them as late as the year 1523. He believed in Indulgences of the older type,-Indulgences which remitted in whole or in part ecclesiastically imposed satisfactions,—and he had procured two for use in Saxony. One served as an endowment for the upkeep of his bridge at Torgau, and he had once commissioned Tetzel to preach its virtues; the other was to benefit pilgrims who visited and venerated his collection of relics on All Saints' Day. But it is clear that he disliked Indulgences of the kind Luther had challenged, and had small belief in the good faith of the Roman Curia. He had prevented money collected for one plenary Indulgence leaving the country, and he had forbidden Tetzel to preach the last Indulgence within his territories. His sympathies were all with Luther on this question. He was an esteemed patron of the pious society called St. Ursula's Schifflein. He went to Mass regularly, and his attendances became frequent when he was in a state of hesitation or perplexity. When he was at Köln (November 1520), besieged by the papal nuncios to induce him to permit the publication of the Bull against Luther within his lands, Spalatin noted that he went to Mass three times in one day. His reverence for the Holy Scriptures must have created a bond of sympathy between Luther and himself. He talked with his private secretary about the incomparable majesty and power of the word of God, and contrasted its sublimities with the sophistries. and trivialities of the theology of the day. He maintained. firmly the traditional policy of his House to make the decisions of the Councils of Constance and of Basel effective within Electoral Saxony, in spite of protests from the Curia and the higher ecclesiastics, and was accustomed to consider himself responsible for the ecclesiastical as well as for the civil good government of his lands. Aleander had considered it a master-stroke of policy to procure the burning of Luther's books at Köln while the Elector was in the city. Frederick only regarded the deed as a petty insult to himself. He was a staunch upholder of the rights and liberties of the German nation, and remembered

that by an old concordat, which every Emperor had sworn to maintain, every German had the right to appeal to a General Council, and could not be condemned without a fair trial; and this Bull had made Luther's appeal to a Council one of the reasons for his condemnation. So, in spite of the "golden rose" and other blandishments, in spite of threats that he might be included in the excommunication of his subject and that the privileges of his University might be taken away, he stood firm, and would not withdraw his protection from Luther. He was a pious German prince of the old-fashioned type, with no great love for Italians, and was not going to be browbeaten by papal nuncios. His attitude towards Luther represents very fairly that of the great mass of the German people on the eve of the Diet of Worms.

CHAPTER III.

THE DIET OF WORMS.1

§ 1. The Roman Nuncio Aleander.

ROME had done its utmost to get rid of Luther by ecclesiastical measures, and had failed. If he was to be overthrown, if the new religious movement and the national uprising which enclosed it were to be stifled, this could only be done by the aid of the supreme secular authority. The Curia turned to the Emperor.

Maximilian had died suddenly on the 12th of January 1519. After some months of intriguing, the papal di

1 SOURCES: Deutsche Reichstagsakten unter Kaiser Karl V., 3 vols. have been published (Gotha, 1893-1901); Balan, Monumenta Reformationis Lutherana ex tabulis S. Sedis secretis 1521-1525 (Ratisbon, 1883-1884); Læmmer, Monumenta Vaticana historiam ecclesiasticam sæculi 16 illustrantia (Freiburg, 1861); Meletematum Romanorum Mantissa (Regensburg, 1875); Brieger, Aleander und Luther 1521: Die vervollständigten Aleander-Depeschen nebst Untersuchungen über den Wormser Reichstag (Gotha, 1894); Calendar of Spanish State Papers (London, 1886); Calendar of Venetian State Papers, vols. iii.-vi. (London, 1864-1884); Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII., vols. iii.-xix. (London, 18601903); V. E. Loescher, Vollständige Reformations-Acta und Documenta, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1713–1722); Spalatin, Annales Reformationis (Leipzig, 1768); Chronikon, 2nd vol. of Mencke's Scriptores rerum Germanicarum præcipue Saxonicarum, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1728-1730); Historischer Nachlass und Briefe (Jena, 1851); also the sources mentioned under the first chapter of this part.

LATER BOOKS: Hausrath, Aleander und Luther auf dem Reichstage zu Worms (Berlin, 1897); Kolde, Luther und der Reichstag zu Worms 1521 (Halle, 1883); Friedrich, Der Reichstag zu Worms 1521 (Munich, 1871); Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (Leipzig, 1881; Eng. trans., London, 1905); Armstrong, The Emperor Charles V. (London, 1902); v. Bezold, Geschichte der deutschen Reformation (Berlin, 1890); Creighton, A History of the Papacy, vol. vi. (London, 1897); Gebhardt, Die Gravamina der deutschen Nation (Breslau, 1895).

plomacy being very tortuous, his grandson Charles, the young King of Spain, was unanimously chosen to be his successor (June 28th, 1519). Troubles in Spain prevented him leaving that country at once to take possession of his new dignities. He was crowned at Aachen on the 23rd of October 1520, and opened his first German Diet on January 22nd, 1521, at Worms.

The Pope had selected two envoys to wait on the young Emperor, the Protonotary Marino Caraccioli (1469– 1530), who was charged with the ordinary diplomatic business, and Jerome Aleander, the Director of the Vatican Library, who was appointed to secure the outlawry of Luther.

The Roman Curia had in Aleander one of the most clear-sighted, courageous, and indefatigable of diplomatists. He was an Italian, born of a burgher family in the little Venetian town of Motta (1480-1542), educated at Padua and Venice; he had begun life as a Humanist, had lectured on Greek with distinction in Paris, and had been personally acquainted with many of the German Humanists, who could not forgive the "traitor" who had deserted their ranks to serve an obscurantist party. His graphic letters, full of minute details, throb with the hopes and fears of the papal diplomacy. The reader has his fingers on the pulse of those momentous months. The Legate was in a land where "every stone and every tree cried out, Luther.'" Landlords refused him lodging. He had to shiver during these winter months in an attic without a stove. The stench and dirt of the house were worse than the cold. When he appeared on the streets he saw scowling faces, hands suddenly carried to the hilts of swords, heard curses shrieked after him. He was struck on the breast by a Lutheran doorkeeper when he tried to get audience of the Elector of Saxony, and no one in the crowd interfered to protect him. He saw caricatures of himself hanging head downwards from a gibbet. He received the old deadly German feud-letters from Ulrich von Hutten, safe in the neighbouring castle of Ebernberg, about a day's ride

distant.1 The imperial Councillors to whom he complained had neither the men nor the means to protect him. When he tried to publish answers to the attacks on the Papacy which the Lutheran presses poured forth, he could scarcely find a printer; and when he did, syndicates bought up his pamphlets and destroyed them. As the weeks passed he came to understand that there was only one man on whom he could rely-the young Emperor, believed by all but himself to be a puppet in the hands of his Councillors, whom Pope Leo had called a "good child," but whom Aleander from his first interview at Antwerp had felt to be endowed with "a prudence far beyond his years," and to "have much more at the back of his head than he carried on his face." He also came to believe that the one man to be feared was the old Elector of Saxony, "that basilisk," that "German fox," that "marmot with the eyes of a dog, who glanced obliquely at his questioners."

Aleander was a pure worldling, a man of indifferent morals, showing traces of cold-blooded cruelty (as when he slew five peasants for the loss of one of his dogs, or tried to get Erasmus poisoned). He believed that every man had his price, and that low and selfish motives were alone to be reckoned with. But he did the work of the Curia at Worms with a thoroughness which merited the rewards he obtained afterwards. He had spies everywhere in the households of the Emperor and of the leading princes, and among the population of Worms. He had no hesitation in lying when he thought it useful for the "faith," as he frankly relates.3 The Curia had laid a difficult task upon him. He was to see that Luther was put under the ban of the Empire at once and unheard. The Bull had condemned him; the secular power had nothing to do but execute the sentence. Aleander had little difficulty in persuading the Emperor to this course within his hereditary

1 Kalkoff, Die Depeschen, etc. pp. 46, 50, 58, 69, etc.

* He became Archbishop of Brindisi and Orio, and then a Cardinal. 3 Brieger, Aleander und Luther 1521: Die vervollständigten AleanderDepeschen, p. 53 (Gotha, 1884); non superstitiose verax, Erasmus said.