Page:The Peace League of George Poděbrad, King of Bohemia.pdf/15

 of Christ’s doctrine against the Turks,—The Christian states are therefore bound to achieve chiefly two ends, viz. to preserve peace between themselves and to protect the Christian creed against the Turks. For this purpose a federation shall be founded of all Christian princes of France, Germany, Italy and eventually of Spain. This league shall take care that any unnecessary war be avoided in future. On the other hand the members of the league undertake the obligation to set all in their power against the Turks and not to cease in their efforts until all Christian principalities are freed from the Turkish yoke. In the new confederation there is no particular place reserved either for the Roman Emperor or for the Pope.

The emperor may take part in the league in his quality of a German king, but then he is put on the same level with all other German princes and takes together with them the second place in the confederation, the first place being assigned to the French king. As regards the Pope, he cannot become a member of the confederation at all; he retains all his ecclesiastical rights, but all possibility of further interference with secular matters shall be taken from him, as far as the members of the confederation are concerned. And he should mediate and negotiate between outsiders i. e. between such princes and kings who were not members of the league—if he wanted to do so and in case conflicts arose between them: on the other hand it shall be made his duty to take care, by means of his ecclesiastical power, that the Italian princes assemble the necessary ships for the new expedition against the Turks and further that he should help the league by means of the eventual threat of ecclesiastical punishment to collect that part of the title which will form, as we shall see further on, the fundamental source of revenue of the league. In plain words, the emperor and the Pope shall be deprived by the confederation of their until then existing special position in the Christian world, by reason of which they considered themselves entitled to interfere with many questions arising in foreign countries, even then when they did not concern them at all. As regards the emperor, the evolution of things would obviously have involved this and in his case, the change would not have been so considerable: the Pope, on the other hand, till then, always succeeded in conserving his rights as the highest rights and powers in the whole Christian world, to which submitted all Christian princes with the exception of those, however, who, as heretics freed themselves from the yoke of Rome. In this latter direction king George’s confederacy meant a revolution—the complete achievement of which would require quite a lenghtylengthy [sic] period of