Caesar promptly forbade the assembling of the Diet at Nürnberg. His command was slighted; the Diet sat, and was attended by a Papal Ablegate. Purely political discussions ensued; and the Diet adjourned before reaching any conclusion. Then the Elector Albrecht of Brandenberg found it worth his while to form a strong Caesarian party; and the Electors of the papal faction were left in a minority. The cry for Church Reform was raised. The Papacy was threatened with what it was supposed to dread more than a General Council—viz., a Pragmatic Sanction,[17] _i.e._, a definite assertion of Imperial Supremacy. The Electors kept their proceedings secret, and little news was allowed to reach Rome, where the curia was determined to resist in any case. The cry for Church Reform is a popular one. The expression of desire for the cultivation and consummation of the Christian Ideal invariably wins sympathy. It is, perhaps, a little unfortunate that the soi-disant reformers of the fifteenth century attached to the word Reform a baser meaning than that which it bears in the twentieth. Rome had her champion ready in the Lord Enea Silvio Bartolomeo de Piccolhuomini, Bishop of Siena, to whom she entrusted the task of her defence; and that he might be well-armed with all authority, the Pope’s Holiness created him Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Sabina. “No cardinal ever entered the college with greater difficulty than I; rust had so spread over the hinges (_cardines_, specimen of fifteenth century pun) that the door could not turn and open. Calixtus used battering rams and every kind of instrument to force it,” said the new Cardinal of Siena to the Lord Giovanni Castelleone, Bishop and Cardinal of Pavia. (Pii II. Ep. 195) The Sacred College had not forgiven the Lord Calixtus P.P. III for the creation of the Cardinal-Nephews; and its policy was to oppose God’s Vicegerent and all His works. This new creature, too, was credited with liberal proclivities; and the conservatism of the Italian cardinals was up in arms. The Cardinal of Siena had been so long a resident in Germany that he was looked upon as more a German than Italian, more of a friend to Caesar than to Peter. Above all, his transcendent talents and versatility were excessively distasteful to mere mediocrity. The adjourned Diet of Nürnberg resumed its session at Frankfort-on-the-Main. Here it became definitely hostile to Caesar; and, by announcing its intention to resist the collection of tithe, to the Pope also. It committed the strategical error of uniting its two enemies by the bond of a single interest. The Lord Calixtus P.P. III instantly appealed to Caesar Friedrich IV on behalf of the Crusade; and so ended the year of grace 1456.