CHARLES V AND THE SPREAD OF THE GERMAN REFORMATION,
1519-1556 A.D.
CHARLES V, EMPEROR, 1519-1556 A.D.
The young man who as Holy Roman Emperor presided at the
Diet of Worms had assumed the imperial crown only two years previously. A
namesake of Charlemagne, Charles V held sway over dominions even more extensive
than those which had belonged to the Frankish king. Through his mother, a
daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, he inherited Spain, Naples, Sicily,
and the Spanish possessions in the New World. Through his father, a son of the
emperor Maximilian I, he became ruler of Burgundy and the Netherlands and also
succeeded to the Austrian territories of the Hapsburgs. Charles was thus the
most powerful monarch in Europe.
CHARLES V AND THE LUTHERANS
Charles, as a devout Roman Catholic, had no sympathy for
the Reformation. At Worms, on the day following Luther's refusal to recant, the
emperor had expressed his determination to stake "all his dominions, his
friends, his body and blood, his life and soul" upon the extinction of the
Lutheran heresy. This might have been an easy task, had Charles undertaken it
at once. But a revolt in Spain, wars with the French king, Francis I, and
conflicts with the Ottoman Turks led to his long absence from Germany and kept
him from proceeding effectively against the Lutherans, until it was too late.
