Chapter V. From The Diet Of Speyer, 1526, To The Religious Peace Of

Augsburg, 1555.

§ 1. The Diet of Speyer, 1526.(326)

When Germany emerged from the social revolution in the end of 1525, it soon became apparent that the religious question remained unsettled, and was dividing the country into two parties whose differences had become visibly accentuated, and that both held as strongly as ever to their distinctive principles. Perhaps one of the reasons for the increased strain was the conduct of many of the Romanist princes in suppressing the rebellion. The victories of the Swabian League in South Germany were everywhere followed by religious persecution. Men were condemned to confiscation of goods or to death, not for rebellion, for they had never taken part in the rising, but for their confessed attachment to Lutheran teaching. The Lutheran preachers were special objects of attack. Aichili, who acted as a provost-marshal to the Swabian League, made himself conspicuous by plundering, mulcting, and putting them to death. It is said that he hung forty Lutheran pastors on the trees by the roadside in one small district. The Roman Catholic princes had banded themselves together for mutual defence as early as July 1525. The more influential members of this league were Duke George of Saxony, the Electors of Brandenburg and Mainz, and Duke Henry of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Duke Henry was selected to inform the Emperor of what they had done, and to secure his sympathy and support. He told Charles V. that the league had been formed “against the Lutherans in case they should attempt by force or cunning to gain them over to their unbelief.”

On the other hand, the Protestant princes had a mutual understanding—it does not seem to have been a definite league—to defend one another against any attack upon their faith. The leaders were John of Saxony, Philip of Hesse, Dukes Otto, Ernest, and Francis of Brunswick-Lüneberg, and the Counts of Mansfeld. Philip of Hesse was the soul of the union. They could count on the support of many of the imperial cities, some of them, such as Nürnberg, being in districts where the country lying around was ruled by Romanist princes.

The Diet, which met at Augsburg in 1525, was very thinly attended, and both parties waited for the Diet which was to be held at Speyer in the following year.

There never had been any doubt about the position and opinions of the Emperor on the religious question. He had stated them emphatically at the Diet of Worms. He had been educated in the beliefs of mediæval Catholicism: he valued the ceremonies and usages of the mediæval worship; he understood no other ecclesiastical polity; he believed that the Bishop of Rome was the head of the Church on earth; he had consistently persecuted Protestants in his hereditary dominions from the beginning; he desired the execution of the Edict of Worms against Luther. If he had remained in Germany, all his personal and official influence would have been thrown into the scale against the evangelical faith. Troubles in Spain, and the prosecution of the war against Francis of France had prevented his presence in Germany after his first brief visit. He had now conquered and taken Francis prisoner at the battle of Pavia. The terms of the Treaty of Madrid bound Francis to assist Charles in suppressing Lutheranism and other pernicious sects in Germany, and when it was signed the Emperor seemed free to crush the German Protestants. But his very success was against him; papal diplomacy wove another web around him; he was still unable to visit the Fatherland, and the religious question had to be discussed at Speyer in his absence.

When the Diet met, the national hostility to Rome showed no signs of abatement. The subject of German grievances against the Curia was again revived, and it was alleged that the chief causes of the Peasants’ War were the merciless exactions of clerical landholders. Perhaps this opinion was justified by the fact that the condition of the peasantry on the lands of monasteries and of bishops was notoriously worse than that of those under secular proprietors; and that, while the clerical landholders had done little to subdue the rebels, they had been merciless after the insurgents had been subdued. There was truth enough in the charge to make it a sufficient answer to the accusation that the social revolution had been the outcome of Luther’s teaching.

Ferdinand of Austria presided in his brother’s absence, and, acting on the Emperor’s instructions, he demanded the enforcement of the Edict of Worms and a decree of the Diet to forbid all innovations in worship and in doctrine. He promised that if these imperial demands were granted, the Emperor would induce the Pope to call a General Council for the definite settlement of the religious difficulties. But the Diet was not inclined to adopt the suggestions. The Emperor was at war with the Pope. Many of the clerical members felt themselves to be in a delicate position, and did not attend. The Lutheran sympathisers were in a majority, and the delegates from the cities insisted that it was impossible to enforce the Edict of Worms. The Committee of Princes(327) proposed to settle the religious question by a compromise which was almost wholly favourable to the Reformation. They suggested that the marriage of priests, giving the cup to the laity, the use of German as well as Latin in the baptismal and communion services, should be recognised; that all private Masses should be abolished; that the number of ecclesiastical holy days should be largely reduced; and that in the exposition of Holy Writ the rule ought to be that scripture should be interpreted by scripture. After a good deal of fencing, the Diet finally resolved on a deliverance which provided that the word of God should be preached without disturbance, that indemnity should be granted for past offences against the Edict of Worms, and that, until the meeting of a General Council to be held in a German city, each State should so live as it hoped to answer for its conduct to God and to the Emperor.

The decision was a triumph for the territorial system as well as for the Reformation, and foreshadowed the permanent religious peace of Augsburg (1555). It is difficult to see how either Charles or Ferdinand could have accepted it. Their acquiescence was probably due to the fact that the Emperor was then at war with the Pope (the sack of Rome under the Constable Bourbon took place on May 6th, 1527), and that the threat of a German ecclesiastical revolt was a good weapon to use against His Holiness. Ferdinand was negotiating for election to the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, and dared not offend his German subjects. Both brothers looked on any concessions to the German Lutherans as temporary compromises to be withdrawn as soon as they were able to enforce their own views.

The Protestant States and cities at once interpreted this decision of the Diet to mean that they had the legal right to organise territorial Churches and to introduce such changes into public worship as would bring it into harmony with their evangelical beliefs.(328) The latent evangelical feeling at once manifested itself. Almost all North Germany, except Brandenburg, Ducal Saxony, and Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, became Lutheran within three years. Still it has to be noticed that the legal recognition was accorded to the secular authorities, and that a ruling prince, who had no very settled religious convictions, might change the religion of his principality from political or selfish motives. It became evident in 1529 that political feeling or fear of the Emperor was much stronger than resolutions to support the evangelical Reformation.

Soon after the Diet, Philip of Hesse committed a political blunder which, in the opinion of many of his evangelical friends, involved disloyalty to the Fatherland, made them chary of associating themselves with him, and greatly weakened the Protestant party. For most of these North German princes, in spite of their clinging to the disruptive territorial principle, had a rugged conscientious patriotism which made them feel that no good German should seek the aid of France or make alliance with a Czech. Many of the Roman Catholic princes, irritated at the spread and organisation of Lutheranism which followed the decision of the Diet of 1526, had been persecuting by confiscation of goods and by death their Lutheran subjects. The Landgrave had married the daughter of Duke George of Saxony, and he knew that his father-in-law was continually uttering threats against the Elector of Saxony. Brooding over these things, Philip became gradually convinced that the Romanist princes were planning a deadly assault on the Lutherans, and that first the Elector and then he himself would be attacked and their territories partitioned among the conquerors. He had no proof, but his suspicions were strong. Chance brought him in contact with Otto von Pack, the steward of the Chancery of Ducal Saxony, who, on being questioned, admitted that the suspicions of Philip were correct, and promised to procure a copy of the treaty. Pack was a scoundrel. No such treaty existed. He forged a document which he declared to be a copy of a genuine treaty, and got 4000 gulden for his pains. Philip took the forgery to the Elector of Saxony and to Luther, both of whom had no doubt of its genuine character. They both, however, refused to agree to Philip’s plan of seeking assistance outside the Empire. The Landgrave believed the situation too dangerous to be faced passively. He tried to secure the assistance of Francis of France and of Zapolya, the determined opponent of the House of Austria in Bohemia. It was not until he had fully committed himself that the discovery was made that the document he had trusted in was nothing but a forgery. His hasty action in appealing to France and Bohemia to interfere in the domestic concerns of the Empire was resented by his co-religionists. When the Diet met at Speyer, the Lutherans were divided and discredited. On the other hand, the Pope and the Emperor were no longer at war, and the clerical members flocked to the Diet in large numbers.

At this memorable Diet of Speyer (1529), a compact Roman Catholic majority faced a weak Lutheran minority. The Emperor, through his commissioners, declared at the outset that he abolished, “by his imperial and absolute authority (_Machtvollkommenheit_),” the clause in the ordinance of 1526 on which the Lutherans had relied when they founded their territorial Churches; it had been the cause, he said, “of much ill counsel and misunderstanding.” The majority of the Diet upheld the Emperor’s decision, and the practical effect of the ordinance which was voted was to rescind that of 1526. It declared that the German States which had accepted the Edict of Worms should continue to do so; which meant that there was to be no toleration for Lutherans in Romanist districts. It said that in districts which had departed from the Edict no further innovations were to be made, save that no one was to be prevented from hearing Mass; that sects which denied the sacrament of the true Body and Blood of Christ (Zwinglians) should no more be tolerated than Anabaptists. What was most important, it declared that no ecclesiastical body should be deprived of its authority or revenues. It was this last clause which destroyed all possibility of creating Lutheran Churches; for it meant that the mediæval ecclesiastical rule was everywhere to be restored, and with it the right of bishops to deal with all preachers within their dioceses.

§ 2. The Protest.(329)

It was this ordinance which called forth the celebrated PROTEST, from which comes the name _Protestant_. The Protest was read in the Diet on the day (April 19th, 1529) when all concessions to the Lutherans had been refused. Ferdinand and the other imperial commissioners would not permit its publication in the “recess,” and the protesters had a legal instrument drafted and published, in which they embodied the Protest, with all the necessary documents annexed. The legal position taken was that the unanimous decision of one Diet (1526) could not be rescinded by a majority in a second Diet (1529). The Protesters declared that they meant to abide by the “recess” of 1526; that the “recess” of 1529 was not to be held binding on them, because they were not consenting parties. When forced to make their choice between obedience to God and obedience to the Emperor, they were compelled to choose the former; and they appealed, from the wrongs done to them at the Diet, to the Emperor, to the next free General Council of Holy Christendom, or to an ecclesiastical congress of the German nation. The document was signed by the Elector John of Saxony, Margrave George of Brandenburg, Dukes Ernest and Francis of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Landgrave Philip of Hesse, and Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt. The fourteen cities which adhered were Strassburg, Nürnberg, Ulm, Constance, Lindau, Memmingen, Kempten, Nördlingen, Heilbronn, Reutlingen, Isny, St. Gallen, Wissenberg, and Windsheim. Many of these cities were Zwinglian rather than Lutheran; but all united in face of the common danger.

The Protest at Speyer embodied the principle, not a new one, that a minority of German States, when they felt themselves oppressed by a majority, could entrench themselves behind the laws of the Empire; and the idea is seen at work onward to the Diet of 1555, when it was definitely recognised. Such a minority, to maintain a successful defence, had to be united and able to protect itself by force if necessary. This was at once felt; and three days after the Protest had been read in the Diet (April, 22nd), Electoral Saxony, Hesse, and the cities of Strassburg, Ulm, and Nürnberg had concluded a “secret and particular treaty.” They pledged themselves to mutual defence if attacked on account of God’s word, whether the onslaught came from the Swabian League, from the _Reichsregiment_, or from the Emperor himself. Soon after the Diet, proposals were brought forward to make the compact effective and extensive,—one drafted by representatives of the cities and the other by the Elector of Saxony,—which provided very thoroughly for mutual support; but neither took into account the differences which lay behind the Protest. These divergences were strong enough to wreck the union.

The differences which separated the German Protestants were not wholly theological, although their doctrinal disputes were most in evidence.

§ 3. Luther and Zwingli.

A movement for reformation, which owed little or nothing to Wittenberg, had been making rapid progress in Switzerland, and two of the strongest cantons, Zurich and Bern, had revolted from the Roman Church. Its leader, Huldreich Zwingli, was utterly unlike Luther in temperament, training, and environment.

He had never gone through the terrible spiritual conflicts which had marked Luther for life, and had made him the man that he was. No deep sense of personal sin had ever haunted him, to make his early manhood a burden to him. Long after he had become known as a Reformer, he was able to combine a strong sense of moral responsibility with some laxity in private life. Unlike both Luther and Calvin, he was not the type of man to be leader in a deeply spiritual revival.

He had been subjected to the influences of Humanism from his childhood. His uncle, Bartholomew Zwingli, parish priest at Wildhaus, and the dean of Wesen, under whose charge the boy was placed, had a strong sympathy for the New Learning, and the boy imbibed it. His young intellect was fed on Homer and Pindar and Cicero; and all his life he esteemed the great pagans of antiquity as highly as he did any Christian saint. If it can be said that he bent before the dominating influence of any one man, it was Erasmus and not Luther who compelled him to admiration. He had for a teacher Thomas Wyttenbach, who was half Reformer and half disciple of Erasmus; and learned from him to study the Scriptures and the writings of such earlier Church Fathers as Origen, Jerome, and Chrysostom. Like many another Humanist north of the Alps, the mystical Christian Platonism of Pico della Mirandola had some influence on him. He had never studied the Scholastic Theology, and knew nothing of the spell it cast over men who had been trained in it. Of all the Reformers, Luther was the least removed from the mediæval way of looking at religion, and Zwingli had wandered farthest from it.

His earliest ecclesiastical surroundings were also different from Luther’s. He had never been taught in childhood to consider the Church to be the Pope’s House, in which the Bishop of Rome was entitled to the reverence and obedience due to the house-father. In his land the people had been long accustomed to manage their own ecclesiastical affairs. The greater portion of Switzerland had known but little either of the benefits or disadvantages of mediæval episcopal rule. Church property paid its share of the communal taxes, and even the monasteries and convents were liable to civil inspection. If a stray tourist at the present day wanders into the church which is called the Cathedral in that survival of ancient mediæval republics, San Marino, he will find that the seats of the “consuls” of the little republic occupy the place where he expects to find the bishop’s chair. The civil power asserted its supremacy over the ecclesiastical in most things in these small mediæval republics. The Popes needed San Marino to be a thorn in the side of the Malatesta of Rimini, they hired most of their soldiers from the Swiss cantons, and therefore tolerated many things which they would not have permitted elsewhere.

The social environment of the Swiss Reformer was very different from that of Luther. He was a free Swiss who had listened in childhood to tales of the heroic fights of Morgarten, Sempach, Morat, and Nancy, and had imbibed the hereditary hatred of the House of Hapsburg. He had no fear of the “common man,” Luther’s bugbear after the Peasants’ War. Orderly democratic life was the air he breathed, and what reverence Luther had for the Emperor “who protected poor people against the Turk,” and for the lords of the soil, Zwingli paid to the civic fathers elected by a popular vote. When the German Reformer thought of Zwingli he was always muttering what Archbishop Parker said of John Knox—“God keep us from such visitations as Knockes hath attempted in Scotland; the people to be orderers of things!”(330)

Owing doubtless to this republican training, Zwingli had none of that aloofness from political affairs which was a marked characteristic of Luther. He believed that his mission had as much to do with politics as with religion, and that religious reformation was to be worked out by political forces, whether in the more limited sphere of Switzerland or in larger Germany. He had never taken a step forward until he had carried along with him the civic authorities of Zurich. His advance had always been calculated. Luther’s _Theses_ (November 1517) had been the volcanic outburst of a conscience troubled by the sight of a great religious scandal, and their author had no intention of doing more than protesting against the one great evil; he had no idea at the time where his protest was leading him. Zwingli’s _Theses_ (January 1523) were the carefully drafted programme of a Reformation which he meant to accomplish by degrees, and through the assistance of the Council of Zurich. His mind was full of political combinations for the purpose of carrying out his plans of reformation. As early as 1524 he was in correspondence with Pirkheimer about the possibility of a league between Nürnberg and Zurich—two powerful Protestant towns. This league did not take shape. But in 1527 a religious and political league (_das christliche Bürgerrecht_) was concluded between Zurich and Constance, an imperial German town; St. Gallen joined in 1528; Biel, Mühlhausen, and Basel in 1529; even Strassburg, afraid of the growing power of the House of Hapsburg, was included in 1530. The feverish political activity of Zwingli commended him to Philip of Hesse almost as strongly as it made him disliked, and even feared, by Ferdinand of Austria. The Elector of Saxony and Luther dreaded his influence over “the young man of Hesse.”

Melanchthon was the first to insist on the evil influences of Zwingli’s activity for the peace of the Empire. He persuaded himself that had the Lutherans stood alone at Speyer, the Romanists would have been prepared to make concessions which would have made the Protest needless. He returned to Wittenberg full of misgivings. The Protest might lead to a defiance of the Emperor, and to a subversion of the Empire. Was it right for subjects to defend themselves by war against the civil power which was ordained of God? “My conscience,” he wrote, “is disquieted because of this thing; I am half dead with thinking about it.”

He found Luther only too sympathetic; resolute to maintain that if the prince commanded anything which was contrary to the word of God, it was the duty of the subject to offer what passive resistance he was able, but that it was never right to oppose him actively by force of arms. Still less was it the duty of a Christian man to ally himself for such resistance with those who did not hold “the whole truth of God.” Luther would therefore have nothing to do with an alliance offensive and defensive against the Emperor with cities who shared in what he believed to be the errors of Zwingli.

This meant a great deal more than a break with the Swiss. The south German towns of Strassburg, Memmingen, Constance, Lindau, and others were more Zwinglian than Lutheran. It was not only that they were inclined to the more radical theology of the Swiss Reformer; they found that his method of organising a reformed Church, drafted for the needs of Zurich, suited their municipal institutions better than the territorial organisations being adopted by the Lutheran Churches of North Germany. To Luther, whose views of the place of the “common man” in the Church had been changed by the Peasants’ War, this was of itself a danger which threatened the welfare of the infant Churches. It made ecclesiastical government too democratic; and it did this in the very centres where the democracy was most dangerous. He could not forget that the mob of these German towns had taken part in the recently suppressed social revolution, that their working-class population was still the recruiting ground of the Anabaptist sectaries, and that at Memmingen itself Zwinglian partisans had helped to organise the revolution, and to link it on to the religious awakening. Besides, the attraction which drew these German cities to the Swiss might lead to larger political consequences which seemed to threaten what unity remained to the German Empire. It might result in the detachment of towns from the German Fatherland, and in the formation of new cantons cut adrift from Germany to increase the strength of the Swiss Confederation.

§ 4. The Marburg Colloquy.(331)

All these thoughts were in the minds of Luther and of his fellow theologians, and had their weight with the Elector of Saxony, when their refusal to join rendered the proposed defensive league impossible. No one was more disappointed than the Landgrave of Hesse, the ablest political leader whom the German Reformation produced. He knew more about Zwingli than his fellow princes in North Germany; he had a keen interest in theological questions; he sympathised to some extent with the special opinions of Zwingli; and he had not the dread of democracy which possessed Luther and his Elector. He believed, rightly as events showed, that differences or suspected differences in theology were the strongest causes of separation; he was correct in supposing that the Lutheran divines through ignorance magnified those points of difference; and he hoped that if the Lutherans and the Swiss could be brought together, they would learn to know each other better. So he tried to arrange for a religious conference in his castle at Marburg. He had many a difficulty to overcome so far as the Lutherans were concerned. Neither Luther nor Melanchthon desired to meet Zwingli. Melanchthon thought that if a conference was to be held, it would be much better to meet Oecolampadius and perhaps some learned Romanists. Zwingli, on the other hand, was eager to meet Luther. He responded at once. He came, without waiting for leave to be given by the Zurich Council, across a country full of enemies. The conference met from October 30th to November 5th, 1529. Luther was accompanied by Melanchthon, Justus Jonas, and Cruciger, Frederick Mecum from Gotha, Osiander from Nürnberg, Brenz from Hall, Stephan Agricola from Augsburg, and others. With Zwingli came Oecolampadius, Bucer, and Hedio from Strassburg, Rudolph Collin (who has left the fullest account of the discussion), two councillors from Basel and from Zurich, and Jacob Sturm from Strassburg. After a preliminary conference between Zwingli and Melanchthon on the one hand, and Luther and Oecolampadius on the other, the real discussion took place in the great hall of the Castle. The tourist is still shown the exact spot where the table which separated the disputants was placed.

This _Marburg Colloquy_, as the conference was called, had important results for good, although it was unsuccessful in fulfilling the expectations of the Landgrave. It showed a real and substantial harmony between the two sets of theologians on all points save one. Fifteen theological articles (_The Marburg Articles_) stated the chief heads of the Christian faith, and fourteen were signed by Luther and by Zwingli. The one subject on which they could not come to an agreement was the relation of the Body of Christ to the elements Bread and Wine in the Sacrament of the Supper. It was scarcely to be expected that there could be harmony on a doctrinal matter on which there had been such a long and embittered controversy.

Both theologians found in the mediæval doctrine of the Sacrament of the Supper what they believed to be an overwhelming error destructive to the spiritual life. It presupposed that a priest, in virtue of mysterious powers conferred in ordination, could give or withhold from the Christian people the benefits conveyed in the Sacrament. It asserted that the priest could change the elements Bread and Wine into the very Body and Blood of Christ, and that unless this change was made there was no presence of Christ in the sacrament, and no possibility of sacramental grace for the communicant. Luther attacked the problem as a mediæval Christian, content, if he was able to purge the ordinance of this one fault, to leave all else as he found it. Zwingli came as a Humanist, whose fundamental rule was to get beyond the mediæval theology altogether, and attempt to discover how the earlier Church Fathers could aid him to solve the problem. This difference in mental attitude led them to approach the subject from separate sides; and the mediæval way of looking at the whole subject rendered difference of approach very easy. The mediæval Church had divided the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper into two distinct parts—the Mass and the Eucharist.(332) The Mass was inseparably connected with the thought of the great Sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross, and the Eucharist with the thought of the believer’s communion with the Risen Living Christ. Zwingli attacked the Romanist doctrine of the Mass, and Luther sought to give an evangelical meaning to the mediæval conception of the Eucharist. Hence the two Protestant antagonists were never exactly facing each other.

Luther’s convent studies in D’Ailly, Biel, and their common master, William of Occam, enabled him to show that there might be the presence of the Glorified Body of Christ, extended in space, in the elements Bread and Wine in a natural way, and without any priestly miracle: and that satisfied him; it enabled him to deny the priestly miracle and keep true in the most literal way to the words of the institution, “This is My Body.”

Zwingli, on the other hand, insisted that the primary reference in the Lord’s Supper was to the death of Christ, and that it was above all things a commemorative rite. He transformed the mediæval Mass into an evangelical sacrament, by placing the idea of commemoration where the mediæval theologian had put that of repetition, and held that the means of appropriation was faith and not eating with the mouth. This he held to be a return to the belief of the early centuries, before the conception of the sacrament had been corrupted by pagan ideas.

Like Luther, he served himself heir to the work of earlier theologians; but he did not go to Occam, Biel, or D’Ailly, as the German Reformer had done. Erasmus, who had no liking for the priestly miracle in the Mass, and cared little for a rigid literal interpretation of the words of the institution, had declared that the Sacrament of the Supper was the symbol of commemoration, of a covenant with God, and of the fellowship of all believers in Christ, and this commended itself to Zwingli’s conception of the social character of Christianity; but he was too much a Christian theologian to be contented with such a vague idea of the rite. Many theologians of the later Middle Ages, when speculation was more free than it could be after the stricter definitions of the Council of Trent, had tried to purify and spiritualise the beliefs of the Church about the meaning of the central Christian rite. Foremost among them was John Wessel (_c._ 1420-1489), with his long and elaborate treatise, _De Sacramento Eucharistiæ_. He had taught that the Lord’s Supper is the rite in which the death of Christ is presented to and appropriated by the believer; that it is above all things a commemoration of that death and a communion or participation in the benefits which followed; that communion with the spiritual presence of Jesus is of far more importance than any corporeal contact with the Body of Christ; and that this communion is shared in through faith. These thoughts had been taken over by Christopher Honius, a divine of the Netherlands, who had enforced them by insisting that our Lord’s discourse in the 6th chapter of St. John’s Gospel had reproved any materialistic conception of the Lord’s Supper; and that _therefore_ the words of the institution must not be taken in their rigid literal meaning. He had been the first to suggest that the word _is_ in “This is My Body” must mean _signifies_. Wessel and Honius were the predecessors of Zwingli, and he wove their thoughts into his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. It should be remembered that Luther had also been acquainted with the labours of Wessel and of Honius, and that so far from attracting they had repelled him, simply because he thought they failed to give the respect due to the literal meaning of the words of the institution.

It must not be forgotten that Luther knew Zwingli only as in some way connected with Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt. Carlstadt had professed to accept the theory of Honius about the nature of the relation of the Presence of Christ to the elements of Bread and Wine—saying that the latter were _signs_, and nothing more, of the former. A controversy soon raged in Wittenberg to the scandal of German Protestantism. Luther insisted more and more on the necessity of the Presence in the elements of the Body of Christ “corporeally extended in space”; while Carlstadt denied that Presence in any sense whatsoever. Luther insisted with all the strength of language at his command that the literal sense of the words of the institution must be preserved, and that the words “This is My Body” must refer to the Bread and to the Wine; while Carlstadt thought it was more likely that while using the words our Lord pointed to His own Body, or if not, that religious conviction compelled another interpretation than the one on which Luther insisted.

The dust of all this controversy was in the eyes of the theologians when they met at Marburg, and prevented them carefully examining each other’s doctrinal position. In all essential matters Luther and Zwingli were not so far apart as each supposed the other to be. Their respective theories, put very shortly, may be thus summed up.

Zwingli, looking mainly at the mediæval doctrine of the Mass, taught: (1) The Lord’s Supper is not a _repetition_ of the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, but a _commemoration_ of that sacrifice once offered up; and the elements are not a newly offered Christ, but the _signs_ of the Body and Blood of the Christ who was once for all offered on Calvary. (2) That forgiveness for sin is not won by _partaking_ in a newly offered Christ, but by _believing_ in a Christ once offered up. (3) That the benefits of the work of Christ are always appropriated by faith, and that the atonement is so appropriated in the sacrament, whereby Christ becomes our food; but the food, being neither carnal nor corporeal, is not appropriated by the mouth, but by faith indwelling in the soul. Therefore there is a Real Presence of Christ in the sacrament, but it is a spiritual Presence, not a corporeal one. A real and living faith always involves the union of the believer with Christ, and therefore the Real Presence of Christ; and the Presence of Christ, which is in every act of faith, is in the sacrament to the faithful partaker. (4) That while the Lord’s Supper primarily refers to the sacrifice of Christ, and while the elements, Bread and Wine, are the symbols of the crucified Body of Christ, the partaking of the elements is also a symbol and pledge of an ever-renewed living union with the Risen Christ. (5) That as our Lord Himself has specially warned His followers against thinking of feeding on Him in any corporeal or carnal manner (John vi.), the words of the institution cannot be taken in a strictly literal fashion, and the phrase “This is My Body” means “This signifies My Body.” The fourth position had been rather implicitly held than explicitly stated.

Luther, looking mainly at the mediæval doctrine of the Eucharist, taught: (1) That the primary use of the sacrament was to bring believing communicants into direct touch with the Living Risen Christ. (2) That to this end there must be in the Bread and Wine the local Presence of the Glorified Body of Christ, which he always conceived as “body extended in space”; the communicants, coming into touch with this Body of Christ, have communion with Him, such as His disciples had on earth and as His saints now have in heaven. (3) That this local Presence of Christ does not presuppose any special priestly miracle, for, in virtue of its _ubiquity_, the Glorified Body of Christ is _everywhere_ naturally, and therefore is in the Bread and in the Wine: this natural Presence becomes a sacramental Presence because of the promise of God attached to the reverent and believing partaking of the sacrament. (4) That communion with the Living Risen Christ implies the appropriation of the Death of Christ, and of the Atonement won by this death; but this last thought of Luther’s, which is Zwingli’s first thought, lies implicitly in his teaching without being dwelt upon.

The two theories, so far as doctrinal teaching goes, are supplementary to each other rather than antagonists. Each has a weak point. Luther’s depends on a questionable mediæval idea of _ubiquity_, and Zwingli’s on a somewhat shallow exegesis. It was unfortunate, but only natural, that when the two theological leaders were brought together at Marburg, instead of seeking the mutual points of agreement, each should attack the weak point in the other’s theory. Luther began by chalking the words _Hoc est Corpus Meum_ on the table before him, and by saying, “I take these words literally; if anyone does not, I shall not argue but contradict”; and Zwingli spent all his argumentative powers in disputing the doctrine of _ubiquity_. The long debate went circling round these two points and could never be got away from them. Zwingli maintained that the Body of Christ was at the Right Hand of God, and could not be present, extended in space, in the elements, which were signs representing what was absent. Luther argued that the Body of Christ was in the elements, as, to use his own illustration, the sword is present in the sheath. As a soldier could present his sheathed sword and say, truly and literally, _This is my sword_, although nothing but the sheath was visible; so, although nothing could be seen or felt but Bread and Wine, these elements in the Holy Supper could be literally and truly called the Body and Blood of Christ.

The substantial harmony revealed in the fourteen articles which they all could sign showed that the Germans and the Swiss had one faith. But Luther insisted that their difference on the Sacrament of the Supper prevented them becoming one visible brotherhood, and the immediate purpose of the Landgrave of Hesse was not fulfilled.

Undaunted by his defeat, Philip next attempted a less comprehensive union. If Luther and Zwingli could not be included within the one brotherhood, might not the German cities of the south and the Lutheran princes be brought together? Another conference was arranged at Schwabach (October 1529), when a series of theological articles were to be presented for agreement. Luther prepared seventeen articles to be set before the conference. They were based on the Marburg Articles; but as Luther had stated his own doctrine of the Holy Supper in its most uncompromising form, it is not to be wondered at that the delegates from the southern cities hesitated to sign. They said that the confession (for the articles took that form) was not in conformity with the doctrines preached among them, and that they would need to consult their fellow-citizens before committing them to it. Thus Philip’s attempts to unite the Protestants of Germany failed a second time, and a divided Protestantism awaited the coming of the Emperor, who had resolved to solve the religious difficulty in person.

§ 5. The Emperor in Germany.

Charles V. was at the zenith of his power. The sickly looking youth of Worms had become a grave man of thirty, whose nine years of unbroken success had made him the most commanding figure in Europe. He had quelled the turbulent Spaniards; he had crushed his brilliant rival of France at the battle of Pavia; he had humbled the Pope, and had taught His Holiness in the Sack of Rome the danger of defying the Head of the Holy Roman Empire; and he had compelled the reluctant Pontiff to invest him with the imperial crown. He had added to and consolidated the family possessions of the House of Hapsburg, and but lately his brother Ferdinand had won, in name at least, the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary. He was now determined to visit Germany, and by his personal presence and influence to end the religious difficulty which was distracting that portion of his vast dominions. He also meant to secure the succession to the Empire for his brother Ferdinand, by procuring his election as King of the Romans.

Charles came from Italy over the Brenner Pass in the spring time, and was magnificently received by the Tyrolese, eager to do all honour to the grandson of their beloved Kaiser Max. His letters to his brother, written on the stages of the journey, reveal as fully as that reserved soul could unbosom itself, his plans for the pacification of Germany. He meant to use every persuasion possible, to make what compromises his conscience permitted (for Catholicism was a faith with Charles), to effect a peaceful settlement. But if these failed, he was determined to crush the Reformation by force. He never seems to have doubted that he would succeed. Never a thought crossed his mind that he was about to encounter a great spiritual force whose depth and intensity he was unable to measure, and which was slowly creating a new world unknown to himself and to his contemporaries. While at Innsbruck he invited the Elector of Saxony to visit him, and was somewhat disappointed that the Lutheran prince did not accept; but this foretaste of trouble did not give him any uneasiness.

The summons to the Diet, commanding the Electors, princes, and all the Estates of the Empire to meet at Augsburg on the 8th of April 1530, had been issued when Charles was at Bologna. No threats marred the invitation. The Emperor announced that he meant to leave all past errors to the judgment of the Saviour; that he wished to give a charitable hearing to every man’s opinions, thoughts, and ideas; and that his only desire was to secure that all might live under the one Christ, in one Commonwealth, one Church, and one Unity.(333) He left Innsbruck on the 6th of June, and, travelling slowly, reached the bridge on the Lech, a little distance from Augsburg, on the evening of the 15th. There he found the great princes of the Empire, who had been waiting his arrival from two o’clock in the afternoon. They alighted to do him reverence, and he graciously dismounted also, and greeted them with all courtesy. Charles had brought the papal nuncio, Cardinal Campeggio, in his train. Most of the Electors knelt to receive the cardinal’s blessing; but John of Saxony stood bolt upright, and refused the proffered benediction.

The procession—one of the most gorgeous Germany had ever seen—was marshalled for the ceremonial entry into the town. The retinues of the Electors were all in their appropriate colours and arms—Saxony, by ancient prescriptive right, leading the van. Then came the Emperor alone, a baldachino carried over his head. He had wished the nuncio and his brother to ride beside him under the canopy; but the Germans would not suffer it; no Pope’s representative was to be permitted to ride shoulder to shoulder with the head of the German Empire entering the most important of his imperial cities.(334)

Augsburg was then at the height of its prosperity. It was the great trading centre between Italy and the Levant and the towns of Northern Europe. It was the home of the Welsers and of the Fuggers, the great capitalists of the later mediæval Europe. It boasted that its citizens were the equals of princes, and that its daughters, in that age of deeply rooted class distinctions, had married into princely houses. To this day the name of one of its streets—Philippine Welser Strasse—commemorates the wedding of an heiress of the Welsers with an archduke of Austria; and the wall decorations of the old houses attest the ancient magnificence of the city.(335)

At the gates of the town, the clergy, singing _Advenisti __ desiderabilis_, met the procession. All, Emperor, clergy, princes, and their retinues, entered the cathedral. The _Te Deum_ was sung, and the Emperor received the benediction. Then the procession was re-formed, and accompanied Charles to his lodgings in the Bishop’s Palace.

There the Emperor made his first attempt on his Lutheran subjects. He invited the Elector of Saxony, George of Brandenburg, Philip of Hesse, and Francis of Lüneburg to accompany him to his private apartments. He told them that he had been informed that they had brought their Lutheran preachers with them to Augsburg, and that he would expect them to keep them silent during the sittings of the Diet. They refused. Then Charles asked them to prohibit controversial sermons. This request was also refused. In the end Charles reminded them that his demand was strictly within the decision of 1526; that the Emperor was lord over the imperial cities; and he promised them that he would appoint the preachers himself, and that there would be no sermons—only the reading of Scripture without comment. This was agreed to. He next asked them to join him in the Corpus Christi procession on the following day. They refused—Philip of Hesse with arguments listened to by Ferdinand with indignation, and by Charles with indifference, probably because he did not understand German. The Emperor insisted. Then old George of Brandenburg stood forth, and told His Majesty that he could not, and would not obey. It was a short, rugged speech, though eminently respectful, and ended with these words, which flew over Germany, kindling hearts as fire lights flax: “Before I would deny my God and His Evangel, I would rather kneel down here before your Majesty and have my head struck off,”—and the old man hit the side of his neck with the edge of his hand. Charles did not need to know German to understand. “Not head off, dear prince, not head off,” he said kindly in his Flemish-German (_Nit Kop ab, löver Först, nit Kop ab_). Charles walked in procession through the streets of Augsburg on a blazing hot day, stooping under a heavy purple mantle, with a superfluous candle sputtering in his hand; but the evangelical princes remained in their lodgings.(336)

§ 6. The Diet of Augsburg 1530.(337)

The Diet was formally opened on June 20th (1530), and in the _Proposition_ or Speech from the Throne it was announced that the Assembly would be invited to discuss armament against the Turk, and that His Majesty was anxious, “by fair and gentle means,” to end the religious differences which were distracting Germany. The Protestants were again invited to give the Emperor in writing their opinions and difficulties. It was resolved to take the religious question first. On June 24th the Lutherans were ready with their “statement of their grievances and opinions relating to the faith.” Next day (June 25th) the Diet met in the hall of the Episcopal Palace, and what is known as the _Augsburg Confession_ was read by the Saxon Chancellor, Dr. Christian Bayer, in such a clear resonant voice that it was heard not only by the audience within the chamber, but also by the crowd which thronged the court outside.(338) When the reading was ended, Chancellor Brück handed the document and a duplicate in Latin to the Emperor. They were signed by the Elector of Saxony and his son John Frederick, by George, Margrave of Brandenburg, the Dukes Ernest and Francis of Lüneburg, the Landgrave of Hesse, Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt, and the delegates of the cities of Nürnberg and Reutlingen. These princes knew the danger which threatened them in putting their names to the Confession. The theologians of Saxony besought their Elector to permit their names to stand alone; but he answered calmly, _I, too, will confess my Christ_. He was not a brilliant man like Philip of Hesse. He was unpretentious, peace-loving, and retiring by nature—John the Steadfast, his people called him. Recent historians have dwelt on the conciliatory attitude and judicial spirit manifested by the Emperor at this Diet, and they are justified in doing so; but the mailed hand sometimes showed itself. Charles refused to invest John with his Electoral dignities in the usual feudal fashion, and his entourage whispered that if the Elector was not amenable to the Emperor’s arguments, he might find the electorate taken from him and bestowed on the kindred House of Ducal Saxony, which in the person of Duke George so stoutly supported the old religion.(339) While possessing that “laudable, if crabbed constitutionalism which was the hereditary quality of the Ernestine line of Saxony,”(340) he had a genuine affection for the Emperor. Both recognised that this Diet of Augsburg had separated them irrevocably. “Uncle, Uncle,” said Charles to Elector John at their parting interview, “I did not expect this from you.” The Elector’s eyes filled with tears; he could not speak; he turned away in silence and left the city soon afterwards.(341)

§ 7. The Augsburg Confession.(342)

The Augsburg Confession (_Confessio Augustana_) was what it claimed to be, a statement of “opinion and grievances,” and does not pretend to be a full exposition of doctrinal tenets. The men who wrote it (Melanchthon was responsible for the phraseology) and presented it to the Diet, claimed to belong to the ancient and visible Catholic Church, and to believe in all the articles of faith set forth by the Universal Church, and particularly in the _Apostles’_ and _Nicene Creeds_; but they maintained that abuses had crept in which obscured the ancient doctrines. The Confession showed why they could not remain in connection with an unreformed Church. Their position is exactly defined in the opening sentence of the second part of the Confession. “Inasmuch as the Churches among us dissent in no articles of faith from the Holy Scriptures nor the Church Catholic, and only omit a few of certain abuses, which are novel, and have crept in with time partly and in part have been introduced by violence, and contrary to the purport of the canons, we beg that your Imperial Majesty would clemently hear both what ought to be changed, and what are the reasons why people ought not to be forced against their conscience to observe these abuses.”

The Confession is often represented as an attempt to minimise the differences between Lutherans and Romanists and exaggerate those between Lutherans and Zwinglians, and there are some grounds for the statement. Melanchthon had come back from the Diet of Speyer (1529) convinced that if the Lutherans had separated themselves more thoroughly from the cities of South Germany there would have been more chance of a working compromise, and it is only natural to expect that the idea should colour his sketch of the Lutheran position at Augsburg. Yet in the main the assertion is wrong. The distinctively Protestant conception of the spiritual priesthood of all believers inspires the whole document; and this can never be brought into real harmony with the Romanist position and claims. It is not difficult to state Romanist and Protestant doctrine in almost identical phrases, provided this one great dogmatic difference be for the moment set on one side. The conferences at Regensburg in 1541 (April 27-May 22) proved as much. No one will believe that Calvin would be inclined to minimise the differences between Protestants and Romanists, yet he voluntarily signed the Augsburg Confession, and did so, he says, in the sense in which the author (Melanchthon) understood it. This Augsburg Confession and Luther’s Short Catechism are the symbolical books still in use in all Lutheran churches.

The _Augsburg Confession_ (_Confessio Augustana_) is divided into two parts, the first expressing the views held by those who signed it, and the second stating the errors they protested against. The form and language alike show that the authors had no intention of framing an exhaustive syllabus of theological opinions or of imposing its articles as a changeless system of dogmatic truth. They simply meant to express what they united in believing. Such phrases as _our Churches teach_, _it is taught_, _such and such opinions are falsely attributed to us_, make that plain. In the first part the authors show how much they hold in common with the mediæval Church; how they abide by the teaching of St. Augustine, the great theologian of the West; how they differ from more radical Protestants like the Zwinglians, and repudiate the teachings of the Anabaptists. The Lutheran doctrine of Justification by Faith is given very clearly and briefly in a section by itself, but it is continually referred to and shown to be the basis of many portions of their common system of belief. In the second part they state what things compel them to dissent from the views and practices of the mediæval Church—the enforced celibacy of the clergy, the sacrificial character of the Mass, the necessity of auricular confession, monastic vows, and the confusion of spiritual and secular authority exhibited in the German episcopate.

The origin of the document was this. When the Emperor’s proclamation summoning the Diet reached Saxony, Chancellor Gregory Brück suggested that the Saxon theologians should prepare a statement of their opinions which might be presented to the Emperor if called for.(343) This was done. The theologians went to the Schwabach Articles, and Melanchthon revised them, restated them, and made them as inoffensive as he could. The document was meant to give the minimum for which the Protestants contended, and Melanchthon’s conciliatory spirit shows itself throughout. It embalms at the same time some of Luther’s trenchant phrases: “Christian perfection is this, to fear God sincerely; and again, to conceive great faith, and to trust assuredly that God is pacified towards us for Christ’s sake; to ask, and certainly to look for, help from God in all our affairs according to our calling; and outwardly to do good works diligently, and to attend to our vocation. In these things doth true perfection and the true worship of God consist: it doth not consist in being unmarried, in going about begging, nor in wearing dirty clothes.” His indifference to forms of Church government and his readiness to conserve the old appears in the sentence: “Now our meaning is not to have rule taken from the bishops; but this one thing only is requested at their hands, that they would suffer the gospel to be purely taught, and that they would relax a few observances, which cannot be observed without sin.”

When the Romanist theologians presented their Confutation of this Confession to the Emperor, it was again left to Melanchthon to draft an answer—the _Apology of the Augsburg Confession_. The _Apology_ is about seven times longer than the _Confession_, and is a noble and learned document. The Emperor refused to receive it, and Melanchthon spent a long time over it before it was allowed to be seen.

After taking counsel with the Romanist princes (_die Chur und Fursten so bepstisch gewesen_),(344) it was resolved to hand the Confession to a committee of Romanist theologians whom the cardinal nuncio(345) undertook to bring together, to examine and answer it. Among them were John Eck of Ingolstadt, Faber, and Cochlæus. There was little hope of arriving at a compromise with such champions on the papal side; and Charles was soon to discover that his strongest opponents in effecting a peaceful solution were the nuncio and his committee of theologians. Five times they produced a confutation, and five times the Emperor and the Diet returned their work, asking them to redraft it in milder and in less uncompromising terms.(346) The sixth draft went far beyond the wishes of Charles, but the Emperor had to accept it and let it appear as the statement of his beliefs. It made reconciliation hopeless.

§ 8. The Reformation to be crushed.

The religious difficulty had not been removed by compromise. There remained force—the other alternative foreshadowed by the Emperor. The time seemed to be opportune. Protestantism was divided, and had flaunted its differences in the Emperor’s presence. Philip of Hesse had signed the Augsburg Confession with hesitation, not because he did not believe its statements, but because it seemed to shut the door on a complete union among all the parties who had joined in the Protest of 1529. The four cities of Strassburg, Constance, Lindau, and Memmingen had submitted a separate Confession (the _Confessio Tetrapolitana_) to the Emperor; and the Romanist theologians had written a confutation of it also. Zwingli had sent a third.

Luther was not among the theologians present at the Diet of Augsburg. Technically he was still an outlaw, for the ban of the Diet of Worms had never been legally removed. The Elector had asked him to stay at his Castle of Coburg. There he remained, worried and anxious, chafing like a caged eagle. He feared that Melanchthon’s conciliatory spirit might make him barter away some indispensable parts of evangelical truth; he feared the impetuosity of the Landgrave of Hesse and his known Zwinglian sympathies. His secretary wrote to Wittenberg that he was fretting himself ill; he was longing to get back to Wittenberg, where he could at least teach his students. It was then that Catharine got their friend Lucas Cranach to paint their little daughter Magdalena, just twelve months old, and sent it to her husband that he might have a small bit of home to cheer him. Luther hung the picture up where he could always see it from his chair, and he tells us that the sweet little face looking down upon him gave him courage during his dreary months of waiting. Posts brought him news from the Diet: that the Confession had been read to the Estates; that the Romanists were preparing a Confutation; that their reply was ready on August 3rd; that Philip of Hesse had left the Diet abruptly on the 6th, to raise troops to fight the Emperor, it was reported; that Melanchthon was being entangled in conferences, and was giving up everything. His strong ardent nature pours itself forth in his letters from Coburg (April 18th-Oct. 4th)—urging his friends to tell him how matters are going; warning Melanchthon to stand firm; taking comfort in the text, “Be ye angry, and sin not”; comparing the Diet to the rooks and the rookery in the trees below his window.(347) It was from Coburg that he wrote his charming letter to his small son.(348) It was there that he penned the letter of encouragement to the tried and loyal Chancellor Brück:

“I have lately seen two wonders: the first as I was looking out of my window and saw the stars in heaven and all that beautiful vault of God, and yet I saw no pillars on which the Master-Builder had fixed this vault; yet the heavens fell not, and the great vault stood fast. Now there are some who search for the pillars, and want to touch and to grasp them; and when they cannot, they wonder and tremble as if the heaven must certainly fall, just because they cannot grasp its pillars. If they could only lay their hands on them, they think that the heaven would stand firm!

“The second wonder was: I saw great clouds rolling over us with such a ponderous weight that they seemed like a great ocean, and yet I saw no foundation on which they rested or were based, and no shore which bounded them; yet they fell not, but frowned on us and flowed on. But when they had passed by, then there shone forth both their floor and our roof, which had kept them back—a rainbow! A frail, thin floor and roof which soon melted into the clouds, and was more like a shadowy prism, such as we see through coloured glass, than a strong, firm foundation, and we might well distrust the feeble rampart which kept back that fearful weight of waters. Yet we found that this unsubstantial prism was able to bear up the weight of waters, and that it guarded us safely! But there are some who look more to the thickness and massive weight of the waters and the clouds than at this thin, light, narrow bow of promise. They would like to feel the strength of that shadowy vanishing arch, and because they cannot do this, they are always fearing that the clouds will bring back the flood.”(349)

The Protestants never seemed to be in a worse plight; but, as Luther wrote, the threatened troubles passed away—for this time at least.

Campeggio was keen to crush the Reformation at once. His letters to the Curia insist that the policy of the strong arm is the only effectual way of dealing with the Lutheran princes. But Charles found that some of the South German princes who were eager that no compromise should be made with the Lutherans, were very unwilling to coerce them by force of arms. They had no wish to see the Emperor all-powerful in Germany. The Romanist Dukes of Bavaria (the Wittelsbachs) were as strongly anti-Hapsburg as Philip of Hesse himself; and Charles had no desire to stir the anti-Hapsburg feeling. Instead, conferences(350) were proposed to see whether some mutual understanding might not after all be reached; and the Diet was careful to introduce laymen, in the hope that they would be less uncompromising than the Romanist theologians. The meetings ended without any definite result. The Protestant princes refused to make the needful concessions, and Charles found his plans thwarted on every side. Whereupon the Romanist majority of the Diet framed a “recess,” which declared that the Protestants were to be allowed to exist unmolested until April 15th, 1531; and were then to be put down by force. Meanwhile they were ordered to make no more innovations in worship or in doctrine; they were to refrain from molesting the Romanists within their territories; and they were to aid the Emperor and the Romanist princes in stamping out the partisans of Zwingli and the Anabaptists. This resolution gave rise to a second Protest, signed by the Lutheran princes and by the fourteen cities.

Nothing had stirred the wrath of Charles so much as the determined stand taken by the cities. He conceived that he, the Emperor, was the supreme Lord within an imperial city; and he employed persuasion and threats to make their delegates accept the “recess.” Even Augsburg refused.

Having made their Protest, the Lutheran princes and the delegates from the protesting towns left the Diet, careless of what the Romanist majority might further do. In their absence an important ordinance was passed. The Diet decided that the Edict of Worms was to be executed; that the ecclesiastical jurisdictions were to be preserved, and all Church property to be restored; and, what was most important, that the Imperial Court of Appeals for all disputed legal cases within the Empire (the _Reichskammersgericht_) should be restored. The last provision indicated a new way of fighting the extending Protestantism by harassing legal prosecutions, which, from the nature of the court, were always to be decided against the dissenters from the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the mediæval Empire.(351) All instances of seizure of ecclesiastical benefices, all defiances of episcopal decisions, could be appealed against to this central court; and as the legal principles on which it gave its decisions and the controlling authorities which it recognised were mediæval, the Protestants could never hope for a decision in their favour. The Lutheran Church in Saxony, for example, with its pastors and schoolmasters, was supported by moneys taken from the old ecclesiastical foundations. According to this decision of the Diet, every case of such transfer of property could be appealed to this central court, which from its constitution was bound to decide against the transfer. If the Protestant princes disregarded the decisions of the central court, the Emperor was within his rights in treating them as men who had outraged the constitution of the Empire.(352)

Charles met at Augsburg the first great check in his hitherto successful career, but he was tenacious of purpose, and never cared to hurry matters to an irrevocable conclusion. He carefully studied the problem, and three ways of dealing with the religious difficulty shaped themselves in his mind at Augsburg—by compromise, by letting the Protestants alone for a period longer or shorter, and by a General Council which would be free. It would seem that at Augsburg he first seriously resolved that the condition of Europe was such that the Pope must be _compelled_ to summon a Council, and to allow it freedom of debate and action. Charles tried all three plans in Germany during the fifteen years that followed.

§ 9. The Schmalkald League.(353)

The Emperor published the decision of the Diet on the 19th of November, and the Protestants had to arrange some common plan of facing the situation. They met, princes and delegates of cities, in the little upland town of Schmalkalden, lying on the south-west frontier of Electoral Saxony, circled by low hills which were white with snow (December 22-31). They had to face at once harassing litigation, and, after the 15th of April, the threat that they would be stamped out by force of arms. Were they still to maintain their doctrine of passive resistance? The question was earnestly debated. Think of these earnest German princes and burghers, their lives and property at stake, debating this abstract question day after day, resolute to set their own consciences right before coming to any resolution to defend themselves! The lawyers were all on the side of active defence. The terms of the bond were drafted. The Emperor’s name was carefully omitted; and the causes which compelled them to take action were rather alluded to vaguely than stated with precision. The Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, the Duke of Lüneburg, the Prince of Anhalt, the two Counts of Mansfeld, and the delegates from Magdeburg and Bremen signed. Pious old George of Brandenburg was not convinced that it was lawful to resist the Emperor; the deputies of Nürnberg had grave doubts also. Many others who were present felt that they must have time to make up their minds. But the league was started, and was soon to assume huge proportions.

The confederates had confessed the new doctrines, and had published their Confession. They now resolved that they would defend themselves if attacked by litigation or otherwise. There was no attempt to exclude the South German cities; and Charles’ expectations that theological differences would prevent Protestant union within Germany were frustrated. Zwingli’s heroic death at Cappel (October 11th, 1531) softened all Protestant hearts towards his followers. The South German cities followed the lead of Bucer, who was anxious for union. Many of these towns now joined the Schmalkald League. Brunswick joined. Hamburg and Rostock in the far north, Goslar and Göttingen in the centre, joined. Almost all North Germany and the more important imperial towns in the South were united in one strong confederacy by this Schmalkald League. It became one of the European Powers. Denmark wished to join. Thomas Cromwell was anxious that England should join. The league was necessarily anti-Hapsburg, and the Emperor had to reckon with it.

Its power appeared at the Diet of Nürnberg in 1532. The dreaded day (April 15th, 1531) on which the Protestants were to be reduced by fire and sword passed quietly by. Charles was surrounded with difficulties which made it impossible for him to carry out the threats he had published on November 19th, 1530. The Turks were menacing Vienna and the Duchy of Austria; the Pope was ready to take advantage of any signs of imperial weakness; France was irreconcilable; England was hostile; and the Bavarian dukes were doing what they could to lessen the Hapsburg power in Germany.

When the Diet met at Nürnberg in 1532, the Emperor knew that he was unable to coerce the Lutherans, and returned to his earlier courteous way of treating them. They were more patriotic than the German Romanists for whom he had done so much. Luther declared roundly that the Turks must be met and driven back, and that all Germans must support the Emperor in repelling the invasion. At the Diet a “recess” was proposed, in which the religious truce was indefinitely extended; the processes against the Protestants in the _Reichskammersgericht_ were to be quashed, and no State was to be proceeded against in matters arising out of religious differences. The Romanist members refused to accept it; the “recess” was never published. But the Protestant States declared that they would trust in the imperial word of honour, and furnished the Emperor with troops for the defence of Vienna, and the invasion was repelled.

The history of the struggle in Germany between the Diet of 1532 and the outbreak of war in 1546 is very intricate, and cannot be told as a simple contest between Reformation and anti-Reformation.

In the sixteenth century, almost all thoughtful and earnest-minded men desired a Reformation of the Church. The Roman Curia was the only opponent to all reforms of any kind. But two different ideas of what Reformation ought to be, divided the men who longed for reforms. The one desired to see the benumbed and formalist mediæval Church filled with a new religious life, while it retained its notable characteristics of a sacerdotal ministry and a visible external unity under a uniform hierarchy culminating in the Papacy. The other wished to free the human spirit from the fetters of a merely ecclesiastical authority, and to rebuild the Church on the principle of the spiritual priesthood of all believing men and women. In the struggle in Germany the Emperor Charles may be taken as the embodiment of the first, as Luther represented the second. To the one it seemed essential to maintain the external unity and authority of the Church according to the mediæval ideal; the other could content himself with seeing the Church of the Middle Ages broken up into territorial Churches, each of which he contended was a portion of the one visible Catholic Church. Charles had no difficulty in accepting many changes in doctrine and usages, provided a genuine and lasting compromise could be arrived at which would retain all within the one ecclesiastical organisation. He consented once and again to suspend the struggle; but he would never have made himself responsible for a permanent religious settlement which recognised the Lutheran Churches. He had no objection to a truce, but would never accept a lasting peace. If the Lutherans could not be brought back within the mediæval Church by compromise, then he was prepared to go to all extremes to compel them to return. Of course, he was the ruler over many lands; he was keen to extend and consolidate the family possessions of his House,—as keen as the most grasping of the petty territorial princes,—and he had to be an opportunist. But he never deviated in the main from his idea of how the religious difficulty should be solved.

But all manner of political and personal motives were at work on both sides in Germany (as elsewhere). Philip of Hesse combined a strenuous acceptance of the principles of the Lutheran Reformation with as thorough a hatred of the House of Hapsburg and of its supremacy in Germany. The Dukes of Bavaria, who were the strongest partisans of the Romanist Church in Germany, were the hereditary enemies of the House of Austria. The religious pacification of the Fatherland was made impossible to Charles, not merely by his insistence on maintaining the conceptions of the mediæval Church, but also by open and secret reluctance to see the imperial authority increased, and by jealousies aroused by the territorial aggrandisement of the House of Hapsburg. The incompatibility between the aims of the Emperor and those of his indispensable ally, the Pope, added to the difficulties of the situation.

In 1534, Philip of Hesse persuaded the Schmalkald League to espouse the cause of the banished Duke of Würtemberg. His territories had been incorporated into the family possessions of the Hapsburgs, and the people groaned under the imperial administration. The Swabian League, which had been the mainstay of the Imperialist and Romanist cause in South Germany, was persuaded to remain neutral by the Dukes of Bavaria, and Philip had little difficulty in defeating Ferdinand, and driving the Imperialists out of the Duchy. Ulrich was restored, declared in favour of the Lutheran Reformation, and Würtemberg was added to the list of Protestant States. By the terms of the Peace of Cadan (June 1534), Ferdinand publicly engaged to carry out Charles’ private assurance that no Protestant was to be dragged before the _Reichskammersgericht_ for anything connected with religion.(354) Another important consequence followed. The Swabian League was dissolved in 1536. This left the Schmalkald League of Protestant States and cities the only formidable confederation in Germany.

The political union among the Protestants suggested a closer approximation. The South German pastors asked to meet Luther and discuss their theological differences. They met at Wittenberg, and after prolonged discussion it was found that all were agreed save on one small point—the presence, _extended in space_, of the Body of Christ in the elements in the Holy Supper. It was agreed that this might be left an open question; and what was called the _Wittenberg Concord_ was signed, which united all German Protestants (May and June 1536).(355)

Three years later (1539), Duke George of Saxony died, the most honest and disinterested of the Romanist princes. His brother Henry, who succeeded him, with the joyful consent of his subjects, pronounced for the Evangelical faith. Nothing would content him but that Luther should come to Leipzig to preside clerically on so auspicious an occasion. Luther preached in the great hall of the Castle, where twenty years earlier he had confronted Eck, and had heard Duke George declare that his opinions were pestilential.

In the same year the new Elector of Brandenburg also came over to the Evangelical side amid the rejoicings of his people; and the two great Romanist States of North Germany, Electoral Brandenburg and Ducal Saxony, became Protestant.

The tide flowed so strongly that the three clerical Electors, the Archbishops of Mainz, Köln, and Trier, and some of the bishops, contemplated secularising their principalities, and becoming Protestants. This alarmed Charles thoroughly. If the proposed secularisation took place, there would be a large Protestant majority in the Electoral College, and the next Emperor would be a Protestant.

Charles had been anxiously watching the gradual decadence of the power of the Romanist princes in Germany; and reports convinced him that the advance of the Reformation among the people was still more marked. The Roman Catholic Church seemed to be in the agonies of dissolution even in places where it had hitherto been strong. Breslau, once strongly Romanist, was now almost fanatically Lutheran; in Vienna, Bishop Faber wrote, the population was entirely Lutheran, save himself and the Archduke. The Romanist Universities were almost devoid of students. In Bavaria, it was said that there were more monasteries than monks. Candidates for the priesthood had diminished in a very startling way: the nuncio Vergerio reported that he could find none in Bohemia except a few paupers who could not pay their ordination fees.

The policy of the Pope (Paul III., 1534-1549) had disgusted the German Romanist princes. He subordinated the welfare of the Church in their dominions to his anti-Hapsburg Italian schemes, and had actually allied himself with Francis of France, who was intriguing with the Turks, in order to thwart the Emperor! The action and speeches of Henry VIII. had been watched and studied by the German Romanist leaders. Could they not imitate him in Germany, and create a Nationalist Church true to mediæval doctrine, hierarchy, and ritual, and yet independent of the Pope, who cared so little for them?

All these things made Charles and Ferdinand revise their policy. The Emperor began to consider seriously whether the way out of the religious difficulty might not be, either to grant a prolonged truce to the Lutherans (which might, though he hoped not, become permanent), or to work energetically for the creation of a German National Church, which, by means of some working compromise in doctrines and ceremonies, might be called into existence by a German National Council assembled in defiance of the Pope.

It was with these thoughts in his mind that he sent his Chancellor Held into Germany to strengthen the Romanist cause there. His agent soon abandoned the larger ideas of his master, if he ever comprehended them, and contented himself with announcing publicly that the private promise given by Charles at Nürnberg, and confirmed by Ferdinand at the Peace of Cadan, was withdrawn. The lawsuits brought against the Protestants in the _Reichskammersgericht_ were not to be quashed, but were to be prosecuted to the bitter end. He also contrived at Nürnberg (June 1538) to form a league of Romanist princes, ostensibly for defence, but really to force the Protestants to submit to the decisions of the _Reichskammersgericht_. These measures did not make for peace; they almost produced a civil war, which was only avoided by the direct interposition of the Emperor.

Chancellor Held was recalled, and the Emperor sent the Archbishop of Lund to find out what terms the Protestants would accept. These proved larger than the Emperor could grant, but the result of the intercourse was that the Protestants were granted a truce which was to last for ten years.

The proposed secularisation of the ecclesiastical Electorates made Charles see that he dared not wait for the conclusion of this truce. He set himself earnestly to discover whether compromises in doctrine and ceremonies were not possible. Conferences were held between Lutheran and Romanist theologians and laymen, at Hagenau (June 1540), at Worms (November 1540), and at Regensburg (Ratisbon, April 1541).(356) The last was the most important. The discussions showed that it was possible to state Romanist and Lutheran doctrine in ambiguous propositions which could be accepted by the theologians of both Confessions; but that there was a great gulf between them which the Evangelicals would never re-cross. The spiritual priesthood of all believers could never be reconciled with the special priesthood of the mediæval clergy. This was Charles’ last attempt at a compromise which would unite of their own free will the German Lutherans with the German Romanists. He saw that the Lutherans would never return to the mediæval Church unless compelled by force, and it was impossible to use force unless the Schmalkald League was broken up altogether or seamed with divisions.

§ 10. The Bigamy of Philip of Hesse.(357)

The opportunity arrived. The triumphant Protestantism received its severest blow in the bigamy of Philip of Hesse, which involved the reputations of Bucer, Luther, and Melanchthon, as well as of the Landgrave.

Philip had married when barely nineteen a daughter of Duke George of Saxony. Latterly, he declared that it was impossible to maintain conjugal relations with her; that continence was impossible for him; that the condition in which he found himself harassed his whole life, and prevented him coming to the Lord’s Table. In a case like his, Pope Clement VII. only a few years previously had permitted the husband to take a second wife, and why should not the Protestant divines permit him? He prepared a case for himself which he submitted to the theologians, and got a reply signed by Bucer, Melanchthon, and Luther, which may be thus summarised:—

According to the original commandment of God, marriage is between one man and one woman, and the twain shall become one flesh, and this original precept has been confirmed by our Lord; but sin brought it about that first Lamech, then the heathen, and then Abraham, took more than one wife, and this was permitted by the law. We are now living under the gospel, which does not give prescribed rules for the regulation of the external life, and it has not expressly prohibited bigamy. The existing law of the land has gone back to the original requirement of God, and the plain duty of the pastorate is to insist on that original requirement of God, and to denounce bigamy in every way. Nevertheless the pastorate, in individual cases of the direst need, and to prevent worse, may sanction bigamy in a purely exceptional way; such a bigamous marriage is a true marriage (the necessity being proved) in the sight of God and of conscience; but it is not a true marriage with reference to public law or custom. Therefore such a marriage ought to be kept secret, and the dispensation which is given for it ought to be kept under the seal of confession. If it be made known, the dispensation becomes _eo ipso_ invalid, and the marriage becomes mere concubinage.

Such was the strange and scandalous document to which Luther, Melanchthon, and Bucer appended their names.

Of course the thing could not be kept secret, and the moral effect of the revelation was disastrous among friends and foes. The Evangelical princes were especially aggrieved; and it was proposed that the Landgrave should be tried for bigamy and punished according to the laws of the Empire. When the matter was brought before the Emperor, he decided that no marriage had taken place, and the sole effect of the decision of the theologians was to deceive a poor maiden.(358)

Philip, humiliated and sore, isolated from his friends, was an instrument ready to the Emperor’s hand in his plan to weaken and, if possible, destroy the Schmalkald League. The opportunity soon arrived. The father of William Duke of Cleves Juliers and Berg had been elected by the Estates of Guelders to be their sovereign, in defiance of a treaty which had secured the succession to Charles. The father died, and the son succeeded almost immediately after the treaty had been signed. This created a powerful anti-Hapsburg State in close proximity to the Emperor’s possessions in the Netherlands. William of Cleves had married his sister Sibylla to John Frederick, the Elector of Saxony, and naturally gravitated towards the Schmalkald League. In 1541 an arrangement was come to between the Emperor and Philip, according to which Philip guaranteed to prevent the Duke of Cleves from joining the League, or at least from being supported by it against the Emperor, and in return Philip was promised indemnity for all past deeds, and advancement in the Emperor’s service. Young Maurice of Ducal Saxony, who had succeeded his father in the Duchy (August 18th, 1541), and had married Philip’s daughter, also joined in this bargain. The Emperor had thus divided the great Protestant League; for the Elector of Saxony refused to desert his brother-in-law. In 1543 the Emperor fell upon the unbefriended Duke, totally defeated him, and took Guelders from him, while the German Protestants, hindered by Philip, saw one of their most important allies overthrown. This gave rise to recriminations, which effectually weakened the Protestant cause.

In 1544, Charles concluded a peace with France (the Peace of Crépy, November 19th), and was free to turn his attention to affairs in Germany. He forced the Pope in the same month to give way about a General Council, which was fixed to meet in March 1545. The Emperor meant this Council to be an instrument in his hands to subdue both the Protestants and the Pope. He meant it to reform the Church in the sense of freeing it from many of the corruptions which had found their way into it, and especially in diminishing the power of the Roman Curia; and in this he was supported by the Spanish bishops and by the greater part of Latin Christendom. But the Pope was the more skilful diplomatist, and out-generalled the Emperor. The Council was summoned to meet at Trent, a purely Italian town, though nominally within Germany. It was arranged that all its members must be present personally and not by deputies, which meant that the Italian bishops had a permanent majority; and the choice of Dominicans and Jesuits as the leading theologians made it plain that no doctrinal concessions would be made to the Protestants. From the first the Protestants refused to be bound in any way by its decisions, and Charles soon perceived that the instrument he had counted on had broken in his hands. If ecclesiastical unity was to be maintained in Germany, it could only be by the use of force. There is no doubt that the Emperor was loath to proceed to this last extremity; but his correspondence with his sister Mary and with his brother Ferdinand shows that he had come to regard it as a necessity by the middle of 1545.

His first endeavour was to break up the Protestant League, which was once more united. He attempted again to detach Philip of Hesse, but without success. He was able, however, to induce the Elector of Brandenburg and the Margrave of Brandenburg-Culmbach and some others to remain neutral—the Elector by promising in any event that the religious settlement which had been effected in Brandenburg (1541) should remain unaltered; and, what served him best, he persuaded young Maurice of Ducal Saxony to become his active ally.

§ 11. Maurice of Saxony.

Maurice of Saxony was one of the most interesting, because one of the most perplexing personalities of his time, which was rich in interesting personalities. He was a Protestant from conviction, and never wavered from his faith; yet in the conflict between the Romanist Emperor and the Protestant princes he took the Emperor’s side, and contributed more than any one else to the overthrow of his fellow Protestants. His bargain with Charles was that the Electorate should be transferred from the Ernestine Saxon family to his own, the Albertine, that he should get Magdeburg and Halberstadt, and that neither he nor his people should be subject to the decrees of the Council of Trent. Then, when he had despoiled the rival family of the Electorate, he planned and carried through the successful revolt of the Protestant princes against the Emperor, and was mainly instrumental in securing the public recognition of Lutheranism in Germany and in gaining the permanent Religious Peace of 1555.(359)

§ 12. Luther’s Death.

It was in these months, while the alarms of war were threatening Germany, that Luther passed away. He had been growing weaker year by year, and had never spared himself for the cause he had at heart. One last bit of work he thought he must do. The Counts of Mansfeld had quarrelled over some trifling things in the division of their property, and had consented to accept Luther’s mediation. This obliged him to journey to Eisleben in bitterly cold weather (January 1546). “I would cheerfully lay down my bones in the grave if I could only reconcile my dear Lords,” he said; and that was what was required from him. He finished the arbitration to the satisfaction of both brothers, and received by way of fee endowments for village schools in the Mansfeld region. The deeds were all signed by the 17th of February (1546), and Luther’s work was done at Mansfeld—and for his generation. He became alarmingly ill that night, and died on the following morning, long before dawn. “Reverend Father,” said Justus Jonas, who was with him, “wilt thou stand by Christ and the doctrine thou hast preached?” The dying man roused himself to say “Yes.” It was his last word. Twenty minutes later he passed away with a deep sigh.

Luther died in his sixty-third year—twenty-eight and a half years after he had, greatly daring, nailed his Theses to the door of All Saints’ in Wittenberg, twenty-seven after he had discovered the meaning of his Theses during the memorable days when he faced Eck at Leipzig, and twenty-five after he had stood before the Emperor and Diet at Worms, while all Germany had hailed him as its champion against the Pope and the Spaniard. The years between 1519 and 1524 were, from an external point of view, the most glorious of Luther’s life. He dominated and led his nation, and gave a unity to that distracted and divided country which it had never enjoyed until then. He spoke and felt like a prophet. “I have the gospel, not from men, but from heaven through our Lord Jesus Christ, so that I might have described myself and have glorified in being a minister and an evangelist.” The position had come to him in no sudden visionary way. He had been led into it step by step, forced forward slowly by a power stronger than his own; and the knowledge had kept him humble before his God. During these years it seemed as if his dream—an expectation shared by his wise Elector, the most experienced statesman in Germany—of a Germany united under one National Church, separated from the bondage of Rome, repudiating her blasphemies, rejecting her traditions which had corrupted the religion of the ancient and purer days, and disowning her presumptuous encroachments on the domain of the civil power ordained of God, was about to come true.

Then came the disillusionment of the Peasants’ War, when the dragon’s teeth were sown broadcast over Germany, and produced their crop of gloomy suspicions and black fears. After the insurrection had spent itself, and in spite of the almost irretrievable damage which it, and the use made of it by papal diplomatists, did to the Reformation movement, Luther regained his serene courage, and recovered much of the ground which had been lost. But the crushing blow had left its mark upon him. He had the same trust in God, but much more distrust of man, fearing the “tumult,” resolute to have nothing to do with anyone who had any connection, however slight, with those who had instigated the misguided peasants. He rallied the forces of the Reformation, and brought them back to discipline by the faith they had in himself as their leader. His personality dominated those kinglets of Germany, possessed with as strong a sense of their dignity and autocratic rights as any Tudor or Valois, and they submitted to be led by him. Electoral Saxony, Hesse, Lüneburg, Anhalt, East Prussia, and Mansfeld, and some score of imperial cities, had followed him loyally from the first; and as the years passed, Ducal Saxony and Würtemberg in the centre and south, and Brandenburg in the north, had declared themselves Protestant States. These larger principalities brought in their train all the smaller satellite States which clustered round them. It may be said that before Luther’s death the much larger portion of the German Empire had been won for evangelical religion,—a territory to be roughly described as a great triangle, whose base was the shores of the Baltic Sea from the Netherlands on the west to the eastern limits of East Prussia, and whose apex was Switzerland. Part of this land was occupied by ecclesiastical principalities which had remained Roman Catholic,—the districts surrounding Köln on the west, and the territories of Paderborn, Fulda, and many others in the centre,—but, on the other hand, many stoutly Protestant cities, like Nürnberg, Constance, and Augsburg, were planted on territories which were outside these limits. The extent and power of this Protestant Germany was sufficient to resist any attempt on the part of the Emperor and the Catholic princes to overcome it by force of arms, provided only its rulers remained true to each other.

Over this wide extent of country Evangelical Churches had been established, and provisions had been made for the education of children and for the support of the poor in ordinances issued by the supreme secular authorities who ruled over its multitudinous divisions. The Mass, with its supposed substitutionary sacrifice and a mediatorial priesthood, had been abolished. The German tongue had displaced mediæval Latin in public worship, and the worshippers could take part in the services with full understanding of the solemn acts in which they were engaged. A German Bible lay on every pulpit, and the people had their copies in the pews. Translations of the Psalms and German evangelical hymns were sung, and sermons in German were preached. Pains were taken to provide an educated evangelical ministry who would preach the gospel faithfully, and conscientiously fulfil all the duties connected with the “cure of souls.” The ecclesiastical property of the mediæval Church was largely used for evangelical purposes. There was no mechanical uniformity in these new arrangements. Luther refused to act the part of an ecclesiastical autocrat: he advised when called upon to give advice, he never commanded. No Wittenberg “use” was to confront the Roman “use” and be the only mode of service and ecclesiastical organisation.

The movement Luther had inaugurated had gone far beyond Germany before 1546. Every country in Europe had felt its pulsations. As early as 1519 (April), learned men in Paris had been almost feverishly studying his writings.(360) They were eagerly read in England before 1521.(361) Aleander, writing from Worms to the Curia, complains that Spanish merchants were getting translations of Luther’s books made for circulation in Spain.(362) They were being studied with admiration in Italy even earlier. The Scottish Parliament was vainly endeavouring to prevent their entrance into that country by 1525.(363) The Lutheran Reformation had been legally established in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden long before Luther passed away.

Luther was the one great man of his generation, standing head and shoulders above everyone else. This does not mean that he absorbed in his individual personality everything that the age produced for the furtherance of humanity. Many impulses for good existed in that sixteenth century which Luther never recognised; for an age is always richer than any one man belonging to it. He stood outside the great artistic movement. He might have learned much from Erasmus on the one hand, and from the leaders of the Peasants’ War on the other, which remained hidden from him. He is greatest in the one sphere of religion only—in the greatest of all spheres. His conduct towards Zwingli and the strong language he used in speaking of opponents make our generation discover a strain of intolerance we would fain not see in so great a man; but his contemporaries did not and could not pass the same judgment upon him. In such a divided Germany none but a man of the widest tolerance could have held together the Protestant forces as Luther did; and we can see what he was when we remember the sad effects of the petty orthodoxies of the Amsdorfs and the Osianders who came after him.

It is the fate of most authors of revolutions to be devoured by the movement which they have called into being. Luther occasioned the greatest revolution which Western Europe has ever seen, and he ruled it till his death. History shows no kinglier man than this Thuringian miner’s son.

§ 13. The Religious War.(364)

The war began soon after Luther’s death. The Emperor brought into Germany his Spanish infantry, the beginning of what was to be a curse to that country for many generations, and various manœuvrings and skirmishes took place, the most important of which was Maurice of Saxony’s invasion of the Electorate. At last the Emperor met the Elector in battle at Mühlberg (April 24th, 1547), where John Frederick was completely defeated and taken prisoner. Wittenberg, stoutly defended by Sibylla, soon after surrendered. This was the end. Philip was induced to surrender on promise of favourable treatment, made by the Electors who had remained on the Emperor’s side. Charles refused to be bound by the promise made in his name, and the Landgrave was also held captive. All Germany, save Constance in the south and some of the Baltic lands, lay prostrate at the Emperor’s feet. It remained to be seen what use he would make of his victory.

In due time he set himself to bring about what he conceived to be a reasonable compromise which would enable all Germany to remain within one National Church. He tried at first to induce the separate parties to work it out among themselves; and, when this was found to be hopeless, he, like a second Justinian, resolved to construct a creed and to impose it by force upon all, especially upon the Lutherans. To begin with, he had to defy the Pope and slight the General Council for which he had been mainly responsible. He formally demanded that the Council should return to German soil (it had been transferred to Bologna), and, when this was refused, he protested against its existence and, like the German Protestants he was coercing, declared that he would not submit to its decrees. He next selected three theologians, Michael Helding, Julius von Pflug, and Agricola,—a mediævalist, an Erasmian, and a very conservative Lutheran—to construct what was called the _Augsburg Interim_.

§ 14. The Augsburg Interim.(365)

This document taught the dogma of Transubstantiation, the seven Sacraments, adoration of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, retained most of the mediæval ceremonies and usages, and declared the Pope to be the Head of the Church. This was to please the Romanists. It appealed to the Lutherans by adopting the doctrine of Justification by Faith in a modified form, the marriage of priests with some reservations, the use of the Cup by the laity in the Holy Supper, and by considerably modifying the doctrine of the sacrificial character of the Mass. Of course all its propositions were ambiguous, and could be read in two ways. This was probably the intention of the framers; if so, they were highly successful.

Nothing that Charles ever undertook proved such a dismal failure as this patchwork creed made from snippets from two Confessions. However lifeless creeds may become, they all—real ones—have grown out of the living Christian experience of their framers, and have contained the very life-blood of their hearts as well as of their brains. It is a hopeless task to construct creeds as a tailor shapes and stitches coats.

Charles, however, was proud of his creed, and did his best to enforce it. The Diet of 1548 showed him his difficulties. The _Interim_ was accepted and proclaimed as an edict by this Diet (May 15), but only after the Emperor, very unwillingly, declared practically that it was meant for the Protestants alone. “The Emperor,” said a member of the Diet, “is fighting for religion against the Pope, whom he acknowledges to be its head, and against the two parts of Christendom in Germany—the mass of the Protestants and the ecclesiastical princes.” Thus from the beginning what was to be an instrument to unite German Christendom was transformed into a “strait-waistcoat for the Lutherans”; and this did not make it more palatable for them. At first the strong measures taken by the Emperor compelled its nominal acceptance by many of the Protestant princes.(366) The cities which seemed to be most refractory had their Councils purged of their democratic members, and their Lutheran preachers sent into banishment—Matthew Alber from Reutlingen, Wolfgang Musculus from Augsburg, Brenz from Hall, Osiander from Nürnberg, Schnepf from Tübingen. Bucer and Fagius had to flee from Strassburg and take refuge in England. The city of Constance was besieged and fell after a heroic defence; it was deprived of its privileges as an imperial city, and was added to the family possessions of the House of Austria. Its pastor, Blarer, was sent into banishment. Four hundred Lutheran divines were driven from their homes.

If Charles, backed by his Spanish and Italian troops, could secure a nominal submission to his _Interim_, he could not coerce the people into accepting it. The churches stood empty in Augsburg, in Ulm, and in other cities. The people met it by an almost universal passive resistance—if singing doggerel verses in mockery of the _Interim_ may be called passive. When the Emperor ordered Duke Christopher of Würtemberg to drive Brenz out of his refuge in his State, the Duke answered him that he could not banish his whole population. The popular feeling, as is usual in such cases, found vent in all manner of satirical songs, pamphlets, and even catechisms. As in the times before the Peasants’ War, this coarse popular literature had an immense circulation. Much of it took the form of rude broadsides with a picture, generally satirical, at the top, and the song, sometimes with the music score, printed below.(367) Wandering preachers, whom no amount of police supervision could check, went inveighing against the _Interim_, distributing the rude literature through the villages and among the democracy in the towns. Soon the creed and the edict which enforced it became practically a dead letter throughout the greater part of Germany.

The presence of the Emperor’s Spanish troops on the soil of the Fatherland irritated the feelings of Germans, whether Romanists or Protestants; the insolence and excesses of these soldiers stung the common people; and their employment to enforce the hated _Interim_ on the Protestants was an additional insult. The citizens of one imperial city were told that if they did not accept the _Interim_ they must be taught theology by Spanish troops, and of another that they would yet learn to speak the language of Spain. While the popular odium against Charles was slowly growing in intensity, he contrived to increase it by a proposal that his son Philip should have the imperial crown after his brother Ferdinand. Charles’ own election had been caused by a patriotic sentiment. The people thought that a German was better than a Frenchman, and they had found out too late that they had not got a German but a Spaniard. Ferdinand had lived in Germany long enough to know its wants, and his son Maximilian had shown that he possessed many qualities which appealed to the German character. The proposal to substitute Philip, however natural from Charles’ point of view, and consistent with his earlier idea that the House of Hapsburg should have one head, meant to the Germans to still further “hispaniolate” Germany. This unpopularity of Charles among all ranks and classes of Germans grew rapidly between 1548 and 1552; and during the same years his foreign prestige was fast waning. He remained in Germany, with the exception of a short visit to the Netherlands; but in spite of his presence the anarchy grew worse and worse. The revolt which came might have arisen much sooner had the Protestants been able to overcome their hatred and suspicion of Maurice of Saxony, whose co-operation was almost essential. It is unnecessary to describe the intrigues which went on around the Emperor, careless though not unforewarned.

Maurice had completed his arrangements with his German allies and with France early in 1552. The Emperor had retired from Augsburg to Innsbruck. Maurice seized the Pass of Ehrenberg on the nights of May 18th, 19th, and pressed on to Innsbruck, hoping to “run the old fox to earth.” Charles escaped by a few hours, and, accompanied by his brother Ferdinand, fled over the Brenner Pass amid a storm of snow and rain. It was the road by which he had entered Germany in fair spring weather when he came in 1530, in the zenith of his power, to settle, as he had confidently expected, the religious difficulties in Germany. He reached Villach in Carinthia in safety, and there waited the issue of events.

The German princes gathered in great numbers at Passau (Aug. 1552) to discuss the position and arrive at a settlement. Maurice was ostensibly the master of the situation, for his troops and those of his wild ally Albert Alcibiades of Brandenburg-Culmbach were in the town, and many a prince felt “as if they had a hare in their breast.” His demands for the public good were moderate and statesmanlike. He asked for the immediate release of his father-in-law the Landgrave of Hesse; for a settlement of the religious question on a basis that would be permanent, at a meeting of German princes fairly representative of the two parties—no Council summoned and directed by the Pope would ever give fair-play to the Protestants, he said, nor could they expect to get it from the Diet where the large number of ecclesiastical members gave an undue preponderance to the Romanist side; and for a settlement of some constitutional questions. The princes present, and with them Ferdinand, King of the Romans, were inclined to accept these demands. But when they were referred to Charles at Villach, he absolutely refused to permit the religious or the constitutional question to be settled by any assembly but the Diet of the Empire. Nothing would move him from his opinion, neither the entreaties of his brother nor his own personal danger. He still counted on the divisions among the Protestants, and believed that he had only to support the “born Elector” of Saxony against the one of his own creation to deprive Maurice of his strength. It may be that Maurice had his own fears, it may be that he was glad to have the opportunity of showing that the “Spaniard” was the one enemy to a lasting peace in Germany. He contented himself with the acquiescence of John Frederick in the permanent loss of the Electorate as arranged at the Peace of Wittenberg (1547).

Charles was then free to come back to Augsburg, where he had the petty satisfaction of threatening the Lutheran preachers who had returned, and of again overthrowing the democratic government of the city. He then went to assume the command of the German army which was opposing the French. His failure to take the city of Metz was followed by his practical abandonment of the direction of the affairs of Germany, which were left in the hands of Ferdinand. The disorders of the time delayed the meeting of the Diet until 1555 (opened Feb. 5th). The Elector and the “born Elector” of Saxony were both dead—John Frederick, worn out by misfortune and imprisonment (March 3rd, 1554), and sympathised with by friends and foes alike; and Maurice, only thirty-two years of age, killed in the moment of victory at Sievershausen (July 9th, 1553).

It was in the summer of 1554 that the Emperor had handed over, in a carefully limited manner, the management of German affairs to his brother Ferdinand, the King of the Romans. The terms of devolution of authority imply that this was done by Charles to avoid the humiliation of being personally responsible for acquiescence in what was to him a hateful necessity, and the confession of failure in his management of Germany from 1530. Everyone recognised that peace was necessary at almost any price, but Ferdinand and the higher ecclesiastical princes shrunk from facing the inevitable. The King of the Romans still cherished some vague hopes of a compromise which would preserve the unity of the mediæval German Church, and the selfish policy of many of the Protestant princes encouraged him. Elector Joachim of Brandenburg wished the archbishopric of Magdeburg and the bishopric of Halberstadt for his son Sigismund, and declared that he would be content with the _Interim_! Christopher of Würtemberg cherished similar designs on ecclesiastical properties. Augustus of Saxony, Maurice’s brother and successor, wished the bishopric of Meissen. All these designs could be more easily fulfilled if the external unity of the mediæval Church remained unbroken.

§ 15. Religious Peace of Augsburg.(368)

The Diet had been summoned for Nov. 13th (1554), but when Ferdinand reached Augsburg about the end of the year, the Estates had not gathered. He was able to open the Diet formally on Feb. 5th (1555), but none of the Electors, and only two of the great ecclesiastical princes, the Cardinal Bishop of Augsburg and the Bishop of Eichstadt, were present in person. While the Diet dragged on aimlessly, the Protestant princes gathered to a great Council of their own at Naumburg (March 3rd, 1555) to concert a common policy. Among those present were the Electors of Brandenburg and Saxony, the sons of John Frederick, the ill-fated “born Elector,” and the Landgrave of Hesse—sixteen princes and a great number of magnates. After long debates, the assembly decided (March 13th) that they would stand by the Augsburg Confession of 1530, and that the minority would unite with the majority in carrying out one common policy. Even “fat old Interim,” as Elector Joachim of Brandenburg had been nicknamed, was compelled to submit; and the Protestants stood on a firm basis with a definite programme, and pledged to support each other.

This memorable meeting at Naumburg forced the hands of the members of the Diet. Every member, save the Cardinal Bishop of Augsburg, desired a _permanent_ settlement of the religious question, and their zeal appeared in the multiplicity of adjectives used to express the predominant thought—“_beständiger, beharrlicher, unbedingter, für und für ewig währender_” was the phrase. The meeting at Naumburg showed them that this could not be secured without the recognition of Lutheranism as a legal religion within the German Empire.

When the Protestant demands were formally placed before the Diet, they were found to include—security under the Public Law of the Empire for all who professed the Augsburg Confession, and for all who in future might make the same profession; liberty to hold legally all the ecclesiastical property which had been or might in the future be secularised; complete toleration for all Lutherans who were resident in Romanist States without corresponding toleration for Romanists in Lutheran States. These demands went much further than any which Luther himself had formulated, and really applied to Romanists some of the provisions of the “recess” of Speyer (1529) which, when applied to Lutherans, had called forth the Protest. They were vehemently objected to by the Romanist members of the Diet; and, as both parties seemed unwilling to yield anything to the other, there was some danger of the religious war breaking out again. The mediation of Ferdinand for the Romanists and Frederick of Saxony for the Protestants brought a compromise after months of debate. It was agreed that the Lutheran religion should be legalised within the Empire, and that all Lutheran princes should have full security for the practice of their faith; that the mediæval episcopal jurisdiction should cease within their lands; and that they were to retain all ecclesiastical possessions which had been secularised before the passing of the Treaty of Passau (1552). Future changes of faith were to be determined by the principle _cujus regio ejus religio_. The secular territorial ruler might choose between the Romanist or the Lutheran faith, and his decision was to bind all his subjects. If a subject professed another religion from his prince, he was to be allowed to emigrate without molestation. These provisions were agreed upon by all, and embodied in the “recess.” Two very important matters remained unsettled. The Romanists demanded that any ecclesiastical prince who changed his faith should thereby forfeit lands and dignities—the “ecclesiastical reservation.” This was embodied in the “recess,” but the Protestants declared that they would not be bound by it. On the other hand, the Protestants demanded toleration for all Lutherans living within the territories of Romanist princes. This was not embodied in the “recess,” though Ferdinand promised that he would see it carried out in practice.(369) Such was the famous Peace of Augsburg. There was no reason why it should not have come years earlier and without the wild war-storm which preceded it, save the fact that, in an unfortunate fit of enthusiasm, the Germans had elected the young King of Spain to be their Emperor. They had chosen the grandson of the genial Maxmilian, believing him to be a real German, and they got a man whose attitude to religion “was half-way between the genial orthodoxy of his grandfather Maxmilian and the gloomy fanaticism of his son Philip II.,” and whose “mind was always travelling away from the former and towards the latter position.”(370) The longer he lived the more Spanish he became, and the less capable of understanding Germany, either on its secular or religious side. His whole public life, so far as that country was concerned, was one disastrous failure. He succeeded only when he used his imperial position to increase and consolidate the territorial possessions of the House of Hapsburg; for the charge of dismembering the Empire can be brought home to Charles as effectually as to the most selfish of the princes of Germany.

The Religious Peace of Augsburg was contained in the decisions of Speyer in 1526, and it was repeated in every one of the truces which the Emperor made with his Lutheran subjects from 1530 to 1544.(371) Had any one of these been made permanent, the religious war, with its outcome in wild anarchy, in embittered religious antagonisms, and its seed of internecine strife, to be reaped in the Thirty Years’ War, would never have occurred. But Charles, whose mission, he fancied, was to preserve the unity “of the seamless robe of Christ,” as he phrased it, could only make the attempt by drenching the fields of Germany with blood, and perpetuating and accentuating the religious antagonisms of the country which had chosen him for its Protector.

This Religious Peace of Augsburg has been claimed, and rightly, as a victory for religious liberty.

From one point of view the victory was not a great one. The only Confession tolerated was the Augsburg. The Swiss Reformation and its adherents were outside the scope of the religious peace. What grew to be the Reformed or Calvinistic Church was also outside. It was limited solely to the Lutheran, or, as it was called, the Evangelical creed. Nor was there much gain to the personal liberty of conscience. It may be said with truth that there was less freedom of conscience under the Lutheran territorial system of Churches, and also under the Roman Catholic Church reorganised under the canons and decrees of Trent, than there was in the mediæval Church.

The victory lay in this, that the first blow had been struck to free mankind from the fetters of Romanist absolutism; that the first faltering step had been taken on the road to religious liberty; and the first is valuable not for what it is in itself, but for what it represents and for what comes after it. The Religious Peace of Augsburg did not concede much according to modern standards; but it contained the potency and promise of the future. It is always the first step which counts.