Moreover, Charles had a certain zeal for a limited reformation of church discipline on the
basis of the Catholic doctrine and the papal hierarchy. He repeatedly urged a general council, against
the dilatory policy of the Popes, and exhorted Protestants and Catholics alike to submit to its
decisions as final. Speaking of the Diet of Augsburg, held in 1530, he says that he, asked his Holiness
to convoke and assemble a general council, as most important and necessary to remedy what was
taking place in Germany, and the errors which were being propagated throughout Christendom."^310
This was likewise consistent with Spanish tradition. Isabella the Catholic, and Cardinal Ximenes,
had endeavored to reform the clergy and monks in Spain.^311
This Roman-Catholic reformation was effected by the Council of Trent, but turned out to
be a papal counter-reformation, and a weapon against Protestantism in the hands of the Spanish
order of the Jesuits.
The Emperor and the Reformer.
Charles and Luther saw each other once, and only once, at the Diet of Worms. The Emperor
was disgusted with the monk who dared to set his private judgment and conscience against the
time-honored creed of Christendom, and declared that he would never make him a heretic. But
Luther wrote him a respectful letter of thanks for his safe-conduct.^312
Twenty years later, after his victory over John Frederick of Saxony at Mühlberg on the Elbe
(April 24, 1547), Charles stood on the grave of Luther in the castle church of Wittenberg, and was
advised by the bloodthirsty Duke of Alva to dig up and burn the bones of the arch-heretic, and to
scatter the ashes to the winds of heaven; but he declined with the noble words:, I make war on the
living, not on the dead." This was his nearest approach to religious toleration. But the interesting
incident is not sufficiently authenticated.^313
For twenty-six years the Emperor and the Reformer stood at the head of Germany, the one
as a political, the other as a religious, leader; working in opposite directions,—the one for the
preservation of the old, the other for the creation of the new, order of things. The one had the army
and treasure of a vast empire at his command; the other had nothing but his faith and pen, and yet
made a far deeper and more lasting impression on his and on future ages. Luther died peacefully
in his birthplace, trusting in the merits of Christ, and commending his soul to the God who redeemed
him. Ten years later Charles ended his life as a monk in Spain, holding a burning candle in the right
hand, and pressing with the left the crucifix to his lips, while the Archbishop of Toledo intoned the
Psalm De Profundis. The last word of the dying Emperor was "Jesus."
(^310) Autobiography, p. 19. On p. 73 sqq. he complains of Clement VII. and Paul III., on account of their violation of promise to convoke
such a council. He does not conceal his hatred of Paul III.
(^311) Comp. Maurenbrecher, Die Kirchenreformation in Spanien, in his "Studien und Skizzen." pp. 1-40, and his Geschichte der katholischen
Reformation (Nördlingen, 1880), vol. I., pp. 37-55. Maurenbrecher shows that there were two reformation-currents in the sixteenth century,
one proceeding from Spain, and led by Charles V., which aimed at a restoration of the mediaeval Church in its purity and glory; the other
proceeding from Germany, and embodied in Luther, which aimed at an emancipation of the human mind from the authority of Rome,
and at a reconstruction of the Church on the inner religiosity of the individual.
(^312) April 28, 1521; in De Wette, I. 589-594.
(^313) In his Autobiography (ch. X., 151 sqq.) Charles speaks of the siege and capitulation of Wittenberg, but says nothing of a visit to
Luther’s grave, nor does he even mention his name. I looked in vain for an allusion to the fact in Sleidan, and Lindner (in his extensive
Appendix to Seckendorf, from 1546 to 1555). Ranke ignores it, though he is very full on this chapter in Charles’s history (vol. IV. 378
sqq.).