§ 51. THE EMPEROR AND THE REFORMER. 275
decisions as final. Speaking of the Diet of Augsburg, held in 1530, he says that he “asked his Holiness to convoke and assemble a general council, as most important and necessary to remedy what was taking place in Germany, and the errors which were being propagated throughout Christendom.” ἢ This was likewise consistent with Spanish tradition. [58bella the Catholic, and Cardinal Ximenes, had endeavored to reform the clergy and monks in Spain.?
This Roman-Catholic reformation was effected by the Council. of Trent, but turned out to be a papal counter-reformation, and a weapon against Protestantism in the hands of the Spanish order of the Jesuits.
The Emperor and the Reformer.
Charles and Luther saw each other once, and only once, at the Diet of Worms. The Emperor was disgusted with the monk who dared to set his private judgment and conscience against the time-honored creed of Christendom, and declared that he would never make him a heretic. But Luther wrote him a respectful letter of thanks for his safeconduct.
Twenty years later, after his victory over John Frederick of Saxony at Mihlberg on the Elbe (April 24, 1547), Charles stood on the grave of Luther in the castle church of Wittenberg, and was advised by the bloodthirsty Duke of Alva to
1 Autobiography, p. 19. On p. 73 sqq. he complains of Clement VII. and Paul III., on account of their violation of promise to convoke such a council. He does not conceal his hatred of Paul III.
2 Comp. Maurenbrecher, Die Kirchenreformation in Spanien, in his “Studien und Skizzen,’’ pp. 1-40, and his Geschichte der katholischen Reformation (Nordiingen, 1880), vol. I., pp. 37-55. Maurenbrecher shows that there were two reformation-currents in the sixteenth century, one proceeding from Spain, and led by Charles V., which aimed at a restoration of the medieval Church in its purity and glory; the other proceeding from Germany, and embodied in Luther, which aimed at an emancipation of the human mind from the authority of Rome, and at a reconstruction of the Church on the inner religiosity of the individual.
8 April 28, 1521; in De Wette, I. 589-594.
276 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1580.
dig up and burn the bones of the arch-heretic, and to scatter the ashes to the winds of heaven; but he declined with the noble words: “1 make war on the living, not on the dead.” This was his nearest approach to religious toleration. But the interesting incident is not sufficiently authenticated.!
For twenty-six years the Emperor and the Reformer stood at the head of Germany, the one as a political, the other as a religious, leader; working in opposite directions, — the one for the preservation of the old, the other for the creation of the new, order of things. The one had the army and treasure of a vast empire at his command ; the other had nothing but his faith and pen, and yet made a far deeper and more lasting impression on his and on future ages. Luther died peacefully in his birthplace, trusting in the merits of Christ, and commending his soul to the God who redeemed him. Ten years later Charles ended his life as a monk in Spain, holding a burning candle in the right hand, and pressing with the left the crucifix to his lips, while the Archbishop of Toledo intoned the Psalm De Profundis. The last word of the dying Emperor was “ Jesus.”
§ 52. The Abdication of Charles, and his Cloister Eafe.
The abdication of Charles, and his subsequent cloister life, have a considerable interest for ecclesiastical as well as general history, and may by anticipation be briefly noted in this place.
In the year 305, the last of the imperial persecutors of Christianity, who was born a slave and reached his power by military achievements, voluntarily resigned the throne of the Cesars, and retired for the remaining eight years of his
1 In his Autobiography (ch. X., 151 sqq.) Charles speaks of the siege and capitulation of Wittenberg, but says nothing of a visit to Luther’s grave, nor does he even mention his name. I looked in vain for an allusion to the fact in Sleidan, and Lindner (in his extensive Appendix to Seckendorf, from 1546 to 1555). Ranke ignores it, though he is very full on this chapter in Charles’s history (vol. IV. 378 sqq.).