Albert Frederick Pollard

“ To Lübeck itself it is possible that the success of Wullenwever's grandiose ideas of mercantile empire might have been more fatal than their failure. According to Baltic nautical ballads Lübeck long regretted its turbulent Burgomaster, and his name is surrounded in popular legend with something of the halo of a van Artevelde, but his attempt to clothe the new democratic spirit in the worn-out garb of the city-empire was doomed from the first to end in disaster. ”

“ For another decade Germany was left to fight out its own political and religious quarrels with little help or hindrance from its sovereign. His intervention in 1530-2 had brought peace to no one; the Protestants had little security against the attacks of the Reichskammer-gericht; the Catholics were unable to prevent the progress of heresy; and while Charles was journeying farther and farther away from Germany the Habsburg authority in the Empire was threatened with one of the most serious checks it experienced. ”

“ That the end of the world was at hand was a common idea of the day. No one was more thoroughly possessed by it than Luther; but while he set little store on the Book of Revelation, the Anabaptists of Münster found in it their chief inspiration. They conceived that they were making straight the path of the Lord by abolishing all human ordinances such as property, marriage, and social distinctions. ”

“ Unresisted, the Turkish forces swept over the plains of Hungary, crossed the imperial frontier, and on September 20 planted their standards before the walls of Vienna. But over these the Crescent was never destined to wave, and the brilliant defence of Vienna in 1529 stopped the first, as a still more famous defence a hundred and fifty years later foiled the last, Turkish onslaught on Germany. ”

“ This unexpected disaster to the Reformation in Switzerland appeared to Ferdinand to offer a magnificent opportunity for crushing the movement in Germany. He was thoroughly convinced that Swiss political and religious radicalism was the most formidable of the enemies of German Catholicism and the Habsburg monarchy, and that deprived of this stimulant the milder Lutheran disease would soon yield to vigorous treatment. He proposed to his brother an armed support of the Five Catholic cantons, and the forcible restoration of Catholicism in Zurich and Bern. ”

“ 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 arms. ”

“ Not till the vials of wrath had been outpoured could the kingdom of heaven come. Hofmann, who had preached " the true gospel " in Livonia and then had combated Luther's magical doctrine of the Eucharist at Stockholm, Kiel, and Strassburg, had by his voice and his pen acquired great influence over the artisans of northern Germany; and here, where men's dreams had not been rudely dispelled by the ravages of peasants and reprisals of Princes, revolutionary ideas took their deepest root and revolutionary projects appeared most feasible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ His introduction of polygamy provoked resistance from the respectable section led by Mollenbeck, but they were mercilessly butchered after surrender. "He who fires the first shot," cried Jan, in words which might have been borrowed from Luther's attack on the peasants, "does God a service." After his victory he dispensed with the twelve elders who had nominally ruled the new Israel, and by the mouth of his prophet Dusentschur announced it as the will of God that he should be king of all the world and establish the Fifth Monarchy of the Apocalypse. ”

“ The doctrine of good works M'as so defined as to guard against the previous popular abuses of it; and in other respects there were signs of the process of purifying Catholic dogma which had commenced at the Congress of Ratisbon in 1524 and was completed at the Council of Trent. But these concessions were too slight to satisfy even Melanchthon; and the Protestant Princes were not frightened into submission by the threats of Charles that unless they returned to the Catholic fold he would proceed against them as became the protector and steward of the Church. ”

“ The Princes had never been so timorous as the divines. They were not so much concerned for the unity of the Empire as Melanchthon was for that of the Church. Philip of Hesse told the Emperor he would sacrifice life and limb for his faith, and long before the Diet had reached its conclusion he rode off" without asking the Emperor's leave. The Elector's fortitude was such that Luther declared the Diet of Augsburg had made him into a hero, and lesser Princes were not less constant. Their steadfastness and the uncompromising attitude of the Catholics stiffened the backs of the Lutheran divines ”

“ In both cases millenary doctrines were only the outward form in which the revolutionary spirit was made manifest, and the spirit of revolution is always at bottom the same because it has its roots in the depths of human nature. ”

“ But the joy was not universal, even in Germany. Secular and religious foes of the Habsburgs had offered their aid to Zapolya; while Philip of Hesse lamented the Turkish failure and hoped for another attack. The Turk was in fact the ally of the Reformation, which might have been crushed without his assistance; and to a clear-sighted statesman like Philip no other issue than ruin seemed possible from the mutual enmity of the two Protestant Churches. ”

“ He and Luther and John Frederick on one side, and Aleander and the Roman theologians on the other, were convinced that no concord was possible between Rome and evangelical Germany. It has been found possible to elaborate formularies which will bear both a Catholic and a Protestant interpretation, but it requires a strong hand and an effective government to compel their acceptance; Charles could not coerce either Wittenberg or Rome; he had neither the will nor the means of Henry VIII and Elizabeth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hungary had failed to resist the Turks by herself; but the Austrian shield, under which she took shelter, afforded no better protection, and Ferdinand only escaped the fate of Louis II because he kept out of the way, Absorbed in the Lutheran conflict, he made no attempt to secure his conquests of 1527, and, when the Turkish invasion began, Zapolya descended from his stronghold in the Carpathians, defeated a handful of Ferdinand's friends, and surrendered the crown of St Stephen on the scene of Mohäcs to the Sultan. ”

“ The distrust with which the revolutionists of Lübeck were viewed by both Protestant and Catholic Princes made Wullenwever's course a difficult one. He started for Copenhagen to conclude an alliance between the two cities, but Copenhagen looked on him askance, and he then offered his friendship to the young Christian III with no better result. Lübeck, however, found an unexpected ally in Henry VIII, who was then trying every means to reduce the Habsburg power, and regarded with alarm the prospect of a Habsburg victory in Denmark. ”

“ Zwingli was in fact the most modern in mind of all the Reformers, while Luther was the most medieval. Luther's conception of truth was theological, and not scientific; to him it was something simple and absolute, not complex and relative. A man either had or had not the Spirit of God; there was nothing between heaven and hell. One or the other of us, he wrote with regard to Zwingli, must be the devil's minister ”

“ Luther chalked on the table round which they sat, the text "This is my Body, and nothing could move him from its literal interpretation. Zwingli, on the other hand, explained the phrase by referring to the sixth chapter of St John, and declared that "is" meant only "represents"; the bread and the wine represented the body and blood, as a portrait represents a real person. Christ was only figuratively "the door" and the "true vine"; and the Eucharist instead of being a miracle was, in his eyes, only a feast of commemoration. ”

“ The Protestants, having already denied that a minority could be bound by a majority of the Diet, now carried the separatist principle a step further by declaring that the Empire was a federated aristocracy of independent sovereigns, who were themselves to judge when and to what extent they would yield obedience to their elected president. It is not, however, fair to charge them with adopting Protestantism in order to further their claims to political independence ”

“ Parties in Germany were more confounded than ever. The spread of Lutheranism produced no union in the Catholic ranks, and at Frankfort Catholics as well as Lutherans had refused to serve against the Turks. Charles appears to have reached the not unreasonable conclusion that Catholicism, especially in the ecclesiastical principalities, would only be safe under the shadow of his territorial power. ”

“ The relief of Vienna was received with mingled feelings in Germany. Luther, who had once denied the duty of Christians to fight the infidel as involving resistance to God's ordinance, had been induced to recant by the imminence of danger and the pressure of popular feeling. In 1529 he exhorted his countrymen to withstand the Turk in language as vigorous as that in which he had urged them to crush the peasants ”

“ The motive force which roused the English peasants in 1381 was essentially the same as that which dominated Münster in 1534 and lined the barricades of Paris in 1848. The revolutionist becomes a believer in the brotherhood of man, in the perfectibility of the race, and in the practicability of the millennium. ”

“ Hence arose a number of theological ideas, which were anathema alike to Catholics and Protestants, but appealed with irresistible force to multitudes who found no solace in either of the more orthodox creeds. The mass of the peasantry had been put out of the pale of hope in 1525, and their complete indifference to ideas of any kind prevented a general rising ten years later; but in some of the towns the lower classes retained enough mental buoyancy to seek consolation in dreams for the burdens they bore in real life. ”

“ Charles was for once maintaining the national cause. To motives of patriotism was added the private agreement between Charles and the Landgrave. The Habsburgs were lavishing all their wiles on Philip; and Philip, in spite of Bucer's warnings and in spite of his own real convictions, allowed himself to be duped. He opposed the admission of Denmark, Sweden, and Cleves into the Schmalkaldic League, and Duke William was thus left to his fate. With genuine insight Charles made the reduction of Gelders his first object. ”

“ The doctrines of second baptism and adult baptism are inoffensive enough, but attempts to realise the millennium, if successful, would be fatal to most forms of government, and a familiar parallel to the Münster revolutionists may be found in the English Fifth-monarchy men of the seventeenth century. ”

“ Melanchthon quailed before the public odium and nearly died of shame, but Luther wished to brazen the matter out with a lie. "The secret 'yea,'" he wrote, "must for the sake of Christ's Church remain a public 'nay.'" By denying the truth of the rumours he would, he argued, be doing no more than Christ Himself did when He said He knew not the day and the hour of His second coming, and he also alleged the analogy of the confessional; a good confessor must deny in Court all knowledge of what he has learnt in confession. ”

“ In the spring of 1536 he overran Savoy, which had become the Emperor's ally, entered into negotiations with the Turks and with Henry VIII for a joint action against the Habsburgs, and approached the Lutheran Princes with a similar object. The Lutherans were reluctant to side with the Emperor's enemies, but they had no hesitation in putting a high price on their friendship, and in turning Charles' necessities to account by demanding security for the threatened members of their Church. ”