William IV of Hesse

King Henry is a persecutor of the French Protestants, called Huguenots.

He has nonetheless allied himself with the German Lutheran princes.

Metz, a free city within the Holy Roman Empire from the twelfth century and the seat of a powerful bishop, has adopted Protestantism.

Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV had in 1354 and 1356 held diets here, at the latter of which was promulgated the famous statute known as the Golden Bull.

The town therefore feels that it occupies an almost independent position between France and Germany, and wants most of all to evade the obligation of imperial taxes and attendance at the diet.

The estrangement between it and the German States had daily became wider, and finally affairs have come to such a pass that in the religious and political troubles of 1552, Metz finds itself in the middle of the war between Charles V and the rebellious princes.

By an agreement of the German princes, Maurice of Saxony, William of Hesse, and John Albert of Mecklenburg, with Henry, ratified by the French king at Chambord, Metz is formally transferred to France, the gates of the city are opened, and Henry takes possession as vicarius sacri imperii et urbis protector.

The commander of the garrison, Francis, Duke of Guise (who had inherited the title from his father, Claude, in 1550), restores the old fortifications and adds new ones, and from October to December 1552 successfully resists the emperor's attacks.

Henry also annexes the episcopal cities of Toul and ...

...Verdun, which together with Metz form the so-called Three Bishoprics.

Hesse is partitioned at the death of German Landgrave Philip of Hesse, also called Philip the Magnanimous, among his four sons.

Hesse-Kassel goes to William IV, who had participated with his brother-in-law Maurice of Saxony in the princely rebellion of 1552 that had liberated his father from his five-year captivity by the Holy Roman emperor Charles V.

Kassel becomes the capital of Hesse-Kassel, which is the largest, most important, and most northerly of the four new Hesse landgraviates.

Thomas Erastus, born Thomas Lüber in Baden, Switzerland, and a student of philosophy and medicine for nine years, is invited in 1557 by the elector Otto Heinrich of the Palatinate to be professor of therapeutics in the new faculty of medicine at the University of Heidelberg, where he had quickly achieved a favorable reputation as a physician and a teacher.

As a supporter of the church reforms advocated by the Swiss theologian Huldrych Zwingli, Erastus has become closely associated with the introduction of Reformed Protestantism into the Palatinate during the electorate of Frederick III (1559–76).

In debates over the Eucharist, the sacrament deriving from the Lord's Supper, he has defended the Zwinglian view that Christ's body is present in the sacramental bread only symbolically, in contrast to Luther's view that his body is really present.

The central controversy in Erastus' life had come to a head after he had opposed efforts by Calvinists in the Palatinate, notably Caspar Olevianus, to impose the system of church discipline that had been established by John Calvin at Geneva and elsewhere.

When, in 1568, a set of theses had been presented at Heidelberg by the English Puritan George Withers, who had affirmed both the presbyterian system of church government (assemblies of elected representatives) and the practice of excommunication, Erastus had drawn up one hundred theses (later reduced to seventy-five) to refute him.

Erastus maintains that excommunication is unscriptural, that the sacraments should not be withheld from anyone genuinely wishing to receive them, and that in a Christian society—and Erastus explicitly limits his argument in this manner—the punishment of sins is in the hands of the civil magistrates.

Because the Calvinists have the support of the elector, however, the presbyterian system had been established in 1570 by electoral decree.

For his opposition to the new order and also for alleged tendencies away from the doctrine of the Trinity toward Unitarianism, Erastus had been excommunicated for two years.

Landgrave Philip II of Hesse-Rheinfels had married Anna Elisabeth of Palatinate-Simmern in 1569, thereby becoming the son-in-law to the Elector Frederick III, one of the leaders of Calvinism.

His territory is absorbed by his elder brother Wilhelm IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, after Philip dies childless on November 30, 1583.

He is buried in St. Goar, where Wilhelm erects an imposing Renaissance monument.

William IV, Landgrave (or count) of Hesse-Kassel from 1567, is called “the Wise” because of his accomplishments in political economy and the natural sciences.

The partition of the Hessian lands at that time had left William with little basis for a forceful foreign policy.

Domestically, he has sought a compromise between Lutherans and Calvinists.

He is an outstanding organizer and a skilled economist.

The Ökonomische Staat (1585), a territorial survey compiled for him, is a model of administrative statistics.

William also pursues scientific studies and perhaps owes his lasting fame to his research in astronomy.

On friendly terms with the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, he constructs numerous astronomical instruments and calculates many stellar positions.