Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/203

 The Catholic Reformation 165 Given at St. Mark's in Rome, in the year of our Lord's incarnation 1540, September 27, in the sixth year of our pontificate. III. The Abdication of Charles V (1555) Although [my councilor] Philibert has just fully explained 279. Charles to you, my friends, the causes which have determined me to v ' s addre ss 1 • • c -r, at Brussels surrender the possession and administration of these Belgian (1555). provinces and leave them to my son, Don Philip, yet I wish to say certain things with my own mouth. You will remember that upon the 5th of January of this year there had elapsed forty years since my grandfather, the emperor Maximilian, in the same place and at the same hour, declared my majority at the age of fifteen, withdrew me from the guardianship under which I had remained up to that time, and made me master of myself. The following year, which was my sixteenth, King Fer- dinand (my mother's father and my grandfather) died in the kingdom over which I was then forced to begin to reign, owing to the fact that my beloved mother, who has but just died, was left, by reason of the death of my father, with disordered judgment, and never sufficiently recovered her health to be capable of ruling over the possessions which she inherited from her father and mother. At that time I went to Spain by way of the sea. Soon came the death of my grandfather Maximilian, in my nine- teenth year, and although I was still young I sought and obtained the imperial dignity in his stead. I had no inordi- nate ambition to rule a multitude of kingdoms, but merely desired to secure the welfare and prosperity of Germany, my dear fatherland, and of my other kingdoms, especially of my Belgian provinces ; and to encourage and extend as far as in me lay Christian peace and harmony throughout the whole world. But although such zeal was mine, I was unable to show so much of it as I might have wished, on account of the troubles raised by the heresies of Luther and the other innovators