ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CHURCH HISTORY 02 May 27, 2005 21 CH2 CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY: CAPTION FIRST, INC. P.O. BOX 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 1 800 825 7234 * * * * * This is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in Order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings * * * * >> Professor, you said that many princes chose to become Lutheran even against the wishes of Emperor Charles V. How was it that they were able to do that? >> Well, this gets back to some more of the political background to the course of the Reformation. And I had mentioned earlier that a number of territories became Lutheran even though the emperor was very much against the spread of reformation ideas. Now, they were able to do that because the emperor didn't really exercise full control over the German territories. The German princes and imperial cities were really quite independent. And they were intent on exercising their independence against the emperor and against church officials such as bishops. So, in many ways, the reformation became yet another power struggle between imperial cities and territories and the emperor and the Papacy. In addition to that, Emperor Charles had a lot of other things on his plate in the 1520s apart from Luther and his followers. In fact, the other business at the Diet of Worms had to do largely with military action against the Turks and against France. And this continued throughout the 1520s. There was warfare between the empire and France culminating in the mid 1520s, and constant warfare on the southern and eastern borders of the empire against the Turks. That warfare with the Turks finally came to an end in 1529 when the Turks, who had been besieging Vienna, were driven back, largely by the weather; and it's no accident, then, that in 1530, the emperor was once again able to deal with the Lutherans at the Diet of Augsburg. But the reason you have this gap between 1520 and 1530 is that Charles was very busy against France and against the Turks. So the princes were able to, shall we say, challenge the Edict of Worms, both officially and unofficially, simply because Charles had other things to do and because Charles desperately needed their support militarily. In addition to that, Charles, although he was no fan of Luther and Lutheran teaching, was not necessarily interested at all times in supporting the Papacy. You might remember in an answer to an earlier question, I talked about how the Pope had opposed Charles's election because it would create a difficult situation for the Pope in Italy with territory controlled by Charles both to the north and south of the papal states. Well, after Charles' election, although Pope and Emperor were somewhat forced to work together, neither one trusted the other and neither one was necessarily willing to do what the other wanted without questioning and without some sort of debate. So if you couple Charles' difficult relations with the Papacy and the warfare with France and warfare with the Turks, you begin to understand how the German princes were able to oppose Charles and to refuse to obey the edict during the 1520s. * * * * * This is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in Order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings * * * *