“Remember, the prince is like a mirror exposed to the eyes of all his subjects who continually look to him as a pattern on which to model themselves, and who in consequence without much trouble discover his vices and virtues.”
-Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
Equestrian Portrait of Charles V – by Titian c.1548
LAW OF INDIES XX (1545)
Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, almost ruled it all. Almost… Ruling over the Spanish kingdom, The Holy Roman kingdom, the Germanic Empire, Netherlands & Italy with colonies all over the world including the new world. If that wasn’t enough he proclaimed they all must grow of hemp…
“The Empire on which the sun never sets” decrees hemp to be grown in the new world in Charles V’s: the LAW OF INDIES XX (1545)…
Laws of Indies. Book 4, Title 18. On commerce, sustenance, and fruits of the Indies. Law XX
Translated:
“Law XX. Let Viceroys, and Governors see to the planting of, and benefitting from flax and hemp.
We [Emperor Charles V, of the Holy Roman Germanic Empire] entrust Viceroys, and Governors, to see to it that flax and hemp be sown and benefitted in the Indies, and to procure that the Indians apply themselves to this grangery, and that they understand in spinning and weaving flax.
Emperor D. [Don] Carlos and the Prince G. [Governor] in Ponferrada at 13 June 1545.”
Added as an amendment to the 1542 writing of the “laws of the indies” by Charles V in 1545, this decree made Viceroys and Governors in charge of making sure hemp was grown in the area’s under their rule in the new world…
Although hemp was already in the new world, this is the first official “order” to actually requiring settlements to grow hemp in the new world. This worked so well that less then 50 years later the kingdom would have to discourage the practice with the falling import sales on the hemp from the home lands…
Pre Colombian smoking pipe found in central America