submitted to Ferdinand by his future subjects expressly demanded the prohibition of clerical marriages, the maintenance of fasts, and the veneration of Saints Of course, like his predecessors, he had to sign the compactata extorted by the Bohemians from the Council of Basel and still unconfirmed by the Pope, but this was no great concession to heresy, and Ferdinand showed much firmness in refusing stipulations which would have weakened his royal authority. In spite of the hopes which his adversaries built on this attitude he was crowned with acclamation at Prague on February 24, 1527, the anniversary of Pavia and of Charles V's birth.
He then turned his attention to Hungary; his widowed sister's exertions had resulted in an assemblage of nobles which elected Ferdinand King at Pressburg on December 17, 1526; and the efforts of Francis I and the Pope, of England and Venice, to strengthen Zapolya's party proved vain. During the following summer Ferdinand was recognised as King by another Diet at Buda, defeated Zapolya at Tokay, and on November 3 was crowned at Stuhlweissenburg, the scene of his rival's election in the previous year. This rapid success led him to indulge in dreams which later Habsburgs succeeded in fulfilling. Besides the prospect of election as King of the Romans, he hoped to secure the duchy of Milan and to regain for Hungary its lost province of Bosnia. Ferdinand might almost be thought to have foreseen the future importance of the events of 1526-7, and the part which his conglomerate kingdom was to play in the history of Europe.
These diversions of Ferdinand, and the absorption of Charles V in his wars in Italy and with England and France, afforded the Lutherans an opportunity of turning the Recess of Speier to an account which the Habsburgs and the Catholic Princes had certainly never contemplated. In their anxiety to discover a constitutional and legal plea which should remove from the Reformation the reproach of being a revolution, Lutheran historians have attempted to differentiate this Recess from other laws of the Empire, and to regard it rather as a treaty between two independent Powers, which neither could break without the other's consent, than as a law which might be repealed by a simple majority of the Estates. It was represented as a fundamental part of the constitution beyond the reach of ordinary constitutional weapons; and the neglect of the Emperor and the Catholic majority to adopt this view is urged as a legal justification of that final resort to arms, on the successful issue of which the existence of Protestantism within the Empire was really based.
It is safe to affirm that no such idea had occurred to the majority of the Diet which passed the Recess. The Emperor and the Catholic Princes had admitted the inexpediency and impracticability of reducing Germany at that juncture to religious conformity; but they had by no means forsworn an attempt in the future when circumstances might
