BOOK VII. THE REFORMATION. "When I recall to mind at last after so many dark ages wherein the huge, overshadowing train of error had almost swept all the stars out of the firmament of the Church, how the bright and blissful Reformation by divine power struck through the black and settled night of ignorance and anti-christian tyranny, methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him that reads or hears, and the sweet odour of the returning gospel imbathe his soul as with the fragrancy of Heaven.'-MILTON, Reformation in England. THE defiance of Wittemberg astonished and exasperated the Roman court. The not very zealous pontiff was somewhat stirred by the burning of his bull; legates were at once sent into Germany to work upon the mind of the youthful Cæsar, and to direct the might of the empire against the daring Saxon monk. But another and far inferior business lay nearer to the heart of Leo. Luther was not the enemy whom he most desired to crush. He coveted an enlarged principality in Italy far more eagerly than the undisputed sovereignty of Christendom. As an Italian prince and politician he was thoroughly in earnest and very prosperous. But with all his prosperity he was restless and ambitious. Supreme in his native Florence and master of larger and more obedient territories than most of his predecessors had possessed, he longed to recover Parma and Placentia, which Julius II. had annexed to the Papal States, and which Francis I. of France had occupied on his conquest of Milan in 1515. The two chief sovereigns of Europe, Francis the French king, and Charles the Spanish king and German emperor, were at the beginning of their long reigns and their long rivalry. Rivals for the imperial crown, rivals for supremacy in Europe, they were rivals for the mastery of Italy. The two chief potentates of Christendom they were also the two chief potentates of Italy, Francis as duke of Milan and Charles as king of Naples and Sicily. It was clearly for the advantage of the territorial popedom to keep both monarchs there rather than drive one out, to maintain rather than to subvert the balance of power in Italy. But Leo was eager for a change and pining for Parma and Placentia; he determined to effect the expulsion of Francis by the help of Charles, to set Spain and Germany in array against France, and to run the risk of yielding Italy to the grasp of the most potent monarch that Europe had known since Charlemagne. In conformity with ancient precedent, a pontiff was the troubler of Italy. The hideous woes so lavishly poured forth upon the peninsula from 1494 to 1530, flowed largely from papal vials, and the long and debasing servitude to the House of Austria in which those woes ended was in no small extent a piece of papal handiwork. The plague of war let loose upon Italy by Charles VIII. of France had been nursed by the diligent perfidy of pope Alexander VI., and inflamed by the fierce ambition and misjudging patriotism of pope Julius II.; and was now after some years' intermission renewed by the restless and intriguing spirit of pope Leo X., who in 1521 formed a league with the emperor for the expulsion of the French from Italy.1 But though mainly busied with Italian projects, Leo was not utterly unmindful of his pontifical duties; though full of Parma and Placentia, he did not quite forget Wittemberg. As a condition of his alliance with Charles against the French monarch, he bargained for the assistance of the emperor against the Saxon monk, and required Charles to strengthen the papal bull with the imperial ban. The legates whom he sent into Germany found the heart of the youthful Cæsar fully with them. Charles showed himself at the age of twenty-one pretty much the same person that he continued to be through life, a zealous devotee of the Roman Church and an earnest foe of the Reformation, but embarrassed and half disabled by circumstances; he commenced at Worms his long series of imperfect and maimed services to the Church of Rome. A diet was assembled there in April 1521, and Luther, whom the unpunished burning of the bull had not a little glorified in the sight of the German nation, was summoned to attend. Fortified by an imperial safe-conduct he at once obeyed the summons. Vainly his 1 Guicciardini, lib. xiv., who thus characterises the pontiffs: 'Principio a nuovi movimenti dettono quegli, i quali obligati più che gl' altri a procurar la conservatione della pace, più spesso che gl' altri la perturbano e guerra accendono con tutta l' industria' (tom. ii. p. 173, ed. 1636). friends dissuaded the journey; vainly they set before him the violated safe-conduct and the fiery doom of John Hus; vainly they urged the likelihood that Charles might repeat the perfidious weakness of Sigismund and Worms renew the famous tragedy of Constance. To Worms he would go were every tile of every house on the road a devil of hell set upon hindering him. To Worms he went where he bore witness to the truth before kings. The peasant-born Reformer stood before those imperial and princely servants, instruments and opponents of his, whose inward and outward life he so powerfully affected, whose policy he did so much to shape, whose territories he did so much to circumscribe or extend-before that youthful Cæsar, that famous Charles V., the passions and perplexities of whose secret soul he was so strongly to stir and multiply, and the burden of whose long and busy reign he was so greatly to aggravate-before the head of that House of Austria whose ruling passion henceforth was to be abhorrence of his doctrines, and whose chief occupation for more than a century lay in warfare with his work. After an elaborate harangue from the legate Alcander against Luther, the Reformer was summoned before the Diet and required to retract his writings. He asked and obtained a day for consideration; on his second appearance he declined to make the slightest retractation; and in the presence of emperor, legates and electors, and to the intense delight of the mass of the audience bore fearless and unshrinking testimony to the truths which had brought the bull upon him. Charles would not or durst not violate the safe-conduct, and Luther withdrew from Worms unscathed: but the emperor and the legate contrived to procure from the Diet an edict which condemned his doctrines and proscribed his person: the State undertook to give effect to the curse which the Church had hurled against him: the papal bull was followed by an imperial ban. The ban was proclaimed in direct defiance of the national feeling: and his sovereign, elector Frederick, interposed to avert an immediate conflict. On his journey from Worms back to Wittemberg Luther was carried off by friendly captors to the famous castle in the Wartburg, where restrained from public warfare with Rome he devoted his solitude to her undoing, and carried on the work most effectually during his seclusion by labouring at his translation of the Bible.2 2 Sleidan, lib. iii. Mathesius, c. 3. Pallavicino, lib. i. c. 23–27. Seckendorf, lib. i. c. 37, 45. Ranke, History of Reformation, lib. ii. c. 4. Gerdes gives the summons, the safe conduct and the ban (tom. ii. appendix, n. 6). Meanwhile Leo, satisfied with the nominal victory at Worms, unaware of the strength of that national and spiritual feeling which would make a mockery of the bull and a nullity of the ban, heedless too of the anti-papal stir that Zwingle was making in Switzerland, flung himself wholly into Italian politics, and forgetful of the secluded heresiarch unsheathed the sword against the orthodox king of France. On the eve of the revolt of half Christendom, he clutched at two Italian towns. While its chief woe was about to fall upon the popedom, the policy of the pope throve and his arms prospered. Luther was out of sight and apparently inactive; the anti-papal opinions of Germany and Switzerland had not yet mastered a state or given birth to a church. The chief sovereigns of Europe either rejoiced in the alliance or mourned over the enmity of Leo. Charles V. joined him in the war against the French king and published an edict against Luther; Henry VIII. entered into the alliance against France and wrote a book against Luther. The emperor well fulfilled his traditional office of advocate of the Roman Church: the English king well earned his title of Defender of the Faith. Francis I. vainly sought the friendship and bitterly rued the hostility of the pontiff. In this war of his own kindling Leo was the principal rather than auxiliary: the combined forces were commanded by his general, and the victories were won in his name. The French were outgeneralled by a papal commander and driven from Milan and Italy by a papal host; Parma and Placentia resumed the yoke of their papal master. The heart of Leo was greatly uplifted by these triumphs; but his enjoyment was exceedingly brief: eight days after the tidings reached him he died, not only in the arms of victory but according to general report in consequence of the hot embrace. His sudden death, imputed by many to poison, was attributed by others to excessive joy at the triumph of his arms and the enlargement of his states.3 The portion of Leo has been very singular. He was at once one of the most prosperous and unprosperous, one of the most illustrious and inglorious among the Roman pontiffs. Most successful as an Italian prince, most distinguished as a patron of art and literature, he was anything but gloriously conspicuous as the Head of the Roman Church. Successful in extending his Italian territories and more than a match for potent French monarchs, he had to face the great uprising of Christendom against Rome, 3 Guicciardini, c. 14. Pallavicino, lib. ii. Sismondi, c. 113. and came into conflict with the greatest and most heroic soul of these latter ages. If he prospered in diplomacy and war, Luther branded his indulgences and burned his bull. He stands conspicuous among the very few popes, Nicholas V., Julius II., Sixtus V., Benedict XIV., Clement XIV., who have possessed some personal and powerful interest for men: he has found favour with those to whom popes were objects neither of much hate nor much love: alone of all the pontiffs he has won an elaborate and tender biography from an enamoured English Protestant. He has connected his name with a great intellectual epoch. But the spiritual greatness of that time far exceeds its intellectual greatness of its master spirit the pontiff was the official and most inadequate antagonist; and the glory of the age of Leo X. is lost in the glory of the age of Luther. Considerable as an Italian potentate, memorable as a patron of genius, as the fostering contemporary of Michael Angelo, of Ariosto, of Raphael, Leo remains far more memorable as the witness of the Reformation, as the contemporary and antagonist of Luther. In company with statesmen and princes, with kings and Cæsars and those of more than ordinary capacity, with Wolsey and Granvelle, with Frederick of Saxony and George of Saxony, with Henry VIII. and Gustavus Vasa, with Francis I. and Charles V., he falls into the train of the German peasant. : He was replaced by Adrian of Utrecht, the tutor of Charles V., the first German and the best man that for centuries had sate in the papal chair. The official head of Christendom, the greatest writer and the master spirit of the age, Adrian, Erasmus and Luther were all of Teutonic blood. Pure in life and earnest in spirit, he brought to the pontifical throne a sincere abhorrence of the corrupt practices of the Roman court and a sincere abhorrence of the doctrines of Luther.5 He understood the movement in Germany far better than Leo did and feared and hated it far more. Bent alike upon reform 4 It makes nothing against the anti-papal character of English literature that one of its most excellent biographies, Roscoe's Life and Pontificate of Leo X., is the panegyric of a pope. In the eyes of the elegant English Unitarian, the papal chair takes what honour it has from so graceful and accomplished an occupant; Luther appears the harsh troubler of so refined a reign; and the plain speaking and plain dealing of the mighty monk with the polite pontiff seem like the impertinence of some rude boor towards an elegant and accomplished gentleman. 5 Guicciardini, lib. xiv. Pallavicino, lib. ii. c. 2, 3, 4. Sarpi, Historia del Concilio Tridentino, lib. i. ed. 1619. |