Albert Frederick Pollard

“ In Germany at all events there can be no pretence that the whole movement was due to the arbitrary caprice of an absolute King. To whatever extent it may have had its roots in the baser passions of mankind, it was at least a popular manifestation. It came from below, and not from above. Charles V was hostile from conviction and from the exigencies of his personal position; the ecclesiastical Princes were hostile from interest if not from conviction; of the temporal Princes only one could be described as friendly, and even Frederick of Saxony was not yet a Lutheran. ”

“ Ulrich was a ruffian who deserved no consideration, but his vices did not abrogate the rights of his heirs, and it was utterly repugnant to German custom and sentiment for the Emperor to confer a fief upon himself. No territory, however, was so convenient for the extension of Austria's influence as Württemberg; with it in Habsburg hands, Zevenbergen thought that Charles and his brother would dominate Germany, and so Württemberg passed into Habsburg possession, with Zevenbergen as its governor. ”

“ He may have perceived the impossibility of founding national unity on a discredited imperial system. Unity did not come through any of the methods suggested by the reforming Diets; it only came when the imperial decay, which they tried to check, had run its full course and the Emperor's supremacy had succumbed to the principle of territorial monarchy. To the extension of that principle by methods of blood and iron Germany owes her modern unity as England, France, and Spain owed their unity in the sixteenth century. It was the most potent political principle then fermenting in Europe ”

“ Each, wrote Hannart to his master, wanted to have the affairs of the Empire regulated according to his individual taste; they all demanded a national government and a national system of judicature, but no one would tolerate the interference of these institutions in his own household and jurisdiction; everyone in short wished to be master himself.
In such circumstances Charles was perhaps justified in preferring, like the rest, the extension of his own territorial power to every other object. ”

“ Seldom has a nation had better cause to repent a fit of enthusiasm than Germany had when it realised the effects of the election of Charles V. Of his rivals Francis I would no doubt have made a worse Emperor, but the choice of Ferdinand-a suggestion made by Margaret of Savoy and peremptorily rejected by Charles himself-or of Frederick of Saxony, would probably have been attended with less disastrous consequences to the German national cause. In personal tastes and sympathies, in the aims he pursued within his German kingdom, and in his foreign policy Charles V was an alien ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The efforts of Berthold of Mainz and Frederick of Saxony to evolve order out of the chaos had been foiled by the skill of the Emperor Maximilian, and the advent of Luther had been the signal for a fresh eruption of discord. But the urgency of the need produced a correspondingly strong demand for national unity; and at his election Charles was pledged to renew the attempt to create a national government, to maintain a national judicature, and to pursue a national policy. ”

“ Religion in that theological age consisted largely in belief and very slightly in conduct, and the conversion of a movement for practical reform into a war of creeds was inevitable. But it hindered the practical Reformation and helped to destroy the national unity of Germany. There was scarcely a conservative who did not see and admit the need for a purification of the Church; Murner and Eck and, most notably, Erasmus felt it as much as Luther, Melanchthon, and Hütten; and Duke George of Saxony and Charles V as much as the Elector Frederick. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was necessary, however, to select a victim, and the choice of the mercantile interest was received with acclamation by every other class in Germany.
The commercial revolution which marked the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century had led, as such revolutions always do, to the rapid and disproportionate accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few who knew how to exploit it; and the consequent growth of luxury and increase of the power of mercantile magnates were a constant theme of denunciation in the mouths of less fortunate men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But particularism had so completely permeated Germany that the very efforts at unity were themselves tainted with particularist motives; and one reason alike for the favour with which Princes like Frederick of Saxony regarded the Reichsregiment, and for its ultimate failure, was that, with its ostensible unifying purpose, the government combined aims which served the interests of Princes against those of other classes. ”

“ Bucer lived in his castle, the Ebernburg, Oecolampadius preached to his followers, and four hundred knights had undertaken Luther's defence at the Diet of Worms. The Reformer was grateful and addressed Sickingen as his especial lord and patron. He looked to the Ritter as a sword of the Gospel, and openly incited them to rise and spoil the unregenerate priests and prelates; while Hütten, whose sympathies were naturally on the knightly side, urged Sickingen to emulate Ziska, and endeavoured to enlist the towns in the service of the opposition to their common foe, the territorial Princes. ”

“ A pathetic interest attaches to the intervening struggles of the Reichsregiment as being the last efforts to create a modern German national State co-extensive with the medieval Empire, a State which would have included not only the present German Empire, but Austria and the Netherlands, and which, stretching from the shores of the Baltic to those of the Adriatic sea, and from the Straits of Dover to the Niémen or the Vistula, would have dominated modern Europe ”

“ He was to be as absolute as he could in the Empire at large, but while he controlled the national government, the national government was to have no control over his hereditary lands. It mattered little how much the imperial authority diminished provided the Habsburg power grew; no one should henceforth be Emperor unless he came of the Habsburg race. ”

“ Both the Edict of Charles and the Bull of Leo remained dead letters in Germany outside the private domains of the House of Habsburg; and the chief effect of the campaign of the allied Pope, Emperor, and King of England against Luther was a bonfire of the heretic's works in London and another at Ghent.
The censorship of the press was never more ludicrously ineffective to stop a revolution. ”

“ These prophets believed themselves to be under the direct influence of the Holy Spirit, and their immediate intercourse with the source of all truth rendered them independent of any other guidance, even that of the Scriptures. The free interpretation of the Bible which seemed a priceless boon to Luther, was a poor thing to men who believed themselves to be at least as much inspired as its writers. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Each political organism within the Empire was left to work out its own salvation at its own option without the stimulus or control of a central government; and the contrast between the course of the Reformation in Germany and its development in England affords some facilities for comparing the relative advantages and disadvantages of a strong national monarchy. ”

“ It was felt that some check must be put upon the process, and a national tax on imports and exports would, it was thought, cure this evil, satisfy at once the moral indignation of people and Princes against capitalists and their selfish desire for fiscal immunity, and provide a stable financial basis for the national executive and judicial system, for the defence of the realm against foreign foes, and for the maintenance of peace within its borders. ”

“ At first sight it may seem strange that an anti-ecclesiastical movement should have been led by ecclesiastics, but the greatest enemies of a class or order generally come from within it; the most successful leaders of democratic revolutions have usually been aristocrats, and the overthrow of Churches has often been the work of Churchmen. So prominent were members of Luther's own Order in the agitation against religious Orders that the whole thing was thought at first to be only a squabble between Augustinians and Dominicans, like many another which had already broken out and been suppressed. ”

“ Originally Bavaria had been as hostile to the Church as any other part of Germany, and no attempt was there made to execute the Edict of Worms. But what others sought by hostility to the Papacy, the Dukes of Bavaria won by its conciliation, and between 1521 and 1525 a firm alliance was built up between the Pope and the Dukes on the basis of papal support for the Dukes even against their Bishops. Adrian VI granted them a fifth of all ecclesiastical revenues within their dominions, a source of income which henceforth remained one of the chief pillars of the Bavarian financial system ”

“ Cochlaeus, Heynlin von Stein, Alexander Hegius, Luther's old master- Staupitz, Karl von Miltitz, Johann Faber, Pirkheimer, and many another had long desired a reformation of the Church, but they looked to a General Council and legal methods. Revolution and disruption they considered too great a price to pay for reform, and therefore sadly threw in their lot with the forces which were preparing to do battle for the Catholic Church, purified or corrupt. ”

“ The dogmas, which appealed to men of the iron cast of Luther and Calvin, repelled cultured men of the world like Erasmus; for scholars and artists are essentially aristocratic in temperament and firmly attached to that doctrine of individual merit which Luther and Calvin denied. While Luther adopted the teaching of St Augustine, Erasmus was regarded at Wittenberg as little better than a Pelagian, and his personal conflict with Hütten was soon followed by a more important encounter with Luther. ”