TRENT IN THE WAITING ROOM OF THE STATION OF HISTORY

 

Charles had been at great pains in bringing the members to join in this request. Having observed a considerable variety of sentiments among the protestants with respect to the submission which he had required to the decrees of the council, some of them being altogether intractable, while others were ready to acknowledge its right of jurisdiction upon certain conditions, he employed all his address in order to gain or to divide them.

He threatened and overawed the elector Palatine, a weak prince, and afraid that the emperor might inflict on him the punishment to which lie had made himself liable by the assistance that he had given to the confederates of Smalkalde. The hope of procuring liberty for the landgrave, together with the formal confirmation of his own electoral dignity, overcame Maurice’s scruples, or prevented him from opposing what he knew would be agreeable to the emperor. The elector of Brandenburg, less influenced by religious zeal than any prince of that age, was easily induced to imitate their example, in assenting to all that the emperor required. The deputies of the cities remained still to be brought over.

They were more tenacious of their principles, and though everything that could operate either on their hopes or fears was tried, the utmost that they would promise was, to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the council, if effectual provision were made for securing to the divines of all parties free access to that assembly, with entire liberty of debate; and if all points in controversy were decided according to scripture, and the usage of the primitive church. But when the memorial containing this declaration was presented to the emperor, he ventured to put in practice a very extraordinary artifice. Without reading, the paper, or taking any notice of the conditions on which they had insisted, he seemed to take it for granted that they had complied with his demand, and gave thanks to the deputies for their full and unreserved submission to the decrees of the council  [Oct. 9]. The deputies, though astonished at what they had heard, did not attempt to set him right, both parties being better pleased that the matter should remain under this state of ambiguity, than to push for an explanation, which must have occasioned a dispute, and would have led, perhaps, to a rupture.

Having obtained this seeming submission from the members of the diet to the authority of the council, Charles employed that as an argument to enforce their petition for its return to Trent. But the pope, from the satisfaction which he felt in mortifying the emperor, as well as from his own aversion to what was demanded, resolved, without hesitation, that his petition should not be granted; though, in order to avoid the imputation of being influenced wholly by resentment, he had the address to throw it upon the fathers at Bologna, to put a direct negative upon the request.

With this view he referred to their consideration the petition of the diet [Dec. 20], and they, ready to confirm by their assent whatever the legates were pleased to dictate, declared that the council could not, consistently with its dignity, return to Trent, unless the prelates who, by remaining there, had discovered a schismatic spirit, would first repair to Bologna, and join their brethren; and that, even after their junction, the council could not renew its consultations with any prospect of benefit to the church, if the Germans did not prove their intention of obeying its future decrees to be sincere, by yielding immediate obedience to those which it bad already passed.

This answer was communicated to the emperor by the pope, who at the same time exhorted him to comply with demands which appeared to be so reasonable. But Charles was better acquainted with the duplicity of the pope's character than to be deceived by such a gross artifice, he knew that the prelates of Bologna durst utter no sentiment but what Paul inspired; and, therefore, overlooking them as mere tools in the band of another, be considered their reply as a full discovery of the pope's intentions. As he could no longer hope to acquire such an ascendant in the council as to render it subservient to his own plan, he saw it to be necessary that Paul should not have it in his power to turn against him the authority of so venerable an assembly.

In order to prevent this, he sent two Spanish lawyers to Bologna [Jan. 16, 1548], who, in the presence of the legates, protested. That the translation of the council to that place had been unnecessary, and founded on false or frivolous pretexts; that while it continued to meet there, it ought to be deemed an unlawful and schismatical conventicle; that all its decisions ought of course to be held as null and invalid; and that since the pope, together with the corrupt ecclesiastics who depended on him, had abandoned the care of the church, the emperor, as its protector, would employ all the power which God had committed to him, in order to preserve it from those calamities with which it was threatened. A few days after [Jan. 23], the Imperial ambassador at Rome demanded an audience of the pope, and in presence of all the cardinals, as well as foreign ministers, protested against the proceedings of the prelates at Bologna, in terms equally harsh and disrespectful

It was not long before Charles proceeded to carry these threats, which greatly alarmed both the pope and council at Bologna, into execution. He let the diet know the ill success of his endeavors to procure a favorable answer to their petition, and that the pope, equally regardless of their entreaties, and of his services to the church, had refused to gratify them by allowing the council to meet again at Trent; that, though all hope of holding this assembly in a place, where they might look for freedom of debate and judgment, was not to be given up, the prospect of it was, at present, distant and uncertain; that in the mean time, Germany was torn in pieces by religious dissensions, the purity of the faith corrupted, and the minds of the people disquieted with a multiplicity of new opinions and controversies formerly unknown among Christians; that, moved by the duty which he owed to them as their sovereign, and to the church as its protector, he had employed some divines of known abilities and learning, to prepare a system of doctrine, to which all should conform, until a council, such as they wished for, could be convocated. This system was compiled by Pflug, Helding, and Agricola, of whom the two former were dignitaries in the Romish church, but remarkable for their pacific and healing spirit; the last was a protestant divine, suspected, not without reason, of having been gained by bribes and promises, to betray or mislead his party on this occasion. The articles presented to the diet of Ratisbon in the year one thousand five hundred and forty-one, in order to reconcile the contending parties, served as a model for the present work.

 

THE INTERIM OF THE EMPEROR