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 Duke George of Saxony. Pack forged a document purporting to be an authentic copy of an offensive league between Ferdinand, the Electors of Mainz and Brandenburg, Duke George of Saxony, the Dukes of Bavaria, and the Bishops of Salzburg, Würzburg, and Bamberg, the object of which was first to drive Zapolya from Hungary, and then to make war on the Elector of Saxony unless he surrendered Luther For this information the Landgrave paid Pack four thousand crowns, and despatched him to Hungary to warn Zapolya and to concert measures of defence. Another envoy was sent to Francis I; and at Weimar in March, 1528, Philip concluded a treaty with the Elector of Saxony in which they agreed to anticipate the attack. The Landgrave at once began to mobilise his forces, but Luther persuaded the Elector to halt. All the parties concerned denied the alleged conspiracy, and eventually Philip himself admitted that he had been deceived. Illogically, however, he demanded that the Bishops should pay the cost of his mobilisation; and as they had no force wherewith to resist, they were compelled to find a hundred thousand crowns between them.

The violence of this proceeding naturally embittered the Catholics, and Philip was charged with having concocted the whole plot and instigated Pack's forgeries. These accusations have been satisfactorily disproved, but the Landgrave's conduct must be held partially responsible for the increased persecution of Lutherans which followed in 1528, and for the hostile attitude of the Diet of Speier in 1529. The Catholic States began to organise visitations for the extirpation of heresy; in Austria printers and vendors of heretical books were condemned to be drowned as poisoners of the minds of the people. In Bavaria in 1528 thirty-eight persons were burnt or drowned, and the victims included men of distinction such as Leonhard Käser, Heuglin, Adolf Clarenbach, and Peter Flysteden, while the historian Aventinus suffered prolonged imprisonment. In Brandenburg the most illustrious victim was the Elector's wife, the Danish Princess Elizabeth, who only escaped death or lifelong incarceration by flight to her cousin, the Elector of Saxony.

Meanwhile the Emperor's attitude grew ever more menacing, for a fresh revolution had reversed the imperial policy. The idea of playing off Luther against the Pope had probably never been serious, and the protests in Spain against Charles' treatment of Clement would alone have convinced him of the dangers of such an adventure. Between 1527 and 1529 he gradually reached the conclusion that a Pope was indispensable. Immediately after the Sack of Rome one of his agents had warned him of the danger lest England and France should establish patriarchates of their own; and a Pope of the universal Church under the control of Charles as master of Italy was too useful an instrument to be lightly abandoned, if for no other reason than that an insular Pope in England would grant the divorce of Henry VIII from Catharine of