions and subjects.”