LUDWIG VON PASTOR'S

HISTORY OF THE POPES FROM THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES

VOLUMES XXV & XXVI . PAUL V. (1605-1621)

CHAPTER XIII.

Relations of Paul V with the Emperors Rudolph II, Matthias and Ferdinand II—Good Results of the Catholic Restoration in Germany—The Bohemian Revolution and the Beginning of the Thirty Years War.

Paul V.’s policy with regard to the emperor and the empire differed in no respect from that of Clement VIII. The aims of the Holy See remained the same, viz. assuring the succession of Rudolph in the empire; the support of the emperor in the war against the Turks; the defeat of the Protestant demand for “religious liberty” and the promotion of the Catholic reform and restoration.

All these problems were most closely interconnected, but their solution had been rendered extraordinarily difficult already in the days of Clement VIII by the disordered mind of the weak-willed emperor whose half-heartedness and indecision produced a highly dangerous situation. The peril became daily more acute owing to the insurrection of the Hungarians whose leader, Stephen Bocskay, did not scruple to ally himself with the hereditary enemy, the Turk.

Whilst bands of insurgents, supported by Turkish flying­columns, repeatedly appeared on the banks of the March and the Drave, and the badly paid imperial army ravaged its own territory, the Austrian aristocracy impatiently pressed its demand for “religious liberty”. All this seemed to leave Rudolph unmoved: he remained entirely inactive. This state of affairs induced the archdukes Matthias, Maximilian, Ferdinand of Stiria and his brother, Maximilian Ernest, to swift intervention. On April 30th, 1605, they bound themselves to act as one man on behalf of their House and to make joint representations to the emperor on the dangers that threatened unless provision were speedily made against them. They then betook themselves to Prague, and there obtained from Rudolph II, for his brother Maximilian, full powers for the conduct of the Hungarian war, as well as for the negotiations for an understanding with Bocskay.

The ticklish question of the succession to the empire had only been lightly touched upon at the conference of the archdukes. It was Paul V who, as the Father of Christendom and the friend of the House of Habsburg, resolved to raise this urgent business which had occupied the Curia for the last twenty years, and to prepare the way for a final settlement. It was clearly recognized, in Rome as well as in Madrid, that a vital interest not only of the House of Habsburg but of the ancient Church also was here at stake, for if Rudolph died, there was the menace of a Protestant imperial vicariate and, eventually, of a Protestant emperor. On June 24th, 1605, Paul V informed the emperor that the nuncio of Prague, Ferreri, had been commissioned to confer with him on the choice of a king of the Romans. At the same time the Pope asked the chief advisers of Rudolph to assist the nuncio in every way.4 Already on June 11th, Paul V had urged Ernest, the Elector of Cologne, to repair to Prague and to press the emperor for a decision on questions in a definite settlement of which Rome saw the only means of saving the Church in Germany. The indecision and morbid susceptibility of the emperor, as also his aversion to the regulation of the question of the succession, were at that time greater than ever. However, Paul V’s pressure was unremitting. On August 22nd, 1605, he wrote again to admonish the emperor not to put off any longer the choice of a king of the Romans. Danger threatened from the plots of the Protestants who had no more ardent wish than to wrest the empire from the House of Austria; the election of a king of the Romans would avert this peril.

A document of similar purport was issued on October 5th, 1605, and a memorandum to the same effect was handed to Rudolph II by Ferreri at the beginning of November. Against all expectations these admonitions were not ill received by the emperor although, at his audience, the nuncio received only the non-committal answer that the matter would be considered. The Elector Ernest also, from whose visit to Prague Paul V looked for a clarification of the situation, obtained nothing at his repeated audiences. Ferreri began to despair. On the other hand the Pope persevered in his efforts. A new Brief, dated January 6th, 1606, insisted on a settlement of the affair. Ferreri hesitated to present the document and did so only after repeated orders and censures. Paul V now clung to the hope that the ecclesiastical Electors would force a decision at the forthcoming Diet of empire.

Together with the settlement of the imperial succession, Paul V had no less at heart a happy termination of the war against the Turks. To this end, only a fortnight after his election, he dispatched his chamberlain, Giacomo Serra, to Hungary, with funds to raise troops. This step was inspired not only by the traditional policy of the Holy See, which aimed at guarding Christendom from the attacks of the infidels, but also by the hope of restraining the emperor from granting concessions in the religious sphere to the Protestants of Austria and Hungary.

It is easy enough to understand how the clamour for freedom of belief and conscience which became ever louder in those countries, had power to alarm the Pope to the utmost, for experience had shown what such a concession entailed for the Catholics. Wherever it had been granted, the sequel was the complete oppression of the Catholics, the deprivation of their churches and possessions and the prohibition of the practice of the Catholic religion. Hence it is not to be wondered at if the Pope and his nuncios condemned with the utmost severity the aspirations of the time towards toleration and withstood them by every available means. However, Paul V was only partially successful, though the subsidy for the war against the Turks which he and the Spaniards contributed, proved decisive for the rejection, in July, 1605, by the local Diet of Vienna, of religious freedom which the Protestants demanded as the price of their assistance against the Turks. But this relieved the Pope only of part of his anxiety, for the Hungarian rebels also noisily demanded religious freedom, and in view of their close connection with the Porte, much depended on the issue of the Turkish campaign.

The truly pitiful course of the war in Hungary is well known. In the autumn of 1605 the Turks conquered Visegrad and the important town of Gran. The Pope, who at that very time was doing his best to induce the grand duke of Tuscany to lend help to the emperor, was deeply grieved by these losses. His sorrow was further increased when he learnt that the shameful issue of the war was due to the systematic demoralization of the imperial military administration: “Write that we refuse to give further help, for it is clear that all is thrown away,” was the sharp remark of the usually calm Paul V to Ottavio Paravicini, the Cardinal protector of Germany. In his letter of sympathy, dated October 31st, 1605, the Pope spoke to Rudolph in a manner which could not be misunderstood: if there was no improvement, worse was to be expected; as a friend and ally he felt bound to warn him that the bad system must be changed. But of this there was no question: armaments, equipment, and commissariat remained as inadequate as before. In like manner the Pope’s attempt to fight the Turk by leaguing together the land and sea forces of Spain, the Italian States, the Catholic parts of Germany and the Slavonic and Croatian princes, failed owing to the indifference of Spain and the opposition of the selfish Venetians.

The total sum spent by the Papal Chamber for Rudolph II’s Turkish war amounted already then to two million gold scudi; hence the most that Paul V was still prepared to do at the close of 1605 was a slight delay of the payment of the Papal troops. As a matter of fact in order to re-establish to some extent his financial condition, which was deplorable, he had been obliged, on December 23rd, 1605, to abolish, for the benefit of the income of the Papal chamber, a number of privileges and immunities granted by his predecessors.

Since the emperor was resolved to come to terms with the Hungarian rebels, it was necessary to see to it that the Catholic faith suffered no injury. The danger was great, for the Hungarians demanded not only the confession of Augsburg, but also the Swiss confession, that is Calvinism. The Pope made the most serious representations to the imperial envoy, and in several Briefs besought the archduke Matthias, who was charged with the peace negotiations, not to allow any clause to creep in which would be detrimental to the Church and the true faith.5

The Prague nuncio, Ferreri, worked energetically for the same end, and bishop Klesl, whose advice had been sought, urged the necessity of taking this course. He declared, amongst other things, that the queen of England had told the Sultan, through her ambassador, that Calvinism and the Koran did not greatly differ, that, in fact they agreed on most points, and that the Dutch had recently made similar statements at Constantinople. Klesl further pointed out that if the Hungarian demands were granted not only would the political consequences be disastrous, but the act would be interpreted as confirming the religious concessions granted in Austria, and other countries would feel encouraged to make similar demands. Lastly he appealed to the coronation oath of the emperor whose person the archduke represented. The emperor had bound himself by a personal oath to maintain and protect the one, universal Church in Hungary and to this end to sacrifice life and goods, if necessary. Therefore let the archduke tell the rebels that it was not in his power to tolerate another religion.

These representations were not without effect. Matthias began by resisting the demands of the rebels, though he ended by allowing himself to be persuaded by the Hungarian magnate, Stephen Illésházy. In this way, after five months of discussion, the fateful peace of Vienna was signed with Hungary on June 23rd, 1606. It expressly revoked Rudolph’s supplementary article of 1604 concerning the fresh confirmation of decrees published by previous kings in favour of the Church and, though Calvinism was not mentioned, it also granted freedom to practise their religion to the Estates of Hungary, that is, to the magnates, the nobles, the free cities, and the boroughs immediately subject to the king, though no prejudice was to accrue to the Catholic Church, and her clergy were not to be interfered with.

Whilst the negotiations were still pending, the nuncio of Prague, Ferreri, had urged the emperor that, with a view to saving his conscience, he should except from confirmation, when ratifying the agreement, whatever was against religion. In the end Ferreri even went so far as to threaten to break off diplomatic relations if the opposite were to take place. However, this sharp procedure, which was bound to lead to the gravest complications, was not approved by the Holy See. When Rudolph, after much hesitation, allowed himself to be persuaded to sign the peace of Vienna, on August 6th, 1606, he had recourse to a subterfuge, for in a secret document he protested that he had acted under compulsion and that he did not consider himself bound by the articles which conflicted with his oath as a Catholic king. However, even so the peace of Vienna was a heavy blow to the Church, for the prosecution of the Catholic restoration in Hungary was now no longer to be thought of.

The emperor had obviously sought to attenuate the consequences of the peace of Vienna, out of consideration for the Pope who, notwithstanding his financial straits, decided, in 1606 to grant yet another subsidy of no less than 130,000 scudi for the war against the Turks. However, this sacrifice was also made in vain. The peace of Vienna was succeeded by an agreement with the Porte, concluded on November 11th, 1606, at Komorn, a place where the river Zsitva enters the Danube. Paul V himself had ended by counselling an agreement for at this time the Pope was fully taken up with his struggle with mighty Venice. On the Turkish side, the scales in favour of an agreement were heavily weighted by the peril which threatened from Persia, with whose ruler Paul V had had relations in 1605. In view of the emperor’s lofty conception of his dignity, he must have deeply felt the humiliation of the unfavourable peace treaty with the Hungarian rebels and the Turks. He was by no means minded to acquiesce for ever, though for a long time he was unable to come to a decision. However, from the summer of 1607 onwards he was not afraid to infringe the peace of Vienna and he gave unmistakable proofs of his intention to renew the war against the Turks. The necessary money for a struggle against the Turks, on which Paul V was once more keen and for which he was willing to grant a subsidy, was to be provided by the Diet of Ratisbon.

To the great annoyance of the Protestants, Rudolph appointed the rigidly Catholic archduke Ferdinand to represent him at that assembly. On October 3rd, 1607, Paul V informed the emperor that the archbishop of Capua, Antonio Caetani, who in June had succeeded Ferreri as nuncio at Prague, was delegated to represent the Holy See at the Diet. Briefs were handed to Caetani for the Catholic princes of empire which, besides accrediting himself, contained an exhortation to oppose the Protestant designs, to interest themselves in the spread of the Catholic faith, and above all to secure the restitution of the confiscated monasteries and other Church property. The emperor, who was informed of the existence of these letters, imagined that they dealt with the question of the succession—a matter which was odious to him—but Caetani was able to allay his suspicion at once.

Rudolph II was strongly opposed to Caetani’s presence at Ratisbon for he feared that the Protestants, who were already greatly annoyed by the nomination of the archduke Ferdinand as his personal representative, would be still further incensed by the nuncio’s presence. The imperial counsellors urged Caetani not to go to Ratisbon. They pointed out that the Diet was convened solely for the purpose of raising money for the Turkish war and that it was not customary for nuncios to be present at such assemblies in the absence of the emperor; the nuncio would do better service to religion if he remained with the emperor at Prague. In the circumstances Paul V decided to cancel the mission he had given to Caetani: he did so in a Brief of November 24th, 1607, which Caetani communicated to the emperor. At the same time Caetani presented a memorial in which the emperor was exhorted not to grant to Protestant administrators of dioceses any indult or privilege unfavourable to the Church, not to admit to the Diet the administrator of Magdeburg and all other usurpers and not to interfere any longer with the rights of Catholics in respect of Church property. In a covering letter the nuncio added that though the Pope had agreed that he should stay away from the Diet, he had commanded him to repair to Ratisbon and to carry out his first instructions in the eventuality of the emperor refusing to give complete satisfaction on the above-mentioned questions. Therefore let the emperor forthwith give precise instructions to the archduke Ferdinand. On his part Caetani dispatched his uditore to Ratisbon with the task of explaining more fully the Pope’s wishes to the archduke.

In addition to these precautions for the safety of the interests of the Church, Caetani deemed it necessary to send a confidential messenger to Ratisbon with mission to report on the proceedings of the Diet. He intended to entrust the task to his uditore, but Rome feared to offend the emperor. In the end Caetani’s choice fell on the Neapolitan Augustinian Friar, Felice Milensio, who had been engaged, since 1602, in the visitation of the German and Bohemian monasteries of his Order. Since the emperor was resolved himself to see to the interests of religion, it was said in Milensio’s instructions, the Pope wished the nuncio to remain at Prague. He had, however, instructed him to send a confidential representative to Ratisbon whose task it would be to keep him and Cardinal Borghese informed of what took place at the Diet. As for himself he must show the greatest caution and reserve and treat with the archduke through the latter’s confessor, Father Miller : only a very few people must know of his presence. Milensio’s duty as a mere reporter was not extended by Rome during the whole course of the Diet; only on one occasion, on March 8th, 1608, was he commissioned to deliver Briefs to the archduke and to the bishop of Ratisbon, and to encourage the Catholic commissaries and prelates in their determination not to consent to any decision prejudicial to the Catholic religion. During the Diet, Milensio confined his activity strictly within these limits. At Ratisbon he lived at the monastery of his Order, hence only a very few people were aware of his presence and he exercised no influence whatever on the discussions.

Wholly against the intentions of Rudolph II, and to the great distress of Paul V, religious strife soon began to occupy the foreground at Ratisbon. The fact was intimately connected with an occurrence of little significance in itself but which had greatly roused Protestant resentment, namely the putting under the ban of empire of the small Suabian town of Donauworth.

Donauworth was one of those towns in which, in accordance with the agreement of Augsburg, Catholics and Lutherans were to preserve their rights and to live in peace and tranquillity whilst both parties followed their own religion and customs. However, there, as everywhere else, tolerable relations between the two confessions did not last for as soon as the Protestants had secured a majority in the council, that body, regardless of the peace settlement, began to oppress the Catholics in every possible way. Not only were they excluded from all public offices, they were even denied the public practice of their religion. With what harshness the authorities proceeded is shown by the fact that when one of the townswomen was dying in hospital, she was denied the last consolations of the Catholic religion. The complaints of the ordinary, the bishop of Augsburg, and, at a later date, those of the Catholic Estates at the Diet of 1594, had not led to an improvement, but rather to a further deterioration in the state of affairs. The Catholics, who had melted down to a mere handful, would have been utterly crushed at Donauworth had they not found support in the nearby Benedictine monastery of Heilig Kreuz. When the monks, most of whom had been pupils of the Jesuits of Dillingen, wished to revive the public processions, with cross and banners, which had long been in abeyance, the Council forbade the function. The bishop of Augsburg, Heinrich von Knaringen, protested to the imperial court council against this and other curtailments of the privileges of the Catholics of Donauworth. The only result of a decree issued by that body for the protection of the Catholic religion was that, in April 1606, a Rogation procession which had started from the monastery of Heilig Kreuz, was assaulted and scattered by the populace at the instigation of the preachers.

The Council refused to punish the sacrilegious attack, in the course of which a crucifix had been thrown to the ground, and ended by offering to the crown council the excuse that they were no longer masters of the fanatical populace. In consequence of this admission the emperor, without heeding the authorities of the Suabian League, in March, 1607, instructed the archduke Maximilian of Bavaria to protect the Catholics of Donauworth from further vexations. When the commissaries of the duke were threatened in their own persons, the ban was pronounced upon Donauworth which had been threatened for a long time because of the violation of the religious and territorial peace, and since the measure proved inadequate by itself, it was put into execution in December, 1607, by means of Bavarian troops. On December 17th the soldiery occupied the town from which the preachers and most of the ringleaders had already fled. Maximilian at once gave orders for the ecclesiastical restoration, summoned some Jesuits and restored to the Catholics the parish church abandoned by the preachers. But for the rest he proceeded with great caution.

In a letter to the Pope, Maximilian expressed the hope that by the prompt execution of the ban against Donauworth the prestige of the emperor had been not a little enhanced and that the Catholic religion had been given “a considerable impulse and help”, a fact which would prove “comfortable and profitable” in other places also. These hopes, which Paul V shared, were not fulfilled. The proceedings against Donauworth benefited neither the Catholic religion nor the imperial prestige, on the contrary, they turned to the advantage of the revolutionary party of the Palatinate.

The Diet had scarcely been opened on January 12, 1608, when the most sensational rumours began to circulate. The Pope, it was rumoured, had 10,000 men under arms who, under the leadership of Jesuits disguised as officers, were about to march into the empire; that the king of Spain had secretly set aside 100,000 ducats and was now enrolling soldiers; that the duke of Bavaria also had 15,000 men in readiness; that a cruel sea of blood was about to burst upon the hapless followers of the gospel. In view of the deep impression which the proceedings against Donauworth had created, rumours of this kind were readily believed, all the more so as the Protestants thought archduke Ferdinand capable of the worst, ever since he had made a prompt and decisive use of the right of reform and had carried out the ecclesiastical restoration in his territory. In these circumstances the disagreement which had existed until then between the Lutheran States of the empire and the Calvinists of the Palatinate sank into the background: the latter became the leaders of the Protestants.

What this meant was seen at the Diet of Ratisbon, to the horror of Paul V. Even the Elector of Saxony now made his promise of help against the Turks dependent on satisfaction being given to Protestant claims. The religious peace should be both confirmed and amplified, in the sense that the Catholics renounced all Church property of which they had been robbed since 1555. The Catholic Electors were willing to agree to this so long as the opponents would give a guarantee that thereafter they would not infringe the settlement. This the Elector Palatine refused: in the future also Protestants were to have a free hand to confiscate Church property.

Any right-minded man was bound to ask himself what advantage could the Catholics derive from any agreement if their opponents could declare in one breath: “What we have taken from you, that we keep, and what we may be able to take from you, in the future, that we shall take”. On the motion of archduke Ferdinand, the Catholic members of the Council of Princes, to whom the ecclesiastical Electors now joined themselves, decided that the religious peace should be ratified with the addition of the following clause: Whatever has been appropriated by either party in defiance of this agreement, must be restored. The implied threat failed of its purpose, hence, in view of the emperor’s precarious position, the archduke proposed a compromise, on March 16th, 1608. It consisted in a renewal of the religious peace without the proposed clause, but its omission was not to prejudice anyone. But even such large concessions to the demands of the Protestant minority failed to satisfy the people of the Palatinate; they demanded the express suppression of the proposed reservation. This would have gravely prejudiced Catholic interests. For fear lest the Diet should get completely off the track, the Elector of Saxony was unwilling to drive the opposition to extremes. However, the archduke Matthias’ revolt against the emperor encouraged the party of the Palatinate to break up the Diet at the end of April by their own withdrawal from it.

When the last vital organ of the constitution of the empire had thus been paralysed the plan of a Protestant separate league became a reality; this Henry IV of France had proposed and worked for during the last ten years. On May 15th and 16th, 1608, at Ahausen, a village of Ansbach, the Elector Palatine, the duke of Wurttemberg, the Palatine of Neuburg, the rulers of Baden-Durlach, Brandenburg- Ansbach, and Kulmbach, formed a league, ostensibly for the sole purpose of defending the “evangelical” faith, but in reality with a view to defending by force of arms all that had been illegally acquired since the religious peace of Augsburg, as well as all further demands of the Protestants.

That which the Protestant Estates of Empire undertook against the constitution of the Empire was likewise attempted, on a smaller scale, by the Estates of the Austrian Crown lands who, under the cloak of the new gospel, in reality worked for the establishment of oligarchic, aristocratic republics. When a few dozen princes and counts in Germany had imposed their unlimited domination on the consciences of the people of their territories, all in the name of “the liberty of the gospel”, and had thereby even won a rich booty of Church property, a few hundred heads of aristocratic houses in Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia were anxious to imitate so alluring an example. Everywhere, of course, the cry was solely for freedom of conscience and protection against religious compulsion, but the real aim was to subtract the subjects from the authority of the Church and to hand them over to the arbitrary domination of the heads of aristocratic Houses. “Real liberty of conscience presupposed social conditions such as did not exist in the seventeenth century.” Moreover in those days, when Church and State were closely linked together, no ruler in Europe could be sure of his throne if his subjects gave up the Catholic faith. Wherever the ancient dynasties had remained faithful to the Church the religious innovations invariably took the form of political revolutions. This was especially the case in the various Austrian territories. There the leaders were in very close contact with the anti-imperial party of the empire, especially with the Elector of the Palatinate, Frederic IV, a notorious drunkard, and with the intriguer, Christian of Anhalt-Bernburg. With a view to the complete oppression of the Catholics, these “heads and leaders” of the revolutionary party in the empire, cast their nets in every direction, from Paris to Venice and Constantinople. And in order that nothing might be wanting to misfortune, a dissension now broke out in the House of Habsburg which threatened the very existence of the dynasty.

Already in April, 1606, the archdukes, in a secret family council, had declared Rudolph II incapable to govern “by reason of a certain malady of the mind”, and they had chosen Matthias as head of the House. Two years later, the latter, who nursed a profound personal resentment against the emperor, took the desperate decision of leaguing himself with the almost wholly Protestant Estates of the various territories in order to put an end to the misrule of the head of the empire by means of a revolutionary rising. He began by making sure of the support of Hungary and Austria at the Diet of Pressburg. The recalcitrants were compelled by threats to join with the others. The Moravian magnates who were openly aiming at an unlimited aristocratic government, joined the movement which Rudolph II met only with half measures. About the middle of April, 1608, Matthias, who was increasingly becoming a mere tool of the heads of the Calvinist party—viz. the Hungarian Illésházy, the Austrian Tschemembl and the Moravian Zierotin—advanced from Hungary against Prague at the head of a considerable army recruited from the Hungarian and Austrian Estates, in order to force a decision between himself and his brother. Christian of Anhalt was already hoping that the last hour of the House of Habsburg, which he hated with a deadly hatred, had struck. His plan was for the Electors—Spain and the Pope being excluded—to undertake to mediate between the two hostile brothers. The Estates of Hungary and Austria were to be guaranteed full religious freedom for any subject “whosoever he may be”; Matthias was to have the government of Hungary and Austria, but in Bohemia the emperor was to appoint his brother Maximilian as his lieutenant. From the dissension which was sure to arise between Matthias and Maximilian, as a result of such an arrangement, Anhalt hoped for complications which would be bound to bring about the downfall of the House of Austria. However, the execution of these plans proved impossible. The mediation was undertaken not by the Electors but by the representatives of precisely those Powers which Anhalt wished to see excluded, viz. the envoy of Philip III, San Clemente, and the papal nuncio, Caetani. The negotiations proved exceedingly arduous but neither the Spanish envoy nor the papal nuncio allowed themselves to be discouraged. That which decided the issue was the fact that the Bohemian Estates refused to join the rebels. Rudolph won them over by meeting their political aspirations, by postponing the settlement of ecclesiastical questions until a new Diet which was to be held in November, and by promising religious freedom until the time when that assembly should meet. The agreement concluded on June 25th, 1608, at Lieben, gave Matthias only half a victory. Rudolph ceded to him Hungary, Austria, and Moravia, but retained Bohemia, Silesia, and Lausitz, of which Matthias only secured the eventual succession.

Such was the situation at the moment of the arrival in Prague of Cardinal Giangarzia Millini who had been appointed legate to the emperor at a consistory held on May 5th, 1608. The Pope, who was most reluctant to meddle with political questions, had been obliged to take this step because the strife between the two Habsburg brothers threatened to inflict grievous injury on the Church. All the written exhortations of the Pope and the efforts of his nuncio having yielded no result, a member of the Sacred College, who had been tried in several diplomatic missions, was now to attempt to mediate between the two brothers. That his task would be fraught with the greatest difficulties was very well realized in Rome.

One great difficulty came at once from the emperor himself, for he surmised, and rightly so, that Millini was also charged to press for the choice of a king of the Romans and that the Pope, however much he condemned Matthias’ revolt, would not unconditionally take the emperor’s side. So he sought to prevent Millini’s mission, alleging that if a special envoy of the Pope were to arrive now, a suspicion would be created that there was question of a league against the Protestant Estates of the empire. For this reason, on June 6, 1608, Rudolph dispatched a messenger to the Cardinal in the person of Matthias Renzi, with mission to beg him to delay his journey long enough to enable the Pope to send him fresh instructions.

Cardinal Millini had only left Rome on May 20th, 1608. The cause of the delay had been the Pope’s wish to await the report of the Prague nuncio who had gone to see the emperor. Meanwhile Millini dispatched before him an Augustinian, one Peter Mander, of Neuhausen, who was well acquainted with Austrian conditions. On May 31st Millini was at Bologna; on June 9th he had reached Trent. There he waited for the answer of Paul V. This was to the effect that the Pope and the Congregation for German affairs judged that the misgivings of the emperor were groundless, hence he was to start for Prague without any more ado. Thereupon the Cardinal set out at once with a small retinue. He reached Prague as early as the evening of July 9th. The emperor, who was failing more and more both in mind and body, gave unmistakable tokens of his displeasure at the arrival of the legate. He put off the reception of the papal representative for the space of three days—in fact he would have preferred not to receive him at all. When at last he granted him an audience, in the afternoon of July 12th, he did it with as little grace as possible. He barely walked half-way across the hall to meet the Cardinal legate. Those in the ante-room observed that when the emperor uncovered his head, he greeted the Cardinal with only a slight bow, whereas Millini made a profound obeisance. The audience lasted barely a quarter of an hour.

The task of the legate, who found himself in the role of an unwanted mentor, was only seemingly eased by the compromise between the two warring brothers of which Millini had received news on his way to Prague, for though the treaty of Lieben had averted the peril of open war between Rudolph II and Matthias, tolerable relations between the two had not been established. In view of Rudolph’s character it was not to be expected that he would ever forget that his brother had robbed him of the greater part of his territories. To this must be added that the treaty did not stay the revolutionary movement which had broken out in the Estates. Both brothers had to expect that, as their reward, the Estates would demand far-reaching concessions, both political and religious. The Cardinal legate clearly discerned the germs of further disorders and grave dangers for the Church which lurked in the treaty of Lieben. In compliance with his instructions he began by advising the emperor to cultivate good relations with Matthias and to resist the demands which the Protestants were sure to make. The ticklish question of the imperial succession he put off until the end of the audience.

To the first two points the emperor’s answer, according to the legate’s report of July 14th, 1608, was spoken in so low a voice that Millini could scarcely understand him. Rudolph thanked the Pope for showing so much solicitude to act as mediator in the quarrel with his brother who had behaved very badly. The conduct of Matthias had encouraged the Bohemians to demand religious freedom; but he was determined to protect the Catholic religion in the future as he had done in the past ; as for particular measures he intended to take, he would inform the legate of them later on. In support of his urgent request that the emperor would not put off any longer a decision in the matter of the imperial succession, Millini pointed to the dangers which threatened the welfare of the House of Habsburg and of religion itself if this affair was further shirked. If the emperor were to die to-day without an heir, the empire would become the plaything of the heretics ; they would be joined not only by their foreign sympathizers, but by all the enemies of the House of Austria, and it could scarcely be doubted that in view of the division of the Electors into a Catholic and a Protestant party, the result of the election of a successor would not be to the advantage of the Habsburgs.

During these representations the emperor did not seek to disguise how much allusion to this question annoyed him, for the humiliation which Matthias had so recently inflicted on him had still further complicated it. His answer was spoken in an even lower tone than before, so that Millini had to approach as close to him as possible in order to hear him. Rudolph explained that he had made up his mind to take up seriously the question of the election of a king of the Romans—which had been so often discussed, when he was prevented by recent events : for the rest the real decision lay with the Electors; he would inform the legate of his further decisions.

Millini replied that a great ruler should surely think more of the welfare of religion, the State, and his own dynasty than of his personal grievances, all the more so as everything depended on the emperor’s personal decision, for he would not find it difficult to get the Electors to fall in with his views. Rudolph made no reply to these representations and put an end to the audience. In his report of the conversation which Millini dispatched to Rome on July 14th, 1608, he relates that Rudolph told his private secretary, Barvitius, that the Cardinal was quite right when he exhorted him to think only of the welfare of Christendom, but that his resentment against his brother was still too great. Subsequently Millini made further unsuccessful attempts to induce the emperor, through his counsellors, to make up his mind in the matter of a king of the Romans, for the monarch was more unapproachable than ever. In view of existing conditions Millini doubted not that only Matthias could succeed to the empire, but that the emperor would never, of his own accord, take a step in that direction, unless he had reason to fear the worst, viz. his own deposition ; but the Cardinal thought that it would be too big a risk to give to this fear a greater semblance of certainty.

At the same time Millini worked zealously upon the imperial counsellors and others in order to make sure that, at the forthcoming Diet, no religious liberty should be conceded to the Bohemian Estates. In the midst of his efforts he was alarmed by information that the Silesians made similar demands and threatened to secede from Matthias. Millini thereupon addressed to the emperor a counter-remonstrance in writing which, he was told, successfully prevented Rudolph at the last moment from making a concession of this kind.

In the meantime, the new envoy of Philip III, Baltasar de Zuñiga, had arrived in Prague. The emperor was very indignant at his appearance on the scene and kept him waiting for an audience even longer than the legate.2 It goes without saying that in the question of the succession Zuniga fared no better than Millini. The envoy, who had not seen the emperor for two years, found him much altered. He agreed with Millini and Caetani that the unhappy monarch had not long to live. Nevertheless Millini took endless trouble with a view to bringing about a reconciliation between Rudolph and Matthias, and to prevent concessions being made to the Protestants. In this last respect he thought he had achieved some success.

On August 18th, 1608, Millini had another audience with the emperor. He thanked him for his intention firmly to resist the Protestants and then turned the conversation once more to the question of the election of a king of the Romans. In doing so the legate put the religious interests in the foreground and once more counselled a reconciliation with Matthias. The emperor’s answer was brief, very low, and scarcely audible. He would treat with the Electors, convene a Diet in the near future and settle the affair as soon as possible. The words of his Majesty, Millini said in his report, could not have been more gratifying; but similar assurances have been given often, and as far as my knowledge of this court goes, no hope can be based on them. A third audience on August 25th, 1608, in which Millini took his farewell, yielded nothing new.

On the very next day the Cardinal Legate left the capital of Bohemia. At the last moment the emperor honoured him with the gift of valuable presents. He went on to Vienna in order to inform archduke Matthias how matters stood with regard to the question of the succession, to exhort him to make his peace with Rudolph II, and to restrain him from making any concessions in matters of religion which would injure the Catholic Church. On the last point he thought he could hope for a measure of success inasmuch as Mander had reported very favourably on Matthias’ Catholic sentiments.

Millini reached Vienna on September 3rd and there awaited Matthias’ return from Moravia. Matthias had given a general promise to the Diet of that country that no one should be persecuted for his religion, but on the other hand, he had refused to grant unconditional freedom of conscience. Millini exhorted Matthias to show a like firmness against the Estates of Austria and Hungary. Warnings of this kind were very necessary. In Upper Austria, under the influence of Tschemembl, a Calvinist as energetic as he was ambitious, the Estates sought to establish the principle that previous to the oath of loyalty, sovereignty lay with the regional administration. Accordingly the free practice of the Protestant religion, as it had existed under Maximilian II, was re-established and on August 31st Protestant worship was inaugurated at Linz, Steyr and Gmunden. In Lower Austria only one of the gentlemen, one Adam Geyer, of Inzersdorf, near Vienna, had the courage to follow this example. At Millini’s suggestion, Matthias had the church closed and Geyer arrested. Thereupon the Protestant Estates left Vienna, betook themselves to Horn and prepared to extort by armed force their demand for freedom of religion. The Catholic Estates broke with those of Horn and did homage to Matthias. Matthias was not strong enough to crush the men of Horn, so he sought to isolate them by coming to terms with the Hungarians.

Matthias succeeded in getting himself elected king of Hungary, whereupon, on November 19th, 1608, he was crowned by the archbishop of Gran, Cardinal Forgacs. But he was made to pay a heavy price for his triumph; not only was his political power confined within such narrow boundaries as to make him but the shadow of a king, in the religious sphere also the weak prince made concessions against which the bishops, pressed by Paul V, lodged a protest. Besides the noble and royal free cities all the other towns and villages were granted religious liberty. The Jesuits were debarred from the ownership of immovable possessions, and the previous safeguards of the Catholics were simply brushed aside.

Paul V had never really trusted Matthias. When therefore on August 22nd, 1608, he begged the Pope to support his election as king of the Romans, the latter replied on September 6th by merely referring to the report which Matthias was to receive from Millini; at the same time he admonished him to make no concessions to the Estates which would be detrimental to the Catholic religion. Already on August 23rd, at the suggestion of Klesl, the Pope had despatched the bishop of Melfi, Placido de Marra, who was in Mellini’s suite, to Matthias with mission to congratulate the archduke on his nomination as king of Hungary, and to admonish him to make no concessions to the Protestants that would injure the Catholic religion. The anxiety with which the Pope watched developments in Austria and Hungary is shown by the fact that on August 27th he proclaimed a jubilee in order to implore the divine assistance. He still hoped that on the question of religion Matthias would pursue the policy of refusal which he had followed in Austria. For this reason he commissioned de Marra to congratulate the archduke on his having secured the crown of Hungary. But when the protests of Cardinal Forgacs against the concessions granted to the Protestants by Matthias reached Rome, soon to be followed by the news of the expulsion of the Jesuits, the Pope felt justified in having refused the subsidy which he had asked for, and for which Spain had also warmly pleaded, to enable him to repress the Protestants by force. Paul V’s reply at the time had been that he would only grant such a subsidy if a league were formed including Matthias, the emperor and all the Catholic princes of Germany. The Pope’s reserve sprang by no means, as has been suggested, from ill-advised economy, still less from avarice, but from a clear and accurate observation of the situation. A subsidy of money could only yield fruit if unity among the Catholic princes gave some hope that the measures taken had some prospects of success. A distribution of money to this prince and to that would only scatter and diminish the resources of the Holy See without achieving anything. The experience which the Holy See had had with the big sums granted to Rudolph II militated against money being given to so inconstant and weak a ruler as Matthias. Nevertheless, how much allowance was made in Rome for Matthias’ difficult position in Hungary is shown by the fact that Paul V was extremely moderate in the expression of his displeasure; he took into account the circumstance that, in substance, only the existing state of affairs had been sanctioned.

But things were very different when Matthias, after much hesitation, and in order to safeguard his sovereignty, granted to the Estates of Horn, in March, 1609, much more than Maximilian II.had at one time conceded, so much so that, as the bishops pointed out at once in their protest, the Catholic religion was bound to perish.

This time Paul V addressed to Matthias a Brief of severe blame. When the king wished to fulfil his Easter duty, bishop Klesl declared that he could not be admitted to the sacraments since all those who had taken a share in this affair had incurred the excommunication pronounced by the Bull In Coena Domini. Thereupon the scruples which the king had already previously felt in consequence of his conduct awakened anew, and with such force that he sought absolution in Rome.

To obtain it those counsellors who had advised Matthias to yield were compelled publicly to declare that the articles which had been granted were erroneous and null, and to pray the king to revoke them at the first opportunity.

The successes of the Protestant party in the countries which had seceded from the emperor had an immediate and powerful repercussion on the Bohemian Estates. A contemporary aptly sums up the situation when he says that it was intended at Prague to stage “a Bohemian Horn”. The movement was controlled by the spiritual head of the “Union of Brethren”, Wencelaus Budowec of Budowa. The aim of this eloquent and energetic man, who was thoroughly steeped in the teaching of Calvinistic statecraft, was the establishment of an unlimited Czecho-Protestant aristocratic government on the ruins of the ancient Church and the royal throne. This plan was opposed, in conjunction with the Papal nuncio Caetani and the Spanish envoy Zuñiga, by the archbishop of Prague, Karl von Lamberg, by the high chancellor Popel of Lobkowic, by William Slawata and Jaroslaw of Martinitz. The emperor, broken in mind and body and thinking only of revenging himself against Matthias, was unable to arrive at a decision.

The struggle lasted from January till July and during its progress the majority of the Estates, which were composed of Lutherans and Bohemian Brethren, did not shrink from threats of open secession. In the end nothing was left to the emperor but the alternative between abdication in favour of his brother or unconditional acceptance of the Protestant demands. In his hatred for Matthias he was all the more willing to choose the latter course as his allegiance to the Catholic faith had wavered for a long time.

On July 9th, 1609, Rudolph II gave his sanction to that “sheet of parchment which was to set half the world on fire”, the so-called “Letter of Majesty”. This was followed by a compromise, sanctioned by the emperor, between the Catholic and the Protestant Estates, which went still further. Both documents granted full liberty to all the inhabitants of Bohemia, irrespective of class, to embrace the Bohemian Confession of 1575, which is a mixture of Hussite, Lutheran and Calvinistic doctrines. The “Letter of Majesty” granted the right to build churches only to the three upper Estates, viz. the nobles, the knights and the royal Estates; the “Compromise ” extended it also to the inhabitants of the royal domains. In view of the fact that the Protestants included the ecclesiastical domains among these, a point which the Catholics contested, further disputes were inevitable.

At Rome it was fully realized that since Rudolph II had failed to obtain even now from the Protestant Estates the disbandment of their troops, his authority was almost completely undermined.

He soon saw himself under the necessity of issuing a “Letter of Majesty” to the Silesians, the Bohemians’ allies, which granted to the subjects the right to build churches in even more emphatic terms than had been done in the “letter” to the Bohemians.

Through the weakness and indecision of the two Habsburg brothers of Prague and Vienna, who were also mortal enemies, Protestantism had made enormous strides in the Austrian territories where archduke Ferdinand alone still upheld the unity of the faith. The reaction on ecclesiastical conditions in the empire was inevitable. Since the formation, there, of the Protestant Separate League, the so-called “Union”— the decision of Germany's destiny rested on the point of the sword. The Union was bound to provoke a Catholic defence organization, viz. the League.

It is in the nature of the defensive to be less quick to act than the offensive. Thus the Catholic League has a long pre-history. The plan of a vast Catholic defensive association against the aggressive Protestant party had been frequently discussed ever since the first impulse had been given towards a Catholic restoration; but the most varied causes, chief among them being the jealousy between Bavaria and Austria and the timidity of the ecclesiastical Princes, had hitherto nullified all efforts, though the Protestants already represented it as an accomplished fact and made capital out of it for controversial purposes.

Soon after Paul V’s election, in June, 1605, the nuncio at the imperial court had been instructed, in view of the situation in Germany, which was fraught with danger for the Church, to press for the formation, in the hereditary States of the Habsburgs, of a league of the ecclesiastical and other good Catholic princes. In July, 1605, the nuncio of Gran, Girolamo Porzia, suggested to Maximilian I, duke of Bavaria, the formation of a Catholic Defence League. The duke, who at that moment was fully taken up with the ordering of his own internal affairs, observed as always, a cautious reserve; in fact he did not take the hint. But the events of Donauworth brought about a change in his policy for he now clearly perceived that the Protestants aimed at the destruction of the Church and the subversion of the empire. In his own resolute and energetic way, Maximilian decided on strong counter-measures. In June, 1607, he caused representations to be made to the Elector of Cologne on the need of a Catholic defence league. The weakness of Rudolph II, the dissolution of the Diet of Ratisbon through the machinations of the party of the Elector Palatine, and, lastly, the quarrel between the two Habsburg brothers, drove the duke of Bavaria ever further. Without heeding the emperor, who was quite unfit to rule, non-Austrian Catholic Germany was to be united in a defensive league. To remove every appearance of selfish views, Maximilian thought of leaving the initiative to the three ecclesiastical Electors as to the most distinguished as well as the most threatened Catholic Estates. However, fear of their Protestant neighbours caused these to hesitate; their eyes were only opened when the “Union” became an accomplished fact. In July, 1608, they declared their approval in principle of a counter­league and even agreed on details. Subsequently they adopted a waiting policy so that six months went by before the foundation stone of the Catholic League could be laid. That which eventually clinched the matter was the attack by the Elector Palatine on the possessions of the bishop of Spire, in April, 1609. Under the impression which this attack made on the minds of the ecclesiastical Estates, an alliance was signed at Munich, on June 10th, 1609, between Bavaria, the bishops of Wurzburg, Constance, Augsburg, Ratisbon, the archduke Leopold in his capacity as bishop of Passau and Strassburg, the Provost of Ellwangen and the abbot of Kempten.

This alliance, subsequently styled “The League”, was to serve only one purpose, viz. the defence and preservation of the Catholic religion, and the protection of religious peace and the laws of the empire. The misgivings of the three Electors of the Rhineland, on account of the exclusion of Austria, were finally overcome. Under pressure of the peril threatening their dioceses by reason of the burning question of the succession of Julich, they joined the League on August 30th, 1609, and on this occasion, in addition to the duke of Bavaria, the Elector of Mayence was likewise appointed supreme head of the League.

Just as the Union leaned on France, so did the League seek the support of Spain and the Pope. Here also Maximilian appears as the moving and guiding force. In a secret memorial of June, 1608, on the subject of a Catholic federation, Maximilian insisted on the necessity of support by the Holy See with the legate Millini who was expected at Munich about that time. In the autumn the duke had some confidential discussions, through his envoy, Forstenhauser, with the nuncio of Prague, Caetani, on the question of a papal subsidy for the League. In November Paul V replied that it was necessary to ascertain first whether the Protestants had really decided to form a general league against the Catholics, otherwise it would not be advisable to form a Catholic league, because this would only force the opponents to federate themselves and to rouse other Powers as well. This view, which events showed to have been erroneous, so annoyed Maximilian that he ordered the negotiations with Caetani to be broken off. In the following year, however, immediately before the formation of the League, he renewed his attempt, but this time, on June 22nd, 1609, he wrote a pressing letter direct to the Pope himself. He suggested that the Pope, and, at his instigation, the king of Spain, the grand duke of Tuscany and other foreign princes should assist the German Catholics either with money or with troops. Meanwhile there arrived at Munich the famous Capuchin, Lorenzo da Brindisi, whom Zuñiga, the Spanish ambassador, with the concurrence of the nuncio Caetani, charged with a special mission to Madrid. Maximilian handed him a memorial for Philip III in which he begged for the latter’s support of the German Catholics. The courier who was to take the letter of June 22nd to Rome, was entrusted with a second letter for the Pope, dated June 25th, which prayed His Holiness to give his support to the Capuchin’s entreaties with Philip III. Paul V answered by return, on July 3rd, 1609, that he had at once done his utmost to second Maximilian’s request with Philip III, and that on his own part he would do all he could.

After the three ecclesiastical Electors had given their adhesion to the League, on August 30th, a deputation was sent, in November, 1609, to the Pope and to the Italian princes, with mission to secure their assistance. Maximilian despatched his counsellor, Giulio Cesare Crivelli, to Rome for the same purpose. The negotiations seemed at first to hold some promise, for Paul V evinced the greatest interest in the League and gave repeated assurances that he meant to help, not only with money, but with troops also. The Pope was particularly strengthened in this view by Cardinal Bellarmine, who offered to put at his disposal part of his own revenues should it be necessary.

Nevertheless, the envoys of the League were unable to conclude a definite pact, and after a three month’s stay they had to depart with no more than general assurances. This surprising attitude of Paul V is explained, not only by his consideration for the House of Austria, but likewise by the clever opposition of the French ambassador, Breves, who, as soon as the Pope showed signs of willingness to support the League, always knew how to turn him from his purpose by his insinuations. Paul V imagined that he ought to show the greatest consideration for the powerful French ruler, and he feared lest a too open support of the League, which was allied with Spain, should lead to strained relations with France. Moreover, he was little inclined to reinforce still further the Spanish preponderance, which was already great enough in itself, and which, in Italy, made itself heavily felt by the Holy See.

To this must be added the fact that the exceedingly cautious Pontiff was afraid, as he had been in the contemporary question of Julich-Cleve, to take any step in the matter of the League which might lead to a war between Catholics and Protestants. A risk of this kind he deemed far too dangerous in view of the relative strength of the parties at that moment. However much his personal sympathies may have been with the League, he was nevertheless unwilling to cause a war in Germany for the sake of religion. If, however, things should come to that extremity, then, so he openly declared to the French ambassador in January, 1610, he would give his support to the League.

The assassination of Henry IV removed the danger of war on a big scale, but in its place, in consequence of the acts of violence of the people of the Union in the dioceses of central Germany, there was a threat of a collision with the League. It was greatly to the disadvantage of the League that it had not given a different turn to its relations with Austria. Like Spain, the Pope made his support of the League dependent on Austria being given the supreme direction of the federation. Thereupon Maximilian threatened to withdraw from it, a threat which led Spain to moderate its former demands. On August 14th, 1610, an agreement was reached by which Philip III bound himself to make a monthly payment of 30,000 ducats on the sole condition that archduke Ferdinand was to be no more than vice-protector, with the title of co­director of the League, and its chief in the place of the king, and that he would take part in all the deliberations on those terms. At the same time the nuncio of Prague promised in the name of the Pope an annual contribution of 66,000 scudi to the chest of the League for as long as it would have to be under arms for the defence of Catholicism.

The warlike preparations of Maximilian and his allies alarmed the members of the Union to such a degree that they lost heart. On October 24th a compromise was reached between them and the League by the terms of which both parties laid down their arms. Meanwhile the discord between the two brothers, Rudolph and Matthias was not at an end. Like all the other friends of the House of Habsburg, Paul V saw in this quarrel one of the chief sources of every misfortune and a constant danger to the interests of the Church. In order to re-establish tolerable relations between the two disputants it was decided to take up once more the plan of a meeting of all the archdukes which had been suggested from the first, but which had failed owing to the mistrust of Rudolph. More than anyone else Klesl, Matthias’ first counsellor, advocated the idea of restoring peace within the House of Habsburg by this means.

In the hope of inducing his brother to restore the lands which he had taken from him, Rudolph II allowed himself, in January, 1610, to be persuaded by the Elector of Cologne to convene a meeting of this kind. The congress did eventually come together, but not as a family council, as Matthias wished, but as an assembly of princes. In September, 1610, a compromise between Rudolph and Matthias was arrived at. In view of the emperor’s inconstancy and the powerful efforts of the Protestants to fan the discord anew, Rome feared from the first for the stability of the compromise; hence the bishop of Sarzana, Giovan Battista Salvago, who had been appointed to succeed Caetani as nuncio at Prague in November, 1610, was instructed to watch with the utmost care that the enemies of the Church and the House of Habsburg did not rekindle the domestic quarrel; to this end he should secure the assistance of the nuncio at Vienna and the Spanish envoy.

That the fears of the Holy See that the reconciliation between the two brothers was only an apparent one were but too well founded, was soon seen. Filled with bitter resentment against Matthias, Rudolph was forging desperate plans with the ambitious archduke Leopold who had arrived in Prague with a view to recovering his lost power. In this enterprise he was to have the help of the Passau troops which had been unemployed since the pitiful issue of Leopold’s campaign against Jülich. The appearance of these troops in Bohemia precipitated the catastrophe. Heedless of the warnings of the papal nuncio, Giovan Battista Salvago, and those of the Spanish envoy, Zuñiga, archduke Leopold laid aside the clerical garb and assumed the supreme command of these undisciplined bands. When they reached Prague, Rudolph, whose appalling hatred for his brother was described with surprising accuracy by his alchemist, Hauser, openly took their side. After their withdrawal Matthias, for whose protection against Rudolph the Bohemian Estates had prayed, appeared at the head of an army. On March 24th, 1611, he made his solemn entrance into Prague; on May 23rd he received the Bohemian crown which the helpless emperor had had to resign. For a last time the mortally offended man hoped to regain what he had lost. To overthrow his brother he was willing to ask for the help of the bitterest enemies of his House, the Protestant Union. By his death, on January 20th, 1612, he was spared further humiliations and disappointments.

It was with great anxiety and “boundless grief” that Paul V saw the quarrel between the two brothers flare up anew. In vain he had sought to “calm the storm”, and to induce Rudolph II, as well as the archdukes Matthias and Leopold, to conclude an amicable arrangement. The mentally enfeebled emperor was under the delusion that the Pope was his worst enemy, whereas the truth was that Paul V did all he could to bring about a compromise, and when the fall of the unhappy monarch could be arrested no longer, he had sought to soften the blow through the intervention of his nuncios, Salvago and de Marra. When the Pope was informed of Rudolph’s death he paid tribute to his memory at the consistory of February 6th, 1612, and since news arrived at the same time that the emperor had made his confession before the end came, the usual obsequies were held for him on the following day in the Sistine Chapel, in the presence of Paul V. Later on, however, the Pope learnt with sorrow that Rudolph had refused to make his confession and had died unrepentant. Consequently the Prague nuncio was instructed to keep the impenitence of the mentally stricken monarch as secret as possible. The secret was kept so successfully that only the most recent research has brought to light the true state of things.

The death of Rudolph II brought about once more in Germany, for the first time in a hundred years, the dangerous condition of an interregnum during which the Electors of the Palatinate and Saxony, who were both Protestants, assumed the administration of the empire in the capacity of Vicars. It was natural that this circumstance should give rise to grave anxiety in Rome lest fresh injury should be done to Catholic interests; hence Paul V, as early as February 4th, 1612, directed his nuncios to do their utmost to speed up the election. In a consistory of February 6th, 1612, public prayers for a happy issue of the imperial election were ordered. So great was the Pope’s anxiety that he decided to send a legate to the ecclesiastical Electors, though there were already six representatives of the Holy See on German soil, viz. Giovan Battista Salvago at Prague, Placido de Marra with king Matthias, Pietro Antonio da Ponte at Graz, Antonio Albergati at Cologne, Antonio Diaz at Salzburg, and Guido Bentivoglio at Brussels. A suitable person for this legation was found in Ottavio Mirto Frangipani who was familiar with existing conditions through having held the nunciatures of Cologne and Brussels. Salvago, who had been consulted, sent a detailed report on the situation from Prague, under date of February 27th, 1612. He began by pointing out that, to his knowledge, no legate had ever been sent to an imperial election, and he stated with emphasis that the occasion rather demanded a nuncio. A legate would not accomplish more than one of the ordinary representatives of the Holy See. Nor would he be able to appear as became his dignity, for, according to the Golden Bull, the Electors were permitted to bring only small retinues with them to Frankfort, and there were several Protestants among them. To a subsequent question of the Cologne nuncio to the Elector of Mayence, the latter replied that were it only for the suspicion to which the mission of a legate would give rise in the mind of the heterodox Electors, such a step was not advisable.5 Thereupon Rome dropped the matter.

The Pope, consequently, sought to influence the Electors through his nuncios, his principal agent being the nuncio of Cologne, Antonio Albergati. In 1611, Albergati had been instructed to press for the election of a king of the Romans. On February 8th, 1612, he presented a Brief to that effect, dated December 16th, 1611, to the Elector of Mayence, Johann Schweikhart, at Ashaffenburg. He told the latter, in confidence, that the Pope no longer favoured the election of Matthias inasmuch as the latter’s dependence on the Protestant Estates had shown that his election would not be to the advantage of Catholic interests. At the same time the nuncio cautiously hinted at the election of archduke Albert. The Elector’s reply was no less cautious, though, as a matter of fact, he fully agreed with the suggestion and had already won the Elector of Saxony for the election of Albert.

Rudolph’s death had created an entirely new situation. There was no longer question of electing a king of the Romans but an emperor. Notwithstanding the opposition of the ecclesiastical Electors, Matthias’ prospects were good: Spain and France likewise supported his candidature. The Elector Palatine worked energetically on his behalf, moving heaven and earth to prevent Albert’s election. The attitude of Rome was greatly influenced by the fact that Albert’s elevation threatened not only to provoke a dispute in the House of Habsburg, but also to trouble once more the good relations between Spain and France, a fact which could not fail grievously to injure Catholic interests. In consequence of this Paul V, on the death of Rudolph II, reverted to his first plan of supporting Matthias’ candidature. He worked in this sense everywhere, even with Albert at Brussels. His first care was to speed up the election for only thus could those of the Palatinate be prevented from exploiting the interregnum. Briefs were sent in all directions, pressing for a speedy and a good election. On February 25th, Paul V wrote to the Elector of Mayence that the existing condition of Germany during the interregnum left him no peace; he could never lose sight of the dangers for the Catholic Church and the empire which would be still further increased by any delay of the election; hence he urged him and his ecclesiastical fellow princes to hasten it as much as possible. The death of the Elector of Cologne, Ernest, which occurred on February 17th, 1612, greatly grieved Paul V, for he had set great hopes on him for the imperial election.4 By the middle of March diplomatic circles in Rome considered Matthias’ election as good as assured. On May 4th a fresh exhortation to make haste was addressed to the Elector of Mayence. In a covering letter the nuncio, Marra, spoke of the Pope’s great anxiety for the speedy election and elevation of a candidate who would have at heart the honour of the empire and the protection of the Church. This letter also expressed anxiety lest the Protestant Electors should endeavour to alter the traditional form of the oath, as they had done at Rudolph II’s election, in the sense that the Pope would be styled the “lieutenant” of the Roman emperor. A further letter, dated June 1st, 1612, instructs the Elector of Mayence to get the emperor to abrogate all decrees detrimental to the Catholic cause. Hopes of this kind were in vain inasmuch as the election of Matthias, on June 13th, 1612, was the fruit of a compromise between Catholics and Protestants. The decisive factor was that, to the joy of the members of the Union and the astonishment of the ecclesiastical Electors, the Elector of Saxony went over to Matthias; thus they too could but join the majority. Hence they were merely polite when they wrote to the Pope that nothing but the influence of His Holiness could have induced them to vote for Matthias. But they were right when they pointed out that, at the election, the ecclesiastical Electors had overcome some great dangers which threatened the Church, for when the terms of the election were settled, they had successfully prevented the changes favourable to the Protestants which the Palatine and Brandenburg had sought to introduce. On the very day of his elevation the emperor wrote a most deferential letter to the Pope. He expressed the hope that he would have his Holiness’ further support and announced the early dispatch of an embassy of homage.

At Rome the news of the election of the emperor was received with the usual demonstrations of joy. It was generally believed that Matthias was sincerely Catholic-minded. Even Paul V showed no sign of the anxiety which Matthias’ policy of compromise had formerly aroused in him. His letter of congratulation, dated June 23, 1612, bears witness to this attitude. A month later Marra was appointed nuncio at the imperial court. He was to insist that the papal confirmation of the election must formally be asked for, and that in its address the embassy should use the word obedience (obedientia). As regards the oath, Paul V would be satisfied if the formula of Frankfort was sent in. The emperor’s secretary, Barvitius, declared to the nuncio that there was no documentary evidence in the imperial chancellery that confirmation had ever been asked for. As regards the profession of obedience, Matthias would allow himself to be styled a most obedient son of His Holiness and of the Church. A promise was also given that copies of the instrument of the election and the oath would be sent in. With these promises Paul V declared himself content.

The imperial mission of homage set out in November, 1612. It was headed by the excellent bishop of Bamberg, Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen. The bishop was commissioned by the League to do his best to get an extension of the subsidy granted in 1610 for the support of the Catholic alliance at the level of 20,000 ducats. He reached Rome shortly before Christmas and was received with the usual honours. The bishop lodged at the palace of Cardinal Madruzzo. He was welcomed there by the Secretary of State, Cardinal Borghese, accompanied by seven other Cardinals, who then escorted him into the presence of the Pope. Aschhausen presented his credentials which, like the address, substantially conformed to the model of Maximilian II. When the copies of the instruments of the election and the emperor’s oath had been examined, the Pope, in a consistory of January 7th, 1613, made to the Cardinals appropriate communications and confirmed the election. On the following day, in the Sala Regia, the bishop of Bamberg made a solemn act of obedience. The function was carried out in the usual way. Fenzoni, the uditore of Cardinal Borghese, proposed to Aschhausen the drawing up of a Bull of confirmation, and in so doing he appealed to the evidence of the Secretary of Briefs, Scipione Cobelluzio, who testified that it was an ancient custom to draw up such Bulls. Aschhausen replied that they had never been accepted, but promised to report the matter to the emperor.

(2.)

Though only fifty-five years old, the emperor Matthias was a decrepit old man. Now that he had at last reached the goal of his ambitions, the easy-going and genial old gentleman wished before all else to enjoy his exalted dignity and to be troubled as little as possible with affairs of state. Consequently power fell into the hands of his counsellors, the most distinguished of whom was Melchior Klesl.

Born in 1553, this gifted man, whose father was a Protestant master baker of Vienna, returned to the Catholic Church during his student years. His ability, application and irreproachable conduct won for him rapid promotion. In 1579 he was Provost of the Chapter of St. Stephen at Vienna and chancellor of the University; in 1581 he was vicar­general of the bishop of Passau for the part of the diocese situate in Lower Austria; in 1588 he became bishop of Wiener-Neustadt; in 1590 chairman of the religious commission for Lower Austria, and in 1598 he was raised to the see of Vienna. In all these posts he showed great activity, defended the liberty of the Church against the Commission dealing with the convents, and fought Protestantism with such determination that he could rightly be styled the leader of the Catholic restoration in Lower Austria. From the time of his taking up the government of the small diocese of Vienna, Klesl got into ever closer relations with archduke Matthias, then lieutenant of Lower Austria and Hungary and completely won his confidence. From that time onwards he also intervened increasingly in political affairs.

How keenly Klesl at first fought for the aims of the Catholic restoration and reform is shown by a memorandum drawn up by him in 1596 for the bishop of Passau, in which he utterly condemned every form of temporizing, yielding and accommodation. In 1604, in a memorial which the archduke Matthias presented to the emperor as his own composition, he demanded that the assurances which Maximilian II had made to the Protestants should be revoked. In 1606 and 1608 he begged of Matthias, in most earnest fashion, not to make concessions of any kind to those who had left the Church. How strongly Klesl still maintained this standpoint in 1609 is shown by his bold action at Easter of that year, when Matthias had yielded to the rebels of Horn. Nevertheless not only through Maximilian, duke of Bavaria, but likewise through the nuncios, who very likely felt hurt by Klesl’s somewhat sharp and brusque manner, reports reached Rome which were anything but favourable to him. In the Instruction of May, 1607, for the papal nuncio, Caetani, Klesl’s excellent work on behalf of the Church is indeed recognized, but he is also represented as self-willed and presumptuous and as not having opposed with the zeal one expected from him, the concessions which were granted to the Protestants on the occasion of the peace treaty lately concluded with the Hungarians. In the autumn of 1608, Klesl himself felt that the Pope did not hold the best opinion of him. In the spring of 1609 the nuncio of Graz reported the rumour that Klesl had had a hand in the concessions made to the Protestants. In August the nuncio of Vienna drew the Curia’s attention to the fact that, though he had been named a bishop a good while ago, he had not yet been consecrated. Thereupon the nuncio was instructed to urge the consecration; for all that Klesl put it off for several years longer. When, in October, 1609, the nuncio reported to Cardinal Borghese a communication he had from Klesl, to the effect that Matthias was thinking of asking for his elevation to the cardinalate, he added the remark that this communication had not been made without clever calculation, for the idea was that it should be passed on to Rome. Yet in July, 1610, the same nuncio was compelled to admit that Klesl was the only defender of the Church in those parts. A Brief of Paul V of May, 1611, praised Klesl’s efforts in defence of the Catholic religion. A Brief of August 1st in the same year is to the same effect, except for a warning to steadfastness against the attempts of the Protestants. The letters of Cardinal Borghese to the nuncio of Vienna in June and July, 1611, concerning Klesl’s equivocal attitude towards the Protestants, are much more explicit; there we read that it was regrettable that such a man should have so much influence; may God’s grace enlighten him. The hostility to which Klesl found himself exposed on many sides led him, towards the end of 1609, to entertain the idea of retiring from the political arena. Twice, in fact, viz. in 1610 and 1611, he asked to be released, but Matthias was unwilling to lose a trusty favourite and a counsellor who had become indispensable. Nor did he have cause to regret his action, for Klesl rendered him exceedingly valuable service at the time of his elevation to the kingdom of Bohemia and to the imperial throne.

The more Matthias, now raised to the most exalted dignity, got entangled in a labyrinth of difficulties, the less able was he to do without the help of Klesl. As president of the Privy Council the indefatigable and ambitious man became “the emperor’s manager” and his veritable factotum during the whole of his reign. His influence was all the greater as he was able to supply considerable sums to a man who was for ever in need of money. If, on occasion, Klesl would profess to be no more than a humble and faithful servant of his master, he was at times imprudent enough to boast that Matthias owed him everything and that he had helped him to his crowns. In a satirical dialogue of the time on existing political conditions, we read that Klesl was universally styled the “vice-emperor”, and that though he was indeed a “Papist” he knew how to trim his sails according to the wind and that he had one foot in each camp.

Judgments of this kind became intelligible in view of the change which had come over Klesl since the coldly calculating politician in him had pushed the prince of the Church into the background. He who had until now sternly rejected every form of temporizing and compromising in religious matters, now, under pressure of the grave weakening of the Catholic and monarchical principle, caused by the quarrel of the two Habsburg brothers, weakly advocated a policy of accommodation by which he hoped to save the authority of the House of Austria. Now as before, it is true, he resisted the demands of the Protestants in the Austrian hereditary States and promoted the Catholic reform movement there, but the aim of his imperial policy was to win over the Protestants, by means of concessions, to the common cause and by reconstructing the Catholic League, to subject it to his imperial master. How far Klesl was prepared to yield is shown by his conduct in the most important of all the questions then pending between Catholics and Protestants—the question, namely, of the imperial dioceses which the latter had illegally seized. To the demand of the Protestant administrator of the archbishopric of Magdeburg for investiture, or a corresponding indult, as well as the grant of a seat and a vote at the Diet, Klesl was so far willing to accede as to consider the grant of an indult for a few years, subject to certain conditions. This meant nothing else but the temporary legalizing of the robbery of Church property and a breach in the ecclesiastical Reservation which was so closely linked to the religious peace of Augsburg.

The earliest as well as the most decided opponent of these plans of Klesl’s was duke Maximilian of Bavaria who took the field against him on the occasion of the Diet convened at Ratisbon for the summer of 1613. He rejected every concession to the Protestant administrators of dioceses, whether it consisted in an indult of investiture or in the grant of a seat and vote at the Diet which was so frequently demanded; for these men could not be considered as having any legal right. If the Protestant administrators of dioceses were given seat and vote at the Diet, Maximilian insisted, the Protestants would have in the council of princes the majority they already possessed in the councils of the cities, and would not fail to use it for the complete oppression of the Catholics. Maximilian was equally opposed to any change in the constitution of the Catholic Defence League which was his very own creation and of the leadership of which he would allow no one to deprive him. It was to be expected that the duke of Bavaria would seek to make his influence felt in Rome on these questions as against the designs of Klesl.

Already then, as later on, it was said that Paul V, together with the Jesuits and the Catholic Estates of empire, were determined to abrogate the religious peace of Augsburg and to open a war of extermination against the adherents of the new faith. There never was question of this. However strongly the Holy See, the Jesuits and the rest of the Catholic polemists protested in point of fact, against the numerous violations of the rights of the Church which were implied in the religious settlement of Augsburg, they never questioned the validity of the agreement as a political and civil treaty of peace. It is true that the Holy See had not positively sanctioned the agreement of 1555, but tolerated it in practice as the less of two evils. For the same reason Paul V even went a step further when he counselled its maintenance. Repeatedly, especially in the years 1610 and 1611, he expressed himself in the sense that “in these times, which were already sufficiently troubled and difficult, the religious and the civil peace should not be jeopardized, nor should any cause or occasion be given for open war and rebellion within the holy empire”. For the year 1612 we have several proofs that Paul V directed the electors to preserve the religious peace. Nothing was further from the circumspect and cautious Pontiff than a desire to provoke warlike complications, for he was well aware that the Catholics were the weaker party in the empire, so that it would have been most imprudent to tamper with the religious peace of Augsburg. The Pope shrank from the responsibility of giving the signal for the outbreak of a war of the issue of which he was afraid. This, and consideration for the House of Habsburg, were the decisive factors in the attitude of reserve which the Pope adopted towards the League. However much he approved of a Catholic Defence League as such, he gave it his support hesitatingly and cautiously, and in 1611 he roundly declared he would not contribute a penny if the Catholics were to undertake anything against the Protestants which would be at variance with the religious peace. However, this peace should have been observed not alone by the Catholics but likewise by the Protestants. For this reason the Pope condemned those concessions which broke the ecclesiastical Reservation; hence also he utterly condemned Klesl’s policy of compromise. Cardinal Carlo Madruzzo, who was appointed apostolic legate for the Diet of Ratisbon, was directed in his instruction of March, 1613, to exert himself to the utmost so as to prevent the grave damage to the Catholic cause which was bound to arise from such a policy. In this Instruction Klesl’s policy is subjected to the severest criticism. The emperor’s counsellors, it says, think of political conditions and the advantage of the moment rather than of the glory of God, the preservation of the Catholic religion and the true welfare of the State. From worldly motives and through thinking only of the present moment, they devise various political schemes which they then seek to force upon other Catholics. They flatter themselves that by so doing they deprive the Catholics of nothing, whilst they satisfy their opponents, and thus assure the longed-for peace. Anyone who sees deeper, the Instruction goes on, knows from experience that no one has done more grievous harm to all Catholics and to the Catholic religion than those politicians who want to stand well with all parties. Hence, at the coming Diet, the legate’s duty will be to oppose by every means the plans of Klesl which consider only the passing moment, and which, though seemingly acceptable, are in reality most injurious. The legate should get the Catholics to oppose a united resistance. On the Catholic side no one bestirred himself more than Maximilian of Bavaria. He besought the emperor, the nuncio Marra and the legate Madruzzo, not to yield in the matter of the grant of an indult to the administrator of Magdeburg. Were they to yield on this point they would never be able to answer for it to the Pope whose still existing rights in Germany would be most grievously injured, nor to the Catholics who would be threatened with the direst disaster. When the nuncio ascertained that some Catholic Estates took up a completely negative attitude on the matter, he set down all the arguments against it in a memorial addressed to the emperor. At one time Klesl hoped to win over to his view the Elector of Mayence, and even the legate himself, to whom he tried to represent the whole thing as a purely political question and one in which no danger lurked for religion. But Madruzzo was not to be taken in. He replied to Klesl, on July 24th, that the grant of an indult of investiture to the Protestant administrator of Magdeburg was contrary to Canon Law, to the laws of empire, and in particular, to the religious peace, and that it would encourage Protestants to seize yet more bishoprics and monasteries and other Church property. He could not sanction concessions of this kind, all the more as on this point the Pope had marked down a clear line of conduct for him. When the indult, against the grant of which Madruzzo worked with all his might, was eventually refused, Klesl made futile efforts to soothe the Catholics who were still irritated against him. From Bavaria he had to listen to bitter reproaches; but what was of far greater importance was that the annoyance of the Catholics brought about a revulsion of feeling against the whole imperial policy of moderation. That policy failed utterly at the Diet of Ratisbon, for, notwithstanding all the advances on the  imperial side, an agreement could not even be reached with the Calvinist party of the Palatinate. With the declaration, which was a mockery of every principle of constitutional law and right, that they refused to bow to majority decisions, not only in matters of religion, but in all other questions also, the Calvinist party formally refused obedience to the constitutions of the empire. The party finally protested against a decision of the Diet of empire granting a subsidy of thirty months for the war against the Turks which had been passed by the Estates which still remained loyal to the emperor and which, besides the Catholics, included Saxony and Darmstadt from the Lutheran party. The Palatine Calvinist party could dare to behave thus because, through the Union’s alliances with England (April 7th, 1612) and Holland (May 6th, 1613) they had strong foreign support. How blinded Klesl must have been when he hoped to bring about a compromise with such a people!

Paul had left Klesl in no uncertainty as to how much he condemned his policy of compromise. Cardinal Madruzzo was commissioned to inform him that the Pope did not merely disapprove any concession in the matter of the Protestant administrator of Magdeburg, but that he forbade it in virtue of his supreme authority: Klesl’s arguments were futile nor could questions of religion be handled according to the principles of raison d’état. When Klesl attempted  to plead the concessions of former emperors, he was told through Cardinal Borghese, that these clearly proved the exact opposite inasmuch as every concession hitherto granted had done extraordinary harm to religion; if worse were not to follow all further concessions must be avoided as much as possible. Out of regard for the person of the influential minister, Paul V allowed him almost at the same date to retain all the benefices he had held until then, viz. the dioceses of Vienna and Wiener-Neustadt, the post of provost of the Chapter of St. Stephen at Vienna, and the parish of Oberhollabrunn.

Whilst the agreement with the Protestants, at which Klesl had aimed, was thus utterly wrecked, his plan for a reconstruction of the League which was directed against the growing influence of Bavaria and which had the support of Schweikart, the Elector of Mayence, made a great step forward at a League meeting of the time, for on that occasion it definitely came under the influence of the emperor.

Paul V, in his anxiety to avoid offending either the emperor or the League, had always viewed with displeasure Austria’s exclusion from the Catholic federation, and as early as 1609, at the request of the Spanish ambassador, he had taken steps for the admission of the Habsburgs into the League. His efforts to settle the disputes between Maximilian and the Elector of Mayence, Schweikart, had, however, been in vain. How greatly the Pope regretted this discord was seen at the beginning of 1613, in the discussions with the archbishop of Bamberg, Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen, who had come to Rome to do homage in the emperor’s name. Notwithstanding the intrigues of the Austrian party, the envoy obtained a promise from Paul V that he would continue, and that for a period of three years, the subsidy which he had previously guaranteed. However, the suspicion spread by the same party, to the effect that Maximilian had other views than the safeguarding of religion and the interests of the emperor, continued to make a strong impression upon the Pope and the Roman Cardinals.

In October, 1613, before he had learnt of the reconstruction of the League at its latest assembly, Paul V had informed the Count of Collalto, whom the emperor had dispatched to Rome, that he was prepared to co-operate in any effort which would induce the Catholic League to obey the emperor and which would guarantee that the subsidy he had promised to it would be spent on the war against the Turks. On the part of Rome, therefore, Klesl had nothing to fear as regards the League, except that it did not approve the eligibility of Protestants for membership which had been agreed to at its last meeting. Eventually he succeeded in completely conciliating the Pope. In pursuance of his policy of conciliation, and notwithstanding his failure at the Diet of Ratisbon, he now began to make propaganda for it in Rome. His letter of September 1st, 1614, to Cardinal Borghese shows how cleverly he proceeded: “If I were in Rome”, he wrote, “and could describe the situation in Germany, His Holiness and the Sacred College would be far better informed. The nuncios are often mistaken for they have no access to State secrets”. For the rest he was ready to do the will of His Holiness in all things, as he had repeatedly declared.

These assurances, however, were belied by Klesl’s attitude with regard to the appointment of a successor to Matthias, a question which was coming more and more into the foreground, since the emperor had no children. The uncertainty of the succession gravely jeopardized not only the interests of the House of Habsburg and those of the empire, but the welfare also of the Catholic Church, for the Union was planning, not only the exclusion of the Habsburgs, but the utter extirpation of the Catholics of Germany, even if the whole constitution of the empire were to crumble in the process. Consequently, ever since the day of the emperor’s election, Paul V, the Austrian archdukes and, subsequently to the Diet of Ratisbon the ecclesiastical Electors also, had insisted on some decisive measure with regard to the succession. All the above-named had in view, as their candidate for the Habsburg Hereditary States as well as for the empire, the archduke Ferdinand who was head of the line of Stiria and in the flower of his age. The papal nuncio favoured this candidature, which was not only strongly opposed by most of the Protestants, but, to the painful surprise of many, by Spain also, for the reason that Philip III imagined that he had some hereditary claims to Bohemia and Hungary. A further delay was caused by Klesl’s insistence on the necessity of first concluding an agreement —a “Composition’’, that is—between the religious parties which opposed each other with such bitter hostility, an issue which he hoped to arrive at through his diplomatic skill and his little tricks. However, he lacked the necessary resolution which might have caused his policy of conciliation to triumph; nor did he wholly belong to any one party. Hence, in view of his hesitation and indecision, it was inevitable that sooner or later he should lose control of events.

Archduke Maximilian, in his great anxiety for the future of the House of Habsburg, insisted with the utmost determination on a prompt settlement of the succession. The slackness with which Klesl proceeded in this all-important affair roused him to fierce indignation, so much so that he accused him of being actuated by the lowest motives. More and more the idea took root in the fiery archduke’s mind that Klesl was a traitor and an enemy of the dynasty. There can be no doubt that Maximilian went too far in his interpretation of the very tortuous paths and the somewhat obscure policy of Klesl. Not a few of Klesl’s arguments for a delay of a settlement of the succession were not without solid grounds. Thus it was sound reasoning when he insisted on the necessity of first arriving at an understanding with Spain, and of preparing the ground in Germany and Bohemia.

It would be difficult to prove that Klesl’s slackness in so important a matter, which his habitual energy makes all the more astounding, had its roots in a traitorous disposition of mind. Nor does it seem just to imagine that he allowed himself to be prompted by the fear that an early settlement of the succession would rob him of the unlimited influence which up till then he had exercised over the emperor Matthias. It would rather seem that, from patriotic motives, Klesl wanted an agreement between the various parties to take precedence over all else, an attitude that does credit rather to his heart than to his political sense.

Already in 1614 Rome had failed to find in Klesl’s attitude to the question of the succession the necessary clarity, and had warned him not to yield in the matter of granting a vote to the Protestant administrator of the diocese of Magdeburg, for no evil may be done for the sake of a good result.

In July, 1614, and in June, 1615, Paul V had urged the ecclesiastical Electors to hasten the election of a king of the Romans. In August, 1615, through the nuncio, he exhorted Klesl, now that peace had been made with the Turks and affairs had been settled in Bohemia, to add to his fame by settling the question of the succession. A Brief to the same purport was despatched to the ecclesiastical Electors on October 27th, 1615.

Whilst the number of the opponents of Klesl, whose blunt and rough manner hurt many and whose tongue spared no one, grew even at the imperial court, the weak and indolent Matthias remained unshaken in his confidence in him. To this circumstance Klesl owed it that, though the gravest accusations and the worst suspicions had been voiced against him in his capacity as leader of the imperial policy, especially by archduke Maximilian, Paul V, in a consistory of April 11th, 1616, proclaimed his elevation to the cardinalate which, at the emperor’s intervention, had already taken place in secret on December 2nd, 1615. The chamberlain Ludovico Ridolfi was charged with the presentation of the red biretta; he also brought the Golden Rose to the empress. In the same consistory Klesl was given the office of Protector of Germany.

Thus did the son of the Viennese baker attain the highest degree of ecclesiastical honours. He had now reached the peak of his fortune and occupied a position similar to that once held by Wolsey in England and, later on, by Richelieu in France. As in the case of those two men so in him also, the Statesman overshadowed the Churchman. The letter he wrote to the emperor as soon as his elevation was made public, is characteristic evidence of this change : “Early this morning,” he wrote on April 20th, 1616, “the Rome courier brought me letters of congratulation from Cardinal Borghese and many other Cardinals in as much as their Lord had proclaimed me a Cardinal on the 11th April. God knows that this gives me no pleasure. But in order to conform with your Majesty’s will, and because the evil tongues of wicked people drive me to it, it has to be; for it is impossible for a Roman emperor to show greater favour to a Churchman. But your Majesty’s favour, affection, and true confidence are worth more to me than the papacy itself.”

Paul V had charged Ridolfi to urge Klesl by word of mouth in the matter of the succession. This anxiety for a speedy settlement of the question also found expression in a Brief dated May 6th, 1616, of which Ridolfi was the bearer. On the same day similar Briefs were likewise dispatched to the ecclesiastical Electors.

On June 19th, 1616, Klesl wrote to the Pope in answer to the Brief of May 6th, and the message of Ridolfi. “Though the whole College of Cardinals,” he writes, “especially those named by Paul V, were greatly beholden to the Pope, none were more so than he himself, whom His Holiness had singled out from among all men for so great an honour, and on whom his fatherly affection had bestowed so many graces and favours. There was not a man living who was more anxious to live and die according to the wishes and desires of the Pope than himself, seeing that he had more grounds for it than any other man.” Klesl then goes on to state, in emphatic terms, his wish to satisfy the Pope in the question of the succession. There follows an exhaustive account of the various stages of the affair. He ends by saying that as much as in him lay, and as far as the parties would follow his lead, he would work day and night in order to satisfy the Pope. But as long as Spain refused to desist from its demands, little could be hoped for, inasmuch as the emperor would never go against Philip III, since such action would upset the whole House of Habsburg. “There is, therefore, no other remedy,” he says in conclusion, “but your Holiness’ personal authority and intervention. But there is no time to lose, for the emperor is old and often ailing. Your Holiness will gather from this report where the difficulty lies, and what it is that ties my hands; hence I am not to blame. But if I get the necessary support I shall not fail, with God’s grace, to do my best in order to fulfil your Holiness’ will.”

This letter crossed a Brief of June 25th, which once more urged the speeding up of the business. At the same time the Pope wrote to Maximilian. On December 16th, 1616, Paul V. sent yet another exhortation to the emperor and to Klesl. Despite the Pope’s insistence, Klesl nevertheless set to work in this question of the succession with almost pedantic caution and easy-going deliberation. Again and again he insisted that his efforts for the election of a king of the Romans would yield no result without the compromise— the so-called “Composition”—with the Protestants. The irritation, not to say the despair, of the impetuous Maximilian was steadily growing. In the autumn he dispatched to Klesl Eustace von Westernach, Knight-Commander of the Teutonic Order, with instructions roundly to tell the Cardinal that he must set to work and execute what he promised by word of mouth and in writing, even on his eternal salvation; if he refused, the archduke would be compelled to look on him as the worst enemy, nay, as the destroyer of the House of Habsburg, and to take every possible means to defend it against such a danger.

Until then Klesl had shown himself a master in the art of evading a solution of the question of the succession. It was a heavy blow for him when, in the spring of 1617, an agreement with Spain became a certainty. By this means the archdukes Maximilian and Ferdinand thought they would force the cunning fox from his last hiding-place. When Klesl attempted further evasion they threatened to remove him by force. On his part the Spanish ambassador told the Cardinal that he would complain to the Pope. At last Klesl saw himself compelled to yield, at least to the extent of convoking the Bohemian Diet for August, 1617. The two archdukes had made up their minds to seize Klesl by force should he fail to abide by this time limit which was still further reduced when the emperor fell seriously ill at the end of April, 1617. In consequence Klesl was forced to give his consent to the convocation of the Bohemian Estates for June 5th. The emperor’s proposal was to the effect, that in view of his approaching old age as well as the renunciation of his brothers Maximilian and Albert, the succession in Bohemia should be settled in such wise that his adopted son, the archduke Ferdinand, should be “accepted” (not elected), proclaimed and crowned. When the Protestant opposition had been sufficiently intimidated, Ferdinand was almost unanimously accepted as king of Bohemia on June 6th. Paul V hailed the event with the greatest joy. Ferdinand, having promised to ratify, after the emperor’s death, the rights and privileges of Bohemia, among which was the “Letter of Majesty”, was crowned on June 19th. Shortly before these events Paul V had once more pressed Klesl in the matter of the succession in the empire. The affair was carried a step further when, at the beginning of August, the emperor journeyed to Dresden, to visit the Elector of Saxony, Johann Georg, in company with Ferdinand, his brother Maximilian and Klesl. On this occasion the Elector promised to attend, anywhere and at any time, a Diet of the Electors to be convoked by Matthias, and to take part in the election of a king of the Romans. Candlemas-day, 1618, was agreed upon as the date of the Diet. Klesl had succeeded in getting the “Composition”, or compromise with the Protestants, placed on the agenda of the Diet, for the Cardinal clung to his idea of the necessity of concessions to the latter.

That Klesl was chiefly guided by political consideration and gave but little evidence of having any solid principles where religious questions were concerned, is shown by his efforts to bring about a marriage between the archduke Ferdinand and the Protestant widow of the former Elector of Saxony. The Cardinal, who in this matter also acted merely as a politician, hoped to win the support of the Protestants as soon as it became known that the princess was free to follow her religion at court and to have her preacher with her. However, a man like Ferdinand was not to be won over by a scheme which did not square with the laws of the Church and which would endanger his life’s work—the Catholic restoration in Stiria.

The election of Ferdinand as king of Bohemia was a heavy blow for the Elector Palatine, Frederick V, who, in his suit for the hand of the daughter of the king of England, had spoken of the crown of Wenceslaus as his own future possession. The Union now decided that at any rate Ferdinand, whom the Protestants detested because of his strict Catholic attitude in Central Austria, should not ascend the imperial throne; in their desperation they even went the length of inviting their bitterest opponent, viz. Maximilian of Bavaria, to accept that dignity. However, at Munich this was seen to be “A Calvinist trap” the aim of which was to stir up enmity between Bavaria and Austria and the Catholic Powers, and, by delaying the election of Ferdinand, which could scarcely be prevented, to secure a long imperial vicariate for the Palatine. In the spring of 1618, Ferdinand’s chances were favourable. The meeting of the electoral Diet seemed assured and his election, for which five votes had been made sure of, could not be prevented even by the Palatine and Brandenburg, when all of a sudden new difficulties arose. Curiously enough they originated at the court. Their author was Klesl, the man of “impenetrable craft”, of which the Vienna nuncio had spoken already in 1610.

Once again Klesl showed himself a master in the art of temporizing and of postponing a decision. In view of a declaration of the Elector of Brandenburg, the Diet of princes convoked at Ratisbon for Candlemas-day was postponed till May 28th. Then it was given out that the travelling expenses of the emperor to Ratisbon must first be provided by means of a Spanish subsidy. For a while discussions on this point sank into the background in consequence of the meeting of the Hungarian Diet, at which, as a sequel to a compromise between the government and the Estates, Peter Pazmany, since May 16th, 1616, archbishop of Gran and primate, secured, on May 16th, 1618, the proclamation of Ferdinand as king of Hungary. Meanwhile, Klesl, despite Paul V’s earnest warnings, went on intriguing against the princes’ Diet, and in so doing, he did not shrink from deceit. That the Cardinal, as was maintained by archduke Maximilian and by many people in Bavaria, was actually a traitor and in collusion with the Hungarian opposition, is neither likely, nor has any proof been discovered up to the present time. But it is a fact that, by his intrigues, he succeeded in delaying the opening of the electoral Diet for which the archduke Maximilian was pressing with the utmost zeal, long enough to make its assembly impossible owing to the outbreak of revolution in Bohemia. Ferdinand and Maximilian were now obliged to concentrate their attention on the preservation of the crown of Bohemia rather than on obtaining that of Germany.

In view of the fact that even in regard to the Bohemian rebels Klesl stood for a policy of temporizing, and thus rendered joint energetic action impossible, Ferdinand and Maximilian decided to put a stop to the “impenetrable intrigues” of the Cardinal-minister by having him arrested and taken into the Tyrol, on July 20th, 1618. In Rome such an issue had been feared for some time. In April the Pope had adjured Klesl not to put off any longer the opening of the Diet of the Electors inasmuch as the delay might lead to the worst consequences for his own person.

In a secret consistory of August 6th, 1618, Paul V. communicated to the Cardinals the report of the Vienna nuncio on the arrest of Klesl, at the same time expressing his regret that violent hands should have been laid on a Cardinal and a bishop in his own residence. A commission of Cardinals was appointed to devise on the measures to be taken in this matter. Obviously the injury done to the dignity of a Cardinal could not be condoned, but neither could king Ferdinand be offended, for on him all Catholic hopes were centred. In consequence Paul V proceeded with great caution and mildness. He acknowledged the report of the emperor Matthias in a Brief of August 13th in which he refers the emperor to an oral message of the nuncio. A no less carefully worded Brief addressed to Ferdinand and Maximilian was to the same effect. The nuncio demanded that the archdukes should seek absolution of the censures they had incurred by arresting Klesl and to state their grievances against him. When this demand elicited no reply, Fabrizio Verospi was dispatched to Vienna as nuncio extraordinary, in February, 1619. He was also charged to hear what Klesl had to say. Thereupon Ferdinand yielded. He not only sought absolution from the censures, he also handed over Klesl to the papal envoy. Under the most stringent safeguards, Verospi escorted the Cardinal to the monastery of St. Georgenberg near Schwaz, in the Tyrol, where he was kept in close confinement. Klesl, nevertheless, felt greatly relieved. In a letter of October 7th, 1619, he thanked the Pope for sending Verospi and surrendered himself wholly to the will of His Holiness.

(3.)

Whilst in consequence of the quarrel between the Habsburg brothers the Catholic cause suffered heavy losses in Austria and several dioceses in North Germany were likewise lost to the Church, in other parts of the empire the Catholic restoration was able to register considerable successes which promised to compensate the Church for the loss of several extensive territories. One splendid triumph for the ancient Church was the profession of the Catholic faith, first privately in July, 1613, and publicly in the following year, of the Count Palatine Wolfgang Wilhelm von Neuburg. Paul V had encouraged the intentions of the Neuburger with the grant of ecclesiastical revenues. After his reception, he expressed his thanks and obligation to Maximilian I for his share in the conversion, at the same time as he granted the necessary dispensation, owing to kinship, for the marriage of the convert with Magdalen, the sister of the duke of Bavaria. As early as January, 1614, the Pope instructed the nuncio of Cologne to confer with Wolfgang Wilhelm on the subject of the Catholic restoration in his territory. The latter, at the death of his father, availed himself of his right of reform, slowly at first, but later on with increasing determination. In 1617, the Catholic faith was proclaimed as the religion of the country and the activities of all preachers were terminated. Already at the close of 1613 the first Jesuits had been called to Neuburg, and before long the grammar school and the court church were handed over to them.5Owing to the shortage of priests, the Jesuits, to whom Paul V assigned, in 1617, the monastery of Eschenbrunn which the Protestants had seized, and the Capuchins, had to do most of the work of the restoration of the Catholic religion in all the remaining districts of the territory of Pfalz-Neuburg. To this end they employed the means then universally in use: a general invitation to come back to the Church, adequate instruction, and, as a last remedy in regard to the obstinate, expulsion from the country. The conversion of the Count Palatine, Wolfgang Wilhelm, was all the more important for the repression of Protestantism in the empire, inasmuch as he drove a wedge into the Union and prevented the duchies of the Lower Rhine from passing completely into the hands of the Protestants. The Protestant attempt to destroy the ancient Church in the territory of the Lower Rhine had failed.

It was of no less consequence for North-Western Germany that, at the death of the Elector of Cologne, Ernest (February 17th, 1612) he was succeeded by his nephew, the strictly Catholic-minded Ferdinand of Bavaria, at Cologne in March, and at Munster in April. It was due to the prudence and energy of this man that the restoration of religious unity, which his predecessor had begun, was completed in the diocese of Munster. Where Protestantism had struck deeper roots obstinate resistance was, of course, not wanting, but in many localities, where the majority of the people were sunk in ignorance rather than in heresy, it was not difficult to bring whole parishes back to the Churh. Owing to the scarcity of good priests, men, that is, of irreproachable conduct, it proved much more difficult to bring about the internal restoration of the Church which was being pursued at the same time. In addition to his vicar-general, Johann Hartmann, a man full of circumspection and a former pupil at the Germanicum, Ferdinand had chiefly recourse to the services of the Jesuits whose school at Munster was gaining an increasing influence in the more cultivated circles. Like the Jesuits, the Capuchins, who had come to Munster in 1612, also enjoyed the bishop’s support. In the following year Ferdinand also founded at Munster a convent of the Franciscans of the strict observance.

In Paderborn also it was of supreme consequence that, with the help of Paul V, it had become possible, in 1612, to give to the aged Dietrich von Fürstenberg, in the person of Ferdinand, a coadjutor who had both the power and the will successfully to carry through the Catholic restoration without heeding the protests of his Protestant neighbours. Fürstenberg, who had hoped that his nephew would be chosen, had needed repeated warnings from the Pope  before he became reconciled with Ferdinand’s appointment. But once the election had become an accomplished fact he passed, in conjunction with his coadjutor, all the necessary measures for carrying out the Catholic reform and restoration. In this respect great services were rendered by the Capuchins who had come to Paderborn in 1612, and even more so by the Jesuits who were indefatigable in their efforts to revive the Catholic spirit by means of sermons, devotions, processions and conffaternities. The school of philosophy and theology founded by Dietrich at Paderborn in 1614, and enriched with the usual privileges by Paul V, was opened two years later and entrusted to the Jesuits. It was destined to become an intellectual centre and a seed plot of the Catholic faith for the diocese, as well as a strong point from which apostles could sally forth to reconquer the surrounding territories.

In the archdiocese of Cologne also the Jesuits and the Capuchins were the chief agents of the Catholic reform. A proof of the Elector Ferdinand’s support of the Jesuits at Cologne may be seen in the magnificent church of the Assumption, an edifice still completely on Gothic lines, of which the nuncio Albergati laid the foundation stone in 1618. The city council of Cologne gave powerful support to the Catholic cause generally and to the Jesuits in particular, for its members realized that their work had not only a religious value, but a social and civic one as well. In 1613 a few Jesuits of Cologne went to Essen. At Neuss, in 1615, Ferdinand assigned to them the Franciscan convent, but in this matter he proceeded with so much violence that Paul V had to rebuke him. In like manner the seminary of Cologne, erected in 1615, for the establishment of which the Pope had already urgently pressed in 1611, was confided by the Elector to the sons of St. Ignatius. At the suggestion of Paul V the Capuchins came to Cologne in 1611; in 1615 they made a foundation at Essen, and in 1618 another at Bonn.

The Catholic reform was in some measure hindered in consequence of the conflicts which Ferdinand had had with the nuncio Coriolano Garzadoro being repeated under his successor, Attilio Amalteo. Antonio Albergati, who succeeded Amalteo in 1610, also had many difficulties with the archiepiscopal curia. Nevertheless during his eleven years’ tenure of the nunciature, he was able to display so fruitful an activity that the rapid and vigorous rise of Catholic life in the archdiocese of Cologne was in a large part due to him. Albergati’s friend, the indefatigable Franciscan Nicholas Wiggers, likewise accomplished a vast amount of good; he established at Cologne the confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament which was confirmed by Paul V in 1611.

In 1611 the Protestants caused a rising in the wealthy and powerful imperial city of Aix-la-Chapelle. They stormed the Jesuit college. The Catholic population found itself in such straits that, in 1612, the Elector Ferdinand appealed to the Pope on their behalf. A complete revulsion occurred in 1614 when Spinola the Spanish general enforced the penalties inflicted by the emperor and restored the Catholic city council. By this means the old imperial city was saved for the Church. In 1615 the Jesuits began the erection there of a new college, and soon after, that of a fair-sized church. The Capuchins had been accommodated in the old monastery of St. Servatius.

In the diocese of Treves Lothar von Metternich pursued with undiminished zeal his work for ecclesiastical regeneration. Outstanding features of his activity were his visitation of parishes, the reform of the Benedictine abbey of St. Maximin, and the Capuchin foundation at Treves. As “founder and a most lavish benefactor of the Capuchin Fathers”, the Elector laid the foundation, in 1617, of their church there. His help enabled them at a later date to found a house also at Cochem, on the Moselle. Paul V did not fail to support Metternich’s efforts for the reform. He styled him the pattern of a bishop.

As regards Church reform, the Elector of Mayence, Johann Schweikart, was completely in line with the Council of Trent. The reform, which ended by triumphing over very great difficulties, found expression in the Church ordinance of 1615 and its supplementary articles of 1617. At this time the property of the Catholic Church in the archdiocese was fairly secure. At the very outset of Paul V’s pontificate Schweikart had successfully carried out the Catholic restoration in the domain of Konigstein. The Pope repeatedly praised his zeal in special Briefs. But it was only by degrees that he overcame the difficulties he had to encounter when he undertook to bring back to the Catholic Church the various localities of the county of Rieneck which were the joint property of the Elector of Mayence and the lord of Hanau. Even more arduous was the Catholic restoration of the Eichsfeld, partly owing to its distance from the archiepiscopal residence; but there also the goal was eventually reached by means of frequent visitations, the appointment of sound Catholic officials, and through the Jesuits, who had a college and a school at Heiligenstadt. In other parts also of the diocese Schweikart made use of the Jesuits for the internal strengthening of the ancient Church. At Mayence he built a large school for them; in 1612 he established them in his winter residence at Aschaffenburg, and at Erfurt he protected the Fathers from hostile attacks. The Elector enabled the Capuchins to found a convent at Mayence in 1612, and another at Aschaffenburg in 1620.

Paul V resolved to take advantage of a rising at Frankfort on the Main, and the fear of the impending imperial punishment, to recover for the Church a town which had for the most part gone over to Protestantism. With this purpose in mind he requested, in 1615, the Elector of Mayence, who had been appointed imperial commissary for the purpose of quelling the rising, to take steps that the practice of the Catholic religion, which had been unduly circumscribed, should enjoy complete freedom and that the Jesuits should be allowed to open a college in the city. The Pope also wished to make it possible for the Capuchins to make a foundation in the old imperial city. The Jesuits did not succeed in establishing themselves at Frankfort and the Capuchins were only able to do so in 1626. With regard to the convocation of a provincial council by the archbishop of Mayence, the Holy See, in view of the troubled times, requested the Cologne nuncio, in 1609, to send in a report. In 1614 Albergati was instructed to hold visitations at Mayence, Cologne and Bamberg.

The newly-appointed bishop of Spire, Philip Christoph von Sotern, was early pressed by Paul V. to reform his cathedral chapter. Subsequently he supported Sotern’s labours in the cause of the restoration with so much energy that the bishop was able to write that the Pope’s memory would remain for ever in benediction in the diocese. In 1606 the zealous bishop of Worms, Wilhelm von Effern, called a few Jesuits into his diocese. The Cologne nuncio praised their work and protected them against the violent attacks which they had to encounter. Johann Friedrich von Schwalbach, who had been elected abbot of Fulda in 1606, enjoyed the strong support of Paul V in his plans for a reform. In 1608 an extremely laudatory Brief was sent to the aged, highly deserving bishop of Wurzburg, Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn. In the following year the Pope commissioned him to watch over the interests of the Church on the occasion of the election of a bishop for the vacant see of Bamberg. Owing to the fact that duke Maximilian also gave his attention to the matter, and with the help of the dean of the chapter, Johann Christoph von Neustetter, a former pupil of the Germanicum, the choice fell, on July 23rd, 1609, on the excellent Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen.

The new bishop of Bamberg undertook at once, with burning zeal, the internal as well as the external renewal of his diocese which had been utterly neglected by his unworthy predecessor, Gebsattel, so that already in 1610 Paul V sent him an expression of his highest satisfaction. In the spring of 1611, Johann Gottfried ordered a general visitation of the diocese which was carried out with great circumspection under the personal supervision of Friedrich Forner, his vicar-general. In the same year the bishop called the Jesuits to Bamberg. On the occasion of his journey to Rome, as imperial envoy for the purpose of doing homage to the Pope (at the close of 1612), he seized the opportunity to give an account of his diocese. As efficacious remedies against prevailing evils he mentioned the following: the celebration of diocesan synods, the revival of rural deaneries and the establishment of confraternities of the Blessed Sacrament and the Blessed Virgin. All these ideals Johann Gottfried carried into effect. Himself the pattern of what a priest ought to be, he gave to his court an almost monastic character. He personally visited a large part of his diocese, built several churches, one large hospital and a seminary for poor students. As the Rhenish Jesuit Provincial reported to the Pope in 1615,2 ecclesiastical conditions in the diocese of Bamberg had undergone a complete transformation. When on September 13th, 1617, Julius Echter closed his tired eyes, Johann Gottfried was put at the head of the diocese of Wurzburg also. He presided over both dioceses until 1622, and during that time he reformed the Benedictine monasteries in them.

In 1612 the splendid bishop of Eichstatt, Konrad von Gemmingen, was given a successor of like character. In the teeth of the opposition of the cathedral chapter, he summoned the Jesuits to Eichstatt. They took charge of the seminary and, together with the Capuchins, zealously devoted themselves also to pastoral work outside the city4

The diocese of Ratisbon also underwent a complete renewal at the hands of the excellent bishop Wolfgang von Hausen (1600-1613) who zealously visited his diocese and arranged for missions to be given by Jesuits and Capuchins. He was no less keen on the improvement of public worship than on the reform of the monasteries. His successor, Albert, Freiherr von Torring, continued his work in the same spirit.

Among the promoters of the Catholic restoration mention must be made of archduke Leopold who, though he allowed political questions to distract him from his pastoral duties, nevertheless did much for Church reform during the time he occupied the see of Passau, and later on also at Strassburg. For the purpose of maintaining ecclesiastical discipline, he instituted a diocesan council in both bishoprics. At Passau he encouraged a Capuchin foundation and built a magnificent college for the Jesuits. His activity in the diocese of Strassburg was repeatedly acknowledged by Paul V. Later on, when he neglected his ecclesiastical duties for the pursuit of politics, he was sharply reprimanded in a Papal Brief. Subsequently Leopold applied himself exclusively to the government of his dioceses and from that time onwards Paul V had every reason to be satisfied with his work. In 1614 the archduke ordered a general visitation which led to a sensible improvement in the religious condition of Alsace. In 1614 the Jesuits were given a college at Hagenau and in 1615 a residence at Schlettstatt. Above all Leopold furthered the principal Jesuit establishment at Molsheim. The church adjoining the college, which was consecrated in 1618, is a splendid proof of his liberality; next to the Jesuit church in Cologne it is the largest and most important Gothic edifice of the seventeenth century on German soil. Simultaneously with the consecration of this imposing edifice, the college, with Paul V’s consent, was given the status of an academy.

In the extensive diocese of Constance the devout bishop Johann Georg von Hallweil had energetically striven, in the first years of the seventeenth century, to raise ecclesiastical discipline, but his reign was too brief (1601-1603) to enable him to remove the numerous abuses which had crept in under his predecessor. This was the task which the noble Jakob Fugger set himself. He was elected on January 27th, 1604, and his reforming zeal was repeatedly encouraged by Paul V. He clearly saw that the spread of heresy could only be stopped by means of a thorough reform of the clergy, hence in the autumn of 1609, he held a diocesan synod the statutes of which were put into the hands of the clergy, in book form, in the following year. Here excellent rules were laid down for the pastoral ministry, preaching, catechizing, and clerical life generally. The synod divided the diocese into four districts each of which, in addition to the deans, was to have its own visitor who, as well as the deans themselves, was to be subject to two visitors general residing at Constance. The bishop took a personal share in the work of visitation and he was assisted by his coadjutor, Jakob Mirgel, a former pupil of the Germanicum.

Owing to the fact that most of the monasteries of the old Orders had lost sight of their original purpose—Weingarten alone, under its excellent abbot, Georg Wegelin, forming an exception—the new reformed Orders stepped into the breach in the diocese of Constance also. To the college which the Jesuits already possessed at Constance another was added in 1620, at Freiburg in Breisgau. Bishop Fugger favoured the Jesuits wherever he could, but he had perhaps even closer relations with the Capuchins in whose church at Constance he chose his last resting place. During his reign the number of Capuchin convents in the different parts of the diocese rose to twenty-one. Jesuits and Capuchins distinguished themselves especially during the plague of 1611, when they devoted themselves with the utmost zeal, day and night, to the bodily and spiritual welfare of the sick.

It is strange that so zealous a bishop as Fugger was in all Church matters, should have refused to comply with the duty of personally reporting in Rome. The Swiss nuncio, Ladislao d’Aquino, suspected that this was due to national antipathy towards the Italians. It may have been so; but a no less weighty reason was the heavy expense of such a journey and the dangers which an absence of some length entailed for the diocese in such troublous times. For the rest Fugger repeatedly sent delegates to report in his place, and Rome refrained from blaming his conduct.

The Curia found itself greatly embarrassed when the long­standing quarrel of the hot-headed archbishop of Salzburg, Wolfgang Dietrich von Raitenau, with Maximilian of Bavaria, became so acute that in the autumn of 1613 the duke overthrew his opponent by violent measures. The excitement caused in Rome by Maximilian’s action was at first very great. The older Cardinals were for stern measures against the duke of Bavaria who, nevertheless, found a keen defender in the person of Cardinal Millini. On Millini’s proposal, Antonio Diaz was dispatched to Salzburg as nuncio extraordinary, with mission to inquire into the affair, the first reports of which had borne a strong party colour. Diaz prevailed on Maximilian to hand over to him the captive bishop, but he himself treated him with the utmost harshness, compelled him on March 7th, 1612, to resign his see, and forthwith had him taken back to prison. Whilst in prison Raitenau wrote a detailed account of the harsh treatment he had been subjected to, declared that the accusations of his enemies, with the exception of his unlawful liaison with Salome Alt, were calumnies, complained bitterly of Diaz, and demanded a fresh inquiry by the bishops of Seckau and Lavant. However the document was intercepted and given to the nuncio. Before his departure, the latter handed over the prisoner to Mark Sittich von Hohenems who had been elected archbishop in the meantime. Though the brothers of Wolf Dietrich strove desperately to get him set at liberty, all their efforts failed owing to the opposition of Mark Sittich who feared for his position and who, contrary to what had been agreed, detained his unhappy predecessor in strict confinement at Hohensalzburg until the day of his death, January 16th, 1617.

The archbishop began his reign with a general visitation which brought to light deplorable conditions among the clergy. Improvement was bound to be slow, and Mark Sittich, who proceeded with great harshness, obtained no more than an outward conversion of the Protestants in the archdiocese. The latter were particularly numerous in the Pongau. With a view to carrying out the Tridentine decrees, Mark Sittich published, in 1616, a number of excellent ordinances and, in order to make stricter vigilance over the clergy practicable, he divided the archidiaconate of Salzburg into seven deaneries. The archbishop himself set a good example to the clergy for he said Mass almost daily and preached frequently. He also sought to strengthen the spiritual life by the introduction of the Forty Hours’ Prayer and the Roman Rite, by the establishment of numerous confraternities, by favouring the Capuchins and by means of pilgrimages and processions. For the formation of good priests Mark Sittich built a college which, later on, in keeping with his plan, developed into a university and was entrusted to the Benedictines. Thus from the ecclesiastical standpoint, Mark Sittich was the very antithesis of his predecessor though he resembled him in his love of magnificence and building on the big scale; to the latter passion the castle and park of Heilbronn and the cathedral of Salzburg owe their origin. This magnificent church, which at the time of Raitenau’s fall was hardly begun, and of which Mark Sittich laid the foundation stone for a second time in 1614, was now built, not as a rotunda, as had been planned by the celebrated pupil of Palladio, Vincenzo Scamozzi, but with a nave, on the model of the Gesu in Rome. The mighty structure erected by the Lombard, Santino Solari, which is wholly instinct with the spirit of the Roman baroque, was roofed in by the time of Sittich’s death in 1619, and the facade had reached half its height. To Sittich, who found his last resting place in the cathedral, belongs the glory of having created Germany’s most remarkable sacred edifice of the first half of the seventeenth century. Probably the most important and most deserving bishop of Germany of that period was, besides Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen of Bamberg and the aged Echter von Mespelbrunn, the bishop of Augsburg, Henry V von Knoringen. Richly endowed, energetic, deeply pious, conscientious, an indefatigable worker and burning with zeal for the Catholic cause, Henry devoted all his energy to establishing religious unity in his vast diocese and recalling clergy and people alike to discipline and order. He started his work of restoration in the second year of his reign by publishing a strong mandate on the subject of religion, and his efforts culminated in the reform decrees promulgated at the diocesan synod of 1610. He went on building on the foundation thus laid, by regular visitations of the parishes and by numerous ordinances for the secular and regular clergy and the people. In all this he was effectively assisted by the Jesuits, the Capuchins and the Franciscans, to all of whom he was a generous benefactor.

The bishop, who had made his studies with the Jesuits of Dillingen, is the founder of their university in that town. He also contributed to the erection of a new church, which in its lay-out and structure resembles the church of St. Michael at Munich. He consecrated it in 1617. In 1614 he had established a Tridentine seminary and confided its direction to the Jesuits. The statutes breathe the same spirit as those of the papal seminary of Dillingen. The praise which Paul V, in 1612, bestowed on his pastoral solicitude was all the more deserved as he had proved the first and most loyal supporter of Maximilian in the latter’s efforts for the formation of the Catholic Defence League.

Maximilian I, the greatest of all Bavaria’s rulers, had the defence of Catholic interests in the empire quite as much at heart as the promotion of the Catholic reform in his own territory. For this Paul V rewarded him with valuable privileges, heaped ecclesiastical dignities and revenues upon his brother Ferdinand, and overlooked many things in the internal ecclesiastical policy of the duke. However much, as a practical politician, he may have studied his own advantage, Maximilian’s Catholic sentiments nevertheless sprang from a most genuine conviction. In his recommendation to his son he states that the first and noblest duty of a ruler is to promote the glory of God, the Catholic religion, and the salvation of the souls of the subjects whom God has committed to him and for whom he will have to give an account at the last day. Maximilian’s ecclesiastical policy, which was both detailed and comprehensive, was dictated by his lively sense of duty. The purpose for which he strove, namely the preservation of the unity of the faith and the promotion of the religious and moral life of his subjects was, in the main, fully realized. On the other hand the duke was on dangerous ground when he enforced compliance with the laws of the Church by police measures and even appointed special spies to that effect. It was also a serious matter that Maximilian claimed for the State sovereign rights in Church matters which went far beyond the concessions of the Concordat, and when he at times seriously encroached on the jurisdiction of the bishops. If here there is question of very debatable government measures, Maximilian’s merits in respect to the moral improvement of a sadly neglected clergy and people stand out all the more conspicuously. In this respect the most important measure was the introduction all over the country of a systematic teaching of religion for which the excellent catechisms of Canisius were used.

The duke himself set his subjects the very best example. In contrast to the repulsive spectacle presented by most Protestant princely courts of the time, the conduct of the court of Munich was exemplary. It reacted on the capital, of which it has been said that it sheltered, at that time, one of the most strictly moral populations of Christendom.

The religious life, of which the congregations of our Lady and splendid processions were characteristic manifestations, was fostered with indefatigable zeal by the Jesuits. Their colleges at Ingolstadt and Munich reached the apex of their splendour at that time. The Capuchins devoted themselves to the great mass of the population. They, like the Jesuits, stood in close relation with the court. The Jesuit Buslidius was the duke’s confessor. The duke also held in high regard the Capuchin Lorenzo of Brindisi, who rendered valuable service to him in matters connected with the League. More than once the duke served Lorenzo’s mass. Yet another Capuchin, Giacinto of Casale, was destined to play an important role in the life of Maximilian. This remarkable man, together with Lorenzo of Brindisi, had been appointed a missioner in Germany by Paul V. He laboured there in 1606 and 1607 and thus came into relations with the imperial House of Habsburg. In 1613 he was again despatched to Germany in the suite of the Cardinal legate, Madruzzo, when he made the acquaintance of Maximilian and introduced the Capuchins at Ratisbon. The latter had already settled at Rosenheim in 1606. Maximilian founded a convent for them at Landshut in 1610, and at Straubing in 1614. Other convents were founded at Wurzburg in 1615, and at Gunzburg in 1616. In 1609 a convent of the Jesuit Sisters founded by Mary Ward for the education of girls was established at Munich. They eventually became known as “the English Ladies”.

The old Orders also awoke to a new life. In 1617 Paul V appealed to Maximilian with regard to the reform of the Bavarian Augustinians. In 1620, on the initiative of the Holy See, the Bavarian Franciscans were subjected to a thorough reform. In a Brief of February 23rd, 1620, to Maximilian, the Pope expressed his satisfaction at the result.

In the Tyrol also the religious life underwent a renewal similar to that which had taken place in Bavaria. Here also besides the prince bishops of Brixen and Trent, Andreas von Spaur and Carlo Madruzzo, it was the ruling prince, Maximilian, Grand­master of the Teutonic Order, who assured the triumph of the Catholic reform and restoration. All the reports that reached Rome about Maximilian’s life and dispositions could but justify the highest hopes. The Augustinian, Mander, who visited him in 1608, described him as the true ideal of a Catholic prince. Such praise was not undeserved. Though many a measure of Maximilian’s may not have been compatible with the letter of Canon Law, there can be no doubt that he strove for the best both for the Church and for his subjects. Hence Paul V repeatedly praised the Grand­master’s zeal for the progress of religion in his territory. As in Bavaria, so in the Tyrol, the encroachments of the State on the sphere of the Church, which were largely the result of circumstances, were attenuated by the devout sense of the prince who did not content himself with the enjoyment of the dignity and the revenues of a Grand-master but who lived accordingly, and even composed a prayer-book.

A remarkable characteristic of Maximilian, and one altogether singular in view of the acute religious feeling of the time, was a certain toleration towards heretics. Thus, in the year before his death, he appointed an anabaptist as his surgeon. He also protested against a decree of the synod of Brixen which would have forbidden the sick to call in a physician who did not profess Catholicism. Hence in dealing with heretics Maximilian would use external pressure only as a secondary means. Solid instruction and the example of good priests he considered to be the noblest, as well as the most effective means, for bringing about a Catholic renewal. His rule, so far as the Tyrol is concerned, proved decisive as regards that revival. The change in the clergy is shown by the reports of visitations which took place regularly after the reform synod of 1603. Year by year these documents bear witness to increasing improvement. Among the people that spirit now asserted itself to which the Tyrol owes its world-wide reputation as a staunch Catholic country. On all sides churches and chapels were either being erected or restored; the Easter Sepulchre, the crib at Christmas came into use in churches and private houses; after 1615 the custom spread of ringing a second bell after the evening Angelus to summon the people to pray for the departed; attendance at sermons and catechetical instructions and participation in confraternities, pilgrimages and processions became general; the recitation of the rosary established itself as a household practice ; and the reception of the sacraments increased.

The newly reformed Orders took a prominent part in this transformation. Maximilian’s biographers justly praise the Jesuits for their incredible zeal in the sphere of education as well as in the pastoral ministry. The higher education was almost exclusively in their hands. The Grand-master built a fine Grammar school for the fathers at Innsbruck, and heaped all manner of favours on the college. He likewise made every effort to settle the Society at Hagenau, Ensisheim, Freiburg in Breisgau and at Trent. The widow of archduke Ferdinand, Anna Catharina, received sympathetic support from Paul V for her religious foundations in the capital of the Tyrol. Close to the convent of the Servite Nuns she erected the so-called “Regelhaus”. Thither she withdrew in company with her younger daughter, in order to live the life of the Servite Tertiaries under the name of Anna Juliana. In 1614, she founded a monastery of Servite Friars in the new part of the town of Innsbruck. In recent years a suitable monument has been erected over her tomb in the church of the convent. In 1621, the Innsbruck Servites took charge of the famous place of pilgrimage of Waldrast. From the Tyrol they spread over almost all the crown lands of the Habsburg Hereditary States and from there they penetrated as far as the Rhine. Three Provinces of the Order, with nearly thirty monasteries, sprang from the foundation of the pious archduchess.

Maximilian kept up such close relations with the Capuchins of Innsbruck that he almost looked upon himself as one of them. His energy and liberality enabled him, notwithstanding all kinds of difficulties, to found a Capuchin convent at Meran, in 1616. There the Fathers took complete charge of religious instruction; they also introduced the Good-Friday night procession, which had been established at Brixen in 1609, and which was soon imitated in other places. In conjunction with the bishop of Chur, Johann Flugi von Aspermont, Maximilian charged the Capuchins with the care of the people of the Vintschgau whose faith was in danger. Maximilian likewise lent help at the foundation of the Capuchin convent of Neumarkt, in the valley of the Adige. At Ala the Order had already established itself in 1606.

Notwithstanding the numerous religious communities which established themselves in these various places, other localities also suffered from a crying need of priests; thus, for instance, in 1607 Bruneck had as yet no priest of its own. This state of affairs moved Spaur, bishop of Brixen, in 1607 to found a seminary for priests. In 1618 the bishop of Trent, Carlo Madruzzo, in whose diocese the dearth of priests was likewise keenly felt, confided his recently restored seminary to the Somaschi whom he had summoned from Pavia, and at a later date he also called the Capuchins into his episcopal city. The bishop of Brixen repeatedly begged for good priests from the papal seminaries of Rome, Dillingen and Graz. Paul V showed himself a generous supporter of these and similar institutions. German ecclesiastical history records with gratitude the regular subsidies granted by him to the seminaries of Braunsberg, Fulda, Prague, Vienna and Olmutz. Paul V’s aims in regard to Germany are defined in the Instruction of the nuncio Caetani, under date October 20th, 1607; viz. publication of the reform decrees of Trent by the bishops or by provincial councils, such as had been held in 1569 at Salzburg and Liege; restoration of clerical discipline, chiefly by means of visitations and the granting of benefices to worthy candidates only; the training of such men in the seminaries; removal of abuses in cathedral chapters; observance of the concordat; abolition of pluralism; removal of Protestants from the courts of Catholic princes; prohibition for the subjects of bishops (prince-bishops) to send their children to non-Catholic schools; assiduous teaching of religion to the people. Though so comprehensive a programme was not by any means everywhere carried out in its fullness, one may nevertheless say, on looking back, that during the reign of the Borghese Pope, very considerable progress was realized in respect of the ecclesiastical and religious renewal of Germany.

(4.)

Whereas within the empire the government of the emperor Matthias showed a willingness for wide concessions to the Protestants, in Bohemia, on the contrary, it endeavoured to protect the ancient Church from the encroachments of the religious innovators. In the dispute on the interpretation of the “Letter of Majesty” and the “Compromise” of 1609, the government withstood the Protestants and promoted, slowly but consecutively, the Catholic reform and restoration, which had also the fervent support of the excellent archbishop of Prague, Johann Lohelius, the provost of Leitmeritz, Johann Sixt von Lerchenfels,  the Jesuits and the Capuchins. The stronger the Catholic defence became the more violent also became the Protestant attack. Wherever the adherents of the ancient faith were in a minority, as, for instance, at Braunan, they saw themselves exposed to insults and rowdy demonstrations of every kind, so that many families migrated elsewhere. The Protestants grew bolder because a small but resolute party of nobles, led by count Heinrich Matthias von Thurn, stood by them and they also enjoyed the support of the Calvinists of the empire. This assistance was prompted less by religious motives than by political ones, for Thurn and his followers, as well as the German Calvinists, aimed before all else at the downfall of the House of Habsburg.

In view of the Bohemian disputes, the calculated vagueness of Rudolph II’s religious legislation was simply disastrous. When at the end of 1617 and the beginning of 1618, both the government and the archbishop of Prague showed a determination to put an end to the propaganda of the heretics by the way in which they tackled the question of the erection of a Protestant church at Braunau and Klostergrab, which had remained undecided for six years, Thurn and his confederates saw their aim, viz. the setting up of a Calvinistic aristocratic republic, seriously threatened; hence they judged they could wait no longer. The count’s scheme was to drive the Estates to a step which must necessarily lead to open revolt. Thus came about, on May 23rd, 1618, the murderous attempt on the Catholic lieutenants of the emperor Matthias known as the defenestration of Prague—(Prager Fenstersturz)—an attempt which failed as such but which fully accomplished its purpose, which was to create an irreparable breach. The Protestants of Silesia and Austria at once showed their sympathy with the outbreak in Bohemia. The head of the Union, the Calvinist Elector Palatine, Frederick V, judged the moment favourable for seizing the crown of St. Wenceslaus and for turning the Bohemian rising into the starting point of a great war of annihilation against the House of Habsburg. To this end allies were sought even abroad, but owing to France and England adopting a policy of neutrality, the Dutch States General thus left to themselves could do nothing. Negotiations with the ambitious Carlo Emmanuele, duke of Savoy, who had long meditated the destruction of the Habsburg-Spanish Power, yielded at first no result. For all that, the action of the rebels had gravely jeopardized Catholic interests. What their aims were was quickly shown by the expulsion of the archbishop of Prague and the abbot of Braunau, and that of the Jesuits from Bohemia and Moravia. Thus, from the very outset, the struggle took on the character of a war of religion. Consequently, despite the adverse state of his finances, Paul V granted the emperor Matthias’ request, which had the very warm support of Cardinal Borja, for a monthly war subsidy of 10,000 florins for a period of six months. Even more important was the action of Paul V when he used his influence with Louis XIII to prevent the French government from exploiting the revolt in Bohemia to the emperor’s disadvantage.

With the death of the emperor Matthias, on March 20th, 1619, the last barrier fell before the Bohemian rebels and their friends. Ferdinand’s declaration, by which he bound himself to maintain all privileges and prescriptions of former kings, hence also the “Letter of Majesty”, was answered by Thurn’s invasion of Moravia: the revolt spread rapidly. Because of the declaration, the Estates of Upper Austria and the Protestants of Lower Austria refused to do homage to Ferdinand. At the beginning of June, Thurn stood before Vienna. He was too late, however, to take the city and the successes of Buquoy and Ferdinand’s defence measures compelled him to beat a hasty retreat into Bohemia. Thereupon Ferdinand, with quick decision, hastened to Frankfort to secure the imperial crown. The party of the Palatine did its utmost to prevent it or at least to obtain a prorogation of the day of the election which had been fixed for July 20th.

How much depended on prompt action was quickly recognized in Rome also. Hence on April 6th, 1619, Paul V. wrote to the ecclesiastical Electors urging them to speed up the imperial election. He repeated his request in August 3 and at the same requested the Elector of Mayence to take immediate counsel with the newly elected emperor on the means of defending the severely threatened Church of Germany. The Pope’s piety had prompted him before this to have recourse to prayer. Public prayers were recited in Rome. On April 23rd Paul prayed at the tomb of St. Peter for help for Germany. Great was his joy, therefore, when, on August 28th, news reached Rome that Ferdinand had been elected Roman emperor of the German nation. When he announced the event to the Cardinals he said that the extraordinary piety of the emperor elect and his outstanding devotion to the Apostolic See, justified the highest hopes for the Catholic Church. In a Brief to Philip III of Spain, the Pope also gave vent to his satisfaction. The long letter of congratulation which he wrote to the new emperor was couched in the most cordial terms. On the same day the Pope held a service of thanksgiving for the happy issue of the election in the Pauline chapel of the Quirinal, in presence of the Cardinals. Cardinal Borghese, as protector of Germany, was the celebrant of the Mass. The German colony celebrated the event with loud demonstrations of joy.

However, the immediate future brought to the emperor days of heavy anxiety. His election was scarcely an accomplished fact when news reached Frankfort that the Estates of Bohemia had formally deposed him “as a pupil of the Jesuits and an arch-enemy of the religion of the gospel”, and that they had chosen the Elector Palatine, Frederick V, as King of Bohemia. Ferdinand’s position grew rapidly more and more critical; the representatives of the territories adjacent to Bohemia approved his deposition; in Moravia a regular persecution of Catholics set in and the Protestants of Upper Hungary threw in their lot with the grand-duke of Transylvania, Bethlen Gabor, who, relying on the help of the Turks, and supported by the Protestants of Austria, was advancing on Vienna at the head of an army.

Beset as he was by so many dangers, Ferdinand had early looked for allies. Besides the assistance of the king of Spain, it was of the utmost consequence for the emperor that Maximilian of Bavaria, fully realizing that the existence of the Danubian State of the Habsburgs as well as the future of the Catholic Church in the empire were at stake, decided to go to the assistance of Ferdinand. The decision was taken in October, 1619, during the emperor’s stay at Munich on his return journey from Frankfort. In the covenant into which they entered on that occasion, the emperor guaranteed to Maximilian the absolute and supreme direction of the League which had become disintegrated in 1616, but which now rose to a new life. Ferdinand further promised to the duke of Bavaria, in return for military aid, full compensation for his expenses and for any losses of men or goods that he might incur, by means of the cession of Austrian territory. An oral agreement also held out to Maximilian the prospect of the Palatinate. With his wonted decision Maximilian at once saw to the necessary military and financial preparations for the struggle. This he did at two assemblies of the League at Wurzburg, in December, 1619, and February, 1620. The rejuvenated League included, from among the ecclesiastical Estates, the occupants of the three Rhenish archbishoprics, Mayence, Treves and Cologne, likewise, the dioceses of Bamberg, Wurzburg, Worms, Spire, Strassburg, Eichstatt, Salzburg, Augsburg, Hildesheim, Paderborn, Munster, Liege, Constance, Freising and Passau; the abbeys of Fulda, Ellwangen, Salmansweiler and Odenheim, and four Swabian prelates, and among the secular Estates, besides Bavaria, Pfalz-Neuburg, Leuchtenberg, the imperial city of Aix-la-Chapelle, and Burgundy. Meanwhile Bavarian diplomats were busily engaged in Paris, Madrid and Rome in raising troops or money.

Already in December, 1618, Paul V had spontaneously promised to the League a subsidy of 200,000 florins, payable within three years, as well as the revenue of ecclesiastical tithes. Not long after, when Cardinal Borja requested the Pope, in the name of the king of Spain, to raise the monthly subsidy which he had granted to emperor Matthias, Paul V declared that in view of his adverse financial position he was unable to do this and he clung to this decision even though the Cardinal gave full vent to his impetuous temperament to his face. When Borja referred to the treasure of the Church which lay in the vaults of the castle of St. Angelo and which could be touched when there was question of an emergency of this kind, Paul V replied that the present case was not one in which these monies could be touched. These and other expressions of opinion show that Rome considerably underestimated the gravity of the situation. However, Maximilian and Ferdinand did not weary of imploring the Pope’s help with so much insistence, that before long the Curia grew so seriously alarmed about the future that it was decided to drop a plan for a big enterprise against the Turks which had been contemplated at the beginning of 1618.

The emperor also prayed for help from Rome. At the beginning of October, 1619, Ferdinand dispatched Freiherr Max von Trauttmansdorff to Rome to represent to the Pope the difficulty and danger of his position. The attack of the Calvinists, the envoy explained, was directed against the Church; they openly proclaimed that as soon as they should have defeated the Catholics in Germany, they would turn against Italy, to put an end to the papacy. For these reasons he prayed that Paul V would grant him, for the duration of the war, a monthly subsidy of 100,000 florins instead of the 10,000 he had contributed until then and that he would also grant him a loan of 1,000,000 kronen from the treasury in the castle of St. Angelo. Trauttmansdorff was further bidden to press the Pope to induce the Italian princes to lend help and to call into being a league of all the Catholic princes of Europe. The envoy was instructed to proceed in all these questions according to the advice of Cardinal Borja, the Protector of Germany and in the eventuality of Paul V taking up a negative attitude, he was to ask to be heard by the College of Cardinals. Lastly Trauttmansdorff was instructed to ask the Pope whether, in view of the desperate state of affairs, it would not be permissible to depart slightly from the strictness of the law and to grant to the Austrian Estates the “right of reform” in order to withdraw them from their alliance with the rebels and so to save the Catholics of that country from utter extinction.

In the audience of an hour and a half which Trauttmansdorff had with the Pope on his arrival, the latter declared that as Supreme Head of the Church he could not give his assent to a concession of that kind, but that he would exercise discretion in the matter. As for raising the monthly subsidy from 10,000 to 100,000 florins, Paul V answered that his debts amounted to 18,000,000 scudi. Though the expenses for the maintenance of the court had been considerably cut down, the usual alms nevertheless demanded 120,000 scudi annually, and he had promised 200,000 to the League. The treasure in St. Angelo, according to existing laws, he could only touch in the eventuality of the Pontifical States being directly threatened, nor was it so considerable as people imagined. To bring about a union of the Catholic princes, particularly those of Spain, France and Poland in a vast League, would demand lengthy preliminary negotiations; for the rest, if the emperor requested her help, Spain would do as much as if she belonged to a league; as for France, she thought she was doing a great deal if she remained neutral, and from her it would hardly be possible to get anything more.

Though Trauttmansdorff failed in his immediate purpose, he had hopes for the future. On his advice, on December 24th, 1619, Ferdinand made another appeal to the Pope and in so doing he was able to point to the renewed threat to his capital on the part of the rebels. Thereupon the Pope decided, at the beginning of 1620, besides proclaiming a universal jubilee to obtain God’s help “against the enemies of the Catholic faith in Germany” to levy, for a period of three years, a tenth on all ecclesiastical benefices in Italy, which was calculated to yield a sum of 200,000 scudi, and to double the monthly subsidy of 10,000 scudi as from March. On February 7th, 1620, Paul V informed the emperor that the nuncios in Spain and France had received appropriate instructions with regard to promoting a general league, though these were to be kept as secret as possible. Meanwhile, the Pope prayed, let the emperor apply himself with all his might to beating down the insurrection.

At the very time when Paul V was being thus pressed for help by Ferdinand II, baron Giulio Cesare Crivelli and the dean of the chapter of Augsburg, Zacharias von Furtenbach, arrived in Rome on April 11th, 1620, as envoys of Maximilian and the League, for a like purpose. Although Paul V.saw in the League one of the chief means for the preservation of the Catholic religion in Germany and placed great hopes on the duke of Bavaria, since he had thrown in his lot with the emperor, his financial situation, and the fact that he had just promised to double the subsidy guaranteed to Ferdinand II, made it exceedingly difficult for the Pope to listen to this new request. He therefore sought to gain time by making the grant of help dependent on the opening of hostilities. In the end the representatives of the League succeeded in obtaining from the Pope a subsidy which far exceeded that promised to the emperor. This was owing to an assurance of considerable sums which the king of Spain had given to Ferdinand II. Crivelli was given 100,000 scudi, the result of the tenth imposed on twelve religious Orders of men and which the court of Vienna had confidently hoped to get. Finally the Pope gave leave to all German bishops to impose a tenth on all benefices, a tax which was expected to yield 1,500,000 florins. It was the Pope’s intention that the big sums granted to the League should likewise benefit the emperor. This was realized at least indirectly in that the League exerted itself to the upmost for its own safety as well as for the cause of Ferdinand.

To these considerable subsidies of the Pope must also be added the very great help which his nuncios gave in Madrid and in Paris, and that with such success that both Spain and France held out the prospect of military assistance against the insurgents.

What had Frederick V and his friends to oppose to these forces? The most disastrous thing of all for them was the pitiable attitude of the Union, rich in words but poor in deeds; its hesitation made it so much easier for the Dutch States General and for cautious James I of England to refuse immediate help. The republic of St. Mark also met the rebellious Bohemians’ urgent requests for help with a refusal. It was a no less heavy blow to them that the hope of joint support by all Protestants was dashed by the irreconcilable opposition between Calvinists and Lutherans. Satisfactory reassurances with regard to the retention of confiscated Church property and the pledge of the Lausitz won over even the Elector of Saxony, Johann Georg, to the support of the emperor. The negotiations on these questions had been conducted by the landgrave Louis V of Hessen- Darmstadt who had fallen out with the Calvinist line of Kassel. During a visit to Rome, in March, 1619, the prudent conduct of Paul V had not indeed won Louis back to the ancient faith, as many Protestants feared, but it had nevertheless freed him from the worst prejudices against the papacy. Thus Frederick V was mainly thrown upon the Calvinist grand-duke of Transylvania, Bethlen Gabor, who, in August 25th, 1620, had had himself elected rival king of Hungary, and upon the Turks and the Bohemians. In Bohemia, however, very bad conditions prevailed in every respect, especially militarily and financially, and these deteriorated still further owing to the mistakes of the personally incompetent king who was totally ignorant of the language and customs of the country. Already in December, 1619, on the advice of his court preacher Scultetus, Frederick V had abandoned the cathedral of St. Vitus, at Prague, a sanctuary adorned with the art of two centuries, to the Calvinist iconoclasts. By his subsequent measures for the establishment of the reformed confession, he incurred the odium not only of the Catholics but also that of the Utraquists and the Lutherans of the empire. The feudal aristocracy of Bohemia, which had provoked the insurrection, saw its hopes unfulfilled and grumbled at seeing the most important posts going to foreigners.

Heedless of the perils threatening from outside and the anarchical conditions which had made headway in Prague itself, the pleasure-loving Palatine spent the winter in riotous living. His fate was decided on the day on which the shrewd duke of Bavaria succeeded in severing the Union from him. The French government rendered substantial service at this juncture. At the close of 1619, the emperor dispatched count Wradislav von Fürstenberg to France to beg for armed assistance against a danger that threatened all princes, in view of the republican tendencies of the Calvinists.

At the moment, not only the fate of the House of Habsburg, but that of the ancient Church depended, in large measure, on the attitude adopted by France. In the final decision, which turned out to be in favour of the Catholic cause, the papal nuncio Bentivoglio saw a true miracle and a manifest intervention of Providence. In conjunction with the confessor of Louis XIII, the Jesuit Arnould and the Catholic party, he had done his utmost to win over the son of Henry IV. It is true that armed help such as Spain gave, was not guaranteed, but France nevertheless declared her opposition to the Bohemian pretender. Letters were written to the princely members of the Union, with a view to inducing them to leave that body, and a great embassy was dispatched to Germany to make propaganda for the cause of the emperor. The Calvinists were not prepared for a blow of this kind and from such a quarter. The embassy, which was headed by the duke of Angouleme, intimidated the Union to such an extent that by an agreement with the League signed at Ulm on July 3rd, 1620, it completely broke with Bohemia. Thus was a brilliant victory won before a shot was fired and Frederick defeated even before battle was joined. With his rear thus guarded, Maximilian was able, at the end of July, to proceed against the rebels in Austria, to compel them to do homage, and from thence to set out on his march against Bohemia. The army, whose principal standard was decorated with a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary, included among other princely personages the young duke Virginio Orsini, of Rome. A number of Jesuits and Capuchins and the Spanish Carmelite Dominic a Jesu Maria accompanied the army as chaplains.

In the autumn of 1620 destruction threatened the rebels from three sides. Whilst the Spanish-Netherlandish army under Spinola invaded the Palatinate and the Elector of Saxony penetrated into the Lausitz, the armies of the emperor and the League advanced jointly against Bohemia. On November 8th a decisive battle was fought on the Weissenberg, West of Prague. The decision of the war council to attack the fortified positions of the Bohemians was, to a great extent, the result of the eloquence of Dominic a Jesu Maria whom everybody venerated as a Saint. Exhibiting an image of the Blessed Virgin Alary, which the Calvinists had mutilated, he spoke in burning accents in support of Maximilian’s and Tilly’s proposal to attack at once, promising the protection of all the Saints whose octave was being kept that day. Within an hour the defeat of the rebels was complete and Frederick V in full flight.

Immediately after the battle, even before Prague had opened its gates, the handful of Catholics still remaining in the city hastened out into the camp in order to congratulate the duke of Bavaria and Buquoy and to beg them to occupy Prague and restore the old religion. “Such was their joy that some of them spent the whole of the following night in prayer.” When the army entered the town, the Catholics almost fought among themselves as to who should be the first to greet the duke of Bavaria. Whereas only a short while ago the Catholic faith was regarded as the religion of the lowest classes and one that a nobleman should be ashamed to belong to, many Calvinists and Lutherans now walked about with a Breviary or a rosary in their hands, or sought safety in some convent, both for their persons and their goods. The preachers lay in hiding; they no longer dared openly to stand up for their tenets; on the contrary, by abject submissiveness to the authorities, they sought to obliterate the memory of their share in the rebellion. The pastor of the church of the Tein and administrator of the “lower consistory”, Dikastus, who had crowned the winter king, now declared him an enemy of the country and prayed for the emperor’s victory, and these sentiments he expressed in all his sermons.

Not only in Prague but elsewhere also the victory of the Weissen Berg was rightly interpreted as a victory of the old religion and a defeat of Protestantism. As a matter of fact, here there was question not merely of preserving the Bohemian crown for Ferdinand, but also of the future of the Catholic Church in the territories of the Habsburgs and in the empire.

How keenly the Catholic party realized the decisive significance of the war in Bohemia was evidenced by the public prayers which had been ordered all over Germany at the opening of the campaign, and by the fervour with which the people took part in them. At Augsburg all the churches were frequented by such crowds, and the devotion of the worshippers was so great, that the Protestants were struck with astonishment. In the Society of Jesus several thousand Masses and many prayers were offered every week for a happy issue of the war. If the whole Catholic world thus celebrated the downfall of “the Calvinist monarchy” in Bohemia, joy was particularly great in Rome. Maximilian, who had contributed more than anyone else to the triumph, announced it to Paul V by a special courier who arrived in the Eternal City on December 1st, 1620: “I myself came indeed and saw, but God conquered,” wrote the noble duke.

Paul V who, on January 24th, 1620, had headed, on foot, a procession of intercession from St. Maria sopra Minerva to the German national church, had followed the Bavarian duke’s progress with tense interest. He fully realized that the defeat of the Bohemian rebels meant “an incalculable weakening of the power of the Protestants in Germany”. As soon as the first news was confirmed by the arrival of Maximilian’s courier, Paul hastened to his favourite church of Sta. Maria Maggiore where he prayed for a whole hour before the miraculous picture of the Cappella Paolina, giving thanks to God for so signal a victory which could not fail to prove of the utmost advantage to the Catholic religion in Germany.

The public thanksgiving was fixed for December 3rd. Notwithstanding the unfavourable weather the Pope again took part in the procession from the Minerva to the Anima. There the joyful psalm Exaudiat te Dominus was sung, prayers were recited and at the conclusion, Paul V. said the Mass of thanksgiving at the high altar, in the presence of all the Cardinals, even those being present who might have been excused either by age or infirmities, of all the prelates and officials of the court, the governor of the city, the envoys of the emperor and those of France, Venice and Savoy. At the conclusion of the ceremony the Pope granted a plenary Indulgence. At night a feu de joie was fired from the castle of St. Angelo and the houses of ambassadors and Cardinals were illuminated.

The date of December 3rd likewise appears on the letters of congratulation addressed to Maximilian and to the emperor. In these the Pope points out the importance of the victory for the spread of the Catholic faith. “Even as the rebellion of Bohemia”, the Pope writes, “was at one time a source of many troubles in Germany, so will the subjugation of the Bohemians bring back the other insurgents to obedience.” In another letter to the emperor, dated December 19th, 1620, the Pope said he could not find words with which to express his joy. At the same time, through the imperial envoy, Prince Savelli, he urged Ferdinand to exploit his success to the utmost, to the advantage of the Catholic religion. This aim he should keep before his eyes during the forthcoming discussions at Prague with the dukes of Bavaria and Saxony. In view of the fact that the Elector Johann Georg had shown signs of an inclination to return to the Church, Ferdinand should do his best to encourage him. If difficulties arose because of confiscated Church property, the Pope would try to find ways and means to overcome them. As regards the Palatinate, he was wholly in favour of its being bestowed on the duke of Bavaria. A suggestion of Paul V that advantage should be taken of Spinola’s successes in the Palatinate, Ferdinand II deemed inopportune and he refused to act on it, so that, for the time being, the Catholic restoration was limited to the localities conquered by the Spanish General.

There is an element of tragedy in the fact that Paul V, whose iron constitution had been equal, until then, to every exertion, should suddenly feel his strength waning at the moment when he had reached the climax of his pontificate. Towards the end of 1620, in his sixty-ninth year, the infirmities of age made themselves felt, though this did not hinder him from carrying out the duties of his office. On January 11th, 1621, he created a number of cardinals, and on the 16th he imposed the red hat on five of the new members of the Sacred College.

Now, as before, the Pope paid frequent visits to the churches both within and without the city; thus he visited St. Sebastian’s on January 20th, and on the 21st St. Agnes’ without the walls. On the occasion of the latter visit he suffered a slight stroke. He sought to allay the anxiety of his suite by holding himself erect by sheer will-power, but a fresh stroke which he suffered on Sunday, the 24th, whilst saying Mass, led to his death four days later. At the  obsequies Gasparo Palloni pronounced the funeral oration. The mortal remains of the Pope were temporarily laid to rest in St. Peter’s. A year later they were transferred, at the expense of Cardinal Scipio Borghese, to the magnificent Cappella Paolina in St. Maria Maggiore where Paul V had  erected a sepulchral monument for himself in his own lifetime.

There was universal recognition in Rome of the unwearying zeal and activity of the Borghese Pope, of his spotless moral conduct, his strict justice, his splendid care for the provisioning of Rome and the magnificent buildings with which he had enriched the City. But the long pontificate of fifteen years and eight months had none the less given rise, in the widest circles, to a desire for a change. This wish was all the stronger as the favours and the liberality of the Pope had been almost wholly limited to his own family. The whole world, says Cardinal Orsini, was weary of the amiable but empty promises of the Pope’s nephew, Cardinal Borghese, and dislike for the latter had still further increased since the last promotion of Cardinals. The radiance which the victory of the Weissenberg shed on the last days of Paul V came as a compensation for the many anxieties which the situation in Germany had caused him during his long pontificate. There was nothing the Borghese Pope feared so much as the issue of an armed conflict between the Catholics and the Protestants of Germany, for since the unsatisfactory termination of his own struggle with Venice he had grown exceedingly timorous. He displayed the greatest caution and did his utmost to avoid a collision of this kind, and only reluctantly did he consent to support the emperor and the League. When the course of events compelled him to intervene, an almost miraculous concatenation of events brought about a complete change in a short time. Splendid vistas opened for the Catholic restoration which Paul V had always systematically promoted, according as he was able, in Germany as much as in France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Poland. His sepulchral monument was already completed, hence the most important and most pregnant event of his pontificate could no longer be recorded on it. The reliefs and inscriptions of the monument pay a just tribute to Paul V’s labours on behalf of peace, for by the neutrality which he successfully observed between the Habsburg and the Bourbons he rendered a permanent service to Catholic interests. Very appropriately also the inscriptions praise Paul V’s solicitude for the Church and its temporal possessions, for his share in safeguarding Hungary against the Turks and for the works of art with which he enriched eternal Rome.

CHAPTER XIV.

Paul V as a Patron of the Arts—Completion of St. Peter’s—The Pauline Chapel in S. Maria Maggiore—The Palace of the Quirinal—Streets and Fountains—The Borghese Palace and Villa —Transformation of the Eternal City.