It was more than a year after his election before Charles V found it convenient to visit his new dominions. He was to meet the electors at Aachen, October 6, 1520, and be crowned king of Germany. On his very first appearance in Germany he had an opportunity to indicate something of his character. The plague was raging at Aachen and the Electors suggested that some other place should be substituted. No; the Golden Bull required that the coronation should take place at Aachen, and the law must be obeyed. In our day a meeting of a Congress of the Nations could assemble at precisely the hour appointed; in that time of laborious and uncertain travel it occasioned no remark and produced no ill feeling that the meeting appointed for the 6th did not take place until the 21st of the month.
On that day the Electors reached Aachen. The next day they went out to meet the Emperor, and with them a splendid escort of sixteen hundred horsemen, besides archers and lancers. The Emperor met them with two thousand horse, "all bravely clothed." The whole company, increased by the four hundred horse of the Duke of Cleves, entered the city after nightfall. It was pronounced the finest cavalcade ever seen in Germany. (Herrick, Thaddeus. 2004)
The ceremony of coronation was splendid and imposing; it took place in the Church of Our Lady, and might almost be described as a long act of worship. When the Emperor was seated on the throne, richly overlaid with gold, the Archbishop of Cologne, in the midst of a solemn mass, turned to him and asked him if he would keep the Catholic faith, defend the Church, administer justice and maintain the dignity of the Empire, protect widows and the fatherless and other distressed persons, and whether he would give due honor to the bishop of Rome? (Lewis, Vickie. 1993) The last question and the first are those that particularly concern us: the Emperor was sworn to give due honor to the Pope and to keep the Catholic faith.
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