Failing thus to secure obedience or maintain order, the Council forfeited all support. Some opposed it for what it failed to do, others for fear of what it might become. It had never represented popular opinion, and now became disliked by the Diet itself. The cities had always objected to it on account of the taxation it necessitated. Most of the Princes were behindhand with their dues, and feared that the Council might proceed against them. Even the Electors despaired of their projected reforms. It was accordingly soon deserted by its most prominent members. The Elector Palatine, who had been appointed vice-president, left it; and the Elector of Trèves, George of Saxony, and Philip of Hesse, declared against it. Finally, the Diet of Nuremberg, at its third session (March-April, 1524), decided that its members should be re-elected, and that none of the present members should be re-eligible. The new Council was no more successful, and though it lasted till 1531, it enjoyed little authority. The spirit of independence and territorialism was too strong, and all hope that the Reformation might go hand-in-hand with a national movement based on a constitutional reform of the Empire was at an end. | Clement VII. and the Diet of Nuremberg. | March-April 1524. | The Catholic Congress of Ratisbon. June, 1524. But this was not the only question that came before this Diet. Adrian VI. had died on September 14, 1523. The new Pope, the Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, who took the name of Clement VII. (elected November 1523), had sent Campeggio, his legate, to demand prompt execution of the Edict of Worms. The adherents of Rome, although still in a majority, did not feel strong enough to comply fully with the Pope’s command. They promised indeed that the Edict should be enforced as far as possible, and that heretical books should be suppressed; but, ‘lest the good should be rooted up with the bad,’ they again insisted on the summoning of a General Council in Germany, and meanwhile suggested that another Diet should be summoned at Spires to settle religious matters. Clement was not unnaturally displeased, and was in the main supported by Charles, who, in July, issued a decree enjoining strict obedience to the Edict of Worms. The Emperor denounced Luther in the strongest terms, forbade the meeting of the Diet at Spires, and declared that, although he was not entirely opposed to the summoning of a General Council, this was a matter for him and the Pope to decide, since it would be presumptuous for Germany to undertake the alteration of Christian ordinances by herself. At the same time he wrote to Clement, saying that only two alternatives were before them: either that he (Charles) should go to Germany and suppress the heretics by force, a course which would be not only dangerous but impossible; or that a General Council should be called. The Council he suggested might be summoned to Trent, and then removed to Rome.