elector of Brandenburg-from whom better things might have been hoped, were induced to concur in it. Some, however, even in these circumstances were found to hold fast their integrity and with the cities the emperor was reduced to practice an extraordinary artifice. They drew up a memorial of the conditions on which they were willing to submit to the council, comprising some of the principal stipulations for which the protestants had ever contended. When the paper was presented to him, he affected, without ever looking at it, to consider it as a declaration of unreserved submission, and thanked them for their compliance with his wishes.' A. D. 1547. of Trent But on the subject of the council difficulties Council arose which the emperor had not anticipated. interrupted. Scarcely had Charles's successes against the protestants commenced, when the pope became sensible of the danger to which he should be exposed if the emperor became absolute master in Germany. At the earliest period, therefore, that the engagements into which he had entered would allow, he withdrew his quota of troops from the imperial army, and even began to project an alliance with the king of France. 2 No longer daring to trust a council assembled at Trent, where it would be exposed to the March 11. emperor's influence, he translated it to Bologna, where he might hope to have it under his own control: but, as this removal must destroy all expectation of the council's being acknowledged by the Germans, it was strenuously opposed by the emperor and other princes; which pro 'Sleid. 440-1. F. Paul, 258. Robertson, iii. 440. 2 The emperor was seasonably relieved from danger from this quarter, by the death of his old rival Francis I, March 31, 1547. Henry VIII. of England had died two months before. CHAP. X. 1551. Sept. 1. The duced a schism in the council itself-such of the fathers as were under the emperor's influence pertinaciously remaining at Trent, while the rest departed to Bologna. Much altercation ensued, which issued in an indefinite adjournment of the assembly: nor were any means found of adjusting the difference, and bringing the council again into action, till Julius III.1 had succeeded Paul III. in the papal chair, and till the season of enforcing its decrees was past.2 Thus disappointed in his views from this quarter, Charles, for the purpose of establishing peace and uniformity in religion throughout Germany, resolved on a measure, which as much astonished the devoted Romanists as it proved oppressive to the protestants. This was no other than bringing forward to be sanctioned by the diet, and thus enforced in the empire, a scheme of doctrine well known by the name of the Interim-from its being proposed to be continued in force only till the decision of a satisfactory general council could be had. The persons whom Charles employed to draw up this formulary were Pflug, bishop of Naumberg, Heldingus, titular bishop of Sidon, made the year following bishop of Mersburg, and Agricola Islebius; the two former Romanists of some moderation, and the latter little better than an apostate Lutheran.3 The work was such as might be expected from Cardinal di Monte, elected Feb. 8, 1550. 2 F. Paul, 208, 242, 248, &c. Suspected not without reason," says Robertson, (iii. 444,) "of having been gained by bribes and promises, to betray or mislead his party on this occasion.' He had liberal rewards for his pains from the emperor and king Ferdinand." Sleid. 468.-Concerning the three compilers of the Interim, the reader may consult the index to the former volume of this work. its authors. "Its contents," says Thuanus, were agreeable to the hitherto received doctrine of the Roman-catholic church, except that it did not utterly condemn the marriage of priests, or entirely reject communion in both kinds." 1 It was drawn up, however, very much upon the plan of the book submitted seven years before to the diet of Ratisbon, and of Gropper's scheme of reformation for Cologne ; 2 and consequently was "expressed, for the most part, in the softest words, or in scriptural phrases, or in terms of studied ambiguity.' Before it was publicly brought forward, the Interim was submitted to the examination of select persons. Bucer, being sent for from Strasburg by the elector of Brandenburg, who now "made it his study to please the emperor," 3 was pressed both by him and Granvelle, the emperor's chief minister, to subscribe it; and, on his refusing to do so, it was not without danger of his life that he made his escape, and returned home.* A copy of the work was also * Thuan. i. 171, 172. : 2 Camerar. Vit. Melanc. Strobel. p. 263. See above vol. i. 262—264, 271, 274—276. —Melancthon however complains that he did not trace the hand of Pflug in the article of justification he would have drawn a better, at least if his own sentiments had not suffered deterioration. Mel. Consil. ii. 5. 3 Sleid. 461. We trace with pain the declension, if not even defection, of Joachim elector of Brandenburg: and our pain is not alleviated by discovering that there were interested motives which might lead to it. He sought to have his son admitted, under the sanction of the and the pope, to emperor the archbishopric of Magdeburg, to which he had been elected by the chapter. Sleid. 526. F. Paul, 322: Courayer, i. 552.-How great is the danger arising from "loving this present world!" How great also the folly of so doing! The elector succeeded in the object of his ambition-but his son scarcely survived his full admission to his new dignity.Chytræi Saxonia, 462. ♦ Sleid. 454, 457. Thuan. i. 171. A. D. 1547. CHAP. X. Its rati the diet. sent to Rome, where a great outcry was made against the emperor's presumption in adventuring to meddle with such subjects, as well as against some things contained in the book. The aged pope, however, more sagacious from long experience in affairs, only wondered that Charles could be so elated by one victory as to imagine that he could dictate the faith of both parties; predicted, that "what all would impugn and none defend" must soon fall; and in the mean time, with consummate artifice, affecting to believe that Charles, as a secular prince, was not pretending to prescribe articles to the faithful, to which they were to lower down their belief, but only to impose on the heretics those to which they must raise their's in order to be tolerated, he urged an explicit declaration to that effect. With regard to the two points of the marriage of priests and the giving of the cup to the laity, he observed, that it belonged only to himself to grant dispensations to that effect; that "if the emperor took upon him to allow them as lawful he would grievously offend Almighty God; but that, holding them unlawful, he might yet permit them to the heretics as the less of two evils."1 The emperor, having consulted with the fication by ecclesiastical electors, corrected the book as he judged fit, and prefixing a preface by which its application was limited, according to the pope's suggestion, to those who had deviated from the ancient doctrine and usages and did not choose to return to them, he proposed it in the diet, May 15, 1548; when, either by previous concert with the emperor, or of his own instance, the archbishop of Mentz, the premier F. Paul, 271-274: Courayer, i. 472-3. elector, rising up, immediately after it had been read, and before any of the members had the opportunity of expressing their sentiments upon it, returned thanks to the emperor, in the name of the diet, for his paternal and provident care for them in the important matter of religion and the peace of the empire. Every one was astonished, but no one ventured to express his surprise; to so servile a state were the princes of Germany reduced; and the emperor, affecting to consider the archbishop's address as the ratification of the diet, closed the business, and enrolled the Interim among the solemn decrees of the empire. A. D. 1548. reforma June 14. With the Interim, which prescribed the doc- Annexed trines to be received, was connected a form of scheme of ecclesiastical reformation, designed to regulate tion. all matters of order and discipline. This gave still higher offence at Rome than the regulation of doctrine, as perhaps wanting the restriction prefixed to the Interim, and directly infringing the fundamental principle, that no secular person is to give law to the clergy in any thing relating to their ecclesiastical character or functions. Among some things of a better kind, the following most objectionable orders were promulged that the monastic life should be restored where it had been discontinued; that nothing should be taught in schools contrary to the old, or Roman-catholic, doctrine; that the Latin tongue should be retained in the services of the church, "lest they should fall into contempt if the people understood the language;" and that the canon 1 Sleid. 453-4, 458-460. F. Paul, 274. The Interim may be seen in Goldast's Constitutiones Imperii, i. 518: also in Calvin's works, viii. 260-272: and a pretty copious abstract of it in Dupin, vii. 83-88. |