fonso joined the campaign of Emperor
Charles V against Pope Clement VII, and
won back the lost duchies in 1530. Ercole
d’Este, the son of Alfonso, married the
daughter of King Louis XII, and allied with
France against the kingdom of Spain. His
brother Ippolito, a cardinal of the church,
built the lavish Villa d’Este at Tivoli, the
finest example of a Renaissance palace to
survive to the present day.
The last of the d’Este line was Alfonso
II, who died in 1597. Although he sought
to pass the duchy to his cousin Cesare,
Pope Clement VIII did not recognize the
inheritance and declared Ferrara a part of
the papal territories.
SEEALSO: Ariosto, Ludovico; d’Este, Isa-
bella; Ferrara
Diet of Augsburg ..............................
The Diet of the Holy Roman Empire was
an assembly of princes and nobles who
convened to decide important matters of
state and religion. In 1530, as the Protes-
tant Reformation gathered force in Ger-
many, Emperor Charles V, a determined
defender of the Catholic Church, sum-
moned the Diet to meet at Augsburg and
invited Protestants to present a summary
of their beliefs. The members of the Diet
promulgated the twenty-eight articles of
the Augsburg Confession, written by the
reformer Philipp Melanchthon, who based
his work on the teachings of Martin
Luther. The Augsburg Confession remains
a central creed of Lutheranism. In 1547
the Diet met again after the defeat of Prot-
estant forces by the emperor. Charles at-
tempted to establish Catholicism as the
supreme church, but many German princes
ruled independently of the emperor and
claimed the right to establish the church
of their choice in their own territories. In
1555 the emperor and the Protestants ar-
rived at the Peace of Augsburg, which rec-
ognized the rights demanded by the
princes.Diet of Worms .................................
A gathering of princes and officials of the
Holy Roman Empire, who met in the town
of Worms, Germany, to deal with the revo-
lutionary religious doctrines espoused by a
monk and university scholar, Martin
Luther, the Diet was convened in early
1521 by Emperor Charles V, who com-
manded Luther himself to appear in order
to debate and defend his ideas. Elector Fre-
derick of Saxony, who was sympathetic to
Luther’s writings, demanded and received
a guarantee of safe passage.
Luther’s teachings—including the doc-
trine of justification by faith alone—had
been disputed by Pope Leo X in his bull
(decree) Exsurge Domine. The pope de-
manded that Luther retract forty-one as-
sertions he had made in his writings and
in the Ninety-five Theses, a pronounce-
ment he had composed in the town of
Wittenberg. But when Johann Eck, speak-
ing for the archbishop of Trier, challenged
Luther, the monk refused to recant. He
then left the Diet under a safe-conduct
pass before its members could take any ac-
tion against him. As the Diet concluded,
the emperor issued the Edict of Worms,
which banned Luther’s writings and com-
manded his arrest. Returning to Saxony,
Luther assumed a disguise and managed
to survive the edict while his revolutionary
teachings set off the Protestant Reforma-
tion in Germany.Donatello ........................................
(1386–1466)
A sculptor who revolutionized the art in
Florence during the early Renaissance.
Born as Donato di Niccolo Bardi, he was
an apprentice in the workshop of LorenzoDiet of Augsburg