Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/240

 202 Readings in European History The clouds gather thick in the German sky ; jealousies and discontents arise between the Catholics and the Evan- gelics, or Lutherans, of the Confession of Augsburg. Both parties draw into confederacies and hold assemblies ; the one seeking by the advantage of power to encroach and get ground, the other to stand their ground and hold their own. The potency of the house of Austria, a house devoted to the persecution of the reformed religion, became formi- dable. The old emperor Mathias declared his cousin ger- man, the archduke Ferdinand, to be his adopted son and successor, and caused him to be chosen and crowned king of Bohemia and Hungary, yet reserving to himself the sole exercise of kingly power during his life. The Jesuits triumphed in their hopes of King Ferdinand. The pope exhorted the Catholics to keep a day of jubilee and to implore aid of God for the Church's high occasions. To answer this festival the elector of Saxony called to mind that it was then the hundredth year complete since Martin Luther opposed the papal indulgences, which was the first beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Whereupon he ordained a solemn feast of three days for thanksgiving and for prayer to God to maintain in peace the purity of the Word and the right administration of the sacraments. The professors of the universities of Lipsick and Wittemberg, the imperial towns of Franckford, Worms, and Noremburg, — yea, the Calvinists also, — observed the same days of jubi- lee against the Romish Church, and much gold and silver was cast abroad in memory of Luther, whom they called blessed. . . . The The Bohemian troubles took their first rise from the Bohemian breach of the edict of peace concerning religion and the accord made by the emperor Rudolf whereby the Protes- tants retained the free exercise of their religion, enjoyed their temples, colleges, tithes, patronages, places of burial, and the like, and had liberty to build new temples and power to choose defenders to secure these rights and to regulate what should be the service in their churches. Now the stop of building certain churches on lands within