Ferdinand was invested with the government of the Austrian States.

In the year 1521, Leo X.died, and Adrian, who seems to have been truly a conscientious Christian man, assumed the tiara.

He saw the deep corruptions of the Church, confessed them openly, mourned over them and declared that the Church needed a thorough reformation.
This admission, of course, wonderfully strengthened the Lutheran party.
The diet, meeting soon after, drew up a list of a hundred grievances, which they intreated the pope to reform, declaring that Germany could no longer endure them.

They declared that Luther had opened the eyes of the people to these corruptions, and that they would not suffer the edicts of the diet of Worms to be enforced.

Ferdinand of Austria, entering into the views of his brother, was anxious to arrest the progress of the new ideas, now spreading with great rapidity, and he entered--instructed by a legate, Campegio, from the pope--into an engagement with the Duke of Bavaria, and most of the German bishops, to carry the edict of Worms into effect.
Frederic, the Elector of Saxony, died in 1525, but he was succeeded by his brother John the Constant, who cordially embraced and publicly avowed the doctrines of the Reformation; and Luther, in July of this year, gave the last signal proof of his entire emancipation from the superstitions of the papacy by marrying Catharine Bora, a noble lady who, having espoused his views, had left the nunnery where she had been an inmate.