1534-6] Ferdinand's compromise with the Protestants

233

account by demanding security for the threatened members of their Church. In December, 1535, at a diet of the Schmalkaldic League, they undertook to admit all who would subscribe to the Confession. of Augsburg; and Württemberg, Pomerania, Anhalt, and the cities of Augsburg, Frankfort, Hanover, and Kempten became thus entitled to its protection. They renewed their repudiation of the Reichskammergericht as a partisan body, and declared that conscience would not allow them to respect its verdicts. They refused in fact to yield to the national and imperial authorities that obedience in religious matters which they rigorously exacted from the subjects of their own territorial jurisdiction; and at the moment when they were pleading conscience as a justification of their own conduct they declined to admit its validity when urged by their Catholic brethren.

The Lutherans had not remained untainted by the pride of power and the arrogance of success. In Ferdinand's own dominions at this time Faber declared that but for him and the King all Vienna would have turned Lutheran, and that it needed but a sign to arm all Germany against the Roman Church. Ferdinand himself was urging such concessions as the marriage of the clergy and communion under both kinds, and complained to the Papal Nuncio that he could not find a confessor who was not a fornicator, a drunkard, or an ignoramus. In England Lutheranism had reached its highest water-mark in Henry's reign; Melanchthon had dedicated an edition of his Loci Communes to the Tudor King, and was willing to undertake a voyage to England to reform the English Church. Francis I had invited Melanchthon and Bucer to France to discuss the religious situation. The new Pope, Paul III, who had succeeded Clement VII in 1534, began his pontificate by creating a number of reforming Cardinals, and sent Vergerio to Germany to investigate the possibilities of a concordat with the heretics and to ascertain the terms upon which they would support a General Council. In all the Scandinavian kingdoms the triumph of the new faith was complete, and the Protestant seemed to be the winning cause in Europe. Now, when Charles was threatened with a joint attack by Turks and French, it was no time to throw the Lutheran Princes into the enemy's For the moment temporal security was a more urgent need than the maintenance of the Catholic Church, and the suspension of all the ecclesiastical cases in the Reichskammergericht was the price which Ferdinand paid for the Lutheran rejection of alliance with Henry VIII and Francis I.

arms.

One of Ferdinand's motives was fear lest Bavaria should, by executing the judicial sentence against Augsburg, acquire predominant influence in that important city; and he was by no means averse from the plan, proposed by the Elector John Frederick of Saxony, of persuading Zwinglian Augsburg to adopt the Lutheran Confession and of then admitting it to the Schmalkaldic League. Augsburg was thus saved

234

Divisions among the Protestants

[1536-8 from what Ferdinand regarded as a more pernicious form of heresy than Lutheranism, and also from the clutches of the rival House of Wittelsbach. The way for this conversion was prepared by the Wittenberg Concord of 1536. The hostility between the Zwinglian and Lutheran sects had to some extent subsided since Zwingli's death. Melanchthon had modified his attitude towards predestination, and had been much impressed by Oecolampadius' treatise on the use of the Eucharist during the first three centuries. Luther even brought himself to entertain a friendly feeling for Zwingli's successor Bullinger. After various preliminary negotiations, in which Bucer was as usual the leading spirit, a conference between Luther and representatives of the modified Zwinglianism which prevailed in the cities of Upper Germany was held in Luther's house at Wittenberg in May, 1536. The two parties agreed on a form of words which covered their differences about the real presence in the Eucharist; they were not so successful with regard to the other disputed point, the reception of the body of Christ by unworthy communicants, but they agreed to differ. Luther expressed himself willing to bury the past and roll the stone upon it, and extended to Bucer and the Upper German cities that "brotherly love" which he had refused to Zwingli at Marburg in 1529.

The Concord of Wittenberg only stopped but for a while the rifts which had begun to appear in the Schmalkaldic Union. The mere fact of security would have tended to relax the bonds, and there were personal as well as religious differences between John Frederick and Philip of Hesse. Philip expressed contempt for the dull but honest Elector, while John Frederick had grave doubts about Philip's orthodoxy and the morality of his policy. Philip had always inclined to Zwinglian views and resented dictation from Wittenberg; and the two religious parties had nearly come to an open breach over the reformation of Württemberg. Ulrich himself was more Zwinglian than Lutheran, and his duchy was partitioned into two spheres of influence, in one of which the Lutheran Schnepf laboured and in the other the Zwinglian Blarer. The latter proved the stronger, and in 1537 Blarer procured the abolition of images in spite of the opposition of Schnepf and Brenz, while Ulrich devoted the confiscated Church revenues to exclusively secular purposes. It seemed as though Hesse, Württemberg, and the Oberland cities might form a strong Zwinglian Union independent of the Lutheran League of Schmalkalden. Both the Elector and the Landgrave were hesitating whether to renew that League, and both were pursuing independent negotiations at the Court of Vienna, where Ferdinand by his conciliatory demeanour and concessions induced them both to turn a deaf ear to the persuasions of the Habsburgs' foreign enemies.

The necessity for this pacific diplomacy on Ferdinand's part was amply demonstrated by the course of the war with the French and the Turks from 1536 to 1538. In spite of the neutrality of Henry VIII

1536-8]

League of Nürnberg

235

and the Lutheran Princes Francis I more than held his own, and the ten years' truce negotiated by Paul III at Nice in 1538 marked a considerable recovery from the humiliation of 1525-9. The real import of the agreement between the two great Catholic Powers, which followed at AiguesMortes, was and is a matter of doubt. Ostensibly the alliance was to be directed against infidels and heretics; and Henry VIII, the Lutheran Princes, and the Turks had all some ground for alarm. Even if war was not intended the Lutherans dreaded the General Council which peace brought perceptibly nearer. They had brusquely declined to concur in the assembly vainly summoned by Paul to meet at Mantua in May, 1537, because the terms of the summons implied that its object was the extirpation of Lutherans and not of abuses. They justified their refusal to the Emperor by arguing that the proposed Papal Council was very different from that General Council contemplated by the Diets of 1523 and 1524; and the Elector John Frederick suggested a counter ecumenical council to be held at Augsburg under the protection of the Schmalkaldic League. One and all they denied the Pope's authority to summon a Council and read with delight Henry VIII's manifesto to that effect.

Apart from the General Council which the union of Paul, Charles, and Francis seemed to portend, the Lutherans had been thrown into alarm by the mission to Germany of the Emperor's Vice-Chancellor, Held, who had received his instructions in October, 1536. Held had been a zealous member of the Reichskammergericht, and he was burning to avenge the contumely with which Protestants had treated the verdicts of that Court. He interpreted Charles' cautious and somewhat ambiguous language as an order to form a Catholic League with the object of restraining, if not of attacking, the Lutheran Princes. He ignored the Treaty of Cadan and Ferdinand's later concessions, required that the Protestants should promise submission to the proposed Council and to the Kammergericht, and, when they refused, proceeded to build up his Catholic alliance. The Habsburg rulers, Ferdinand and the QueenRegent of the Netherlands, were alarmed at Held's proceedings; but the King could not afford to break with the ultra-Catholics whose tool Held was; and on June 10, 1538, the League of Nürnberg was formed under the nominal patronage of Charles V. Its organisation was a faithful copy of that of the Schmalkaldic League, and its members were the Emperor, the King, the Archbishops of Mainz and Salzburg, and the Dukes of Bavaria, George of Saxony, and Eric and Henry of Brunswick. The League was professedly defensive, but its determination to execute the decrees of the Kammergericht, which the Schmalkaldic League had repudiated, really threatened war; and the occasion for it was almost provided by Duke Henry of Brunswick. He was chafing at the support given by the Schmalkaldic League to his two towns of Brunswick and Goslar, which had been condemned by the Kammergericht to restore the confiscated goods of the Church; and with a view to consolidating his

236

Dangers in Hungary and Gelders

[1536-9 territorial power he was eager to carry out the verdict of the Court. Personal animosity between him and his neighbour the Landgrave added fuel to the flames; Philip was believed to be arming for war in the spring of 1539, and Held and Duke Henry were bent upon anticipating his attack.

Such a development was, however, repugnant to responsible people on both sides. The Emperor had not in fact been so truculent as Held represented; his real intention in sending his Vice-Chancellor to Germany seems to have been to provide safeguards for his imperial authority, which in 1536-7 was threatened at least as much by Catholic as it was by Protestant enmities. The Pope appeared to be indifferent to the fate of the Church and Empire in Germany, and regarded with apparent unconcern the alliance between France and the infidels against the Christian Emperor. If Charles was to make head against them he must feel more secure in Germany, and the only means feasible were a Council summoned without the concurrence of Francis or Paul, a national synod of the German people, or a perpetual compromise on the basis of the Nürnberg peace of 1532. The ten years' truce with France concluded at Nice relieved Charles of his more pressing anxieties, but in spite of appearances, brought him no nearer to the position from which he could dictate terms to the Lutherans. He was doubtless aware that Francis had given, both before and after the truce, satisfactory assurances to the German Princes to the effect that the concord was merely defensive and that he would not allow Charles to destroy them. And other dangers arose on the imperial horizon. In February, 1538, Ferdinand closed his long rivalry with Zapolya by a treaty which guaranteed to that potentate, who was then childless, a lifelong tenure of his Hungarian throne on condition that Ferdinand should be his successor. But this only enraged the really formidable foe, the Sultan, who regarded Hungary as his and Zapolya as only his viceroy; and in 1539 war was once more threatened on the banks of the Danube.

A still greater trouble menaced the Habsburgs in Flanders, and the revolt of Ghent, extending though it did to Alost, Oudenaarde, and Courtrai, was only a part of the peril. Gelders, which had constantly been to the Burgundian House what Scotland was to England, passed in 1539 into the hands of a ruler who dreamt of uniting with the Schmalkaldic League on the east, with Henry VIII on the west, and possibly with Francis I on the south, and of thus surrounding Charles' dominions in the Netherlands with an impenetrable hostile fence. John, Duke of Cleves, had married Mary, the only child of William of Jülich and Berg; his son William, heir to the united duchy of Cleves-Jülich-Berg, had also claims on the neighbouring duchy of Gelders, whose Duke died without issue in 1538. The Estates of Gelders admitted William's claims, and in February, 1539, he also succeeded his father in Cleves. He had been educated by Erasmus' friend Conrad Heresbach, and the

1539-40]

Changes in Brandenburg and Saxony

237 form of religion obtaining in Cleves was a curious Erasmian compromise between Popery and Protestantism, which erected the Duke into a sort of territorial Pope and bore some resemblance to the via media pursued by Henry VIII in England and by Joachim II in Brandenburg. Cleves was thus a convenient political and theological link between England and the Schmalkaldic League; and by means of it Cromwell in 1539 thought of forging a chain to bind the Emperor. Duke William's sister Sibylla was already married to the Elector Frederick of Saxony, and at the end of 1539 another sister Anne was wedded to Henry VIII.

Over and above these foreign complications the ever-increasing strength of the Lutheran party in Germany rendered an attack upon them a foolhardy enterprise on the Emperor's part unless his hands were completely free in other directions. In 1539 two of the chief pillars of the Catholic Church in the Empire were removed, the Elector of Brandenburg and Duke George of Saxony. Joachim I of Brandenburg had died in 1535, but it was four years later before his son and successor definitely seceded from the ancient Church. On his accession he joined the Catholic League of Halle and retained the old Church ritual, but in 1538 he refused adherence to the extended Catholic confederation of Nürnberg. In February, 1539, his capital Berlin with Kölln demanded the administration of the Sacrament in both kinds, and the Bishop of Brandenburg himself advocated a Reformation. Joachim II, however, taking Henry VIII as his exemplar, resolved to be as independent of Wittenberg as he was of Rome; and probably the chief motive in his Reformation was the facility it afforded him of self-aggrandisement by appropriating the wealth of the monasteries and establishing an absolute control over his Bishops. He became, in fact, though not in title, summus episcopus and supreme head of the Church within his dominions. Like the Tudor King he was fond of splendour and ritual, made few changes in Catholic use, and maintained an intermediate attitude between the two great religious parties.

The revolution in Albertine Saxony was more complete. Duke George, one of the most estimable Princes of his age, had kept intact his faith in Catholic dogma, though he had spoken with candour of the necessity for practical reforms. On his death in 1539 the Duchy passed to his brother Henry, who had preferred the religion of his Ernestine cousin the Elector to that of his brother the Duke. In order to avert the impending conversion of his duchy, George had made his brother's succession conditional upon his renouncing Lutheranism and joining the League of Nürnberg; if he rejected these terms the duchy was to pass to the Emperor or to Ferdinand. For this violent expedient there was no legal justification and no practical support within or without the duchy. The people had long resented the repressive measures with which Duke George had been compelled to support Catholicism, and they accepted with little demur the new Duke and the new religion.