A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1.
by
Carlton J. H. Hayes

Part 4 out of 12



determined effort to prevent the accession of his son, Christian III,
who was not only an avowed Lutheran but was known to stand for
absolutist principles in government.

The popular protest against royal despotism failed in Denmark and the
triumph of Christian III in 1536 sealed the fate of Catholicism in that
country and in Norway. It was promptly enacted that the Catholic
bishops should forfeit their temporal and spiritual authority and all
their property should be transferred to the crown "for the good of the
commonwealth." After discussions with Luther the new religion was
definitely organized and declared the state religion in 1537. It might
be added that Catholicism died with difficulty in Denmark,--many
peasants as well as high churchmen resented the changes, and Helgesen,
the foremost Scandinavian scholar and humanist of the time, protested
vigorously against the new order. But the crown was growing powerful,
and the crown prevailed. The enormous increase of royal revenue,
consequent upon the confiscation of the property of the Church, enabled
the king to make Denmark the leading Scandinavian country throughout
the second half of the sixteenth century and the first quarter of the
seventeenth. In time national patriotism came to be intertwined with
Lutheranism.

[Sidenote: Sweden]

In Sweden the success of the new religion was due to the crown quite as
much as in Denmark and Norway. Gustavus Vasa had obtained the Swedish
throne through the efforts of a nationalist party, but there was still
a hostile faction, headed by the chief churchman, the archbishop of
Upsala, who favored the maintenance of the union with Denmark. In order
to deprive the unionists of their leader, Gustavus begged the pope to
remove the rebellious archbishop and to appoint one in sympathy with
the nationalist cause. This the pope peremptorily refused to do, and
the breach with Rome began. Gustavus succeeded in suppressing the
insurrection, and then persevered in introducing Protestantism. The
introduction was very gradual, especially among the peasantry, and its
eventual success was largely the result of the work of one strong man
assisted by a subservient parliament.

At first Gustavus maintained Catholic worship and doctrines, contenting
himself with the suppression of the monasteries, the seizure of two-
thirds of the church tithes, and the circulation of a popular Swedish
translation of the New Testament. In 1527 all ecclesiastical property
was transferred to the crown and two Catholic bishops were cruelly put
to death. Meanwhile Lutheran teachers were encouraged to take up their
residence in Sweden and in 1531 the first Protestant archbishop of
Upsala was chosen. Thenceforth, the progress of Lutheranism was more
rapid, although a Catholic reaction was threatened several times in the
second half of the sixteenth century. The Confession of Augsburg was
adopted as the creed of the Swedish Church in 1593, and in 1604
Catholics were deprived of offices and estates and banished from the
realm.


CALVINISM

The second general type of Protestantism which appeared in the
sixteenth century was the immediate forerunner of the modern
Presbyterian, Congregational, and Reformed Churches and at one time or
another considerably affected the theology of the Episcopalians and
Baptists and even of Lutherans. Taken as a group, it is usually called
Calvinism. Of its rise and spread, some idea may be gained from brief
accounts of the lives of two of its great apostles--Calvin and Knox.
But first it will be necessary to say a few words concerning an older
reformer, Zwingli by name, who prepared the way for Calvin's work in
the Swiss cantons.

[Sidenote: Zwingli]

Switzerland comprised in the sixteenth century some thirteen cantons,
all of which were technically under the suzerainty of the Holy Roman
Empire, but constituted in practice so many independent republics,
bound together only by a number of protective treaties. To the town of
Einsiedeln in the canton of Schwyz came Huldreich Zwingli in the year
1516 as a Catholic priest. Slightly younger than Luther, he was well
born, had received an excellent university education in Vienna and in
Basel, and had now been in holy orders about ten years. He had shown
for some time more interest in humanism than in the old-fashioned
theology, but hardly any one would have suspected him of heresy, for it
was well known that he was a regular pensioner of the pope.

Zwingli's opposition to the Roman Church seems to have been based at
first largely on political grounds. He preached eloquently against the
practice of hiring out Swiss troops to foreign rulers and abused the
Church for its share in this shameless traffic in soldiers. Then he was
led on to attack all manner of abuses in ecclesiastical organization,
but it was not until he was installed in 1518 as preacher in the great
cathedral at Zürich that he clearly denied papal supremacy and
proceeded to proclaim the Scriptures as the sole guide of faith and
morals. He preached against fasting, the veneration of saints, and the
celibacy of the clergy. Some of his hearers began to put his teachings
into practice: church edifices were profaned, statues demolished,
windows smashed, and relics burned. Zwingli himself took a wife.

[Sidenote: Zwinglian Revolt in Switzerland]

In 1523 a papal appeal to Zürich to abandon Zwingli was answered by the
canton's formal declaration of independence from the Catholic Church.
Henceforth the revolt spread rapidly throughout Switzerland, except in
the five forest cantons, the very heart of the country, where the
ancient religion was still deeply intrenched. Serious efforts were made
to join the followers of Zwingli with those of Luther, and thus to
present a united front to the common enemy, but there seemed to be
irreconcilable differences between Lutheranism and the views of
Zwingli. The latter, which were succinctly expressed in sixty-seven
Theses published at Zürich in 1523, insisted more firmly than the
former on the supreme authority of Scripture, and broke more thoroughly
and radically with the traditions of the Catholic Church. Zwingli aimed
at a reformation of government and discipline as well as of theology,
and entertained a notion of an ideal state in which the democracy would
order human activities, whether political or religious. Zwingli
differed essentially from Luther in never distrusting "the people."
Perhaps the most distinctive mark of the Swiss reformer's theology was
his idea that the Lord's Supper is not a miracle but simply a symbol
and a memorial.

In 1531 Zwingli urged the Protestant Swiss to convert the five forest
cantons to the new religion by force of arms. In answer to his
entreaties, civil war ensued, but the Catholic mountaineers won a great
victory that very year and the reformer himself was killed. A truce was
then arranged, the provisions of which foreshadowed the religious
settlement in the Germanies--each canton was to be free to determine
its own religion. Switzerland has remained to this day part Catholic
and part Protestant.

[Sidenote: Calvin]

By the sudden death of Zwingli, Swiss Protestantism was left without a
leader, but not for long, because the more celebrated Calvin took up
his residence in Geneva in 1536. From that time until his death in 1564
Calvin was the center of a movement which, starting from these small
Zwinglian beginnings among the Swiss mountains, speedily spread over
more countries and affected more people than did Lutheranism. In
Calvinism, Catholicism was to find her most implacable foe.

John Calvin, who, next to Martin Luther, was the most conspicuous
Protestant leader of the sixteenth century, was a Frenchman. Born of
middle-class parentage at Noyon in the province of Picardy in 1509, he
was intended from an early age for an ecclesiastical career. A pension
from the Catholic Church enabled him to study at Paris, where he
displayed an aptitude for theology and literature. When he was nineteen
years of age, however, his father advised him to abandon the idea of
entering the priesthood in favor of becoming a lawyer--so young Calvin
spent several years studying law.

[Sidenote: Calvin in France]

It was in 1529 that Calvin is said to have experienced a sudden
"conversion." Although as yet there had been no organized revolt in
France against the Catholic Church, that country, like many others, was
teeming with religious critics. Thousands of Frenchmen were in sympathy
with any attempt to improve the Church by education, by purer morals,
or by better preaching. Lutheranism was winning a few converts, and
various evangelical sects were appearing in divers places. The chief
problem was whether reform should be sought within the traditional
Church or by rebellion against it. Calvin believed that his conversion
was a divine call to forsake Roman Catholicism and to become the
apostle of a purer life. His heart, he said, was "so subdued and
reduced to docility that in comparison with his zeal for true piety he
regarded all other studies with indifference, though not entirely
abandoning them. Though himself a beginner, many flocked to him to
learn the pure doctrine, and he began to seek some hiding-place and
means of withdrawal from people."

[Sidenote: "The Institutes"]

His search for a hiding-place was quickened by the announced
determination of the French king, Francis I, to put an end to religious
dissent among his subjects. Calvin abruptly left France and found an
asylum in the Swiss town of Basel, where he became acquainted at first
hand with the type of reformed religion which Zwingli had propagated
and where he proceeded to write a full account of the Protestant
position as contrasted with the Catholic. This exposition,--_The
Institutes of the Christian Religion_,--which was published in 1536,
was dedicated to King Francis I and was intended to influence him in
favor of Protestantism.

Although the book failed of its immediate purpose, it speedily won a
deservedly great reputation. It was a statement of Calvin's views,
borrowed in part from Zwingli, and in part from Luther and other
reformers. It was orderly and concise, and it did for Protestant
theology what the medieval writers had done for Catholic theology. It
contained the germ of all that subsequently developed as Calvinism.

[Sidenote: Calvin and Luther]

It seemed for some time as if the _Institutes_ might provide a
common religious rule and guide for all Christians who rebelled against
Rome. But Calvin, in mind and nature, was quite different from Luther.
The latter was impetuous, excitable, but very human; the former was
ascetic, calm, and inhumanly logical. Then, too, Luther was quite
willing to leave everything in the church which was not prohibited by
Scripture; Calvin insisted that nothing should remain in the church
which was not expressly authorized by Scripture. The _Institutes_
had a tremendous influence upon Protestantism but did not unite the
followers of Calvin and Luther. Calvin's book seems all the more
wonderful, when it is recalled that it was written when the author was
but twenty-six years of age.

[Sidenote: Calvin at Geneva]

In 1536 Calvin went to Geneva, which was then in the throes of a
revolution at once political and religious, for the townsfolk were
freeing themselves from the feudal suzerainty of the duke of Savoy and
banishing the Catholic Church, whose cause the duke championed. Calvin
aided in the work and was rewarded by an appointment as chief pastor
and preacher in the city. This position he continued to hold, except
for a brief period when he was exiled, until his death in 1564. It
proved to be a commanding position not only in ordering the affairs of
the town, but also in giving form to an important branch of Protestant
Christianity.

The government of Geneva under Calvin's regime was a curious theocracy
of which Calvin himself was both religious leader and political "boss."
The minister of the reformed faith became God's mouthpiece upon earth
and inculcated an unbending puritanism in daily life. "No more
festivals, no more jovial reunions, no more theaters or society; the
rigid monotony of an austere rule weighed upon life. A poet was
decapitated because of his verses; Calvin wished adultery to be
punished by death like heresy, and he had Michael Servetus [Footnote: A
celebrated Spanish reformer.] burned for not entertaining the same
opinions as himself upon the mystery of the Trinity."

Under Calvin's theocratic despotism, Geneva became famous throughout
Europe as the center of elaborate Protestant propaganda. Calvin, who
set the example of stern simplicity and relentless activity, was
sometimes styled the Protestant pope. He not only preached every day,
wrote numerous theological treatises, and issued a French translation
of the Bible, but he established important Protestant schools--
including the University of Geneva--which attracted students from
distant lands, and he conducted a correspondence with his disciples and
would-be reformers in all points of Europe. His letters alone would
fill thirty folio volumes.

[Sidenote: Diffusion of Calvinism]

Such activities account for the almost bewildering diffusion of
Calvinism. French, Dutch, Germans, Scotch, and English flocked to
Geneva to hear Calvin or to attend his schools, and when they returned
to their own countries they were likely to be so many glowing sparks
ready to start mighty conflagrations.

Calvinism was known by various names in the different countries which
it entered. On the continent of Europe it was called the Reformed
Faith, and in France its followers were styled Huguenots; in Scotland
it became Presbyterianism; and in England, Puritanism. Its essential
characteristics, however, remained the same wherever it was carried.

[Sidenote: Calvinism in Switzerland]

We have already noticed how Switzerland, except for the five forest
cantons, had been converted to Protestantism by the preaching of
Zwingli. Calvin was Zwingli's real theological successor, and the
majority of the Swiss, especially those in the urban cantons of Zürich
and Bern as well as of Geneva, cheerfully accepted Calvinism.

[Sidenote: Calvinism in France: the Huguenots]

Calvinism also made converts in France. The doctrines and writings of
Luther had there encountered small success. Many French reformers
believed that greater good would eventually be achieved within the
Catholic Church than without. There appeared to be fewer abuses among
the French clergy than among the ecclesiastics of northern Europe, for
they possessed less wealth and power. The French sovereign felt less
prompted to lay his hand upon the dominions of the clergy, because a
special agreement with the pope in 1516 bestowed upon the king the
nomination of bishops and the disposition of benefices. For these
reasons the bulk of the French people resisted Protestantism of every
form and remained loyally Catholic.

What progress the new religion made in France was due to Calvin rather
than to Luther. Calvin, as we have seen, was a Frenchman himself, and
his teachings and logic appealed to a small but influential body of his
fellow-countrymen. A considerable portion of the lower nobility, a few
merchants and business men, and many magistrates conformed to Calvinism
openly; the majority of great lawyers and men of learning adhered to it
in public or in secret. Probably from a twentieth to a thirtieth of the
total population embraced Calvinism. The movement was essentially
confined to the middle-class or _bourgeoisie_, and almost from the
outset it acquired a political as well as a religious significance. It
represented among the lesser nobility an awakening of the aristocratic
spirit and among the middle-class a reaction against the growing power
of the king. The financial and moneyed interests of the country were
largely attracted to French Calvinism. The Huguenots, as the French
Calvinists were called, were particularly strong in the law courts and
in the Estates-General or parliament, and these had been the main
checks upon royal despotism.

[Sidenote: Edict of Nantes]

The Huguenots were involved in sanguinary civil and religious wars
which raged in France throughout the greater part of the sixteenth
century and which have already been treated in their appropriate
political aspect. The outcome was the settlement accorded by King Henry
IV in the famous Edict of Nantes (1598), which contained the following
provisions: (1) Private worship and liberty of conscience were allowed
to the Calvinists throughout France; (2) Public Protestant worship
might be held in 200 enumerated towns and over 3000 castles; (3) A
financial grant was made to Protestant schools, and the publication of
Calvinist books was legalized; (4) Huguenots received full civil
rights, with admission to all public offices; (5) Huguenots were
granted for eight years the political control of two hundred towns, the
garrisons of which were to be maintained by the crown; and (6)
Huguenots were accorded certain judicial privileges and the right of
holding religious and political assemblies. For nearly a hundred years
France practiced a religious toleration which was almost unique among
European nations, and it was Calvinists who benefited.

[Sidenote: Calvinism in the Netherlands]

The Netherlands were too near the Germanies not to be affected by the
Lutheran revolt against the Catholic Church. And the northern or Dutch
provinces became quite thoroughly saturated with Lutheranism and also
with the doctrines of various radical sects that from time to time were
expelled from the German states. The Emperor Charles V tried to stamp
out heresy by harsh action of the Inquisition, but succeeded only in
changing its name and nature. Lutheranism disappeared from the
Netherlands; but in its place came Calvinism, [Footnote: Many
Anabaptist refugees from Germany had already sought refuge in the
Netherlands: they naturally found the teachings of Zwingli and Calvin
more radical, and therefore more appropriate to themselves, than the
teachings of Luther. This fact also serves to explain the acceptance of
Calvinism in regions of southern Germany where Lutheranism, since the
Peasants' Revolt, had failed to take root.] descending from Geneva
through Alsace and thence down the Rhine, or entering from Great
Britain by means of the close commercial relations existing between
those countries. While the southern Netherlands eventually were
recovered for Catholicism, the protracted political and economic
conflict which the northern Netherlands waged against the Catholic king
of Spain contributed to a final fixing of Calvinism as the national
religion of patriotic Dutchmen. Calvinism in Holland was known as the
Dutch Reformed religion.

[Sidenote: Calvinism in Southern Germany]

We have already noted that southern Germany had rejected aristocratic
Lutheranism, partially at least because of Luther's bitter words to the
peasants. Catholicism, however, was not destined to have complete sway
in those regions, for democratic Calvinism permeated Württemberg,
Baden, and the Rhenish provinces, and the Reformed doctrines gained
numerous converts among the middle-class. The growth of Calvinism in
Germany was seriously handicapped by the religious settlement of
Augsburg in 1555 which officially tolerated only Catholicism and
Lutheranism. It was not until after the close of the direful Thirty
Years' War in the seventeenth century that German Calvinists received
formal recognition.

[Sidenote: Scotland]

Scotland, like every other European country in the early part of the
sixteenth century, had been a place of protest against moral and
financial abuses in the Catholic Church, but the beginnings of
ecclesiastical rebellion are to be traced rather to political causes.
The kingdom had long been a prey to the bitter rivalry of great noble
families, and the premature death of James V (1542), which left the
throne to his ill-fated infant daughter, Mary Stuart, gave free rein to
a feudal reaction against the crown. In general, the Catholic clergy
sided with the royal cause, while the religious reformers egged on the
nobles to champion Protestantism in order to deal an effective blow
against the union of the altar and the throne. Thus Cardinal Beaton,
head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, ordered numerous executions on
the score of protecting religion and the authority of the queen-regent;
on the other hand several noblemen, professing the new theology,
assassinated the cardinal and hung his body on the battlements of the
castle of St. Andrews (1546). Such was the general situation in
Scotland when John Knox appeared upon the scene.

[Sidenote: John Knox]

Born of peasant parents about 1515, John Knox [Footnote: John Knox (c.
1515-1572).] had become a Catholic priest, albeit in sympathy with many
of the revolutionary ideas which were entering Scotland from the
Continent and from England. In 1546 he openly rejected the authority of
the Church and proceeded to preach "the Gospel" and a stern puritanical
morality. "Others snipped the branches," he said, "he struck at the
root." But the Catholic court was able to banish Knox from Scotland.
After romantic imprisonment in France, Knox spent a few years in
England, preaching an extreme puritanism, holding a chaplaincy under
Edward VI (1547-1553), and exerting his influence to insure an
indelibly Protestant character to the Anglican Church. Then upon the
accession to the English throne of the Catholic Mary Tudor, Knox betook
himself to Geneva where he made the acquaintance of Calvin and found
himself in essential agreement with the teachings of the French
reformer.

[Sidenote: Calvinism in Scotland]

After a stay of some five years on the Continent, Knox returned finally
to Scotland and became the organizer and director of the "Lords of the
Congregation," a league of the chief Protestant noblemen for purposes
of religious propaganda and political power. In 1560 he drew up the
creed and discipline of the Presbyterian Church after the model of
Calvin's church at Geneva; and in the same year with the support of the
"Lords of the Congregation" and the troops of Queen Elizabeth of
England, Knox effected a political and religious revolution in
Scotland. The queen-regent was imprisoned and the subservient
parliament abolished the papal supremacy and enacted the death penalty
against any one who should even attend Catholic worship. John Knox had
carried everything before him.

Mary Stuart, during her brief stay in Scotland (1561-1567), tried in
vain to stem the tide. The jealous barons would brook no increase of
royal authority. The austere Knox hounded the girl-queen in public
sermons and fairly flayed her character. The queen's downfall and
subsequent long imprisonment in England finally decided the
ecclesiastical future of Scotland. Except in a few fastnesses in the
northern highlands, where Catholicism survived among the clansmen, the
whole country was committed to Calvinism.

[Sidenote: Calvinism in England]

Calvinism was not without influence in England. Introduced towards the
close of the reign of Henry VIII, it gave rise to a number of small
sects which troubled the king's Anglican Church almost as much as did
the Roman Catholics. Under Edward VI (1547-1553), it considerably
influenced the theology of the Anglican Church itself, but the moderate
policies of Elizabeth (1558-1603) tended to fix an inseparable gulf
between Anglicans and Calvinists. Thenceforth, Calvinism lived in
England, in the forms of Presbyterianism, Independency, [Footnote:
Among the "Independents" were the Baptists, a sect related not so
immediately to Calvinism as to the radical Anabaptists of Germany. See
above, pp. 134 f., 145, footnotes] and Puritanism, as the religion
largely of the commercial middle class. It was treated with contempt,
and even persecuted, by Anglicans, especially by the monarchs of the
Stuart family. After a complete but temporary triumph under Cromwell,
in the seventeenth century, it was at length legally tolerated in
England after the settlement of 1689. It was from England that New
England received the Calvinistic religion which dominated colonial
forefathers of many present-day Americans.


ANGLICANISM

Anglicanism is the name frequently applied to that form of
Protestantism which stamped the state church in England in the
sixteenth century and which is now represented by the Episcopal Church
in the United States as well as by the established Church of England.
The Methodist churches are comparatively late off-shoots of
Anglicanism.

The separation of England from the papacy was a more gradual and
halting process than were the contemporary revolutions on the
Continent; and the new Anglicanism was correspondingly more
conservative than Lutheranism or Calvinism.

[Sidenote: English Catholicism in 1500]
[Sidenote: Church of England]

At the opening of the sixteenth century, the word "Catholic" meant the
same in England as in every other country of western or central Europe
--belief in the seven sacraments, the sacrifice of the Mass, and the
veneration of saints; acceptance of papal supremacy and support of
monasticism and of other institutions and practices of the medieval
Church. During several centuries it had been customary in legal
documents to refer to the Catholic Church in England as the _Ecclesia
Anglicana_, or Anglican Church, just as the popes in their letters
repeatedly referred to the "Gallican Church," the "Spanish Church," the
"Neapolitan Church," or the "Hungarian Church." But such phraseology
did not imply a separation of any one national church from the common
Catholic communion, and for nearly a thousand years--ever since there
had been an _Ecclesia Anglicana_--the English had recognized the
bishop of Rome as the center of Catholic unity. In the course of the
sixteenth century, however, the great majority of Englishmen changed
their conception of the _Ecclesia Anglicana_, so that to them it
continued to exist as the Church of England, but henceforth on a
strictly national basis, in communion neither with the pope nor with
the Orthodox Church of the East nor with the Lutherans or Calvinists,
abandoning several doctrines that had been universally held in earlier
times and substituting in their place beliefs and customs which were
distinctively Protestant. This new conception of the Anglican Church--
resulting from the revolution in the sixteenth century--is what we mean
by Anglicanism as a form of Protestantism. It took shape in the
eventful years between 1520 and 1570.

[Sidenote: Religious Opposition to the Roman Catholic Church in
England]

In order to understand how this religious and ecclesiastical revolution
was effected in England, we must appreciate the various elements
distrustful of the Catholic Church in that country about the year 1525.
In the first place, the Lutheran teachings were infiltrating into the
country. As early as 1521 a small group at Cambridge had become
interested in the new German theology, and thence the sect spread to
Oxford, London, and other intellectual centers. It found its early
converts chiefly among the lower clergy and the merchants of the large
towns, but for several years it was not numerous.

In the second place, there was the same feeling in England as we have
already noted throughout all Europe that the clergy needed reform in
morals and in manners. This view was shared not only by the
comparatively insignificant group of heretical Lutherans, but likewise
by a large proportion of the leading men who accounted themselves
orthodox members of the Catholic Church. The well-educated humanists
were especially eloquent in preaching reform. The writings of Erasmus
had great vogue in England. John Colet (1467?-1519), a famous dean of
St. Paul's cathedral in London, was a keen reformer who disapproved of
auricular confession and of the celibacy of the clergy. Sir Thomas More
(1478-1535), one of the greatest minds of the century, thought the
monks were lazy and indolent, and the whole body of churchmen in need
of an intellectual betterment. But neither Colet nor More had any
intention of breaking away from the Roman Church. To them, and to many
like them, reform could be secured best within the traditional
ecclesiastical body.

[Sidenote: Political Opposition to the Roman Catholic Church in
England]

A third source of distrust of the Church was a purely political feeling
against the papacy. As we have already seen, the English king and
English parliament on several earlier occasions had sought to restrict
the temporal and political jurisdiction of the pope in England, but
each restriction had been imposed for political reasons and even then
had represented the will of the monarch rather than that of the nation.
In fact, the most striking limitations of the pope's political
jurisdiction in the kingdom had been enacted during the early stages of
the Hundred Years' War, when the papacy was under French influence, and
had served, therefore, indirectly as political weapons against the
French king. Before that war was over, the operation of the statutes
had been relaxed, and for a century or more prior to 1525 little was
heard of even a political feeling against the bishop of Rome.

Nevertheless an evolution in English government was in progress at that
very time, which was bound sooner or later to create friction with the
Holy See. On one hand, a sense of nationalism and of patriotism had
been steadily growing in England, and it was at variance with the older
cosmopolitan idea of Catholicism. On the other hand, a great increase
of royal power had appeared in the fifteenth century, notably after the
accession of the Tudor family in 1485. Henry VII (1485-1509) had
subordinated to the crown both the nobility and the parliament, and the
patriotic support of the middle class he had secured. And when his son,
Henry VIII (1509-1547), came to the throne, the only serious obstacle
which appeared to be left in the way of royal absolutism was the
privileged independence of the Catholic Church.

[Sidenote: Early Loyalty of Henry VIII to the Roman Catholic Church]

Yet a number of years passed before Henry VIII laid violent hands upon
the Church. In the meanwhile, he proved himself a devoted Roman
Catholic. He scented the new Lutheran heresy and sought speedily to
exterminate it. He even wrote in 1521 with his own royal pen a bitter
arraignment of the new theology, and sent his book, which he called
_The Defence of the Seven Sacraments_, with a delightful
dedicatory epistle to the pope. For his prompt piety and filial
orthodoxy, he received from the bishop of Rome the proud title of
_Fidei Defensor_, or Defender of the Faith, a title which he
jealously bore until his death, and which his successors, the
sovereigns of Great Britain, with like humor have continued to bear
ever since. He seemed not even to question the pope's political claims.
He allied himself on several occasions with Leo X in the great game of
European politics. His chief minister and adviser in England for many
years was Thomas Wolsey, the most conspicuous ecclesiastic in his
kingdom and a cardinal of the Roman Church.

[Sidenote: The Marriage Difficulty of Henry VIII]

Under these circumstances it is difficult to see how the Anglican
Church would have immediately broken away from Catholic unity had it
not been for the peculiar marital troubles of Henry VIII. The king had
been married eighteen years to Catherine of Aragon, and had been
presented by her with six children (of whom only one daughter, the
Princess Mary, had survived), when one day he informed her that they
had been living all those years in mortal sin and that their union was
not true marriage. The queen could hardly be expected to agree with
such a definition, and there ensued a legal suit between the royal
pair.

To Henry VIII the matter was really quite simple. Henry was tired of
Catherine and wanted to get rid of her; he believed the queen could
bear him no more children and yet he ardently desired a male heir;
rumor reported that the susceptible king had recently been smitten by
the brilliant black eyes of a certain Anne Boleyn, a maid-in-waiting at
the court. The purpose of Henry was obvious; so was the means, he
thought. For it had occurred to him that Catherine was his elder
brother's widow, and, therefore, had no right, by church law, to marry
him. To be sure, a papal dispensation had been obtained from Pope
Julius II authorizing the marriage, but why not now obtain a revocation
of that dispensation from the reigning Pope Clement VII? Thus the
marriage with Catherine could be declared null and void, and Henry
would be a bachelor, thirty-six years of age, free to wed some
princess, or haply Anne Boleyn.

[Sidenote: Difficult Position of the Pope]

There was no doubt that Clement VII would like to do a favor for his
great English champion, but two difficulties at once presented
themselves. It would be a most dangerous precedent for the pope to
reverse the decision of one of his predecessors. Worse still, the
Emperor Charles V, the nephew of Queen Catherine, took up cudgels in
his aunt's behalf and threatened Clement with dire penalties if he
nullified the marriage. The pope complained truthfully that he was
between the anvil and the hammer. There was little for him to do except
to temporize and to delay decision as long as possible.

The protracted delay was very irritating to the impulsive English king,
who was now really in love with Anne Boleyn. Gradually Henry's former
effusive loyalty to the Roman See gave way to a settled conviction of
the tyranny of the papal power, and there rushed to his mind the
recollection of efforts of earlier English rulers to restrict that
power. A few salutary enactments against the Church might compel a
favorable decision from the pope.

Henry VIII seriously opened his campaign against the Roman Church in
1531, when he frightened the English clergy into paying a fine of over
half a million dollars for violating an obsolete statute that had
forbidden reception of papal legates without royal sanction, and in the
same year he forced the clergy to recognize himself as supreme head of
the Church "as far as that is permitted by the law of Christ." His
subservient Parliament then empowered him to stop the payment of
annates and to appoint the bishops without recourse to the papacy.
Without waiting longer for the papal decision, he had Cranmer, one of
his own creatures, whom he had just named archbishop of Canterbury,
declare his marriage with Catherine null and void and his union with
Anne Boleyn canonical and legal. Pope Clement VII thereupon handed down
his long-delayed decision favorable to Queen Catherine, and
excommunicated Henry VIII for adultery.

[Sidenote: Separation of England from the Roman Catholic Church: the
Act of Supremacy]

The formal breach between England and Rome occurred in 1534. Parliament
passed a series of laws, one of which declared the king to be the "only
supreme head in earth of the Church of England," and others cut off all
communication with the pope and inflicted the penalty of treason upon
any one who should deny the king's ecclesiastical supremacy.

One step in the transition of the Church of England had now been taken.
For centuries its members had recognized the pope as their
ecclesiastical head; henceforth they were to own the ecclesiastical
headship of their king. From the former Catholic standpoint, this might
be schism but it was not necessarily heresy. Yet Henry VIII encountered
considerable opposition from the higher clergy, from the monks, and
from many intellectual leaders, as well as from large numbers of the
lower classes. A popular uprising--the Pilgrimage of Grace--was sternly
suppressed, and such men as the brilliant Sir Thomas More and John
Fisher, the aged and saintly bishop of Rochester, were beheaded because
they retained their former belief in papal supremacy. Tudor despotism
triumphed.

[Sidenote: The "Six Articles"]

The breach with Rome naturally encouraged the Lutherans and other
heretics to think that England was on the point of becoming Protestant,
but nothing was further from the king's mind. The assailant of Luther
remained at least partially consistent. And the Six Articles (1539)
reaffirmed the chief points in Catholic doctrine and practice and
visited dissenters with horrible punishment. While separating England
from the papacy, Henry was firmly resolved to maintain every other
tenet of the Catholic faith as he had received it. His middle-of-the-
road policy was enforced with much bloodshed. On one side, the Catholic
who denied the royal supremacy was beheaded; on the other, the
Protestant who denied transubstantiation was burned! It has been
estimated that during the reign of Henry VIII the number of capital
condemnations for politico-religious offenses ran into the thousands--
an inquisition that in terror and bloodshed is comparable to that of
Spain.

[Sidenote: Suppression of the Monasteries]

It was likewise during the reign of Henry VIII that one of the most
important of all earlier Christian institutions--monasticism--came to
an end in England. There were certainly grave abuses and scandals in
some of the monasteries which dotted the country, and a good deal of
popular sentiment had been aroused against the institution. Then, too
the monks had generally opposed the royal pretensions to religious
control and remained loyal to the pope. But the deciding factor in the
suppression of the monasteries was undoubtedly economic. Henry, always
in need of funds on account of his extravagances, appropriated part of
the confiscated property for the benefit of the crown, and the rest he
astutely distributed as gigantic bribes to the upper classes of the
laity. The nobles who accepted the ecclesiastical wealth were thereby
committed to the new anti-papal religious settlement in England.

[Sidenote: Protestantizing the Church of England: Edward VI]

The Church of England, separated from the papacy under Henry VIII,
became Protestant under Edward VI (1547-1553). The young king's
guardian tolerated all manner of reforming propaganda, and Calvinists
as well as Lutherans preached their doctrines freely. Official articles
of religion, which were drawn up for the Anglican Church, showed
unmistakably Protestant influence. The Latin service books of the
Catholic Church were translated into English, under Cranmer's auspices,
and the edition of the _Book of Common Prayer_, published in 1552,
made clear that the Eucharist was no longer to be regarded as a
propitiatory sacrifice: the names "Holy Communion" and "Lord's Supper"
were substituted for "Mass," while the word "altar" was replaced by
"table." The old places of Catholic worship were changed to suit a new
order: altars and images were taken down, the former service books
destroyed, and stained-glass windows broken. Several peasant uprisings
signified that the nation was not completely united upon a policy of
religious change, but the reformers had their way, and Protestantism
advanced.

[Sidenote: Temporary Roman Catholic Revival under Mary Tudor]

A temporary setback to the progress of the new Anglicanism was afforded
by the reign of Mary Tudor (1553-1558), the daughter of Catherine of
Aragon, and a devout Roman Catholic. She reinstated the bishops who had
refused to take the oath of royal supremacy and punished those who had
taken it. She prevailed upon Parliament to repeal the ecclesiastical
legislation of both her father's and her brother's reigns and to
reconcile England once more with the bishop of Rome. A papal legate, in
the person of Cardinal Reginald Pole, sailed up the Thames with his
cross gleaming from the prow of his barge, and in full Parliament
administered the absolution which freed the kingdom from the guilt
under Mary incurred by its schism and heresy. As an additional support
to her policy of restoring the Catholic Church in England, Queen Mary
married her cousin, Philip II of Spain, the great champion of
Catholicism upon the Continent.

But events proved that despite outward appearances even the reign of
Mary registered an advance of Protestantism. The new doctrines were
zealously propagated by an ever-growing number of itinerant exhorters.
The Spanish alliance was disastrous to English fortunes abroad and
distasteful to all patriotic Englishmen at home. And finally, the
violent means which the queen took to stamp out heresy gave her the
unenviable surname of "Bloody" and reacted in the end in behalf of the
views for which the victims sacrificed their lives. During her reign
nearly three hundred reformers perished, many of them, including
Archbishop Cranmer, by fire. The work of the queen was in vain. No heir
was born to Philip and Mary, and the crown, therefore, passed to
Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, a Protestant not so much from
conviction as from circumstance.

[Sidenote: Definite Fashioning of Anglicanism: the Reign of Elizabeth]

It was in the reign of Elizabeth (1558-1603) that the Church of England
assumed definitely the doctrines and practices which we now connect
with the word "Anglicanism." By act of Parliament, the English Church
was again separated from the papacy, and placed under royal authority,
Elizabeth assuming the title of "supreme governor." The worship of the
state church was to be in conformity with a slightly altered version of
Cranmer's _Book of Common Prayer_. A uniform doctrine was likewise
imposed by Parliament in the form of the _Thirty-nine Articles_,
which set a distinctively Protestant mark upon the Anglican Church in
its appeal to the Scriptures as the sole rule of faith, its insistence
on justification by faith alone, its repudiation of the sacrifice of
the Mass, and its definition of the Church. All the bishops who had
been appointed under Mary, with one exception, refused to accept the
changes, and were therefore deposed and imprisoned, but new bishops,
Elizabeth's own appointees, were consecrated and the "succession of
bishops" thereby maintained. Outwardly, the Church of England appeared
to retain a corporate continuity throughout the sixteenth century;
inwardly, a great revolution had changed it from Catholic to
Protestant.

Harsh laws sought to oblige all Englishmen to conform to Elizabeth's
religious settlement. Liberty of public worship was denied to any
dissenter from Anglicanism. To be a "papist" or "hear Mass"--which were
construed as the same thing--was punishable by death as high treason. A
special ecclesiastical court--the Court of High Commission--was
established under royal authority to search out heresy and to enforce
uniformity; it served throughout Elizabeth's reign as a kind of
Protestant Inquisition.

[Sidenote: English Dissent from Anglicanism]

While the large majority of the English nation gradually conformed to
the official Anglican Church, a considerable number refused their
allegiance. On one hand were the Roman Catholics, who still maintained
the doctrine of papal supremacy and were usually derisively styled
papists, and on the other hand were various Calvinistic sects, such as
Presbyterians or Independents or Quakers, who went by the name of
"Dissenters" or "Non-conformists." In the course of time, the number of
Roman Catholics tended to diminish, largely because, for political
reasons which have been indicated in the preceding chapter,
Protestantism in England became almost synonymous with English
patriotism. But despite drastic laws and dreadful persecutions, Roman
Catholicism survived in England among a conspicuous group of people. On
the other hand, the Calvinists tended somewhat to increase their
numbers so that in the seventeenth century they were able to
precipitate a great political and ecclesiastical conflict with
Anglicanism.


THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION

We have now traced the origins of the Protestant Revolt against the
Catholic Church, and have seen how, between 1520 and 1570, three major
varieties of new theology--Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism--
appeared on the scene and divided among themselves the nations of
northern Europe. The story of how, during that critical half-century,
the other civilized nations retained their loyalty to the Catholic
Church virtually as it had existed throughout the middle ages, remains
to be told. The preservation of the papal monarchy and Catholic
doctrine in southern Europe was due alike to religious and to political
circumstances.

It must not be supposed that pious critics of ecclesiastical abuses
were confined to countries which subsequently became Protestant. There
were many sincere Catholics in Italy, Austria, France, and Spain who
complained of the scandals and worldliness that afflicted the Church at
the opening of the sixteenth century: they demanded sweeping reforms in
discipline and a return of the clergy to a simple apostolic life. They
believed, however, that whatever change was desirable could best be
achieved by means of a reformation within the Catholic Church--that is,
without disturbing the unity of its organization or denying the
validity of its dogmas--while the critics of northern Europe, as we
have seen, preferred to put their reforms into practice by means of a
revolution--an out-and-out break with century-old traditions of
Catholic Christianity. Even in northern Europe some of the foremost
scholars of that period desired an intellectual reformation within
Catholicism rather than a dogmatic rebellion against it: with Luther's
defiance of papal authority, the great Erasmus had small sympathy, and
Sir Thomas More, the eminent English humanist, sacrificed his life for
his belief in the divine sanction of the papal power.

Thus, while the religious energy of northern Europe went into
Protestantism of various kinds, that of southern Europe fashioned a
reformation of the Catholic system. And this Catholic reformation, on
its religious side, was brought to a successful issue by means of the
improved conditions in the papal court, the labors of a great church
council, and the activity of new monastic orders. A few words must be
said about each one of these religious elements in the Catholic
reformation.

[Sidenote: Reforming Popes]

Mention has been made of the corruption that prevailed in papal affairs
in the fifteenth century, and of the Italian and family interests which
obscured to the Medici pope, Leo X (1513-1521), the importance of the
Lutheran movement in Germany. And Leo's nephew, who became Clement VII
(1523-1534), continued to act too much as an Italian prince and too
little as the moral and religious leader of Catholicism in the contest
which under him was joined with Zwinglians and Anglicans as well as
with Lutherans. But under Paul III (1534-1549), a new policy was
inaugurated, by which men were appointed to high church offices for
their virtue and learning rather than for family relationship or
financial gain. This policy was maintained by a series of upright and
far-sighted popes during the second half of the sixteenth century, so
that by the year 1600 a remarkable reformation had been gradually
wrought in the papacy, among the cardinals, down through the prelates,
even to the parish priests and monks.

[Sidenote: The Council of Trent]

The reforming zeal of individual popes was stimulated and reinforced by
the work of the Council of Trent (1545-1563). The idea of effecting a
"reformation in head and members" by means of a general council of the
Catholic Church had been invoked several times during the century that
preceded the Protestant Revolt, but, before Luther, little had been
accomplished in that way.

With the widening of the breach between Protestantism and the medieval
Church, what had formerly been desirable now became imperative. It
seemed to pious Catholics that every effort should be made to reconcile
differences and to restore the unity of the Church. The errors of the
manifold new theologies which now appeared might be refuted by a clear
statement of Catholic doctrine, and a reformation of discipline and
morals would deprive the innovators of one of their most telling
weapons against the Church.

It was no easy task, in that troublous time, to hold an ecumenical
council. There was mutual distrust between Catholics and Protestants.
There was uncertainty as to the relative powers and prerogatives of
council and pope. There were bitter national rivalries, especially
between Italians and Germans. There was actual warfare between the two
chief Catholic families--the Habsburgs of Germany and Spain and the
royal house of France.

Yet despite these difficulties, which long postponed its convocation
and repeatedly interrupted its labors, the Council of Trent [Footnote:
Trent was selected largely by reason of its geographical location,
being situated on the boundary between the German-speaking and Italian-
speaking peoples.] consummated a great reform in the Church and
contributed materially to the preservation of the Catholic faith. The
Protestants, whom the pope invited to participate, absented themselves;
yet such was the number and renown of the Catholic bishops who
responded to the summons that the Council of Trent easily ranked with
the eighteen œcumenical councils which had preceded it. [Footnote: Its
decrees were signed at its close (1563) by 4 cardinal legates, 2
cardinals, 3 patriarchs, 25 archbishops, 167 bishops, 7 abbots, 7
generals of orders, and 19 proxies for 33 absent prelates.] The work of
the council was twofold--dogmatic and reformatory.

Dogmatically, the fathers at Trent offered no compromise to the
Protestants. They confirmed with inexorable frankness the main points
in Catholic theology which had been worked out in the thirteenth
century by Thomas Aquinas and which before the appearance of
Protestantism had been received everywhere in central and western
Europe. They declared that the tradition of the Church as well as the
Bible was to be taken as the basis of the Christian religion, and that
the interpretation of the Holy Scripture belonged only to the Church.
The Protestant teachings about grace and justification by faith were
condemned, and the seven sacraments were pronounced indispensable. The
miraculous and sacrificial character of the Lord's Supper (Mass) was
reaffirmed. Belief in the invocation of saints, in the veneration of
images and of relics, in purgatory and indulgences was explicitly
stated, but precautions were taken to clear some of the doctrines of
the pernicious practices which at times had been connected with them.
The spiritual authority of the Roman See was confirmed over all
Catholicism: the pope was recognized as supreme interpreter of the
canons and incontestable chief of bishops.

[Sidenote: Reformatory Canons of the Council of Trent ]

A volume of disciplinary statutes constituted the second achievement of
the Tridentine Council. The sale of church offices was condemned.
Bishops and other prelates were to reside in their respective dioceses,
abandon worldly pursuits, and give themselves entirely to spiritual
labors. Seminaries were to be established for the proper education and
training of priests.

While Latin was retained as the official and liturgical language,
frequent sermons were to be preached in the vernacular. Indulgences
were not to be issued for money, and no charge should be made for
conferring the sacraments.

[Sidenote: Index and inquisition ]

The seed sown by the council bore abundant fruit during several
succeeding pontificates. The central government was completely
reorganized. A definite catechism was prepared at Rome and every layman
instructed in the tenets and obligations of his religion. Revisions
were made in the service books of the Church, and a new standard
edition of the Latin Bible, the Vulgate, was issued. A list, called the
Index, was prepared of dangerous and heretical books, which good
Catholics were prohibited from reading. By these methods, discipline
was in fact confirmed, morals purified, and the scandal of the immense
riches and the worldly life of the clergy restrained. From an unusually
strict law of faith and conduct, lapses were to be punishable by the
ancient ecclesiastical court of the Inquisition, which now zealously
redoubled its activity, especially in Italy and in Spain.

A very important factor in the Catholic revival--not only in preserving
all southern Europe to the Church but also in preventing a complete
triumph of Protestantism in the North--was the formation of several new
religious orders, which sought to purify the life of the people and to
bulwark the position of the Church. The most celebrated of these
orders, both for its labors in the sixteenth century and for its
subsequent history, is the Society of Jesus, whose members are known
commonly as Jesuits. The society was founded by Ignatius Loyola
[Footnote: Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556).] in 1534 and its constitution
was formally approved by the pope six years later.

[Sidenote: Ignatius Loyola]

In his earlier years, Ignatius followed the profession of arms, and as
a patriotic Spaniard fought valiantly in the armies of Emperor Charles
V against the French. But while he was in a hospital, suffering from a
wound, he chanced to read a Life of Christ and biographies of several
saints, which, he tells us, worked a great change within him. From
being a soldier of an earthly king, he would now become a knight of
Christ and of the Church. Instead of fighting for the glory of Spain
and of himself, he would henceforth strive for the greater glory of
God. Thus in the very year in which the German monk, Martin Luther,
became the leading and avowed adversary of the Catholic Church, this
Spanish soldier was starting on that remarkable career which was to
make him Catholicism's chief champion.

After a few years' trial of his new life and several rather footless
efforts to serve the Church, Ignatius determined, at the age of thirty-
three, to perfect his scanty education. It was while he was studying
Latin, philosophy, and theology at the University of Paris that he made
the acquaintance of the group of scholarly and saintly men who became
the first members of the Society of Jesus. Intended at first primarily
for missionary labors among the Mohammedans, the order was speedily
turned to other and greater ends.

[Sidenote: The Jesuits]

The organization of the Jesuits showed the military instincts of their
founder. To the three usual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience,
was added a fourth vow of special allegiance to the pope. The members
were to be carefully trained during a long novitiate and were to be
under the personal direction of a general, resident in Rome. Authority
and obedience were stressed by the society. Then, too, St. Ignatius
Loyola understood that the Church was now confronted with conditions of
war rather than of peace: accordingly he directed that his brothers
should not content themselves with prayer and works of peace, with
charity and local benevolence, but should adapt themselves to new
circumstances and should strive in a multiplicity of ways to restore
all things in the Catholic Church.

Thus it happened that the Jesuits, from the very year of their
establishment, rushed to the front in the religious conflict of the
sixteenth century. In the first place, they sought to enlighten and
educate the young. As schoolmasters they had no equals in Europe for
many years. No less a scholar and scientist than Lord Francis Bacon
said of the Jesuit teaching that "nothing better has been put in
practice." Again, by their wide learning and culture, no less than by
the unimpeachable purity of their lives, they won back a considerable
respect for the Catholic clergy. As preachers, too, they earned a high
esteem by the clearness and simplicity of their sermons and
instruction.

It was in the mission field, however, that the Jesuits achieved the
most considerable results. They were mainly responsible for the
recovery of Poland after that country had almost become Lutheran. They
similarly conserved the Catholic faith in Bavaria and in the southern
Netherlands. They insured a respectable Catholic party in Bohemia and
in Hungary. They aided considerably in maintaining Catholicism in
Ireland. At the hourly risk of their lives, they ministered to their
fellow-Catholics in England under Elizabeth and the Stuarts. And what
the Catholic Church lost in numbers through the defection of the
greater part of northern Europe was compensated for by Jesuit missions
among the teeming millions in India and China, among the Huron and
Iroquois tribes of North America, and among the aborigines of Brazil
and Paraguay. No means of influence, no source of power, was neglected
that would win men to religion and to the authority of the bishop of
Rome. Politics and agriculture were utilized as well as literature and
science. The Jesuits were confessors of kings in Europe and apostles of
the faith in Asia and America.

[Sidenote: Political and Economic Factors in the Catholic Reformation]

It has been pointed out already that the rapid diffusion of
Protestantism was due to economic and political causes as well as to
those narrowly religious. It may be said with equal truth that
political and economic causes co-operated with the religious
developments that we have just noted in maintaining the supremacy of
the Catholic Church in at least half the countries over which she had
exercised her sway in 1500. For one thing, it is doubtful whether
financial abuses had flourished as long or as vigorously in southern as
in northern Europe. For another, the political conditions in the states
of southern Europe help to explain the interesting situation.

[Sidebar: Italy]

In Italy was the pope's residence and See. He had bestowed many favors
on important Italian families. He had often exploited foreign countries
in behalf of Italian patronage. He had taken advantage of the political
disunity of the peninsula to divide his local enemies and thereby to
assure the victory of his own cause. Two popes of the sixteenth century
belonged to the powerful Florentine family of the Medici--Florence
remained loyal. The hearty support of the Emperor Charles V preserved
the orthodoxy of Naples, and that of Philip II stamped out heresy in
the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

[Sidenote: France]

In France, the concordat of 1516 between pope and king had peacefully
secured for the French monarch appointment of bishops and control of
benefices within his country,--powers which the German princes and the
English sovereigns secured by revolutionary change. Moreover, French
Protestantism, by its political activities in behalf of effective
checks upon the royal power, drove the king into Catholic arms: the
cause of absolutism in France became the cause of Catholicism, and the
latter was bound up with French patriotism to quite the same extent as
English patriotism became linked with the fortunes of Anglicanism.

[Sidenote: Spain and Portugal]

In Spain and Portugal, the monarchs obtained concessions from the pope
like those accorded the French sovereigns. They gained control of the
Catholic Church within their countries and found it a most valuable
ally in forwarding their absolutist tendencies. Moreover, the
centuries-long struggle with Mohammedanism had endeared Catholic
Christianity alike to Spaniards and to Portuguese and rendered it an
integral part of their national life. Spain and Portugal now remained
fiercely Catholic.

[Sidenote: Austria]

Somewhat similar was the case of Austria. Terrifying fear of the
advancing Turk, joined with the political exigencies of the Habsburg
rulers, threw that duchy with most of its dependencies into the hands
of the pope. If the bishop of Rome, by favoring the Habsburgs, had lost
England, he had at least saved Austria.

[Sidenote: Poland and Ireland]

Ireland and Poland--those two extreme outposts of the Roman Catholic
Church in Europe--found their religion to be the most effectual
safeguard of their nationality, the most valuable weapon against
aggression or assimilation by powerful neighbors.


SUMMARY OF THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

By the year 1570 the profound religious and ecclesiastical changes
which we have been sketching had been made. For seventy-five years more
a series of wars was to be waged in which the religious element was
distinctly to enter. In fact these wars have often been called the
Religious Wars--the ones connected with the career of Philip II of
Spain as well as the subsequent dismal civil war in the Germanies--but
in each one the political and economic factors predominated. Nor did
the series of wars materially affect the strength or extent of the
religions implicated. It was prior to 1570 that the Protestant Revolt
had been effected and the Catholic Reformation achieved.

[Sidenote: Geographical Extent of the Revolt]

In the year 1500, the Roman Catholic Church embraced central and
western Europe; in the year 1600 nearly half of its former subjects--
those throughout northern Europe--no longer recognized its authority or
practiced its beliefs. There were left to the Roman Catholic Church at
the close of the sixteenth century the Italian states, Spain, Portugal,
most of France, the southern Netherlands, the forest cantons of
Switzerland, the southern Germanies, Austria, Poland, Ireland, large
followings in Bohemia and Hungary, and a straggling unimportant
following in other countries.

Those who rejected the Roman Catholic Church in central and western
Europe were collectively called Protestants, but they were divided into
three major groups. Lutheranism was now the religion of the northern
Germanies and the Scandinavian states of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
Calvinism, under a bewildering variety of names, was the recognized
faith of the majority of the cantons of Switzerland, of the northern
Netherlands, and Scotland, and of important followings in Germany,
Hungary, France, and England. Anglicanism was the established religion
of England.

[Sidenote: Doctrines Held in Common by Catholics and Protestants]

The Protestants retained a large part of Catholic theology, so that all
portions of western Christianity continued to have much in common. They
still believed in the Trinity, in the divinity of Jesus Christ, in the
sacredness of the Jewish scriptures and of the New Testament, the fall
of man and his redemption through the sacrifice of the Cross, and in a
future life of rewards and punishments. The Christian moralities and
virtues continued to be inculcated by Protestants as well as by
Catholics.

[Sidenote: Doctrines Held by all Protestants Apart from Catholics]

On the other hand, the Protestants held in common certain doctrines
which separated all of them from Roman Catholicism. These were the
distinguishing marks of Protestantism: (1) denial of the claims of the
bishop of Rome and consequent rejection of the papal government and
jurisdiction; (2) rejection of such doctrines as were supposed to have
developed during the middle ages,--for example, purgatory, indulgences,
invocation of saints, and veneration of relics,--together with
important modifications in the sacramental system; (3) insistence upon
the right of the individual to interpret the Bible, and recognition of
the individual's ability to save himself without the interposition of
ecclesiastics--hence to the Protestant, authority resided in individual
interpretation of the Bible, while to the Catholic, it rested in a
living institution or Church.

[Sidenote: Divisions among Protestants]

Now the Protestant idea of authority made it possible and essentially
inevitable that its supporters should not agree on many things among
themselves. There would be almost as many ways of interpreting the
Scriptures as there were interested individuals. It is not surprising,
therefore, that in the last Almanac some one hundred and sixty-four
varieties or denominations of Protestants are listed in the United
States alone. These divisions, however, are not so complex as at first
might appear, because nearly all of them have come directly from the
three main forms of Protestantism which appeared in the sixteenth
century. Just how Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism differed from
each other may be gathered from a short summary.

(1) The Calvinists taught justification by election--that God
determines, or _predestines_, who is to be saved and who is to be
lost. The Lutherans were inclined to reject such doctrine, and to
assure salvation to the mere believer. The Anglicans appeared to accept
the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith, although the Thirty-
nine Articles might be likewise interpreted in harmony with the
Calvinistic position.

(2) The Calvinists recognized only two sacraments--baptism and the
Lord's Supper. Lutherans and Anglicans retained, in addition to the two
sacraments, the rite of confirmation, and Anglicans also the rite of
ordination. The official statement of Anglicanism that there are "two
major sacraments" has made it possible for some Anglicans--the so-
called High Church party--to hold the Catholic doctrine of seven
sacraments.

(3) Various substitutes were made for the Catholic doctrine of
transubstantiation, the idea that in the Lord's Supper the bread and
wine by the word of the priest are actually changed into the Body and
Blood of Christ. The Lutherans maintained what they called
consubstantiation, that Christ was _with_ and _in_ the bread
and wine, as fire is in a hot iron, to borrow the metaphor of Luther
himself. The Calvinists, on the other hand, saw in the Eucharist, not
the efficacious sacrifice of Christ, but a simple commemoration of the
Last Supper; to them the bread and wine were mere symbols of the Body
and Blood. As to the Anglicans, their position was ambiguous, for their
official confession of faith declared at once that the Supper is the
communion of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ but that the
communicant receives Jesus Christ only spiritually: the present-day
"Low Church" Anglicans incline to a Calvinistic interpretation, those
of the "High Church" to the Catholic explanation.

(4) There were pronounced differences in ecclesiastical government. All
the Protestants considerably modified the Catholic system of a divinely
appointed clergy of bishops, priests, and deacons, under the supreme
spiritual jurisdiction of the pope. The Anglicans rejected the papacy,
although they retained the orders of bishop, priest, and deacon, and
insisted that their hierarchy was the direct continuation of the
medieval Church in England, and therefore that their organization was
on the same footing as the Orthodox Church of eastern Europe. The
Lutherans rejected the divinely ordained character of episcopacy, but
retained bishops as convenient administrative officers. The Calvinists
did away with bishops altogether and kept only one order of clergymen--
the presbyters. Such Calvinistic churches as were governed by
assemblies or synods of presbyters were called Presbyterian; those
which subordinated the "minister" to the control of the people in each
separate congregation were styled Independent, or Separatist, or
Congregational. [Footnote: This latter type of church government was
maintained also by the quasi-Calvinistic denomination of the Baptists.]

(5) In the ceremonies of public worship the Protestant churches
differed. Anglicanism kept a good deal of the Catholic ritual although
in the form of translation from Latin to English, together with several
Catholic ceremonies, in some places even employing candles and incense.
The Calvinists, on the other hand, worshiped with extreme simplicity:
reading of the Bible, singing of hymns, extemporaneous prayer, and
preaching constituted the usual service in church buildings that were
without superfluous ornaments. Between Anglican formalism and
Calvinistic austerity, the Lutherans presented a compromise: they
devised no uniform liturgy, but showed some inclination to utilize
forms and ceremonies.

[Sidenote: Significance of the Protestant Revolt]

Of the true significance of the great religious and ecclesiastical
changes of the sixteenth century many estimates in the past have been
made, varying with the point of view, or bias, of each author. Several
results, however, now stand out clearly and are accepted generally by
all scholars, regardless of religious affiliations. These results may
be expressed as follows:

In the first place, the Catholic Church of the middle ages was
disrupted and the medieval ideal of a universal theocracy under the
bishop of Rome was rudely shocked.

In the second place, the Christian religion was largely nationalized.
Protestantism was the religious aspect of nationalism; it naturally
came into being as a protest against the cosmopolitan character of
Catholicism; it received its support from _nations_; and it
assumed everywhere a national form. The German states, the Scandinavian
countries, Scotland, England, each had its established state religion.
What remained to the Catholic Church, as we have seen, was essentially
for national reasons and henceforth rested mainly on a national basis.

Thirdly, the whole movement tended to narrow the Catholic Church
dogmatically. The exigencies of answering the Protestants called forth
explicit definitions of belief. The Catholic Church was henceforth on
the defensive, and among her members fewer differences of opinion were
tolerated than formerly.

Fourthly, a great impetus to individual morality, as well as to
theological study, was afforded by the reformation. Not only were many
men's minds turned temporarily from other intellectual interests to
religious controversy, but the individual faithful Catholic or
Protestant was encouraged to vie with his neighbor in actually proving
that his particular religion inculcated a higher moral standard than
any other. It rendered the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries more
earnest and serious and also more bigoted than the fifteenth.

Finally, the Protestant Revolution led immediately to important
political and social changes. The power of secular rulers was
immeasurably increased. By confiscation of church lands and control of
the clergy, the Tudor sovereigns in England, the kings in Scandinavia,
and the German princes were personally enriched and freed from fear of
being hampered in absolutist tendencies by an independent
ecclesiastical organization. Even in Catholic countries, the monarchs
were able to wring such concessions from the pope as resulted in
shackling the Church to the crown.

The wealth of the nobles was swelled, especially in Protestant
countries, by seizure of the property of the Church either directly or
by means of bribes tendered for aristocratic support of the royal
confiscations. But despite such an access of wealth, the monarchs took
pains to see that the nobility acquired no new political influence.

In order to prevent the nobles from recovering political power, the
absolutist monarchs enlisted the services of the faithful middle class,
which speedily attained an enviable position in the principal European
states. It is safe to say that the Protestant Revolution was one of
many elements assisting in the development of this middle class.

For the peasantry--still the bulk of European population--the religious
and ecclesiastical changes seem to have been peculiarly unfortunate.
What they gained through a diminution of ecclesiastical dues and taxes
was more than lost through the growth of royal despotism and the
exactions of hard-hearted lay proprietors. The peasants had changed the
names of their oppressors and found themselves in a worse condition
than before. There is little doubt that, at least so far as the
Germanies and the Scandinavian countries are concerned, the lot of the
peasants was less favorable immediately after, than immediately before,
the rise of Protestantism.


ADDITIONAL READING


GENERAL. Good brief accounts of the whole religious revolution of the
sixteenth century: Frederic Seebohm, _The Era of the Protestant
Revolution,_ new ed. (1904); J. H. Robinson, _Reformation_, in
"Encyclopædia Britannica," 11th ed. (1911); A. H. Johnson, _Europe in
the Sixteenth Century_ (1897), ch. iii-v and pp. 272 ff.; E. M. Hulme,
_Renaissance and Reformation,_ 2d ed. (1915), ch. x-xviii, xxi-xxiii;
Victor Duruy, _History of Modern Times_, trans. and rev. by E. A.
Grosvenor (1894), ch. xiii, xiv. More detailed accounts are given in
the _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. II (1904), and in the _Histoire
generate_, Vol. IV, ch. x-xvii, and Vol. V, ch. i. All the standard
general histories of the Christian Church contain accounts of the rise
of Protestantism, naturally varying among themselves according to the
religious convictions of their authors. Among the best Protestant
histories may be cited: T. M. Lindsay, _A History of the Reformation,_
2 vols. (1906-1910); Wilhelm Moeller, _History of the Christian
Church_, trans. and condensed by J. H. Freese, 3 vols. (1893-1900);
Philip Schaff, _History of the Christian Church_, Vols. VI and VII; A.
H. Newman, A Manual of Church History, Vol. II (1903), Period V; G. P.
Fisher, _History of the Christian Church_ (1887), Period VIII, ch. i-
xii. From the Catholic standpoint the best ecclesiastical histories
are: John Alzog, _Manual of Universal Church History_, trans. from 9th
German edition (1903), Vol. II and Vol. Ill, Epoch I; and the histories
in German by Joseph (Cardinal) Hergen-rother [ed. by J. P. Kirsch, 2
vols. (1902-1904)], by Alois Knopfler (5th ed., 1910) [based on the
famous _Conciliengeschichte_ of K. J. (Bishop) von Hefele], and by F.
X. von Funk (5th ed., 1911); see, also, Alfred Baudrillart, _The
Catholic Church, the Renaissance and Protestantism_, Eng. trans. by
Mrs. Philip Gibbs (1908). Many pertinent articles are to be found in
the scholarly _Catholic Encyclopedia_, 15 vols. (1907-1912), in the
famous _Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche_, 3d
ed., 24 vols. (1896-1913), and in the (Non-Catholic) _Encyclopedia of
Religion and Ethics_, ed. by James Hastings and now (1916) in course of
publication. For the popes of the period, see Ludwig Pastor, _The
History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages_, the monumental
work of a distinguished Catholic historian, the twelfth volume of which
(coming down to 1549) was published in English translation in 1912; and
the older but still useful (Protestant) _History of the Papacy from the
Great Schism to the Sack of Rome_ by Mandell Creighton, new ed. in 6
vols. (1899-1901), and _History of the Popes_ by Leopold von Ranke, 3
vols. in the Bonn Library (1885). Heinrich Denziger, _Enchiridion
Symbolorum, Definitionum, et Declarationium de rebus fidei el morum,_
11nth ed. (1911), is a convenient collection of official pronouncements
in Latin on the Catholic Faith. Philip Schaff, _The Creeds of
Christendom,_ 3 vols. (1878), contains the chief Greek, Latin, and
Protestant creeds in the original and usually also in English
translation. Also useful is B. J. Kidd (editor), _Documents
Illustrative of the Continental Reformation_ (1911). For additional
details of the relation of the Reformation to sixteenth-century
politics, consult the bibliography appended to Chapter III, above.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY. In the _Cambridge
Modern History,_ Vol. I (1902), a severe indictment of the Church is
presented (ch. xix) by H. C. Lea, and a defense is offered (ch. xviii)
by William Barry. The former opinions are developed startlingly by H.
C. Lea in Vol. I, ch. i, of his _History of the Inquisition in the
Middle Ages._ An old-fashioned, though still interesting, Protestant
view is that of William Roscoe, _Life and Pontificate of Leo X,_ 4
vols. (first pub. 1805-1806, many subsequent editions). For an
excellent description of the organization of the Catholic Church, see
André Mater, _L'église catholique, sa constitution, son administration_
(1906). The best edition of the canon law is that of Friedberg, 2 vols.
(1881). On the social work of the Church: E. L. Cutts, _Parish Priests
and their People in the Middle Ages in England_ (1898), and G. A.
Prévost, _L'église et les campagnes au moyen âge_ (1892). The most
recent and comprehensive study of the Catholic Church on the eve of the
Protestant Revolt is that of Pierre Imbart de la Tour, _Les origines de
la Réforme,_ Vol. I, _La France moderne_ (1905), and Vol. II, _L'église
catholique, la crise et la renaissance_ (1909). For the Orthodox Church
of the East see Louis Duchesne, _The Churches Separated from Rome,_
trans. by A. H. Mathew (1908).

MOHAMMEDANISM. Sir William Muir, _Life of Mohammed,_ new and rev. ed.
by T. H. Weir (1912); Ameer Ali, _Life and Teachings of Mohammed_
(1891), and, by the same author, warmly sympathetic, Islam (1914); D.
S. Margoliouth, _Mohammed and the Rise of Islam_ (1905), in the "Heroes
of the Nations" Series, and, by the same author, _The Early Development
of Mohammedanism_ (1914); Arthur Gilman, _Story of the Saracens_
(1902), in the "Story of the Nations" Series. Edward Gibbon has two
famous chapters (1, li) on Mohammed and the Arabian conquests in his
masterpiece, _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire._ The _Koran,_ the
sacred book of Mohammedans, has been translated into English by E. H.
Palmer, 2 vols. (1880): entertaining extracts are given in Stanley
Lane-Poole, _Speeches and Table Talk of the Prophet Mohammad._

LUTHER AND LUTHERANISM. Of innumerable biographies of Luther the best
from sympathetic Protestant pens are: Julius Köstlin, _Life of Luther,_
trans. and abridged from the German (1900); T. M. Lindsay, _Luther and
the German Reformation_ (1900); A. C. McGiffert, _Martin Luther, the
Man and his Work_ (1911); Preserved Smith, _The Life and Letters of
Martin Luther_ (1911); Charles Beard, _Martin Luther and the
Reformation in Germany until the Close of the Diet of Worms_ (1889). A
remarkable arraignment of Luther is the work of the eminent Catholic
historian, F. H. S. Denifle, _Luther und Luthertum in der ersten
Entwickelung,_ 3 vols. (1904-1909), trans. into French by J. Pasquier
(1911-1912). The most available Catholic study of Luther's personality
and career is the scholarly work of Hartmann Grisar, _Luther,_ 3 vols.
(1911-1913), trans. from German into English by E. M. Lamond, 4 vols.
(1913-1915). _First Principles of the Reformation,_ ed. by Henry Wace
and C. A. Buchheim (1885), contains an English translation of Luther's
"Theses," and of his three pamphlets of 1520. The best edition of
Luther's complete works is the Weimar edition; English translations of
portions of his _Table Talk,_ by William Hazlitt, have appeared in the
Bonn Library; and _Luther's Correspondence and Other Contemporary
Letters_ is now (1916) in course of translation and publication by
Preserved Smith. J. W. Richard, _Philip Melanchthon_ (1898) is a brief
biography of one of the most famous friends and associates of Luther.
For the Protestant Revolt in Germany: E. F. Henderson, _A Short History
of Germany_ (1902), Vol. I, ch. x-xvi, a brief sketch of the political
and social background; Johannes Janssen, _History of the German
People,_ a monumental treatise on German social history just before and
during the revolt, scholarly and very favorable to the Catholic Church,
trans. into English by M. A. Mitchell and A. M. Christie, 16 vols.
(1896-1910); Gottlob Egelhaaf, _Deutsche Geschichte im sechzehnten
Jahrhundert bis zum Augsburger Religionsfrieden,_ 2 vols. (1889-1892),
a Protestant rejoinder to some of the Catholic Janssen's deductions;
Karl Lamprecht, _Deutsche Geschichte,_ Vol. V, Part I (1896),
suggestive philosophizing; Leopold von Ranke, _History of the
Reformation in Germany,_ Eng. trans., 3 vols., a careful study, coming
down in the original German to 1555, but stopping short in the English
form with the year 1534; Friedrich von Bezold, _Geschichte der
deutschen Reformation,_ 2 vols. (1886-1890), in the bulky Oncken
Series, voluminous and moderately Protestant in tone; J. J. I. von
Döllinger, _Die Reformation, ihre innere Entwicklung und ihre
Wirkungen,_ 3 vols. (1853-1854), pointing out the opposition of many
educated people of the sixteenth century to Luther; A. E. Berger, _Die
Kulturaufgaben der Reformation,_ 2d ed. (1908), a study of the cultural
aspects of the Lutheran movement, Protestant in tendency and opposed in
certain instances to the generalizations of Janssen and Döllinger; J.
S. Schapiro, _Social Reform and the Reformation_ (1909), a brief but
very suggestive treatment of some of the economic factors of the German
Reformation; H. C. Vedder, _The Reformation in Germany_ (1914),
likewise stressing economic factors, and sympathetic toward the
Anabaptists. For additional facts concerning the establishment of
Lutheranism in Scandinavia, see R. N. Bain, _Scandinavia, a Political
History of Denmark, Norway and Sweden from 1513 to 1900_ (1905), and
John Wordsworth (Bishop of Salisbury), _The National Church of Sweden_
(1911). Zwingli, Calvin, and Calvinism. The best biography of Zwingli
in English is that of S. M. Jackson (1901), who likewise has edited the
_Selected Works of Zwingli_; a more exhaustive biography in German is
Rudolf Stahelin, _Huldreich Zwingli: sein Leben und Wirken_, 2 vols.
(1895 1897). Biographies of Calvin: H. Y. Reyburn, _John Calvin: his
Life, Letters, and Work_ (1914); Williston Walker, John Calvin, the
Organizer of Reformed Protestantism (1906); Emile Doumergue, _Jean
Calvin: les hommes et les choses de son temps_, 4 vols. (1899-1910); L.
Penning, _Life and Times of Calvin_, trans. from Dutch by B. S.
Berrington (1912); William Barry, _Calvin_, in the "Catholic
Encyclopædia." Many of Calvin's writings have been published in English
translation by the "Presbyterian Board of Publication" in Philadelphia,
22 vols. in 52 (1844-1856), and his _Institutes of the Christian
Religion_ has several times been published in English. H. M. Baird,
_Theodore Beza_ (1899) is a popular biography of one of the best-known
friends and associates of Calvin. For Calvinism in Switzerland: W. D.
McCracken, _The Rise of the Swiss Republic_, 2d ed. (1901); F. W.
Kampschulte, _Johann Calvin, seine Kirche und sein Staat in Genf_, 2
vols. (1869-1899). For Calvinism in France: H. M. Baird, _History of
the Rise of the Huguenots of France_, 2 vols. (1879), and by the same
author, a warm partisan of Calvinism, _The Huguenots and Henry of
Navarre_, 2 vols. (1886); the brothers Haag, _France protestante_, 2d
ed., 10 vols. (1877-1895), an exhaustive history of Protestantism in
France; E. Lavisse (editor), _Histoire de France_, Vol. V, Livre IX, by
Henry Lemonnier (1904), most recent and best. For Calvinism in
Scotland: P. H. Brown, _John Knox, a Biography_, 2 vols. (1895); Andrew
Lang, _John Knox and the Reformation_ (1905); John Herkless and R. K.
Hannay, _The Archbishops of St. Andrews_, 4 vols. (1907-1913); D. H.
Fleming, _The Reformation in Scotland: its Causes, Characteristics, and
Consequences_ (1910); John Macpherson, _History of the Church in
Scotland_ (1901), ch. iii-v.

THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND. The eve of the revolution:
Frederic Seebohm, _The Oxford Reformers_, 3d ed. (1887), a sympathetic
treatment of Colet, Erasmus, and More; F. A. (Cardinal) Gasquet, _The
Eve of the Reformation in England_ (1899), and, by the same author, an
eminent Catholic scholar, _England under the Old Religion_ (1912).
General histories of the English Reformation: H. O. Wakeman, _An
Introduction to the History of the Church of England_, 8th ed. (1914),
ch. x-xiv, the best brief "High Church" survey; J. R. Green, _Short
History of the English People_, new illust. ed. by C. H. Firth (1913),
ch. vi, vii, a popular "Low Church" view; W. R. W. Stephens and William
Hunt (editors), _A History of the Church of England_, Vols. IV (1902)
and V (1904) by James Gairdner and W. H. Frere respectively; James
Gairdner, _Lollardy and the Reformation in England_, 4 vols. (1908-
1913), the last word of an eminent authority on the period, who was
convinced of the revolutionary character of the English Reformation;
John Lingard, _History of England to 1688_, Vols. IV-VI, the standard
Roman Catholic work; R. W. Dixon, _History of the Church of England
from the Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction_, 6 vols. (1878-1902), a
thorough treatment from the High Anglican position; H. W. Clark,
_History of English Nonconformity_, Vol. I (1911), Book I, valuable for
the history of the radical Protestants; Henry Gee and W. J. Hardy,
_Documents Illustrative of English Church History_ (1896), an admirable
collection of official pronouncements. Valuable special works and
monographs: C. B. Lumsden, _The Dawn of Modern England, being a History
of the Reformation in England, 1509-1525_ (1910), pronouncedly Roman
Catholic in tone; Martin Hume, _The Wives of Henry VIII_ (1905); F. A.
(Cardinal) Gasquet, _Henry VIII and the English Monasteries_, 3d ed., 2
vols. (1888), popular ed. in 1 vol. (1902); R. B. Merriman, _Life and
Letters of Thomas Cromwell_, 2 vols. (1902), a standard work; Dom Bede
Camm, _Lives of the English Martyrs_ (1904), with special reference to
Roman Catholics under Henry VIII; A. F. Pollard, [Footnote: See also
other works of A. F. Pollard listed in bibliography appended to Chapter
III, p. 110, above.] _Life of Cranmer_ (1904), scholarly and
sympathetic, and, by the same author, _England under Protector
Somerset_ (1900), distinctly apologetic; Frances Rose-Troup, _The
Western Rebellion of 1549_ (1913), a study of an unsuccessful popular
uprising against religious innovations; M. J. Stone, _Mary I, Queen of
England_ (1901), an apology for Mary Tudor; John Foxe (1516-1587),
_Acts and Monuments of the Church_, popularly known as the _Book of
Martyrs_, the chief contemporary account of the Marian persecutions,
uncritical and naturally strongly biased; R. G. Usher, _The
Reconstruction of the English Church_, 2 vols. (1910), a popular
account of the changes under Elizabeth and James I; H. N. Birt, _The
Elizabethan Religious Settlement_ (1907), from the Roman Catholic
standpoint; G. E. Phillips, _The Extinction of the Ancient Hierarchy,
an Account of the Death in Prison of the Eleven Bishops Honored at Rome
amongst the Martyrs of the Elizabethan Persecution_ (1905), also Roman
Catholic; A. O. Meyer, _England und die katholische Kirche unter
Elisabeth und den Stuarts_, Vol. I (1911), Eng. trans. by J. R. McKee
(1915), based in part on use of source-material in the Vatican Library;
Martin Hume, _Treason and Plot_ (1901), deals with the struggles of the
Roman Catholics for supremacy in the reign of Elizabeth; E. L. Taunton,
_The History of the Jesuits in England_, 1580-1773 (1901); Richard
Simpson, _Life of Campion_ (1867), an account of a devoted Jesuit who
suffered martyrdom under Elizabeth; Champlin Burrage, _The Early
English Dissenters in the Light of Recent Research, 1550-1641_, 2 vols.
(1912).

THE REFORMATION WITHIN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. Brief narratives: William
Barry, _The Papacy and Modern Times_ (1911), in "Home University
Library," ch. i-iii; A. W. Ward, _The Counter Reformation_ (1889) in
"Epochs of Church History" Series; _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. Ill
(1905), ch. xiii by Ugo (Count) Balzani on "Rome under Sixtus V."
Longer accounts: G. V. Jourdan, _The Movement towards Catholic Reform
in the Early Sixteenth Century, 1496-1536_ (1914); K. W. Maurenbrecher,
_Geschichte der katholischen Reformation_, Vol. I (1880), excellent
down to 1534 but never completed; J. A. Symonds, _Renaissance in
Italy_, Vols. VI and VII, _The Catholic Reaction_, replete with
inaccuracy, bias, and prejudice. The _Canons and Decrees of the Council
of Trent_ have been translated by J. Waterworth, new ed. (1896), and
the _Catechism of the Council of Trent_, by J. Donovan (1829). Nicholas
Hilling, _Procedure at the Roman Curia_, 2d ed. (1909), contains a
concise account of the "congregations" and other reformed agencies of
administration introduced into church government in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The famous _Autobiography of St. Ignatius
Loyola_ has been trans. and ed. by J. F. X. O'Conor (1900), and the
text of his _Spiritual Exercises_, trans. from Spanish into English,
has been published by Joseph Rickaby (1915). See Stewart Rose (Lady
Buchan), _St. Ignatius Loyola and the Early Jesuits_, ed. by W. H. Eyre
(1891); Francis Thompson, _Life of Saint Ignatius_ (1910); T. A.
Hughes, _Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits_ (1892).
Monumental national histories of the Jesuits are now (1916) appearing
under the auspices of the Order: for Germany, by Bernhard Duhr, Vol. I
(1907), Vol. II (1913); for Italy, by Pietro Tacchi Venturi, Vol. I
(1910); for France, by Henri Fouqueray, Vol. I (1910), Vol. II (1913);
for Paraguay, by Pablo Pastells, Vol. I (1912); for North America, by
Thomas Hughes, 3 vols. (1907-1910); for Spain, by Antonio Astrain,
Vols. I-IV (1902-1913). Concerning the Index, see G. H. Putnam, _The
Censorship of the Church of Rome and its Influence upon the Production
and Distribution of Literature_, 2 vols. (1907). On the Inquisition,
see H. C. Lea, _A History of the Inquisition of Spain_, 4 vols. (1907),
and, by the same author, _The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies_
(1908), on the whole a dark picture; and, for a Catholic account,
Elphège Vacandard, _The Inquisition: a Critical and Historical Study of
the Coercive Power of the Church_, trans. by B. L. Conway (1908).

FOR THE OUTCOME OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLT AND THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION
FROM THE THEOLOGICAL STANDPOINT, see Adolph Harnack, _History of
Dogma_, Eng. trans., Vol. VII (1900). Charles Beard, _The Reformation
of the Sixteenth Century in its Relation to Modern Thought and
Knowledge_ (1883) is a strongly Protestant estimate of the significance
of the whole movement. J. Balmes, _European Civilization: Protestantism
and Catholicity Compared in their Effects on the Civilization of
Europe_ (1850), though old, is a suggestive résumé from the Catholic
standpoint.




CHAPTER V

THE CULTURE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY


[Sidenote: "Culture"]

"Culture" is a word generally used to denote learning and refinement in
manners and art. The development of culture--the acquisition of new
knowledge and the creation of beautiful things--is ordinarily the work
of a comparatively small number of scientists and artists. Now if in
any particular period or among any special people, we find a relatively
larger group of intellectual leaders who succeed in establishing an
important educated class and in making permanent contributions to the
civilization of posterity, then we say that it is a cultured century or
a cultured nation.

[Sidenote: Greek Culture]

All races and all generations have had some kind of culture, but within
the recorded history of humanity, certain peoples and certain centuries
stand out most distinctly as influencing its evolution. Thus, the
Greeks of the fourth and fifth centuries before Christ gathered
together and handed down to us all manner of speculation about the
nature of the universe, all manner of hypothetical answers to the
eternal questions--Whence do we come, What are we doing, Where do we
go?--and this was the foundation of modern philosophy and metaphysics.
From the same Greeks came our geometry and the rudiments of our
sciences of astronomy and medicine. It was they who gave us the model
for nearly every form of literature--dramatic, epic, and lyric poetry,
dialogues, oratory, history--and in their well-proportioned temples, in
their balanced columns and elaborate friezes, in their marble
chiselings of the perfect human form, they fashioned for us forever the
classical expression of art.

[Sidenote: Roman Culture]

Still in ancient times, the Romans developed classical architecture in
the great triumphal arches and in the high-domed public buildings which
strewed their empire. They adapted the fine forms of Greek literature
to their own more pompous, but less subtle, Latin language. They
devised a code of law and a legal system which made them in a real
sense the teachers of order and the founders of the modern study of
law.

[Sidenote: Mohammedan Culture]

The Mohammedans, too, at the very time when the Christians of western
Europe were neglecting much of the ancient heritage, kept alive the
traditions of Greek philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine.
From eastern Asia they borrowed algebra, the Arabic numerals, and the
compass, and, in their own great cities of Bagdad, Damascus, and
Cordova, they themselves developed the curiously woven curtains and
rugs, the strangely wrought blades and metallic ornaments, the
luxurious dwellings and graceful minarets which distinguish Arabic or
Mohammedan art.

[Sidenote: Medieval Culture]

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries--the height of the middle ages
--came a wonderful outburst of intellectual and artistic activity.
Under the immediate auspices of the Catholic Church it brought forth
abundantly a peculiarly Christian culture. Renewed acquaintance with
Greek philosophy, especially with that of Aristotle, was joined with a
lively religious faith to produce the so called scholastic philosophy
and theology. Great institutions of higher learning--the universities--
were now founded, in which centered the revived study not only of
philosophy but of law and medicine as well, and over which appeared the
first cloud-wrapped dawn of modern experimental science. And side by
side with the sonorous Latin tongue, which long continued to be used by
scholars, were formed the vernacular languages--German, English,
French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.--that gave a wealth of
variety to reviving popular literature. Majestic cathedrals with
pointed arch and flying buttress, with lofty spire and delicate
tracery, wonderful wood carvings, illuminated manuscripts, quaint
gargoyles, myriad statues of saints and martyrs, delicately colored
paintings of surpassing beauty--all betokened the great Christian, or
Gothic, art of the middle ages.

[Sidenote: New Elements in Culture of Sixteenth Century]

The educated person of the sixteenth century was heir to all these
cultural periods: intellectually and artistically he was descended from
Greeks, Romans, Mohammedans, and his medieval Christian forbears. But
the sixteenth century itself added cultural contributions to the
original store, which help to explain not only the social, political,
and ecclesiastical activities of that time but also many of our
present-day actions and ideas. The essentially new factors in
sixteenth-century culture may be reckoned as (1) the diffusion of
knowledge as a result of the invention of printing; (2) the development
of literary criticism by means of humanism; (3) a golden age of
painting and architecture; (4) the flowering of national literature;
(5) the beginnings of modern natural science.


THE INVENTION OF PRINTING

The present day is notably distinguished by the prevalence of enormous
numbers of printed books, periodicals, and newspapers. Yet this very
printing, which seems so commonplace to us now, has had, in all, but a
comparatively brief existence. From the earliest recorded history up to
less than five hundred years ago every book in Europe [Footnote: For an
account of early printing in China, Japan, and Korea, see the informing
article "Typography" in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 11th
edition, Vol. XXVII, p. 510.] was laboriously written by hand,
[Footnote: It is interesting to note the meaning of our present word
"manuscript," which is derived from the Latin--_manu scriptum_
("written by hand").] and, although copyists acquired an astonishing
swiftness in reproducing books, libraries of any size were the property
exclusively of rich institutions or wealthy individuals. It was at the
beginning of modern times that the invention of printing revolutionized
intellectual history.

Printing is an extremely complicated process, and it is small wonder
that centuries of human progress elapsed before its invention was
complete. Among the most essential elements of the perfected process
are _movable type_ with which the impression is made, and
_paper_, on which it is made. A few facts may be conveniently
culled from the long involved story of the development of each of these
elements.

[Sidenote: Development of paper]

For their manuscripts the Greeks and Romans had used papyrus, the
prepared fiber of a tough reed which grew in the valley of the Nile
River. This papyrus was very expensive and heavy, and not at all
suitable for printing. Parchment, the dressed skins of certain animals,
especially sheep, which became the standard material for the hand-
written documents of the middle ages, was extremely durable, but like
papyrus, it was costly, unwieldy, and ill adapted for printing.

The forerunner of modern European paper was probably that which the
Chinese made from silk as early as the second century before Christ.
For silk the Mohammedans at Mecca and Damascus in the middle of the
eighth century appear to have substituted cotton, and this so-called
Damascus paper was later imported into Greece and southern Italy and
into Spain. In the latter country the native-grown hemp and flax were
again substituted for cotton, and the resulting linen paper was used
considerably in Castile in the thirteenth century and thence penetrated
across the Pyrenees into France and gradually all over western and
central Europe. Parchment, however, for a long time kept its
preeminence over silk, cotton, or linen paper, because of its greater
firmness and durability, and notaries were long forbidden to use any
other substance in their official writings. Not until the second half
of the fifteenth century was assured the triumph of modern paper,
[Footnote: The word "paper" is derived from the ancient "papyrus."] as
distinct from papyrus or parchment, when printing, then on the
threshold of its career, demanded a substance of moderate price that
would easily receive the impression of movable type.

[Sidenote: Development of Movable Type]

The idea of movable type was derived from an older practice of carving
reverse letters or even whole inscriptions upon blocks of wood so that
when they were inked and applied to writing material they would leave a
clear impression. Medieval kings and princes frequently had their
signatures cut on these blocks of wood or metal, in order to impress
them on charters, and a kind of engraving was employed to reproduce
pictures or written pages as early as the twelfth century.

It was a natural but slow evolution from block-impressing to the
practice of casting individual letters in separate little pieces of
metal, all of the same height and thickness, and then arranging them in
any desired sequence for printing. The great advantage of movable type
over the blocks was the infinite variety of work which could be done by
simply setting and resetting the type.

The actual history of the transition from the use of blocks to movable
type--the real invention of modern printing--is shrouded in a good deal
of mystery and dispute. It now appears likely that by the year 1450, an
obscure Lourens Coster of the Dutch town of Haarlem had devised movable
type, that Coster's invention was being utilized by a certain Johan
Gutenberg in the German city of Mainz, and that improvements were being
added by various other contemporaries. Papal letters of indulgence and
a version of the Bible, both printed in 1454, are the earliest
monuments of the new art.

Slowly evolved, the marvelous art, once thoroughly developed, spread
with almost lightning rapidity from Mainz throughout the Germanics, the
Italian states, France, and England,--in fact, throughout all Christian
Europe. It was welcomed by scholars and applauded by popes. Printing
presses were erected at Rome in 1466, and book-publishing speedily
became an honorable and lucrative business in every large city. Thus,
at the opening of the sixteenth century, the scholarly Aldus Manutius
was operating in Venice the famous Aldine press, whose beautiful
editions of the Greek and Latin classics are still esteemed as
masterpieces of the printer's art.

The early printers fashioned the characters of their type after the
letters that the scribes had used in long-hand writing. Different kinds
of common hand-writing gave rise, therefore, to such varieties of type
as the heavy black-faced Gothic that prevailed in the Germanics or the
several adaptations of the clear, neat Roman characters which
predominated in southern Europe and in England. The compressed "italic"
type was devised in the Aldine press in Venice to enable the publisher
to crowd more words upon a page.

[Sidenote: Results of Invention of Printing]

A constant development of the new art characterized the sixteenth
century, and at least three remarkable results became evident. (1)
There was an almost incalculable increase in the supply of books. Under
earlier conditions, a skilled and conscientious copyist might, by
prodigious toil, produce two books in a year. Now, in a single year of
the sixteenth century, some 24,000 copies of one of Erasmus's books
were struck off by one printing press.

(2) This indirectly increased the demand for books. By lessening the
expense of books and enabling at least all members of the middle class,
as well as nobles and princes, to possess private libraries, printing
became the most powerful means of diffusing knowledge and broadening
education.

(3) A greater degree of accuracy was guaranteed by printing than by
manual copying. Before the invention of printing, it was well-nigh
impossible to secure two copies of any work that would be exactly
alike. Now, the constant proof-reading and the fact that an entire
edition was printed from the same type were securities against the
anciently recurring faults of forgery or of error.


HUMANISM

Printing, the invention of which has just been described, was the new
vehicle of expression for the ideas of the sixteenth century. These
ideas centered in something which commonly is called "humanism." To
appreciate precisely what humanism means--to understand the dominant
intellectual interests of the educated people of the sixteenth century
--it will be necessary first to turn back some two hundred years
earlier and say a few words about the first great humanist, Francesco
Petrarca, or, as he is known to us, Petrarch.

[Sidenote: Petrarch, "the Father of Humanism"]

The name of Petrarch, who flourished in the fourteenth century (1304-
1374), has been made familiar to most of us by sentimentalists or by
literary scholars who in the one case have pitied his loves and his
passions or in the other have admired the grace and form of his Italian
sonnets. But to the student of history Petrarch has seemed even more
important as the reflection, if not the source, of a brilliant
intellectual movement, which, taking rise in his century, was to grow
in brightness in the fifteenth and flood the sixteenth with resplendent
light.

In some respects Petrarch was a typical product of the fourteenth
century. He was in close touch with the great medieval Christian
culture of his day. He held papal office at Avignon in France. He was
pious and "old-fashioned" in many of his religious views, especially in
his dislike for heretics. Moreover, he wrote what he professed to be
his best work in Latin and expressed naught but contempt for the new
Italian language, which, under the immortal Dante, had already acquired
literary polish. [Footnote: Ironically enough, it was not his Latin
writings but his beautiful Italian sonnets, of which he confessed to be
ashamed, that have preserved the popular fame of Petrarch to the
present day.] He showed no interest in natural science or in the
physical world about him--no sympathy for any novelty.

Yet despite a good deal of natural conservatism, Petrarch added one
significant element to the former medieval culture. That was an
appreciation, amounting almost to worship, of the pagan Greek and Latin
literature. Nor was he interested in antique things because they
supported his theology or inculcated Christian morals; his fondness for
them was simply and solely because they were inherently interesting. In
a multitude of polished Latin letters and in many of his poems, as well
as by daily example and precept to his admiring contemporaries, he
preached the revival of the classics.

[Sidenote: Characteristics of Petrarch's Humanism]

This one obsessing idea of Petrarch carried with it several corollaries
which constituted the essence of humanism and profoundly affected
European thought for several generations after the Italian poet. They
may be enumerated as follows:

(1) Petrarch felt as no man had felt since pagan days the pleasure of
mere human life,--the "joy of living." This, he believed, was not in
opposition to the Christian religion, although it contradicted the
basis of ascetic life. He remained a Catholic Christian, but he
assailed the monks.

(2) Petrarch possessed a confidence in himself, which in the constant
repetition in his writings of first-person pronouns partook of
boastfulness. He replaced a reliance upon Divine Providence by a sense
of his own human ability and power.

(3) Petrarch entertained a clear notion of a living bond between
himself and men of like sort in the ancient world. Greek and Roman
civilization was to him no dead and buried antiquity, but its poets and
thinkers lived again as if they were his neighbors. His love for the
past amounted almost to an ecstatic enthusiasm.

(4) Petrarch tremendously influenced his contemporaries. He was no
local, or even national, figure. He was revered and respected as "the
scholar of Europe." Kings vied with each other in heaping benefits upon
him. The Venetian senate gave him the freedom of the city. Both the
University of Paris and the municipality of Rome crowned him with
laurel.

[Sidenote: "Humanism" and the "Humanities"; Definitions]

The admirers and disciples of Petrarch were attracted by the fresh and
original human ideas of life with which such classical writers as
Virgil, Horace, and Cicero overflowed. This new-found charm the
scholars called humanity (_Humanitas_) and themselves they styled
"humanists." Their studies, which comprised the Greek and Latin
languages and literatures, and, incidentally, profane history, were the
humanities or "letters" (_litterae humaniores_), and the pursuit
of them was humanism.

Petrarch himself was a serious Latin scholar but knew Greek quite
indifferently. About the close of his century, however, Greek teachers
came in considerable numbers from Constantinople and Greece across the
Adriatic to Italy, and a certain Chrysoloras set up an influential
Greek school at Florence. [Footnote: This was before the capture of
Constantinople by the Turks in 1453.] Thenceforth, the study of both
Latin and Greek went on apace. Monasteries were searched for old
manuscripts; libraries for the classics were established; many an
ancient masterpiece, long lost, was now recovered and treasured as fine
gold. [Footnote: It was during this time that long-lost writings of
Tacitus, Cicero, Quintilian, Plautus, Lucretius, etc., were
rediscovered.]

[Sidenote: Humanism and Christianity]

At first, humanism met with some opposition from ardent churchmen who
feared that the revival of pagan literature might exert an unwholesome
influence upon Christianity. But gradually the humanists came to be
tolerated and even encourage, until several popes, notably Julius II
and Leo X at the opening of the sixteenth century, themselves espoused
the cause of humanism. The father of Leo X was the celebrated Lorenzo
de' Medici, who subsidized humanists and established the great
Florentine library of Greek and Latin classics; and the pope proved
himself at once the patron and exemplar of the new learning: he enjoyed
music and the theater, art and poetry, the masterpieces of the ancients
and the creations of his humanistic contemporaries, the spiritual and
the witty--life in every form.

[Sidenote: Spread of Humanism]

The zeal for humanism reached its highest pitch in Italy in the
fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth, but it gradually
gained entrance into other countries and at length became the
intellectual spirit of sixteenth-century Europe. Greek was first taught
both in England and in France about the middle of the fifteenth
century. The Italian expeditions of the French kings Charles VIII,
Louis XII, and Francis I, 1494-1547, served to familiarize Frenchmen
with humanism. And the rise of important new German universities called
humanists to the Holy Roman Empire. As has been said, humanism
dominated all Christian Europe in the sixteenth century.

[Sidenote: Erasmus, Chief Humanist of the Sixteenth Century]

Towering above all his contemporaries was Erasmus, the foremost
humanist and the intellectual arbiter of the sixteenth century. Erasmus
(1466-1536) was a native of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, but
throughout a long and studious life he lived in Germany, France,
England, Italy, and Switzerland. He took holy orders in the Church and
secured the degree of doctor of sacred theology, but it was as a lover
of books and a prolific writer that he earned his title to fame.
Erasmus, to an even greater degree than Petrarch, became a great
international figure--the scholar of Europe. He corresponded with every
important writer of his generation, and he was on terms of personal
friendship with Aldus Manutius, the famous publisher of Venice, with
Sir Thomas More, the distinguished statesman and scholar of England,
with Pope Leo X, with Francis I of France, and with Henry VIII of
England. For a time he presided at Paris over the new College of
France.

A part of the work of Erasmus--his Greek edition of the New Testament
and his _Praise of Folly_--has already been mentioned. In a series
of satirical dialogues--the _Adages_ and the _Colloquies_--he
displayed a brilliant intellect and a sparkling wit. With quip and jest
he made light of the ignorance and credulity of many clergymen,
especially of the monks. He laughed at every one, himself included.
"Literary people," said he, "resemble the great figured tapestries of
Flanders, which produce effect only when seen from the distance."

[Sidenote: Humanism and Protestantism]

At first Erasmus was friendly with Luther, but as he strongly
disapproved of rebellion against the Church, he subsequently assailed
Luther and the whole Protestant movement. He remained outside the group
of radical reformers, to the end devoted to his favorite authors,
simply a lover of good Latin.

Perhaps the chief reason why Erasmus opposed Protestantism was because
he imagined that the theological tempest which Luther aroused all over
Catholic Europe would destroy fair-minded scholarship--the very essence
of humanism. Be that as it may, the leading humanists of Europe--More
in England, Helgesen in Denmark, and Erasmus himself--remained
Catholic. And while many of the sixteenth-century humanists of Italy
grew skeptical regarding all religion, their country, as we have seen,
did not become Protestant but adhered to the Roman Church.

[Sidenote: Decline of Humanism]

Gradually, as the sixteenth century advanced, many persons who in an
earlier generation would have applied their minds to the study of Latin
or Greek, now devoted themselves to theological discussion or moral
exposition. The religious differences between Catholics and
Protestants, to say nothing of the refinements of dispute between
Calvinists and Lutherans or Presbyterians and Congregationalists,
absorbed much of the mental energy of the time and seriously distracted
the humanists. In fact, we may say that, from the second half of the
sixteenth century, humanism as an independent intellectual interest
slowly but steadily declined. Nevertheless, it was not lost, for it was
merged with other interests, and with them has been preserved ever
since.

Humanism, whose seed was sown by Petrarch in the fourteenth century and
whose fruit was plucked by Erasmus in the sixteenth, still lives in
higher education throughout Europe and America. The historical
"humanities"--Latin, Greek, and history--are still taught in college
and in high school. They constitute the contribution of the dominant
intellectual interest of the sixteenth century.


ART IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

[Sidenote: Humanism and the Renaissance of Art]

The effect of the revived interest in Greek and Roman culture, which,
as we have seen, dominated European thought from the fourteenth to the
sixteenth century, was felt not only in literature and in the outward
life of its devotees--in ransacking monasteries for lost manuscripts
scripts, in critically studying ancient learning, and in consciously
imitating antique behavior--but likewise in a marvelous and many-sided
development of art.

The art of the middle ages had been essentially Christian--it sprang
from the doctrine and devotions of the Catholic Church and was
inextricably bound up with Christian life. The graceful Gothic
cathedrals, pointing their roofs and airy spires in heavenly
aspiration, the fantastic and mysterious carvings of wood or stone, the
imaginative portraiture of saintly heroes and heroines as well as of
the sublime story of the fall and redemption of the human race, the
richly stained glass, and the spiritual organ music--all betokened the
supreme thought of medieval Christianity. But humanism recalled to
men's minds the previous existence of an art simpler and more
restrained, if less ethereal. The reading of Greek and Latin writers
heightened an esteem for pagan culture in all its phases.

Therefore, European art underwent a transformation in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. While much of the distinctively medieval culture
remained, civilization was enriched by a revival of classical art. The


 


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