VI.

The answer of the Imperial Regency to Adrian VI. was the first political triumph of the Reformation, but its effect was considerably weakened by several events which occurred shortly after. First came the rising of the knights—who constituted the lower nobility—under the banner of the brave and restless Franz von Sickingen. Grave discontent reigned among the knights with the doings of the all-powerful “Suabian League,” formed in 1488 by the Estates of Suabia for the maintenance of general peace, and also with the encroachments of the Princes; and Sickingen, aided by Ulrich von Hutten, united the lesser nobles into one body with the avowed object of breaking the power of the higher nobility, and of acknowledging one head only—the Emperor. It has been plausibly assumed, that Sickingen pursued a more ambitious aim, and he has therefore been compared with Wallenstein. Sickingen professed, however, another object in his enterprise: the furtherance of the cause of the Reformation; and at the head of a large and powerful army, he directed his first attack (Sept. 1522), against the Archbishop of Treves. The knights were defeated, their leader lost his life, and Hutten wandered away—outlawed and proscribed—to find an exile’s grave in a small island of Switzerland. The enemies of Luther considered, or pretended to consider, the Reformation as the Edition: current; Page: [lxix] main cause of Sickingen’s undertaking, and this circumstance estranged from the Reformer a number of his adherents and confirmed his antagonists in their enmity against him, although he had no immediate connection with the revolt of the nobles.

The first result of the rising and of the defeat of the knights was, that several Princes now assumed a somewhat hostile attitude towards the Imperial Regency, that had shown itself so tolerant respecting religious reforms; but a still severer blow threatened that body from another quarter. The wealthy German cities sent a deputation to Charles V. in Spain, with a petition against some ordinances which the Imperial Chamber had decided upon and which were considered detrimental to their commercial interests. The Emperor, dissatisfied with that liberal Institution, readily promised a new administration. This promise was fulfilled at the next Diet, in 1524, at Nuremberg, when it was decided to reorganise the Imperial Regency by electing for it entirely new members. Those who consented to this proceeding were influenced, partly by political and partly by commercial reasons, but as regards religious matters there was still a majority in favour of the Reformation. On this account it came to pass that a Resolution was carried at the Diet, to convoke another assembly of the Estates in the same year at Spires, the points to be discussed there being in the meantime drawn up for the Princes by scholars and counsellors. Till then the Resolution of the preceding Diet, “that the Gospel should be allowed to be freely preached,” was to remain in force. Thus the mission of the Papal Nuncio Campeggi, who had been sent to Germany by Clement VII. (the successor of Adrian VI. since 1523) to bring about the enactment of the Edict of Worms, proved unsuccessful. It is true the Diet passed a Resolution, that the Edict of Worms should be executed, but this decision was rendered ineffective by the additional elastic clause: “As far as possible.” At the same time the demand for a General Council was added.

The above Mandate now shared the fate of most compromises; Edition: current; Page: [lxx] inasmuch as it satisfied neither party. Luther himself and his followers saw in it an indirect confirmation of the Edict of Worms, and he expressed his indignation at it in an outspoken publication, in which he bitterly reproached the Emperor and the Princes for their treatment of him. He had now lost all confidence in both. But the Emperor’s indignation at the Nuremberg Mandate was not less strongly marked, and he issued an Edict, in which he energetically denied the Estates the right of interference in religious matters, demanding at the same time the strict execution of the Edict of Worms. The constant recurrence of the Emperor and the adherents of the Pope to that Edict must not surprise us. It is the point upon which the whole movement turned; for if the condemnation of Luther was confirmed, all his reforms and his adherents would be comprised in that condemnation.

Various circumstances now combined to strengthen the effect of the Emperor’s new Edict. The Papal Nuncio Campeggi succeeded in inducing several influential forces, hostile to the Reformation, to form a League for the protection of the old faith. The Archduke Ferdinand and the Dukes of Bavaria—Princes who had for some time been conspiring with the Roman Curia—together with a number of Prelates, assembled for that purpose in the summer of 1524 at Ratisbon, and agreed upon stringent measures against the Reformation. They decided to give effect to the Edict of Worms, to proscribe again the works of Luther, and even to forbid to their subjects the attending of the University of Wittenberg.

The next step of the Ratisbon Convention was now to obtain the co-operation of Charles V., which was effected easily enough, inasmuch as the projected measures fully coincided with his own views; and being about to attack Francis I. in France itself, from the direction of Italy, he stood in great need of the Pope’s tacit acquiescence. He issued, therefore, a stringent Edict, in which the convocation of a General Council was strictly prohibited, and all interference in religious matters Edition: current; Page: [lxxi] was energetically forbidden. Those who dared to set at nought the provision of the Edict, would render themselves liable to a charge of high treason, and on conviction would be punished with the highest degree of the Imperial Ban, (Acht- und Aberacht). In that Imperial Order Luther himself—one of the noblest men who ever lived—was likened to some loathsome monster.

The Convention of Ratisbon, which was chiefly brought about by foreign influence, may be said to have caused the first violent rupture among the German people, and to be the origin of all the calamities which befell Germany in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Without that Convention the projected General Council would, in all probability, have been held, the proposed reforms would have been peacefully and legally discussed, and there would not have occurred that violent disruption among the Germans, of which the evil effects, not only from a religious, but also from a political point of view, have not yet entirely disappeared. The only advantage which resulted from the Ratisbon Convention was the agreement to introduce a number of internal reforms in the Church. Thus the improved state of Roman Catholicism is entirely due to the doctrines of Luther and his Reformation.