CHAPTER VII.

THE CONFLICT OF CREEDS AND PARTIES IN GERMANY.

THE threats of the victorious Catholic majority at Speier and the diplomacy of Philip of Hesse had, despite the forebodings of Luther and the imprecations of Melanchthon, produced a temporary alliance between the Lutheran north and the Zwinglian south ; and the summer and autumn of 1529 were spent in attempts to make the union permanent and to cement it by means of religious agreement. In the secret understanding concluded between Electoral Saxony, Hesse, Nürnberg, Ulm, and Strassburg at Speier on April 22, it was arranged that a conference should be held at Rodach, near Coburg, in the following June. But this coalition between Lutheran Princes and Zwinglian towns had been concealed from the divines, and as soon as it came to their ears they raised a vehement protest. Melanchthon lamented that his friends had not made even greater concessions at Speier; if they had only repudiated Zwingli and all his works, the Catholics, he thought, might not have hardened their hearts against Luther ; and he did his best to dissuade his friends in Nürnberg from participating in the coming congress at Rodach. Luther not only denounced the idea of defending by force what Melanchthon described as " the godless opinions " of Zwingli, but denied the right of Lutherans to defend themselves. Resort to arms he considered both wicked and needless ; " Be ye still," he quoted from Isaiah, "and ye shall be holpen"; and, while the conference at Rodach succumbed to his opposition, a vast army of Turks was swarming up the banks of the Danube and directing its march on Vienna. Solyman brandished the sword which Luther refused to grasp.

The relief of Vienna was received with mingled feelings in Germany. Luther, who had once denied the duty of Christians to fight the infidel as involving resistance to God's ordinance, had been induced to recant by the imminence of danger and the pressure of popular feeling. In 1529 he exhorted his countrymen to withstand the Turk in language as vigorous as that in which he had urged them to crush the peasants ; and the retreat of the Ottoman was generally hailed as a national deliverance. But the joy was not universal, even in Germany. Secular and religious foes of the Habsburgs had offered their aid to Zapolya; while Philip of Hesse lamented the Turkish failure and hoped for another attack. The Turk was in fact the ally of the Reformation, which might have been crushed without his assistance ; and to a clear-sighted statesman like Philip no other issue than ruin seemed possible from the mutual enmity of the two Protestant Churches.

Zwingli was in fact the most modern in mind of all the Reformers, while Luther was the most medieval. Luther's conception of truth was theological, and not scientific ; to him it was something simple and absolute, not complex and relative. A man either had or had not the Spirit of God ; there was nothing between heaven and hell. One or the other of us, he wrote with regard to Zwingli, must be the devil's minister; and the idea that both parties might have perceived some different aspect of truth was beyond his comprehension. This dilemma was his favourite dialectical device ; it reduced argument to anathema and excluded from the first all chance of agreement. He applied it to political as well as religious discussions, and his inability to grasp the conception of compromise determined his views on the question of non-resistance. If we resist the Emperor, he said, we must expel him and become Emperor ourselves ; then the Emperor will resist, and there will be no end until one party is crushed. Tolerance was not in his nature, and concession in Church or in State was to him evidence of indifference or weakness. Truth and falsehood, right and wrong, were both absolute. The Papacy embodied abuses, therefore the Pope was Antichrist ; Caesar's authority was recognised by Christ, therefore all resistance was sin.

But the primary objects of the conference were theological, and it was on a dispute over the Eucharist that the differences between the two parties came to a head On all other points Zwingli went to the limit of concession, but he could not accept the doctrine of consubstantiation. Luther chalked on the table round which they sat, the text "This is my Body,* and nothing could move him from its literal interpretation. Zwingli, on the other hand, explained the phrase by referring to the sixth chapter of St John, and declared that " is " meant only " represents " ; the bread and the wine represented the body and blood, as a portrait represents a real person. Christ was only figuratively "the door" and the "true vine"; and the Eucharist instead of being a miracle was, in his eyes, only a feast of commemoration. This doctrine was anathema to Luther ; at the end of the debate Zwingli offered him his hand, but Luther rejected it, saying " Your spirit is not our spirit." As a final .effort at compromise Luther was induced to draw up the fifteen Marburg Articles, of which the Zwinglians signed all but the one on the Eucharist ; and it was agreed that each party should moderate the asperity of its language towards the other. But this did not prévent the Lutheran divines from denying that Zwinglians could be members of the Church of Christ, or Luther himself from writing a few days afterwards that they were " not only liars, but the very incarnation of lying, deceit, and hypocrisy, as Carlstadt and Zwingli show by their very deeds and words." The hand which had pulled down the 'Roman Church in Germany made the first rent in the Church which was beginning to grow up in its place. Zwingli went back to Zurich to meet his death two years later at Kappel, and the Lutherans returned home to ponder on the fate which the approach of Charles V had in store.

In May, 1530, having in conjunction with Clement VII regulated the affairs of Italy and discussed schemes for regulating those of the world, Charles V crossed the Alps on his second visit to his German dominions. The auspices in 1530 were very different from those of 1521, Then he had left Spain in open rebellion, he was threatened with war by the most powerful State in Europe, and the attitude of the Papacy was still doubtful. Now Spain was reduced to obedience and the Pope to impotence ; France had suffered the greatest defeat of the century ; Italy lay at his feet ; and Ferdinand had added two kingdoms to the family estate. Over every obstacle Charles seemed to have triumphed. But in Germany the universal agitation against Rome had resolved itself into two organised parties which threatened to plunge the nation into civil war. Here indeed was the scene of the last of Hercules' labours ; would his good fortune or skill yield him a final triumph ?

The Diet opened on June 20, 1530, and was very fully attended. Luther, who was still under the ban of the Empire, could come no nearer than Coburg ; his place as preceptor • of the Protestant Princes was taken by Melanchthon ; and the celebrated Confession of Augsburg, though it was based on Luther's Schwabach Articles, was exclusively Melanchthon's work. The attitude of the Lutheran divines is well expressed by the tone of this document; they were clearly on the defensive, and the truculent Luther himself, who had dictated terms to the Archbishop of Mainz, was now reduced to craving his favour. Melanchthon was almost prostrated by the fear of religious war; and he thought it could best be averted by an alliance between Catholics and Lutherans against the Zwinglians, whom he regarded as no better than Anabaptists. His object in framing the Confession was therefore twofold, to minimise the differences between Lutherans and Catholics, and to exaggerate those between Lutherans and Zwinglians ; he hoped thus to heal the breach with the former and complete it with the latter.

In form the Confession is an apologia, and not a creed ; it does not assert expressly the truth of any dogma, but merely states the fact that such doctrines are taught in Lutheran churches, and justifies that teaching on the ground that it varies little if at all from that of the Church of Rome. It does not deny the divine right of the Papacy, the character indelebUis of the priesthood, or the existence of seven Sacraments ; it does not assert the doctrine of predestination, which had brought Luther into conflict with Erasmus ; and the doctrine of the Eucharist is so ambiguously expressed that the only fault the Catholics found was its failure to assert categorically the fact of transub-stantiation. In view of the substantial agreement which it endeavoured to establish between Catholic and Lutheran dogma, it was represented as unjustifiable to exclude the Reformers from the Catholic Church; their only quarrel with their opponents was about traditions and abuses, and their object was not polemic or propaganda, but merely toleration for themselves.

It appears to have been the hope of the Protestants, and probably of Charles also, that the Emperor would be able to make himself the mediator between the Lutherans and Catholics, and to effect an agreement by inducing each side to make concessions. But for the moment the Catholics distrusted Charles more than the Protestants did. They had secular as well as ecclesiastical grievances. They denounced the treaties concluded in Italy as wanting their concurrence ; they were horrified at the example set by Charles in secularising the see of Utrecht, and they refused to confirm the Pope's grant of ecclesiastical revenues to Ferdinand; while the orthodox Wittelsbachs were moving heaven and earth to prevent the election of Charles' brother as King of the Romans. They were thus by no means disposed to place themselves in the Emperor's hands ; they insisted rather that they should determine the Empire's policy, and that Charles should merely execute their decrees ; and, lacking the Emperor's broader outlook, they were less inclined to make concessions to peace. It was the growing conviction that Charles was a helpless tool in the hands of their enemies which caused a revulsion of the Protestant feeling in his favour.

Neither side was, however, prepared for religious war ; and, when the Confutation and Charles' menaces failed to precipitate unity, a series of confused and lengthy negotiations between the various parties, the Emperor, the Pope, the Catholic majority, and the Lutherans was initiated. In the course of these Melanchthon receded still further from the Protestant standpoint. He offered on behalf of the Lutherans to recognise episcopal authority, auricular confession and fasts, and undertook to regard the Communion in both kinds and the marriage of priests, which he had before demanded, as merely temporary concessions pending the convocation of a General Council. He even went so far as to assert that the Lutherans admitted papal authority, adhered to papal doctrine, and that this was the reason for their unpopularity in Germany. On the other hand, the Catholic members of the commission appointed to discuss the question were ready to concede a communion sub utrâque, on condition that the Lutherans would acknowledge communion in one kind to be equally valid, and declare the adoption of either form to be a matter of indifference.

The failure of Melanchthon's plan of attaining peace with Catholics by breach with the Zwinglians produced a certain reaction of feeling and policy. Luther was, partially at any rate, disabused of his faith in Charles' intentions, and the pressure of common danger facilitated a renewed attempt at union. With this object in view, Bucer, the chief author of the Tetrapolitana, called on Luther at Coburg on September 25, and was received with surprising favour. Luther even expressed a willingness to lay down his life three times if only the dissensions among the Reformers might be healed, and Bucer himself had a genius for accommodation. Under these favourable circumstances he contrived to evolve a plausible harmonisation of the Wittenberg and Tetrapolitan doctrines of the Eucharist which was sufficient for the day and led to an invitation of the south German cities to the meeting of Protestant Powers to be held in December at Schmalkalden.

Meanwhile the Catholic majority of the Diet continued its deliberations at Augsburg. The aid against the Turks which Charles desired had not yet been voted, and before he obtained it the Emperor had to drop his demand for Ferdinand's ecclesiastical endowment, and promise to press upon the Pope the redress of the hundred gravamina which were once more revived. Substantial concessions to individual Electors secured the prospect of Ferdinand's election as King of the Romans, which took place at Cologne on January 5, 1531 ; and the Diet concluded with the adoption of the Recess on November 19. The Edict of Worms was to be put into execution, episcopal jurisdictions were to be maintained, and Church property to be restored. Of more practical importance than these resolutions was the reconstitution of the Reichs-kammergericht, which henceforward began to play an important part in imperial politics. It was now organised so as to be an efficient instrument in carrying out the will of the majority, and was solemnly pledged to the suppression of Lutheranism. The campaign was to open, not on a field of battle, but in the Courts of law; and the attack was to be directed, not against the persons of Lutheran Princes, but against their secularisation of Church property Countless suits were already pending before the Kammergericht ; and, however inconsistent such a policy may have been in the Habsburgs who had themselves profited largely by secularisation, the law of the Empire gave the Kammergericht no option but to decide against the Lutherans, and its decisions would have completely undermined the foundations of the rising Lutheran Church.

His inactivity enabled the Protestants to mature their plans and organise an effective bond of resistance. The doctrine of implicit obedience to the Emperor broke down as danger approached ; the divines naively admitted that they had not before realised that the sovereign power was subject to law ; and Luther, acknowledging that he was a child in temporal matters, allowed himself to be persuaded that Charles was not the Caesar of the New Testament, but a governor whose powers were limited by the Electors in the same way as the Roman consul's by the Senate, the Doge's by the Venetian Council, and a Bishop's by his Chapter. The Protestants, having already denied that a minority could be bound by a majority of the Diet, now carried the separatist principle a step further by declaring that the Empire was a federated aristocracy of independent sovereigns, who were themselves to judge when and to what extent they would yield obedience to their elected president. It is not, however, fair to charge them with adopting Protestantism in order to further their claims to political independence ; it is more correct to say that they extended their particularist ideas in order to protect their religious principles.

Bucer, after his partial success with Luther at Coburg, proceeded to Zurich in the hope of bringing Zwingli to the point of concession where Luther had come to meet him. But as the German Reformer grew more conciliatory, the Swiss became more uncompromising. In February, 1531, the Swiss cities refused to join the Schmalkaldic League, and in the same month a Congress of Zwinglian divines at Memmingen attacked the Catholic ceremonial observed in Lutheran churches. This aggressive attitude may be traced to the rapid progress which Zwinglian doctrines were making in south Germany at the expense of the Augsburg Confession. At Augsburg itself the Tetrapolitan or Bucerian creed defeated its Lutheran rival; and in other German cities more violent manifestations of the Zwinglian spirit prevailed. Under the influence of Bucer, Blarer, and Oecolampadius, Ulm, Reutlingen, Biberach, and other hitherto Lutheran cities destroyed pictures, images, and organs in their churches, and selected pastors who looked for inspiration to Zurich and not to Wittenberg; those cities which had already joined the Schmalkaldic League refused at its meeting at Frankfort in June to subscribe to the League's project for military defence. South Germany seemed in fact to be about to fall like ripe fruit into Zwingli's lap, when his power suddenly waned at home, and the defeat of Kappel (October 11, 1531) cut short his life, and ruined his cause in Germany; it was left for Calvin to gather up the fragments of Zwingli's German party, and to establish an ultra-Protestant opposition to the Lutheran Church.

Council might be as fatal to him as that of Basel had threatened to be to his predecessors ; and the Emperor's enemies suggested that if it met Charles would propose the restoration of the Papal States to the Empire from which they had been wrung. Rather than risk such a fate, some at least of his friends urged Clement to accede to the Lutheran demand for communion in both kinds and clerical marriage, and maintained that the Augsburg Confession was not repugnant to the Catholic faith. Without the help of the heretics it seemed impossible for Charles to resist the approaching Turkish onslaught; and the Emperor's confessor, Loaysa, urged him not to trouble if their souls went to hell, so long as they served him on earth. And so the term of grace accorded to the Lutherans by the Recess of Augsburg expired in April, 1531, without a thought of resort to compulsion ; and instead of this, the Emperor suspended, on July 8, the action of the Reichskammergericht. He had missed the golden opportunity; it did not recur for fifteen years, during which two wars with the Turk in Europe, two wars in Africa, and two wars with France distracted his attention from German affairs.

This inaction on Charles' part cooled the martial ardour of the Schmalkaldic League; and Zwinglian aggression in south Germany increased their disinclination to help the Swiss in their domestic troubles. In reality the battle of Kappel was of greater advantage to Luther than to the Emperor. For a second time the Reformation was freed from the embarrassment of a mutinous left wing; and Luther, although he professed to lament Zwingli's fate, regarded the battle as the judgment of God, and Zwingli as damned unless the Almighty made an irregular exception in his favour. The cities of Upper Germany, deprived of their mainstay at Zurich, gravitated in the direction of Wittenberg; while the defeat of one section of the Reformers convinced the rest of the need for common defence. Under the pressure of these circumstances the Schmalkaldic League completed its organisation, and of necessity assumed a predominantly Lutheran and territorial character. At two conferences held at Nordhausen and Frankfort (November-December, 1531) the military details of the League were settled, and the respective contributions of its various members fixed; the Princes obtained a large majority of votes in its council of war and exclusive command of its armies. Saxony and Hesse were treated as equal; if the seat of war was in Saxony or Westphalia the supreme command was to fall to the Elector, if in Hesse or Upper Germany to the Landgrave.

These extreme and unpatriotic schemes were defeated by a tacit understanding between Catholic and Protestant moderates ; and Germany presented a fairly united front to its infidel foe. Saxony and cities like Ulm and Nürnberg convinced Charles that the coming of the Turk would be used for no sectional purposes; and the Emperor in return promised the Lutherans at least a temporary peace. He turned a deaf ear to the demands at the Diet of B,atisbon (April, 1532) for the execution of the Augsburg Recess, while Luther denounced the claims of his forward friends to toleration for all future Protestants even in Catholic territories as impossible and unreasonable. At Nürnberg (July 23, 1532) an agreement was reached by which all suits against the Protestants before the Reichskammergerwlit were quashed and they were guaranteed peace until the next Diet or a General Council. The understanding was to be kept secret for fear of offending the Catholics, but it sufficed to open to Charles the armouries of the Protestant cities, and Nürnberg sent double its quota to serve in the Turkish campaign.

September they commenced their retreat through Carinthia and Croatia, which they ravaged on their way.

The precipitate withdrawal of the Turks was followed by an equally sudden abandonment of the campaign by Charles V. After all his brave words it was a shock to his friends and admirers when he made no effort to seize the fruits of victory and recover Hungary for his brother ; for a vigorous prosecution of the war in 1532 might have restored to Christendom lands which remained under Turkish rule for nearly two centuries longer. There are explanations enough for his course ; the German levies refused to pass the imperial frontiers, regarding self-defence as the limit of their duty ; the Spaniards and Italians confined their efforts mainly to pillaging German villages ; and Cranmer, who accompanied Charles' Court, describes how they spread greater desolation than the Turks themselves and how the peasants in revenge fell upon and slew the Emperor's troops whenever opportunity offered; so that delay in disbanding his army might have fanned the enmity between Charles' German and Spanish subjects into war. But other reasons accounted for the Emperor's departure from Germany, which was once more sacrificed to the exigencies of Charles' cosmopolitan interests. The Pope, irritated alike by the Emperor's bestowal of Modena and Reggio on the Duke of Ferrara, and by his persistence in demanding a General Council, was proposing to marry his niece Catharine de' Medici to Henry, Duke of Orleans ; and a union between Clement and Francis I would again have threatened Charles' position in Italy. He regarded two objects as then of transcendent importance, the reconciliation of the Pope and the convocation of a General Council. They were quite incompatible, yet to them Charles sacrificed the chance of regaining Hungary.

Habsburg authority in the Empire was threatened with one of the most serious checks it experienced.

The restoration of Duke Ulrich of Württemberg was not merely a favourite design of the Protestants for the extension of the Reformation in south Germany ; it was regarded by German Catholic Princes and by the Emperor's foreign foes as an invaluable means of undermining the Habsburg power. It is even believed that Clement VII himself in his anger at Charles' persistent demand for a General Council, discussed the execution of this plan at his interview with Francis I at Marseilles in the autumn of 1533. At any rate the French King went from Marseilles to Bar-le-duc, where in January, 1534, he agreed with Philip of Hesse to give the enterprise extensive financial support, cloaked under a fictitious sale of Montbeliard (the property of Ulrich) to the French King. The moment was opportune. Ferdinand was busy in Bohemia and Hungary ; the outbreak of the Anabaptist revolution gave Philip of Hesse an excuse for arming ; and the decrepitude of the Swabian League neutralised the force by which Württemberg had been won and maintained for the Austrian House. Religious divisions had impaired the harmony of the League, and political jealousies had transformed it from a willing tool of the Habsburgs into an almost hostile power, In November, 1532, the Electors of Trier and the Palatinate and Philip of Hesse had agreed to refuse a renewal of the League ; and in May, 1533, some of its most important city members, Ulm, Nürnberg, and Augsburg, formed a separate alliance for the defence of freedom of conscience. The strictly defensive Catholic confederation established at Halle in ducal Saxony in the following November between the Elector Joachim of Brandenburg, Dukes George of Saxony, Eric and Henry of Brunswick, was neither a match for the Schmalkaldic League, nor had it any interest in the perpetuation of Austrian rule in Württemberg. Joachim told Philip that Ferdinand would get no help from the Electors ; and his words proved true indeed. The Archbishops of Mainz and Trier observed a strict neutrality ; the Elector Palatine's promise of aid was delusive ; while the Catholic bishop of Münster and Duke Henry of Brunswick, possibly on the understanding that Philip would assist them to put down the Münster Anabaptists, consented to help him in Württemberg, and assurances of support were also forthcoming from Henry VIII, Christian III of Denmark, and Zapolya.

Nor was there any hope of retrieving the disaster ; rather, Ferdinand dreaded lest Philip should with the help of the Anabaptists raise a general insurrection against the Habsburgs, and seize the imperial crown for himself, the Dauphin of France, or Duke William of Bavaria. Francis I regarded Württemberg as only a beginning, and was urging Philip on to fresh conquests, which would have helped him in his impending war with Charles. But the German Princes were content with securing their immediate objects without becoming the cat's-paw of France, and peace was made with Ferdinand at Cadan on June 29. Ulrich was restored to Württemberg, but Ferdinand's pride was to some extent saved by the provision that the duchy was to be held as a fief of Austria-without however impairing its imperial status-and should pass to the Habsburgs in default of male heirs in Ulrich's line; at the same time Ferdinand withdrew his original stipulation that the Reformation should not be established in Württemberg.

Other causes than the weakness of Ferdinand and the disinclination of Lutherans to promote the ends of Francis I moved Catholic and Protestant Princes to the Peace of Cadan. Both alike were threatened by their common foe, the spirit of revolution, which in two different forms had now submerged Catholic Münster and Protestant Lübeck. Of the two phenomena the Anabaptist reign at Münster was the more to be feared and the harder to be explained, for the term by which it is known represents a mere accident of the movement as being its essence. It was not essentially theological, nor is "anabaptist1' an adequate or accurate expression of its theological peculiarities. The doctrines of second baptism and adult baptism are inoffensive enough, but attempts to realise the millennium, if successful, would be fatal to most forms of government, and a familiar parallel to the Münster revolutionists may be found in the English Fifth-monarchy men of the seventeenth century. In both cases millenary doctrines were only the outward form in which the revolutionary spirit was made manifest, and the spirit of revolution is always at bottom the same because it has its roots in the depths of human nature. The motive force which roused the English peasants in 1381 was essentially the same as that which dominated Münster in 1534 and lined the barricades of Paris in 1848. The revolutionist becomes a believer in the brotherhood of man, in the perfectibility of the race, and in the practicability of the millennium. The narrower his experience of men and affairs, the wider his flights of fancy; and revolutionary principles commonly find their most fruitful soil among hand-workers of sedentary occupation and straitened circumstances. In those submerged classes materials for discontent ever abound, awaiting the coincidence of two events to set them free, the flash of vision into better things and the disturbance of the repressive force of law and order. The Reformation produced them both; and the new gospel of Divine justice for the oppressed set the volcanic flood in motion, and strife between Catholic and Protestant authorities gave it a vent.

The Anabaptist doctrine was but one of an endless variety of ideas, many of which had long been current. All such opinions gained fresh vogue in the decade following the Peasants' Revolt ; but most of the "sectaries'" agreed in repudiating Luther's views on predestination and the unfree will, and denounced the dependence of the Lutheran Church upon the State. They denied the right of the secular magistrate to interfere in religious matters, and themselves withdrew in varying degrees from concern in the affairs of this world. Some, anticipating the Quakers, refused to bear arms ; the Gärtnerbrüder of Salzburg endeavoured to live on the pattern of primitive simplicity. One sect denied the humanity of Christ; another, of whom Ludwig Hetzer was the chief, began by regarding Jesus as a leader and teacher rather than an object of worship, and ended by denying His divinity. Many thoughtful people, repelled by the harshness of Luther's dogmas, insisted upon mercy as the pre-eminent attribute of God, and extended even to the devil the hope of salvation; while the idea that the flesh alone sinned leaving the spirit undefiled proved attractive to the lower sort and opened the door to a variety of antinomian speculations and practices.

The doctrine of passive resistance broke down under treatment like this, and men's sufferings began to set their hands as well as their minds in motion ; a conviction developed that it was their duty to assist in effecting the purification which they believed to be imminent. In Augsburg, Hans Hut proclaimed the necessity incumbent upon the saints to purify the world with a double-edged sword, and his disciple, Augustin Bader, prepared a crown, insignia, and jewels for his future kingdom in Israel. Melchior Hofmann told Frederick I of Denmark that he was one of the two sovereigns at whose hands all the firstborn of Egypt should be slain. Not till the vials of wrath had been outpoured could the kingdom of heaven come. Hofmann, who had preached " the true gospel " in Livonia and then had combated Luther's magical doctrine of the Eucharist at Stockholm, Kiel, and Strassburg, had by his voice and his pen acquired great influence over the artisans of northern Germany; and here, where men's dreams had not been rudely dispelled by the ravages of peasants and reprisals of Princes, revolutionary ideas took their deepest root and revolutionary projects appeared most feasible. From 1529 onwards there were outbreaks in not a few north German towns, at Minden, Herford, Lippstadt, and Soest; but it was at Münster and Lübeck that the revolution in two different forms assumed a worldwide importance.

In the Netherlands Charles V was enabled by the strength of his position as territorial prince and by means of the Inquisition to exercise an authority in religious matters which was denied him in Germany, but his repression had the effect of stimulating the growth of extremer doctrines. Schismatic movements had long been endemic in the Netherlands, and nowhere else did Melchior Hofmann find so many disciples. Chief among them were Jan Matthys, a baker of Haarlem, and Jan Beuckelssen or Bockelsohn, popularly known as Jan of Leyden. Matthys declared himself to be the Enoch of the new dispensation, and chose twelve apostles to proselytise the six neighbouring provinces. Beuckelssen was one of them ; though not yet thirty years of age he had seen much of the world ; as a journeyman tailor he had travelled over Europe from Lübeck to Lisbon ; abandoning his trade he opened an inn at Leyden, became a leading member of the local Rederykers, and wrote verses and dramas, in which he himself played a part. Finally he fell under the influence of the Scriptural teaching of Hofmann and Matthys, as whose forerunner he journeyed to Münster in January, 1534, and joined forces with Rottman and the Münster Anabaptists.

Like the earliest Christians they sought to have all things in common, and as a commencement they confiscated the goods of the exiles. To ensure primitive simplicity of worship they next destroyed all images, pictures, manuscripts, and musical instruments on which they could lay their hands. Tailors and shoemakers were enjoined to introduce no new fashions in wearing apparel ; gold and silver and jewels were surrendered to the common use ; and there was an idea of pushing the communistic principle to its logical extreme by repudiating individual property in wives. The last was apparently offensive to public opinion even in purified Munster, and the nearest approach to it effected in practice was polygamy, which was not introduced without some sanguinary opposition, and did not probably extend far beyond the circle of Beuckelssen and the leaders of the movement. These eccentricities were regarded by their authors as a necessary preparation for the second coming of Christ. That the end of the world was at hand was a common idea of the day. No one was more thoroughly possessed by it than Luther; but while he set little store on the Book of Revelation, the Anabaptists of Münster found in it their chief inspiration. They conceived that they were making straight the path of the Lord by abolishing all human ordinances such as property, marriage, and social distinctions. The notion was not entirely new ; at one end of the religious scale the Taborites had held somewhat similar views, and at the other, monastic life was also based on renunciation of private property, of marriage, and of the privilege of rank. The idea of preparing for the Second Advent gave the movement its strength, and stimulated the revolutionists of Münster to resist for a year and a half the miseries of a siege and all the forces which Germany could bring against them.

These misfortunes probably dimmed the faith of the besieged in Münster. Although there were thousands of Anabaptists scattered throughout the north of Germany and the Netherlands, their sporadic risings were all suppressed, and no town but Warendorf accepted Munster's proposals of peace. The Württemberg war, which had distracted the Princes of Germany, was over ; and the Lübeck war prevented Hanseatic democrats from assisting the people of Münster as effectually as it kept north German Princes from joining the siege. But it was April, 1535, before the mutual jealousies of the various Princes, the dissensions between Catholics and Protestants, the inefficiency of the national military organisation, and the common fear lest Charles V should seize the occasion to extend his Burgundian patrimony at the expense of Germany by appropriating Münster to himself, permitted a joint expedition in aid of the Bishop of Münster, who had hitherto carried on the siege with the help of some Hessian troops. After that the result could not long remain doubtful ; but the city offered a stubborn resistance, and it was only by means of treachery that it was taken by assault on the night of June 24. The usual slaughter followed ; Jan of Leyden and Knipperdollinck were tortured to death in the market-place with red-hot pincers. Münster was deprived of its privileges as an imperial city ; the Bishop's authority and Catholicism were re-established, and a fortress was built to support them. The Anabaptists were dispersed into many lands, and their views exercised a potent influence in England and America in the following century ; but the visionary and revolutionary spirit which gave Anabaptism its importance during the German Reformation passed out of it to assume other forms, and Anabaptism slowly became a respectable creed.

That famous organisation had lost much of the power it wielded in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Its position was based on a union between the so-called Wendic cities of the Baltic and the towns of Westphalia and the Netherlands, and upon the control which they exercised over the united Scandinavian kingdoms, and thus over the whole trade of the Baltic and the North Sea. The most potent voice in the confederation had hitherto been that of Lübeck, but the development of Bruges and Antwerp under the fostering care of their Burgundian rulers provoked a bitter rivalry between the Flemings and the League ; Lübeck insisted upon the exclusion of Dutch trade from the Baltic, and the Dutch naturally resented this limitation of their commerce. At the same time this loosening of the bond between the eastern and western cities weakened the League's hold on the Scandinavian kingdoms ; and Christian II, who had married Charles V's sister, conceived the idea of utilising his Burgundian allies for the purpose of breaking the domination of the Baltic cities. The plan was ruined by Christian's vices, which gained him the hatred of all his subjects and enabled the Lübeckers, by timely assistance to Christian's uncle, Frederick, Duke of Holstein, to evict their enemy from the throne of Denmark and Norway ; similar aid was rendered to Gustavus Vasa, who in the same year (1523) drove Christian out of Sweden ; and thus the union of the three Scandinavian kingdoms which had lasted since the Peace of Kalmar (1397) was permanently broken up.

The distrust with which the revolutionists of Lübeck were viewed by both Protestant and Catholic Princes made Wullenwever's course a difficult one. He started for Copenhagen to conclude an alliance between the two cities, but Copenhagen looked on him askance, and he then offered his friendship to the young Christian III with no better result. Lübeck, however, found an unexpected ally in Henry VIII, who was then trying every means to reduce the Habsburg power, and regarded with alarm the prospect of a Habsburg victory in Denmark. Marx Meyer, a military adventurer who had taken service under Lübeck, had been sent to sea in command of a fleet against the Dutch. Landing in England without a passport, he had been lodged in the Tower of London; but Henry saw in him a convenient instrument against the Habsburgs. He conferred on Meyer a knighthood, and promised Lübeck assistance ; while the Lübeckers undertook to tolerate no Prince upon the Danish throne of whom the English King did not approve. But Henry's promises were not very serious, and the Lübeckers were wise in not putting too much trust in them. They were better advised in concluding a four years1 truce with the Netherlands at the price of free trade through the Sound in order to concentrate their efforts upon establishing their control over Denmark.

These disasters were fatal to Wullenwever's power in Lübeck ; during his absence in Mecklenburg the restoration of the conservatives was effected in August. Wullenwever eventually fell into the hands of the Archbishop of Bremen, was delivered to the Archbishop's brother, Duke Henry of Brunswick, and put to death in September, 1537. With the ruin of his party the prosecution of his war began to languish, and in 1536 Christian took possession of Copenhagen and made himself master of the two kingdoms of Denmark and Norway. He was crowned by the Lutheran apostle Bugenhagen, under whose auspices religion according to the straitest sect of Wittenberg was established in Denmark. Christian's triumph was no doubt largely due to national antipathy to the domineering interference of an alien State, but the national feeling was exploited by class prejudice, and the aristocracy in Denmark turned their victory to the same use as the German Princes did theirs in the Peasants1 War. In both cases Lutheranism made common cause with the upper classes ; the proclamation of the Gospel and the enforcement of serfdom went hand in hand, but the landlord was the predominant partner, and even the children of preachers remained in the status of serfs.

Yet peace was not any nearer because the rivals had beaten a common foe. The agreement of Nürnberg in 1532 had guaranteed to the members of the Schmalkaldic League immunity for their religion, but it did not define religion or provide security for future Protestants. At the Peace of Cadan in 1534 the first point was settled by Ferdinand's quashing all the processes in the Reichskammergericht against the Schmalkaldic allies ; but the protection did not extend beyond the members of the League, and numerous other Protestant States were liable to practical ruin as the result of the Supreme Court's verdicts. This was a particularly dangerous cause of friction, because Catholic Princes had other than religious motives for executing the judgments of the Court against their Protestant neighbours; as executors of the Court's decrees they could legally seize the lands of recalcitrant cities or lords, and under the guise of religion extend their territorial power. Thus, Duke Eric of Brunswick-Calenberg was anxious to execute sentence on his chief town, Hanover, where a revolutionary movement had taken place ; the Duke of Bavaria cast longing eyes on Augsburg ; and the specific object of the Catholic League of Halle (1533) was to secure the execution of verdicts against all cities and Princes who were not among the Schmalkaldic confederates. The Catholics undoubtedly had the law on their side, but necessity drove their opponents to break it. They could hardly stand by while their fellow-countrymen were punished for holding the faith they held themselves ; had they done so they would only have prepared the way for their own destruction. The obvious method of protecting their co-religionists was to admit them to the Schmalkaldic League ; but this was an infraction of the terms of the Nürnberg Peace which would endanger their own security, and they would not have ventured on the step unless circumstances had tied the hands of the Austrian government.

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

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

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

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

One Bishop, John of Meissen, petitioned Charles to be freed from his allegiance to the Duke ; but even the Catholic members of the Estates repudiated his action, and in 1540 the Estates sanctioned the Lutheran Reformation which Duke Henry had begun without their concurrence.

Besides the Elector of Brandenburg and the Duke of Saxony, minor Princes and many towns threw in their lot with the Protestant cause. Joachim IPs brother, Margrave John of Brandenburg, who ruled in Cottbus and Peitz, joined the Schmalkaldic League in 1537. Batisbon, long a Catholic stronghold, relinquished its ancient faith; its monasteries had only one or two inmates apiece ; and only some twenty people gathered to worship in its cathedral. In other Catholic States there were said to be more monasteries than monks, and the number of candidates for ordination sank to five in four years in the see of Passau, and to seventeen in eight years in that of Laibach. Heidelberg, the Elector Palatine's capital, was described as the most Lutheran city in Germany ; and the Elector himself was, in the few moments he spared from the hunt and his cups, wavering between Luther and the Pope. Albrecht of Brandenburg, Luther's "devil of Mainz," was the only member of his family who remained Catholic, and he was compelled to flee from his palace at Halle. Mecklenburg-Schwerin was reformed by its episcopal Duke, and Brunswick-Calenberg by its Dowager-Duchess, Elizabeth of Brandenburg.

So the golden opportunity which the alliance with Paul and Francis at Nice appeared to afford to Charles for the reduction of German heresy passed away through no fault of the Emperor's. The zealous Held was suppressed ; the negotiations with the Lutherans were entrusted to the moderate Archbishop of Lund, who had contrived the agreement between Zapolya and Ferdinand ; and Charles accepted the mediation of the doubtful Catholic, the Elector Palatine Ludwig V, and the doubtful Protestant, Joachim II of Brandenburg. The parties met at Frankfort in April, 1539. Henry VIII sent envoys to stiffen the Lutheran demands and prevent an agreement if possible. The Protestant terms were high ; they wanted a permanent peace which no Council and no assembly of Estates should have the power to break ; the Nürnberg League was to receive no fresh accessions, its Protestant rival of Schmalkalden as many as chose to join it ; and all processes in the Relchskammergerlcht were to be suspended for eighteen months. All that Charles ultimately conceded was a suspension for six months, and he quietly gave his consent to the Nürnberg League. But its immediate object of enforcing the decrees of the Supreme Court was baulked; and for half a year even the latest recruits to Protestantism were to enjoy complete immunity. Beyond that nothing was settled, and the peace of the Lutherans depended upon the extent of the Emperor's troubles in other directions.

Yet the most pertinent comment on Bucer's scheme was Melanch-thon's, who compared it to Plato's Republic. He and Luther and John Frederick on one side, and Aleander and the Roman theologians on the other, were convinced that no concord was possible between Rome and evangelical Germany. It has been found possible to elaborate formularies which will bear both a Catholic and a Protestant interpretation, but it requires a strong hand and an effective government to compel their acceptance ; Charles could not coerce either Wittenberg or Rome ; he had neither the will nor the means of Henry VIII and Elizabeth. Bavaria organised an extreme faction among the Bishops and non-Electoral Princes, who revealed their double motives by threatening to seek another Emperor unless Charles afforded them better protection and obtained restitution of their secularised lands. This intrigue proved fatal to the attempt at comprehension and the result of the Diet was to leave parties in much the same state as before. In July, 1541, Charles made a declaration to the Protestants, suggested by Brandenburg, that the Augsburg Confession should be no ground for proceeding against any Prince ; that the ReichsJcammergericht should not exclude questions of ecclesiastical property from this guarantee; and that, although for the future monasteries must not be dissolved, they might adopt a " Christian reformation." But this declaration was to remain secret, and at the same time Charles renewed the Catholic League of Nürnberg. He was forced to ignore both Protestant and Catholic disobedience and to conciliate rebels in both the camps.

The pressure of other dangers, however, gave Gelders a two years' respite. The Emperor hurried from the Diet of Ratisbon to attempt the conquest of Algiers, a nest of pirates which was a perpetual menace to his Spanish and Italian possessions ; and the disastrous failure of that expedition encouraged Francis I and Solyman to renew their war on the Habsburgs. Zapolya had died on July 23, 1540, but before his death he had been unexpectedly blessed with a son, John Sigismund. His widow and her minister George Martinuzzi, Bishop of Grosswardein, thereupon repudiated the treaty of Grosswardein (1538), by which Ferdinand was to succeed Zapolya, and crowned the infant John Sigismund. Their only hope lay in Solyman, and the Turk had determined to end the nominal independence which Hungary enjoyed under Zapolya. In August, 1541, he captured Buda, turned its church of St Mary into a mosque, and Hungary into a Turkish province. The Diet of Speier (January, 1542) offered substantial levies for the war, but they were ill-equipped and worse commanded by Joachim of Brandenburg. In September the army sat down before Pesth ; on the 5th a breach was made, but the storming party failed ; and afterwards, wrote Sir Thomas Seymour, who was present, " the soldiers for lack of wages refused to keep watch and ward or to make assault." Two days later the siege was raised ; Joachim and his troops returned in disgrace to Germany ; and next year Solyman extended his sway over Fünfkirchen, Stuhlweissen-burg, and Gran.

Misfortune attended the Emperor in the west as well as in the east. Cleves had definitely thrown in its lot with France, and the anti-imperial league was joined by Sweden, Denmark, and Scotland. The French alliance with Turkey was once more brought into play, the Pope was hostile to both the Habsburg brothers, and Henry VIII was still haggling over the price of his friendship. Francis I declared war in 1542 ; and, although, he failed before Perpignan, a Danish-Clevish army under Martin van Rossem defeated the imperialists at Sittard (March 24,1543), Luxemburg was overrun, and a Franco-Turkish fleet captured Nice.

The Emperor's fate trembled in the balance. Arrayed against him were France, Turkey, the Pope, Sweden, Denmark, Scotland, Gelders, and Cleves ; he could only look for assistance from Henry VIII and the Lutherans, Henry became his ally in hope of reducing Scotland, but into which scale would the German sword be cast ? Francis I was holding out all sorts of inducements, and his proposals were backed by Strassburg and Calvin. But the Princes were perhaps not bold enough, perhaps not bad enough, to seize the opportunity of effecting their sovereign's ruin. Francis was allied to both Turk and Pope ; Charles was for once maintaining the national cause. To motives of patriotism was added the private agreement between Charles and the Landgrave. The Habsburgs were lavishing all their wiles on Philip ; and Philip, in spite of Bucer's warnings and in spite of his own real convictions, allowed himself to be duped. He opposed the admission of Denmark, Sweden, and Cleves into the Schmalkaldic League, and Duke William was thus left to his fate. With genuine insight Charles made the reduction of Gelders his first object. On August 22, 1543, he arrived before Duren, the principal stronghold in Gelders ; on the 24th it was battered from break of .day till 2 p.m., and then his Spanish and Italian troops took it by storm. Jülich, Koermonde, and Orkelen fell in the next few days, and on September 6 Duke William knelt before Charles at Venloo. Gelders and Zutphen were annexed to the Emperor's hereditary States, passed from him to Philip II, and thus were in effect severed from the Empire ; Duke William repudiated his French bride and his heresy, and later (1546) was married to Maria, Ferdinand's daughter. The Reformation in neighbouring Cologne was checked, and during the winter Bucer declared that the subjection of Germany was inevitable and imminent.

The campaign opened in 1544 with a French victory at Ceresole, but the tables were turned in the north. Aided by Lutheran troops Charles captured St Dizier while Henry VIII laid siege to Boulogne. In September the Emperor was almost within sight of the walls of Paris, when suddenly on the 18th he signed the preliminaries of the Peace of Crépy. Many and ingenious were the reasons alleged before the world and to his ally of England. In reality there had been a race between the two as to which should make peace first and leave the other in the grip of the enemy. Had Henry won he might have conquered Scotland, and there might have been no Schmalkaldic war. But Charles had proved the nimbler; it was he and not Henry who was left free to deliver his blows in another direction. At the cost of liberal terms to his foe he had duped one of the allies who had helped him to victory ; it remains to recount the fate which befell the other.