and that the members of the Council should be released from their oaths to the Pope, in order that they might more effectually reform the Papacy. In the name of the German nation Charles formally required the return of the Council to Trent; and when this was refused, his two representatives, Vargas and Velasco, solemnly protested on January 18, 1548, against all future acts of the Council at Bologna, declaring them null and void.
Was Charles also among the prophets? He, even as Philip of Hesse and John Frederick of Saxony, had protested against a General Council and refused to be bound by its decrees. Had he been as devoid of religious scruples as Maurice of Saxony or Henry of Navarre, and had he had only German feelings to consult, he would in 1548 have become an ostensible Protestant. But Charles would never have bought a kingdom with a Mass; he preferred to lose a kingdom for a Mass, and, in spite of his enmity with the Papacy, he was bent on making Germany Catholic, and on using his victory to decide questions upon which he had declared the struggle would not be fought. At the same time his refusal to accept the Tridentine decrees as the standard of faith made it necessary for him to evolve some criterion of his own which should serve its purpose during the interval until a General Council should formulate conclusions acceptable both to him and the Pope. With this object in view, after a fruitless discussion by a committee consisting of representative laymen as well as ecclesiastics, he took into consultation Michael Helding, the suffragan Bishop of Mainz, who represented the high Catholic point of view, the Erasmian Julius von Pflug, whom the result of the Schmal-kaldic War had at last established as Bishop of Naumburg, and John Agricola, whose views were Lutheran, of a moderate type. The compromise, known as the Interim, which this commission drew up, conceded clerical marriages, the use of the cup by the laity, and accepted a modification of the doctrine of justification by faith. Pflug also explained away enough of the sacrificial character of the Mass to satisfy some of the Lutherans, and denied some of the prerogatives claimed by the Pope. On the other hand the Interim retained all the seven Sacraments, the worship of the Virgin and the Saints, fasts, processions, and other Catholic ceremonies, and reaffirmed the dogma of transubstantiation.
The reception of the Interim by the College of Electors was on the whole favourable. Joachim of Brandenburg rejoiced to see included in it the three concessions which formed the basis of his compact with Charles in 1541; the Elector Palatine concurred. Maurice wanted to consult his Estates, but Charles represented to him that no provincial assembly could override the decisions of a Diet. The Emperor had more to fear from the College of Princes, where the Bishops and Bavaria were preponderant on the Catholic side. The Count Palatine Wolfgang of Neumark and Margrave Hans of Custrin, as zealous Lutherans, offered a strenuous opposition. Duke William of Bavaria had Catholic
