Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor from The Civil Wars of Spain, in the Reign of Charles the Fifth, Emperour of Germanie, and King of that Nation.

1655

de Beer Eb 1655 S

London: Printed for Simon Miller

Born into the Dutch Hapsburg dynasty, Charles V (1500-58), became Holy Roman Emperor in 1519. In 1521, he decided that Luther deserved a formal public hearing and summoned him to a Diet at Worms, giving him safe passage through the German countryside. Luther’s supporters did not want him to attend the Diet in case his fate echoed that of Jan Hus, who was branded a heretic and condemned to death at the Council of Constance in 1415. However, Luther attended, recanted nothing, and survived. It was not politically prudent for Charles to condemn Luther to death although he did publicly brand him an ‘obstinate schismatic and a manifest heretic’ and outlawed him. Still under Charles’s ‘safe passage’, Luther hastily left Worms. Luckily for Luther, for the rest of his reign, Charles was too distracted by various wars to police his reformation activities.