Page 182 - sfogliabile 49

448 Rubén González Cuerva

indeterminate Christian-Muslim hostility motivated by the «clash of
civilizations» .
3
That interpretation overshadowed the fact that Charles V fought as
protector of the Hafsids, the local Muslim dynasty dethroned by the
expansion of the Ottoman Empire led by Barbarossa. Before the battle
against the latter’s forces, the Emperor camped in the bay of Tunis
and met the exiled king Mulay Hassan in July 1535. The two
sovereigns spent a month together bound by a formal relationship of
friendship. As recent research has shown, premodern peaceful
relations among sovereigns, even when there was little trust between
them, were expressed in the formal, rhetorical language of friendship
which did not imply real, emotional ties . We can narrate their
4
cohabitation in three acts with an epilogue.

1 Act: The Meeting
st

This princely encounter was a bizarre episode in the early modern
society of princes, and not just because it was a rather unprecedented
inter-confessional event. Kings did not frequently meet each other
because, as Montaigne warned, it required them to establish
beforehand who the superior was . Neighbours and by turns allies and
5
rivals, the French and Spanish Kings only met three times throughout
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (1525-6, 1538, and 1660) .
6
As Hengerer has stressed, «this history, too, of the early modern
princely congress remains unwritten» . Even less frequent were the
7

3 B. Fuchs, Y.-G. Liang, A Forgotten Empire: The Spanish-North African Borderlands,
«Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies», 12:3 (2011), p. 263.
4 A. Würgler, Freunde, amis, amici. Freundschaft in Politik und Diplomatie der
frühneuzeitlichen Eidgenossenschaft, in K. Oschema (ed.), Freundschaft oder amitié? Ein
politisch-soziales Konzept der Vormoderne im zwischensprachlichen Vergleich (15.–17.
Jahrhundert), Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 2007, p. 193; N. Weber, Gute Miene zum
bösen Spiel? Freundschaft, Kooperation und Vertrauen in den französisch-preußischen
Beziehungen des 18. Jahrhunderts, in B. Haan, C. Kühner (eds.), Freundschaft: eine
politisch-soziale Beziehung in Deutschland und Frankreich, 12.–19. Jahrhundert,
Deutschen Historischen Instituts Paris, Paris, 2013 (https://perspectivia.net/publika
tionen/8-2013/weber_freundschaft).
5 M. de Montaigne, Essais, Simon Millanges, Bourdeaus, 1580, book I, ch. 13.
6 M. de Foronda y Aguilera, Estancias y viajes del emperador Carlos V, S.n., S.l.,
1914, pp. 260, 267-268, 455.
7 M. Hengerer, Access at the Court of the Austrian Habsburg Dynasty (Mid-Sixteenth
to Mid-Eighteenth Century): A Highway from Presence to Politics?, in D. Raeymaekers, S.
Derks (eds.), The key to power? The culture of access in princely courts, 1400-1750, Brill,
Leiden, 2016, p. 146. See also N. Rubello, La présence des princes: gli incontri tra sovrani
come momenti d'eccezione nei rapporti diplomatici tra gli Stati (XVI secolo), in E. Plebani,
E. Valeri, P. Volpini (eds.), Diplomazie. Linguaggi, negoziati e ambasciatori fra XV e XVI
secolo, Franco Angeli, Milano, 2018, pp. 139-160.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XVII - Agosto 2020
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)