guaranteed by the Federal Constitution of 1787: it prevents the state from persecuting the church,
and the churches from persecuting each other, and confines them to their proper moral and spiritual
vocation. The American principle of the legal equality of religious confessions was proposed by
the Frankfort Parliament in 1849, triumphed in the new German empire, 1870, and is making steady
progress all over the civilized world. (See the author’s Church and State in the United States, N.
Y., 1888.)
§ 113. The Emperor and the Pope. The Sacking of Rome, 1527.
Contemporary accounts of the sacking of Rome are collected by Carlo Milanesi: Il Sacco di Roma
del MDXXVII., Florence, 1867. Alfred von Reumont: Geschichte der Stadt Rom (Berlin, 1870),
vol. III. 194 sqq.; Comp. the liter. he gives on p. 846 sq. Ranke: bk. V. (vol. III. I sqq.). Janssen:
vol. III. 124 sqq.
Charles V. neither signed nor opposed the edict of Speier. He had shortly before fallen out with
Clement VII., because this Pope released King Francis I. from the hard conditions of peace imposed
upon him after his defeat at Pavia, June 26, 1526, and placed himself at the head of a Franco-Italian
league against the preponderance of Austria the Holy League" of Cognac, May 22, 1526). The
league of the Emperor and the Pope had brought about the Edict of Worms; the breach between
the two virtually annulled it at the Diet of Speier. Had the Emperor now embraced the Protestant
doctrines, he might have become the head of a German imperial state church. But all his instincts
were against Protestantism.
His quarrel with the Pope was the occasion of a fearful calamity to the Eternal City. The
Spanish and German troops of the Emperor, under the lead of Constable Charles de Bourbon, and
the old warrior Frundsberg (both enemies of the Pope), marched to Rome with an army of twenty
thousand men, and captured the city, May 6, 1527. Bourbon, the ablest general of Charles, but a
traitor to his native France, was struck by a musket-ball in climbing a ladder, and fell dead in the
moment of victory. The pope fled to the castle St. Angelo. The soldiers, especially the Spaniards,
deprived of their captain, surpassed the barbarians of old in beastly and refined cruelty, rage and
lust. For eight days they plundered the papal treasury, the churches, libraries, and palaces, to the
extent of ten millions of gold; they did not spare even the tomb of St. Peter and the corpse of Julius
II., and committed nameless outrages upon defenseless priests, monks, and nuns. German soldiers
marched through the streets in episcopal and cardinal’s robes, dressed a donkey like a priest, and
by a grim joke proclaimed Luther as pope of Rome.
Never before had Rome suffered such indignities and loss. The sacking was a crime against
civilization, humanity, and religion; but, at the same time, a fearful judgment of God upon the
worldliness of the papacy, and a loud call to repentance.^939
When the news reached Germany, many rejoiced, at the fall of Babylon." But Melanchthon,
rising above bigotry, said in one of his finest addresses to the students of Wittenberg: "Why should
(^939) Reumont (l.c. III. 201) says: "Wüster und andauernder ist keine Stadt geplündert, sind keine Einwohner misshandelt worden als
Rom und die Römer. Spanier wie Teutsche haben bei diesem grausen Werke gewetteifert, jene mit erfinderischer Unmenschlichkeit, diese
mit wilder Barbarei. Kirchen, Klöster, Palläste, Wohnhäuser, Hütten wurden mit gleicher Beutelust ausgeleert und verwüstet, Männer,
Frauen, Kinder mit gleicher Grausamkeit misshandelt."