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.