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| 1531, Feb. 6 |
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| Schmalkaldic League, agreed upon in 1530, between the majority of Protestant princes and imperial cities. | 1 |
| Charles caused his brother, Ferdinand, to be elected king of Rome and crowned at Aachen. The elector of Saxony protested against this proceeding in the name of the evangelicals. | 2 |
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| 1532 |
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| In consequence of the new danger that threatened from the Ottoman Turks, Ferdinand concluded the religious peace of Nürnberg. The Augsburg edict was revoked, and free exercise of their religion was granted the Protestants until the meeting of a new council to be called within a year. | 3 |
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| 1534–35 |
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| Anabaptists (literally, “to baptize again”) held that only adults could make a free choice about baptism and that the church was a voluntary association of those (few) who experienced an inner light. Thus they favored separation of church and state; religious toleration; pacifism; admission of women to ministry. Münster, the scene of an experimental Anabaptist community, attracted many followers, but the movement was crushed and its leader, John of Leiden, (1509–36) beheaded. | 4 |
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| 1536–38 |
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| Third war of Charles against Francis I of France. The latter, having renewed his claims to Milan after the death of Francesco Sforza II without issue, Charles invaded Provence anew but fruitlessly. Francis made an inroad into Savoy and Piedmont and sought the alliance of Suleiman, who thereupon pressed his advance on Hungary and sent his fleets to ravage the coasts of Italy. | 5 |
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| 1538, June 18 |
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| The war was ended by the Truce of Nice, which was concluded on the basis of possession and for ten years. | 6 |
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| 1541 |
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| JOHN CALVIN (See 1536) introduced the Reformation into Geneva. Calvinist churches had a strict moral code, and, unlike Lutheran, maintained independence of the Church from the lay authority. In Geneva, in Scotland (John Knox, 1505–72), briefly in England, and even in the New World (at Boston), the Calvinists erected theocratic states. In France and Hungary they became an important minority. In Holland and parts of Germany they were soon the dominant Protestant group. | 7 |
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| 1542–44 |
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| Fourth war between Charles and Francis, occasioned by the investiture of Charles's son, Philip, with Milan. Two secret agents whom Francis had sent to Suleiman having been captured in Milan and put to death served Francis as a pretext. Francis in alliance with Suleiman and the duke of Cleve. The allied Turkish and French fleets bombarded and plundered Nice. Charles, in alliance with Henry VIII of England, defeated the duke of Cleves and advanced as far as Soissons. | 8 |
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| 1546–47 |
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| SCHMALKALDIC WAR. Charles V sought to crush the independence of the states of the empire in Germany and restore the unity of the Church, to which he was urged by the pope, who concluded an alliance with him and promised money and troops. The leaders of the League of Schmalkalden—John Frederick, elector of Saxony, and Philip, landgrave of Hesse—placed under the ban. Irresolute conduct of the war by the allies in upper Germany. They could not be induced to make a decisive attack and finally retired, each to his own land. Charles V first reduced the members of the league in southern Germany, then went to Saxony and defeated the elector of Saxony and the German Protestant princes in the Battle of Mühlberg (April 24, 1547). However, Charles could not exploit his victory, because the princes reunited. | 9 |
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| 1551–52 |
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| War with Ottoman Turks over Hungary, leading ultimately to peace (1562) and Habsburg renunciation of Transylvania (See 1551–62). | 10 |
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| 1552–56 |
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| War between Charles V and Henry II, who, as the ally of Maurice, had seized Metz, Toul, and Verdun. Charles besieged Metz, which was successfully defended by Francis of Guise. The Truce of Vaucelles left France, provisionally, in possession of the cities that had been occupied. | 11 |
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| 1555, Sept. 25 |
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| PEACE OF AUGSBURG granted legal (imperial) recognition to the Confession of Augsburg (1530). The basic principle of the diet, cuius regio ejus religio (freely, the prince determines the religion of the territory), meant that the territorial princes and free cities gained freedom of worship, the right to introduce the Lutheran faith (jus reformandi), and equal rights with Catholic states. No agreement reached on the ecclesiastical reservation that Catholic bishops and abbots who became Lutheran should lose their offices and incomes, but this provision had been inserted by imperial decree. No provision made for the reformed (Calvinist) faith. | 12 |
| SOCIAL TRENDS | 13 |
| Protestantism held considerable appeal for women: Luther's belief that routine domestic work had merit in God's sight; Luther and Calvin's stress on the home as special domain of women meant that the home, in contrast to the place of business, became the setting for peace, reconciliation, love; Protestants established schools where girls, as well as boys, became literate in the Bible and the catechism; reformers' emphasis on marriage as the cure for concupiscence meant that priests' concubines could become legal and honorable wives. | 14 |
| The Lutheran clergy derived from the lower to middle burger class and after the 16th century tended to be self-perpetuating; Calvinist clergy were from the educated upper bourgeoisie; Catholic diocesan priests of Reformation Europe descended from middling groups of the towns, from the peasantry in rural areas. | 15 |
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| 1556 |
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| ABDICATION OF CHARLES V at Brussels (effective 1558). | 16 |
| The crown of Spain, with the colonies, Naples, Milan, Franche-Comté, and the Netherlands, went to his son Philip; the imperial office and the Habsburg lands to his brother Ferdinand I. Charles lived in the monastery of Yuste as a private individual, not as a monk, and died there in 1558. | 17 |
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