BOOK II

HENRY VIII, OF THE UNITED KINGDOMS

 

 

MANY concurring circumstances not only called Charles’s thoughts towards the affairs of Germany (1520), but rendered his presence in that country necessary. The electors grew impatient of so long an interregnum, his hereditary dominions were disturbed by intestine commotions; and the new opinions concerning religion made such rapid progress as required the most serious consideration. But above all, the motions of the French king drew his attention, and convinced him that it was necessary to take measures for his own defence with no less speed than vigour.

When Charles and Francis entered the lists as candidates for the Imperial dignity, they conducted their rivalship with many professions of regard for each other, and with repeated declarations that they would not suffer any tincture of enmity to mingle itself with this honorable emulation. “We both court the same mistress”, said Francis, with his usual vivacity; “each ought to urge his suit with all the address of which he is master; the mast fortunate will prevail, and the other must rest contented”. But though two young and high-spirited princes, and each of them animated with the hope of success, might be capable of forming such a generous resolution, it was soon found that they promised upon a moderation too refined and disinterested for human nature. The preference given to Charles in the sight of all Europe mortified Francis extremely, and inspired him with all the passions natural to disappointed ambition. To this was owing the personal jealousy and rivalship which subsisted between the two monarchs during their whole reign; and the rancor of these, augmented by a real opposition of interest, which gave rise to many unavoidable causes of discord, involved them in almost perpetual hostilities. Charles had paid no regard to the principal article in the treaty of Noyon, by refusing oftener than once to do justice to John d’Albret, the excluded monarch of Navarre, whom Francis was bound in honor, and prompted by interest, to restore to his throne. The French king had pretensions to the crown of Naples, of which Ferdinand had deprived his predecessors by a most unjustifiable breach of faith. The emperor might reclaim the duchy of Milan as a fief of the empire, which Francis had seized, and still kept in possession, without having received investiture of it from the emperor. Charles considered the duchy of Burgundy as the patrimonial domain of his ancestors, wrested from them by the unjust policy of Louis XI, and observed with the greatest jealousy the strict connections which Francis had formed with the duke of Gueldres, the hereditary enemy of his family.

When the sources of discord were so many and various, peace could be of no long continuance, even between princes the most exempt from ambition or emulation. But as the shock between two such mighty antagonists could not fail of being extremely violent, they both discovered no small solicitude about its consequences, and took time not only to collect and to ponder their own strength, and to compare it with that of their adversary, but to secure the friendship or assistance of the other European powers.

The pope had equal reason to dread the two rivals, and saw that he who prevailed would become absolute master. If it had been in his power to engage them in hostilities, without rendering Lombardy the theatre of war, nothing would have been more agreeable to him, than to see them waste each other’s strength in endless quarrels. But this was impossible. Leo foresaw, that on the first rupture between the two monarchs, the armies of France and Spain would take the field in the Milanese; and while the scene of their operations was so near, and the subject for which they contended so interesting to him, he could riot long remain neuter. He was obliged, therefore, to adapt his plan of conduct to his political situation. He courted and soothed the emperor and king of France with equal industry and address. Though warmly solicited by each of them to espouse his cause, he assumed all the appearances of entire impartiality, and attempted to conceal his real sentiments under that profound dissimulation which seems to have been affected by most of the Italian politicians in that age.

The views and interests of the Venetians were not different from those of the pope; nor were they less solicitous to prevent Italy from becoming the seat of war, and their own republic from being involved in the quarrel. But through all Leo’s artifices, and notwithstanding his high pretensions to a perfect neutrality, it was visible that he leaned towards the emperor, from whom he had both more to fear and more to hope than from Francis; and it was equally manifest, that if it became necessary to take a side, the Venetians would from motives of the same nature, declare for the king of France. No considerable assistance, however, was to be expected from the Italian states, who were jealous to an extreme degree of the Transalpine powers, and careful to preserve the balance even between them, unless when they were seduced to violate this favorite maxim of their policy, by the certain prospect of some great advantage to themselves.

But the chief attention both of Charles and of Francis was employed in order to gain the king of England, from whom each of them expected assistance more effectual, and afforded with less political caution. Henry VIII had ascended the throne of that kingdom in the year 1509, with such circumstances of advantage as promised a reign of distinguished felicity and splendor. The union in his person of the two contending titles of York and Lancaster; the alacrity and emulation with which both factions obeyed his commands, not only enabled him to exert a degree of vigour and authority in his domestic government which none of his predecessors could have safely assumed; but permitted him to take a share in the affairs of the continent, from which the attention of the English had long been diverted by their unhappy intestine divisions. The great sums of money which his father had amassed, rendered him the most wealthy prince in Europe. The peace which had subsisted under the cautious administration of that monarch, had been of sufficient length to recruit the population of the kingdom after the desolation of the civil wars, but not so long as to enervate its spirit; and the English, ashamed of having rendered their own country so long a scene of discord and bloodshed, were eager to display their valor in some foreign war, and to revive the memory of the victories gained on the continent by their ancestors. Henry’s own temper perfectly suited the state of his kingdom, and the disposition of his subjects. Ambitious, active, enterprising, and accomplished in all the martial exercises which in that age formed a chief part in the education of persons of noble birth, and inspired them with an early love of war, he longed to engage in action, and to signalize the beginning of his reign by some remarkable exploit. An opportunity soon presented itself; and the victory at Guinegate [1511], together with the successful sieges of Terouenne and Tournay, though of little utility to England, reflected great luster on its monarch, and confirmed the idea which foreign princes entertained of his power and consequence. So many concurring causes, added to the happy situation of his own dominions, which secured them from foreign invasion; and to the fortunate circumstance of his being in possession of Calais, which served not only as a key to France, but opened an easy passage into the Netherlands, rendered the king of England the natural guardian of the liberties of Europe, and the arbiter between the emperor and French monarch. Henry himself was sensible of this singular advantage, and convinced, that, in order to preserve the balance even, it was his office to prevent either of the rivals from acquiring such superiority of power as might be fatal to the other, or formidable to the rest of Christendom. But he was destitute of the penetration, and still more of the temper which such a delicate function required. Influenced by caprice, by vanity, by resentment, by affection, he was incapable of forming any regular and extensive system of policy, or of adhering to it with steadiness. His measures seldom resulted from attention to the general welfare, or from a deliberate regard to his own interest, but were dictated by passions which rendered him blind to both, and prevented his gaining that ascendant in the affairs of Europe, or from reaping such advantages to himself, as a prince of greater art, though with inferior talents, might have easily secured.

All the impolitic steps in Henry’s administration must not, however, be imputed to defects in his own character; many of them were owing to the violent passions and insatiable ambition of his prime minister and favorite, cardinal Wolsey. This man, from one of the lowest ranks in life, had risen to a height of power and dignity, to which no English subject ever arrived; and governed the haughty, presumptuous, and intractable spirit of Henry with absolute authority. Great talents, and of very different kinds, fitted him for the two opposite stations of minister and of favorite. His profound judgment, his unwearied industry, his thorough acquaintance with the state of the kingdom, his extensive knowledge of the views and interests of foreign courts, qualified him for that uncontrolled direction of affairs with which he was entrusted. The elegance of his manners, the gayety of his conversation, his insinuating address, his love of magnificence, and his proficiency in those parts of literature of which Henry was fond, gained him the affection and confidence of the young monarch. Wolsey was far from employing this vast and almost royal power, to promote either the true interest of the nation, or the real grandeur of his master. Rapacious at the same time, and profuse, he was insatiable in desiring wealth. Of boundless ambition, he aspired after new honors with an eagerness unabated by his former success; and being rendered presumptuous by his uncommon elevation, as well as by the ascendant which he had gained over a prince, who scarcely brooked advice from any other person, he discovered in his whole demeanor the most overhearing haughtiness and pride. To these passions he himself sacrificed every consideration; and whoever endeavored to obtain his favor or that of his master, found it necessary to soothe and to gratify them.

As all the states of Europe sought Henry’s friendship at that time, all courted his minister with incredible attention and obsequiousness, and strove by presents, by promises, or by flattery, to work upon his avarice, his ambition, or his pride. Francis had, in the year 1518, employed Bonnivet, admiral of France, one of his most accomplished and artful courtiers, to gain this haughty prelate. He himself bestowed on him every mark of respect and confidence. He consulted him with regard to his most important affairs, and received his responses with implicit deference. By these arts, together with the grant of a large pension, Francis attached the cardinal to his interest, who persuaded his master to surrender Tournay to France, to conclude a treaty of marriage between his daughter the princess Mary and the dauphin, and to consent to personal interview with the French king. From that time, the most familiar intercourse subsisted between the two courts; Francis, sensible of the great value of Wolsey’s friendship, labored to secure the continuance of it by every possible expression of regard, bestowing on him, in all his letters, the honorable appellations of Father, Tutor, and Governor.

Charles observed the progress of this union with the utmost jealousy and concern. His near affinity to the king of England gave him some title to his friendship; and soon after his accession to the throne of Castile, he attempted to ingratiate himself with Wolsey, by settling on him a pension of three thousand livres. His chief solicitude at present was to prevent the intended interview with Francis, the effects of which upon two young princes, whose hearts were no less susceptible of friendship, than their manners were capable of inspiring it, he extremely dreaded. But after many, delays, occasioned by difficulties with respect to the ceremonial, and by the anxious precautions of both courts for the safety of their respective sovereigns, the time and place of meeting were at last fixed. Messengers had been sent to different courts, inviting all comers, who were gentlemen, to enter the lists at tilt and tournament, against the two monarchs and their knights. Both Francis and Henry loved the splendor of these spectacles too well, and were too much delighted with the graceful figure which they made on such occasions, to forego the pleasure or glory which they expected from such a singular and brilliant assembly. Nor was the cardinal less fond of displaying his own magnificence in the presence of two courts, and of discovering to the two nations the extent of his influence over both their monarchs. Charles, finding it impossible to prevent the interview, endeavored to disappoint its effects, and to preoccupy the favor of the English monarch and his minister by an act of complaisance still more flattering and more uncommon. Having sailed from Corunna, as has already been related, he steered his course directly towards England, and relying wholly on Henry’s generosity for his own safety, landed at Dover [May 26th]. This unexpected visit surprised the nation. Wolsey, however, was well acquainted with the emperor’s intention. A negotiation, unknown to the historians of that age, had been carried on between him and the court of Spain; this visit had been concerted; and Charles granted the cardinal whom he calls his most dear friend, an additional pension of seven thousand ducats. Henry, who was then at Canterbury, in his way to France, immediately despatched Wolsey to Dover, in order to welcome the emperor; and being highly pleased with an event so soothing to his vanity, hastened to receive, with suitable respect, a guest who had placed in him such unbounded confidence. Charles, to whom time was precious, stayed only four days in England; but during that short space he had the address, not only to give Henry favorable impressions of his character and intentions, but to detach Wolsey entirely from the interest of the French king. All the grandeur, the wealth, and the power, which the cardinal possessed, did not satisfy his ambitious mind, while there was one step higher to which an ecclesiastic could ascend. The papal dignity had for some time been the object of his wishes, and Francis, as the most effectual method of securing his friendship, had promised to favor his pretensions, on the first vacancy, with all his interest. But as the emperor’s influence in the college of cardinals was greatly superior to that of the French king, Wolsey grasped eagerly at the offer which that artful prince had made him, of exerting it vigorously in his behalf; and allured by this prospect, which, under the pontificate of Leo, still in the prime of his life, was a very distant one, he entered with warmth into all the emperor’s schemes. No treaty, however, was concluded at that time between the two monarchs; but Henry, in return for the honor which Charles had done him, promised to visit him in some place of the Low Countries, immediately after taking leave of the French king.

His interview with that prince was in an open plain between Guisnes and Ardres [June 7th,] where the two kings and their attendants displayed their magnificence with such emulation and profuse expense, as procured it the name of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Feats of chivalry, parties of gallantry, together with such exercises and pastimes as were in that age reckoned manly or elegant rather than serious business, occupied both courts during eighteen days that they continued together. Whatever impression the engaging manners of Francis, or the liberal and unsuspicious confidence with which he treated Henry, made on the mind of that monarch, was soon effaced by Wolsey’s artifices, or by an interview he had with the emperor at Gravelines [July 10]; which was conducted with less pomp than that near Guisnes, but with greater attention to what might be of political utility.

This assiduity, with which the two greatest monarchs in Europe paid court to Henry, appeared to him a plain acknowledgment that he held the balance in his hands, and convinced him of the justness of the motto which he had chosen, “That whoever he favored would prevail”. In this opinion he was confirmed by an offer which Charles made, of submitting any difference that might arise between him and Francis to his sole arbitration. Nothing could have the appearance of greater candor and moderation, than the choice of a judge who was reckoned the common friend of both. But as the emperor had now attached Wolsey entirely to his interest, no proposal could be more insidious, nor, as appeared by the sequel, more fatal to the French king.

Charles, notwithstanding his partial fondness for the Netherlands, the place of his nativity, made no long stay there; and after receiving the homage and congratulations of his countrymen, hastened to Aix-la-Chapelle, the place appointed by the golden bull for the coronation of the emperor. There, in presence of an assembly more numerous and splendid than had appeared on any form occasion, the crown of Charlemagne was placed on his head [Oct. 23], with all the pompous solemnity which the Germans affect in their public ceremonies, and which they deem essential to the dignity of their empire.

Almost at the same time, Solyman the Magnificent, one of the most accomplished, enterprising, and victorious of the Turkish sultans, a constant and formidable rival to the emperor, ascended the Ottoman throne. It was the peculiar glory of that period to produce the most illustrious monarchs, who have at any one time appeared in Europe. Leo, Charles, Francis, Henry, and Solyman, were each of them possessed of talents which might have rendered any age, wherein they happened to flourish, conspicuous. But such a constellation of great princes shed uncommon luster on the sixteenth century. In every contest, great power as well as great abilities were set in opposition; the efforts of valor and conduct on one side, counterbalanced by an equal exertion of the same qualities on the other, not only occasioned such a variety of events as renders the history of that period interesting, but served to check the exorbitant progress of any of those princes, and to prevent their attaining such preeminence in power as would have been fatal to the liberty and happiness of mankind.

The first act of the emperor’s administration was to appoint a diet of the empire to be held at Worms on the sixteenth of January, one thousand five hundred and twenty one. In his circular letters to the different princes, he informed them, that he had called this assembly in order to concert with them the most proper measures for checking the progress of those new and dangerous opinions, which threatened to disturb the peace of Germany, and to overturn the religion of their ancestors.

Charles had in view the opinions which had been propagated by Luther and his disciples since the year one thousand five hundred and seventeen. As these led to that happy reformation in religion which rescued one part of Europe from the papal yoke, mitigated its rigor in the other, and produced a revolution in the sentiments of mankind, the greatest, as well as the most beneficial, that has happened since the publication of Christianity, not only the events which at first gave birth to such opinions, but the causes which rendered their progress so rapid and successful, deserve to be considered with minute attention.

To overturn a system of religious belief, founded on ancient and deep rooted prejudices, supported by power, and defended with no less art than industry; to establish in its room doctrines of the most contrary genius and tendency; and to accomplish all this, not by external violence or the force of arms; are operations which historians, the least prone to credulity and superstition, ascribe to that Divine Providence which, with infinite ease, can bring about events which to human sagacity appear impossible. The interposition of Heaven, in favor of the Christian religion at its first publication, was manifested by miracles and prophecies wrought and uttered in confirmation of it. Though none of the reformers possessed, or pretended to possess, these supernatural gifts, yet that wonderful preparation of circumstances which disposed the minds of men for receiving their doctrines, that singular combination of causes which secured their success, and enabled men, destitute of power and of policy, to triumph over those who employed against them extraordinary efforts of both, may be considered as no slight proof, that the same hand which planted the Christian religion, protected the reformed faith, and reared it, from beginnings extremely feeble, to an amazing degree of vigor and maturity.

It was from causes, seemingly fortuitous, and from a source very inconsiderable, that all the mighty effects of the reformation flowed. Leo X, when raised to the papal throne, found the revenues of the church exhausted by the vast projects of his two ambitious predecessors, Alexander VI and Julius II. His own temper, naturally liberal and enterprising, rendered him incapable of that severe and patient economy which the situation of his finances required. On the contrary, his schemes for aggrandizing the family of Medici, his love of splendor, his taste for pleasure, and his magnificence in rewarding men of genius, involved him daily in new expenses; in order to provide a fund for which, he tried every device that the fertile invention of priests had fallen upon, to drain the credulous multitude of their wealth. Among others he had recourse to a sale of Indulgences. According to the doctrine of the Romish church, all the good works of the saints, over and above those which were necessary towards their own justification, are deposited, together with the infinite merits of Jesus Christ, in one inexhaustible treasury. The keys of this were committed to St. Peter, and to his successors the popes, who may open it at pleasure, and by transferring a portion of this superabundant merit to any particular person, far a sum of money, may convey to him either the pardon of his own sins, or a release for any one, in whose happiness he is interested, from the pains of purgatory. Such indulgences were first invented in the eleventh century by Urban II as a recompense for those who went in person upon the meritorious enterprise of conquering Holy Land. They were afterwards granted to those who hired a soldier for that purpose; and in process of time were bestowed on such as gave money for accomplishing any pious work enjoined by the pope. Julius II had bestowed indulgences on all who contributed towards building the church of St. Peter at Rome; and as Leo was carrying on that magnificent and extensive fabric, his grant was founded on the same pretence.

The right of promulgating these indulgences in Germany, together with a share in the profits arising from the sale of them, was granted to Albert, elector of Metz and archbishop of Magdeburg, who, as his chief agent for retailing them in Saxony, employed Tetzel, a Dominican friar of licentious morals, but of an active spirit, and remarkable for his noisy and popular eloquence. He, assisted by the monks of his order, executed the commission with great zeal and success, but with little discretion or decency; and though by magnifying excessively the benefit of their indulgences, and by disposing of them at a very low price, they carried on for some time an extensive and lucrative traffic among the credulous and the ignorant; the extravagance of their assertions, as well as the irregularities in their conduct, came at last to give general offence. The princes and nobles were irritated at seeing their vassals drained of so much wealth, in order to replenish the treasury of a profuse pontiff. Men of piety regretted the delusion of the people, who, being taught to rely, for the pardon of their sins, on the indulgences which they purchased, did not think it incumbent on them either to study the doctrines taught by genuine Christianity, or to practice the duties which it enjoins. Even the most unthinking were shocked at the scandalous behavior of Tetzel and his associates, who often squandered in drunkenness, gaming, and low debauchery, those sums which were piously bestowed, in hopes of obtaining eternal happiness; and all began to wish that some check were given to this commerce, no less detrimental to society than destructive to religion.

 

Martin Luther and Leo X

 

Such was the favorable juncture, and so disposed were the minds of his countrymen to listen to his discourses, when Martin Luther first began to call in question the efficacy of indulgences, and to declaim against the vicious lives and false doctrines of the persons employed in promulgating them. Luther was a native of Eisleben in Saxony, and though born of poor parents, had received a learned education, during the progress of which he gave many indications of uncommon vigor and acuteness of genius. His mind was naturally susceptible of serious sentiments, and tinctured with somewhat of that religious melancholy which delights in the solitude and devotion of a monastic life. The death of a companion, killed by lightning at his side, in a violent thunder-storm, made such an impression on his mind, as cooperated with his natural temper, in inducing him to retire into a convent of Augustinian friars, where, without suffering the entreaties of his parents to divert hint from what he thought his duty to God, he assumed the habit of that order. He soon acquired great reputation, not only for piety, but for his love of knowledge, and his unwearied application to study. He had been taught the scholastic philosophy and theology which were then in vogue, by very able masters, and wanted not penetration to comprehend all the niceties and distinctions with which they abound; but his understanding, naturally sound, and superior to everything frivolous, soon became disgusted with those subtle and uninstructive sciences, and sough: for some more solid foundation of knowledge and of piety in the holy scriptures. Having found a copy of the Bible which lay neglected in the library of his monastery, he abandoned all other pursuits, and devoted himself to the study of it, with such eagerness and assiduity, as astonished the monks, who were little accustomed to derive their theological notions from that source. The great progress which he made in this uncommon course of study, augmented so much the fame both of his sanctity and of his learning, that Frederic, elector of Saxony, having founded a university at Wittenberg on the Elbe, the place of his residence, Luther was chosen first to teach philosophy, and afterwards theology there; and discharged both offices in such a manner, that he was deemed the chief ornament of that society.

While Luther was at the height of his reputation and authority, Tetzel began to publish indulgences in the neighborhood of Wittenberg, and to ascribe to them the same imaginary virtues which had, in other places, imposed on the credulity of the people. As Saxony was not more enlightened than the other provinces of Germany, Tetzel met with prodigious success there. It was with the utmost concern that Luther beheld the artifices of those who sold, and the simplicity of those who bought indulgences. The opinions of Thomas Aquinas and the other schoolmen, on which the doctrine of indulgences was founded, had already lost much of their authority with him; and the scriptures which he began to consider as the great standard of theological truth, afforded no countenance to a practice equally subversive of faith and of morals. His warm and impetuous temper did not suffer him long to conceal such important discoveries, or to continue a silent spectator of the delusion of his countrymen. From the pulpit, in the great church at Wittenberg, he inveighed bitterly against the irregularities and vices of the monks who published indulgences; he ventured to examine the doctrines which they taught, and pointed out to the people the danger of relying for salvation upon any other means than those appointed by God in his word. The boldness and novelty of these opinions drew great attention, and being recommended by the authority of Luther’s personal character, and delivered with a popular and persuasive eloquence, they made a deep impression on his hearers. Encouraged by the favorable reception of his doctrines among the people, he wrote to Albert, elector of Metz, and archbishop of Magdeburg, to whose jurisdiction that part of Saxony was subject, and remonstrated warmly against the false opinions, as well as wicked lives, of the preachers of indulgences; but he found that prelate too deeply interested in their success to correct their abuses. His next attempt was to gain the suffrage of men of learning. For this purpose he published ninety-five theses, containing his sentiments with regard to indulgences. These he proposed, not as points fully established, or of undoubted certainty, but as subjects of inquiry and disputation he appointed a day, on which the learned were invited to impugn them, either in person or by writing; to the whole he subjoined solemn protestations of his high respect for the apostolic see, and of his implicit submission to its authority. No opponent appealed at the time prefixed; the theses spread over Germany with astonishing rapidity; they were read with the greatest eagerness; and all admired the boldness of the man, who had ventured not only to call in question the plenitude of papal power, but to attack the Dominicans, armed with all the terrors of Inquisitorial authority.

The friars of St. Augustine, Luther’s own order, though addicted with no less obsequiousness than the other monastic fraternities to the papal see, gave no check to the publication of these uncommon opinions. Luther had, by his piety and learning, acquired extraordinary authority among his brethren; he professed the highest regard for the authority of the pope; his professions were at that time sincere; and as a secret enmity, excited by interest or emulation, subsists among all the monastic orders in the Romish church, the Augustinians were highly pleased with his invectives against the Dominicans, and hoped to see them exposed to the hatred and scorn of the people. Nor was his sovereign, the elector of Saxony, the wisest prince at that time in Germany, dissatisfied with this obstruction which Luther threw in the way of the publication of indulgences. He secretly encouraged the attempt, and flattered himself that this dispute among the ecclesiastics themselves, might give some check to the exactions of the court of Rome, which the secular princes had long, though without success, been endeavoring to oppose.

Many zealous champions immediately arose to defend opinions on which the wealth and power of the church were founded, against Luther’s attacks. In opposition to his theses, Tetzel published counter-theses at Frankfort on the Oder; Eccius, a celebrated divine of Augsburg, endeavored to refute Luther’s notions; and Prierias, a Dominican friar, master of the sacred palace and Inquisitor-general, wrote against him with all the virulence of a scholastic disputant. But the manner in which they conducted the controversy did little service to their cause. Luther attempted to combat indulgences by arguments founded in reason, or derived from scripture; they produced nothing in support of them, but the sentiments of schoolmen, the conclusions of the canon law, and the decrees of popes. The decision of judges so partial and interested, did not satisfy the people, who began to call in question the authority even of these venerable guides, when they found them standing in direct opposition to the dictates of reason, and the determinations of the divine laws.

Meanwhile, these novelties in Luther’s doctrines, which interested all Germany, excited little attention and no alarm in the court of Rome. Leo, fond of elegant and refined pleasures, intent upon great schemes of policy, a stranger to theological controversies, and apt to despise them, regarded with the utmost indifference the operations of an obscure friar, who, in the heart of Germany, carried on a scholastic disputation in a barbarous style. Little did he apprehend, or Luther himself dream, that the effects of this quarrel would be so fatal to the papal see. Leo imputed the whole to monastic enmity and emulation, and seemed inclined not to interpose in the contest, but to allow the Augustinians and Dominicans to wrangle about the matter with their usual animosity.

The solicitations, however, of Luther’s adversaries, who were exasperated to a high degree by the boldness and severity with which he animadverted on their writings, together with the surprising progress which his opinions made in different parts of Germany, roused at last the attention of the court of Rome, and obliged Leo to take measures for the security of the church against an attack that now appeared too serious to be despised. For this end, he summoned Luther to appear at Rome [July, 1518], within sixty days, before the auditor of the chamber, and the Inquisitor-general Prierias, who had written against him, whom he empowered jointly to examine his doctrines, and to decide concerning them. He wrote, at the same time, to the elector of Saxony, beseeching him not to protect a man whose heretical and profane tenets were so shocking to pious ears; and enjoined the provincial of the Augustinians’ to check, by his authority, the rashness of an arrogant monk, which brought disgrace upon the order of St. Augustine, and gave offence and disturbance to the whole church.

From the strain of these letters, as well as from the nomination of a judge so prejudiced and partial as Prierias, Luther easily saw what sentence he might expect at Rome. He discovered, for that reason, the utmost solicitude to have his cause tried in Germany, and before a less suspected tribunal. The professors in the university of Wittenberg, anxious for the safety of a man who did so much honor to their society, wrote to the pope, and after employing several pretexts to excuse Luther from appearing at Rome, entreated Leo to commit the examination of his doctrines to some persons of learning and authority in Germany. The elector requested the same thing of the pope’s legate at the diet of Augsburg; and as Luther himself, who, at that time, was so far from having any intention to disclaim the papal authority, that he did not even entertain the smallest suspicion concerning its divine original, had written to Leo a most submissive letter, promising an unreserved compliance with his will, the pope gratified them so far as to empower his legate in Germany, cardinal Cajetan, a Dominican, eminent for scholastic learning, and passionately devoted to the Roman see, to hear and determine the cause.

Luther, though he had good reason to decline the judge chosen among his avowed adversaries, did not hesitate about appearing before Cajetan; and having obtained the emperor’s safe-conduct, immediately repaired to Augsburg. The cardinal received him with decent respect, and endeavored at first to gain upon him by gentle treatment. The cardinal, relying on the superiority of his own talents as a theologian, entered into a formal dispute with Luther concerning the doctrines contained in his theses. But the weapons which they employed were so different, Cajetan appealing to papal decrees, and the opinions of schoolmen, and Luther resting entirely on the authority of scripture, that the contest was altogether fruitless. The cardinal relinquished the character of a disputant, and assuming that of judge, enjoined Luther, by virtue of the apostolic powers with which he was clothed, to retract the errors which he had uttered with regard to indulgences, and the nature of faith; and to abstain, for the future, from the publication of new and dangerous opinions. Luther, fully persuaded of the truth of his own tenets, and confirmed in the belief of them by the approbation which they had met with among persons conspicuous both for learning and piety, was surprised at this abrupt mention of a recantation, before any endeavors were used to convince him that he was mistaken. He had flattered himself, that in a conference concerning the points in dispute with a prelate of such distinguished abilities, he should be able to remove many of those imputations with which the ignorance or malice of his antagonists had loaded him; but the high tone of authority that the cardinal assumed, extinguished at once all hopes of this kind, and cut off every prospect of advantage from the interview. His native intrepidity of mind, however, did not desert him. He declared with the utmost firmness, that he could not, with a safe conscience, renounce opinions which he believed to be true; nor should any consideration ever induce him to do what would be so base in itself, and so offensive to God. At the same time he continued to express no less reverence than formerly for the authority of the apostolic see; he signified his willingness to submit the whole controversy to certain universities which he named, and promised neither to write nor to preach concerning indulgences for the future, provided his adversaries were likewise enjoined to be silent with respect to them. All these offers Cajetan disregarded or rejected, and still insisted peremptorily on a simple recantation, threatening him with ecclesiastical censures, and forbidding him to appear again in his presence, unless he resolved instantly to comply with what he had required. This haughty and violent manner of proceeding, as well as other circumstances, gave Luther’s friends such strong reasons to suspect, that even the Imperial safe conduct would not be able to protect him from the legate’s from and resentment, that they prevailed on him to withdraw secretly from Augsburg, and to return to his own country. But before his departure, according to a form of which there had been some examples, he prepared [October 18] a solemn appeal from the pope, ill-informed at that time concerning his cause, to the pope, when he should receive more full information with respect to it.

Cajetan, enraged at Luther’s abrupt retreat, and at the publication of his appeal, wrote to the elector of Saxony, complaining of both; and requiring him, as he regarded the peace of the church, or the authority of its head, either to send that seditious monk a prisoner to Rome, or to banish him out of his territories. It was not from theological considerations that Frederic had hitherto countenanced Luther: he seems to have been much a stranger to controversies of that kind, and to have been little interested in them. His protection flowed almost entirely, as had been already observed, from political motives, and was afforded with great secrecy and caution. He had neither heard any of Luther’s discourses, nor read any of his books; though all Germany resounded with his fame, he had never once admitted him into his presence. But upon this demand which the cardinal made, it became necessary to throw off somewhat of his former reserve. He had been at great expense, and had bestowed much attention on founding a new university, an object of considerable importance to every German prince; and foreseeing how fatal a blow the removal of Luther would be to its reputation, he, under various pretexts, and with many professions of esteem for the cardinal, as well as of reverence for the pope, not only declined complying with either of his requests, but openly discovered great concern for Luther’s safety.

The inflexible rigor with which Cajetan insisted on a simple recantation, gave great offence to Luther’s followers in that age, and bath since been censured as imprudent, by several Popish writers. But it was impossible for the legate to act another part. The judges before whom Luther had been required to appear at Rome, were so eager to display their zeal against his errors, that, without waiting for the expiration of the sixty days allowed him in the citation, they had already condemned him as a heretical. Leo had, in several of his briefs and letters, stigmatized him as a child of iniquity, and a man given up to a reprobate sense. Nothing less, therefore, than a recantation could save the honor of the church, whose maxim it is, never to abandon the smallest point that it has established, and which is even precluded, by its pretensions to infallibility, from having it in its power to do so.

Luther’s situation at this time was such as would have filled any other person with the most disquieting apprehensions. He could not expect that a prince so prudent and cautious as Frederic, would, on his account, set at defiance the thunders of the church, and brave the papal power, which had crushed some of the most powerful of the German emperors. He knew what veneration was paid, in that age, to ecclesiastical decisions; what terrors ecclesiastical censures carried along with them, and how easily these might intimidate and shake a prince, who was rather his protector from policy, than his disciple from conviction. If he should be obliged to quit Saxony, he had no prospect of any other asylum, and must stand exposed to whatever punishment the rage or bigotry of his enemies could inflict. Though sensible of his danger, he discovered no symptoms of timidity or remissness, but continued to vindicate his own conduct and opinions, and to inveigh against those of his adversaries with more vehemence than ever.

But as every step taken by the court of Rome, particularly the irregular sentence by which he had been so precipitately declared a heretic, convinced Luther that Leo would soon proceed to the most violent measures against him, he had recourse to the only expedient in his power, in order to prevent the effect of the papal censures. He appealed to a general council, which he affirmed to by the representative of the catholic church, and superior in power to the pope, who, being a fallible man, might err, as St. Peter, the most perfect of his predecessors had erred.

It soon appeared, that Luther had not formed rash conjectures concerning the intentions of the Romish church. A bull, of a date prior to his appear was issued by the pope, in which he magnifies the virtue and efficacy of indulgences, in terms as extravagant as any of his predecessors had ventured to use in the darkest ages; and without applying stick palliatives, or mentioning such concessions, as a more enlightened period, and the dispositions in the minds of many men at that juncture seemed to call for, he required all Christians to assent to what he delivered as the doctrine of the catholic church, and subjected those who should hold or teach and contrary opinion to the heaviest ecclesiastical censures.

Among Luther’s followers, this bull, which they considered as an unjustifiable effort of the pope, in order to preserve that rich branch of his revenue which arose from indulgences, produced little effect. But, among the rest of his countrymen, such a clear decision of the sovereign pontiff against him, and enforced by such dreadful penalties, must have been attended with consequences very fatal to his cause; if these had not been prevented in a great measure by the death of the emperor Maximilian, [January 17, 1519,] whom both his principles and his interest prompted to support the authority of the holy see. In consequence of this event, the vicariat of that part of Germany which is governed by the Saxon laws, devolved to the elector of Saxony; and under the shelter of his friendly administration, Luther not only enjoyed tranquility, but his opinions were suffered, during the interregnum which preceded Charles's election, to take root in different places, and to grow up to some degree of strength and firmness. At the same time, as the election of an emperor was a point more interesting to Leo than a theological controversy, which he did not understand, and of which he could not foresee the consequences, he was so extremely solicitous not to irritate a prince of such considerable influence in the electoral college as Frederic, that he discovered a great unwillingness to pronounce the sentence of excommunication against Luther, which his adversaries continually demanded with the most clamorous importunity.

To these political views of the pope, as well as to his natural aversion from severe measures, was owing the suspension of any further proceedings against Luther for eighteen months. Perpetual negotiations, however, in order to bring the matter to some amicable issue, were carried on during that space. The manner in which these were conducted having given Luther many opportunities of observing the corruption of the court of Rome: its obstinacy in adhering to established errors; and its indifference about truth, however clearly proposed, or strongly proved, he began to utter some doubts with regard to the divine original of the papal authority. A public disputation was held upon this important question at Leipzig, between Luther and Eccius, one of his most learned and formidable antagonists; but it was as fruitless and indecisive as such scholastic combats usually prove. Both parties boasted of having obtained the victory; both were confirmed in their own opinions; and no progress was made towards deciding the point in controversy.

Nor did this spirit of opposition to the doctrines and usurpations of the Romish church break out in Saxony alone; an attack no less violent, and occasioned by the same causes, was made upon them about this time in Switzerland. The Franciscans being entrusted with the promulgation of indulgences in that country, executed their commission with the same indiscretion and rapaciousness which had rendered the Dominicans so odious in Germany. They proceeded, nevertheless, with uninterrupted success till they arrived at Zurich. There Zwingli, a man not inferior to Luther himself in zeal and intrepidity, ventured to oppose them; and being animated with a republican boldness, and free from those restraints which subjection to the will of a prince imposed on the German reformer, he advanced with more daring and rapid steps to overturn the whole fabric of the established religion. The appearance of such a vigorous auxiliary, and the progress which he made, was, at first, matter of great joy to Luther. On the other hand, the decrees of the universities of Cologne and Louvain, which pronounced his opinions to be erroneous, afforded great cause of triumph to his adversaries.

But the undaunted spirit of Luther acquired additional fortitude from every instance of opposition; and pushing on his inquiries and attacks from one doctrine to another, he began to shake the firmest foundations on which the wealth or power of the church were established. Leo came at last to be convinced, that all hopes of reclaiming him by forbearance were vain; several prelates of great wisdom exclaimed no less than Luther's personal adversaries, against the pope’s unprecedented lenity in permitting an incorrigible heretic, who during three years had been endeavoring to subvert everything sacred and venerable, still to remain within the bosom of the church, the dignity of the papal see rendered the most vigorous proceedings necessary; the new emperor, it was hoped, would support its authority; nor did it seem probable that the elector of Saxony would so far forget his usual caution, as to set himself in opposition to their united power. The college of cardinals was often assembled, in order to prepare the sentence with due deliberation, and the ablest canonists were consulted how it might he expressed with unexceptionable formality. At last, on the fifteenth of June, one thousand five hundred and twenty, the bull, so fatal to the church of Rome, was issued. Forty-one propositions, extracted out of Luther's works, are therein condemned as heretical, scandalous, and offensive to pious ears; all persons are forbidden to read his writings, upon pain of excommunication; such as had any of them in their custody are commanded to commit them to the flames; he himself, if he did not in sixty days, publicly recant his errors, and burn his books, is pronounced an obstinate heretic; is excommunicated, and delivered unto Satan for the destruction of his flesh; and all secular princes are required, under pain of incurring the same censure, to seize his person, that he might be punished as his crimes deserved.

The publication of this bull in Germany excited various passions in different places. Luther’s adversaries exulted, as if his party and opinions had been crushed at once by such a decisive blow. His followers, whose reverence for the papal authority daily diminished, read Leo’s anathemas with more indignation than terror. In some cities, the people violently obstructed the promulgation of the bull; in others, the persons who attempted to publish it were insulted, and the bull itself torn in pieces, and trodden under foot.

This sentence, which he had for some time expected, did not disconcert or intimidate Luther. After renewing his appeal to the general council [Nov. 17], he published remarks upon the bull of excommunication; and being now persuaded that Leo had been guilty both of impiety and injustice in his proceedings against him, he boldly declared the pope to be that man of sin, or Antichrist, whose appearance is foretold in the New Testament; he declaimed against his tyranny and usurpations with greater violence than ever; he exhorted all Christian princes to shake off such an ignominious yoke; and boasted of his own happiness in being marked out as the object of ecclesiastical indignation, because he had ventured to assert the liberty of mankind. Nor did he confine his expressions of contempt for the papal power to words alone; Leo having, in execution of the bull, appointed Luther’s book to be burnt at Rome, he, by way of retaliation, assembled all the professors and students in the university of Wittenberg, and with great pomp, in presence of a vast multitude of spectators, cast the volumes of the canon law, together with the bull of excommunication, into the flames; and his example was imitated in several cities of Germany. The manner in which he justified this action was still more offensive than the action itself. Having collected from the canon law some of the most extravagant propositions with regard to the plenitude and omnipotence of the papal power, as well as the subordination of all secular jurisdiction to the authority of the holy see, he published these with a commentary, pointing out the impiety of such tenets, and their evident tendency to subvert all civil government.

 

The Régime of the Church under the Medieval Popes

 

Such was the progress which Luther had made, and such the state of his party, when Charles arrived in Germany. No secular prince had hitherto embraced Luther's opinions; no change in the established forms of worship had been introduced, and no encroachments had been made upon the possessions or jurisdiction of the clergy; neither party had yet proceeded to action; and the controversy, though conducted with great heat and passion on both sides, was still carried on with its proper weapons, with theses, disputations, and replies. A deep impression, however, was made upon the minds of the people; their reverence for ancient institutions and doctrines was shaken; and the materials were already scattered, which kindled into the combustion that soon spread over all Germany. Students crowded from every province of the empire to Wittenberg; and under Luther himself, Melanchthon, Carlostadius, and other masters then reckoned eminent, imbibed opinions, which, on their return, they propagated among their countrymen, who listened to them with that fond attention, which truth, when accompanied with novelty, naturally commands.

During the course of these transactions, the court of Rome, though under the direction of one of its ablest pontiffs, neither formed its schemes with that profound sagacity, nor executed them with that steady perseverance, which had long-rendered it the most perfect model of political wisdom to the rest of Europe. When Luther began to declaim against indulgences, two different methods of treating him lay before the pope; by adopting one of which, the attempt, it is probable, might have been crushed, and by the other, it might have been rendered innocent. It Luther’s first departure from the doctrines of the church had instantly drawn upon him the weight of its censures, the dread of these might have restrained the elector of Saxony from protecting him, might have deterred the people from listening to his discourses, or even might have overawed Luther himself; and his name, like that of many good men before his time, would now have been known to the world only for his honest but ill-timed effort to correct the corruptions of the Romish church. On the other hand, if the pope had early testified some displeasure with the vices and excesses of the friars who had been employed in publishing indulgences; if he had forbidden the mentioning of controverted points in discourses addressed to the people; if he had enjoined the disputants on both sides to be silent; if he had been careful not to risk the credit of the church, by defining articles which had hitherto been left undetermined; Luther would, probably, have stopped short at his first discoveries; he would not have been forced, in self-defence, to venture upon new ground, and the whole controversy might possibly have died away insensibly; or, being confined entirely to the schools, might have men carried on with as little detriment to the peace and unity of the Romish church, as that which the Franciscans maintain with the Dominicans concerning the immaculate conception, or that between the Jansenists and Jesuits concerning the operations of grace. But Leo, by fluctuating between these opposite systems, and by embracing them alternately, defeated the effect: of both. By an improper exertion of authority, Luther was exasperated, but not restrained. By a mistaken exercise of lenity, time was given for his opinions to spread, but no progress was made towards reconciling him to the church; and even the sentence of excommunication, which at another juncture might have been decisive, was delayed so long, that it became at last scarcely an object of terror.

Such a series of errors in the measures of a court seldom chargeable with mistaking its own true interest, is not more astonishing than the wisdom which appeared in Luther’s conduct. Though a perfect stranger to the maxims of worldly wisdom, and incapable, from the impetuosity of his temper, of observing them, he was led naturally, by the method in which he made his discoveries, to carry on his operations in a manner which contributed more to their success than if every step he took had been prescribed by the most artful policy. At the time when he set himself to oppose Tetzel, he was far from intending that reformation which he afterwards effected; and would have trembled with horror at the thoughts of what at last he gloried in accomplishing. The knowledge of truth was not poured into his mind all at once, by any special revelation; he acquired it by industry and meditation, and his progress, of consequence, was gradual. The doctrines of popery are so closely connected, that the exposing of one error conducted him naturally to the detection of others; and all the parts of that artificial fabric were so united together, that the pulling down of one loosened the foundation of the rest, and rendered it more easy to overturn them. In confuting the extravagant tenets concerning indulgences, he was obliged to inquire into the true cause of our justification and acceptance with God. The knowledge of that discovered to him by degrees the inutility of pilgrimages and penances; the vanity of relying on the intercession or saints; the impiety of worshipping them; the abuses of auricular confession; and the imaginary existence of purgatory. The detection of so many errors led him of course to consider the character of the clergy who taught them; and their exorbitant wealth, the severe injunction of celibacy, together with the intolerable rigor of monastic vows, appeared to him the great sources of their corruption. From thence, it was but one step to call in question the divine original of the papal power, which authorized and supported such a system of errors. As the unavoidable result of the whole, he disclaimed the infallibility of the pope, the decisions of schoolmen, or any other human authority, and appealed to the word of God as the only standard of theological truth. To this gradual progress Luther owed his success. His hearers were net shocked at first by any proposition too repugnant to their ancient prejudices, or too remote from established opinions. They were conducted insensibly from one doctrine to another. Their faith and conviction were able to keep pace with his discoveries. To the same cause was owing the inattention, and even indifference, with which Leo viewed Luther’s first proceedings. A direct or violent attack upon the authority of the church would at once have drawn upon Luther the whole weight of its vengeance; but as this was far from his thoughts, as he continued long to profess great respect for the pope, and made repeated offers of submission to his decisions, there seemed to be no reason for apprehending that he would prove the author of any desperate revolt; and he was suffered to proceed step by step, in undermining the constitution of the church, until the remedy applied at last came too late to produce any effect.

But whatever advantages Luther’s cause derived, either from the mistakes of his adversaries, or from his own good conduct, the sudden progress and firm establishment of his doctrines must not be ascribed to these alone. The same corruptions in the church of Rome which he condemned, had been attacked long before his time. The same opinions which he now propagated, had been published in different places, and were supported by the same arguments. Waldus in the twelfth century, Wickliff in the fourteenth, and Huss in the fifteenth, had inveighed against the errors of popery with great boldness, and confuted them with more ingenuity and learning than could have been expected in those illiterate ages in which they flourished. But all these premature attempts towards a reformation proved abortive. Such feeble lights, incapable of dispelling the darkness which then covered the church, were soon extinguished; and though the doctrines of these pious men produced some effects, and left some traces in the countries where they taught, they were neither extensive nor considerable. Many powerful causes contributed to facilitate Luther's progress, which either did not exist, or did not operate with full force in their days; and at that critical and mature juncture when he appeared, circumstances of every kind concurred in rendering each step that he took successful.

The long and scandalous schism which divided the church during the latter part of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, had a great effect in diminishing the veneration with which the world had been accustomed to view the papal dignity. Two or three contending pontiffs roaming about Europe at a time; fawning on the princes, whom they wanted to gain; extorting large sums of money from the countries which acknowledged their authority; excommunicating their rivals, and cursing those who adhered to them; discredited their pretensions to infallibility, and exposed both their persons and their office to contempt. The laity, to whom all parties appealed, came to learn that some right of private judgment belonged to them, and acquired the exercise of it so far as to choose, among these infallible guides, whom they would please to follow. The proceedings of the councils of Constance and Basil spread this disrespect for the Romish see still wider, and by their bold exertion of authority in deposing and electing popes, taught the world that there was in the church a jurisdiction superior even to the papal power, which they had long believed to be supreme.

The wound given on that occasion to the papal authority was scarcely healed up, when the pontificates of Alexander VI and Julius II, both able princes, but detestable ecclesiastics, raised new scandal in Christendom. The profligate morals of the former in private life; the fraud, the injustice, and cruelty of his public administration, place him on a level with those tyrants, whose deeds are the greatest reproach to human nature. The latter, though a stranger to the odious passions which prompted his predecessor to commit so many unnatural crimes, was under the dominion of a restless and ungovernable ambition, that scorned all considerations of gratitude, of decency, or of justice, when they obstructed the execution of his schemes. It was hardly possible to be firmly persuaded that the infallible knowledge of a religion, whose chief precepts are purity and humility, was deposited in the breasts of the profligate Alexander or the overbearing Julius. The opinion of those who exalted the authority of a council above that of the pope, spread wonderfully under their pontificates; and as the emperor and French kings, who were alternately engaged in hostilities with those active pontiffs, permitted and even encouraged their subjects to expose their vices with all the violence of invective and all the petulance of ridicule, men’s ears being accustomed to these, were not shocked with the bold or ludicrous discourses of Luther and his followers concerning the papal dignity.

Nor were such excesses confined to the head of the church alone. Many of the dignified clergy, secular as well as regular, being the younger sons of noble families, who had assumed the ecclesiastical character for no other reason but that they found in the church stations of great dignity and affluence, were accustomed totally to neglect the duties of their office, and indulged themselves without reserve in all the vices to which great wealth and idleness naturally give birth. Though the inferior clergy were prevented by their poverty from imitating the expensive luxury of their superiors, yet gross ignorance and low debauchery rendered them as contemptible as the other were odious. The severe and unnatural law of celibacy, to which both were equally subject, occasioned such irregularities, that in several parts of Europe the concubinage of priests was not only permitted, but enjoined. The employing of a remedy so contrary to the precepts of the Christian religion, is the strongest proof that the crimes it was intended to prevent were both numerous and flagrant. Long before the sixteenth century, many authors of great name and authority give such descriptions of the dissolute morals of the clergy, as seem almost incredible in the present age. The voluptuous lives of ecclesiastics occasioned great scandal, not only because their manners were inconsistent with their sacred character; but the laity being accustomed to see several of them raised from the lowest stations to the greatest affluence, did not show the same indulgence to their excesses, as to those of persons possessed of hereditary wealth or grandeur; and viewing their condition with more envy, they censured their crimes with greater severity. Nothing, therefore, could be more acceptable to Luther’s hearers, than the violence with which he exclaimed against the immoralities of churchmen, and every person in his audience could, from his own observation, confirm the truth of his invectives.

The scandal of these crimes was greatly increased by the facility with which such as committed them obtained pardon. In all the European kingdoms, the impotence of the civil magistrate, under forms of government extremely irregular and turbulent, made it necessary to relax the rigor of justice, and upon payment of a certain fine or composition prescribed by law, judges were accustomed to remit farther punishment, even of the most atrocious crimes. The court of Rome, always attentive to the means of augmenting its revenues, imitated this practice, and, by a preposterous accommodation of it to religious concerns, granted its pardons to such transgressors as gave a sum of money in order to purchase them. As the idea of a composition for crimes was then familiar, this strange traffic was so far from shocking mankind, that it soon became general; and in order to prevent any imposition in carrying it on, the officers of the Roman chancery published a book, containing the precise sum to be exacted for the pardon of every particular sin. A deacon guilty of murder was absolved for twenty crowns. A bishop or abbot might assassinate for three hundred livres. Any ecclesiastic might violate his vows of chastity, even with the most aggravating circumstances, for the third part of that sum. Even such shocking crimes, as occur seldom in human life, and perhaps exist only in the impure imagination of a casuist, were taxed at a very moderate rate. When a more regular and perfect mode of dispensing justice came to be introduced into civil courts, the practice of paying a composition for crimes went gradually into disuse; and mankind having acquired more accurate notions concerning religion and morality, the conditions on which the court of Rome bestowed its pardons appeared impious, and were considered as one great source of ecclesiastical corruption.

This degeneracy of manners among the clergy might have been tolerated, perhaps, with greater indulgence, if their exorbitant riches and power had not enabled them at the same time, to encroach on the rights of every other order of men. It is the genius of superstition, fond of whatever is pompous or grand, to set no bounds to its liberality towards persons whom it esteems sacred, and to think its expressions of regard detective, unless it hath raised them to the height of wealth and authority. Hence flowed the extensive revenues and jurisdiction possessed by the church in every country of Europe, and which were become intolerable to the laity, from whose undiscerning bounty they were at first derived.

The burden, however, of ecclesiastical oppression had fallen with such peculiar weight on the Germans, as rendered them, though naturally exempt from levity, and tenacious of their ancient customs, more inclinable than any people in Europe to listen to those who called on them to assert their liberty. During the long contests between the popes and emperors concerning the right of investiture, and the wars which these occasioned, most of the considerable German ecclesiastics joined the papal faction; and while engaged in rebellion against the head of the empire, they seized the Imperial domains and revenues, and usurped the imperial jurisdiction within their own dioceses. Upon the re-establishment of tranquility, they still retained these usurpations, as if by the length of an unjust possession they had acquired a legal right to them. The emperors, too feeble to wrest them out of their hands, were obliged to grant the clergy fiefs of those ample territories, and they enjoyed all the immunities as well as honors which belonged to feudal barons. By means of these, many bishops and abbots in Germany were not only ecclesiastics, but princes, and their character and manners partook more of the license too frequent among the latter, than of the sanctity which became the former.

The unsettled state of government in Germany, and the frequent wars to which that country was exposed, contributed in another manner towards aggrandizing ecclesiastics. The only property, during those times of anarchy, which enjoyed security from the oppression of the great, or the ravages of war, was that which belonged to the church. This was owing, not only to the great reverence for the sacred character prevalent in those ages, but to a superstitious dread of the sentence of excommunication, which the clergy were ready to pronounce against all who invaded their possessions. Many observing this, made a surrender of their lands to ecclesiastics, and consenting to hold them in fee of the church, obtained as its vassals a degree of safety, which without this device they were unable to procure. By such an increase of the number of their vassals, the power of ecclesiastics received a real and permanent augmentation; and as lands, held in fee by the limited tenures common in those ages, often returned to the persons on whom the fief depended, considerable additions were made in this way to the property of the clergy.

The solicitude of the clergy in providing for the safety of their own persons, was still greater than that which they displayed in securing their possessions and their efforts to attain it were still more successful. As they were consecrated to the priestly office with much outward solemnity; were distinguished from the rest of mankind by a peculiar garb and manner of life; and arrogated to their order many privileges which do not belong to other Christians, they naturally became the objects of excessive veneration. As a superstitious spirit spread, they were regarded as beings of a superior species to the profane laity, whom it would be impious to try by the same laws, or to subject to the same punishments. This exemption from civil jurisdiction, granted at first to ecclesiastics as a mark of respect, they soon claimed as a point of right. This valuable immunity of the priesthood is asserted, not only in the decrees of popes and councils, but was confirmed in the most ample form by many of the greatest emperors. As long as the clerical character remained, the person of an ecclesiastic was in some degree sacred; and unless he were degraded from his office, the unhallowed hand of the civil judge durst not touch him. But as the power of degradation was lodged in the spiritual courts, the difficulty and expense of obtaining such a sentence, too often secured absolute impunity to offenders. Many assumed the clerical character for no other reason, than that it might screen them from the punishment which their actions deserved. The German nobles complained loudly, that these anointed malefactors, as they called them, seldom suffered capitally, even for the most atrocious crimes; and their independence on the civil magistrate is often mentioned in the remonstrances of the diets, as a privilege equally pernicious to society, and to the morals of the clergy.

While the clergy asserted the privileges of their own order with so much zeal, they made continual encroachments upon those of the laity. All causes relative to matrimony, to testaments, to usury, to legitimacy of birth, as well as those which concerned ecclesiastical revenues, were thought to be so connected with religion, that they could be tried only in the spiritual courts. Not satisfied with this ample jurisdiction, which extended to one half of the subjects that give rise to litigation among men, the clergy, with wonderful industry, and by a thousand inventions, endeavored to draw all other causes into their own courts. As they had engrossed almost the whole learning known in the dark ages, the spiritual judges were commonly so far superior in knowledge and abilities to those employed in the secular courts, that the people at first favored any stretch that was made to bring their affairs under the cognizance of a judicature, on the decisions of which they could rely with more perfect confidence than on those of the civil courts. Thus the interest of the church, and the inclination of the people, concurring to elude the jurisdiction of the lay-magistrate, soon reduced it almost to nothing. By means of this, vast power accrued to ecclesiastics, and no inconsiderable addition was made to their revenue by the sums paid in those ages to the persons who administered justice.

The penalty by which the spiritual courts enforced their sentences, added great weight and terror to their jurisdiction. The censure of excommunication was instituted originally for preserving the purity of the church; that obstinate offenders, whose impious tenets or profane lives were a reproach to Christianity, might be cut off from the society of the faithful; this ecclesiastics did not scruple to convert into an engine for promoting their own power, and they inflicted it on the most frivolous occasions. Whoever despised any of their decisions, even concerning civil matters, immediately incurred this dreadful censure, which not only excluded them from all the privileges of a Christian, but deprived them of their rights as men and citizens, and the dread of this rendered even the most fierce and turbulent spirits obsequious to the authority of the church.

Nor did the clergy neglect the proper methods of preserving the wealth and power which they had acquired with such industry and address. The possessions of the church, being consecrated to God, were declared to be unalienable; so that the funds of a society, which was daily gaining, and could never lose, grew to be immense. In Germany it was computed that the ecclesiastics had got in their hands more than one half of the national property. In other countries, the proportion varied; but the share belonging to the church was everywhere prodigious. These vast possessions were not subject to the burdens imposed on the lands of the laity. The German clergy were exempted by law from all taxes, and if, on any extraordinary emergence, ecclesiastics were pleased to grant some aid towards supplying the public exigencies, this was considered as a free gift flowing from their own generosity, which the civil magistrate had no title to demand, far less to exact. In consequence of this strange solecism in government, the laity in Germany had the mortification to find themselves loaded with excessive impositions, because such as possessed the greatest property were freed from any obligation to support or to defend the state.

Grievous, however, as the exorbitant wealth and numerous privileges of the clerical order were to the other members of the Germanic body, they would have reckoned it some mitigation of the evil, if these had been possessed only by ecclesiastics residing among themselves, who would have been less apt to make an improper use of their riches, or to exercise their rights with unbecoming rigor. But the bishops of Rome having early put in a claim, the boldest that ever human ambition suggested, of being supreme and infallible heals of the Christian church, they, by their profound policy and unwearied perseverance, by their address in availing themselves of every circumstance which occurred, by taking advantage of the superstition of some princes, of the necessity of others, and of the credulity of the people, at length established their pretensions, in opposition both to the interest and common sense of mankind. Germany was the country which these ecclesiastical sovereigns governed with most absolute authority. They excommunicated and deposed some of its most illustrious emperors, and excited their subjects, their ministers, and even their children, to take arms against them. Amidst these contests, the popes continually extended their own immunities, spoiling the secular princes gradually of their most valuable prerogatives, and the German church felt all the rigor of that oppression which flows from subjection to foreign dominion, and foreign exactions.

The right of conferring benefices, which the popes usurped during that period of confusion, was an acquisition of great importance, and exalted the ecclesiastical power upon the ruins of the temporal. The emperors and other princes of Germany had long been in possession of this right, which served to increase both their authority and their revenue. But by wresting it out of their hands, the popes were enabled to fill the empire with their own creatures; they accustomed a great body of every prince's subjects to depend not upon him, but upon the Roman see; they bestowed upon strangers the richest benefices in every country; and drained their wealth to supply the luxury of a foreign court. Even the patience of the most superstitious ages could no longer bear such oppression; and so loud and frequent were the complaints and murmurs of the Germans, that the popes, afraid of irritating them too far, consented, contrary to their usual practice, to abate somewhat of their pretensions, and to rest satisfied with the right of nomination to such benefices as happened to fall vacant during six months in the year, leaving the disposal of the remainder to the princes and other legal patrons.

But the court of Rome easily found expedients for eluding an agreement which put such restraints on its power. The practice of reserving certain benefices in every country to the pope’s immediate nomination, which had been long known, and often complained of, was extended far beyond its ancient bounds. All the benefices possessed by cardinals, or any of the numerous officers in the Roman court; those held by persons who happened to die at Rome, or within forty miles of that city, on their journey to or from it; such as became vacant by translation, with many others, were included in the number of reserved benefices; Julius II and Leo X stretching the matter to the utmost, often collated to benefices where the right of reservation had not been declared, on pretence of having mentally reserved this privilege to themselves. The right of reservation, however, even with this extension, had certain limits, as it could be exercised only where the benefice was actually vacant, and therefore in order to render the exertion of papal power unbounded, expectative graces, or mandates nominating a person to succeed to a benefice upon the first vacancy that should happen, were brought into use. By means of these, Germany was filled with persons who were servilely dependent on the court of Rome, from which they had received such reversionary grants; princes were defrauded, in a great degree, of their prerogatives; the rights of lay-patrons were preoccupied, and rendered almost entirely vain.

The manner in which these extraordinary powers were exercised, rendered then, still mote odious and intolerable. The avarice and extortion of the court of Rome were become excessive almost to a proverb. The practice of selling benefices was so notorious, that no pains were taken to conceal, or to disguise it. Companies of merchants openly purchased the benefices of different districts in Germany from the pope’s ministers, and retailed them at an advanced price. Pious men beheld with deep regret these simoniacal transactions, so unworthy the ministers of a Christian church; while politicians complained of the loss sustained by the exportation of so much wealth in that irreligious traffic.

The sums, indeed, which the court of Rome drew, by its stated and legal impositions, from all the countries acknowledging its authority, were so considerable, that it is not strange that princes, as well as their subjects, murmured at the smallest addition made to them by unnecessary or illicit means. Every ecclesiastical person, upon his admission to his benefice, paid annals, or one year’s produce of his living, to the pope; and as that tax was exacted with great rigor, its amount was very great. To this must be added, the frequent demands made by the popes of free gifts from the clergy, together with the extraordinary levies of tenths upon ecclesiastical benefices, on pretence of expeditions against the Turks, seldom intended, or carried into execution; and from the whole, the vast proportion of the revenues of the church, which flowed continually to Rome, may be estimated.

Such were the dissolute manners, the exorbitant wealth, the enormous power and privileges of the clergy, before the Reformation, such the oppressive rigor of that dominion which the popes had established over the Christian world; and such the sentiments concerning them that prevailed in Germany at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Nor has this sketch been copied from the controversial writers of that age, who, in the heat of disputation, may he suspected of having exaggerated the errors, or of having misrepresented the conduct of that church which they labored to overturn: it is formed upon more authentic evidence, upon the memorials and remonstrances of the Imperial diets, coolly enumerating the grievances under which the empire groaned, in order to obtain the redress of them. Dissatisfaction must have arisen to a great height among the people, when these grave assemblies expressed themselves with that degree of acrimony which abounds in their remonstrances; and if they demanded the abolition of those enormities with so much vehemence, the people, we may be assured, uttered their sentiments and desires in bolder and more virulent language.

To men thus prepared for shaking off the yoke, Luther addressed himself with certainty of success. As they had long felt its weight, and had borne it with impatience, they listened with joy to the first refer of procuring them deliverance. Hence proceeded the fond and eager reception that his doctrines met with, and the rapidity with which they spread over all the provinces of Germany. Even the impetuosity and fierceness of Luther’s spirit, his confidence in asserting his own opinions, and the arrogance as well as contempt wherewith he treated all who differed from him, which in ages of greater moderation and refinement, have been reckoned defects in the character of that reformer, did not appear excessive to his contemporaries whose minds were strongly agitated by those interesting controversies which he carried on, and who had themselves endured the rigor of papal tyranny, and seen the corruptions in the church against which he exclaimed.

Nor were they offended at that gross scurrility with which his polemical writings are filled, or at the low buffoonery which he sometimes introduces into his gravest discourses. No dispute was managed in those rude times without a large portion of the former; and the latter was common, even on the most solemn occasion, and in treating the most sacred subjects. So far were either of these from doing hurt to his cause, that invective and ridicule had some effect, as well as more laudable arguments, in exposing the errors of popery, and in determining mankind to abandon them.

 

Erasmus and the Invention of Printing

 

Besides all these causes of Luther’s rapid progress, arising from the nature of his enterprise, and the juncture at which he undertook it, he reaped advantage from some foreign and adventitious circumstances, the beneficial influence of which none of his forerunners in the same course had enjoyed. Among these may be reckoned the invention of the art of printing, about half a century before his time. By this fortunate discovery, the facility of acquiring and of propagating knowledge was wonderfully increased, and Luther's books, which must otherwise have made their way slowly and with uncertainty into distant countries, spread at once all over Europe. Nor were they read only by the rich and the learned, who alone had access to books before that invention; they got into the hands of the people, who, upon this appeal to them as judges, ventured to examine and to reject many doctrines which they had formerly been required to believe, without being taught to understand them.

The revival of learning at the same period was a circumstance extremely friendly to the Reformation. The study of the ancient Greek and Roman authors, by enlightening the human mind with liberal and sound knowledge, roused it from that profound lethargy in which it had been sunk during several centuries. Mankind seem, at that period, to have recovered the powers of inquiring and of thinking for themselves, faculties of which they had long lost the use; and fond of the acquisition, they exercised them with great boldness upon all subjects. They were not now afraid of entering an uncommon path, or of embracing a new opinion. Novelty appears rather to have been a recommendation of a doctrine; and instead of being startled when the daring hand of Luther drew aside or tore the veil which covered established errors, the genius of the age applauded and aided the attempt. Luther, though a stranger to elegance in taste or composition, zealously promoted the cultivation of ancient literature; and sensible of its being necessary to the light understanding of the scriptures, he himself had acquired considerable knowledge both in the Hebrew and Greek tongues. Melanchthon, and some other of his disciples, were eminent proficients in the polite arts; and as the same ignorant monks who opposed the introduction of learning into Germany, set themselves with equal fierceness against Luther’s opinions, and declared the good reception of the latter to be the effect of the progress which the former had made, the cause of learning and of the Reformation came to be considered as closely connected with each other, and, in every country, had the same friends and the same enemies. This enabled the reformers to carry on the contest at first with great superiority. Erudition, industry, accuracy of sentiment, purity of composition, even wit and raillery, were almost wholly on their side, and triumphed with ease over illiterate monks, whose rude arguments, expressed in a perplexed and barbarous style, were found insufficient for the defence of a system, the errors of which, all the art and ingenuity of its later and more learned advocates have not been able to palliate.

That bold spirit of inquiry, which the revival of learning excited in Europe, was so favorable to the Reformation, that Luther was aided in his progress, and mankind were prepared to embrace his doctrines, by persons who did not wish success to his undertaking. The greater part of the ingenious men who applied to the study of ancient literature towards the close of the fifteenth century, and the beginning of the sixteenth, though they had no intention, and perhaps no wish, to overturn the established system of religion, had discovered the absurdity of many tenets and practices authorized by the church, and perceived the futility of those arguments by which illiterate monks endeavored to defend them. Their contempt of these advocates for the received errors, led them frequently to expose the opinions which they supported, and to ridicule their ignorance with great freedom and severity. By this, men were prepared for the more serious attacks made upon them by Luther, and their reverence both for the doctrines and persons against whom he inveighed was considerably abated. This was particularly the case in Germany. When the first attempts were made to revive a taste for ancient learning in that country, the ecclesiastics there, who were still more ignorant than their brethren on the other side of the Alps, set themselves to oppose its progress with more active zeal; and the patrons of the new studies, in return, attacked them with greater violence. In the writings of Reuchlin, Hutten, and the other revivers of learning in Germany, the corruptions of the church of Rome are censured with an acrimony of style little interior to that of Luther himself.

From the same cause proceeded the frequent strictures of Erasmus upon the errors of the church, as well as upon the ignorance and vices of the clergy. His reputation and authority were so high in Europe, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and his storks were read with such universal admiration, that the effect of these deserves to be mentioned as one of the circumstances which contributed considerably towards Luther’s success. Erasmus, having been destined for the church, and trained up in the knowledge of ecclesiastical literature, applied himself more to theological inquiries than any of the revivers of learning in that age. His acute judgment and extensive erudition enabled him to discover many errors, both in the doctrine and worship of the Romish church. Some of these he confuted with great solidity of reasoning and force of eloquence. Others he treated as objects of ridicule, and turned against them that irresistible torrent of popular and satirical wit, of which he had the command. There was hardly any opinion or practice of the Romish church, which Luther endeavored to reform, but what had been previously animadverted upon by Erasmus, and had afforded him subject either of censure or of raillery. Accordingly, when Luther first began his attack upon the church, Erasmus seemed to applaud his conduct; he courted the friendship of several of his disciples and patrons, and condemned the behavior and spirit of his adversaries. He concurred openly with him in inveighing against the school divines, as the teachers of a system equally unedifying and obscure. He joined him in endeavoring to turn the attention of men to the study of the holy scriptures, as the only standard of religious truth.

Various circumstances, however, prevented Erasmus from holding the same course with Luther. The natural timidity of his temper; his want of that strength of mind which alone can prompt a man to assume the character of a reformer; his excessive deference for persons in high station; his dread of losing the pensions and other emoluments, which their liberality had conferred upon him; his extreme love of peace, and hopes of reforming abuses gradually, and by gentle methods, all concurred in determining him not only to repress and to moderate the zeal with which he had once been animated against the errors of the church, but to assume the character of a mediator between Luther and his opponents. But though Erasmus soon began to censure Luther as too daring and impetuous, and was at last prevailed upon to write against him, he must, nevertheless, be considered as his forerunner and auxiliary in this war upon the church. He first scattered the seeds, which Luther cherished and brought to maturity. His raillery and oblique censures prepared the way for Luther’s invectives and more direct attacks. In this light Erasmus appeared to the zealous defenders of the Romish church in his own times. In this light he must be considered by every person conversant in the history of that period.

In this long enumeration of the circumstances which combined in favoring the progress of Luther’s opinions, or in weakening the resistance of his adversaries, I have avoided entering into any discussion of the theological doctrines of popery, and have not attempted to show how repugnant they are to the spirit of Christianity, and how destitute of any foundation in reason, in the word of God, or in the practice of the primitive church, leaving those topics entirely to ecclesiastical historians, to whose province they peculiarly belong. But when we add the effect of these religious considerations to the influence of political causes, it is obvious that the united operation of both on the human mind must have been sudden and irresistible. Though, to Luther’s contemporaries, who were too near perhaps to the scene, or too deeply interested in it, to trace the cause with accuracy, or to examine them with coolness, the rapidity with which his opinions spread appeared to be so unaccountable, that some of them imputed it to a certain uncommon and malignant position of the stars, which scattered the spirit of giddiness and innovation over the world, it is evident, that the success of the Reformation was the natural effect of powerful causes prepared by peculiar providence, and happily conspiring to that end. This attempt to investigate these causes, and to throw light on an event so singular and important, will not, perhaps, be deemed an unnecessary digression. I return from it to the course of the history.

 

The Diet of Worms (1521)

 

The diet at Worms conducted its deliberations with that slow formality peculiar to such assemblies. Much time was spent in establishing some regulations with regard to the internal police of the empire. The jurisdiction of the Imperial chamber was confirmed, and the forms of its proceeding rendered more fixed and regular. A council of regency was appointed to assist Ferdinand in the government of the empire during any occasional absence of the emperor; which, from the extent of the emperor’s dominions, as well as the multiplicity of his affairs, was an event that might be frequently expected. The state of religion was then taken into consideration. There was not wanting some plausible reason which might have induced Charles to have declared himself the protector of Luther’s cause, or at least to have connived at its progress. If he had possessed no other dominions, but those which belonged to him in Germany, and no other crown besides the Imperial, he might have been disposed, perhaps, to favor a man, who asserted so boldly the privileges and immunities for which the empire had struggled so long with the popes. But the vast and dangerous schemes which Francis I was forming against Charles, made it necessary for him to regulate his conduct by views more extensive than those which would have suited a German prince; and it being of the utmost importance to secure the pope’s friendship, this determined him to treat Luther with great severity, as the most effectual method of soothing Leo into a concurrence with his measures. His eager­ness to accomplish this rendered him not unwilling to gratify the papal legates in Germany, who insisted that, without any delay or formal deliberation, the diet ought to condemn a man whom the pope had already excommunicated as an incorrigible heretic. Such an abrupt manner of proceeding, however, being deemed unprecedented and unjust by the members of the diet, they made a point of Luther’s appearing in person, and declaring whether be adhered or not to those opinions which had drawn upon him the censures of the church. Not only the emperor, but all the princes through whose territories he had to pass, granted him a safe-conduct; and Charles wrote to him at the same time [March 6th.] requiring his immediate attendance on the diet, and renewing his promises of protection from any injury or violence. Luther did not hesitate one moment about yielding obedience, and set out for Worms, attended by the herald who had brought the emperor's letter and safe-conduct. While on his journey, many of his friends, whom the fate of Huss under similar circumstances, and notwithstanding the same security of an Imperial safe-conduct, filled with solicitude, advised and entreated him not to rush wantonly into the midst of danger. But Luther, superior to such terrors, silenced them with this reply, “I am lawfully called”, said he, “to appear in that city, and thither will I go in the name of the Lord, though as many devils, as there are tiles on the houses, were there combined against me”.

The reception which he met with at Worms was such as he might have reckoned a full reward of all his labors, if vanity and the love of applause had been the principles by which he was influenced. Greater crowds assembled to behold him, than had appeared at the emperor’s public entry; his apartments were daily filled with princes and personages of the highest rank, and he was treated with all the respect paid to those who possess the power of directing the understanding and sentiments of other men; an homage, more sincere, as well as more flattering, than any which preeminence in birth or condition can command. At his appearance before the diet, he behaved with great decency, and with equal firmness. He readily acknowledged an excess of vehemence and acrimony in his controversial writings, but refused to retract his opinions, unless he were convinced of their falsehood; or to consent to their being tried by any other rule than the word of God. When neither threats nor entreaties could prevail on him to depart from his resolution, seine of the ecclesiastics proposed to imitate the example of the council of Constance, and by punishing the author of this pestilent heresy, who was now in their power, to deliver the church at once front such an evil. But the members of the diet, refusing to expose the German integrity to fresh reproach by a second violation of public faith; and Charles being no less unwilling to bring a stain upon the beginning of his administration by such an ignominious action, Luther was permitted to depart in safety. A few days after he left the city [April 26,] a severe edict was published in the emperor’s name, and by authority of the diet, depriving him, as an obstinate and excommunicated criminal, of all the privileges which he enjoyed as a subject of the empire, forbidding any prince to harbor or protect him, and requiring all to concur in seizing his person as soon as the term specified in his safe-conduct was expired.

But this rigorous decree had no considerable effect, the execution of it being prevented, partly by the multiplicity of occupations, which the commotion in Spain, together with the wars in Italy and the Low-Countries, created to the emperor; and partly by a prudent precaution employed by the elector of Saxony, Luther’s faithful and discerning patron. As Luther, on his return from Worms, was passing near Altenstein in Thuringia, a number of horsemen in masks rushed suddenly out of a wood, where the elector had appointed them to lie in wait for him, and surrounding his company, carried him, after dismissing all his attendants, to Wartburg, a strong castle not far distant. There the elector ordered him to be supplied with everything necessary or agreeable, but the place of his retreat was carefully concealed, until the fury of the present storm against him began to abate, upon a change in the political situation of Europe. In this solitude, where he remained nine months, and which he frequently called his Patmos, after the name of that Island to which the apostle John was banished, he exerted his usual vigor and industry in defence of his doctrines, or in confutation of his adversaries, publishing several treatises, which revived the spirit of his followers, astonished to a great degree, and disheartened at the sudden disappearance of their leader.

During his confinement, his opinions continued to gain ground, acquiring the ascendant in almost every city in Saxony. At this time, the Augustinians of Wittenberg, with the approbation of the university, and the connivance of the elector, ventured upon the first step towards an alteration in the established forms of public worship, by abolishing the celebration of private masses, and by giving the cup as well as the bread to the laity in administering the sacrament of the Lord’s supper.

Whatever consolation the courage and success of his disciples, or the progress of his doctrines in his own country, afforded Luther in his retreat, he there received information of two events which considerably damped his joy, as they seemed to lay insuperable obstacles in the way of propagating his principles in the two most powerful kingdoms of Europe. One was a solemn decree condemning his opinions, published by the university of Paris, the most ancient, and, at that time, the most respectable of the learned societies in Europe. The other was the answer written to his book concerning the Babylonish captivity by Henry VIII of England. That monarch, having been educated under the eye of a suspicious father, who, in order to prevent his attending to business, kept him occupied in the study of literature, still retained a greater love of learning, and stronger habits of application to it, than are common among princes of so active a disposition and such violent passions. Being ambitious of acquiring glory of every kind, as well as zealously attached to the Romish church, and highly exasperated against Luther, who had treated Thomas Aquinas, his favorite author, with great contempt, Henry did not think it enough to exert his royal authority in opposing the opinions of the reformer, but resolved likewise to combat them with scholastic weapons. With this view he published his treatise on the Seven Sacraments, which, though forgotten at present, as books of controversy always are, when the occasion that produced them is past, is not destitute of polemical ingenuity and acuteness, and was represented by the flattery of his courtiers to be a work of such wonderful science and learning, as exalted him no less above other authors in merit, than he was distinguished among them by his rank. The pope, to whom it was presented with the greatest formality in full consistory, spoke of it in such terms, as if it had been dictated by immediate inspiration; and as a testimony of the gratitude of the church for his extraordinary zeal, conferred on him the title of Defender of the Faith, an appellation which Henry soon forfeited in the opinion of those from whom he derived it, and which is still retained by his successors, though the avowed enemies of those opinions, by contending for which he merited that honorable distinction. Luther, who was, not overawed, either by the authority of the university, or the dignity of the monarch, soon published his animadversions on both, in a style no less vehement and severe, than he would have used in confuting his meanest antagonist. This indecent boldness, instead of shocking his contemporaries, was considered by them as a new proof of his undaunted spirit. A controversy managed by disputants so illustrious, drew universal attention; and such was the contagion of the spirit of innovation, diffused through Europe in that age, and so powerful the evidence which accompanied the doctrines of the reformers on their first publication, that, in spite of both the civil and ecclesiastical powers combined against them, they daily gained converts both in France and in England.

How desirous soever the emperor might be to put a stop to Luther’s progress, he was often obliged, during the diet at Worms, to turn his thoughts to matters still more interesting, and which demanded more immediate attention. A war was ready to break out between him and the French king in Navarre, in the Low-Countries, and in Italy; and it required either great address to avert the danger, or timely and wise precautions to resist it. Every circumstance, at that juncture, inclined Charles to prefer the former measure. Spain was torn with intestine commotions. In Italy, he had not hitherto secured the assistance of any one ally. In the Low-Countries, his subjects trembled at the thoughts of a rupture with France, the fatal effects of which on their commerce they had often experienced. From these considerations, as well as from the solicitude of Chièvres, during his whole administration, to maintain peace between the two monarchs, proceeded the emperor’s backwardness to commence hostilities. But Francis and his ministers did not breathe the same pacific spirit. He easily foresaw that concord could not long subsist, where interest, emulation, and ambition conspired to dissolve it; and he possessed several advantages which flattered him with the hopes of surprising his rival, and of overpowering him before he could put himself in a posture of defence. The French king’s dominions, from their compact situation, from their subjection to the royal authority, from the genius of the people, fond of war, and attached to their sovereign by every tie of duty and affection, were more capable of a great or sudden effort, than the larger but disunited territories of the emperor, in one part of which the people were in arms against his ministers, and in all his prerogative was more limited than that of his rival.

The only princes, in whose power it was to have kept down, or to have extinguished this flame on its first appearance, either neglected to exert themselves, or were active in kindling and spreading it. Henry VIII though he affected to assume the name of mediator, and both parties made frequent appeals to him, had laid aside the impartiality which suited that character. Wolsey, by his artifices, had estranged rim so entirely from the French king, that he secretly fomented the discord which he ought to have composed, and waited only for some decent pretext to join his arms to those of the emperor.

Leo’s endeavors to excite discord between the emperor and Francis were more avowed, and had greater influence. Not only his duty, as the common father of Christendom, but his interest as an Italian potentate, called upon the pope to act as the guardian of the public tranquility, and to avoid any measure that might overturn the system, which, after much bloodshed, and many negotiations, was now established in Italy. Accordingly Leo, who instantly discerned the propriety of this conduct, had formed a scheme, upon Charles’s promotion to the Imperial dignity, of rendering himself the umpire between the rivals, by soothing them alternately, while he entered into no close confederacy with either; and a pontiff less ambitious and enterprising, might have saved Europe from many calamities by adhering to this plan. But this high spirited prelate, who was still in the prime of life, longed passionately to distinguish his pontificate by some splendid action. He was impatient to wash away the infamy of having lost Parma and Placentia, the acquisition of which reflected so much luster on the administration of his predecessor Julius. He beheld, with the indignation natural to Italians in that age, the dominion which the Transalpine, or as they, in imitation of the Roman arrogance, denominated them, the barbarous nations, had attained in Italy. He flattered himself, that after assisting the one monarch to strip the other of his possessions in that country, he might find means of driving out the victor in his turn, and acquire the glory of restoring Italy to the liberty and happiness which it had enjoyed before the invasion of Charles VIII, when every state was governed by its native princes, or its own laws, and unacquainted with a foreign yoke. Extravagant and chimerical as this project may seem, it was the favorite object of almost every Italian eminent for genius or enterprise during great part of the sixteenth century. They vainly hoped, that by superior skill in the artifices and refinements of negotiation, they should be able to baffle the efforts of nations, less polished indeed than themselves, but much more powerful and warlike. So alluring was the prospect of this to Leo, that notwithstanding the gentleness of his disposition, and his fondness for the pleasures of a refined and luxurious ease, he hastened to disturb the peace of Europe, and to plunge himself into a dangerous war, with an impetuosity scarcely inferior to that of the turbulent and martial Julius.

It was in Leo’s power, however, to choose which of the monarchs he would take for his confederate against the other. Both of them courted his friendship; he wavered for some time between them, and at last concluded an alliance with Francis. The object of this treaty was the conquest of Naples, which the confederacy agreed to divide between them. The pope, it is probable, flattered himself, that the brisk and active spirit of Francis, seconded by the same qualities in his subjects, would get the start of the slow and wary councils of the emperor, and that they might overrun with ease this detached portion of his dominions, ill provided for defence, and always the prey of every invader. But whether the French king, by discovering too openly his suspicion of Leo’s sincerity, disappointed these hopes; whether the treaty was only an artifice of the pope’s to cover the more serious negotiations which he was carrying on with Charles; whether he was enticed by the prospect of reaping greater advantages from a union with that prince; or whether he was soothed by the zeal which Charles had manifested for the honor of the church in condemning Luther; certain it is that he soon deserted his new ally, and made overtures of friendship, though with great secrecy, to the emperor. Don John Manuel, the same man who had been the favorite of Philip, and whose address had disconcerted all Ferdinand’s schemes, having been delivered, upon the death of that monarch, from the prison to which he had been confined, was now the Imperial ambassador at Rome, and fully capable of improving this favorable disposition in the pope to his master’s advantage. To him the conduct of this negotiation was entirely committed; and being carefully concealed from Chièvres, whose aversion from a war with France would have prompted him to retard or to defeat it, an alliance between the pope and emperor was quickly concluded [May 8]. The chief articles in this treaty, which proved the foundation of Charles’s grandeur in Italy, were, that the pope and emperor should join their forces to expel the French out of the Milanese, the possession of which should be granted to Francis Sforza, a son of Ludovico the Moor, who had resided at Trent since the time that his brother Maximilian had been dispossessed of his dominions by the French king; that Parma and Placentia should be restored to the church; that the emperor should assist the pope in conquering Ferrara; that the annual tribute paid by the kingdom of Naples to the Holy See should be increased; that the emperor should take the family of Medici under his protection; that he should grant to the cardinal of that name a pension of ten thousand ducats upon the archbishopric of Toledo; and should settle lands in the kingdom of Naples to the same value upon Alexander the natural son of Lorenzo de Medici.

The transacting an affair of such moment without his participation, appeared to Chièvres so decisive a proof of his having lost the ascendant which he had hitherto maintained over the mind of his pupil, that his chagrin on this account, added to the melancholy with which he was overwhelmed on taking a view of the many and unavoidable calamities attending a war against France, is said to have shortened his days. But though this, perhaps, may be only the conjecture of historians, fond of attributing everything that befalls illustrious personages to extraordinary causes, and of ascribing even their diseases and death to the effect of political passions, which are more apt to disturb the enjoyment than to abridge the period of life, it is certain that his death, at this critical junc­ture, extinguished all hopes of avoiding a rupture with France. This event, too, delivered Charles from a minister, to whose authority he had been accustomed from his infancy to submit with such implicit deference, as checked and depressed his genius, and retained him in a state of pupilage, unbecoming his years as well as his rank. But this restraint being removed, the native powers of his mind were permitted to unfold themselves, and he began to display such great talents, both in council and in action, as exceeded the hopes of his contemporaries, and command the admiration of posterity.

 

Europe at War

 

While the pope and emperor were preparing, in consequence of their secret alliance, to attack Milan, hostilities commenced in another quarter. The children of John d'Albret, king of Navarre, having often demanded the restitution of their hereditary dominions, in terms of the treaty of Noyon, and Charles having as often eluded their requests upon very frivolous pretexts, Francis thought himself authorized by that treaty to assist the exiled family. The juncture appeared extremely favorable for such an enterprise. Charles was at a distance from that part of his dominions; the troops usually stationed there had been called away, to quell the commotions in Spain; the Spanish malcontents warmly solicited him to invade Navarre, in which a considerable faction was ready to declare for the descendants of their ancient monarchs. But in order to avoid, as much as possible, giving offence to the emperor, or king of England, Francis directed forces to be levied, and the war to be carried on, not in his own name, but in that of Henry d’Albret. The conduct of these troops was committed to Andrew de Foix, de l'Esparre, a young nobleman, whom his near alliance to the unfortunate king, whose battles he was to fight, and what was still more powerful, the interest of his sister, Madame de Chateaubriand, Francis’ favorite mistress, recommended to that important trust, for which he had neither talents nor experience. But as there was no army in the field to oppose him, he became master, in a few days, of the whole kingdom of Navarre, without meeting with any obstruction but from the citadel of Pampeluna. The additional works to this fortress, begun by Ximenes, were still unfinished; nor would its slight resistance have deserved notice, if Ignatio Loyola, a Biscayan gentleman, had not been dangerously wounded in its defence. During the progress of a lingering cure, Loyola happened to have no other amusement than what he found in reading the lives of the saints: the effect of this on his mind, naturally enthusiastic, but ambitious and daring, was to inspire him with such a desire of emulating the glory of these fabulous worthies of the Romish church, as led him into the wildest and most extravagant adventures, which terminated at last in instituting the society of Jesuits, the most political and best regulated of all the monastic orders, and from which mankind have derived more advantages, and received greater injury, than from any other of those religious fraternities. If, upon the reduction of Pampeluna, l'Esparre had been satisfied with taking proper precautions for securing his conquest, the kingdom of Navarre might still have remained annexed to the crown of France, in reality, as well as in title. But pushed on by youthful ardor, and encouraged by Francis, who was too apt to be dazzled with success, he ventured to pass the confines of Navarre, and to lay siege to Logrogno, small town in Castile. This roused the Castilians, who had hitherto beheld the rapid progress of his arms with great unconcern, and the dis­sensions in that kingdom (of which a full account shall be given) being almost composed, both parties exerted themselves with emulation in defence of their country; the one that it might efface the memory of past misconduct by its present zeal; the other, that it might add to the merit of having subdued the emperor’s rebellious subjects, and of repulsing his foreign enemies. The sudden advance of their troops, together with the gallant defence made by the inhabitants of Logrogno, obliged the French general to abandon his rash enterprise. The Spanish army, which increased every day, harassing him during his retreat, he, instead of taking shelter under the canon of Pampeluna, or waiting the arrival of some troops which were marching to join him, attacked the Spaniards, though far superior to him in number, with great impetuosity, but with so little conduct, that his forces were totally routed, he himself, together with his principal officers, was taken prisoner, and Spain recovered possession of Navarre, in still shorter time than the French had spent in the conquest of it.

While Francis endeavored to justify his invasion of Navarre, by carrying it on in the name of Henry d'Albret, he had recourse to an artifice much of the same kind, in attacking another part of the emperor’s territories. Robert de la Mark, lord of the small but independent territory of Bouillon, situated on the frontiers of Luxembourg and Champagne, having abandoned Charles’s service on account of an encroachment which the Aulic council had made on his jurisdiction, and having thrown himself upon France for protection, was easily persuaded, in the heat of his resentment, to send a herald to Worms, and to declare war against the emperor in form. Such extravagant insolence in a petty prince surprised Charles, and appeared to him a certain hi proof of his having received promises of powerful support from the French king. The justness of this conclusion soon became evident. Robert entered the duchy of Luxem­bourg with troops levied in France, by the king’s connivance, though seemingly in contradiction to his orders, and after ravaging the open country, laid siege to Vireton. Of this Charles complained loudly, as a direct violation of the peace subsisting between the two crowns, and summoned Henry VIII in terms of the treaty concluded at London in the year 1518, to turn his arms against Francis as the first aggressor. Francis pretended that he was not answerable for Robert’s conduct, whose army fought under his own standards, and in his own quarrel; and affirmed, that, contrary to an express prohibition, he had seduced some subjects of France into his service; but Henry paid so little regard to this evasion, that the French king, rather than irritate a prince whom he still hoped to gain, commanded De la Mark to disband his troops.

The emperor, meanwhile, was assembling an army to chastise Robert’s insolence. Twenty thousand men, under the count of Nassau, invaded his little territories, and in a few days became masters of every place in them but Sedan. After making him feel so sensibly the weight of his master’s indignation, Nassau advanced towards the frontiers of France; and Charles, knowing that he might presume so far on Henry’s partiality in his favor, as not to be overawed by the same fears which had restrained Francis, ordered his general to besiege Monson. The cowardice of the garrison having obliged the governor to surrender almost without resistance, Nassau invested Mézières, a place at that time of no considerable strength, but so advantageously situated, that by getting possession of it, the Imperial army might have penetrated into the heart of Champagne, in which there was hardly any other town capable of obstructing its progress. Happily for France, its monarch, sensible of the importance of this fortress, and of the danger to which it was exposed, committed the defence of it to the chevalier Bayard, distinguished among his contemporaries by the appellation of The knight without fear, and without reproach. This man, whose prowess in combat, whose punctilious honor and formal gallantry, bear a nearer resemblance, than anything recorded in history, to the character ascribed to the heroes of chivalry, possessed all the talents which form a great general. These he had many occasions of exerting in the defence of Mézières: partly by his valor, partly by his conduct, he protracted the siege to a great length, and in the end obliged the Imperialists to raise it, with disgrace and loss. Francis, at the head of a numerous army, soon retook Morison, and entering the Low-Countries, made several conquests of small importance. In the neighborhood of Valenciennes, through an excess of caution, an error with which he cannot be often charged, he lost an opportunity of cutting off the whole Imperial army; and what was still more unfortunate, he disgusted Charles duke of Bourbon, high constable of France, by giving the command of the van to the duke D'Alençon, though this post of honor belonged to Bourbon, as a prerogative of his office.

During these operations in the field, a congress was held at Calais (August) under the mediation of Henry VIII in order to bring all differences to an amicable issue; and if the intentions of the mediator had corresponded in any degree to his professions, it could hardly have failed of producing some good effect. But Henry committed the sole management of the negotiation, with unlimited powers, to Wolsey; and this choice alone was sufficient to have rendered it abortive. That prelate, bent on attaining the papal crown, the great object of his ambition, and ready to sacrifice everything in order to gain the emperor’s interest, was so little able to conceal his partiality, that, if Francis had not been well acquainted with his haughty and vindictive temper, he would have declined his mediation. Much time was spent in inquiring who had begun hostilities, which Wolsey affected to represent as the principal point, and by throwing the blame of that on Francis, he hoped to justify, by the treaty of London, any alliance into which his master should enter with Charles. The conditions on which hostilities might be terminated came next to be considered; but with regard to these, the emperor’s proposals were such, as discovered either that he was utterly averse to peace, or that he knew Wolsey would approve of whatever terms should be offered in his name. He demanded the restitution of the duchy of Burgundy, a province, the possession of which would have given him access into the heart of France; and required to be released from the homage due to the crown of France for the counties of Flanders and Artois, which none of his ancestors had ever refused, and which he had bound himself by the treaty of Noyon to renew. These terms, to which a high-spirited prince would scarcely have listened, after the disasters of an unfortunate war, Francis rejected with great disdain; and Charles showing no inclination to comply with the more equal and moderate propositions of the French monarch, that he should restore Navarre to its lawful prince, and withdraw his troops from the siege of Tournay, the congress broke up without any other effect than that which attends unsuccessful negotiations, the exasperating of the parties whom it was intended to reconcile.

During the continuance of the congress, Wolsey, on pretence that the emperor himself would be more willing to make reasonable concessions than his ministers, made an excursion to Bruges, 'to meet that monarch. He was received by Charles, who knew his vanity, with as much respect and magnificence as if he had been king of England. But instead of advancing the treaty of peace by this interview, Wolsey, in his master's name, concluded a league with the emperor against Francis; in which it was stipulated, that Charles should invade France on the side of Spain, and Henry in Picardy, each with an army of forty thousand men; and that, in order to strengthen their union, Charles should espouse the princess Mary, Henry's only child, and the apparent heir of his dominions. Henry produced no better reasons for this measure, equally unjust and impolitic, than the article in the treaty of London, by which he pretended that he was bound to take arms against the French king as the first aggressor; and the injury which he alleged Francis had done him, in permitting the duke of Albany, the head of a faction in Scotland, which opposed the interest of England, to return into that kingdom. He was influenced, however, by other considerations. The advantages which accrued to his subjects from maintaining an exact neutrality, or the honor that resulted to himself from acting as the arbiter between the contending princes, appeared to his youthful imagination so inconsiderable, when compared with the glory which might be reaped from leading armies or conquering provinces, that he determined to remain no longer in a state of inactivity. Having once taken this resolution, his inducements to prefer an alliance with Charles were obvious. He had no claim upon any part of that prince’s dominions, most of which were so situated, that he could not attack them without great difficulty and disadvantage; whereas several maritime provinces of France had been long in the hands of the English monarchs, whose preten­sions, even to the crown of that kingdom, were not as yet altogether forgotten; and the possession of Calais not only gave him easy access into some of those provinces, but in case of any disaster, afforded him a secure retreat. While Charles attacked France on one frontier, Henry flattered himself that he should find little resistance on the other, and that the glory of re-annexing to the crown of England the ancient inheritance of its monarchs on the continent was reserved for his reign. Wolsey artfully encouraged these vain hopes, which led his master into such measures as were most subservient to his own secret schemes; and the English, whose hereditary animosity against the French was apt to rekindle on every occasion, did not disapprove of the martial spirit of their sovereign.

Meanwhile the league between the pope and the emperor produced great effects in Italy, and rendered Lombardy the chief theatre of war. There was, at that time, such contrariety between the character of the French and Italians, that the latter submitted to the government of the former with greater impatience than they expressed under the dominion of other foreigners. The phlegm of the Germans and gravity of the Spaniards suited their jealous temper and ceremonious manners better than the French gayety, too prone to gallantry, and too little attentive to decorum. Louis XII, however, by the equity and gentleness of his administration, and by granting the Milanese more extensive privileges than those they had enjoyed under their native princes, had overcome, in a great measure, their prejudices, and reconciled them to the French government. Francis, on recovering that duchy, did not imitate the example of his predecessor. Though too generous himself to oppress his people, his boundless confidence in his favorites, and his negligence in examining into the conduct of those whom he entrusted with power, emboldened them to venture upon many acts of oppression. The government of Milan was committed by him to Odet de Foix, Maréschal de Lautrec, another brother of Madame de Chateaubriand, an officer of great experience and reputation, but haughty, imperious, rapacious, and incapable either of listening to advice or of bearing contradiction. His insolence and exactions totally alienated the affections of the Milanese from France, drove many of the considerable citizens into banishment, and forced others to retire for their own safety. Among the last was Jerome Morone, vice-chancellor of Milan, a man whose genius for intrigue and enterprise distinguished him in an age and country, where violent factions, as well as frequent revolutions, affording great scope for such talents, produced or called them forth in great abundance. He repaired to Francis Sforza, whose brother Maximilian he had betrayed; and suspecting the pope’s intention of attacking the Milanese, although his treaty with the emperor was not yet made public, he proposed to Leo, in the name of Sforza, a scheme for surprising several places in that duchy by means of the exiles, who, from hatred to the French, and from attachment to their former masters, were ready for any desperate enterprise. Leo not only encouraged the attempt, but advanced a considerable sum towards the execution of it; and when, through unforeseen accidents, it failed of success in every part, he allowed the exiles, who had assembled in a body, to retire to Reggio, which belonged at that time to the church. The Maréschal de Foix, who commanded at Milan in absence of his brother Lautrec, who was then in France, tempted with the hopes of catching at once, as in a snare, all the avowed enemies of his master's government in that country, ventured to march into the ecclesiastical territories [June 24], and to invest Reggio. But the vigilance and good conduct of Guicciardini the historian, governor of that place, obliged the French general to abandon the enterprise with disgrace. Leo, on receiving this intelligence, with which he was highly pleased, as it furnished him a decent pretence for a rupture with France, immediately assembled the consistory of cardinals. After complaining bitterly of the hostile intentions of the French king, and magnifying the emperor’s zeal for the church, of which he had given a recent proof by his proceedings against Luther, he declared that he was constrained in self-defence, and as the only expedient for the security of the ecclesiastical state, to join his arms to those of that prince. For this purpose he now pretended to conclude a treaty with Don John Manuel, although it had really been signed some months before this time and he publicly excommunicated De Foix, as an impious invader of St. Peter’s patrimony.

Leo had already begun preparations for war, by taking into pay a considerable body of Swiss; but the Imperial troops advanced so slowly from Naples and Germany, that it was the middle of autumn before the army took the field under the command of Prosper Colonna, the most eminent of the Italian generals, whose extreme caution, the effect of long experience in the art of war, was opposed with great propriety to the impetuosity of the French. In the meantime, De Foix despatched courier after courier to inform the king of the danger which was approaching. Francis, whose forces were either employed in the Low-Countries, or assembling on the frontiers of Spain, and who did not expect so sudden an attack in that quarter, sent ambassadors to his allies the Swiss, to procure from them the immediate levy of an additional body of troops; and commanded Lautrec to repair forthwith to his government. That general, who was well acquainted with the great neglect of economy in the administration of the king’s finances, and who knew how much the troops in the Milanese had already suffered from the want of their pay, refused to set out unless the sum of three hundred thousand crowns was immediately put into his hands. But the king, Louise of Savoy his mother, and Semblancy, the superintendent of finances, having promised, even with an oath, that on his arrival at Milan he should find remittances for the sum which he demanded; upon the faith of this, he departed. Unhappily for France, Louise, a woman deceitful, vindictive, rapacious, and capable of sacrificing anything to the gratification of her passions, but who had acquired an absolute ascendant over her son by her maternal tenderness, her care of his education, and her great abilities, was resolved not to perform this promise. Lautrec having incurred her displeasure by his haughtiness in neglecting, to pay court to her, and by the freedom with which he had talked concerning some of her adventures in gallantry, she, in order to deprive him of the honor which he might have gained, by a successful defence of the Milanese, seized the three hundred thousand crowns destined for that service, and detained them for her own use.

Lautrec, notwithstanding this cruel disappointment, found means to assemble a considerable army, though far inferior in number to that of the confederates. He adopted the plan of defence most suitable to his situation, avoiding a pitched battle with the greatest care, while he harassed the enemy continually with his light troops, beat up their quarters, intercepted their convoys, and covered or relieved every place which they attempted to attack. By this prudent conduct, he not only retarded their progress, but would have soon wearied out the pope, who had hitherto defrayed almost the whole expense of the war, as the emperor, whose revenues in Spain were dissipated during the commotions in that country, and who was obliged to support a numerous army in the Netherlands, could not make any considerable remittances into Italy. But an unforeseen accident disconcerted all his measures, and occasioned a fatal reverse in the French affairs. A body of twelve thousand Swiss served in Lautrec’s army under the banners of the republic, with which France was in alliance. In consequence of a law, no less political than humane, established among the cantons, their troops were never hired out by public authority; both the contending parties in any war. This law, however, the love of gain had sometimes eluded, and private persons had been allowed to enlist in what service they pleased, though not under the public banners, but under those of their particular officers. The cardinal of Sion, who still preserved his interest among his countrymen, and his enmity to France, having prevailed on them to connive at a levy of this kind, twelve thousand Swiss, instigated by him, joined the army of the confederates. But the leaders in the cantons, when they saw so many of their countrymen marching under hostile standards, and ready to turn their arms against each other, became so sensible of the infamy to which they would be exposed by permitting this, as well as the loss they might stiffer, that they despatched couriers, commanding their people to leave both armies, and to return forthwith into their own country. The cardinal of Sion, however, had the address, by corrupting the messengers appointed to carry this order, to prevent it from being delivered to the Swiss in the service of the confederates; but being intimated in due form to those in the French army, they, fatigued with the length of the campaign, and murmuring for want of pay, instantly yielded obedience, in spite of Lautrec’s remonstrances and entreaties.

After the desertion of a body which formed the strength of his army, Lautrec durst no longer face the confederates. He retired towards Milan, encamped on the banks of the Adda, and placed his chief hopes of safety in preventing the enemy from passing that river; an expedient for defending a country so precarious, that there are few instances of its being employed with success against any general of experience or abilities. Accordingly Colonna, notwithstanding Lautrec’s vigilance and activity, passed the Adda with little loss, and obliged him to shut himself up within the walls of Milan, which the confederates were preparing to besiege, when an unknown person, who never afterwards appeared either to boast of this service, or to claim a reward for it, came from the city, and acquainted Morone, that if the army would advance that night, the Ghibelline or Imperial faction, would put them in possession of one of the gates. Colonna, though no friend to rash enterprises, allowed the marquis de Pescara to advance with the Spanish infantry, and he himself followed with the rest of his troops. About the beginning of night, Pescara arrived at the Roman gate in the suburbs, surprised the soldiers whom he found there; those posted in the fortifications adjoining to it immediately fled; the marquis seizing the works which they abandoned, and pushing forward incessantly, though with no less caution than vigour, became master of the city with little bloodshed, and almost without resistance; the victors being as much astonished as the vanquished at the facility and success of the attempt. Lautrec retired precipitately towards the Venetian territories with the remains of his shattered army; the cities of the Milanese, following the fate of the capital, surrendered to the confederates; Parma and Placentia were united to the ecclesiastical state, and of all their conquests in Lombardy only the town of Cremona, the castle of Milan, and a few considerable forts, remained in the hands of the French.

Leo received the accounts of this rapid succession of prosperous events with such transports of joy, as brought on (if we may believe the French historians) a slight fever, which being neglected, occasioned his death oh the second of December, while he was still of a vigorous age, and at the height of his glory. By this unexpected accident, the spirit of the confederacy was broken, and its operations suspended. The cardinals of Sion and Medici left the army that they might be present in the conclave; the Swiss were recalled by their superiors; some other mercenaries disbanded for want of pay; and only the Spaniards and a few Germans in the emperor’s service, remained to defend the Milanese. But Lautrec, destitute both of men and of money, was unable to improve this favorable opportunity in the manner which he would have wished. The vigilance of Morone, and the good conduct of Colonna, disappointed his feeble attempts on the Milanese. Guicciardini, by his address and valor, repulsed a bolder and more dangerous attack which he made on Parma.

Great discord prevailed in the conclave which followed upon Leo’s death, and all the arts natural to men grown old in intrigue, when contending for the highest prize an ecclesiastic can obtain, were practiced. Wolsey’s name, notwithstanding all the emperor's magnificent promises to favor his pretensions, of which that prelate did not fail to remind him, was hardly mentioned in the conclave. Julio cardinal de Medici, Leo’s nephew, who was more eminent than any other member of the sacred college for his abilities, his wealth, and his experience in transacting great affairs, had already secured fifteen voices, a number sufficient according to the forms of the conclave, to exclude any other candidate, though not to carry his own election. As he was still in the prime of life, all the aged cardinals combined against him, without being united in favor of any other person. While these factions were endeavoring to gain, to corrupt, or to weary out each other, Medici and his adherents voted one morning at the scrutiny, which according to form was made every day, for cardinal Adrian of Utrecht, who at that time governed Spain in the emperor’s name. This they did merely to protract time. But the adverse party instantly closing with them, to their own amazement, and that of all Europe, a stranger to Italy, unknown to the persons who gave their suffrages in his favor, and unacquainted with the manners of the people, or the interest of the state, the government of which they conferred upon him, was unanimously raised to the papal throne [January 9], at a Juncture so delicate and critical, as would have demanded all the sagacity and experience of one of the most able prelates in the sacred college. The cardinals themselves, unable to give a reason for this strange choice, on account of which, as they marched in procession from the conclave, they were loaded with insults and curses by the Roman people, ascribed it to an immediate impulse of the Holy Ghost. It may be imputed with great certainty to the influence of Don John Manuel, the Imperial ambassador, who by his address and intrigues facilitated the election of a person devoted to his master's service, from gratitude, from interest, and from inclination.

Beside the influence which Charles acquired by Adrian’s promotion, it threw great luster on his administration. To bestow on his preceptor such a noble recompense, and to place on the papal throne one whom he had raised from obscurity, were acts of uncommon magnificence and power. Francis observed, with the sensibility of a rival, the preeminence which the emperor was gaining, and resolved to exert himself with fresh vigor, in order to wrest from him his late conquests in Italy. The Swiss, that they might make some reparation to the French king, for having withdrawn their troops from his army so unseasonably as to occasion the loss of the Milanese, permitted him to levy ten thousand men in the republic. Together with this reinforcement, Lautrec received from the king a small sum of money, which enabled him once more to take the field; and after seizing by surprise, or force, several places in the Milanese, to advance within a few miles of the capital. The confederate army was in no condition to obstruct his progress; for though the inhabitants of Milan, by the artifices of Morone, and by the popular declamations of a monk whom he employed, were inflamed with such enthusiastic zeal against the French government, that they consented to raise extraordinary contributions, Colonna must soon have abandoned the advantageous camp which he had chosen at Bicocca, and have dismissed his troops for want of pay, if the Swiss in the French service had not once more extricated him out of his difficulties.

The insolence or caprice of those mercenaries was often no less fatal to their friends, than their valor and discipline were formidable to their enemies. Having now served some months without pay, of which they complained loudly, a sum destined for their use was sent from France under a convoy of horse; but Morone, whose vigilant eye nothing escaped, posted a body of troops in their way, so that the party which escorted the money durst not advance. On receiving intelligence of this, the Swiss lost all patience, and officers as well as soldiers crowding around Lautrec, threatened with one voice instantly to retire, if he did not either advance the pay which was due, or promise to lead them next morning to battle. In vain did Lautrec remonstrate against these demands, representing to them the impossibility of the former, and the rashness of the latter, which must be attended with certain destruction, as the enemy occupied a camp naturally of great strength, and which by art they had rendered almost inaccessible. The Swiss, deaf to reason, and persuaded that their valor was capable of surmounting every obstacle, renewed their demand with greater fierceness, offering themselves to form the vanguard, and to begin the attack. Lautrec, unable to overcome their obstinacy, complied with their request, hoping, perhaps, that some of those unforeseen accidents which so often determine the fate of battles, might crown this rash enterprise with undeserved success; and convinced that the effects of a defeat could not be more fatal than those which would certainly follow upon the retreat of a body which composed one half of his army. Next morning [May] the Swiss were early in the field, and marched with the greatest intrepidity against an enemy deeply entrenched on every side, surrounded with artillery, and prepared to receive them. As they advanced, they sustained a furious cannonade with great firmness, and without waiting for their own artillery, rushed impetuously upon the entrenchments. But after incredible efforts of valor, which were seconded with great spirit by the French, having lost their bravest officers and best soldiers, and finding that they could make no impression on the enemy’s works, they sounded a retreat, leaving the field of battle however, like men repulsed, but not vanquished, in close array, and without receiving any molestation from the enemy.

Next day, such as survived set out for their own country; and Lautrec, despairing of being able to make any farther resistance, retired into France, after throwing garrisons into Cremona and a few other places; all which, except the citadel of Cremona, Colonna soon obliged to surrender.

Genoa, however, and its territories, remaining subject to France, still gave Francis considerable footing in Italy, and made it easy for him to execute any scheme for the recovery of the Milanese. But Colonna, rendered enterprising by continual success, and excited by the solicitations of the faction of idle Adorni, the hereditary enemies of the Fregosi, who under the protection of France possessed the chief authority in Genoa, determined to attempt the reduction of that state; and accomplished it with amazing facility. He became master of Genoa by an accident as unexpected as that which had given him possession of Milan; and almost without opposition or bloodshed, the power of the Adorni, and the authority of the emperor, were established in Genoa.

Such a cruel succession of misfortunes affected Francis with deep concern, which was not a little augmented by the arrival of an English herald, who, in the name of his sovereign, declared war in form against France [May 29]. This step was taken in consequence of the treaty which Wolsey had concluded with the emperor at Bruges, and which had hitherto been kept secret. Francis, though he had reason to be surprised with this denunciation, after having been at such pains to soothe Henry and to gain his minister, received the herald with great composure and dignity; and without abandoning any of the schemes which he was forming against the emperor, began vigorous preparations for resisting this new enemy. His treasury, however, being exhausted by the efforts which he had already made, as well as by the sums he expended on his pleasures, he had recourse to extraordinary expedients for supplying it. Several new offices were created, and exposed to sale; the royal demesnes were alienated; unusual taxes were imposed; and the tomb of St. Martin was stripped of a rail of massive silver, with which Louis XI, in one of his fits of devotion, had encircled it. By means of these expedients he was enabled to levy a considerable army, and to put the frontier towns in a good posture of defence.

The emperor, meanwhile, was no less solicitous to draw as much advantage as possible from the accession of such a powerful ally; and the prosperous situation of his affairs, at this time, permitting him to set out for Spain, where his presence was extremely necessary, he visited the court of England in his way to that country. He proposed by this interview not only to strengthen the bonds of friendship which united him with Henry, and to excite him to push the war against France with vigor, but hoped to remove any disgust or resentment that Wolsey might have conserved on account of the mortifying disappointment which he had met with in the late conclave. His success exceeded his most sanguine expectations; and by his artful address, during a residence of six weeks in England, he gained not only the king and the minister, but the nation itself. Henry, whose vanity was sensibly flattered by such a visit, as well as by the studied respect with which the emperor treated him on every occasion, entered warmly into all his schemes. The cardinal foreseeing, from Adrian’s age and infirmities, a sudden vacancy in the papal see, dissembled or forgot his resentment; and, as Charles, besides augmenting the pensions which he had already settled on him, renewed his promise of favoring his pretensions to the papacy, with all his interest, he endeavored to merit the former, and to secure the accomplishment of the latter, by fresh services. The nation, sharing in the glory of its monarch, and pleased with the confidence which the emperor placed in the English, by creating the earl of Surrey his high-admiral, discovered no less inclination to com­mence hostilities than Henry himself.

In order to give Charles, before he left England, a proof of this general ardor, Surrey sailed with such forces as were ready, and ravaged the coasts of Normandy. He then made a descent on Bretagne, where he plundered and burnt Morlaix, and some other places of less consequence. After these slight excursions, attended with greater dishonor than damage to France, he repaired to Calais, and took the command of the principal army, consisting of sixteen thousand men; with which, having joined the Flemish troops under the Count de Buren, he advanced into Picardy. The army which Francis had assembled was far inferior in number to these united bodies. But during the long wars between the two nations, the French had discovered the proper method of defending their country against the English. They had been taught by their misfortunes to avoid a pitched battle with the utmost care, and to endeavour, by throwing garrisons into every place capable of resistance, by watching all the enemy’s motions, by intercepting their convoys, attacking their advanced posts, and harassing them continually with their numerous cavalry, to ruin them with the length of the war, or to beat them by piece-meal. This plan the duke of Vendome, the French general in Picardy, pursued with no less prudence than success; and not only prevented Surrey from taking any town of importance, but obliged him to retire with his army greatly reduced by fatigue, by want of provisions, and by the loss which it had sustained in several unsuccessful skirmishes.

Thus ended the second campaign, in a war the most general that had hitherto been kindled in Europe; and though Francis, by his mother’s ill-timed resentment, by the disgusting insolence of his general, and the caprice of the mercenary troops which he employed, had lost his conquests in Italy, yet all the powers combined against him had not been able to make any impression on his hereditary dominions; and wherever they either intended or attempted an attack, he was well prepared to receive them.

While the Christian princes were thus wasting each other’s strength, Solyman the Magnificent entered Hungary with a numerous army, and investing Belgrade, which was deemed the chief barrier of that kingdom against the Turkish arms, soon forced it to surrender. Encouraged by this success, he turned his victorious arms against the island of Rhodes, the seat, at that time, of the knights of St. John of Jerusalem. This small state he attacked with such a numerous army as the lords of Asia have been accustomed in every age to bring into the field. Two hundred thousand men, and a fleet of four hundred sail, appeared against a town defended by a garrison consisting of five thousand soldiers, and six hundred knights, under the command of Villiers de L'lsle Adam, the grand master, whose wisdom and valor rendered him worthy of that station at such a dangerous juncture. No sooner did he begin to suspect the destination of Solyman’s vast armaments, than he despatched messengers to all the Christian courts, imploring their aid against the common enemy. But though every prince in that age acknowledged Rhodes to be the great bulwark of Christendom in the east, and trusted to the gallantry of its knights as the best security against the progress of the Ottoman arms; though Adrian, with a zeal which became the head and father of the church, exhorted the contending powers to forget their private quarrels, and, by uniting their arms, to prevent the Infidels from destroying a society which did honor to the Christian name; yet so violent and implacable was the animosity of both parties, that regardless of the danger to which they exposed all Europe, and unmoved by the entreaties of the grand master, or the admonitions of the pope, they suffered Solyman to carry on his operations against Rhodes without disturbance. The grand master, after incredible efforts of courage, of patience, and of military conduct during a siege of six months; after sustaining many assaults, and disputing every post with amazing obstinacy, was obliged at last to yield to numbers; and having obtained an honorable capitulation from the sultan, who admired and respected his virtue, he surrendered the town, which was reduced to a heap of rubbish, and destitute of every resource. Charles and Francis, ashamed of having occasioned such a loss to Christendom by their ambitious contests, endeavored to throw the blame of it on each other, while all Europe, with greater justice, imputed it equally to both. The emperor, by way of reparation, granted the knights of St. John the small island of Malta, in which they fixed their residence, retaining, though with less power and splendor, their ancient spirit and implacable enmity to the Infidels.

 

BOOK 3

KINGDOM OF SPAIN.

THE REVOLT OF THE COMUNEROS