History of the Great Reformation Part 3

[Sidenote: THE a.s.sAULT.]

Whilst the storm descending from the Alps was approaching the eternal city, the Pope lost his presence of mind, sent away his troops, and kept only his body-guard. More than thirty thousand Romans, it is true, capable of bearing arms, paraded their bravery in the streets, dragging their long-swords after them, quarrelling and fighting; but these citizens, eager in the pursuit of gain, had little thought of defending the Pope, and desired on the contrary that the magnificent Charles would come and settle in Rome, hoping to derive great profit from his stay.

On the evening of the 5th May Bourbon arrived under the walls of the capital; and he would have begun the a.s.sault at that very moment if he had had ladders. On the morning of the 6th the army, concealed by a thick fog which hid their movements,[50] was put in motion, the Spaniards marching to their station above the gate of the Holy Ghost, and the Germans below.[51] The Constable, wishing to encourage his soldiers, seized a scaling-ladder, mounted the wall, and called on them to follow him. At this moment a ball struck him: he fell, and expired an hour after. Such was the end of this unhappy man, a traitor to his king and to his country, and suspected even by his new friends.

[50] Guicciardini, vol. ii. p. 721.

[51] Since the new wall built by Urban VIII. on the top of the Janiculum, the gates of the Holy Ghost and of Seltimiana have become useless.

His death, far from checking, served only to excite the army. Claudius Seidenstucker, grasping his long sword, first cleared the wall; he was followed by Michael Hartmann, and these two reformed Germans exclaimed that G.o.d himself marched before them in the clouds. The gates were opened, the army poured in, the suburbs were taken, and the Pope, surrounded by thirteen cardinals, fled to the Castle of St. Angelo.

The Imperialists, at whose head was now the Prince of Orange, offered him peace on condition of his paying three hundred thousand crowns.

But Clement, who thought that the Holy League was on the point of delivering him, and who fancied he already saw their leading hors.e.m.e.n, rejected every proposition. After four hours' repose, the attack was renewed, and by an hour after sunset the army was master of all the city. It remained under arms and in good order until midnight, the Spaniards in the Piazza Navona, and the Germans in the Campofiore. At last, seeing no demonstrations either of war or of peace, the soldiers disbanded and ran to pillage.

[Sidenote: THE SACK.]

Then began the famous "Sack of Rome." The Papacy had for centuries put Christendom in the press. Prebends, annates, jubilees, pilgrimages, ecclesiastical graces,--she had made money of them all. These greedy troops, that for months had lived in wretchedness, determined to make her disgorge. No one was spared, the imperial not more than the ultramontane party, the Ghibellines not more than the Guelfs.

Churches, palaces, convents, private houses, basilics, banks, tombs--every thing was pillaged, even to the golden ring that the corpse of Julius II. still wore on its finger. The Spaniards displayed the greatest skill; they scented out and discovered treasures in the most mysterious hiding-places; but the Neapolitans were still more outrageous.[52] "On every side were heard," says Guicciardini, "the piteous shrieks of the Roman women and of the nuns whom the soldiers dragged away by companies to satiate their l.u.s.t."[53]

[52] Jovius Vita Pompeii Colonnae, p. 191; Ranke, Deutsche Gesch. ii.

p. 398.

[53] Guicciardini, ii. p. 724.

[Sidenote: GERMAN HUMOURS.]

At first the Germans found a certain pleasure in making the Papists feel the weight of their swords. But ere long, happy at finding food and drink, they were more pacific than their allies. It was upon those things which the Romans called "holy" that the anger of the Lutherans was especially discharged. They took away the chalices, the pyxes, the silver remonstrances, and clothed their servants and camp-boys with the sacerdotal garments.[54] The Campofiore was changed into an immense gambling-house. The soldiers brought thither golden vessels and bags full of crowns, staked them upon one throw of the dice, and after losing them, they went in search of others. A certain Simon Baptista, who had foretold the sack of the city, had been thrown into prison by the Pope; the Germans liberated him, and made him drink with them. But, like Jeremiah, he prophesied against all. "Rob, plunder,"

cried he to his liberators; "you shall however give back all; the money of the soldiers and the gold of the priests will follow the same road."

[54] Sacras vestes profanis induebant lixis.--(Cochlus, p. 156.)

Nothing pleased the Germans more than to mock the papal court. "Many prelates," says Guicciardini, "were paraded on a.s.ses through all the city of Rome."[55] After this procession, the bishops paid their ransom; but they fell into the hands of the Spaniards, who made them pay it a second time.[56]

[55] Wars of Italy, ii. p. 723.

[56] Eundem civem seu curialem haud raro, nunc ab Hispanis, nunc a Germanis aere mutuato redimi.--(Cochlus, p. 156.)

One day a lansquenet named Guillaume de Sainte Celle, robes, and placed the triple crown upon his head; others, adorning themselves with the red hats and long robes of the cardinals, surrounded him; and all going in procession upon a.s.ses through the streets of the city, arrived at last before the castle of Saint Angelo, where Clement VII.

had retired. Here the soldier-cardinals alighted, and lifting up the front of their robes, kissed the feet of the pretended pontiff. The latter drank to the health of Clement VII., the cardinals kneeling did the same, and exclaimed that henceforward they would be pious popes and good cardinals, who would have a care not to excite wars, as all their predecessors had done. They then formed a conclave, and the Pope having announced to his consistory that it was his intention to resign the Papacy, all hands were immediately raised for the election, and they cried out "Luther is Pope! Luther is Pope!"[57] Never had pontiff been proclaimed with such perfect unanimity. Such were the humours of the Germans.

[57] Milites itaque leva.s.se manum ac exclama.s.se: Lutherus Papa!

Lutherus Papa!--(Cochlus, p. 156.)

[Sidenote: VIOLENCE OF THE SPANIARDS.]

The Spaniards did not let them off so easily. Clement VII. had called them "Moors," and had published a plenary, indulgence for whoever should kill any of them. Nothing, therefore, could restrain their fury. These faithful Catholics put the prelates to death in the midst of horrible tortures, destined to extort their treasures from them: they spared neither rank, s.e.x, nor age. It was not until after the sack had lasted ten days, and a booty of ten million golden crowns had been collected, and from five to eight thousand victims had perished, that quiet began to be in some degree restored.

Thus did the pontifical city expire in the midst of a long and cruel pillage, and that splendour with which Rome from the beginning of the sixteenth century had filled the world faded in a few hours. Nothing could preserve this haughty city from chastis.e.m.e.nt, not even the prayers of its enemies. "I would not have Rome burnt," Luther had exclaimed; "it would be a monstrous deed."[58] The fears of Melancthon were still keener: "I tremble for the libraries," said he, "we know how hateful books are to Mars."[59] But in despite of these wishes of the reformers, the city of Leo X. fell under the judgment of G.o.d.

[58] Romam nollem exustam, magnum enim portentum esset.--(Epp. iii. p.

221.)

[59] Metuo bibliothecis.--(Corp. Ref. i. p. 869.)

Clement VII., besieged in the castle of Saint Angelo, and fearful that the enemy would blow his asylum into the air with their mines, at last capitulated. He renounced every alliance against Charles the Fifth, and bound himself to remain a prisoner until he had paid the army four hundred thousand ducats. The evangelical Christians gazed with astonishment on this judgment of the Lord. "Such," said they, "is the empire of Jesus Christ, that the Emperor, pursuing Luther on account of the Pope, is constrained to ruin the Pope instead of Luther. All things minister unto the Lord, and turn against his adversaries."[60]

[60] Ut Caesar pro Papa Lutherum persequens, pro Luthero papam cogatur vastare.--(L. Epp. iii. p. 188.)

[Sidenote: PROFITABLE CALM.]

III. And in truth the Reform needed some years of repose that it might increase and gain strength; and it could not enjoy peace, unless its great enemies were at war with each other. The madness of Clement VII.

was as it were the _lightning-conductor_ of the Reformation, and the ruin of Rome built up the Gospel. It was not only a few months' gain; from 1526 to 1529 there was a calm in Germany by which the Reformation profited to organize and extend itself. A const.i.tution was now to be given to the renovated Church.

The papal yoke having been broken, the ecclesiastical order required to be reestablished. It was impossible to restore their ancient jurisdiction to the bishops; for these continental prelates maintained that they were, in an especial manner, the Pope's servants. A new state of things was therefore called for, under pain of seeing the Church fall into anarchy. Provision was made for it. It was then that the evangelic nations separated definitely from that despotic dominion which had for ages kept all the West in bondage.

Already on two occasions the diet had wished to make the reform of the Church a national work; the Emperor, the Pope, and a few princes were opposed to it; the Diet of Spire had therefore resigned to each state the task that it could not accomplish itself.

But what const.i.tution were they about to subst.i.tute for the papal hierarchy?

They could, while suppressing the Pope, preserve the Episcopal order: it was the form most approximate to that which was on the point of being destroyed.

They might, on the contrary, reconstruct the ecclesiastical order, by having recourse to the sovereignty of G.o.d's Word, and by re-establishing the rights of the christian people. This form was the most remote from the Roman hierarchy. Between these two extremes there were several middle courses.

[Sidenote: PHILIP OF HESSE.]

The latter plan was Zwingle's; but the reformer of Zurich had not fully carried it out. He had not called upon the christian people to exercise the sovereignty, and had stopped at the council of two hundred as representing the Church.[61]

[61] _Supra_, Vol. III. b. xi. ch. x.

The step before which Zwingle had hesitated might be taken, and it was so. A prince did not shrink from what had alarmed even republics.

Evangelical Germany, at the moment in which she began to try her hand on ecclesiastical const.i.tutions, began with that which trenched the deepest on the papal monarchy.

It was not, however, from Germany that such a system could proceed. If the aristocratic England was destined to cling to the episcopal form, the docile Germany was destined the rather to stop in a governmental medium. The democratic extreme issued from Switzerland and France. One of Calvin's predecessors then hoisted that flag which the powerful arm of the Genevese Reformer was to lift again in after-years and plant in France, Switzerland, Holland, Scotland, and even in England, whence it was a century later to cross the Atlantic and summon North America to take its rank among the nations.

None of the evangelical princes was so enterprising as Philip of Hesse, who has been compared to Philip of Macedon in subtlety, and to his son Alexander in courage. Philip comprehended that religion was at length acquiring its due importance; and far from opposing the great development that was agitating the people, he put himself in harmony with the new ideas.

The morning-star had risen for Hesse almost at the same time as for Saxony. In 1517, when Luther was preaching in Wittemberg the gratuitous remission of sins, men and women were seen in Marburg repairing secretly to one of the ditches of the city, and there, near a solitary loophole, listening to the words that issued from within, and that preached doctrines of consolation through the bars. It was the voice of the Franciscan, James Limburg, who having declared that, for fifteen centuries, the priests had falsified the Gospel of Christ, had been thrown into this gloomy dungeon. These mysterious a.s.semblies lasted a fortnight. On a sudden the voice ceased; these lonely meetings had been discovered, and the Franciscan, torn from his cell, had been hurried away across the Lahnberg towards some unknown spot.

Not far from the Ziegenberg, some weeping citizens of Marburg came up with him, and hastily s.n.a.t.c.hing aside the canva.s.s that covered his car, they asked him, "Whither are you going?" "Where G.o.d wills,"

calmly replied the friar.[62] There was no more talk of him, and it is not known what became of him. These disappearances are usual in the Papacy.

[62] Rommel, Phil. von Hesse, i. p. 128.

Scarcely had Philip prevailed in the Diet of Spire, when he resolved on devoting himself to the Reformation of his hereditary states.

[Sidenote: Lambert's Paradoxes.]

His resolute character made him incline towards the Swiss reform: it was not therefore one of the moderates that he required. He had formed a connexion at Spire with James Sturm, the deputy from Strasburg, who spoke to him of Francis Lambert of Avignon, who was then at Strasburg.

Of a pleasing exterior and decided character, Lambert added to the fire of the South the perseverance of the North. He was the first in France to throw off the cowl, and he had never since then ceased to call for a radical reform in the Church. "Formerly," said he, "when I was a hypocrite, I lived in abundance; now I consume frugally my daily bread with my small family;[63] but I had rather be poor in Christ's kingdom, than possess abundance of gold in the dissolute dwellings of the Pope." The Landgrave saw that Lambert was such a man as he required, and invited him to his court.