1548
--The Council of Mantua issues its first decrees, a withering rejection of the precepts of Lutheranism that have in fact been held back to make them as combative as possible. It also sets forth a program to handle church corruption. Having done this, Pope Paul then proceeds to spend his time on his other major interest, indeed, one he feels he's neglected for too long of late--furthering his family's interests in Italian politics. This does undercut the entire 'handle church corruption' issue, but Paul seems fairly oblivious to this.
--England, France and Scotland unveil a web of marriage alliances that it is hoped will keep everybody happy. King Henry IX will wed the Princess Elizabeth Valois when she comes of age. Queen Mary Stuart will wed the Prince Charles Valois when they both come of age. Thus the three nations shall all be tied to one another, while simultaneously avoiding any messy personal unions, to the satisfaction of all, and disappointment of none--in theory. True, there are a few rough patches, such as the fact that aside from Henry, all these children have ages in the single digits. But this is nobility. It's how things go. Anne in particular is thrilled that her long-standing dream to wed her son to a French princess is coming true. Others are less thrilled.
--For Henri II of France, the marriage contract with England is all part of the ongoing prepartions for the next conflict with the Hapsburgs. (The one he hopes will settle who's the Duke of Milan good and proper.) While France's position in Italy is probably the strongest it's been in decades, the fact remains they've watched all this slip from their hands before. Indeed, after watching the end of the Schmalkaldic war, Henri has been alternating between kicking himself for letting a golden opportunity escape, and reminding himself that France needed an opportunity to replenish its resources. This sort of inner conflict is pretty much par for the course for Henri, a man whose pragmatic nature is often at odds with his romantic upbringing. His influential mistress, Diane de Poitiers, doesn't help this--she regularly steers him towards grandiose projects, and away from the practical steps needed to achieve them. Henri realizes that the good will of England, Denmark and Germany's Protestant Princes is essential for a victory against the Hapsburg Empire, and that means acting as the more tolerant major Catholic monarch. And yet this rankles him--and Diane encourages this rancor, bidding Henri to take a harder line with France's growing Calvinist population, commonly referred to as the Huguenots. And there is another aspect to this religious struggle--the rivalry of the Guise and the Bourbons. Relative newcomers to the French political scene, the Guises have staked out a place for themselves as defenders of the Catholic orthodoxy--the Bourbons, old Princes of the Blood, are heavily inclined towards the cause of Reform. All of this is going to get very unpleasant in the future. But that is the future. For the present, Henri is a relative moderate--he has reopened a court on heresy, but as yet, this seems to be little more than a sop to the Papacy. As yet.
--At the next Reichstag, Emperor Charles and the Schmalkaldic League create a little something called the Peace of Augsburg, an agreement that will allow Protestant Princes to be Protestant Princes. It also allows the Schmalkaldic League to still exist, on the understanding that it won't be actively pursuing treachery anymore, by say, allying with foreign nations. Of course, Charles doesn't expect that proviso to be honored that much--the Holy Roman Empire of the Germans has a centuries-old tradition of backstabbing to continue, after all--but it will hopefully keep things under some semblance of control. Charles cannot be said to be that thrilled by the whole thing, but it is, he hopes, the framework to peaceable coexistance with the Lutherans, who he now knows are not going to curl up and die simply because he wants them to. His brother Ferdinand is also less thrilled--he's less doctrinaire than Charles, but he lost his beloved eldest son in this war, and he naturally blames the League. As he is presently the King of the Romans and thus, heir presumptive to the title of Holy Roman Emperor, this will prove a problem in the future. But even he knows that there is little that can be done--Protestants are everywhere--indeed their prevalence in Ferdinand's kingdoms are one reason why he wasn't able to mount an effective military response to the Elector. For the moment, the brothers agree that this is a peace that, if it doesn't pry victory from the jaws of defeat, pries acceptable loss from the jaws of total disaster, which is almost as good.
Sadly, one person does not agree with them. Pope Paul angrily denounces the agreement, and refuses to accept it. Heretics, he states, are to be fought until they are defeated. While this has limited direct effect--both Charles and Ferdinand signal everyone that they consider the deal to be in effect, even if the Pope is having a hissy--it does help make everything just a tad more tense throughout the Empire. Still, Paul is an old man. He probably won't be around much longer, and the next Pope will probably prove more reasonable. Hopefully.
--In other Hapsburg news, Ferdinand's second son, Ferdinand II, finds himself forced to take up his brother's place in all sorts of things--he not only finds himself sent to Spain to govern it in his uncle's place, as Charles had planned to have Maximillian do, but he winds up marrying his brother's betrothed, Charles' daughter Maria, as well. He is less than pleased with all this, but he's a Hapsburg. You do what you have to for the family's sake.
While this is going on, Charles broaches the idea of his son Philip succeeding him as Holy Roman Emperor to his brother. Ferdinand does not take it well--he views the position as promised to him--and Charles drops the matter, though it does result in a certain level of bitterness between the brothers. Meanwhile, in an effort to prepare his son for rule--and also get him to get out of the funk his wife's death has caused--Charles has Philip come to govern the Duchy of Burgundy. It does not go well--the Burgundians, Dutch, Wallonian, and Flemish alike find the austere, Spanish-speaking and incredibly narrow-minded Philip... rather unsettling.
--While walking about on government business, Thomas Cromwell suddenly keels over, dying of a heart attack. This makes Anne miss her dearly-departed brother George more intensely--with her old foe/ally Cromwell gone, she has lost her strongest supporter on the Council outside of Paulet, the bastion of opportunism. Cromwell's son Gregory is a member, true, but he is a charming nonentity, in no way capable of taking his father's place. And Anne's position is less sure than it would appear. In the immediate aftermath of her husband's death, the Council was willing to accept her, partially because of a need for strong leadership, and partially because they were used to her. But now things are settling down, and people are starting to rankle. Anne can be abrasive at times, after all. This was not a problem when they needed someone capable of calming down Henry VIII during one of his bad moments, such as the time when he apparently thought England was still in the League of Cambrai, and wondered why they weren't attacking France. But now that's not an issue, and every man who thinks he should be the big man on the Council is starting to bristle. And they aren't alone. Henry IX may only be fourteen, with a fifteenth birthday fast approaching, but he is an exceptionally clever young boy. He is beginning to strike out on his own, and much as he loves his mother, he resents being seen as under her thumb. Anne realizes she may have to step down from the Council earlier than she expected to...
--Turning to the Schmalkaldic League--its mood is celebrant. Closet Lutherans--like Elector Joachim--are becoming open Lutherans. Protestant Princes who refused to join are now begging for admission. William, Duke of Bavaria, who's long had Lutheran sympathies, joins the faith--though this involves politics as much as religion. (Simply put, William suspects that it may prove more important for his family to stay on the Wettins' good side than the Hapsburgs' in the near future.) Yes, things are looking up. Or are they? *dramatic music sting*
John Frederick has naturally emerged the big winner from the war--he has expanded his holdings considerably, and even recieved the Emperor's blessing to do so, in return for agreeing to support the Hapsburg candidate following the end of Charles' reign and giving up any claim to Gelre. Indeed, the late Maurice's side of the family have been downgraded to the mere Dukes of Saxe-Weisenfals. (Presently, as Maurice left only a young daughter behind, the position has passed to his younger brother, Augustus.) Further, John Frederick's eldest son, John Frederick, is now betrothed to England's Princess Elizabeth in a move to connect two of Europe's most prominent Protestant families. The Ernestine line of Wessen is well on its way to become the unofficial head of the Empire's Protestant nobles. And that is what the Emperor is hoping for. Charles has long been the victim of the German Princes crabpot nature, and frankly he wants to spread the love. As he hasn't been able to peel the Elector down, he's decided he'll just help him puff up, and then let nature take its course.
And it's working. John Frederick has come out of the war with two fixed ideas--that the Schmalkaldic League needs to reform if it is to remain an effective counterweight to Imperial might, and that he is its essential man. Needless to say, neither belief, no matter how justified, endears him to his fellows. In addition the League is burdened by old dynastic rivalries. The Wettins and the Hohenzollerns have long competed with each other for influence--indeed, that competition wound up inadvertantly jumpstarting up the Reformation. While they're getting used to working on the same side now, it's an uneasy alliance at the best of times. Then there's the House of Hesse--Philip is feeling somewhat resentful at being eclipsed by John Frederick and is thus making himself into something of an unofficial leader of the opposition. And then John Frederick makes matters worse by picking a fight with Philip Melanchthon.
It all comes down to the the Real Presence. While Luther didn't believe in transubstantiation--that is that the priest more or less transforms the substance of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ--he did believe that the body and blood are there--somehow--and saw Zwingli and Calvin's denial of this as fanatical. Melanchthon came to disagree with him on this, but kept quiet while his teacher lived to keep the peace. But since Luther's death, he's moved to bring the Lutheran faith somewhat closer to the rest of Protestantism. Unfortunately for him, John Frederick doesn't appreciate this. John Frederick's brand of Protestantism always included just a dose of hero worship for Luther, and thus he does not react well to what he sees as an attack on the great man's works when Luther is no longer able to defend them. There is a political element to this as well--John Frederick is hoping to make sure the Peace holds, and he feels the Lutheran Church becoming LESS Catholic isn't the best way to do this. Besides, this sounds suspiciously like an effort to bring in Calvinism into the church through the backdoor. It starts with suggesting that the Lord's Supper is largely symbolic--it ends with proclaiming kooky doctrines like the nonexistance of free will, or God's chosen elect.
The argument continues throughout the year, with Melanchthon cursing the stubborness of the man who he was painting in near-Messianic terms only recently, and John Frederick muttering about that damned priest. Finally, Melanchthon threatens to resign from his position at Wittenberg University. John Frederick accepts his resignation. Though none realize it at the time, this "little matter" is going to cause the League a great deal of trouble in the years ahead.
--In Scotland, most of the Catholic opposition retires to their respective corners. They're weak, disorientated, and leaderless--with Arran, Lennox, and Beaton gone, they've lost any strong unifying figures outside of Marie of Guise, who of course, wants everyone to just get along. But they're not out of people who think they could be such a figure, and those folks are quietly duking it out, with, as per usual for Scotland, a lot of old feuds starting up again. The Protestants are also less than thrilled by the deal--some feel that England has sold them out--but many understand at least some of the reasoning behind it, and hope that the knowledge that they have England's backing will keep Marie of Guise from attempting a Counter-Reformation. Meanwhile, rumors continue to circulate about the Bloody Night, with various nobles being placed as the third--or rather fourth--party who actually did the deed. Archibald Douglas, the Earl of Angus, is a popular choice--while he was Lennox's father-in-law, he is a notably self-serving, unscrupulous man. Young James Hamilton, the new Earl of Arran, hears these stories, and is profoundly affected by them, though he is unable to do anything at the moment--the English Ambassador also hears them, but dismisses them. Angus, he writes the Council, is an old, tired man more interested in the pretty young wife he recently married than politics these days. Still, this shows how things stand in Scotland. It's not horrifically violent at the moment, but it's a nasty and unstable powderkeg with rumors flying everywhere and people on edge.
--England's Convocation comes to an end. It has been, on the whole, a triumph for Cramner, the primary author of England's new Forty-Three Articles of the Faith, which place the country's church firmly in the Protestant camp. True, he had to scale back some articles to gain the approval of the more conservative members--personally, he considers the compromise on saints he made a little dubious--but on the whole, he is justly proud of it. It is also something of a feather in John Frederick's cap--the Church of England's formulation of the Last Supper is pretty much a gloss on Luther's stance. Yes, everybody's a winner--except for England's Catholics, but by this stage in the game, most people assume they've learnt their lesson.
--In Poland, King Sigismund the Old dies early in the year. The throne passes to his son Sigismund Augustus. At his first Sejm, the king faces a challenge from a group of deputies who call for him to renounce his wife, Barbara Radizwell. Sigismund refuses, setting up a lengthy fight over Barbara's coronation as Queen. This matter is more than simply the Sejm feeling slighted by a prince's hasty marriage--Barbara's family are major Lithuanian magnates, and Protestants to boot. (Barbara herself is Catholic, but sympathetic to reform.) Many Poles distrust such a family gaining ready access to the throne. In addition, the Hapsburgs have quite a bit of pull in the Sejm, and their distrust of the Radizwells is if anything even deeper. And so, by the end of the year, battle lines are set...
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