An Empire Divided Over the Gospel
By 1529 the Holy Roman Empire had been arguing about Martin Luther for more than a decade. At Worms in 1521 the young Emperor Charles V had declared Luther an outlaw and banned his writings, but the edict proved impossible to enforce. Charles was often away, fighting France in Italy and facing the Ottoman Turks, who had crushed Hungary at Mohács in 1526 and were advancing toward Vienna. German princes and cities who favored the Reformation used his distraction.
At the first Diet of Speyer, in 1526, the estates agreed that until a general council met, each ruler should act in matters of religion as he could answer to God and the emperor. Evangelical princes took that as permission to reform the churches of their territories, and many did. In 1529 the emperor, acting through his brother Archduke Ferdinand, summoned a second diet to Speyer to undo the damage. The Catholic estates held a clear majority.
A diet was an assembly of the empire's princes, prince-bishops, and free cities meeting with the emperor or his representative, and it made law for the empire. At Speyer in 1529 Catholic and evangelical rulers sat together. What divided them made the diet famous; what united them is the subject of this article.
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For Deeper Study
- The Reformers and Their StepchildrenAmazon Leonard VerduinExplains why the Reformers' state churches persecuted the free churches; sympathetic to the dissenters.
- The Anabaptist StoryAmazon William R. EstepA Baptist historian's introduction to the Anabaptists and their persecution.
- Anabaptism: A Social History, 1525–1618Amazon Claus-Peter ClasenA statistical study of the movement and its persecution in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany.
- Martyrs MirrorAmazon Thieleman J. van BraghtThe classic Mennonite martyrology (1660). Devotional and partisan, with documents found nowhere else.
- Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern EuropeAmazon Brad S. GregoryCompares Catholic, Protestant, and Anabaptist martyrs with unusual fairness to each.
- The Travail of Religious LibertyAmazon Roland H. BaintonPortraits of persecutors and dissenters in the Reformation era.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
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