History of the reformation in Germany

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Author's Preface

From the first ten years of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the thirty years' war, the constitution and political condition of Germany were detennined by the periodical diets and the measures there resolved on.

Thp timft wa,Q Inng paitt in which thftjiiihlic affairs of the country were determined by one supreme will ; but its political life had not yet (as at a later period) retreated within the several boundaries of the constituent members of the empire. The Imperial assemblies exercised rights and powers which, though not accurately defined* were yet the comprehensive and absolute powers of sovereignty. They made war and peace ; levied taxes ; exercised a supreme supervision, and were even invested with executive power. Together with the deputies from the cities, and the representatives of the counts and lords, appeared the emperor and the sovereign princes in person. It is true they discussed the most important affairs of their respective countries in their several colleges, or in committees chosen from the whole body, and the questions were decided by the majority of voices. The unity of the nation was represented by these assembUes. Within the wide borders of the empire nothing of importance could occur which did not here come under deliberation ; nothing new arise, which must not await its final decision and execution here.

In spite of all these considerations, the history of the diets of the empire has not yet received the attention it deserves. The Recesses ^ of the

* The Recess {Abschied — literally, Departure ; called by the jurists of the empire, Recessus, was the document wherewith the labours of the diet were closed, and in which they were summed up. All the resolutions of the assembly, or the decisions of the sovereign on their proposals or petitions, were collected into one whole, and the session, or, according to the German expression, day (Tag), was thus closed with the publication of the Recess. Each separate law, after having passed the two colleges, that of the electors and that of the princes, received the emperor's assent or ratification, and had then the force of law. It was called a Resolution of the Empire {Reichsschluss or Reichsconclusiim). The sum of all the decisions or acts of a diet was called the Reichsabschied.

The correspondence of this with the English term Statute will be seen in the following extract : " For all the acts of one session of parliament taken together make properly but one statute ; and therefore when two sessions have been held in one year we usually mention stat. i or 2. Thus the Bill of Rights is cited as I W. & M. St. 2, c. 2 ; signifying that it is the second chapter or act of the second statute, or the laws made in the second session of parliament in the first year of King William and Queen Mary." — Blackstone*s Comment, vol. i., p. 85, isth ed.

The earliest Recesses of the empire are lost. Since the year 1663, as the diet remained constantly sitting down to 1806, no recess, properly so called, could be published. — ^Transl.

vu viii AUTHOR'S PREFACE

diets axe sufficiently well known ; but who would judge a deliberative assembly by the final results of its deUberations ? Projects of a systematic collection of its transactions have occasionally been entertained, and the work has even been taken in hand ; but all that has hitherto been done has remained in a fragmentary and incomplete state.

As it is the natural ambition of every man to leave behind him some useful record of his existence, I have long cherished the project of devoting my industry and my powers to this most important work. Not that I flattered myself that I was competent to supply so large a deficiency ; to exhaust the mass of materials in its manifold juridical bearings ; my idea was only to trace with accuracy the rise and development of the constitution of the empire, through a series (if possible unbroken) of the Acts of the Diets.

Fortune was so propitious to my wishes that, in the autumn of 1836, I found in the Archives of the city of Frankfurt a collection of the very kind I wanted, and was allowed access to these precious documents with all the facility I could desire.

The collection consists of ninety-six foHo volumes, which contain the Acts of the Imperial Diets from i4i4toi6i3. In the earUer part it is very imperfect, but step by step, in proportion as the constitution of the empire acquires form and development, the documents rise in interest. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, from which time the practice of reducing public proceedings to writing was introduced, it becomes so rich in new and important materials, that it lay^ the strongest hold on the attention. There are not only the Acts, but the reports of the deputies from the cities — the Rathsfreunde, — which generally charm by their frankness and simplicity, and often surprise by their sagacity. I profited by the opportunity to make myself master of the contents of the first sixty-four of these volumes, extending down to the year 1551. A collection of Imperial Rescripts occasionally afiPorded me valuable contributions.

But I could not stop here. A single town was not in a condition to know all that passed. It was evident that the labours of the electoral and princely colleges were not to be sought for in the records of a city.

In the beginning of the year 1837, I received permission to explore the Royal Archives of the kingdom of Prussia at Berlin, and, in the April of the same year, the State Archives of the kingdom of Saxony at Dresden, for the affairs of the empire during the times of Maximilian I. and Charles V. They were of great value to me ; the former as containing the records of an electorate ; the latter, down to the end of that epoch, those of a sovereign principality. It is true that I came upon many documents which I had already seen at Frankfurt ; but, at the same time, I found a great number

AUTHOR'S PREFACE ix

of new ones, which gave me an insight into parts of the subject hitherto obscure. None of these collections is, indeed, complete, and many a question which suggests itself remains unanswered ; yet they are in a high degree instructive. They throw a completely new light on the character and conduct of such influential princes as Joachim II. of Brandenburg, and still more, Maurice of Saxony.

Let no one pity a man who devotes himself to studies apparently so dry, and neglects for them the delights of many a joyous day. It is true that the companions of his soUtary hours are but lifeless paper, but they are the remnants of the life of past ages, which gradually assume form and substance to the eye occupied in the study of them. For me (in a preface an author is bound to speak of himself — a subject he elsewhere gladly avoids) they had a peculiar interest.

When I wrote the first part of my *« History of the Popes," I designedly treated the origin and progress of the Reformation with as much brevity as the subject permitted. I cherished the hope of dedicating more extensive and profound research to this most important event of the history of my country.

This hope was now abundantly satisfied. Of the new matter which I found, the greater part related, directly or indirectly, to the epoch of the Reformation. At every step I acquired new information as to the circumstances which prepared the politico-religious movement of that time ; the phases of our national life by which it was accelerated ; the origin and working of the resistance it encountered.

It is impossible to approach a matter originating in such intense mental energy, and exercising so vast an influence on the destinies of the world, without being profoundly interested and absorbed by it. I was fully sensible that if I executed the work I proposed to myself, the Reformation would be the centre on which all other incidents and circumstances would turn.

But to accomplish this, more accurate information was necessary as to the progress of opinion in the evangelical^ party (especially in a political point of view), antecedent to the crisis of the Reformation, than any that could be gathered from printed sources. The Archives common to the

1 It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to remark, that I have retained this word throaghout the following work in its original acceptation ; viz., as denoting the party which, at the time of the Reformation, adhered to the Confession of Augsburg ; the party which declared the Gospel the sole rule of faith. In our own age and country it has been assumed by a party which stands in nearly the same relation to the Church of England as the party called pietistical (pietistisch) to the Lutheran Church of Germany. But this did not seem to me a sufficient reason for removing it from its proper and authorized place in German history. The word Protestant hardly occurs in the original volumes ; and as it suggests another train of ideas and sentiments, I have not introduced it. — ^Traksl.

X AUTHOR'S PREFACE

whole Ernestine line of Saxony, deposited at Weimar, which I visited in August, 1837, afEorded me what I desired. Nor can any spot be more full of information on the marked epochs at which this house played so important a part, than the vault in which its archives are preserved. The walls and the whole interior space are covered with the rolls of documents relating to the deeds and events of that period. Every note, every draft of an answer, is here preserved. The correspondence between the Elector John Frederick and the Landgrave Phihp of Hessen would alone fill a long series of printed volumes. I endeavoured, above all, to make myself master of the two registers, which include the affairs of the empire and of the League of Schmalkald. As to the former, I found, as was to be expected from the nature of the subject, many valuable details ; as to the latter, I hence first drew information which is, I hope, in some degree calculated to satisfy the curiosity of the public.

1 feel bound here pubUcly to express my thanks to the authorities to whom the guardianship of these various archives is entrusted for the liberal aid — often not unattended with personal trouble — which I received from them all.

At length I conceived the project of undertaking a more extensive research into the Archives of Germany. I repaired to the Communal Archives of the house of Anhalt at Dessau, which at the epoch in question shared the opinions and followed the example of that of Saxony ; but I soon saw that I should here be in danger of encumbering myself with too much matter of a purely local character. I remembered how many other documents relating to this period had been explored and employed by the industry of German inquirers. The work of Buchholtz^ on Ferdinand I. contains a most copious treasure of important matter from those of Austria, of which too Uttle use is made in that state. The instructive writings of Stumpf and Winter^ are founded on those of Bavaria. The Archives of Wurtemberg were formerly explored by Sat tier ;' those of Hessen, recently, by Rommel * and Neudecker. For the more exclusively ecclesiastical view of the period, the public is in possession of a rich mass of authentic documents in the collection of Walch, and the recent editions of Luther's Letters by De Wette ; and still more in those of Melanchthon by Bretschneider. The letters of the deputies from Strasburg and Nurem-

* Buchholtz, F. B., Geschichte der Regierung Ferdinands I., 9 vols. Vienna, 1831-38.

2 Winter, V. A., Geschichte der evangelischen Lehrein Baiem, 2 parts. Munich, 1809-10.

' Sattler, C. F., Geschichte des Herzogthums Wurtemberg, 5 parts. Ulm, 1764-68.

* Rommel, Ch. v., Geschichte von Hessen, 10 vols. Marburg and Cassel, 1820-S8.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE xi

"berg,* which have been published, throw light on the history of particular diets. It is hardly necessary for me to mention how much has lately been brought together by Forstemann respecting the Diet of Augsburg of 1530, so long the subject of earnest research and labour.

Recent pubUcations, especially in Italy and England, lead us to hope for the possibility of a thorough and satisfactory explanation of the foreign relations of the empire.

I see the time approach in which we shall no longer have to found modem history on the reports even of contemporary historians, except in so far as they were in possession of personal and immediate knowledge of facts ; still less, on works yet more remote from the source ; but on the narratives of eye-witnesses, and the genuine and original documents. For the epoch treated in the following work, this prospect is no distant one. I myself have made use of a number of records which I had found when in the pursuit of another subject, in the Archives of Vienna, Venice, Rome, and especially Florence. Had I gone into further detail, I should have run the risk of losing sight of the subject as a whole ; or in the necessary lapse of time, of breaking the unity of the conception which had arisen before my mind in the course of my past researches.

And thus I proceeded boldly to the completion of this work ; persuaded that when an inquirer has made researches of some extent in authentic records, with an earnest spirit and a genuine ardour for truth, though later discoveries may throw clearer and more certain light on details, they can only strengthen his fundamental conceptions of the subject : — for truth can be but one.

* Recent works on this correspondence are : Virch, H., und Winckelmann, O., Politische Korresp. der Stadt Strasburg im Zeitalter der Reformation, 3 vols. Strasburg, 1879-98.

Liidewig, S., Die Politik Numbergs im Zeitalter der Reformation. Gottingen,

ERRATA

Page 739, note 2, line 8, for " his Provisional Government" read " the Provisional Government " ; line 9, for " Thurian Dampier" read '* Thurian Dangin."

Introduction

I Early History of Germany

ATTEMPT TO REFORM THE CONSTITUTION OF THE EMPIRE. 1486-1517 -

Book II

EARLY HISTORY OF LUTHER AND OF CHARLES V. 1517-1521 I. Origin op the Religious Opposition . . . -

II. Dbscbnt of ihb Imperial Crown FROti Maximilian to Charles V. .......

III. First Defection from the Papacy, 1519-10

IV. Diet of Worms, a.d. 1521 .....

BOOK in.

1521-1523

III. Diffusion op the New Doctrines, 1521-1534

IV. Opposition to the Council of Regency — Diet of 1533-24

V. Origin of the Division in the Nation - . - .

VI. Tbb Peasants' War ......

VII. Formation dp the Aovbrsb Rbligiocs Leagues — Diet of Augsburg, December, 1515 ......

Book IV

I. French and Italian Wars, down to '

II. Diet of Spire, a.d. 1526

III. Conquest of Rome, a.d. 1527

IV. Occupation of Bohemia and Hungary V, Foundation of Evangelical States xiv CONTENTS