whose policy it suited. Charles now rose, and indicated that his views lay in the direction of those of his minister; and the Pope, concealing his disgust, seeing how the wind set, said that he would think further on the matter. He hoped to work upon the mind of the emperor in private. one. These discussions were prolonged till the end of January. The passes of the Alps were locked, avalanches and snow-drifts threatened the man who would scale their precipices at that season, and the climate of Bologna being salubrious, Charles was in no haste to quit so agreeable an abode. The ecclesiastical potentate continued to advocate the sword, and the temporal monarch to call for a Council. It is remarkable that each distrusted the weapon with which he was best acquainted. "The sword will avail nought in this affair," urged the emperor; "let us vanquish our opponents in argument." "Reason," exclaimed the Pope, "will not serve our turn; let us resort to force." But, though all considerations of humanity had been put aside, the question of the practicability of bringing all the Protestants to the scaffold was a serious Was the emperor able to do this? He stood at the head of Europe, but it was prudent not too severely to test his superiority. The Lutheran princes were by no means despicable, either in spirit or resources. The Kings of France and England, though they disrelished the Protestant doctrines, had come to know that the Protestant party was an important political element; and it was just possible their majesties might prefer that Christendom should remain divided, rather than that its unity should be restored by a holocaust like that advocated by Campeggio. And then there was the Turk, who, although he had now retreated into his own domain, might yet, should a void so vast occur as would be created by the slaughter of the Protestants, transfer his standards from the shores of the Bosphorus to the banks of the Danube. It was clear that the burning of 100,000 Protestants or so would be only the beginning of the drama. The Pope would most probably approve of so kindly of so kindly a blaze; but might it not end in setting other States besides Germany on fire, and the Spanish monarchy among the rest? Charles, therefore, stuck to his idea of a Council; and being master, as Gattinara reminded him, he was able to have the last word in the conferences. Meanwhile, till a General Council could be convened, and as preparatory to it, the emperor, on the 20th January, 1530, issued a summons for a Diet of the States of Germany to meet at Augs burg on the 8th April.' The summons was couched in terms remarkably gracious, and surely, if conciliation was to be attempted, at least as a first measure, it was wise to go about it in a way fitted to gain the object the emperor had in view. "Let us put an end to all discord," he said; "let us renounce our antipathies; let us all fight under one and the same leader-Jesus Christ—and let us strive thus to meet in one communion, one Church, and one unity." 112 What a relief to the Protestants of Germany! The great sword of the emperor which had hung over their heads, suspended by a single thread, was withdrawn, and the olive-branch was held out to them instead. "The heart of kings is in the hand of God." One thing only was lacking to complete the grandeur of Charles, even that he should receive the imperial diadem from the hands of the Pope. He would have preferred to have had the ceremony performed in the Eternal City; the act would have borrowed additional lustre from the place where it was done; but reasons of State compelled him to select Bologna. The Pope, so Father Paul Sarpi hints, did not care to put so much honour upon Charles in the presence of a city which had been sacked by his soldiers just two years before; and Bologna lay conveniently on the emperor's road to the Diet of Augsburg. Charles had already been crowned as Emperor of Germany at Aix-laChapelle, now (22nd February) he received the iron crown as King of Lombardy, and the golden one (24th February) as Emperor of the Romans. The latter day, that on which the golden crown was placed on his brow, he accounted specially auspicious. It was the anniversary of his birth, and also of the victory of Pavia, the turning-point of his greatness. The coronation was a histrionic sermon upon the theological and political doctrines of the age, and as such it merits our attention. Charles received his crown at the foot of the altar. The sovereignty thus gifted was not however absolute; it was conditioned and limited in the manner indicated by the ceremonies that accompanied the investiture, each of which had its meaning. In the great Cathedral of San Petronio --the scene of the august ceremony-were erected two thrones. That destined for the Pope rose half-a-foot higher than the one which the emperor was to occupy. The Pontiff was the first to take his seat; next came the emperor, advancing by a foot-bridge thrown across the piazza which sepa 1 Sleidan, bk. vii., p. 126. 2 D'Aubigné, bk. xiv., chap. 1. CHARLES CROWNED BY THE POPE. rated the palace in which he was lodged from the cathedral where he was to be crowned.1 The erection was not strong enough to sustain the weight of the numerous and magnificent suite that attended him. It broke down immediately It broke down immediately behind the emperor, precipitating part of his train on the floor of the piazza, amid the débris of the structure and the crowd of spectators. The incident, so far from discomposing the monarch, was interpreted by him into an auspicious omen. He had been rescued, by a Power whose favourite he was, from possible destruction, to wield those high destinies which were this day to receive a new sanction from the Vicar of God. He surveyed the scene of the catastrophe for a moment, and passed on to present himself before the Pontiff. The The The first part of the ceremony was the investiture of the emperor with the office of deacon. government of those ages was a theocracy. theory of this principle was that the kingdoms of the world were ruled by God in the person of his Vicar, and no one had a valid right to exercise any part of that Divine jurisdiction unless he were part and parcel of that sacred class to whom this rule had been committed. The emperor, therefore, before receiving the sceptre from the Pope, had to be incorporated with the ecclesiastical estate. Two canons approached, and stripping him of the signs of royalty, arrayed him in surplice and amice. Charles had now the honour of being a deacon of St. Peter's and of St. John Lateranus. The Pope leaving his throne proceeded to the altar and sang mass, the new deacon waiting upon him, and performing the customary services. Then kneeling down the emperor received the Sacrament from the Pope's hands. Charles now reseated himself on his throne, and the princess approaching him removed his deacon's dress, and robed him in the jewelled mantle which, woven on the looms of the East, had been brought 1 In front of the palace at Bologna is a tablet with an inscription, in which this and other particulars of the coronation are mentioned: "Fenestra hæc ad dextrum fuit porta Prætoria; et egressus Cæsar per pontem sublicium, in Edem D. Petronii deductus. Sacris ritis peractis a Pont. Max. auream coronam Imperii cæteraque insignia accepit." (The window on the right was the Prætorian gate, out of which Cæsar passed by a wooden bridge to the temple of San Antonio. The sacred rites being performed by the supreme Pontiff, he received the golden crown and the rest of the imperial insignia.)— Maximilian Misson, Travels, vol. ii., part 1; Lond., 1739. 579 from Constantinople for the coronation of the Emperors of Germany. The emperor now put himself on bended knee before Clement VII. First the Pontiff, taking a horn of oil, anointed Charles; then he gave him a naked sword; next he put into his hands the golden orb; and last of all he placed on his head the imperial crown, which was studded all round with precious stones. With the sword was the emperor to pursue and smite the enemies of the Church; the orb symbolised the world, which he was to govern by the grace of the Holy Father; the diadem betokened the authority by which all this was to be done, and which was given of him who had put the crown upon his head; the oil signified that Divine puissance which, shed upon him from the head of that anointed body of which Charles had now become a member, would make him invincible in fighting the battles of the faith. Kissing the white cross that adorned the Pope's red slipper, Charles swore to defend with all his powers the rights and liberties of the Church of Rome. When we examine the magnificent symbolisation acted out in the Cathedral of Bologna, what do we see? We behold but one ruler, the head of all government and power, the fountain of all virtues and graces the Vicar of the Eternal King. Out of the plenitude of his great office he constitutes other monarchs and judges, permitting them to take part with him in his superhuman Divine jurisdiction. They are his vicars even as he is the Vicar of the Eternal Monarch. They govern by him, they rule for him, and they are accountable to him. They are the vassals of his throne, the lictors of his judgment-seat. lictors of his judgment-seat. To him appertains the power of passing sentence, to them the humble office of using the sword he has put into their hands in executing it. In this one immense monarch, the Pope namely, all authority, rights, liberties are comprehended. The State disappears as a distinct and independent society: it is absorbed in the Church as the Church is absorbed in her head-occupying the chair of St. Peter. It was against this hideous tyranny that Protestantism rose up. It restored to society the Divine monarchy of conscience. The theocracy of Rome was uprooted, and with it sank the Divine right of priests and kings, and all the remains of feudalism. It was now the beginning of March. Spring had opened the passes of the Alps, and Charles and his men-at-arms went on their way to meet the Diet he had summoned at Augsburg. CHAPTER XX. PREPARATIONS FOR THE AUGSBURG DIET. Charles Crosses the Tyrol-Looks down on Germany-Events in his Absence-His Reflections-Fruitlessness of his Labours-Opposite Realisations-All Things meant by Charles for the Hurt turn out to the Advantage of Protestantism-An Unseen Leader-The Emperor Arrives at Innspruck-Assembling of the Princes to the DietJourney of the Elector of Saxony-Luther's Hymn-Luther left at Coburg-Courage of the Protestant PrincesProtestant Sermons in Augsburg-Popish Preachers-The Torgau Articles-Prepared by Melancthon-Approved by Luther. THE emperor was returning to Germany after an absence of nine years. As, in the first days of May, he slowly climbed the summits of the Tyrolese Alps, and looked down from their northern slopes upon the German plains, he had time to reflect on all that had happened since his departure. The years which had passed since he last saw these plains had been full of labour, and yet how little had he reaped from all the toil he had undergone, and the great vexation he had experienced! The course affairs had taken had been just the opposite of that which he had wished and fully expected. By some strange fatality the fruits of all his campaigns had eluded him. His crowning piece of good fortune had been Pavia; that event had brought his rival Francis as a captive to Madrid, and placed himself for a moment at the head of Europe; and yet this brilliant victory had turned out in the end more damaging to the victor than to the vanquished. It had provoked the League of Cognac, in which the kings of Europe, with the Pontiff at their head, united to resist a power which they deemed dangerous to their own, and curb an ambition that they now saw to be boundless. The League of Cognac, in its turn, had recoiled on the head of the man who was its chief deviser. The tempest it had raised, and which those who evoked it intended should burst on the headquarters of Lutheranism, rolled away in the direction of Rome, and discharged its lightning. bolts on the City of the Seven Hills, inflicting on the wealth and glory of the Popes, on the art and splendour of their capital, a blow which no succeeding age has been able to repair. For the moment all was again quiet. The Pope and the King of France had become the friends of the emperor. The Turks who had appeared in greater numbers, and penetrated farther into Europe than they had ever before been able to do, had suddenly retreated within their own dominions, and thus all things conspired to remove every obstacle out of Charles's path that might prevent his long-meditated visit to Germany. The emperor was now going to consolidate the peace that had so happily followed the tempest, and put the top-stone upon his own power by extinguishing the Wittemberg movement, a task not quite so hard, he thought, as that from which he was at this moment returning, the destruction of the League of Cognac. And yet when he thought of the Wittemberg movement, which he was advancing to confront, he must have had some misgivings. His former experience of it must have taught him that instead of being the easiest to settle of the many matters he had on hand, it was precisely the one of all others the most difficult. He had won victories over Francis, he had won victories over the Pope, but he had won no victory over the monk. The dreaded Solyman had vanished at his approach, but Luther kept his ground and refused to flee. Why was this? Nay, not only had the Reformer not fallen before him, but every step the emperor had taken against him had only lifted Luther higher in the sight of men, and strengthened his influence in Christendom. At the Diet of Worms, 1521, he had fulminated his ban against the heresiarch. He did not for a moment doubt that a few weeks, or a few months at the most, and he would have the satisfaction of seeing that ban executed, and the Rhine bearing the ashes of Luther, as a hundred years before it had done those of Huss, to the ocean, there to bury him and his cause in an eternal sepulchre. Far different had the result been. The emperor's ban had chased the Reformer to the Wartburg, and there, exempt from every other distraction, Luther had prepared an instrumentality a hundred times more powerful than all his other writings and labours for the propagation of his movement. The imperial ban, if it consigned Luther to a brief captivity, had liberated the Word of God, imprisoned in a dead language, and now it was traversing the length and breadth of the Fatherland, and speaking to prince and peasant, to baron and burgher in their own mother tongue. This, as Charles knew to his infinite chagrin, was THE EMPEROR ENTERS THE FATHERLAND. all that he had reaped as yet from the Edict of Worms. He essayed a second time to extinguish but in reality to strengthen the movement. He convoked a Diet of the Empire at Spires in 1526, to take steps for executing the edict which had been passed with their concurrence five years before at Worms. Now it will be seen whether the bolt does not fall and crush the monk. Again the result is exactly the opposite of what the emperor had so confidently anticipated. The Diet decreed that, till a General Council should meet, every one should be at liberty to act in religious matters as he pleased. This was in fact an edict of toleration, and henceforward the propagation of Protestant truth throughout the dominions of the princes was to go on under sanction of the Diet. The movement was now surrounded by legal securities. How irritating to the potentate who thought that he was working skilfully for its overthrow ! Twice had Charles miscarried; but he will make a third attempt and it will prosper; so he assures himself. In 1529 he convokes the Diet anew at Spires. He sent a threatening message from Spain commanding the princes, by the obedience they owed him as emperor, and under peril of ban, to execute the edict against Luther. It was now that the Lutheran princes unfurled their great PROTEST, and took up that position in the Empire and before all Christendom which they have ever since, through all variety of fortune, maintained. Every time the emperor puts forth his hand, it is not to kill but to infuse new life into the movement; it is to remove impediments from its path and help it onward. Even the dullest cannot fail to perceive that these most extraordinary events, in which everything meant for the destruction of the Protestant movement turned out for its furtherance, did not originate with Luther. He had neither the sagacity to devise them nor the power to control them. Nor did they take their rise from Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony; nor from Philip the Magnanimous, Landgrave of Hesse. Much less did they owe their origin to Charles, for nothing did he less intend to accomplish than what really took place. Let us then indulge in no platitudes about these Luther indeed was wise, and not less courageous than wise; but in what did his wisdom consist? It consisted in his profound submission to the will of One whom he saw guiding the movement through intricacies where his own counsels would have utterly wrecked it. And in what lay his courage? In this even his profound faith in One whose arm he saw shielding Protestantism in the midst of dangers where, but for this protection, both men. 581 the Reformer and the cause would have speedily perished. In these events Luther beheld the footprints of One whom an ancient Hebrew sage styles "wonderful in counsel, excellent in working." The emperor and his suite, a numerous and brilliant one, arrived at Innspruck in the beginning of May. He halted at this romantic little town that he might make himself more closely acquainted with the state of Germany, and decide upon the line of tactics to be adopted. The atmosphere on this side of the Alps differed sensibly from the fervid air which he had just left on the south of them. All he saw and heard where he now was told him that Lutheranism was strongly entrenched in the Fatherland, and that he should need to put forth all the power and craft of which he was master in order to dislodge it. The appearance of the emperor on the heights of the Tyrol revived the fears of the Protestants. As when the vulture is seen in the sky, and there is silence and cowering in the groves, so was it with the inhabitants of the plains, now that the mailed cohorts of Rome were seen on the mountains above them. And there was some cause for alarm. With the emperor came Campeggio, as his evil genius, specially commissioned by the Pope to take care of Charles,' and see that he did not make any compromise with the Lutherans, or entangle himself by any rash promise of a General Council. The legate had nothing but the old cure to recommend for the madness which had infected the Germans—the sword. Gattinara, who had held back the hand of Charles from using that weapon against Protestantism, and who had come as far as Innspruck, here sickened and died.2 Melancthon mourned his death as a loss to the cause of moderate counsels. "Shall we meet our adversary with arms?" asked the Protestant princes in alarm. "No," replied Luther, "let no man resist the emperor: if he demands a sacrifice, lead me to the altar." 3 Even Maimbourg acknowledges that "Luther conducted himself on this occasion in a manner worthy of a good man. He wrote to the princes to divert them from their purpose, telling them that the cause of religion was to be defended, not by the force of arms, but by sound arguments, by Christian patience, and by firm faith in the omnipotent God."4 The Reformer strove at the same time to uphold the hearts of all by directing their eyes to heaven. His noble hymn, "A strong Tower is our God," began to be heard 1 Fra-Paolo Sarpi, tom. i., p. 99. 2 Sleidan, vii., 127. Seckendorf, lib. ii., sec. 21; Additio iv. 3 Seckendorf., lib. ii., sec. 20, pp. 150, 151. 4 Ibid. |