The Knights' Revolt
Hungry knights were impatiently awaiting the day when they could rise against princes, churchmen and moneylenders. In 1522 Charles V was in Spain; idleness and want of employment had worn down Sickingen's soldiers, and seizing the rich, fertile lands of the Church looked easy. Ulrich von Hutten was calling the people to rebellion, and Luther had asked the German people to remove their tyrants and oppressors from the earth. On August 13 a group of knights made a league of mutual aid at Landau. Sickingen besieged Trier and called on the people to join him in overthrowing the archbishop, the ruler of the city, but the townspeople did not answer.
The archbishop gathered soldiers, took command of them himself, and drove off five assaults. Sickingen gave up the siege and withdrew to his castle at Landstuhl. The archbishop, aided by neighboring princes, marched on Sickingen's fortress. Sickingen was mortally wounded in its defense, surrendered on May 6, 1523, and died the next day (the book's date). The knights disbanded their forces, submitted to the princes, and contented themselves with the dues that peasants paid to feudal lords, their main means of living.
Lutheranism Spreads
Luther, foreseeing this sad end, soon drew back from the revolt (December 19, 1522), but in other respects his star kept rising. In 1522 Archduke Ferdinand wrote to his brother the emperor Charles that Luther's aims had taken such root throughout the empire that not one in a thousand was free of them. Monks and priests were coming in crowds to "the altar of marriage." In Nuremberg the churches of St. Lorenz and St. Sebaldus adopted "the Word of God," the reformers' term for founding faith on Scripture, as their motto. "Evangelical" preachers in northern Germany moved freely from town to town, taking over pulpits and setting up new ones. They called not only popes and bishops "servants of Lucifer" (the book's phrase is garbled here) but condemned secular rulers as "unjust tyrants." Even so, many German rulers favored Luther: Philip of Hesse (called the Magnanimous), Casimir of Brandenburg, Ulrich of Württemberg, Ernest of Lüneburg and John of Saxony. Even Isabella, the emperor's sister, was a follower.
Pope Adrian VI Confesses
Charles's old tutor, Adrian of Utrecht, now sat on the papal throne as Adrian VI (1521). In his letter to the Diet of Nuremberg, while asking for Luther's arrest, he frankly admitted some of the Church's faults (1522). It was clear to all of us, he wrote, that for many years abominable abuses had found their way into the papal court; sacred things had been misused, commands disobeyed, and everything corrupted. No wonder if corruption had spread from the top to the bottom, from popes to clergy. All of us, from the highest churchmen down, had strayed from the right path, and for a long time no good had been done by us. Therefore, first of all, we must do all in our power to reform the court of Rome, from which perhaps all these evils have sprung. The whole world is waiting for such a reform.
The Hundred Grievances
The Diet voted that the elector Frederick should look into Luther's actions, but also asked why Luther should be condemned for exposing evils that the pope now officially acknowledged. Finding the pope's confessions inadequate, the Diet sent Adrian a letter listing a hundred grievances of the German people against the Church and asked that a national council, presided over by the emperor, be held on German soil to examine these grievances and remove their causes.
The Debate Over Monopolies
The Diet of Nuremberg, dominated by the nobles, sympathetically considered the German complaints against monopolists who grew rich at the people's expense. A committee chosen by the Diet looked into them, wrote to the main German cities, and asked whether limits should be set on monopolists or they should be abolished. Ulm called monopolists harmful and dangerous and asked that ownership of trading firms be limited to father, son and son-in-law. Augsburg, the seat of the Fuggers, defended unlimited commerce and the rights of widows and orphans as investors. It replied that Christendom, and indeed the whole world, owes its wealth to trade; that the country where trade flourishes most has the most comfortable and prosperous people; that where merchants are most numerous work is most plentiful; that restricting the firms' activities is impossible; and that the greater the number and range of merchants, the more the people benefit. If merchants did not enjoy full freedom in Germany, they would leave it, to Germany's loss. If a merchant could not trade beyond a fixed amount, what would he do with his extra capital? It was better to leave merchants free and to set no limits to their ability and capital; some had spoken of limiting the profit due to capital, but this would be an injustice to widows, orphans and others who live on investments in these companies.
By decree the Diet limited the capital of companies to 50,000 gulden and ordered that profits be distributed every two years, that officials audit company accounts, that money not be lent at usurious rates, that no merchant buy more than a fixed amount in a quarter, and that prices be set by law. The merchants appealed to Charles V, who, for the reasons given earlier, supported them. Since the magistrates of many cities profited from monopoly trade, nothing remained of the Nuremberg decree after a little while but a scrap of paper.
Campeggio at Nuremberg
Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, representing the pope of the day, Clement VII, attended the Diet's new sessions (January 1524) and again raised the demand for Luther's arrest. The papal envoy, who had been jeered at in passing through Augsburg, had to enter Nuremberg secretly to avoid hostile demonstrations. But even there he was humiliated: he watched a Eucharist celebrated in two kinds by a Lutheran priest, in which three thousand townspeople, among them the emperor's sister, took part. The legate warned the Diet that if the religious revolt were not quickly crushed, the power of the state would be shaken and social order would fall apart. The Diet answered that any harsh measure to put down the Lutheran movement would lead to "revolt, rebellion, killing ... and widespread ruin." The Diet's deliberations were not yet finished when the fire of social revolution blazed up.