Activities
The members of the League agreed to provide 10,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry for their mutual protection. They rarely provoked Charles directly, but confiscated Church land, expelled bishops and Catholic princes, and helped spread Lutheranism throughout northern Germany. Martin Luther planned to present to the League the Schmalkald Articles, a stricter Protestant confession, during a meeting in 1537. Luther attended the critical meeting in 1537, but spent most of his time suffering from kidney stones. The rulers and princes even met in the home where Luther was staying. Though Luther was asked to prepare the articles of faith that came to be known as the Schmalcald Articles, they were not formally adopted at the time of the meeting, though later they were incorporated into the Lutheran Confessions, in the Book of Concord, of 1580, in German, and in Latin translation, in the official Latin edition of the Book of Concord, the Leipzig edition of 1584.
For fifteen years the League was able to exist without opposition, because Charles was busy fighting wars with France and the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman–Habsburg wars lasted from 1526 until 1571. In 1535 Charles led a successful campaign against Tunis. Francis I of France, in an effort to limit the power of the Habsburgs, allied with Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire, forming a Franco-Ottoman alliance. The Italian War of 1535–1538, between France and the Holy Roman Empire, ended in 1538 with the Truce of Nice. The final war during this period Charles fought against France, the Italian War of 1542–1546, ended with inconclusive results and the Treaty of Crépy.
Read more about this topic: Schmalkaldic League
Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“Justice begins with the recognition of the necessity of sharing. The oldest law is that which regulates it, and this is still the most important law today and, as such, has remained the basic concern of all movements which have at heart the community of human activities and of human existence in general.”
—Elias Canetti (b. 1905)
“I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Juggling produces both practical and psychological benefits.... A woman’s involvement in one role can enhance her functioning in another. Being a wife can make it easier to work outside the home. Being a mother can facilitate the activities and foster the skills of the efficient wife or of the effective worker. And employment outside the home can contribute in substantial, practical ways to how one works within the home, as a spouse and as a parent.”
—Faye J. Crosby (20th century)