Pictures of German Life in the XVth, XVIth, and XVIIth Centuries, Vol. I. by Gustav Freytag

Author:Gustav Freytag [Freytag, Gustav]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781453862612
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: CreateSpace Publishing
Published: 2010-10-04T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VII.

GERMAN PRINCES AT THE IMPERIAL DIET.

(1547.)

Luther was dead. Over his grave raged the Smalkaldic war. Charles V. made a triumphal progress through humiliated Germany.

Only once did these two men confront each other--these great opponents whose spirits are still struggling in the German nation,--the Burgundian Hapsburger and the German peasant's son--the Emperor and the professor;--the one, who spoke German only to his horse; the other, who translated the Bible and formed the new German language of literature;--the one, the predecessor of the Jesuit protectors and the originator of the Hapsburger family politics; the other, the forerunner of Lessing the great German poet, historian, and philosopher.

It was a moment in German history pregnant with fate, when the young Emperor, lord of half the world, spoke at Worms the disdainful words,--"That man shall not make me a heretic." For then began the struggle between his house and the spirit of the German nation. A struggle of three centuries; victory and defeat on both sides; its final issue not to be doubted.

When the German princes and lords of the Empire, with the envoys from the free cities, rode to the Diet, they assembled to transact business with the two rulers of Germany. These two rulers were the Pope and the Emperor.

The Pope ruled in the holy Roman Empire of the German nation, not only as chief bishop in his spiritual capacity, but equally as a political power. A third of Germany was under the rule of ecclesiastical princes, who had at least to be confirmed by the Pope. The greatest part of his income he drew from the Empire; his legates sat at the Imperial Diet, among the ecclesiastical and temporal Electors, and could even open it without the Emperor.

When the Emperor would not confirm the Count Palatine Frederic the Victorious in the Electoral dignity, this temporal prince accepted the confirmation of the Pope. The Pope endeavoured to bring every difficult political negotiation before his court; indeed, he granted rights of custom, he annulled the Imperial ban, and ventured by his own power to exact tithes.

The Emperor was still considered the nominal centre of the Empire, and the source of all power. All hastened, upon his accession, to obtain from him the confirmation of old freedoms and privileges, and he was the first judge and first general of the Empire, but could not raise a single thaler of money or a single soldier without the consent of the Diet. And what was of still greater importance, he could only obtain taxes and soldiers from among the vassals, by the consent of their feudal lords. Hesitatingly and sparingly did the Diet grant subsidies, and so defective was the payment that the grant became a mere farce.

Within the Empire, Electors, princes, nobles, and Imperial cities ruled their territories, with many gradations of sovereign rights. The greater princes were real sovereigns, their power only restricted by their states. Noble families, holding temporal principalities in heritable possession, strove incessantly to enlarge their power, to put down the smaller lords round them, and to limit the sovereign rights of the Emperor.

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