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