Catholic Monarchy and House of Austria

possibility of universal government in Diego de Saavedra Fajardo

Abstract

In the 17th century, on horseback between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age, Diego Saavedra Fajardo witnesses the
first decline of the Hispanic Universal Monarchy. For a diplomat and treatise writer, key for the understanding of the European upheaval in this century, there appears an internal debate between the theoretical possibility of a universal government, protected both by historical circumstances and by a desire for mimesis and overcoming the previous Empires; and its factual impossibility due to the political and religious
dismemberment of Christianity, the Protestant Reformation, and the genesis and triumph of the modern States after the Peace of Westphalia. The main goal of the article is to demonstrate the presence in Saavedra of the positively  judged possibility of a universal government pivoted around
the Hispanic Monarchy. The methodology has been based on the critical analysis of the different works of the author, comparing them with the previous idea of Universal Monarchy, contrasted with the concept of Modern State. The main result has been the clarification of both concepts in Saavedra, concluding that he is not contrary to the abstract idea of the universality of the power of the Spanish Monarchy, although he is a defender of its scarce real viability.