V

1521] Revolt against clerical domination.

The origin of the whole movement was a natural attempt on the part of man, with the progress of enlightenment, to emancipate himself from the clerical tutelage under which he had labored for centuries, and to remedy the abuses which were an inevitable outcome of the exclusive privileges and authority of the Church. These abuses were traced directly or indirectly to the exemption of the Church and its possessions from secular control, and to the dominion which it exercised over the laity; and the revolt against this position of immunity and privilege was one of the most permanently and universally successful movements of modern history. It was in the beginning quite independent of dogma, and it has pervaded Catholic as well as Protestant countries. The State all over the world has completely deposed the Church from the position it held in the Middle Ages; and the existence of Churches, whether Catholic or Protestant, in the various political systems, is due not to their own intrinsic authority but to the fact that they are tolerated or encouraged by the State. No ecclesiastic has any appeal from the temporal laws of the land in which he lives. In 1521 clerical ministers ruled the greater part of Europe, Wolsey in England, Adrian in Spain, Du Prat in France, and Matthew Lang to no small extent in Germany; today there is not a clerical prime minister in the world, and the temporal States of the Catholic Church have shrunk to the few acres covered by the Vatican. The Church has ceased to trespass on secular territory and returned to her original spiritual domain.

This was, roughly speaking, the main issue of the Reformation; it was practically universal, while the dogmatic questions were subsidiary and took different forms in different localities. It was on this principle that the German nation was almost unanimous in its opposition to Rome, and its feelings were accurately reflected in the Diet at Worms. Even Frederick of Saxony was averse from Luther's repudiation of Catholic doctrine, but, if the Reformer had confined himself to an attack on the Church in its temporal aspect, Pope and Emperor together would have been powerless to secure his condemnation. The whole nation, wrote a canon of Worms, was of one mind with regard to clerical immorality, from Emperor down through all classes to the last man. Nine-tenths of Germany, declared the papal Nuncio, cried "Long live Luther", and the other tenth shouted "Death to the Church". Duke George of Saxony, the staunchest of Catholics, was calling for a General Council to reform abuses, and Gattinara, Charles’ shrewdest adviser, echoed the recommendation. Even Jean Glapion, the Emperor’s confessor, was believed to be not averse from an accommodation with Luther, provided that he would disavow the Babylonish Captivity, and in Worms itself the papal emissaries went about in fear of assassination. The Germans, wrote Tunstall to Wolsey from Worms, were everywhere so addicted to Luther that a hundred thousand of them would lay down their lives to save him from the penalties pronounced by the Pope.

This popular enthusiasm for Luther led Napoleon to express the belief that, had Charles adopted his cause, he could have conquered Europe at the head of a united Germany. But an imperial sanction of Lutheranism would not have killed the separatist tendencies of German politics, nor was it Lutheran doctrine which had captivated the hearts of the German people. He was the hero of the hour solely because he stood for the national opposition to Rome. The circumstances in Germany in 1521 were not very dissimilar from those in England in 1529. There was an almost universal repugnance to clerical privilege and to the Roman Curia, but the section of the nation which was prepared to repudiate Catholic dogma was still insignificant; and a really national government, which regarded national unity as of more importance than the immediate triumph of any religious party, would have pursued a policy something like that of Henry VIII in his later years. It would have kept the party of doctrinal revolution in due subordination to the national movement against the abuses of a corrupt clerical caste and an Italian domination; it would have endeavored to satisfy the popular demand for practical reform, without alienating the majority by surrendering to a sectional agitation against Catholic dogma. But both the man and the forces were wanting. Charles often dallied with the idea of a limited practical reform, and he had already slighted the Papacy by allowing Luther to be heard at the Diet of Worms after his condemnation by the Pope, as if an imperial edict were of more effect in matters of faith than a papal Bull. He could hardly, however, be Reformer in Germany and reactionary in Spain, and the necessities of his dynastic position as well as his personal feelings tied him to the Catholic cause. His frequent and prolonged periods of absence and his absorption in other affairs prevented him from bestowing upon the government of Germany that vigilant and concentrated attention which alone enabled Henry VIII to effect his aims in England; and the task of dealing with the religious, and with the no less troublesome political and social discord in Germany, was left to the Council of Regency and practically, for five years, to Ferdinand.

The Reforms instituted at Worms.

The composition and powers of this body were among the chief questions which came before the Diet of Worms. When the electors extorted from Charles a promise to re-establish the Reichsregiment, they had in their mind a national administration like that suggested by Berthold of Mainz; when Charles gave his pledge, he was thinking of a Council which should be, like Maximilian’s, Aulic rather than national; and he imagined that he was redeeming his pledge when he proposed to the Diet the formation of a government which was to have no control over foreign affairs, and a control, limited by his own assent, over domestic administration. The Regent or head of the Council and six of its twenty members were to be nominated by the Emperor; these were to be permanent, but the other fourteen, representing the Empire, were to change every quarter. This body was to have no power over Charles’ hereditary dominions, nor over the newly-won Württemberg. The Emperor, in short, was to control the national government, but the writs of the national government were not to run in the Habsburg territories. On the other hand, the Princes demanded a form of government which would have practically eliminated the imperial factor from the Empire; the governing Council was to have the same authority whether Charles himself were present or not, it was to decide foreign as well as domestic questions, and in it the Emperor should be represented only in the same way as other Princes, namely, by a proportionate number of members chosen from his hereditary lands.

In the compromise which followed Charles secured the decisive point. The government which was formed was too weak to weld Germany into a political whole, able to withstand the disintegrating influence of its own particularism and of the Habsburg dynastic interest; and Charles was left free to pursue throughout his reign the old imperial maxim, divide et impera. The Reichsregiment was to have independent power only during the Emperor’s absence; at other times it was to sink into an advisory body, and important decisions must always have his assent. He was to nominate the president and four out of the Council’s twenty-two members; but his own dominions were to be subject to its authority, the determination of religious questions was left largely in the hands of the Estates, and Charles undertook to form no leagues or alliances affecting the Empire without the Council's consent. The reconstitution of the supreme national court of justice or Reichskammergericht presented few variations from the form adopted at Constance in 1507, and the ordinance establishing it is almost word for word the same as the original proposal of Berthold of Mainz in 1495; the imperial influence was slightly increased by the provision permitting him to nominate two additional assessors to the Court, but, being paid by the Empire and not by the Emperor, its members retained their independence.

A measure which ultimately proved to be of more importance than the reorganization of these two institutions was the partition of the Habsburg inheritance. One of the most cherished projects of Ferdinand of Aragon had been the creation in northern Italy of a kingdom for the benefit of the younger of his two grandsons, which would have left Charles free to retain his Austrian lands. That scheme had failed; but the younger Ferdinand, especially when he became betrothed to the heiress of Hungary and Bohemia, could not decently remain unendowed while his brother possessed so much; and on April 28, 1521, a contract was ratified transferring to Ferdinand the five Austrian duchies, of Austria, Carinthia, Carniola, Styria, and Tyrol. This grant formed the nucleus of the present so-called Dual Monarchy; it was gradually extended by the transference to Ferdinand of all Charles V’s possessions and claims in Germany, and the success with which the younger brother governed his German subjects made them regret that Ferdinand had not been elected Emperor in 1519 instead of having to wait thirty-seven years for the prize.

Growth of the power of the Princes.