V

NATIONAL OPPOSITION TO ROME IN GERMANY.

Dynastic aims of Charles.

THROUGH all the political and religious confusion, which distracted Germany during the period from the Diet of Worms to the Peasants’ War, there runs one thread which gives to the story at least a semblance of unity; and that is the attempt and failure of a central government to keep the nation together on the path towards a practical reform in Church and in State. The reform was no less imperative than the obstacles to it were formidable. Germany was little more than a geographical expression, and a vague one withal; it was not a State, it could hardly be called a nation, so deep were its class divisions. Horizontal as well as vertical lines traversed it in every part, and its social strata were no more fused into one nation than its political sections were welded into one organized State. Rival ambitions and conflicting interests might set Prince against Prince, knight against knight, and town against town, but deeper antagonisms ranged knights against Princes and cities, or cities against Princes and knights ; they might all conspire against Caesar, or the peasant might rise up against them. Imperial authority was an ineffective shadow brooding over the troubled waters and unable to still the storm. Separatism in every variety of permutation and combination was erected into a principle, and on it was based the Germanic political system.

Yet this warring concourse of atoms felt once and again a common impulse, and adopted on rare occasions a common line of action. With few exceptions the German people were bent on reform of the Church, and with one voice they welcomed the election of Charles V. Nor for the moment was the hope of political salvation entirely quenched. The efforts of Berthold of Mainz and Frederick of Saxony to evolve order out of the chaos had been foiled by the skill of the Emperor Maximilian, and the advent of Luther had been the signal for a fresh eruption of discord. But the urgency of the need produced a correspondingly strong demand for national unity; and at his election Charles was pledged to renew the attempt to create a national government, to maintain a national judicature, and to pursue a national policy. Unhappily vague aspirations and imperial promises were poor substitutes for political forces, and the forms in which the common feelings of the nation found vent added strength to centrifugal tendencies, and contributed their share to the ruin of unity. The attempt to remodel the Church divided the realm into two persistently hostile camps, and the succession of Charles V secured the throne of the Caesars to a family which was too often ready to sacrifice its national imperial duties to the claims of dynastic ambition.

Seldom has a nation had better cause to repent a fit of enthusiasm than Germany had when it realized the effects of the election of Charles V. Of his rivals Francis I would no doubt have made a worse Emperor, but the choice of Ferdinand - a suggestion made by Margaret of Savoy and peremptorily rejected by Charles himself - or of Frederick of Saxony, would probably have been attended with less disastrous consequences to the German national cause. In personal tastes and sympathies, in the aims he pursued within his German kingdom, and in his foreign policy Charles V was an alien; his ways were not those of his subjects, nor were his thoughts their thoughts; he could neither speak the German language, nor read the German mind. Nurtured from birth in the Burgundian lands of his father, he at first regarded the world from a purely Burgundian point of view and sorely offended his Spanish subjects by his neglect of their interests in concluding the Treaty of Noyon (1516). But the Flemish aspect of his Court and his policy rapidly changed under southern influence, and the ten years of his youth (1517-20 and 1522-9) which he spent in Spain developed the Spanish tastes and feelings which he derived from his mother Juana. His mind grew ever more Spanish in sympathy, and this mental evolution was more and more clearly reflected in Charles’ dynastic policy. So far as it was affected by national considerations, those considerations became ever more Spanish; the Colossus which bestrode the world gradually turned its face southwards, and it was to Spain and not to the land of his birth that Charles retired to die.

Charles and the Papacy.

From this development Germany could not fail to suffer. German soldiers helped to win Pavia and to desecrate Rome, but their blood was shed in vain so far as the fatherland was concerned. Charles1 conquests in Italy, made in the name of the German Empire and supported by German imperial claims, went to swell the growing bulk of the Spanish monarchy, and when he was crowned by Pope Clement VII at Bologna it was noted that functions which belonged of right to Princes of the Empire were performed by Spanish Grandees. His promise to the German nation to restore to the Empire its pristine extent and glory was interpreted in practice as an undertaking to enhance at all costs the prestige of the Habsburg family. The loss of its theoretical rights over such States as Milan and Genoa was, however, rather a sentimental than a real grievance to the nation. It had better cause for complaint when Charles (1543) in effect severed the Netherlands from the Empire and transferred them to Spain. He sacrificed German interests in Holstein to those of his brother-in-law Christian II of Denmark; and, although he was not primarily responsible for the loss of Metz, Toul, and Verdun in 1552, his neglect of German interests along the Slavonic coasts of the Baltic was not without effect upon the eventual incorporation of Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland, in the Russian domains of the Czar. German troops had been wont to march on Rome; but Charles brought Italian troops to the banks of the Elbe. He introduced into Germany that Spanish taint which was only washed out in the Thirty Years' War; and he then sought to turn that tide of northern influence, which has been flowing ever since the decline of the Roman Empire.

In religion as well as in politics Charles’ increasingly Spanish tendencies had an evil effect on the Empire. He was no theologian, and he could never comprehend the Reformers’ objections to Roman dogma; but that did not make him less hostile to their cause. His attitude towards religion was half way between the genial orthodoxy of his grandfather Maximilian and the gloomy fanaticism of his son Philip II, but his mind was always travelling away from the former and towards the latter position; and the transition enhanced the difficulty of coming to an accommodation with Lutheran heretics.

This orthodoxy, however, implied no blindness to the abuses of the Pope’s temporal power, and was always conditioned by regard for the Emperor's material interests. The fervid declaration of zeal against Luther which Charles read at the Diet of Worms has been described as the most genuine expression of his religious feelings. No doubt it was sincere, but it is well to note that the Emperor's main desire was then to wean Leo X from his alliance with Francis I, and to prove to the papal Nuncio that, whatever the Diet might do, Charles' heart was in the right place. If he often assumed the rôle of papal champion, he could on occasion remember that he was the successor of Henry IV, and to some at least the Sack of Rome must have seemed a revenge for the scene at Canossa. He could tell Clement that that outrage was the just judgment of God, he could seize the temporalities of the bishopric of Utrecht, and speak disrespectfully of papal excommunications. He could discuss proposals for deposing the Pone and destroying his temporal power, and was even tempted to think that Luther might one day become of importance if Clement continued to thwart the imperial plans.

With Charles, as with every prince of the age, including the Pope, political far outweighed religious motives. Chivalry and the crusading spirit were both dead. His religious faith and family pride might both have impelled him to avenge upon Henry VIII the wrongs of Catharine of Aragon; but these, he said, were private griefs; they must not be allowed to interfere with the public considerations which compelled him impression. The devils on the roofs of the houses at Worms were really rather friendly to Luther than otherwise, and the renowned Edict itself was not so much an expression of settled national policy as an expedient, recommended by the temporary exigencies of the Emperor's foreign relations, and only extorted from him by Leo’s promise to cease from supporting Charles’ foes. Probably Charles himself had no expectation of seeing the Edict executed, and certainly the Princes who passed it had no such desire. They were much more intent on securing redress of their grievances against the Church than on chastising the man who had attacked their common enemy; and the fact that the Diet which condemned Luther's heresy also solemnly formulated a comprehensive indictment against the Roman Church throws a vivid light upon the twofold aspect which the Reformation assumed in Germany as elsewhere.

1521] Revolt against clerical domination.