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 Maximilian, subject to dreams, and his dream from 1545 to the disasters of 1552 was to assemble a General Council by means of which he would reduce the Lutherans to Catholicism and the Pope to reform; then having united and purified Western Christendom he would march at its head against the Infidel, regain the East for the orthodox faith, and be crowned in Jerusalem. Maximilian had contemplated all these achievements, and had also hoped to encircle his brow with the tiara of a Pope and the halo of a saint; but Charles would have been content to crown his life with monastic retirement. The object immediately under consideration in 1545 was the General Council for which he had laboured so long in vain. By this means he hoped to work his will both with the Pope and with the Protestants. The Lutherans had for m an v years expressed a desire for a General Council; if it met and they accepted its decrees, unity would be achieved: if they refused to be bound by them, the refusal would be a justification for war and a good ground on which to appeal for help to the Catholic Powers. Secondly, the mere fact of its meeting would annul the concessions which Charles had made; and thirdly, the demand of a free General Council from an obstructive Pope would enhance the illusion under which the Lutherans laboured that Charles was their ally against the Papacy. In August, 1544, Paul III had denounced the Emperor's compliance at Speier, had reminded him of the fate of his predecessors, from Nero to Frederick II, who had persecuted the Church, and had threatened him with an even more terrible doom; and Luther and Calvin had thereupon seized their pens in his defence. The Pope in fact was the chief obstacle to the Council; but the peace between Charles and Francis destroyed all chance of successful resistance; and Paul III made a virtue of necessity by summoning a Council to meet at Trent in December. As the Edict of Worms had been dated the same day as Charles' alliance with Leo X, so the summons to the Council of Trent was dated the same day as the Peace of Crépy (November 19, 1544).

If Charles hoped for Protestant submission to the Council of Trent he was speedily undeceived. The choice of Trent was a concession to German sentiment, but was nevertheless a Bwpov aSa>pov. Trent was only nominally a German city; in feeling it was almost purely Italian, and, on account of its proximity to Italy, Italian Bishops would swamp the Council almost as completely as if it had met within Italian borders. The practical exclusion of deputies made the adequate representation of non-Italian sees impossible; and the choice of monastic theologians ruined the prospect of an accommodation with Lutheran doctrine. The authority of the universal Church was assumed by a gathering of Italian and Spanish Bishops, who would unite to maintain the extreme Catholic theology, and would only be divided by the political question of papal or imperial predominance. Even in the more favourable event of Charles prevailing, the Protestants had little to hope; a few practical abuses