Though the division of the country into two camps by their religious differences enabled princes to play off one part of the people against another in the interests of their own rivalries and ambitions, yet the contests were mostly made to wear the appearance of struggles for the securing of spiritual or civil freedom. And all the misery brought about by them was not therefore unfruitful of good. Though the points in dispute between the rival creeds were often nugatory, though the better sense was not invariably on the side of the reformers, and though good men lamented that Church reform had quitted its proper sphere and duties, when it allied itself with worldly policy and descended from the pulpit into the camp and the battle field, yet even so, and even then, the Reformation was preparing the great career which it has run, and that still before it, from which no man can ever more turn it back.
THE INTERIM.
Charles the Fifth was just then busy in imposing his "Interim" on the German cities. The great council at Trent, which was to "heal the wounds of Christendom," made but small progress in that business; manifested, indeed, a fertility of resource in the discovery of means how not to do any thing of the sort, perfectly marvellous. And Charles, who was perfectly earnest in wishing that these wounds should be healed, or at all events closed up in some sort, for reasons of his own, very much of the nature of those which make a coachman wish that his team may be coupled up, so as to draw well together, became impatient. It struck his royal mind, that the thing must be easy enough if one only went about it in a simple straightforward manner. So he ordered three divines,—Julius Pflug and Helding, on the Catholic side, and one Agricola, a "practical" man, inclined, when he got his cue, to make things pleasant, on the Protestant side,—to draw up a scheme of a good working religion, such as all men might accept without objection,—or despite objection, if it came to that; and to be quick about it. On the 15th of May, 1548, his Majesty was gracious enough to lay the scheme so drawn before the diet; whereupon the Elector of Mentz declared it to be as good a religion as any man need wish for; and being an Archbishop, it was clear that he must know. And this was the celebrated Interim; so named because it professed only to be a provisional faith, for men to live and die—and pay their taxes—by, till such time as what they really were definitively to believe could be got settled for them in a more regular and formal manner.
The indignation and disgust felt at Rome by the regular practitioners at such quack–Pope practice as this, may be easily imagined. The regular–bred Pope examined his rivals' prescription, and found, as we hear without surprise, "seven or eight heresies in it,"[89] all clear and evident like so many false quantities in a school–boy's verse task. Evidently a most unworkmanlike production!
As to the Protestant cities of Germany, they found the Interim religion to be flat Popery. And the royal quack–Pope had to adopt the orthodox practice in administering it. Augsburg, Ulm, Strasburg, Bremen, Lubeck, Hamburg, Magdeburg, Constance, and many other towns would have none of it. And Spanish soldiers had to be employed, with more or less success in different places, in recommending it to their favourable consideration. At Augsburg, Charles placed bodies of these troops at the different gates, and in other commanding positions of the town, then called the members of the municipal government to the town–hall, dismissed them all from their functions, abolished "motu proprio" the entire form of municipal government, and nominated a few creatures of his own to govern the city, each man of whom had sworn to receive and observe the Interim. Ulm he converted much in the same manner, sending off in chains the Protestant preachers. The stout Magdeburgers shut their gates, manned their walls, and stood a siege against the imperial troops and the Interim. For a lay Pope's essay at persecution this was zealous and energetic enough, though falling far short of the true ecclesiastical practice of Inquisition, stake, and faggot.
ROYAL VIEWS OF HUMAN NATURE.
It might be supposed that Charles would have been too sagacious a man to have imagined that any successful issue could have come of this Interim scheme of his. It seems hardly a thing to have been hoped, that Germany had gone through all the sufferings and sorrows, spiritual and temporal, incidental to a national change of religion, and kicked off the authority of a real Pope, venerable with the prestige of fifteen centuries, to submit quietly to a new quack Pope, whose whole theological apparatus consisted of men–at–arms and gunpowder. If men were to submit to an imposed creed, it was better to take one without seven or eight heresies in it. No very profound knowledge of the human heart, one would think, were needed to enable a sagacious ruler of men to anticipate failure for such a plan; and Charles has the reputation of having been such. But it strikes one, in considering this and a hundred other similar mistakes by the Louis XIVths. and other great masters of kingcraft, as doubtful how far it is practicable for such personages to attain to any knowledge of the plebeian human heart. Of the hearts of princes, ministers of state, popes, cardinals, diplomatists, ambassadors, and such,—though hearts are not generally supposed to be worn on embroidered sleeves,—a royal craftsman practised in the business may know a thing or two; may, perhaps, if acute, obtain some uncertain notion of the hearts of gentlemen–ushers, ladies of honour, grand chamberlains, and other such samples of mankind: but it would seem as if such knowledge were rather calculated to lead a royal philosopher astray in dealing with humanity outside the palace gates.
The mistake into which the sagacious Charles was thus led in the matter of the Interim, was causing throughout Germany the uncomfortable state of confusion that has been described when poor Andreas Grünthler, flying from persecution in Italy, came to seek for a home and the means of supporting a wife in his native land.
The search, as we have seen, became prolonged, to Olympia's great distress, far beyond what the young couple had calculated on. Grünthler's profession, indeed, was one which the misrule of monarchs has no tendency to render superfluous. On the contrary, he had soon occasion to find that it provided him with work in more than abundance. But then, as still, in Germany, the professional chairs in the Universities afforded the most reliable prospect of bread, with some small modicum of butter, to a studious and married man. Grünthler's education and talents well fitted him to teach, and that was his ambition. But town councillors turned violently out of their offices, or in daily dread of being so, and burghers in distress, consternation, and hot debate, between temporal and spiritual ruin, had scant attention to give to such matter. Besides, the lecture–rooms were empty, the students dispersed to their own homes, as the most necessary place for a man in critical and perilous times, or joining in resistance against the oppression that weighed on the country.