Charles V (Carlos V, Karel V) visited Utrecht twice. During his second visit in 1546 he signed an edict for the expulsion of the Jews from Utrecht and gave them a month to leave. Expulsions were common at the time. They constituted the final phase of a process in which the parting of ways between Christianity and Judaism had led to an increasingly isolated position of the Jews and incidental persecutions. It is unlikely that many Jews were in Utrecht at the time. The effectiveness of such measures was also limited. Expulsions of Jews from Utrecht have been recorded in 1444, 1485, 1546 and 1550.
In general expulsions were ordered by civil rulers, and could have various reasons, such as local politics (incl. hampering an influx from Jews from other locations), greed to take over property or sources of income, or religious zeal. Here the first reason is the more likely.
Although anti-Judaism or anti-Semitism was often not the primary cause of the expulsions, the systematic “Othering” of the Jews in the religious culture (see the discussion about the frontpage §0) had resulted in a mood that paved the way.
Especially Elukin (see ref.) elucidates that the experience of Jews in medieval Europe cannot be reduced to a one-dimensional account of violence and persecution. The traditional stress on the memory of the persecutions, especially by Jewish historian (see e.g. Salfeld §3) may have been too single-sided.
References
Jonathan Elukin – Living together, Living apart, rethinking Jewish-Christian relations in the Middle Ages – Princeton University Press – 2007
R.I. Moore – Formation of a persecuting society, power & deviance in W-Europe 950-1250 – Blackwell Publ. – 1987 and 2007 (The latter edition gives a new “layer of reflection” in a revised chapter 5)
Anna Foa – The Jews of Europe After the Black Death – University of California Press – 2000
N.T.Gidal – De Joden in Duitsland – Könemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbH – Keulen – 1998
Haym Soloveitchik – Principles and Pressures: Jewish Trade in Gentile Wine in the Middle Ages (in Hebrew) – Am Oved Publ. – 2003
Stéphanie E. Binder – Tertullian, On idolatry and Mishah Avodah Zarah, Questioning the Parting of Ways between Christians and Jews – Brill 2012