§ 116. The Reconciliation of the Emperor and the Pope. The Crowning of the Emperor. 1529.
§ 116. The Reconciliation of the Emperor and the Pope.
The Crowning of the Emperor. 1529.
The Emperor expressed to the Pope his deep regret at the sacking of the holy city. His breach with him was purely political and temporary. The French troops again entered Lombardy. Henry VIII. of England sympathized with Francis and the Pope. The Spanish counselors of Charles repre-sented to him that the imprisonment of the vicar of Christ was inconsistent with the traditional loyalty of Spain to the holy see.
On Nov. 26, 1527, the Emperor concluded an agreement with the Pope by which he was released from confinement, and reinstated in his temporal power (except over a few fortified places), on promise of paying the soldiers, and convening a council for the reformation of the church. For a while Clement distrusted the Emperor, and continued his Franco-Italian policy; but at last they definitely made peace, June 29, 1529. The Pope acknowledged the sovereignty of the Emperor in Italy, which he had heretofore opposed; the Emperor guaranteed to him the temporal possessions, with a reservation of imperial rights.
They held a personal conference at Bologna in November of that year. They were well matched in political and diplomatic shrewdness, and settled their secular disputes as well as they could. Charles was crowned Roman emperor, Feb. 24, 1530, at Bologna, the only emperor crowned outside of St. Peter’s at Rome, and the last German emperor crowned by the Pope. The dignitaries who graced the occasion were chiefly Spanish and Italian noblemen. Only one of the seven German electors was present, Philip of the Palatinate. The wooden awning which was constructed between the palace and the church of San Petronio broke down, but the Emperor escaped an accident. Clothed in a richly jewelled robe, he was anointed with oil, and received from the bishop of Rome the crown of Charlemagne as the temporal head of Western Christendom, and swore to protect the Pope and the Roman-Catholic Church with their possessions, dignities, and rights.955
This event was the sunset of the union of the German empire with the papal theocracy.
The German electors complained that they were not invited to the coronation, nor consulted about the treaties with the Italian States, and entered a formal protest.
Early in May, 1530, the Emperor crossed the Alps on his way to the Diet of Augsburg, which was to decide the fate of Lutheranism in Germany.
Speier, or Speyer, is an old German city on the left bank of the Rhine, the seat of a bishop, with a cathedral and the graves of eight German kings, the capital of the Bavarian Palatinate. It became the birthplace of the name "Protestants" in 1529. See below, § 115, p. 692.
Demnach haben wir uns jetzt einmüthiglich verglichen und vereiniget, mittlerzeit des Concilii, oder aber Nationalversammlung, nichtsdestoweniger mit unsern Unterthanen, ein jeglicher in Sachen so das Edict durch kaiserl. Majestät auf dem Reichstag zu Worms gehalten, ausgangen, belangen möchten, für sich also zu leben, zu regieren und zu halten, wie ein jeder solches gegen Gott und kaiserliche Majestät hoffet und vertraut zu verantworten."See the Reichsabschied (recess) in Walch, XVI. 266, and in Gieseler, III. I. 223 (Germ. ed.; IV. 126 Am. ed.). The acts are now published in full by Friedensburg.
This was the view heretofore taken by most Protestant historians, e.g., by Kurtz (II. 31, ed. 9th), who calls the recess "die reichsgesetzliche Legitimation der Territorialverfassung," and by Fisher (Hist. of the Christ. Ch., p. 304): "This act gave the Lutheran movement a legal existence." The correct view is stated by Janssen (III. 51): "Der Speierer Abschied bildet keineswegs eine positive Rechtsgrundlage, wohl aber den Ausgangspunkt für die Ausbildung neuer Landeskirchen." Kluckhohn, Friedensburg, and his reviewer, Kawerau (in the "Theol. Literaturzeitung," Dec. 3, 1887), arrive at the same conclusion.
He alludes to it in a polemical tract against Duke George of Saxony from the year 1529 as follows: "Auch so bin ich auf dem Reichstage zu Speir durch ein öffentlichs kaiserlichs Reichsdecret wiederumb befreiet, oder zum wenigsten befristet [freed at least for a season], dass man mich nicht kann einen Ketzer schelten; weil daselbst beschlossen ist von Allen einträchtiglich, dass ein jeglicher solle und müge glauben, wie ers wisse gegen Gott und kaiserliche Majestät zu verantworten; und ich billig daraus als die Ungehorsamen dem Reich und Aufrührischen beklagen möcht alle die, so mich einen Ketzer schelten. Hat das Gebotzu Worms gegolten, da ich verdampt ward ohn Bewilligung der besten und höhesten Stände des Reichs: warumb sollt mir denn das Gebot zu Speir nicht auch gelten, welchs einträchtlich durch alle Stände des Reichs beschlossen und angenommen ist." Erl. ed., vol. VIII. p. 14.
Reumont (l.c. III. 201) says: "Wüster und andauernder ist keine Stadt geplündert, sind keine Einwohner misshandelt worden als Rom und die Römer. Spanier wie Teutsche haben bei diesem grausen Werke gewetteifert, jene mit erfinderischer Unmenschlichkeit, diese mit wilder Barbarei. Kirchen, Klöster, Palläste, Wohnhäuser, Hütten wurden mit gleicher Beutelust ausgeleert und verwüstet, Männer, Frauen, Kinder mit gleicher Grausamkeit misshandelt."
"Corp. Ref.," XI. 130; C. Schmidt, Phil. Melanchthon, p. 135 sq.
See his letters on this subject in De Wette, III. 314 sqq.
After a fugitive life, Pack was beheaded as a forger in the Netherlands, 1536, at the solicitation of Duke George.
Words of Jacob Sturm, the ambassador of Strassburg, from the middle of March.
The great Instrumentum appellationis is given by Müller, Walch, Jung, and in substance by Gieseler, l.c. April 25 (a Sunday) is the date of the legal completion of the protest (Ranke, III. 113). The dates of the preparatory steps are April 19 and 22.
Janssen denies the right of such protest, and dates from it the schism of the German nation. "Von dem Tage zu Speier an," he says, III. 144, "beginnt die eigentliche Spaltung der deutschen Nation." Fortunately, the schism has been healed in 1870 by Providence, without the aid of the Pope and against his wish and will.
It is remarkable that one of the most conservative branches of Protestant Christendom, "the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America," adopted the term as a part of its official title when, after the Revolutionary War, it assumed an independent organization. This could not be done in the state of churchly sentiment which has since come to prevail in that church. Vigorous efforts have been made within the last few years to get rid of the term Protestant, and to substitute for it Catholic, or American, or some other more or less presumptuous epithet, but without success so far. The secession from this body which was organized in 1873 took the name of "The Reformed Episcopal Church."
In a letter to Elector John, May 22, 1529 (De Wette, III. 455), Luther went so far as to call the Zwinglians "audacious enemies of God and his Word, who fight against God and the sacrament."
955 How has the situation changed since! In the same once papal city where the Emperor was crowned by the Pope with all the splendor of the Catholic ceremonial, the eighth centennial of the University—the oldest in the world ("Bononia docet")—was celebrated June 11-13, 1888, in the presence of the King and Queen, with unbounded enthusiasm for free and united Italy, which has shaken off the yoke of petty tyrants, and is determined to resist all attempts at a restoration of the temporal power of the papacy. The Italians are willing to take their religion from the Pope, but not their politics. Practically, church and state are almost as separate in Italy, since 1870, as in the United States.