Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION.
Pgs. 147 - 150
GERMANY CHALLENGES THE CHURCH
Germany too was a federation, but its constituent parts were ruled not by democratic assemblies but by secular or ecclesiastical princes acknowledging only a limited fealty to the head of the holy Roman Empire. Some of these states -- Bavaria, Württemberg, Thuringia, Hesse, Nassau, Meissen, Saxony, Brandenburg, Carinthia, Austria, and the Palatinate -- were ruled by dukes, counts, margraves, or other secular lords; some -- Magdeburg, Mainz, Halle, Bamberg, Cologne, Bremen, Strasburg, Salzburg, Trier, Basel, Hildesheim -- were politically subject in varying degrees to bishops and archbishops; but nearly a hundred cities had by 1460 won charters of practical freedom from their lay or church superiors. In each principality delegates of the three estates -- nobles, clergy, commons -- met occasionally in a territorial diet that exercised some restraint, through its power of the purse, on the authority of the prince. Principalities and free cities sent representatives to the Reichstag or Imperial Diet. A special Kurfurstentag, or Diet of Electors, was called to choose a king; normally it was composed of the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg, the count palatine, and the archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne. Their choice created only a king, who became the acknowledged head of the Holy Roman Empire when he was crowned emperor by the Pope; hence his precoronation title of “King of the Romans.” He made his capital primarily in Nuremburg, often elsewhere, even in Prague. His authority rested on tradition and prestige rather than on possessions or force; he owned no territory beyond his own domain as one feudal prince among many; he was dependent upon the Reichstag or Kurfurstentag for funds to administer his government or to wage war; and this dependence condemned even able men like Charles IV or Sigismund to humiliating failures in foreign affairs. The destruction of the Hohenstaufen dynasty by the powerful popes of the thirteenth century had fatally weakened the Holy Roman Empire founded ( ad. 800) by Pope Leo III and Charlemegne. In 1400 it was a loose association of Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Holland, and Switzerland.
The conflict between Empire and papacy revived when, on the same day in 1314, two rival groups of electors chose Louis of Bavaria and Frederick of Austria as rival kings. John XXII, from his papal seat at Avignon, recognized both as kings, neither as emperor, and argued that since only a pope could crown a king as emperor, he should be accepted as judge of the validity of the election; moreover, said the ambitious pontiff, the administration of the empire should belong to the papacy between the death of an emperor and the coronation of his successor. Louis and Frederick preferred the arbitrament of war. At Muhldorf (1322) Louis defeated and captured Frederick, and henceforth assumed full Imperial authority. John ordered him to resign all titles and powers, and to appear before the papal court to receive sentence as a rebel against the Church. Louis refusing, the Pope excommunicated him (1324 ), bade all Christians in the Empire to resist his rule, and laid an interdict upon any region that recognized him as king. Most of Germany ignored these edicts, for the Germans, like the English, rated the Avignon popes as servants or allies of France. In the progressive weakening of faith and papacy men were beginning to think of themselves as patriots first and Christians afterward. Catholicism, which is supernational, declined; nationalism, which is Protestant, rose.
At this juncture Louis received aid and comfort from incongruous allies, Pope John's bull “Cum inter nonmulla (1323) had branded as heresy the notion that Christ and the Apostles refused to own property, and he had directed the inquisition to summon before its tribunal the “ Spiritual Franciscans” who affirmed that view. Many friars retorted the charge of heresy upon the Pope; they expressed holy horror at the wealth of the Church; some of them called the aged pontiff Antichrist; and the general of the Spirituals, Michael Cessna, led a large minority of them into open alliance with Louis of Bavaria ( 1324 ). Emboldened by their support, Louis issued at Sachsenhausen a manifesto against “John XXII, who calls himself pope”; denounced him as a man of blood and a friend of injustice, and who was resolved to destroy the Empire; and demanded that a general council should try the Pope for heresy.
The king was further encouraged by the appearance, at his court in Nuremberg, two professors from the univesity of Paris -- Marsilius of Padua and John of Jandun -- whose book, “defensor Pacis’, attacked the Avignon papacy in terms that must have pleased the royal ears. “ What do you find but a swarm of simoniacs from every quarter? what but the clamour of pettifoggers, the . . . abuse of honorable men? There justice to the innocent falls to the ground, unless you can buy it for a price.” Echoing the Albigensian and Waldensian preachers of the thirteenth century, and anticipating Luther by two hundred years, the authors argued that Christianity should be based exclusively upon the Bible. A general council of the church should be summoned not by the pope but by the emperor; the latter’s consent should be required for the election of any pontiff; and the pope, like everybody else, should be subject to the emperor. Delighted to hear this , Louis decided to go to Italy and have himself crowned emperor by the people of Rome. Early in 1327 he set out with a small army, some Franciscans and two philosophers whom he employed to compose his public pronouncements. In April the Pope issued new bulls, excommunicating John and Marsilius, and ordered Louis to leave Italy. But Louis was welcomed into Milan by the ruling Visconti, and received the iron crown as the formal sovereign of Lombardy. On January the 7th, 1328, he entered Rome amid the acclimations of a populace resentful of the papal residence at Avignon. He established himself in the Vatican Palace and summoned a public assembly to meet at the Capitol. To the multitude there he appeared as a candidate for investiture with the Imperial Crown. It gave its tumultuous consent; and on January 17 the coveted diadem was placed upon his head by the old syndic Sciarra Colonna -- that same unrelenting foe of the papacy who, almost a quarter of a century before, had fought and threatened with death Boniface VIII, and who again symbolised for a moment the challenge of the rising state to the weakened Church.
Pope John, now seventy-eight, never dreamed of accepting defeat. He proclaimed a holy crusade to depose Louis from all authority, and bade the Romans, under pain of interdict, to expel him from their city and return to papal obedience. Louis replied in terms recalling his excommunicated predecessor Henry IV; he convoked another popular assembly, and in its presence issued an Imperial edict accusing the Pope of heresy and tyranny, deposed him from ecclesiastical office, and sentencing him to punishment by secular powers. A committee of Roman clergy and laity, under his instructions, named Peter of Corvara as a rival pope. Reversing the roles of Leo III and Charlemagne, Louis placed the papal tiara upon Peter’s head, and proclaimed him Pope. Nicholas V (May 12, 1328 ). The Christian world marvelled, and divided into two camps, almost along the same lines that would divide Europe after the Reformation.
Petty local events changed the situation dramatically. Louis had appointed Marsilius of Padua spiritual administrator of the Capital; Marsilius ordered the few priests who remained in Rome to celebrate Mass as usual, despite the interdict; some who refused were tortured; an Augustan friar was exposed in a den of lions on the Capitol. Many Romans felt that this was carrying philosophy too far. The Italians had never learned to love Tuetons; when some German soldiers took food from the markets without paying for it, riots ensued. To support his troops and retinue Louis needed money; he imposed a tribute of 10,000 florins ( $250,000) upon the laity, and equal sums upon the clergy and Jews. Resentment mounted so dangerously that Louis thought it time to return to Germany. On August 4, 1328, he began a retreat through Italy. Papal troops took possession of Rome the next day; the palaces of Louis’s Roman supporters were destroyed, and their goods confiscated to the Church. The people made no resistance, but returned to their devotions and their crimes.
