§1
Both my purpose and the bitterness of the times compel me to treat many matters concerning the composing of the seditions of our country. That there is so great a disturbance in the Empire, so great a distrust among the princes, and so great a mutual hostility toward the Imperial Majesty as there was not even in the most exasperated times is taught by the diets and public assemblies. The beginnings of almost all of them contain complaints about discord, contention, lawsuits, and distrust, while the negotiators have thus far sought remedies. Yet it appears marvelous to foreign nations, and posterity will scarcely believe it, that now for ninety years peace has been negotiated among princely colleagues and relatives, in the sight of emperors who are most desirous of peace, while alienation of minds and petty wars nevertheless endure—especially since war would be equally ruinous and mournful to either party, and since no one comes to those diets who does not profess that he is most desirous of peace.
I inquire into the cause of so great an evil; for just as in medicine it is necessary for the remedies to know the cause of the disease, so a certain harmful humor enclosed in this vast body of the most august Empire must be recognized. In various places and with diverse effect it disturbs the duly tempered harmony and concord of the limbs and members; some it inflames contrary to nature, some it wastes away, and some it tears apart by gnawing; and while it assails the individual parts, it infests all alike. I shall disclose in what part this evil is situated and reigns.
Accordingly, I determine as follows. The causes of all discords, hatreds, civil wars, and rebellion in the Roman Empire are the Lutheran and Calvinist preachers, by whatever name they are called and in whatever sect they live. Nor are the Anabaptists innocent; but because their audacity has once been broken, their malice now lacks force and arms. Therefore they now cover themselves with a fox’s skin until they acquire a lion’s and grow strong enough to carry the matter through. I ask the reader so to regard and weigh the reasons that he does not pronounce sentence from a preoccupied judgment.
§2
The first reason. For conserving the Empire and preserving peace, the authority of the ruler is necessary; it is stronger against rebellions and contempt than all citadels and even arms. Majesty is the safeguard of empire. The preaching innovators, so far as lay in them, dissolved all its force, and attempted to bring the matter to such a point that there would be neither admiration nor fear of the highest power, the two things by which authority, which is the prop of governments, is sustained. They therefore undertook to cut the sinews of the Empire; thence audacity broke the peace in the hope of impunity, and that enticement gradually drew many men so that they now drew authority to themselves.
οὐ γὰρ πεφύκασιν αἰδοῖ πειθαρχεῖν, ἀλλὰ φόβῳ· οὐδ᾽ ἀπέχεσθαι τῶν φαύλων διὰ τὸ αἰσχρόν, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὰς τιμωρίας.
For they have not been born in such a way that they obey shame, but so that they obey fear; nor that they abstain from wicked things because of their disgracefulness, but because of punishments and penalty.
But how shall I show that the innovators blunted the edge of august authority, detracted from majesty, and befouled it with the contempt of every most worthless man? This indeed will hardly be laborious. In the volumes of Luther there are entire invectives against princes, collected even by Catholics. It is not my intention to report all of them—indeed, scarcely any—because Luther’s authority has not yet been abolished from the minds of all, and esteem for legitimate power is languishing more than it ought. It is sufficient to have taught the matter by one or two examples.
In his little book On the War against the Turks, he denies that the emperor is the head of the Christian state and defender of the Gospel or of the faith. The Church, he says, assuredly ought to have another defender than the emperor and kings, for they are the worst enemies of Christianity and the faith. In the little book On Secular Power, he says that princes are for the most part either the foremost fools or the most abominable scoundrels.
But lest we attribute these things to Luther’s fervor alone, behold that most timorous man Philip. In an epistle to Lord Burchard Mithobius: “Although I have often learned with great sorrow that the minds τῶν ἀρχόντων [of rulers] are exceedingly inconstant”—he speaks of his own rulers, whose diligence in plundering monasteries he also censures. “Most princes even before this time have been much more diligent in plundering monasteries than in establishing παροικίας [parishes] and schools. But let us await the coming year, which perhaps will shake from our heroes their lethargy, games, pleasures, loves, and quarrels. Thus far some have raged against churches, others have invented corruptions of doctrine,
contended with obscene pamphlets, invented tasteless dialogues, delighted themselves with venereal pleasures, neglected churches and schools, and contended in ambition; now Nemesis draws near an enemy who is not to be despised.”
And in an epistle to Milichius, he says that cities have been deserted and betrayed by cowardly princes. What the Calvinists think about the princes of the Empire and the emperor himself I have already shown often enough: namely, that the Empire is the apocalyptic beast, the slayer of the saints; that to admire the Empire excessively and to call it August is to adore the Devil or Dragon.
But this doctrine was invented for overthrowing the Empire. Therefore the preachers endeavor to overthrow the Empire. But because that world cannot be inverted without a crash, and so great a body cannot be transferred without dissolution, so great a ruin must necessarily be preceded by many and most violent convulsions.
§3
The second reason. Those by whose arts the power of the Empire is attacked and weakened furnish the cause of tumults and seditions. For what is anger without strength? What is the shadow of a great name? That Empire which rests upon the mere opinion of the multitude and esteem for antiquity cannot stand; power, wealth, arms, counsels, and alliances must be present, or else the first man who has dared to push the column dislocated from its base will overthrow it. But by the insidious and also open machinations, preparations, and battles of the innovators, the power of the Empire has been afflicted; and the fact that it has not yet fallen it owes to its emperors, to the Catholic princes, to certain Protestant princes as well as certain free states. It credits its preservation to no preacher.
What? Would those pitiable men disturb the Empire? As though there were no danger even to the strongest from the weak. For great frauds there is no need of a great spirit, but of an evil one. When affairs have been disturbed, Sinon as victor mingles fires. What lions and bears can do, vipers and blister beetles can do also. The acrimony of the poison compensates for weakness of strength. I prove that the preachers are implicated in this fault.
For first they attempted to divert, wear away, and ruin wealth—the sinews of war, the ornaments of peace, and arms.
For they converted the estates, possessions, and ornaments of very many churches to other uses and, as Melanchthon bears witness, were diligent in plundering monasteries. But that wealth was taken from the Empire, because old tenants who were faithful subjects of the Empire were ordered to migrate, without right and without legitimate process. Monasteries, canonries, prelatures, and bishoprics were the plunder of secular princes; names, places, and the valuation will tell to whose courts annual accounts are rendered concerning the spoil of the Lord. A double loss arose from this for the Empire. For neither were monetary subsidies sent by those despoiled, and the others, who were terrified by the example of those who had been plundered, while their fortunes hung in uncertainty and depended upon the disposition of their neighbors, were weaker for defending the state in which they saw themselves oppressed, having been deserted by the fellowship of their colleagues.
Much of its former power therefore departed in this way by the counsel of the preachers. Yet their own greed deceived them; for when they saw that they were heard with inclined ears by princes and cultivated by the people, they did not doubt that they would be received into the dignities of the deposed prelates and would become prosperous after being begging and itinerant versifiers. But they were mistaken. When the matter came to the point, the treasury prevailed; they themselves were sprinkled with a slender little portion, lest they bark, not so that they might be satisfied.
By this convulsion, therefore, the tributes and revenues of the Empire were diminished, that is, the ornaments of peace and the supports of war. For neither can the repose of the Empire be possessed without arms, nor arms without pay, nor pay without tributes. But what system of tributes will there be if those who transferred the possessions of others to themselves have no will to contribute, while the despoiled are protected by πενίᾳ [poverty] and ἀπορίᾳ [want], divinities of ill omen?
Secondly, in so many diets and assemblies, which have now been multiplied for ninety years, so much expense has been expended upon lawsuits and contentions and upon mutual skirmishes as would have sufficed for a Turkish war. I appeal to the princes’ very accounts and to the expenses made upon journeys, envoys, and diets.
Thirdly, with Luther as its author and Müntzer as its agent, the Peasants’ War was kindled, in which fortresses, monasteries, and churches were overthrown, and at last the obstinate peasants were destroyed by slaughter. Whoever has not learned to reckon this among the losses does not know that fields and farmers are the foundation of the treasury.
Fourthly, Luther and his followers stirred up intestine wars; upon these was incurred expense and poured out blood with which Hungary and Thrace, even Constantinople itself, could have been acquired. To wit, after various disasters, almost all non-Catholic Germany conspired against the emperor. They record that there were eighty thousand infantry and ten thousand cavalry in the camp of the rebels, besides garrisons of towns and the remaining equipment. Why should I then relate other lesser things, such as the devastation of Brandenburg, the wars of Cologne and Alsace, and the rest? The beginnings of all those things were stirred up by the innovators while they attempted to wrest ancient possessions from the orthodox.
Nor yet does restless novelty, impatient of peace, stop here. How often has Belgium been aided with money and men? How often have the Huguenots in France been strengthened against their own kings? The fields of France and Belgium are still growing fat with the corpses of Germans. Who can wonder that the power and strength of the Empire, fighting against itself and letting blood so often, are drained away? Who can wonder that it has neither spirit nor resources against the Turks, when everything is expended at home?
Consider even the present condition: Germany must be drained by daily expenses. For behold the standards, equal eagles, and javelins threatening javelins. Adversaries intent upon an occasion have sometimes terrified Catholics by sudden expeditions; at last they conspired among themselves and entered into alliances with foreigners. And so, with the emperor approving, they impelled the Catholics mutually to bind themselves by a holy confederation necessary for protecting their affairs that remained. Movements therefore arise from both sides: war is prepared there, defense here; money is contributed even in peace; commanders for war are chosen; pay for future wars is given to centurions; provisions and equipment are procured. German felicity would have deserved congratulation if it armed itself in this manner against the enemy. Now, through fear of neighbors who, at the trumpet call of their preachers, clamor for wars and arms and promise priestly robes to the soldier, those expenses must be incurred.
The Empire therefore collapses beneath its own mass and is arrayed against itself; hence it is weak against foreigners and, its strength poured out in domestic conflicts, will be conquered by an unwarlike enemy unless caution is taken. But what is the origin of so great an evil? Whence comes so enduring a mutual hostility, sometimes making war, always threatening, never thinking rightly? From those who lie upon the goods of Catholics, for whom it is too much that bishops live, who, having been baited by the plundering of the Church, regard whatever is denied
them as something snatched away.
The Empire of Germany was formerly strong not only by its own majesty and might, but also by the love and alliances of its neighbors. The innovators undertook to cut off these aids and altogether strip us of the assistance of allies. Faithful Italy and Spain have always furnished the strongest assistance against the Ottomans, kingdoms which scorn truces and peace with the Turks; we read that a ready force, and one especially feared by the Turks, came from Belgium; nor must there be doubt about a French force, since the kings have confirmed friendship by affinity.
What do the innovators do here? The pontiff is the beast; the Florentine, the Mantuan, and the Spaniard fornicate with the Babylonian harlot. You, Briton, burn Italy, kill, devour flesh. But what? While the pontiff, the princes of Italy, and the Spaniards in part oppose their own bodies for the Empire, in part support soldiers at their own expense, contribute money, and make vows, do you lay plots? The Lutherans accuse the Calvinists of inclination toward the Turk; they warn their princes to adhere to the Catholics rather than to the Zwinglians, because the pope wages wars for the Empire, while the Calvinists deny subsidies to Caesar and carry the Eastern Antichrist under their breast, as I proved in the book On Syncretism, or False Peace.
Who, therefore, disturbs the peace? Is it the man who says that the most faithful allies must be retained in friendship? Or the man who neither thinks of contributing to the war himself and seeks an enemy throughout the whole world for the defenders of the Empire?
§4
The third reason. Those are guilty of violating peace who have taught men to occupy the possessions of others by injury; or, if they allege some element of right and equity in that usurpation, who have entered upon possession by no judgment and no order, who flee the sentence of courts, and persuade men to possess and persevere by force or deceit. These have been the pursuits of the preachers, these their endeavors from their very cradle.
And concerning the Zwinglians, indeed, the matter is public: in the Diet of Augsburg itself they boasted of armies, alliances of foreign nations, and divisions of bishoprics, as is found in Melanchthon’s epistle to Philip, Prince of Hesse. But what need is there of my proof? Let the acts of the Imperial Chamber at Speyer be inspected: supplications, formal declarations of right, appeals, pending suits, and inveterate suits. Catholics complain that possessions have been snatched from them wrongfully, by force and deceit, through the ministers; they wish to try the remedies of law; they are and have been the plaintiffs; they arraign their adversaries for extortion; Caesar assigns judges of recovery. There is therefore no doubt that those men gave the beginning to the suit who drove from ancestral estates a possessor in good faith, the peaceful possessor of an undoubted inheritance.
“But the Catholics were unjust possessors; therefore the lordships had to be vindicated and transferred to us.” I shall consider the question of right later. If they appeal to law, let them come under law to a formal joining of hands; let the matter be decided by law, and let them not proceed by force alone. But why were those possessors unjust who were possessors by the gift, foundation, and laws of Charlemagne, Henry, and other pious emperors and princes? There was a common interpretation of imperial laws, a common understanding of municipal laws, a common use and practice of law, and the decisions of tribunals. According to this law they were legitimate possessors, quietly and without challenge occupying dominion over their own property.
By the counsel of the innovators, right or the interpretation of right was changed, and the minds of princes were changed; with the new religion, the old form of the state ceased. By confiscation, fine, exile, and plunder, by a new and most unjust law, proceedings were taken against those whom the customary and long-enduring protections of the laws defended. The private treasury seized so many bishoprics, abbeys, colleges, monasteries, hospitals, and schools; for to the very ministers of the robberies, as to hunting dogs for sharpening their keenness, small particles from the plunder were divided.
Who moved the war? Was it the man who invoked the laws and the magistrate while he was being expelled? Or truly the man who drove an old tenant out without law? You snatch everything from its ancient owners because they did not embrace a new opinion which fought against ancient laws and customs, and do you accuse them of violating peace? “Let them become Evangelicals,” you will say, “and they may keep their own property for themselves.” I do not know whether they could protect their possessions by changing their faith. This I know: it was provided by no ancient law that possessions were safe and preserved intact only for those who call themselves Evangelicals. This new law, therefore, which is opposed to all ancient rights, customs, and privileges, was the cause of the discords.
§5
The fourth reason. Those men gave the cause of seditions and tumults whom the legitimate magistrate condemned for violating peace, for whose restraint assemblies were proclaimed, laws enacted, and judgments instituted—not those in response to whose tears and prayers these things were granted, for the relieving of whose calamities and the mitigating of whose exiles these protections were prepared.
You expelled me from my possession by your law, stripped me of my goods and annual revenues, and punished even my reputation. I lie at Caesar’s feet; I implore the noble office of the judge and the assistance of the laws. What remains except that at your command Caesar should order me to be led away as a violator of public peace? I possessed by ancient law and faith; I was expelled by no law. I complain of this to Caesar, and behold, I hear that I am seditious.
What, therefore, of Caesar and the Roman Empire itself? The Pandects, the Code, and the Novels protect me; the Golden Bull of Charles IV, issued in the year 1356, protects me; the Reformation of Frederick III in the year 1442 protects me; the declaration made by Maximilian I in the year 1500 defends me.
But Charles V identifies you as the author of the discords at Worms in the year 1521, at Augsburg in the years 1521 and 1530, at Speyer in the years 1526 and 1529, and in the years 1542 and 1544, and in innumerable other places; he confirms the judgment of the Chamber and forbids plunderings and spoliations. A General Council is sought and awaited by all; meanwhile I was expelled before the Council and am not restored after the Council. Despoiled before I was accused, amid punishment and exile I await the sentence of the Council to which you too appealed. Let me be permitted to grieve over these things with myself. Why do you insult me as I lie fallen and attempt to transfer to me the fault for violated peace? You were unwilling to approach the Council, deservedly so, because you possessed without right. Invited to the Colloquy of Worms in the year 1557, you departed, overcome by the discord and mutual hatred of your own men; meanwhile each party lives upon my plunder, although opposed to the other. Am I the cause of the discord because I did not immediately die out?
§6
The fifth reason. Let us look at the acts themselves. After they had occupied many goods of Catholics, in the year 1541, lest war arise, the Catholics were compelled to suspend the actions which they possessed against the invaders, as was established in the Decree of Regensburg—but under this law, that the hands of the Evangelicals should now stop and that they should not carry out new spoliations. But who could stop men hurrying toward other things, always with a new thirst? For what did princes not learn from those Harpies? Scenting gain from every occasion, the preachers advised that our wings be cut in such a way that they could not grow again; every fold and every designation for plundering was invented.
For in the meantime the bishoprics of Magdeburg, Bremen, Halberstadt, Verden, Osnabrück, Minden, Lübeck, Utrecht, Cammin, Schwerin, Gdańsk, Brandenburg, Ratzeburg, Schleswig, Hamelburg, and Lebus were snatched away, and likewise both celebrated and small monasteries. Nothing else remained except that they carry everything away together with the dust. Priests were expelled and temples laid waste, contrary to the agreements and covenants and to Caesar’s mandates issued at Speyer in the year 1544. Caesar therefore decreed that he would appoint commissioners because of the ecclesiastical jurisdictions and goods that had been invaded. Certainly they had not been invaded by us, but by the violators of peace.
The disaster of Germany then followed, when they openly rebelled against Caesar. We assuredly did not arm Saxony and Hesse. We neither impede reviews of the Chamber nor call Caesar’s power into doubt, something repeatedly done at the last diets by the envoys of the Correspondents. Concerning this matter, let the acts published by them be seen, and the author who wrote On the Disturbed Condition of the Empire.
§7
The sixth reason. Those by whose counsel war, plots, and betrayals were made against Caesar violated the peace; but the years 1544, 1545, 1546, and those following teach that the innovators did this.
Deservedly, therefore, Catholics also wage war on their own behalf. For if the Landgrave rightly told Caesar at Frankfurt in the year 1546 that nothing else had been transacted among the Protestants except how they might both remain in their own religion and repel unjust force, who can doubt that Caesar necessarily had to wage war in order to repel unjust force from so many subjects? Who can deny that a just cause of war was given to the Catholics, when they experienced that they were stripped of goods contrary to Caesar’s edicts and laws and deprived of the exercise of the ancient religion?
Did not certain princes deny Caesar the appellation of August Majesty? Otherwise, they thought it was not permissible to wage war against him. Sleidan, Book XVII. As though, truly, once you have taken away the name of authority, it is then permissible to fight against the magistrate. At the same time they stirred up both the king of France and the Swiss against Caesar, but they were mocked by the Frenchman and rejected by the Swiss.
But there is no need for me to transfer the fault for the wars to my adversaries, nor is it fitting for the innovators themselves to deny it, since the case of men who have confessed need not be pleaded. Ulrich of Württemberg implores Caesar’s mercy and asks that for Christ’s sake he pardon him. He does not place his protection in his own innocence, but in the fact that he has found Caesar’s clemency to be certain, a clemency which Caesar is accustomed to employ toward suppliants; there was, he says, more than one proof of this fact, and indeed one produced a few years before in the case of certain men from the order of princes who perhaps had furnished Caesar with no little greater cause of offense than he himself had. And his envoys said that he openly confessed his fault and grieved vehemently over the crime committed. Sleidan, Book XVIII.
Frederick the Palatine also came to Halle to seek pardon. A little later the envoys of Ulm came to Caesar and, when as suppliants they acknowledged their fault and begged forgiveness, they were reconciled. But the envoys of Memmingen, Biberach, Ravensburg, Kempten, and Isny say that it happened partly by their own error and partly by the fault of others that they transgressed against Caesar. Indeed, the people of Strasbourg and others also seek pardon. Caesar’s envoys at Ulm in the year 1547 accuse them of not only having rebelled themselves, but also of having impelled others to do the same and of having disturbed everything throughout Germany in violation of laws and right. Nor does the Landgrave, as Caesar’s suppliant, deny it.
We therefore have the authors of the tumults now accused by their own judgment. But the cause of all the evils is the dissension of religion, concerning which the emperor rightly said in the year 1547: “Unless it is composed, peace cannot be established at all.” Thence it followed that right was not administered. The emperor deservedly judges that the fact that for some time no justice was administered pertains to the infamy and injury of Germany. But who is the author of the injustice except the man who distrusted his cause, except the man who, when the trumpet sounded, compelled the laws to be silent?
§8
The seventh reason. A man is guilty of violating peace if he prevents justice from being administered and prevents justice from being able to have an avenger or executor. But how greatly the sectarian ministers labored to remove from their midst all tribunals except those they themselves erected! At the beginning, in the year 1521, Luther burned the canon law, as though he were free from every fear of judgments if he burned the parchments. Then they most earnestly demanded that the Imperial Chamber not pronounce against them; they impeded reviews, by which art they evaded very many sentences.
When appeal was made to Caesar’s court, they denied its jurisdiction; they wished the causes of principalities and counties to be committed to the estates of the Empire. When the matter came to the diets, they were unwilling that the greater number of votes should prevail, but rather those to which they attributed greater soundness. Which were those? The votes of the few who call themselves the Correspondents.
What, then, must pitiable Catholics do if someone from among the Calvinists invades them? Let a Catholic flee to the Chamber? A review will be sought and will not be granted. To Caesar’s tribunal? They will deny that Caesar can decree without the consent of the estates. They will rescind the sentence, as the most unconquered Emperor Matthias declares was done in the affair of Aachen. Do you appeal at a diet of the Empire to the venerable Senate of the most illustrious princes? One will have to abide not by the greater part of the votes, but by the lesser or the least.
What if that least part, which wishes itself to be sounder, judges everything in the Calvinist manner: that Catholics are Antichristians, to be burned and devoured, and delivers us to Du Plessis, who would die from joy at our punishments? What if the greater part cries that this is contrary to the law of nations, while the lesser part thinks itself sounder? It is marvelous that they could propose these things without blushing.
Will you believe this, posterity—that there were men in the Roman Empire, founded upon so many laws and ordered by so many dignities, who wished to be exempted from all laws and judgments and, by an unheard-of oligarchy, to draw to themselves the jurisdiction of all the princes and indeed of the August Emperor himself? No one has anything to hope for in such a condition if he is not among the Correspondents; no one has anything to fear if he is going to have men of his own faction as judges. But if these things continue to hasten onward in their course, what at last will this sacrosanct Empire be except a great brigandage? For where the laws have been trampled down, judgments removed, and the authority of magistrates vanquished, what will be right and lawful hereafter except every act of the superior, every title of the stronger? For what the man who conquers has himself done will be judged lawful.