Throughout the 15th century the cohesion of the tdifferent parts of Germany was slight. The interests of its rulers lay elsewhere: in Hun gary, Bohemia, Italy or Luxemburg. Emperor Wenceslaus was deposed for staying away as much as eight years at a thne. Sigismund made his first appearance four years after his election. Frederick III once retired in a fit of anger and did not come near a diet for 27 years. Yet the chief courts of justice followed the king's per son! No wonder a secret tribunal, the Verne; could become the chief upholder of law and order and even venture to summon the king himself. Like the Hausa and the Teutonic Order the Verne had its flourishing days and then sank into disrepute; the end of the 15th cen tury marks the decline of all three institutions.
After 1437 Hapsburgs, many of them ineffi cient, held the imperial throne in almost un broken succession. After the Councils of stance and Basel Frederick III, by a concordat or agreement with the Pope, renounced practi cally•all the benefits that Germany had obtained. Frederick is noted for the fact that the great Renaissance movement began under his reign. His son, Maximilian, was a regular product of the Renaissance, versatile, talented, but lacking in balance. Maximilian was personally active in a scientific, literary and artistic way, and was full of political projects, some of which were almost too wild for belief, aiming as they did at making him world-ruler. He was, for in stance, to combine the offices of Pope and emperor in his own person, and to succeed Perkin Warbeck as king of England.
In Maximilian's reign, independent of yet a product of the Renaissance spirit, falls the beginning of the German Reformation. The in vention of printing (about 1450) had provided a channel for the rapid dissemination of ideas, and pungent satires like Erasmus' 'Praise of Folly,' Brant's 'Ship of Fools,' and the anony mous 'Letters of Obscure Men' had mercilessly assailed abuses in the Church. Inflammatory writings of various kinds had made the peasants familiar with the idea of vengeance on the clergy and nobles, in whose favor they were overtaked; while payments for the support of the papal court at Rome were becoming de cidedly unpopular. Altogether, the ground was well prepared when the monk Martin Luther (q.v.) launched his demand for a discussion of the matter of papal indulgences, a demand that drew down an avalanche on his own head and that altered the whole course of German history.
Luther had soon found that the indulgence preacher, Tetzel, was merely the instrument of higher personages and was not altogether to blame for his extravagant utterances. He then • joined issue directly with Pope Leo X, who had authorized the indulgences, and with the archbishop of Mainz, who was to benefit largely by them. Luther's sovereign prince, the elector 'of Saxony, though a professed Roman Catholic to the end, came forward as the re former's protector, and Luther, in response to his own demand for a fair hearing, was sum moned to meet the Roman cardinal, Cajetanus, at Augsburg. The meeting proved fruitless,
as did one with the legate Miltitz, who had been sent to Saxony to bribe the elector with the gift of the golden rose. A disputation with the theologian Eck, at Leipzig (1519), only served to clarify Luther's own ideas and to widen the breach with Rome. In three great writings he attacked the Pope and the doctrines of the Church, drawing down upon himself the papal ban. But the bull of excommunication was publicly burned by Luther at Wittenberg. The new emperor, Charles V, felt compelled, by a recent agreement with his princes not to condemn any one unheard. to summon Luther to his first German diet (Worits, 1521): By this time, if We can believe the Roman legate himself, nine-tenths of the German people were more or less in favor of Luther. Crowds gathered all along his route. His final word at Worms was: °I neither can nor will recant anything, for it is neither safe nor right to act against one's conscience. God help me. Amen.° He left as a convicted heretic, an edict signed by a majority of the princes declaring him in the ban of the empire. His life was in danger, but by order of the friendly elector of he was attacked by seeming brigands and spirited away to the Wartburg, where he em ployed his tune in preparing a translation of the Bible. Germany meanwhile was in a fer-, rnent and the number of polemical publications became enormous. Luther himself, by 1523, had published a hundred writings. Radical' elements, men who claimed to be following Luther's own teachings, soon caused disturb ances and drew him from his seclusion. His successful effort at restoring order in Witten berg was one of the causes that prevented his arrest. His role in the great peasant that broke out in 1524 was not so admirable. His incendiary eloquence had been taken by the masses as an invitation to iconoclasm. Discon-. tent against the nobles, fanned by long oppres sion, had blazed up fiercely and 300,000 peasants rose in revolt, sacking castles and monasteries in all directions. Luther preached against them as °brands of hell," and urged every Man to strike them dead. The revolt was quelled and horrible vengeance taken, but Luther, naturally, lost many adherents, and the course of the Reformation was changed. Reliance had now to be placed on the princes rather than on the people. The Edict of Worms was never carried out, though still considered in force as late as 1530. Charles V was hampered by political considerations and by his wars with Francis of France and the Pope. His enmity to the latter once led him to remark that °Martin Luther might, after all, prove a useful man?' Luther, was able at his leisure to organize his new church; and the diet of Spires, in 1526, unani mously passed a decree which practically al lowed the Lutheran princes to conduct the religious affairs of their lands as pleased themselves.