correlazione all’ Italia, Venice, 1863. Rösler: Die Kaiserwahl Karls V., Wien, 1868. W.
Maurenbrecher: Karl V. und die deutschen Protestanten, 1545–1555, Düsseldorf, 1865; Studien
und Skizzen zur Geschichte der Reformationszeit, Leipzig, 1874, pp. 99–133. A. v. Druffel:
Kaiser Karl V. und die röm. Curie 1544–1546. 3 Abth. München, 1877 sqq.
IV. Comp. also Ranke: Deutsche Geschichte, I. 240 sqq., 311 sqq.; and on Charles’s later history
in vols. II., III., IV., V., VI. Janssen: Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, II. 131 sqq., and vol.
III. Weber: Allgemeine Weltgeschichte, vol. X. (1880), 1 sqq. Prescott’s Philip II., bk. I, chaps.
1 and 9 (vol. I. 1–26; 296–359). Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. I., Introduction.
Before passing to the Diet of Worms, we must make the acquaintance of Charles V. He is,
next to Martin Luther, the most conspicuous and powerful personality of his age. The history of
his reign is the history of Europe for more than a third of a century (from 1520–1556).
In the midst of the early conflicts of the Reformation, the Emperor Maximilian I. died at
Wels, Jan. 12, 1519. He had worn the German crown twenty-six years, and is called "the last
Knight." With him the middle ages were buried, and the modern era dawned on Europe.
It was a critical period for the Empire: the religion of Mohammed threatened Christianity,
Protestantism endangered Catholicism. From the East the Turks pushed their conquests to the walls
of Vienna, as seven hundred years before, the Arabs, crossing the Pyrenees, had assailed Christian
Europe from the West; in the interior the Reformation spread with irresistible force, and shook the
foundations of the Roman Church. Where was the genius who could save both Christianity and the
Reformation, the unity of the Empire and the unity of the Church? A most difficult, yea, an
impossible task.
The imperial crown descended naturally on Maximilian’s grandson, the young king of
Spain, who became the most powerful monarch since the days of Charles the Great. He was the
heir of four royal lines which had become united by a series of matrimonial alliances.
Never was a prince born to a richer inheritance, or entered upon public life with graver
responsibilities, than Charles V. Spanish, Burgundian, and German blood mingled in his veins, and
the good and bad qualities of his ramified ancestry entered into his constitution. He was born with
his eventful century (Feb. 24, 1500), at Ghent in Flanders, and educated under the tuition of the
Lord of Chièvres, and Hadrian of Utrecht, a theological professor of strict Dominican orthodoxy
and severe piety, who by his influence became the successor of Leo X. in the papal chair. His father,
Philip I., was the only son of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy (daughter of Charles the Bold),
and cuts a small figure among the sovereigns of Spain as "Philip the Handsome" (Filipe el
Hermoso),—a frivolous, indolent, and useless prince. His mother was Joanna, called, "Crazy Jane"
(Juana la Loca), second daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and famous for her tragic fate, her
insanity, long imprisonment, and morbid devotion to the corpse of her faithless husband, for whom,
during his life, she had alternately shown passionate love and furious jealousy. She became, after
the death of her mother (Nov. 26, 1504), the nominal queen of Spain, and dragged out a dreary
existence of seventy-six years (she died April 11, 1555).^298
(^298) Her sad story is told by the contemporary historians Gomez, Peter Martyr, Zurita, and Sandoval (from whom the scattered account
of Prescott is derived in his Ferdinand and Isabella, III. 94, 170 sqq., 212 sqq., 260 sqq.), and more fully revealed in the Simancas and
Brussels documents. It has been ably discussed by several modem writers with reference to the unproved hypothesis of Bergenroth that
she was never insane, but suspected and tortured (?) for heresy, and cruelly treated by Charles. But her troubles began long before the
Reformation, and her melancholy disposition was derived from her grandmother. She received the extreme unction from priestly hands,
and her last word was: "Jesus, thou Crucified One, deliver me." See Gustav Bergenroth (a German scholar then residing in London),