mission. At last he proceeded to the overt act of arresting the Bishop of Trent, and seizing upon the city as his own domain. The matter was brought by complaint before the council. They issued their monitory against the duke, commanding him to restore, within twenty days, what he had taken away, with damages for the evil done. They authorized the bishop to invoke against him, in case of refusal, the secular arm. The penalty of disobedience was most severe. The council-assuming a right which they had exercised in the decree concerning the emperor's absence,-authority over secular princesthreatened his disobedience with a deprivation of all the feoffs and privileges which he held from the church or the empire, stripping him of all authority, power, and title to reign, and his posterity after him to the second generation. The subjects of Frederic were to be released from their oaths of allegiance. He, with his accomplices who were to share his fate, was to be summoned before the council, and the ecclesiastics who should favor him, were to be excommunicated. The council probably would have scarcely dared to assume such an attitude toward any other prince than Frederic of Austria. The emperor hated him still, notwithstanding their formal reconciliation, and gave some credit to the report of attempts made by the duke to take his life. The council were confident of being sustained by Sigismund in their course. Frederic was not the powerful Duke of Burgundya criminal whom they dared not touch. Despoiled of a large part of his possessions, and deprived of the CH. V.] FREDERIC OF AUSTRIA. 157 favor of the emperor, he was just the object over which they might safely presume to domineer. Violent and reckless as he may have been, his conduct in this instance demanded more judicial formality, more investigation in regard to its justice or injustice, than was allowed by this summary sentence. The facts of the case were these. George of Lichtenstein had been appointed Bishop of Trent, to the great dissatisfaction of its inhabitants. They had, as their leader, a nobleman by the name of Rodolph, who aspired to occupy the post of the unacceptable official. This could only be secured by acts that bordered at least on violence, and tended to the expulsion of the bishop. But the latter found a friend and ally in Henry of Rottenberg, who marched upon Trent with his army and took summary vengeance upon the inhabitants. He seized and kept possession of the city, having first ravaged it with fire and sword, and put Rodolph to death. Frederic of Austria observed with anger and indignation this harsh and violent proceeding. It is not to be presumed that he was much moved by such a method of installing a bishop in his diocese, for on another occasion, if his own interests had demanded it, he would probably have been willing to have adopted it himself without a scruple. But Trent was a friendly city bordering on his own domain. Undoubtedly, as he looked around upon his lost jewels-the territories that had been taken from him for his adherence to John XXIII.— he felt an anxious desire for their recovery. But whatever motives may have influenced him, he marched to Trent, drove out the obnoxious bishop, and took the citizens under his protection. All this seems to have taken place after the emperor had set out for Spain. In the twentieth session of the council, (Nov. 6,) the decree against the duke, already referred to, was read. His advocate, John Eling, protested against the decree as a nullity. For months after this, the matter made little if any progress. Frederic appeared at Constance.1 But he found little hope of justice in the action of the council. He seized the occasion that offered, to escape secretly from the city back to his own dominions, which had been plundered in his absence. He left behind him a public placard, in which he complained of the injustice of the council, "who," he said, "had shut the mouth of his advocate." This was the thirtieth of March, 1416, after the matter had been depending for more than six months. The council, however, were indignant, not only at Frederic's escape, but at his placard, which they considered libellous. They wrote to the emperor against him, and found Sigismund only too ready to put the turbulent duke under the ban of the empire. Frederic, moreover, found a dangerous rival in his brother Ernest, who had in his absence seized upon large portions of his estates. Yet notwithstanding all the influences and terrors that were arrayed against him, the duke maintained his ground. He defied alike the emperor and the council. He still kept the Bishop of Trent in durance, and deprived of his diocese. The effort CH. V.] SLOW PROGRESS OF REFORM. 159 to induce his subjects to renounce his allegiance was but partially successful, and the threatening decree of the council fell at his feet as a mere brutum fulmen. The duke was, however, in the course he pursued, but a fair specimen of the petty princes and nobles of Europe. To restrain their violence, the council revived the memorable Carolina Constitutio, by Charles IV., on the subject of the liberty of ecclesiastics. It affixed the several penalties to the crime of trespassing on the rights, person, or privileges of the clergy. They who transgressed it were to be accounted infamous, deprived of their honors, and no more to be admitted to the privileges or councils of their order. All this was aggravated by the terrors of the imperial ban, and the canonical as well as divine judgments which were denounced upon the of fender. Undoubtedly severe restraints and penalties were necessary to repress the prevalent violence; but when the clergy and prelates were often the chief offenders, their immunity only the more provoked indignant reprisals. The justice of the council should have taught them not to launch the terrors of the Caroline Constitution and their own anathema, till their project of reform had become so far effectual that the clergy could be regarded as deserving of such protection. The work of reform, however, made but slow progress. At a congregation held on the nineteenth of December, John Nason, president at that time of the German nation in the council, gave utterance to his complaints on this subject. "The council," said Van der Hardt, iv. 523. he, "has been assembled for three principal objects, -to put an end to the schism, to condemn heresies, and to reform the church in its head and members. John Huss has been already most justly condemned, and John XXIII. has been deposed. But those same crimes are still every day committed which were the ground of his deposition, and especially the crime of simony. The German nation has hitherto redoubled its urgency for the condemnation of this and every other abuse, as well as for the exemplary punishment of those that are guilty. But, to the shame of the council, the most criminal indulgence and dissimulation have been practised." After this complaint and protestation, he besought the members to proceed without delay in the matter. Nor did he fail to call attention to a subject in which his own personal feelings were enlisted-the case of Jerome. He seemed dissatisfied with what had already been done, and put no faith in the recantation which Jerome had made.1 In this respect he was probably a fair representative of the feeling of the German nation. They were earnestly bent upon a reform of the church. They had complained repeatedly of the abuses which they wished to have corrected. In the discussion of the papal claim of annates they had been especially interested, but their defeat in regard to these matters was only a premonition of what they were still to expect. In regard to Jerome, their complaint was more successful. If there were those in the council who preferred to save him, and avoid again provoking the Bohe 1 Van der Hardt, iv. 556. |