In the midst of the troubles of the Italian campaign, and in the face of the hostility of the Pope, any decisive action against the Reformers had been out of the question. It was at least necessary to procrastinate. Accordingly, at the Diet of Spires (Aug. 1526), the Emperor had promised, through his representatives, that a General Council should be summoned, but that, meanwhile, the penal clauses of the Edict of Worms should be enforced. At the same time, he had warned Clement VII. that if the Christian republic should suffer in consequence of a Council not being summoned, the blame must fall on him. At the Diet itself, the Catholics found themselves in a majority in all the chambers, except that of the imperial cities, yet they were not prepared to advocate extreme measures. The _Recess_[50] declared that, until a Council should meet, each state should, in matters appertaining to the Edict of Worms, ‘so live, rule, and conduct itself as it shall be ready to answer to God and his Imperial Majesty.’ It is a mistake to hold that the Reformers were thereby authorised to set on foot their new ecclesiastical organisations. The concession was purely provisional, and they were to answer to the Emperor for what they did. None the less, the Elector of Saxony and Philip of Hesse proceeded to establish their Lutheran churches, and to appropriate monastic property for the purpose--a policy which was soon followed by others, especially by Albert of Prussia, who, in 1525, had already secularised the estates of the Teutonic knights, and converted his mastership into a dukedom. Thus the Diet of Spires makes an important advance in the history of the Reformation. If, on the one hand, it was now clear that Germany was not to belong exclusively to the Lutherans, on the other, a great impulse was given to the principle of territorialism (_cujus regio, ejus religio_), upon which eventually the ecclesiastical settlement of Germany was to be based. Three years later, the position of affairs had materially altered. The marked advance of the Reformed opinions had excited the apprehensions of the Catholics, while the successes of the Emperor in Italy, and his reconciliation with the Pope, had strengthened their cause. The rapid growth of the Zwinglian opinions in the south of Germany, opinions which were wholly distasteful to Luther, had weakened the Evangelical party, and the rash appeal to arms on the part of Philip of Hesse, to resist a supposed conspiracy against those who thought with him, had irritated the Princes. | Second Diet of Spires. Feb. 1529. | Meeting at Schmalkalde. Dec. 1529.