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.