Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/59

 principle was dead too. No German Emperor arose in whom the dreams of Henry VII could live again. What Charles V sought and attained in the two conferences at Bologna and during his subsequent visit to Rome (April 5, 1536) had nothing whatever to do with the plans of the Emperors before him. The restoration of the Medici in Florence and the Emperor's dealings with the doomed Republic inaugurated that unhappy policy which down to 1866 continued to make the Germans enemies of the Italians. This it was that, after the tribulations of Metternich's government, brought on the catastrophe of Solferino and Sadowa.

The programme of 1510 demanded in the first place a reformation of the Church, both in its head and its members. Let us consider the attitude of Rome under the Medici with regard to this question.

The reformations attempted by the Councils of Constance and Basel had utterly failed. Since Martin V had returned to Rome the Papacy could consider nothing beyond the governing of the Papal State, and since Calixtus III it was involved in dynastic intrigue. Æneas Silvius had stated with the utmost clearness thirteen years before he became Pope that no one in the Curia any longer thought of reformation. Then Savonarola appeared; France and Germany cried out for reform. At the synods of Orleans and Tours (1510) the French decided on the assembling of an Ecumenical Council. In view of the decree Frequens of the Council of Constance, the dilatoriness of the Pope, and the breaking of the oath he had sworn in conclave, the Second Synod of Pisa was convoked (May 16, 1511). It was first and foremost a check offered to Julius II by French politicians, but was also intended to obtain a general recognition by the Church of the principles of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1438 drawn from the articles of the Basel and Constance conventions. This pseudo-synod was attended only by a few French prelates and savants. Meantime the Emperor Maximilian had conferred with the leading theologians of his Empire, such as Geiler von Kaisersberg, Wimpheling, Trithemius, Johann Eck, Matthäus Lang, and Conrad Peutinger, about the state of the Church. In 1510 he commissioned the Schlettstadt professor, Jakob Wimpheling, to draw up a plan of reform, which the latter published in his Gravamina Germanicae Nationis cum remediis et avisamentis ad Caesaream Maiestatem. It is composed of an extract from the Pragmatic Sanction, an essay on the machinations of courtiers, another on the ten grievances, with their remedies, notifications for the Emperor, and an excursus concerning legates. The ten gravamina are the same which Martin Mayr had mentioned as early as 1457 in his epistle to Æneas Silvius.

The Emperor, who since 1507 cherished the wild plan of procuring his own election to the Papacy on the death of Julius, at first gave his protection to the Council of Pisa. Afterwards he withdrew it, and