A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [81]
The tension between the peoples living on either side of the Alps was greater than the rivalry dividing Spain and Portugal. It was also much older. Piety and hostility toward the papacy had coexisted among central Europeans since the fifth century, when, they remembered with pride, Alaric had led their ancestors in sacking Rome. They also recalled—and this memory was bitter—how Pope Gregory VII had humiliated their leader six centuries later, forcing him to kneel in the snows of Canossa for three days before granting him absolution. Though Teutonic Obrigkeit, authority, remained in the hands of some three hundred independent princes, the Volk shared one language, one culture, and, increasingly, a sense of common identity. Their unanimity in the period may be overstated, but now that they were beginning to feel like Germans, Canossa and other old wounds were opened and nursed.
After the Church’s jubilee of 1500, when Rodrigo Borgia, Alexander VI, was pope, German pilgrims recrossing the Brenner Pass had returned with wild stories of Vatican orgies, the poisoning of pontiffs, homicidal cardinals, pagan rites in the Curia, and nuns practicing prostitution in the streets of Rome. But the roots of Germany’s burgeoning anticlericalism lay deeper than gossip. To a people united by a flickering new national spirit, the imperiousness of the Vatican had become intolerable. Rome had decreed that no sovereign was legitimate until he had been confirmed by the pope. In theory, a pontiff could dismiss any emperor, king, or prince if displeased with him. He wasn’t even obliged to cite a reason. Clergymen, like later diplomats, were immune from civil law. No officer of the law could lay a hand on a priest guilty of rape or murder, and conflicts between civil and episcopal courts could be settled, by pontifical fiat, in favor of the clerics.
Maximilian had nearly broken with the Vatican. In 1508 he had been barred from attending his own coronation in Rome by hostile Venetians. The schismatic Council of Pisa offered him the papacy. He declined then, but a year later he briefly considered separating the German church from Rome. In the end he was persuaded that he couldn’t rely on the support of German princes, but he went so far as to direct Jakob Wimpheling, the humanist, to draw up a list of Germany’s grievances against the papacy.
Heading Wimpheling’s complaints were protests against the Vatican’s systematic looting of German taxpayers, industries, and the vaults of noblemen. Maximilian himself calculated that the papacy reaped a hundred times more in German revenues than he did himself—an exaggeration, of course; nevertheless, businessmen, the most vigorous men in the new German society, did find themselves competing with monastic industries whose profits, Rome had ruled, were exempt from taxation. Long before Luther arrived to lead his disgruntled countrymen, the chancellor to an archbishop of Mainz had angrily written an Italian cardinal that “taxes are collected harshly, and no delay is granted … and war tithes imposed without consulting the German prelates. Lawsuits that ought to have been dealt with at home have been hastily transferred to the apostolic tribunal. The Germans have been treated as if they were rich and stupid barbarians, and drained of their money by a thousand cunning devices. … For many years Germany has lain in the dust, bemoaning her poverty and her sad fate. But now her nobles have awakened as from sleep; now they have resolved to shake off the yoke, and to win back their ancient freedom.”
Among his countrymen, pastors and even prelates agreed. Archbishop Berthold von Henneberg wrote: “The Italians ought to reward the Germans for their services, and not drain the sacerdotal body with frequent extortions of gold.” He was ignored. Relationships between pious churchgoers and the ecclesiastical hierarchy worsened. When Karl von Miltitz had journeyed to Altenburg to meet Luther, he had been astounded