The period of Maximilian's reign was a bridge which spanned two
colossal events: the discovery of America and the Reformation. When
this Emperor died in 1517, a greater work was at hand than any he or
his predecessors had ever accomplished, and the humble man who was to
be its instrument was destined to become a power above all princes, and
to shake the Church of Rome to its foundation after an undisturbed
reign of a thousand years.
The Reformation had long been preparing in the hearts of the people.
The persecutions of the Albigenses in France, the Waldenses in Savoy,
and the burning of Huss and of Jerome, had all come from the growing
conviction that the Bible was the only true source of Christian truth
and doctrine.
The art of printing had made this well of pure truth accessible to all,
and there was a deep though unspoken belief in the hearts and minds of
the people that a church grasping at secular power and riches had
wandered far from the simple teachings of its Founder.
These smoldering fires were very near to the surface when Maximilian
died. Charles, his grandson, was then King of Spain. The ambitious
Francis I. of France struggled hard for the crown laid down by the
Emperor, but, in 1519, it was placed upon the head of his rival, and
Charles V. was the first of whom it could be said that the sun never
set upon his dominions.
At this most critical moment in the history of the world, the fate of
Europe was in the hands of three men: Charles V., Emperor of Germany;
Francis I., King of France, and Henry VIII., King of England.
Charles, half Fleming and half Spaniard, had the grasping
acquisitiveness of the one nation, and the proud, fanatical cruelty of
the other. Small of stature, plain in feature, sedate, quiet, crafty,
he was playing a desperate game with Francis I. for supremacy in Europe.
Francis, handsome as an Apollo, accomplished, fascinating, profligate,
was fully his match in ambition. Covering his worst qualities with a
gorgeous mantle of generosity and chivalrous sense of honor, he was the
insidious corrupter of morals in France, creating a sentiment which
laughed at virtue and innocence as qualities belonging to a lower class
of society.
Each of these men was striving to enlist Henry VIII. upon his side, by
appealing to the cruel caprices of that vain, ostentatious, arrogant
King, who in turn tried to use them for the furthering of his own
desires and purposes.
It was a sort of triangular game between the three monarchs--a game
full of finesse and far-reaching designs. If Charles attacked Francis,
Henry attacked Charles, while the astute Charles, knowing well the
desire of the English King to repudiate Katharine and make Anne Boleyn
his queen, whispered seductive promises of the papal chair to Wolsey,
who was in turn to establish his own influence over his royal master by
bringing about the marriage with Anne, upon which the King's heart was
set, and then be rewarded by securing Henry's promise of neutrality for
Charles, in his designs of overreaching Francis--and, after that, the
road to Rome for the aspiring cardinal would be a straight one!
It was an intricate diplomatic net-work, in which the thread of Henry's
desire for the fair Anne was mingled with Wolsey's desire for
preferment, and both interlaced with the ambitious, far-reaching
purposes of the other two monarchs.
All these events were very absorbing, and while they were splendidly
gilding the surface of Europe in the first half of the sixteenth
century, it seemed a small matter that an obscure monk was denouncing
the Pope and defying the power of the Catholic Church. Little did
Charles suspect that, when his victories and edicts were forgotten, the
words of the insolent heretic would still be echoing down the ages.
A few years later, and the Apollo-like beauty and false heart of
Francis I. were dissolving in the grave; Henry VIII. had gone to
another world, to meet his reward--and his wives; and Charles V. was
sadly counting his beads in the monastery of St. Jerome, at Juste,
reflecting upon the vanity of human ambitions. But the murmur of
protest from the unknown monk had become a roar--the rivulet had
swollen into a threatening torrent. As it is the invisible forces that
are the most powerful in nature, so it is the obscure and least
observed events that have accomplished the most tremendous revolutions
in human affairs.
But before all this had happened, in the year 1517, when it had not yet
occurred to Henry's sensitive conscience that his marriage with
Katharine, his brother's widow, was illegal, and while Charles V., that
sedate young man, who "looked so modest and soared so high," was
quietly revolving plans for the extension of his empire, Pope Leo X.,
the pious Vicar of Christ upon earth, and elegant patron of Michael
Angelo and Raphael, found his income all too small for his magnificent
tastes. It does not seem to have occurred to him that his tastes were
too costly for his income; he simply recognized that something must be
done, and at once, to fill his empty purse. But what should it be? A
simple and ingenious expedient solved the perplexing problem. He would
issue a proclamation to his "loving, faithful children," that he would
grant absolution for all sorts of crimes, the prices graduated to suit
the enormity of the offense. We have not seen the proclamation, but
doubt not it was in most caressing Latin, for can anything exceed the
velvety softness of the gloves worn on the hands which have signed
papal decrees?
Simple lying and slander were cheap; perjury and sins against chastity
more costly; while the use of the stiletto, of poison, and the hired
assassin could be enjoyed only by the richest. It worked well. In the
hopeful words of a pious dignitary, "as soon as the money chinks in the
coffer, the soul springs out of purgatory." Who could resist such
promise? Money flowed in swollen streams into the thirsty coffers,
many even paying in advance for crimes they intended to commit!
Martin Luther was the one man who dared to stand up and denounce this
tax upon crime, this papal trade in vice. The people had at last found
a voice and a leader.
Protestantism, which had long been maturing in silence and in darkness,
sprang full-armed into existence, and was the first thing to confront
Charles when he assumed the Imperial crown.
He, no doubt, thought that he would soon be able to dispose of the new
heresy, as had his royal father and mother in Spain disposed of heretic
Jews a few years before. But this new specter of Protestantism would
not down!
When Charles called together an assembly of states (or Diet) at Worms,
in 1521, he supposed he was going to deal with one obscure monk,
leading an obscure movement. But it assumed quite a different aspect
when Luther, the culprit, was sustained by two great electors and many
princes of his realm; and when a long list of grievances against the
Papacy was formally presented by several states, which he was firmly
told he would be required to redress!
The princes were in earnest. They began to seize church property, to
send monks and nuns adrift, and to make free with gold and silver
vessels and treasure belonging to the Church.
This time of confusion was used by one ambitious ruler for his own
ends. The German, or Teutonic, order was a knightly organization
created expressly to hold the frontier against the Slavonic people.
After the year 1230 this order held Prussia, which they ruled like
princes. The Margrave of Brandenburg, who was at the time of the
Reformation Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, realized his
opportunity in the existing disorder. He made himself sovereign over
Prussia, and annexed the possessions of the Teutonic order to his
family.
But it was not alone the princes who saw their opportunity in this time
of overturning. The wrongs of the peasants were very real and very
grievous, and of long, long standing. The entire burden of taxation
rested on them--the archbishops and the nobles and the _gentlemen_ all
being exempt!
When the Reformation began the _bauer_, or peasantry, believed that
their hope lay in the abolishing of Catholicism and of the feudal
system.
It takes a very small spark to fire a train of gunpowder. When the
Countess of Luepfen ordered the peasants on her estate to spend their
Sundays in picking strawberries and gathering snail shells for
pincushions, she dropped such a spark! They refused, and the revolt
spread, gathering in fury as it moved like a cyclone through the German
states. All throughout Germany there are to be seen, to-day, ruined
castles which tell the story of this "Peasants' War" (1525). Hideous
atrocities were committed, and, as has so often happened, the cause of
a people whose grievances were real and heartrending was so stained
with crime that sympathy with and pity for their sufferings were
obliterated. Even Luther--whose followers they claimed to be--said of
them, "they should be treated as a man would treat a mad dog."
The bold stand taken by Luther against this rebellion strengthened him
with the princes. Not only Saxony, Hesse, and Brunswick and many free
cities, but the Augustine order of monks, a part of the Franciscans,
and a number of priests had embraced the new doctrine contained in the
"Augsburg Confession," the creed or summary of belief which was
prepared by Luther's friend, Philip Melancthon.
The principles asserted in this were that men are justified by faith
alone; that an assembly of believers constitutes a Church; that
monastic vows, invocation of saints, fasting, celibacy, etc., are
useless.
Such were the chief points in the celebrated "Confession," which was
signed by the Protestant cities and princes in 1530.
So while Charles was engaged in his great game of finesse with Francis
I. and Henry VIII. for preponderance in Europe--while the Turks were
pressing toward Vienna on the east, and the French into Flanders on the
west, and while the Pope, who should have been his ally, jealous of his
power was circumventing and weakening him so far as he could, worse
than all else, the foundations of the Protestant Church were being
permanently laid in Germany.
The two great aims of the Emperor were to restore papal supremacy over
Christendom and firmly to unite Germany and Spain. But how could he do
the one, when at the hour of a great schism in the Church, a jealous
Pope was trying to weaken his hands? Or the other, when Germany was
always suspicious of him because he was a Spaniard, and Spain because
he was a Hapsburg?
Charles was profound in his methods, crafty and powerful; but
circumstances were stronger than he. In order to succeed at one point,
he had to weaken himself at another. He could do nothing in repelling
the Turks or the French, unless aided by the Protestant states. And
these states would only give assistance in exchange for concessions to
their cause, while Francis I., as crafty as he, found a sure way to
circumvent his rival in giving aid to the Protestants.
The new faith was spreading not only in Germany, but in Denmark,
Sweden, and England. The movement in Switzerland diverged somewhat in
character under Zwingli, another Reformer, and the new Protestantism
began to have its own schismatics.
Calvin in Geneva rejected Luther's doctrine of _justification by
faith_, and for it substituted that of _election_. The doctrine that
men were predestined to heaven or hell was thereafter held by that
branch of the Church known as Reformers, as distinguished from the
Lutherans, while from the _protest_ of Saxony, Brandenburg, Brunswick,
Hesse, and fifteen imperial cities against the decree outlawing Luther
and his doctrines, the name Protestants took its rise, which included
Lutherans and Reformers alike.
The famous Schmalkaldian League was so called from the little Hessian
town where the Protestant princes assembled in 1530 and made a solemn
promise of mutual support against the Emperor; when they also entered
into a secret treaty with Francis I., and received promises of support
from the Kings of England, Sweden, and Denmark.
In 1540 the strength of the Catholics had been re-enforced by the order
of Jesuits, which was founded by Ignatius Loyola. This order made the
suppression of Protestant doctrines its chief task.
Meyerbeer has, by his great opera, made so famous the strange tragedy
enacted at Muenster in 1534 that it must have brief mention, although it
was only a bit of driftwood in the great current of events. A
religious sect called the Anabaptists was led by a Dutch tailor, John
of Leyden, who claimed to be inspired. The chief things he was
inspired to do were to crown himself king, to introduce polygamy, and
to cut off the heads of all who resisted his decrees! For more than a
year the city was held by this madman and his associates; and then the
tragedy was concluded by the torturing to death of the tailor-king and
his chief abettors; their bodies being left suspended in iron cages
over the Cathedral door at Muenster. This grewsome story is the one
used by Meyerbeer in his opera of "Le Prophete."
In 1552 Charles saw his ambitious plans for the government of the world
failing at every point. By the treaty of Passau, religious freedom had
been conceded to the Protestants; and while his army was needed to
fight the Turks in Hungary, Henry II. of France (who had succeeded
Francis I., 1547), in league with the Protestant states, was invading
Lorraine.
Sick at heart and failing in health, the weary Emperor (1556) resolved
to lay down the heavy crown he had worn for thirty-six years.
To his son Philip II. he gave the Netherlands, Naples, Spain, and the
American Colonies, while the Imperial title, and the German-Austrian
lands passed to his brother Ferdinand I.
The singular cause of his death, two years later, makes us wonder
whether his unfortunate mother Joanna could have transmitted to her son
the insanity which darkened her own life.
At the monastery at St. Juste to which the Imperial monk had retired
after his abdication, he yielded to a morbid whim to rehearse his own
funeral. The grave-clothes were damp. He was seized with a chill, and
after a brief illness died (1558).
Charles had been thwarted in his two great aims of establishing the
supremacy of his Church, and the permanent union of Germany and Spain.
But perhaps his bitterest disappointment was in not being permitted to
leave the Imperial crown to his son Philip.
His brother Ferdinand, although firmly Catholic, was a just and
moderate prince, who had always favored conciliatory measures to the
Protestants while the course of Philip II., in the Netherlands, soon
showed how heavily his hand would have rested upon Germany. He
appointed the Duke of Alva Spanish governor in that unfortunate
territory. Never had cruel king more cruel agent in carrying out his
policy. Torture, fire, and sword were the instruments intended to
subjugate, but which in the end brought about the independence of
Holland.
The prelates of the Church in 1543 had come together in what was called
the "Council of Trent," with the avowed object of reforming abuses
which had crept into the Church. The real purpose, however, was to
examine the foundations of that venerable structure, to discover where
it had been injured in the assaults made upon it since 1517, and to
strengthen it where it seemed to need new supports.
In 1563, after eighteen years' deliberation, the work of this Council
was finished. The cardinal doctrines of purgatory, absolution,
celibacy, invocation of saints, censorship of press, etc., etc., were
reaffirmed, and terrible anathemas pronounced against such as should
reject them.
Thus was created a chasm which nothing could ever bridge, eternally
dividing the old religion from the new.
Another tremendously re-enforcing agent was at work in Loyola's Society
of Jesus, which was to be to the Church what the brain is to the human
body. In 1540 Loyola's ten disciples received the papal blessing. In
1600 there were ten million Jesuits, and in 1700 twenty millions!