What Kept the Movement Alive
What force kept the young Protestant movement alive against the hostility of pope and emperor? Mystic piety, Bible study, religious reform, intellectual growth and Luther's stubbornness and daring could not alone have assured its victory, for these factors could have been turned in another direction or restrained. The Protestant victory may be ascribed above all to economic factors: the German people's wish to keep Germany's wealth in Germany, to use church lands for secular ends, to cut the hands of the pope and the Italians from German soil, and to end the imperial authorities' meddling in the territorial, legal and financial powers of German princes, cities and states.
Certain political factors must also be kept in view. The Ottoman Turks, after conquering Constantinople and Egypt, had extended their empire through the Balkan peninsula into Hungary and besieged Vienna, and there was constant fear that they would cut Christian merchants off from the Mediterranean. To meet the Muslim attack Charles V and Archduke Ferdinand needed the unity of Germany and Austria, and the money and men of Protestants and Catholics alike. The affairs of Spain, Flanders and Italy and the wearing struggle with Francis I so absorbed the emperor that he could not take an active part in Germany's inner conflict. He agreed with his pensioner Erasmus about the need for basic reform of the Church. His quarrels with Clement VII and Paul III sometimes went so far that he let his troops sack Rome. Only the friendship of emperor and pope could have provided a force to oppose the religious revolution.
The Cities Turn
By 1527 the Lutheran "heresy" had become the official faith of half of Germany. The German cities had recognized that the Protestant movement served their interests. Melanchthon said sadly, "They pay the least attention to religion; their aim is solely to take power and be free of the bishops' restrictions." By turning Protestant, the German cities freed themselves from taxes and episcopal courts and took over church property. Yet most Germans sincerely wanted a simpler, purer religion. The members of the parish of St. Ulrich in Magdeburg gathered in the churchyard and chose eight men to elect preachers and manage church affairs (1524), and soon the Lord's Supper in the Lutheran manner was in use in all churches of the city. Protestantism had taken such root in Augsburg that when Campeggio came there as papal envoy the people called him Antichrist (1524). Most of Strasbourg, under Wolfgang Capito (1523) and his successor Martin Bucer, joined the new faith, as did Ulm. In Nuremberg, great capitalists such as Lazarus Spengler and Hieronymus Baumgartner got the council to accept Luther's beliefs (1526); the churches of St. Sebald and St. Lawrence adopted Lutheran services without giving up their Catholic art. The people of Brunswick welcomed Luther's writings, sang his hymns openly and so eagerly read his New Testament that when a priest misquoted the Gospel the congregation corrected him. Finally the council ordered that preachers speak only of the teachings of Scripture, baptize in German and administer the sacraments in both Protestant and Catholic ways (1528). By 1530 the Protestant movement had taken Hamburg, Bremen, Rostock, Lübeck, Stralsund, Danzig, Dorpat (Tartu), Riga, Reval (Tallinn) and nearly all the imperial cities of Swabia. In Augsburg, Hamburg, Brunswick and Stralsund people destroyed religious images in the churches, perhaps in reaction to the Church's use of pictures and statues to spread mocking and profitable legends.
The Princes
The German princes, whom Catholicism had made "men of independence," now found that Protestantism not only raised the state's standing but was subordinate to the state, made them both religious and civil rulers, and left them free to use church land and wealth. John "the Steadfast," who became elector of Saxony after Frederick the Wise (1525), unlike his predecessor, adopted Lutheranism; after his death his son John Frederick consolidated Protestantism in Saxony. Philip the Magnanimous, landgrave of Hesse, and John allied the cities of Gotha and Torgau to preserve and spread Protestantism (1526). Other princes followed: Ernest of Lüneburg, Otto and Francis of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Henry of Mecklenburg, and Ulrich of Württemberg. Albert of Prussia, grand master of the Teutonic Knights, on Luther's advice broke his monastic vow, married, took his order's lands from the Church and became duke of Prussia (1525). In his lifetime, by the force of his personality and eloquence, Luther made half of Germany his followers.
Since many monks and nuns had left their monasteries and society showed no wish to keep up the rest, the German princes dissolved the monasteries in their lands except those whose inmates had become Protestant. Although the princes had agreed with nobles, cities and some universities to share the seized church property, in many cases they broke their word. Luther opposed non-religious, non-educational use of church lands and condemned the nobles' haste in seizing church buildings and fields. The nobles gave a small part of the spoils to schools and charities and kept the rest. Melanchthon wrote (1530), "The nobles had no aim but to plunder the Church in the name of the Gospel." In any case, whether from pure or base motives, spiritual or material, great changes took place in Germany. The people of East Friesland, Silesia, Schleswig and Holstein all turned Protestant. The general wish to accept Protestantism is clear evidence that Catholicism was dying in these lands. Priests who were still loyal to the Catholic Church were impatient for the freedom of clergy to marry. Archduke Ferdinand reported to the pope that the wish to marry was general among priests and that of a hundred it was hard to find one who had not married, openly or secretly. Catholic princes urged on the pope the moral need to abolish clerical celibacy.
Devout Catholics complained (1524) that bishops, with revolution at their doorstep, gave feasts as splendid as Lucullus's. A Catholic historian, describing Albert, archbishop of Mainz, speaks of the lavish apartments the unholy prelate used for his private pleasures (the book is more explicit; it is stated delicately here). The same historian adds, "The bishops have become so hated that wherever they appear the people mock and harass them." On January 1, 1530 Erasmus wrote, "The people all favor the new religious ideas." But he was speaking only of north Germany, though Duke George of Saxony and Joachim, elector of Brandenburg, held firmly to Catholicism.
The Catholic South
The people of the southern and western German states, formerly parts of the ancient Roman empire, which Latin language and culture had entered, mostly stayed loyal to the Catholic Church. The pleasure-loving, easygoing southerners preferred the easy, tolerant ways of Catholicism to the northerners' piety based on predestination. The archbishops of Mainz, Trier and (until 1543) Cologne kept Catholicism alive in their lands, and Pope Hadrian VI, by assigning a fifth of the local church's revenue for the upkeep of the dukes of Bavaria, kept Bavaria from turning Protestant. The pope used the same stratagem to restrain Ferdinand of Austria.
Disaster at Mohács
At the same time Hungary suffered a painful catastrophe. Louis II's too-early accession to the throne at ten (1516) and his early death hastened it. Even his birth was premature; doctors of the time kept the frail, undersized infant alive by placing him among the warm carcasses of animals. Louis was a kind and open-hearted youth, but dissolute courtiers, spending the court's small funds, raised him to be extravagant and pleasure-loving. When the envoy of Suleiman the Magnificent arrived at Buda, the nobles refused to receive him, dragged him about the country, mutilated him and sent him back to his master (the book gives the details; they are omitted here). The enraged sultan marched into Hungary and took two important cities, Szabadka (Subotica) and Belgrade (1521). After long delay, despite the treachery and cowardice of his nobles, Louis raised an army of 25,000 and with mad courage charged a hundred thousand Turks near Mohács (August 30, 1526; the figures are the book's). The Hungarian soldiers were killed almost to a man, and Louis himself drowned in a stream as he fled. Suleiman entered Buda in triumph. The Turkish soldiers plundered and burned Hungary's beautiful capital, destroyed its main buildings except the royal palace, and burned most of the treasures of Matthias Corvinus's fine library. The Turks plundered or ruined the eastern half of Hungary they had taken, and Suleiman carried a hundred thousand Christian captives to Constantinople.
The Hungarian nobles who survived split into hostile parties. One, thinking resistance to the Turks futile, elected János Zápolya king and let him accept Turkish tutelage. Suleiman allowed him to rule at Buda as his deputy, but half of eastern Hungary was in practice subject to the Ottomans until 1686. Another party, hoping for the help of the Holy Roman Empire and the mighty Habsburgs, allied with the Bohemian lords to put Ferdinand on the thrones of Hungary and Bohemia. When Suleiman again set his army in motion (1529) and, after covering two hundred kilometers along the Danube, reached the gates of Vienna, Ferdinand triumphantly defended his capital. In these critical years Charles V, to prevent all Europe from falling to the Muslims, tolerated the Protestants. The Turkish advance westward so strengthened the Protestants' position that Philip of Hesse was glad of Turkish victories. But after the sultan was beaten at Vienna and returned to Constantinople, Protestants and Catholics resumed their struggle to win the minds of the German people.