Mercurino Gattinara

Mercurino Arborio marchese di Gattinara (10 June 1465 – 5 June 1530) was an Italian statesman and jurist. Gattinara was a humanist, imperialist, and conservationist. He was made a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church in 1529.

He was born in Gattinara, near Vercelli, modern Piedmont. Mercurino Gattinara initially served as the legal advisor to Margaret of Austria in Savoy. She considered him as chief amongst her various counselors.

Mercurino Gattinara is however mostly famous for having served as Emperor Charles V's “Grand Chancellor of all the realms and kingdoms of the king.” Upon the death of Charles' counselor Chièvres, Gattinara would become the king’s most influential advisor. He was a Roman Catholic, humanist, Erasmian, jurist and scholar—at the same time idealist in his goals, and in his tactics. He was a scholar of jurisprudence, the classic theory of the state, and the Christian doctrine of duty. Gattinara would guide Charles away from both his roots in dynastic Burgundy, and from the prevailing secular political theory of Spain at the time, toward a Christian humanist conception of Empire. His ideas of the primacy of the Empire in Europe were in direct contradiction with the growing trend toward the theory of the nation state.

In his capacity as Chancellor, he urged Charles V to create a dynastic empire with the object of establishing global rule ("Dominium Mundi"). Gattinara in his policy advice and personal writings argued for Christian imperialism, based on a united Christendom, which would then combat or convert the Protestants, the Turks, and the infidels of the New World. His theory attempted to balance the solidarity of Christian nations, with the requirements of conquest for the establishment of one world empire.

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