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.