The majesty of power. The power of majesty. Both emerge clearly from John Julius Norwich’s lucidly written and life-enhancing Four Princes, an account of a time of turmoil, adventure, and development. As he writes, has there been a half-century like it? Here, packed into the space of a lifetime, are the High Renaissance, Luther and the Reformation, the exploration of the Americas, and a series of memorable monarchs, each of whom left an indelible imprint on the history of the European world.
Both with this splendid imperial and royal cast, and with the others who play a walk-on part from Erasmus to Luther, the privateer Barbarossa to the great architect of Suleiman’s Constantinople, Mimar Sinan, this is a story that proclaims the importance of the individual and, therefore, the value of particular characteristics and drives and the importance of the interaction of a small group. Indeed, this is an account of the “Founders,” the founders of modern Europe, and it represents a grasping of the Classical understanding of the role of the hero, as well as a new iteration of the Enlightenment commitment to the idea that modernity occurred from the early sixteenth century. Thus, William Robertson, in his classic The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V: With a View of the Progress of Society in Europe, From the Subversion of the Roman Empire, to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century, saw the development then of the balance of power:
the
