Monks, Popes, and their Political Intrigues

by John Alberger

The grand struggle between religious freedom and Catholic despotism was visibly approaching when Charles V., King of Spain, in 1519 became Emperor of Germany. His design was to conquer the world, and his policy was to unite all parties in augmenting the national strength. To secure the favor of the pope, and the co-operation of his extensive and effective machinery, he declared himself the defender of the Catholic faith. To conciliate the Protestants he convened a diet at Worms, at which, under a plausible show of toleration he allowed Luther, in his presence, to defend the principles of the reformation. But his ambiguous policy becoming offensive to the Roman See, he issued an edict against the Protestants. A Catholic from interest, he was more disposed to make the pope auxiliary to the success of his designs than to be governed by him. Hence, when Francis I. preferred claims to certain portions of the Germanic empire, he leagued with the pope and accomplished the defeat of the king; but he was equally disposed to defend his interests against the pope. The papal monarch, always apprehensive of the political power of friend or foe, seeing that his confederacy with Charles had vastly augmented the latter's preponderating power, and placed the papal interests at his disposal, formed against him a counter league with the Italian States. This effort to retrieve the errors of his policy only aggravated his misfortune. The forces of the Holy League were defeated by the arms of Charles, Rome taken by storm, the city plundered, the pope imprisoned, and four hundred thousand crowns of gold demanded for his ransom. When Charles heard of the success of his arms, in evident mockery he dressed himself in mourning for the pope, ordered masses to be said in all the churches for his deliverance from prison, and in alleviation of his misfortune reduced the ransom to 100,000 crowns, The power of Charles overawing the papal throne, it prudently refrained from venting in insulting anathemas the ebullitions of its wrath. Pope Clement VII., after the peace of Cambray in 1592, crowned Charles as King of Lombardy and Rome.

On this occasion the emperor dutifully kissed the feet of the papal monarch. The cause of this affection and harmony was shortly afterwards manifested in an intolerant edict against the Protestants. This significant menace led the Protestant princes to form the Smalkalden League for the protection of Protestantism. Two years afterwards a holy league was formed by the Catholic princes for the protection of Catholicism. After some abortive attempts at negotiation, the Protestant league raised the standard of war. The emperor by strategetic movements, and by creating jealousy and divisions among the Protestant confederates, obtained important advantages over their arms, and finally succeeded in dissolving the league. But Maurice of Saxony had secretly formed another league, which was joined by Henry II., King of France. While Charles was at Innspruck, attending the Council of Trent, Maurice suddenly appeared at the head of an army, and the emperor barely escaped amid the darkness of a stormy night from being captured. The council was consequently dissolved, and the Protestants dictated the terms of peace at Passau; which the emperor ratified at Augsburg. By the terms of this treaty it was agreed that no one should be attacked on account of his religious belief; that no one should be molested in the enjoyment of his property or mode of worship; that religious disputes should be adjusted by pacific means; that persons for religious reasons should be allowed to change their residences; that bishops on becoming Protestants should forfeit their office and salary; and that every Protestant should enjoy his faith until a religious compromise should be established!

Charles, broken down in health and constitution, enfeebled in mind, and conceiving that he was haunted by some invisible power which blasted all his prospects, abdicated the throne and retired to a monastery, where he passed the remainder of his life in making wooden clocks, and in performing his funeral ceremonies.

Ferdinand II., King of Spain, succeeded to the crown of Germany in 1619. He was by nature of a morose and revengeful disposition, and the bigotry and prejudice which had been instilled into his mind by Catholic preceptors made him an accomplished instrument in the hands of the church, in executing its exterminating vengeance on the heretics. During the course of his tutelage he made a pilgrimage to Rome, where an oath was administered to him by the pope, that if he should ever become emperor he would exterminate heresy in his dominions. When he ascended the throne Germany was divided into two factions. The one was known as the "Catholic League," and the other as the "Evangelical Union." The Catholic League was headed by Maximilian, elector of Bavaria, and comprised the bishops and princes attached to the house of Austria.

The Evangelical Union was headed by the Duke of Wittenberg, the elector of Saxony and Brandenburg, and composed of Lutheran and Calvinistic princes and knights. A number of the princes of Bavaria assembled at Prague, and declaring that they would not submit to Maximilian, chose for their king Frederic, elector of the Palatina, a member of the Evangelical Union. This revolt benefited the Evangelical Union by a powerful accession. A desperate and bloody struggle was imminent between these two parties. Notwithstanding the Protestant influence in Bavaria, Ferdinand succeeded in having himself elected king. After this event he tore up in a violent rage the charter which Rudolph II. had granted the Bohemians, because it allowed them to build churches and school-houses. He then showed his remembrance of his popish oath by persecuting the Protestants, banishing their preachers, and depopulating the kingdom by an intolerance which caused emigrations of whole sections from his dominions. The victory of his troops near Prague enabling him to dictate a treaty which crushed the Protestant cause, and dissolved the Evangelical Union, he proceeded to restore the ecclesiastical institutions which had been abolished by the Protestants, to exclude Calvinists from the benefits of the religious peace of Augsburg, and to require Protestants living under Catholic princes to believe in Catholicism. Besides these decrees, enforced by the military power, the conquest of the Palatinate of Frederic, the bestowal of that dignity on Maximilian, the emperor's favorite, giving the Catholics the ascendency in the electoral college, the army of Tilly in Lower Saxony, where no existing enemy made it excusable, depriving the Protestants of their churches, committing wanton violence on the Lutherans, and compelling thousands to abandon their homes, property and country, were such gross violations of treaties, and such strong incentives to resistance, that the Protestant princes were impelled to unite in a league with the King of Denmark and the Duke of Holstein, determining to exhaust every resource in the defence of religious liberty. After some successes the confederated forces were defeated, and the Protestants lost all that they had acquired since the peace of Augsburg. At this dark hour in the fortunes of the league, Gustavus Adolphus, with an army of thirty thousand veterans, espoused its cause. His heroism, strategetic skill, and indomitable valor soon annihilated Tilly's army, reduced the imperial allies to extreme distress, conquered Lower Saxony and Bavaria, and delivered the Protestants from their perilous situation. Tilly having died, Wallenstein assumed command. Having raised an immense and formidable army, the new general was enabled to attack Adolphus with such overwhelming force that he compelled him to retire from Bavaria. In 1642, at Lutzen, the two powerful armies came to a general and decisive engagement; the genius of Adolphus crowned his arms with victory, but his intrepidity cost him his life. Through a wise policy the Swedes still continued a triumphant career, victoriously marching through the empire with incredible rapidity, and finally, after the battle of Prague, dictating the peace of Westphalia.

By the terms of the peace of Westphalia Calvinists acquired the same rights with Lutherans; princes were bound not to persecute subjects on account of religious differences; all acquisitions of Protestants since the peace of Augsburg were confirmed; entire equality of sect, liberty of conscience, and the exercise of all modes of religion were guaranteed, and the independence of Switzerland and of the Netherlands acknowledged.

Pope Innocent X. strenuously protested against this peace, complaining in bitter terms of the deep injury it inflicted on the church. Though the consequences of the treaty have been of the most benignant nature to Europe, still the Papal See has, through all periods maintained, with unabated animosity, its original opposition to the invaluable treaty.

The papal intrigues, so prolific of disastrous wars, were no less pernicious to Austria than they had been to other powers. Upon the death of Duke Frederic, its ruler, Frederic II., of Germany, declared the duchy a vacant fief of his empire, and appointed over it a governor. Pope Innocent V. persuaded Margaret, the sister of the deceased duke, and Gertrude, his neice, to claim the duchy as their inheritance. The Margrave Hermann, by the aid of the pope and his machinery, was enabled to command a strong party in support of the project. After a war of thirty-six years the dispute was settled by the interference of the emperor Rodolph, who gave it to his two sons, Albert and Ro-dolph.

On the death of Maria Theresa, Joseph, her son, succeeded to the throne of Austria. Maria Theresa was a very devout and superstitious princess, a circumstance which enabled the sacerdotal fraternity to gain and betray her confidence. But in making her an object of their craft they made her son their enemy. Their duplicity having excited in the mind of Joseph a strong aversion to the intermeddling and intriguing profession, he no sooner ascended the throne than he manifested a disposition to adopt a policy more in accordance with the enlightenment of the age than was agreeable to the pope and the clergy. The world with pleasure, but the church with consternation, beheld him enlarging the liberty of the press, tolerating the Protestants, treating the Jews with moderation, annulling ecclesiastical sinecures, and abolishing such monasteries and nunneries as were not useful as schools or hospitals. Uneasy at these useful reforms, yet not daring to mutter his Vatican thunder, and finding his machinery unable to stop their progress, Pope Pius IV. sought a personal interview with the liberal minded emperor, to dissuade him from the further prosecution of his beneficent intentions. But notwithstanding the earnest remonstrances of the vicar of Christ, the emperor still continued to reduce the number of the monasteries, and to effect reforms in the churches, and in the various departments of the government. This wise and sagacious policy, which relieved the people of the oppression of spiritual despotism, and renewed the vigor of national energy, was not appreciated by the masses through the ignorance and superstition of the age. The emperor not only had to contend with opposition from those for whose moral advancement he was laboring, but also with the disguised hostility of the pope, and the subtle operation of his treacherous machinery. But still, amid wars, seditions and rebellions, he pursued his magnanimous policy; and if he did not effect all the reforms in the church, and in his government, that he had contemplated, it was more through the intrigues of the pope than through any want of disposition, skill and energy on his part.

The various orders of knights, whose avocation it was to enforce conformity to the demands of Catholicism by the vengeance of the sword, was an important part of the papal machinery. All who yielded not to this argument were threatened with extermination; all who did, became the slaves of spiritual despotism. Under pretext of protecting Poland from the ravages of Prussian heathen, the Teutonic Knights, in 1226, won from Conrad of Masovia a small strip of land on the Vistula. For fifty-three years they carried on a war against the Persian tribes, and finally obliged them to embrace Catholicism. This war, suggested by papal craft, continued by incredible barbarity, culminated in the grossest perfidy. In their protection of Poland they inflicted deeper injuries on her than the savages of Prussia had ever contemplated, or in fact had the ability to inflict. They subjugated the Baltic seaboard, from the Oder to the Gulf of Finland, and wrung from her her maritime commerce, and her northern line of defence. Poland and Prussia having both been plundered and oppressed by the knights, united in a bond of union against their common enemy, and a ferocious war was inaugurated, during which the knights lost a great portion of their territory, and finally their power was broken. In the various vicissitudes of the succeeding fifty years the knights became abolished in Prussia, and their possessions converted into a hereditary duchy, under the male line of Prince Albert, which, under Francis III. became the kingdom of Prussia.