File 40 >> Certainly one of the largest and most powerful geopolitical entities in the world at this time was the Holy Roman Empire. I know that this empire's boundaries extended quite far but were centered on Germany. But you said that parts of the Holy Roman Empire also became reformed. For some reason this surprises me, given Luther's influence in Germany. How did that happen? >> Nick, that's a very good question. And I want to answer it. But before I get into the details of how parts became reformed, I think that we ought to back up a little bit and talk about what happened in the Holy Roman Empire after the Diet of Augsburg of 1630. That's where we left the narrative. If we are to understand what happened later, we need to talk about what happened a little bit earlier so let's consider where the Holy Roman Empire was after 1530. You will recall that the emperor Charles V had decreed that the Catholic refutation, the Augsburg, had won the day and all of the states and territories and empires were supposed to subscribe to that document, and that the Edict of Worms against the Lutherans was supposed to be enforced. Well, that didn't happen. It didn't happen for a couple of reasons. One of those reasons was the fact that Charles V continued to need political and military support from his empire over against his various enemies, especially the Turks. So Charles wasn't in a position to impose the Edict of Worms upon those places that didn't want to accept it. And one of the reasons that he hesitated to do that was the fact that in 1531, the evangelical or Lutheran forces organized a military or defensive league called the Schmalkald which just referred to a place in Germany where there were important meetings, associations, et cetera, and then also the name that's given to this Lutheran defensive political military league, really directed against the Catholic imperial forces, should they decide to enforce the Edict of Worms. Now, that league attracted eventually representatives from many of the German territories in the northern part of the empire as well as imperial cities in the southern part of the empire. It was a very strong military, political, and religious force then in Germany. As it turned out from about the period 1532 to 1546, 1547, we have pretty peaceful years for Lutheranism, and these years see the expansion of Lutheranism within the Holy Roman Empire. It's also true that over the course of the 16th century, Lutheranism would expand into the Scandinavian territories and kingdoms, so that Lutheranism would become the official religion not only of many parts of Germany, but also of the nation states that we think of today, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and even Iceland. So Lutheranism took advantage of this period of relative peace in the 1530s and 1540s as a period of good years, a period of expansion. Now, I should mention that in his decision not to impose the Edict of Worms, which Charles V came to in 1532 at a diet held in Nuremberg as a result of which the truce between the emperor and the Lutherans is also known as the Peace of Nuremburg, and what Charles V said is we'll have this truce, we won't enforce the edict until there is a decision on these matters by a church council, or maybe by an imperial church council, either one called by the Pope or called by the emperors, but we'll have a church council to settle these issues. That meant that one of the things that the emperor wanted to press the Pope for was the calling of a church council. And at length he prevailed with Pope Paul III who agreed to summon a church council for the year 1537, and it was supposed to meet in the city of Mantua. Now, once the Pope issued his call for council, there was debate back and forth among the Lutherans and the members of the league about whether or not they should send representatives. Now, Luther, himself, was all for attending and giving witness to the truth, but the political leaders weren't sure that was a good idea. For one thing, the invitation of the Pope insisted that those who participated need to agree ahead of time that they would accept the conclusions of the council. And by this time there was lack of confidence that the council would actually attempt to answer the theological questions on the basis of the scriptures, as the Lutherans, the evangelicals, insisted. More over, Paul III indicated that one of the purposes of the council should be this: The utter extirpation of the poison pestilential Lutheran heresy. It hardly sounded like it would be a free, good-natured discussion points of view on the basis of the Bible. At any rate, 1536, 1537, the league, the Lutheran princes, Lutheran cities are thinking whether they ought to participate, and to the end that if they did participate, the Elector of Saxony, Luther's prince, John Frederick, requested Luther to write up a statement indicating those particular points of debate upon which there could be no compromise. In other words, kind of give an agenda or platform upon which the Lutheran princes and Lutheran theologians could participate in the Council of Trent. Well, Luther did that. He drafted a set of articles which came to be known as the Schmalkaldic Articles that were in preparation for a meeting of the league in February of 1537. In these articles, Luther really squared off against Roman Catholicism on questions like the sacrifice of the mass, the monastic vows, invocation of saints, and even the papacy, and the role of the papacy in the church. As it turned out, Luther was very ill in 1536, and into 1537. Even though he made it to Schmalkald, by the time he made it he couldn't participate in any of the discussions because he was so sick. He had to leave Schmalkald early. And although his life was preserved for another decade, at that particular point he was not much of a participant in the discussions. The princes decided really to take no action with respect to Luther's articles. But the theologians who were there did consider those articles, and signed those articles as expression of their faith as well as Luther's faith. So that they ended up becoming yet another one of these kind of great doctrinal statements coming out of the reformation, this one written by Luther, and eventually it was incorporated into our Book of Concord as one of the official statements of our Lutheran faith. Also in connection that meeting at Schmalkald in 1537, there was a statement prepared, usually known as the treatise on the power and the primacy of the Pope. And what that did was to take a look at, again, the role of the papacy in the church, and like Luther's articles, actually ends up calling the Pope the anti-Christ. This is an important idea in the 16th century, among Lutherans especially, but also the reform. The notion that the Pope on account of his opposition to the gospel, on account of his assuming power and authority over the church, even power and authority over Christian princes, fulfills what the scriptures had to say regarding the anti-Christ at the time of the lasts. So this document, the treatise, as well as the Schmalkald are a place where Lutheran theologians, Lutheran professors designate the Pope as the anti-Christ. This treatise was presented and was accepted at Schmalkald, and so it, too, came to be numbered among the Lutheran confessions. It's really kind of a powerful statement on the doctrine of the ministry, and how important it is for the church to continue to have pastors, even when church officials in this case the hierarchy, the bishops, and the Pope were no longer willing to supply such pastors. The church would then have to take the initiative to call men into the office of the public ministry so that they continue to have pastors. Well, in the 1540s, things began to change for the course of the Reformation. For one thing, Luther died in February of 1546. And this was a tremendous loss to the Lutherans in terms of theological leadership, confidence, boldness, and everything else that Luther brought to the theological task. He was actually viewed as kind of a prophet of the last times that God had raised up especially to recover the gospel to give leadership to the church in these of the last days. So that was a blow. There was also a political blow, a military blow, that had occurred some years earlier in connection with one of the great leaders of the league, and that was Philip of Hesse. Now, Philip of Hesse was in many ways an admirable character and gave great leadership to the Lutherans. But he did have a weakness, a moral failing, if you will, and that was that he did not keep his marriage vows. He had fallen into the sin of adultery. Philip was a good enough Christian to be worried about this. This bothered him in his conscience. But when his pastoral advisors said that he had to go back to his wife and keep those marriage vows, he claimed moral weakness and said that he would never be able to do this. He no longer loved his wife, et cetera, et cetera. So what was to be done? Well, kind of surprisingly, a prominent reformers, Martin Butzer, Philipp Melanchthon, and even Martin Luther basically gave approval to Philip to marry a second wife. Now, this is kind of shocking. I don't think that any pastor would suggest that today, but their thinking was that after the example of the Old Testament it was probably better for a prince take a second wife, better than to unscripturally divorce his first wife. Well, anyway, this was their counsel, and their expectation would be that if Philip did this, first wife would approve, and it would all be kept kind of secret so, that it would not create a great deal of public scandal or precedent for others. But, you know, it's a little difficult to keep a second wife secret. And so not too surprisingly, word got out, and a great scandal erupted anyway. Turned out to be against the law of the empire to have a second wife, and the penalty for such an offense might very well have been the loss of titles and lands. So Philip was in a bad situation, and he had to make his peace with the emperor, Charles V. Now, Charles V, I don't know that he cared a whole lot about bigamy, but he cared about the role of Philip in the league, and was quite willing to make a peace, a separate peace, a non-aggression pact with Philip as a way of letting Philip off the hook for his bigamy. So as we move through the 1540s, the Schmalkald League is weakened by the disgrace, the scandal, and the forced peace with the emperor by its leader Philip of Hesse. Even more importantly for the emperor, and the weakness of the league the emperor was able to negotiate with another of the princes of the league to get that man to turn against his coreligiousness, the Lutherans. Now, that man is Moritz. He was a Duke of Saxony. He was the ruler of a part of Saxony of which John Frederick, the elector of Saxony, ruled the other part. So we have two parts of Saxony, one ruled by the elector, Luther's prince, and the other ruled by Duke Moritz. By this time, both parts are Lutheran. But that doesn't mean that Moritz wasn't jealous of John Frederick, the Elector, because he was. He wanted the electoral title and dignity for himself. And that's what emperor Charles V was willing to give him. So Moritz really turned upon his erstwhile allies in the league, turned on his fellow Lutherans in order to ally himself with the emperor Charles V. By the mid 15-40s, Charles V had also worked out a peaceful relationship with the Pope who had actually called that church counsel in 1545 and was willing to help supply the emperor's effort to suppress the Lutherans. And so in 1546, 1547, war broke out between the imperial Catholic forces and a much weakened Schmalkald League. This is usually known as the Schmalkald War, and the emperor won it decisively. The Elector of Saxony, John Frederick, even Philip of Hesse, sent troops into the battle but lost to the Catholic imperial side as a result of which parts of Saxony were occupied, even Wittenberg was occupied. Although there was some thought that Luther's body should be dug up and burned, treated as a heretic and so forth, Charles V wouldn't have that. He was not going to make war on the dead. But nonetheless, Luther's legacy was very much in jeopardy as a result of the Lutherans being defeated in the Schmalkald League, or the Lutherans in the Schmalkald League were defeated. Well, at this point, things look bad. The emperor wants to impose a religious settlement, usually known as the Augsburg Interim. Duke Moritz who is given the electoral title is given rule over Wittenberg, along with Philipp Melanchthon who is willing to stay in Wittenberg tried to come up with an alternative for the Augsburg, but whether we're talking Augsburg, we're talking a great deal of religious change back in the direction of Medieval Catholicism. So it looks as if for a period of time that the reformation, if not being wiped out, is going to be severely reduced on account of the emperor's victory in the Schmalkald War. Well, that turned out not to be the case. And it turned out not be the case because Duke, now Elector Moritz, changed sides once again. Upset that way some of the Lutherans including Philip of Hesse were being treated, also concerned to maintain good relations with his Lutheran subjects, Moritz changes sides. Some help is forthcoming from the French, as a result of which the forces of the Lutherans now lead by Moritz are able to defeat the forces of the emperor, and Charles V's gains against the Lutherans are now reversed. As a result of that Charles basically gives up on imposing religious unity on his empire. At the Diet of Augsburg in 1555, the emperor finally acknowledges the principle that we talked about some time ago that is whoever rules the region chooses the religion. And so he agrees that within the various states and territories of the empire, the local ruler would have the right to choose the religion. Of course, he is only assuming two choices. It will only be Lutheranism, or it's going to be Catholicism. He doesn't have any room in his program at this point for other choices, including even reformed Christianity. The next year, 1556, the emperor abdicates. He retires to a monastery in Spain. He leaves much of his empire, much of his hereditary domains in the Netherlands and Spain to his son, Philip II, who becomes the great Catholic monarch of the second half of the 16th century. But within the empire, and within his German territories, he leaves it to his brother, Ferdinand, who, therefore, succeeds him as Ferdinand I, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Well, you can see then that these are bad years for the emperor, Charles V. But they weren't particularly good years for the Lutherans either. Following the death of Luther, and the Schmalkald War, and the interims of help in Augsburg, Lutherans fell into a great deal of infighting. There were many issues that separated them, issues raised by the validity of compromising in times of war, with, you know, Catholic, victorious parties. But also issues of what especially the legacy of Luther meant in one case or another. So a great deal of infighting. Another problem or challenge in these years was the competition from the reform. In the Palatinate, for example, which was one of the more important territories within the empire, because the ruler of the Palatinate was an Elector, one of the seven electors, Elector Frederick III who first came to power in the late 1550s, concerned about you know, the religious issues that were tearing apart the evangelical movement within the Holy Roman Empire, investigated these various issues, and finally came to the conclusion personally that the reformed, the Calvinists, were right on the issue of the Lord's Supper. Using then his princely authority, he imposed Calvinists form of Protestantism upon his territory. Now, his example was followed by others. They're not especially numerous, but the advances of the reformed within the empire all took place at the expense of the Lutherans. It wasn't that there were any Catholic territories that embraced reformed Protestantism, but there were Lutheran territories, Lutheran dynasties that embraced reformed Protestantism. So you can well imagine the kind of bitterness that set in between the Lutherans and the reformed, the Lutherans seeing the reformed as kind of taking away territories that were under their control. The reformed accused the Lutherans of only being half Protestant or half reformed, of not having gone all the way in the reform of their worship, and in the reform of their doctrine, especially with respect to the issue of the Lord's Supper. The Palatinate became the center of reform Protestantism within the German speaking lands of the empire. The University of Heidelberg in the Palatinate became a center for reformed thought, and doctrine, kind of a training ground for reformed theologians. And in 1563, reformed theologians at the University of Heidelberg actually composed a catechism, the Heidelberg Catechism which became one of the earliest expressions of reform Christianity for German-speaking territories. Now, as I said, the numbers of reformed territories are not large, but I should mention that the early 17th century, yet another one of the electors embraced reformed Protestantism. This was Johann Sigismund who was the elector of Brandenburg in 1613, and he announced his conversion from Lutheranism, and attempted to impose reformed Protestantism upon his subjects. Interestingly, he couldn't pull it off. There was so much resistance by the Lutheran preachers, and Lutheran subjects, that eventually Johann Sigismund had to give up his attempt. So what you had in the course of the 17th century was a reformed ruler, a reformed dynasty ruling a largely Lutheran people. Now, although this is getting a little bit beyond the scope of this particular course, I will just mention way of concluding this part of our discussion that the tensions between the Lutherans and the reformed in part, at least, helped to lead to the Thirty Years� War of the early 17th century. You had three religions in the empire all of which really were competing with one another. You had Catholicism, you had Lutheranism, and you also had the reformed.