1539. THE CALL FOR THE COUNCIL OF TRENT

 

During the war between the emperor and Francis, an event had happened which abated in some degree the warmth and cordiality of friendship which had long subsisted between the latter and the king of England.

James the fifth of Scotland, an enterprising young prince, having heard of the emperor’s intention to invade Provence, was so fond of showing that he did not yield to any of his ancestors in the sincerity of his attachment to the French crown, and so eager to distinguish himself by some military exploit, that he levied a body of troops with an intention of leading them in person to the assistance of the king of France. Though some unfortunate accidents prevented his carrying any troops into France, nothing could divert him from going thither in person. Immediately upon his landing, he hastened to Provence, but had been detained so long in his voyage, that he came too late to have any share in the military operations, and met the king on his return after the retreat of the Imperialists. But Francis was so greatly pleased with his zeal, and no less with his manners and conversation, that he could not refuse him his daughter Magdalen, whom he demanded in marriage. It mortified Henry extremely to see a prince, of whom he was immoderately jealous, form an alliance [Jan 1, 1537], from which he derived such an accession of reputation as well as security. He could not, however, with decency, oppose Francis’s bestowing his daughter upon a monarch descended from a race of princes, the most ancient and faithful allies of the French crown. But when James, upon the sudden death of Magdalen, demanded as his second wife Mary of Guise, he warmly solicited Francis to deny his suit, and in order to disappoint him, asked that lady in marriage for himself. When Francis preferred the Scottish king’s sincere courtship to his artful and malevolent proposal, he discovered much dissatisfaction. The pacification agreed upon at Nice, and the familiar interview of the two rivals at Aigues-mortes, filled Henry’s mind with new suspicions, as if Francis had altogether renounced his friendship for the sake of new connections with the emperor.

Charles, thoroughly acquainted with the temper of the English king, and watchful to observe all the shiftings and caprices of his passions, thought this a favorable opportunity of renewing his negotiations with him, which had been long broken off. By the death of queen Catharine, whose interest the emperor could not with decency have abandoned, the chief cause of their discord was removed; so that, without touching upon the delicate question of her divorce, he might now take what measures he thought most effectual for regaining Henry’s good-will. For this purpose, he began with proposing several marriage-treaties to the king. He offered his niece, a daughter of the king of Denmark, to Henry himself; he demanded the princess Mary for one of the princes of Portugal, and was even willing to receive her as the king’s illegitimate daughter. Though none of these projected alliances ever took place, or perhaps were ever seriously intended, they occasioned such frequent intercourse between the courts, and so many reciprocal professions of civility and esteem, as considerably abated the edge of Henry’s rancor against the emperor, and paved the way for that union between them which afterwards proved so disadvantageous to the French king.

The ambitious schemes in which the emperor had been engaged, and the wars he had been carrying on for some years, proved, as usual, extremely favorable to the progress of the reformation in Germany. While Charles was absent upon his African expedition, or intent on his projects against France, his chief object in Germany was to prevent the dissensions about religion from disturbing the public tranquility, by granting such indulgence to the protestant princes as might induce them to concur with his measures, or at least to hinder them from taking part with his rival. For this reason, he was careful to secure to the protestants the possession of all the advantages which they had gained by the articles of pacification at Nuremberg, in the year one thousand five hundred and thirty-two; and except some slight trouble from the proceedings of the Imperial chamber, they met with nothing to disturb them in the exercise of their religion, or to interrupt the successful zeal with which they propagated their opinions.

Meanwhile the pope continued his negotiations for convoking a general council; and though the protestants had expressed great dissatisfaction with his intention to fix upon Mantua as the place of meeting, he adhered obstinately to his choice, issued a bull on the second of June, one thousand five hundred and thirty-six, appointing it to assemble in that city on the twenty-third of May the year following; he nominated three cardinals to preside in his name; enjoined all Christian princes to countenance it by their authority, and invited the prelates of every nation to attend in person.

This summons of a council, an assembly which from its nature and intention demanded quiet times, as well as pacific dispositions, at the very juncture when the emperor was on his march towards France, and ready to involve a great part of Europe in the confusions of war, appeared to every person extremely unseasonable. It was intimated, however, to all the different courts by nuncios despatched on purpose. With an intention to gratify the Germans, the emperor, during his residence in Rome, had warmly solicited the pope to call a council; but being at the same time willing to try every art in order to persuade Paul to depart from the neutrality which he preserved between him and Francis, he sent Heldo his vice-chancellor into Germany, along with a nuncio despatched thither, instructing him to second all the nuncio’s representations, and to enforce them with the whole weight of the Imperial authority.

The protestants gave them audience at Smalkalde, [Feb, 25, 1537], where they had assembled in a body in order to receive them. But after weighing all their arguments, they unanimously refused to acknowledge a council summoned in the name and by the authority of the pope alone; in which he assumed the sole right of presiding; which was to be held in a city not only far distant from Germany, but subject to a prince, who was a stranger to them, and closely connected with the court of Rome; and to which their divines could not repair with safety, especially after their doctrines had been stigmatized in the very bull of convocation with the name of heresy. These and many other objections against the council, which appeared to them unanswerable, they enumerated in a large manifesto, which they published in vindication of their conduct.

Against this the court of Rome exclaimed as a flagrant proof of their obstinacy and presumption, and the pope still persisted in his resolution to hold the council at the time and in the place appointed. But some unexpected difficulties being started by the duke of Mantua, both about the right of jurisdiction over the persons who resorted to the council, and the security of his capital amidst such a concourse of strangers, the pope [Oct. 8, 1538], after fruitless endeavors to adjust these, first prorogued the council for some months, and afterwards, transferring the place of meeting to Vicenza in the Venetian territories, appointed it to assemble on the First of May, in the following year. As neither the emperor nor the French king, who had not then come to any accommodation, would permit their subjects to repair thither, not a single prelate appeared on the day prefixed, and the pope, that his authority might not become altogether contemptible by so many ineffectual efforts to convoke that assembly, put off the meeting by an indefinite prorogation.

But that he might not seem to have turned his whole attention towards a reformation which he was not able to accomplish, while he neglected that which was in his own power, he deputed a certain number of cardinals and bishops, with full authority to inquire into the abuses and corruptions of the Roman court; and to propose the most effectual method of removing them. This scrutiny, undertaken with reluctance, was carried on slowly and with remissness. All defects were touched with a gentle hand, afraid of probing too deep, or of discovering too much. But even by this partial examination, many irregularities were detected, and many enormities exposed to light, while the remedies which they suggested as most proper were either inadequate or were never applied. The report and resolution of these deputies, though intended to be kept secret, were transmitted by some accident into Germany, and being immediately made public, afforded ample matter for reflection, and triumph to the protestants.

On the one hand, they demonstrated the necessity of a reformation in the head as well as the members of the church, and even pointed out many of the corruptions against which Luther and his followers had remonstrated with the greatest vehemence. They showed, on the other hand, that it was vain to expect this reformation from ecclesiastics themselves, who, as Luther strongly expressed it, piddled at curing warts, while they overlooked or confirmed ulcers.

The earnestness with which the emperor seemed, at first, to press their acquiescing in the pope’s scheme of holding a council in Italy, alarmed the protestant princes so much, that they thought it prudent to strengthen their confederacy, by admitting several new members who solicited that privilege, particularly the king of Denmark. Heldo, who during his residence in Germany, had observed all the advantages which they derived from that union, endeavored to counterbalance its effects by an alliance among the Catholic powers of the empire. This league, distinguished by the name of Holy, was merely defensive; and though concluded by Heldo in the emperor’s name, was afterwards disowned by him, and subscribed by very few princes.

The protestants soon got intelligence of this association, notwithstanding all the endeavors of the contracting parties to conceal it; and their zeal, always apt to suspect and to dread, even to excess, everything that seemed to threaten religion, instantly took the alarm, as if the emperor had been just ready to enter upon the execution of some formidable plan for the extirpation of their opinions. In order to disappoint this, they held frequent consultations, they courted the kings of France and England with great assiduity, and even began to think of raising the respective contingents both in men and money with which they were obliged to furnish by the treaty of Smalkalde. But it was not long before they were convinced that these apprehensions were without foundation, and that the emperor, to whom repose was absolutely necessary, after efforts so much beyond his strength in the war with France, had no thoughts of disturbing the tranquility of Germany. As a proof of this, at an interview with the protestant princes in Frankfort [April 19], his ambassadors agreed that all concessions in their favor, particularly those contained in the pacification of Nuremberg, should continue in force for fifteen months; that during this period all proceedings of the Imperial chamber against them should be suspended; that a conference should be held by a few divines of each party, in order to discuss the points in controversy, and to propose articles of accommodation which should be laid before the next diet. Though the emperor, that he might not irritate the pope, who remonstrated against the first part of this agreement as impolitic, and against the latter, as an impious encroachment upon his prerogative, never formally ratified this convention, it was observed with considerable exactness, and greatly strengthened the basis of that ecclesiastical liberty for which the protestants contended.

A few days after the convention at Frankfort, George duke of Saxony died [April 24], and his death was an event of great advantage to the reformation. That prince, the head of the Albertine, or younger branch of the Saxon family, possessed, as marquis of Misnia and Thuringia, extensive territories, comprehending Dresden, Leipzig, and other cities now the most considerable in the electorate. From the first dawn of the reformation, he had been its enemy as avowedly as the electoral princes were its pro­tectors, and had carried on his opposition not only with all the zeal flowing from religious prejudices, but with a virulence inspired by personal antyipathy to Luther, and embittered by the domestic animosity subsisting between him and the other branch of his family. By his death without issue, his succession fell to his brother Henry, whose attachment to the protestant religion surpassed, if possible, that of his predecessor to popery. Henry no sooner took possession of his new dominions, than, disregarding a clause in George’s will, dictated by his bigotry, whereby he bequeathed all his territories to the emperor and king of the Romans, if his brother should attempt to make any innovation in religion, he invited some pro­testant divines, and among them Luther himself, to Leipzig. By their advice and assistance, he overturned in a few weeks the whole system of ancient rites, establishing the full exercise of the reformed religion with the universal applause of his subjects, who had long wished for this change, which the authority of their duke alone had hitherto prevented. This revolution delivered the protestants from the danger to which they were exposed by having an inveterate enemy situated in the middle of their territories; and they had now the satisfaction of seeing that the possessions of the princes and cities attached to their cause, extended in one great and almost unbroken line from the shore of the Baltic to the banks of the Rhine.

 

THE SPANISH PRIDE AT TEST