The Age of the Reformation (2024)

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by

PRESERVED SMITH, Ph.D.

New York
Henry Holt and Company

American Historical Series
General Editor
Charles H. Haskins
Professor of History in Harvard University

Copyright, 1920
by
Henry Holt and Company

VITÂ CARIORI FILIOLAE PRISCILLAE SACRUM

PREFACE

The excuse for writing another history of the Reformation is the needfor putting that movement in its proper relations to the economic andintellectual revolutions of the sixteenth century. The labor of lovenecessary for the accomplishment of this task has employed most of myleisure for the last six years and has been my companion throughvicissitudes of sorrow and of joy. A large part of the pleasurederived from the task has come from association with friends who havegenerously put their time and thought at my disposal. First of all,Professor Charles H. Haskins, of Harvard, having read the whole inmanuscript and in proof with care, has thus given me the unstintedbenefit of his deep learning, and of his ripe and sane judgment. Nextto him the book owes most to my kind friend, the Rev. Professor WilliamWalker Rockwell, of Union Seminary, who has added to the many otherfavors he has done me a careful revision of Chapters I to VIII, ChapterXIV, and a part of Chapter IX. Though unknown to me personally, theRev. Dr. Peter Guilday, of the Catholic University of Washington,consented, with gracious, characteristic urbanity, to read Chapters VIand VIII and a part of Chapter I. I am grateful to Professor N. S. B.Gras, of the University of Minnesota, for reading that part of the bookdirectly concerned with economics (Chapter XI and a part of Chapter X);and to Professor Frederick A. Saunders, of Harvard, for a like servicein technical revision of the section on science in Chapter XII. Whileacknowledging with hearty thanks the priceless services of theseeminent scholars, it is only fair to relieve them of all responsibilityfor any rash statements that may have escaped their scrutiny, as wellas for any conclusions from which they might dissent.

For information about manuscripts and rare books in Europe my thanksare due to my kind friends: Mr. P. S. Allen, Librarian of MertonCollege, Oxford, the so successful editor of Erasmus's Epistles; andProfessor Carrington Lancaster, of Johns Hopkins University. Toseveral libraries I owe much for the use of books. My friend,Professor Robert S. Fletcher, Librarian of Amherst College, has oftensent me volumes from that excellent store of books. My sister,Professor Winifred Smith, of Vassar College, has added to many lovingservices, this: that during my four years at Poughkeepsie, I wasenabled to use the Vassar library. For her good offices, as well asfor the kindness of the librarian, Miss Amy Reed, my thanks. Myfather, the Rev. Dr. Henry Preserved Smith, professor and librarian atUnion Theological Seminary, has often sent me rare books from thatlibrary; nor can I mention this, the least of his favors, withoutadding that I owe to him much both of the inspiration to follow and ofthe means to pursue a scholar's career. My thanks are also due to thelibraries of Columbia and Cornell for the use of books. But the workcould not easily have been done at all without the facilities offeredby the Harvard Library. When I came to Cambridge to enjoy the richesof this storehouse, I found the great university not less hospitable tothe stranger within her gates than she is prolific in great sons.After I was already deep in debt to the librarian, Mr. W. C. Lane, andto many of the professors, a short period in the service of Harvard, aslecturer in history, has made me feel that I am no longer a stranger,but that I can count myself, in some sort, one of her citizens andfoster sons, at least a dimidiatus alumnus.

This book owes more to my wife than even she perhaps quite realizes.Not only has it been her study, since our marriage, to give me freedomfor my work, but her literary advice, founded on her own experience aswriter and critic, has been of the highest value, and she has carefullyread the proofs.

PRESERVED SMITH.

Cambridge,
Massachusetts,
May 16, 1920.

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER I. THE OLD AND THE NEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1. The World. Economic changes in the later Middle Ages. Rise of thebourgeoisie. Nationalism. Individualism. Inventions. Printing.Exploration. Universities.

2. The Church. The papacy. The Councils of Constance and Basle.Savonarola.

3. Causes of the Reformation. Corruption of the church not a maincause. Condition of the church. Indulgences. Growth of a new type oflay piety. Clash of the new spirit with old ideals.

4. The Mystics. The German Theology. Tauler. The Imitation ofChrist.

5. The Pre-reformers. Waldenses. Occam. Wyclif. Huss.

6. Nationalizing the churches. The Ecclesia Anglicana. The GallicanChurch. German church. The Gravamina.

7. The Humanists. Valla. Pico della Mirandola. Lefèvre d'Étaples.Colet. Reuchlin. Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum. Hutten. Erasmus.

CHAPTER II. GERMANY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

1. The Leader. Luther's early life. Justification by faith only.The Ninety-five Theses. The Leipzig Debate. Revolutionary Pamphletsof 1520.

2. The Revolution. Condition of Germany. Maximilian I. Charles V.
The bull Exsurge Domine burned by Luther. Luther at Worms and in the
Wartburg. Turmoil of the radicals. The Revolt of the Knights.
Efforts at Reform at the Diets of Nuremberg 1522-4. The Peasants'
Revolt: economic causes, propaganda, course of the war, suppression.

3. Formation of the Protestant Party. Defection of the radicals: theAnabaptists. Defection of the intellectuals: Erasmus. TheSacramentarian Schism: Zwingli. Growth of the Lutheran party among theupper and middle classes. Luther's ecclesiastical polity. Accessionof many Free Cities, of Ernestine Saxony, Hesse, Prussia. Balance ofPower. The Recess of Spires 1529; the Protest.

4. Growth of Protestantism until the death of Luther. Diet of Augsburg1530: the Confession. Accessions to the Protestant cause. Religiousnegotiations. Luther's last years, death and character.

5. Religious War and Religious Peace. The Schmalkaldic War. TheInterim. The Peace of Augsburg 1555. Catholic reaction and Protestantschisms.

6. Note on Scandinavia, Poland and Hungary.

CHAPTER III. SWITZERLAND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

1. Zwingli. The Swiss Confederacy. Preparation for the Reformation.Zwingli's early life. Reformation at Zurich. Defeat of Cappel.

2. Calvin. Farel. Calvin's early life. The Institutes of theChristian Religion. Reformation at Geneva. Theocracy. TheLibertines. Servetus. Character and influence of Calvin.

CHAPTER IV. FRANCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

1. Renaissance and Reformation. Condition of France. Francis I. Warwith Charles. The Christian Renaissance. Lutheranism. Defection ofthe humanists.

2. The Calvinist Party. Henry II. Expansion of France. Growth andpersecution of Calvinism.

3. The Wars of Religion. Catharine de' Médicis. Massacre of Vassy.The Huguenot rebellion. Massacre of St. Bartholomew. The League.Henry IV. Edict of Nantes. Failure of Protestantism to conquer France.

CHAPTER V. THE NETHERLANDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

1. The Lutheran Reform. The Burgundian State. Origins of theReformation. Persecution. The Anabaptists.

2. The Calvinist Revolt. National feeling against Spain. Financialdifficulties of Philip II. Egmont and William of Orange. The newbishoprics. The Compromise. The "Beggars." Alva's reign of terror.Requesens. Siege of Leyden. The Revolt of the North. Division of theNetherlands. Farnese. The Dutch Republic.

CHAPTER VI. ENGLAND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277

1. Henry VIII and the National Church. Character of Henry VIII.Foreign policy. Wolsey. Early Lutheranism. Tyndale's NewTestament. Tracts. Anticlerical feeling. Divorce of Catharine ofAragon. The Submission of the Clergy. The Reformation Parliament1520-30. Act in Restraint of Appeals. Act of Succession. Act ofSupremacy. Cranmer. Execution of More. Thomas Cromwell. Dissolutionof the monasteries. Union of England and Wales. Alliance with theSchmalkaldic League. Articles of Faith. The Pilgrimage of Grace.Catholic reaction. War. Bankruptcy.

2. The Reformation under Edward VI. Somerset Regent. Repeal of thetreason and heresy laws. Rapid growth of Protestant opinion. The Bookof Common Prayer. Social disorders. Conspiracy of Northumberland andSuffolk.

3. The Catholic reaction under Mary. Proclamation of Queen Jane.Accession and policy of Mary. Repeal of Reforming Acts. Revival ofTreason Laws. The Protestant Martyrs.

4. The Elizabethan Settlement 1558-88. Policy of Elizabeth.Respective numbers of Catholics and Protestants. Conversion of themasses. The Thirty-nine Articles. The Church of England. Underhandwar with Spain. Rebellion of the Northern Earls. Execution of MaryStuart. The Armada. The Puritans.

5. Ireland.

CHAPTER VII. SCOTLAND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350

Backward condition of Scotland. Relations with England. Cardinal
Beaton. John Knox. Battle of Pinkie. Knox in Scotland. The Common
Band. Iconoclasm. Treaty of Edinburgh. The Religious Revolution.
Confession of Faith. Queen Mary's crimes and deposition. Results of
the Reformation.

CHAPTER VIII. THE COUNTER-REFORMATION . . . . . . . . . . 371

1. Italy. The pagan Renaissance; the Christian Renaissance. SporadicLutheranism.

2. The Papacy 1521-90. The Sack of Rome. Reforms.

3. The Council of Trent. First Period (1545-7). Second Period(1551-2). Third Period (1562-3). Results.

4. The Company of Jesus. New monastic orders. Loyola. The SpiritualExercises. Rapid growth and successes of the Jesuits. Their finalfailure.

5. The Inquisition and the Index. The medieval Inquisition. TheSpanish Inquisition. The Roman Inquisition. Censorship of the press.The Index of Prohibited Books.

CHAPTER IX. THE IBERIAN PENINSULA AND THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425

1. Spain. Unification of Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella. Charles
V. Revolts of the Communes and of the Hermandad. Constitution of
Spain. The Spanish empire. Philip II. The war with the Moriscos.
The Armada.

2. Exploration. Columbus. Conquest of Mexico and of Peru.Circumnavigation of the globe. Portuguese exploration to the East.Brazil. Decadence of Portugal. Russia. The Turks.

CHAPTER X. SOCIAL CONDITIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451

1. Population.

2. Wealth and Prices. Increase of wealth in modern times. Prices andwages in the Sixteenth Century. Value of money. Trend of prices.

3. Social Institutions. The monarchy, the Council of state, theParliament. Public finance. Maintenance of Order. Sumptuary laws and"blue laws." The army. The navy.

4. Private life and manners. The nobility; the professions; theclergy. The city, the house, dress, food, drink. Sports. Manners.Morals. Position of Women. Health.

CHAPTER XI. THE CAPITALISTIC REVOLUTION . . . . . . . . . 515

1. The Rise of the Power of Money. Rise of capitalism. Banking.Mining. Commerce. Manufacture. Agriculture.

2. The Rise of the Money Power. Ascendancy of the bourgeoisie over thenobility, clergy, and proletariat. Class wars. Regulation of Labor.Pauperism.

CHAPTER XII. MAIN CURRENTS OF THOUGHT . . . . . . . . . 563

1. Biblical and classical scholarship. Greek and Hebrew Bibles.Translations. The classics. The vernaculars.

2. History. Humanistic history and church history.

3. Political theory. The state as power: Machiavelli. Constitutionalliberty: Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, Hotman, Mornay, Bodin, Buchanan.Radicals: the Utopia.

4. Science. Inductive method. Mathematics. Zoölogy. Anatomy.Physics. Geography. Astronomy; Copernicus. Reform of the calendar.

5. Philosophy. The Catholic and Protestant thinkers. Skeptics.Effect of the Copernican theory: Bruno.

CHAPTER XIII. THE TEMPER OF THE TIMES . . . . . . . . . 641

1. Tolerance and Intolerance. Effect of the Renaissance andReformation.

2. Witchcraft. Causes of the mania. Protests against it.

3. Education. Schools. Effect of the Reformation. Universities.

4. Art. The ideals expressed. Painting. Architecture. Music.Effect of the Reformation and Counter-reformation.

5. Reading. Number of books. Typical themes. Greatness of theSixteenth Century.

CHAPTER XIV. THE REFORMATION INTERPRETED . . . . . . . 699

1. The Religious and Political Interpretations. Burnet, Bossuet,Sleidan, Sarpi.

2. The Rationalist Critique. Montesquieu, Voltaire, Robertson, Hume,Gibbon, Goethe, Lessing.

3. The Liberal-Romantic Appreciation. Heine, Michelet, Froude, Hegel,Ranke, Buckle.

4. The Economic and Evolutionary Interpretations. Marx, Lamprecht,Berger, Weber, Nietzsche, Troeltsch, Santayana, Harnack, Beard,Janssen, Pastor, Acton.

5. Concluding Estimate.

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 751

INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 819

{3}

THE AGE OF THE REFORMATION

CHAPTER I

THE OLD AND THE NEW

SECTION 1. THE WORLD.

Though in some sense every age is one of transition and everygeneration sees the world remodelled, there sometimes comes a change sostartling and profound that it seems like the beginning of a new seasonin the world's great year. The snows of winter melt for weeks, thecold winds blow and the cool rains fall, and we see no change until,almost within a few days, the leaves and blossoms put forth theirverdure, and the spring has come.

Such a change in man's environment and habits as the world has rarelyseen, took place in the generation that reached early manhood in theyear 1500. [Sidenote: 1483-1546] In the span of a single life—forconvenience let us take that of Luther for our measure—men discovered,not in metaphor but in sober fact, a new heaven and a new earth. Inthose days masses of men began to read many books, multiplied by thenew art of printing. In those days immortal artists shot the worldthrough with a matchless radiance of color and of meaning. In thosedays Vasco da Gama and Columbus and Magellan opened the watery ways tonew lands beyond the seven seas. In those days Copernicus establishedthe momentous truth that the earth was but a tiny planet spinningaround a vastly greater sun. In those days was in large partaccomplished the economic shift from medieval gild to modern productionby capital and wages. In those days wealth was piled up in the coffersof the merchants, and a new power was {4} given to the life of theindividual, of the nation, and of the third estate. In those days themonarchy of the Roman church was broken, and large portions of herdominions seceded to form new organizations, governed by other powersand animated by a different spirit.

[Sidenote: Antecedents of the Reformation]

Other generations have seen one revolution take place at a time, thesixteenth century saw three, the Rise of Capitalism, the end of theRenaissance, and the beginning of the Reformation. All three,interacting, modifying each other, conflicting as they sometimes did,were equally the consequences, in different fields, of antecedentchanges in man's circumstances. All life is an adaptation toenvironment; and thus from every alteration in the conditions in whichman lives, usually made by his discovery of new resources or ofhitherto unknown natural laws, a change in his habits of life mustflow. Every revolution is but an adjustment to a fresh situation,intellectual or material, or both.

[Sidenote: Economic]

Certainly, economic and psychological factors were alike operative inproducing the three revolutions. The most general economic force wasthe change from "natural economy" to "money economy," i.e. from asociety in which payments were made chiefly by exchange of goods, andby services, to one in which money was both the agent of exchange andstandard of value. In the Middle Ages production had been largelyco-operative; the land belonged to the village and was apportioned outto each husbandman to till, or to all in common for pasture.Manufacture and commerce were organized by the gild—a society ofequals, with the same course of labor and the same reward for each, andwith no distinction save that founded on seniority—apprentice,workman, master-workman. But {5} in the later Middle Ages, and morerapidly at their close, this system broke down under the necessity forlarger capital in production and the possibility of supplying it by theincrease of wealth and of banking technique that made possibleinvestment, rapid turn-over of capital, and corporate partnership. Theincrease of wealth and the changed mode of its production has been inlarge part the cause of three developments which in their turn becamecauses of revolution: the rise of the bourgeoisie, of nationalism, andof individualism.

[Sidenote: The bourgeoisie]

Just as the nobles were wearing away in civil strife and were seeingtheir castles shot to pieces by cannon, just as the clergy were wastingin supine indolence and were riddled by the mockery of humanists, therearose a new class, eager and able to take the helm of civilization, themoneyed men of city and of trade. Nouveaux riches as they were, theyhad an appetite for pleasure and for ostentation unsurpassed by any, alove for the world and an impatience of the meek and lowly church, withher ideal of poverty and of chastity. In their luxurious and leisuredhomes they sheltered the arts that made life richer and the philosophy,or religion, that gave them a good conscience in the work they loved.Both Renaissance and Reformation were dwellers in the cities and in themarts of commerce.

[Sidenote: National states]

It was partly the rise of the third estate, but partly also culturalfactors, such as the perfecting of the modern tongues, that made thenational state one of the characteristic products of modern times.Commerce needs order and strong government; the men who paid the pipercalled the tune; police and professional soldiery made the state, onceso racked by feudal wars, peaceful at home and dreaded abroad. If theconsequence of this was an increase in royal power, the kings wereamong those who had greatness thrust upon them, rather than achievingit for themselves. {6} They were but the symbols of the new, proudlyconscious nation, and the police commissioners of the large bankers andtraders.

[Sidenote: Individualism]

The reaction of nascent capitalism on the individual was no less markedthan on state and society, though it was not the only cause of the newsense of personal worth. Just as the problems of science and of artbecame most alluring, the man with sufficient leisure and resource tosolve them was developed by economic forces. In the Middle Ages menhad been less enterprising and less self-conscious. Their thought wasnot of themselves as individuals so much as of their membership ingroups. The peoples were divided into well-marked estates, or classes;industry was co-operative; even the great art of the cathedrals wasrather gild-craft than the expression of a single genius; even learningwas the joint property of universities, not the private accumulation ofthe lone scholar. But with every expansion of the ego either throughthe acquisition of wealth or of learning or of pride in great exploits,came a rising self-consciousness and self-confidence, and this was theessence of the individualism so often noted as one of the contrastsbetween modern and medieval times. The child, the savage, and to alarge extent the undisciplined mind in all periods of life and ofhistory, is conscious only of object; the trained and leisuredintellect discovers, literally by "reflection," the subjective. He isthen no longer content to be anything less than himself, or to be lostin anything greater.

Just as men were beginning again to glory in their own powers came aseries of discoveries that totally transformed the world they lived in.So vast a change is made in human thought and habit by some apparentlytrivial technical inventions that it sometimes {7} seems as if the racewere like a child that had boarded a locomotive and half accidentallystarted it, but could neither guide nor stop it. Civilization was bornwith the great inventions of fire, tools, the domestication of[Sidenote: Inventions] animals, writing, and navigation, all of them,together with important astronomical discoveries, made prior to thebeginnings of recorded history. On this capital mankind traded forsome millenniums, for neither classic times nor the Dark Ages addedmuch to the practical sciences. But, beginning with the thirteenthcentury, discovery followed discovery, each more important in itsconsequences than its last. One of the first steps was perhaps therecovery of lost ground by the restoration of the classics. Gothic artand the vernacular literatures testify to the intellectual activity ofthe time, but they did not create the new elements of life that werebrought into being by the inventors.

What a difference in private life was made by the introduction ofchimneys and glass windows, for glass, though known to antiquity, wasnot commonly applied to the openings that, as the etymology of theEnglish word implies, let in the wind! By the fifteenth century thepower of lenses to magnify and refract had been utilized, as mirrors,then as spectacles, to be followed two centuries later by telescopesand microscopes. Useful chemicals were now first applied to variousmanufacturing processes, such as the tinning of iron. The compass,with its weird power of pointing north, guided the mariner on unchartedseas. The obscure inventor of gunpowder revolutionized the art of warmore than all the famous conquerors had done, and the polity of statesmore than any of the renowned legislators of antiquity. The equallyobscure inventor of mechanical clocks—a great improvement on the {8}older sand-glasses, water-glasses, and candles—made possible a newprecision and regularity of daily life, an untold economy of time andeffort.

[Sidenote: Printing]

But all other inventions yield to that of printing, the glory of JohnGutenberg of Mayence, one of those poor and in their own times obscuregeniuses who carry out to fulfilment a great idea at much sacrifice tothemselves. The demand for books had been on the increase for a longtime, and every effort was made to reproduce them as rapidly andcheaply as possible by the hand of expert copyists, but theapplications of this method produced slight result. The introductionof paper, in place of the older vellum or parchment, furnished one ofthe indispensable pre-requisites to the multiplication of cheapvolumes. In the early fifteenth century, the art of the wood-cutterand engraver had advanced sufficiently to allow some books to beprinted in this manner, i.e. from carved blocks. This was usually,or at first, done only with books in which a small amount of text wentwith a large amount of illustration. There are extant, for example,six editions of the Biblia Pauperum, stamped by this method. It wasafterwards applied, chiefly in Holland, to a few other books for whichthere was a large demand, the Latin grammar of Donatus, for example,and a guide-book to Rome known as the Mirabilia Urbis Romae. But atbest this method was extremely unsatisfactory; the blocks soon woreout, the text was blurred and difficult to read, the initial expensewas large.

The essential feature of Gutenberg's invention was therefore not, asthe name implies, printing, or impression, but typography, or the useof type. The printer first had a letter cut in hard metal, this wascalled the punch; with it he stamped a mould known as the {9} matrix inwhich he was able to found a large number of exactly identical types ofmetal, usually of lead.

These, set side by side in a case, for the first time made it possiblesatisfactorily to print at reasonable cost a large number of copies ofthe same text, and, when that was done, the types could be taken apartand used for another work.

The earliest surviving specimen of printing—not counting a few undatedletters of indulgence—is a fragment on the last judgment completed atMayence before 1447. In 1450 Gutenberg made a partnership with therich goldsmith John Fust, and from their press issued, within the nextfive years, the famous Bible with 42 lines to a page, and a Donatus(Latin grammar) of 32 lines. The printer of the Bible with 36 lines toa page, that is the next oldest surviving monument, was apparently ahelper of Gutenberg, who set up an independent press in 1454. Legible,clean-cut, comparatively cheap, these books demonstrated once for allthe success of the new art, even though, for illuminated initials, theywere still dependent on the hand of the scribe.

[Sidenote: Books and Reading]

In those days before patents the new invention spread with wonderfulrapidity, reaching Italy in 1465, Paris in 1470, London in 1480,Stockholm in 1482, Constantinople in 1487, Lisbon in 1490, and Madridin 1499. Only a few backward countries of Europe remained without apress. By the year 1500 the names of more than one thousand printersare known, and the titles of about 30,000 printed works. Assuming thatthe editions were small, averaging 300 copies, there would have been inEurope by 1500 about 9,000,000 books, as against the few score thousandmanuscripts that lately had held all the precious lore of time. In afew years the price of books sank to one-eighth of what it had beenbefore. "The gentle reader" had started on his career.

{10} The importance of printing cannot be over-estimated. There arefew events like it in the history of the world. The whole giganticswing of modern democracy and of the scientific spirit was released byit. The veil of the temple of religion and of knowledge was rent intwain, and the arcana of the priest and clerk exposed to the gaze ofthe people. The reading public became the supreme court before whom,from this time, all cases must be argued. The conflict of opinions andparties, of privilege and freedom, of science and obscurantism, wastransferred from the secret chamber of a small, privileged,professional, and sacerdotal coterie to the arena of the reading public.

[Sidenote: Exploration]

It is amazing, but true, that within fifty years after this exploit,mankind should have achieved another like unto it in a widely differentsphere. The horror of the sea was on the ancient world; a heart of oakand triple bronze was needed to venture on the ocean, and itsannihilation was one of the blessings of the new earth promised by theApocalypse. All through the centuries Europe remained sea-locked,until the bold Portuguese mariners venturing ever further and furthersouth along the coast of Africa, finally doubled the Cape of GoodHope—a feat first performed by Bartholomew Diaz in 1486, though it wasnot until 1498 that Vasco da Gama reached India by this method.

Still unconquered lay the stormy and terrible Atlantic,

"Where, beyond the extreme sea-wall,
and between the remote sea-gates,
Waste water washes, and tall ships founder,
and deep death waits."

But the ark of Europe found her dove—as the name Columbussignifies—to fly over the wild, western {11} waves, and bring her newsof strange countries. The effect of these discoveries, enormously andincreasingly important from the material standpoint, was first felt inthe widening of the imagination. Camoens wrote the epic of Da Gama,More placed his Utopia in America, and Montaigne speculated on thecurious customs of the redskins. Ariosto wrote of the wonders of thenew world in his poem, and Luther occasionally alluded to them in hissermons.

[Sidenote: Universities]

If printing opened the broad road to popular education, other and moreformal means to the same end were not neglected. One of the greatinnovations of the Middle Ages was the university. These permanentcorporations, dedicated to the advancement of learning and theinstruction of youth, first arose, early in the twelfth century, atSalerno, at Bologna and at Paris. As off-shoots of these, or inimitation of them, many similar institutions sprang up in every land ofwestern Europe. The last half of the fifteenth century was especiallyrich in such foundations. In Germany, from 1450 to 1517, no less thannine new academies were started: Greifswald 1456, Freiburg in theBreisgau 1460, Basle 1460, Ingolstadt 1472, Trèves 1473, Mayence 1477,Tübingen 1477, Wittenberg 1502, and Frankfort on the Oder 1506. Thoughgenerally founded by papal charter, and maintaining a strongecclesiastical flavor, these institutions were under the direction ofthe civil government.

In France three new universities opened their doors during the sameperiod: Valence 1459, Nantes 1460, Bourges 1464. These were all placedunder the general supervision of the local bishops. The greatuniversity of Paris was gradually changing its character. From themost cosmopolitan and international of bodies it was fast becomingstrongly nationalist, and was the chief center of an ErastianGallicanism. Its {12} tremendous weight cast against the Reformationwas doubtless a chief reason for the failure of that movement in France.

Spain instituted seven new universities at this time: Barcelona 1450,Saragossa 1474, Palma 1483, Sigüenza 1489, Alcalá 1499, Valencia 1500,and Seville 1504. Italy and England remained content with theacademies they already had, but many of the smaller countries nowstarted native universities. Thus Pressburg was founded in Hungary in1465, Upsala in Sweden in 1477, Copenhagen in 1478, Glasgow in 1450,and Aberdeen in 1494. The number of students in each foundationfluctuated, but the total was steadily on the increase.

Naturally, the expansion of the higher education brought with it anincrease in the number and excellence of the schools. Particularlynotable is the work of the Brethren of the Common Life, who devotedthemselves almost exclusively to teaching boys. Some of their schools,as Deventer, attained a reputation like that of Eton or Rugby today.

The spread of education was not only notable in itself, but had a moredirect result in furnishing a shelter to new movements until they werestrong enough to do without such support. It is significant that theReformations of Wyclif, Huss, and Luther, all started in universities.

[Sidenote: Growth of intelligence]

As the tide rolls in, the waves impress one more than the flood beneaththem. Behind, and far transcending, the particular causes of this andthat development lies the operation of great biological laws, selectinga type for survival, transforming the mind and body of men slowly butsurely. Whether due to the natural selection of circumstance, or tothe inward urge of vital force, there seems to be no doubt that theaverage intellect, not of leading thinkers or of select groups, {13}but of the European races as a whole, has been steadily growing greaterat every period during which it can be measured. Moreover, themonastic vow of chastity tended to sterilize and thus to eliminate thereligiously-minded sort. Operating over a long period, and on bothsexes, this cause of the growing secularization of the world, though itmust not be exaggerated, cannot be overlooked.

SECTION 2. THE CHURCH

Over against "the world," "the church." . . . As the Reformation wasprimarily a religious movement, some account of the church in the laterMiddle Ages must be given. How Christianity was immaculately conceivedin the heart of the Galilean carpenter and born with words of beautyand power such as no other man ever spoke; how it inherited from himits background of Jewish monotheism and Hebrew Scripture; how it wasenriched, or sophisticated, by Paul, who assimilated it to the currentmysteries with their myth of a dying and rising god and of salvation bysacramental rite; how it decked itself in the white robes of Greekphilosophy and with many a gewgaw of ceremony and custom snatched fromthe flamen's vestry; how it created a pantheon of saints to take theplace of the old polytheism; how it became first the chaplain and thenthe heir of the Roman Empire, building its church on the immovable rockof the Eternal City, asserting like her a dominion without bounds ofspace or time; how it conquered and tamed the barbarians;—all thislies outside the scope of the present work to describe. But of itslater fortunes some brief account must be given.

[Sidenote: Innocent III 1198-1216]

By the year 1200 the popes, having emerged triumphant from their longstrife with the German emperors, successfully asserted their claim tothe {14} suzerainty of all Western Europe. Innocent III took realms infief and dictated to kings. The pope, asserting that the spiritualpower was as much superior to the civil as the sun was brighter thanthe moon, acted as the vicegerent of God on earth. But this supremacydid not last long unquestioned. Just a century after Innocent III,Boniface VIII [Sidenote: Boniface VIII 1294-1303] was worsted in aquarrel with Philip IV of France, and his successor, Clement V, aFrenchman, by transferring the papal capital to Avignon, virtually madethe supreme pontiffs subordinate to the French government and thusweakened their influence in the rest of Europe. This "BabylonianCaptivity" [Sidenote: The Babylonian Captivity 1309-76] was followed bya greater misfortune to the pontificate, the Great Schism, [Sidenote:The Great Schism 1378-1417] for the effort to transfer the papacy backto Rome led to the election of two popes, who, with their successors,respectively ruled and mutually anathematized each other from the tworival cities. The difficulty of deciding which was the true successorof Peter was so great that not only were the kingdoms of Europe dividedin their allegiance, but doctors of the church and canonized saintscould be found among the supporters of either line. There can be nodoubt that respect for the pontificate greatly suffered by the schism,which was in some respects a direct preparation for the greaterdivision brought about by the Protestant secession.

[Sidenote: Councils—Pisa, 1409, Constance, 1414-18]

The attempt to end the schism at the Council of Pisa resulted only inthe election of a third pope. The situation was finally dealt with bythe Council of Constance which deposed two of the popes and secured thevoluntary abdication of the third. The synod further strengthened thechurch by executing the heretics Huss and Jerome of Prague, and bypassing decrees intended to put the government of the church in thehands of representative assemblies. It asserted that it {15} had powerdirectly from Christ, that it was supreme in matters of faith, and inmatters of discipline so far as they affected the schism, and that thepope could not dissolve it without its own consent. By the decreeFrequens it provided for the regular summoning of councils at shortintervals. Beyond this, other efforts to reform the morals of theclergy proved abortive, for after long discussion nothing of importancewas done.

For the next century the policy of the popes was determined by the wishto assert their superiority over the councils. The Synod of Basle[Sidenote: Basle 1431-43] reiterated all the claims of Constance, andpassed a number of laws intended to diminish the papal authority and todeprive the pontiff of much of his ill-gotten revenues—annates, feesfor investiture, and some other taxes. It was successful for a timebecause protected by the governments of France and Germany, for, thoughdissolved by Pope Eugene IV in 1433, it refused to listen to hiscommand and finally extorted from him a bull ratifying the conciliarclaims to supremacy.

In the end, however, the popes triumphed. The bull Execrabilis[Sidenote: 1458] denounced as a damnable abuse the appeal to a futurecouncil, and the Pastor Aeternus [Sidenote: 1516] reasserted insweeping terms the supremacy of the pope, repealing all decrees ofConstance and Basle to the contrary, as well as other papal bulls.

[Sidenote: The secularization of the papacy]

At Rome the popes came to occupy the position of princes of one of theItalian states, and were elected, like the doges of Venice, by a smalloligarchy. Within seventy years the families of Borgia, Piccolomini,Rovere, and Medici were each represented by more than one pontiff, anda majority of the others were nearly related by blood or marriage toone of these great stocks. The cardinals were appointed from thepontiff's sons or nephews, and the numerous other {16} offices in theirpatronage, save as they were sold, were distributed to personal orpolitical friends.

Like other Italian princes the popes became, in the fifteenth century,distinguished patrons of arts and letters. The golden age of thehumanists at Rome began under Nicholas V [Sidenote: Nicholas V 1447-55]who employed a number of them to make translations from Greek. It ischaracteristic of the complete secularization of the States of theChurch that a number of the literati pensioned by him were skeptics andscoffers. Valla, who mocked the papacy, ridiculed the monastic orders,and attacked the Bible and Christian ethics, was given a prebend;Savonarola, the most earnest Christian of his age, was put to death.

[Sidenote: 1453]

The fall of Constantinople gave a certain European character to thepolicy of the pontiffs after that date, for the menace of the Turkseemed so imminent that the heads of Christendom did all that waspossible to unite the nations in a crusade. This was the keynote ofthe statesmanship of Calixtus III [Sidenote: Calixtus III 1455-8] andof his successor, Pius II. [Sidenote: Pius II 1458-64] Before hiselevation to the see of Peter this talented writer, known to literatureas Aeneas Sylvius, had, at the Council of Basle, published a strongargument against the extreme papal claims, which he afterwards, aspope, retracted. His zeal against the Turk and against his old friendsthe humanists lent a moral tone to his pontificate, but his feebleattempts to reform abuses were futile.

[Sidenote: Paul II 1464-71]

The colorless reign of Paul II was followed by that of Sixtus IV,[Sidenote: Sixtus IV 1471-84] a man whose chief passion was theaggrandizement of his family. He carried nepotism to an extreme and bya policy of judicial murder very nearly exterminated his rivals, theColonnas.

[Sidenote: Innocent VIII 1484-92]

The enormous bribes paid by Innocent VIII for his election wererecouped by his sale of offices and spiritual graces, and by taking atribute from the Sultan, {17} in return for which he refused toproclaim a crusade. The most important act of his pontificate was thepublication of the bull against witchcraft.

[Sidenote: Alexander VI 1492-1503]

The name of Alexander VI has attained an evil eminence of infamy onaccount of his own crimes and vices and those of his children, CaesarBorgia and Lucretia. One proof that the public conscience of Italy,instead of being stupified by the orgy of wickedness at Rome was ratherbecoming aroused by it, is found in the appearance, just at this time,of a number of preachers of repentance. These men, usually friars,started "revivals" marked by the customary phenomena of suddenconversion, hysteria, and extreme austerity. The greatest of them allwas the Dominican Jerome Savonarola [Sidenote: Savonarola] who, thoughof mediocre intellectual gifts, by the passionate fervor of hisconvictions, attained the position of a prophet at Florence. He beganpreaching here in 1482, and so stirred his audiences that many wept andsome were petrified with horror. His credit was greatly raised by hisprediction of the invasion of Charles VIII of France in 1494. Hesucceeded in driving out the Medici and in introducing a newconstitution of a democratic nature, which he believed was directlysanctioned by God. He attacked the morals of the clergy and of thepeople and, besides renovating his own order, suppressed not onlypublic immorality but all forms of frivolity. The people burned theircards, false hair, indecent pictures, and the like; many women lefttheir husbands and entered the cloister; gamblers were tortured andblasphemers had their tongues pierced. A police was instituted withpower of searching houses.

It was only the pope's fear of Charles VIII that prevented his dealingwith this dangerous reformer, who now began to attack the vices of thecuria. In 1495, however, the friar was summoned to Rome, and {18}refused to go; he was then forbidden to preach, and disobeyed. In Lent1496 he proclaimed the duty of resisting the pope when in error. InNovember a new brief proposed changes in the constitution of his orderwhich would bring him more directly under the power of Rome.Savonarola replied that he did not fear the excommunication of thesinful church, which, when launched against him May 12, 1497, only madehim more defiant. Claiming to be commissioned directly from God, heappealed to the powers to summon a general council against the pope.

At this juncture one of his opponents, a Franciscan, Francis da Puglia,proposed to him the ordeal by fire, stating that though he expected tobe burnt he was willing to take the risk for the sake of the faith.The challenge refused by Savonarola was taken up by his friend FraDomenico da Peseta, and although forbidden by Alexander, the ordeal wassanctioned by the Signory and a day set. A dispute as to whetherDomenico should be allowed to take the host or the crucifix into theflames prevented the experiment from taking place, and the mob, furiousat the loss of its promised spectacle, refused further support to thediscredited leader. For some years, members of his own order, whoresented the severity of his reform, had cherished a grievance againsthim, and now they had their chance. Seized by the Signory, he wastortured and forced to confess that he was not a prophet, and on May22, 1498, was condemned, with two companions, to be hung. After thespeedy execution of the sentence, which the sufferers met calmly, theirbodies were burnt. All effects of Savonarola's career, political,moral, and religious, shortly disappeared.

Alexander was followed by a Rovere who took the name of Julius II.[Sidenote: Julius II 1503-13] Notwithstanding his advanced age thispontiff proved one of the most vigorous and able {19} statesman of thetime and devoted himself to the aggrandizement, by war and diplomacy,of the Papal States. He did not scruple to use his spiritual thundersagainst his political enemies, as when he excommunicated the Venetians.[Sidenote: 1509] He found himself at odds with both the EmperorMaximilian and Louis XII of France, who summoned a schismatic councilat Pisa. [Sidenote: 1511] Supported by some of the cardinals thisbody revived the legislation of Constance and Basle, but fell intodisrepute when, by a master stroke of policy, Julius convoked a councilat Rome. [Sidenote: 1512-16] This synod, the Fifth Lateran, lastedfor four years, and endeavored to deal with a crusade and with reform.All its efforts at reform proved abortive because they were eitherchoked, while in course of discussion, by the Curia, or, when passed,were rendered ineffective by the dispensing power.

[Sidenote: Leo X 1513-21]

While the synod was still sitting Julius died and a new pope waschosen. This was the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Medici Leo X.Having taken the tonsure at the age of seven, and received the red hatsix years later, he donned the tiara at the early age of thirty-eight.His words, as reported by the Venetian ambassador at Rome, "Let usenjoy the papacy, since God has given it to us," exactly express hisprogram. To make life one long carnival, to hunt game and to witnesscomedies and the antics of buffoons, to hear marvellous tales of thenew world and voluptuous verses of the humanists and of the greatAriosto, to enjoy music and to consume the most delicate viands and themost delicious wines—this was what he lived for. Free and generouswith money, he prodigally wasted the revenues of three pontificates.Spending no less than 6000 ducats a month on cards and gratuities, hewas soon forced to borrow to the limit of his credit. Little recked hethat Germany was being {20} reft from the church by a poor friar. Hisirresolute policy was incapable of pursuing any public endconsistently, save that he employed the best Latinists of the time togive elegance to his state papers. His method of governing was thepurely personal one, to pay his friends and flatterers at the expenseof the common good. One of his most characteristic letters expresseshis intention of rewarding with high office a certain gentleman who hadgiven him a dinner of lampreys.

SECTION 3. CAUSES OF THE REFORMATION

[Sidenote: Corruption of the church not a main cause of the Reformation]

In the eyes of the early Protestants the Reformation was a return toprimitive Christianity and its principal cause was the corruption of thechurch. That there was great depravity in the church as elsewhere cannotbe doubted, but there are several reasons for thinking that it could nothave been an important cause for the loss of so many of her sons. In thefirst place there is no good ground for believing that the moralcondition of the priesthood was worse in 1500 than it had been for a longtime; indeed, there is good evidence to the contrary, that things weretending to improve, if not at Rome yet in many parts of Christendom. Ifobjectionable practices of the priests had been a sufficient cause forthe secession of whole nations, the Reformation would have come longbefore it actually did. Again, there is good reason to doubt that themere abuse of an institution has ever led to its complete overthrow; aslong as the institution is regarded as necessary, it is rather mendedthan ended. Thirdly, many of the acts that seem corrupt to us, gavelittle offence to contemporaries, for they were universal. If the churchsold offices and justice, so did the civil governments. If the clergylived impure lives, so did the laity. Probably the standard of the {21}church (save in special circumstances) was no worse than that of civillife, and in some respects it was rather more decent. Finally, there issome reason to suspect of exaggeration the charges preferred by theinnovators. Like all reformers they made the most of their enemy'sfaults. Invective like theirs is common to every generation and to allspheres of life. It is true that the denunciation of the priesthoodcomes not only from Protestants and satirists, but from popes andcouncils and canonized saints, and that it bulks large in medievalliterature. Nevertheless, it is both a priori probable and to someextent historically verifiable that the evil was more noisy, not morepotent, than the good. But though the corruptions of the church were nota main cause of the Protestant secession, they furnished good excuses forattack; the Reformers were scandalized by the divergence of the practiceand the pretensions of the official representatives of Christianity, andtheir attack was envenomed and the break made easier thereby. It istherefore necessary to say a few words about those abuses at which publicopinion then took most offence.

[Sidenote: Abuses: Financial]

Many of these were connected with money. The common man's conscience waswounded by the smart in his purse. The wealth of the church wasenormous, though exaggerated by those contemporaries who estimated it atone-third of the total real estate of Western Europe. In addition torevenues from her own land the church collected tithes and taxes,including "Peter's pence" in England, Scandinavia and Poland. The clergypaid dues to the curia, among them the servitia charged on the bishopsand the annates levied on the income of the first year for each appointeeto high ecclesiastical office, and the price for the archbishop's pall.The priests recouped themselves by charging high fees for theirministrations. At a time {22} when the Christian ideal was one of"apostolic poverty" the riches of the clergy were often felt as a scandalto the pious.

[Sidenote: Simony]

Though the normal method of appointment to civil office was sale, it wasfelt as a special abuse in the church and was branded by the name ofsimony. Leo X made no less than 500,000 ducats[1] annually from the saleof more than 2000 offices, most of which, being sinecures, eventuallycame to be regarded as annuities, with a salary amounting to about 10 percent. of the purchase price.

Justice was also venal, in the church no less than in the state. Pardonwas obtainable for all crimes for, as a papal vice-chamberlain phrasedit, "The Lord wishes not the death of a sinner but that he should pay andlive." Dispensations from the laws against marriage within theprohibited degrees were sold. Thus an ordinary man had to pay 16grossi[2] for dispensation to marry a woman who stood in "spiritualrelationship" [3] to him; a noble had to pay 20 grossi for the sameprivilege, and a prince or duke 30 grossi. First cousins might marry forthe payment of 27 grossi; an uncle and niece for from three to fourducats, though this was later raised to as much as sixty ducats, at leastfor nobles. Marriage within the first degree of affinity (a deceasedwife's mother or daughter by another husband) was at one time sold forabout ten ducats; marriage within the second degree[4] was {23} permittedfor from 300 to 600 grossi. Hardly necessary to add, as was done: "Notewell, that dispensations or graces of this sort are not given to poorpeople." [5] Dispensations from vows and from the requirements ofecclesiastical law, as for example those relating to fasting, were alsoto be obtained at a price.

[Sidenote: Indulgences]

One of the richest sources of ecclesiastical revenue was the sale ofindulgences, or the remission by the pope of the temporal penalties ofsin, both penance in this life and the pains of purgatory. The practiceof giving these pardons first arose as a means of assuring heaven tothose warriors who fell fighting the infidel. In 1300 Boniface VIIIgranted a plenary indulgence to all who made the pilgrimage to thejubilee at Rome, and the golden harvest reaped on this occasion inducedhis successors to take the same means of imparting spiritual graces tothe faithful at frequent intervals. In the fourteenth century thepardons were extended to all who contributed a sum of money to a piouspurpose, whether they came to Rome or not, and, as the agents who weresent out to distribute these pardons were also given power to confess andabsolve, the papal letters were naturally regarded as no less thantickets of admission to heaven. In the thirteenth century thetheologians had discovered that there was at the disposal of the churchand her head an abundant "treasury of the merits of Christ and thesaints," which might be applied vicariously to anyone by the pope. Inthe fifteenth century the claimed power to free living men from purgatorywas extended to the {24} dead, and this soon became one of the mostprofitable branches of the "holy trade."

The means of obtaining indulgences varied. Sometimes they were grantedto those who made a pilgrimage or who would read a pious book. Sometimesthey were used to raise money for some public work, a hospital or abridge. But more and more they became an ordinary means for raisingrevenue for the curia. How thoroughly commercialized the business ofselling grace and remission of the penalties of sin had become is shownby the fact that the agents of the pope were often bankers who organizedthe sales on purely business lines in return for a percentage of the netreceipts plus the indirect profits accruing to those who handle largesums. Of the net receipts the financiers usually got about ten percent.; an equal amount was given to the emperor or other civil ruler forpermitting the pardoners to enter his territory, commissions were alsopaid to the local bishop and clergy, and of course the pedlars of thepardons received a proportion of the profits in order to stimulate theirzeal. On the average from thirty to forty-five per cent. of the grossreceipts were turned into the Roman treasury.

It is natural that public opinion should have come to regard indulgenceswith aversion. Their bad moral effect was too obvious to be disregarded,the compounding with sin for a payment destined to satisfy the greed ofunscrupulous prelates. Their economic effects were also noticed, thedraining of the country of money with which further to enrich a corruptItalian city. Many rulers forbade their sale in their territories,because, as Duke George of Saxony, a good Catholic, expressed it, beforeLuther was heard of, "they cheated the simple layman of his soul."Hutten mocked at Pope Julius II for selling to others the heaven he couldnot win himself. Pius II [Sidenote 1458-64] was obliged {25} to confess:"If we send ambassadors to ask aid of the princes, they are mocked; if weimpose a tithe on the clergy, appeal is made to a future council; if wepublish an indulgence and invite contributions in return for spiritualfavors, we are charged with greed. People think all is done merely forthe sake of extorting money. No one trusts us. We have no more creditthan a bankrupt merchant."

[Sidenote: Immorality of clergy]

Much is said in the literature of the latter Middle Ages about theimmorality of the clergy. This class has always been severely judgedbecause of its high pretensions. Moreover the vow of celibacy was toohard to keep for most men and for some women; that many priests, monksand nuns broke it cannot be doubted. And yet there was a sprinkling ofsaintly parsons like him of whom Chancer [Transcriber's note: Chaucer?]said

"Who Christes lore and his apostles twelve
He taught, but first he folwed it himselve,"

and there were many others who kept up at least the appearance ofdecency. But here, as always, the bad attracted more attention than thegood.

The most reliable data on the subject are found in the records of churchvisitations, both those undertaken by the Reformers and thoseoccasionally attempted by the Catholic prelates of the earlier period.Everywhere it was proved that a large proportion of the clergy were bothwofully ignorant and morally unworthy. Besides the priests who hadconcubines, there were many given to drink and some who kept taverns,gaming rooms and worse places. Plunged in gross ignorance andsuperstition, those blind leaders of the blind, who won great reputationsas exorcists or as wizards, were unable to understand the Latin service,and sometimes to repeat even the Lord's prayer or creed in any language.

{26}

[Sidenote: Piety]

The Reformation, like most other revolutions, came not at the lowest ebbof abuse, but at a time when the tide had already begun to run, and torun strongly, in the direction of improvement. One can hardly find asweeter, more spiritual religion anywhere than that set forth inErasmus's Enchiridion, or in More's Utopia, or than that lived byVitrier and Colet. Many men, who had not attained to this conception ofthe true beauty of the gospel, were yet thoroughly disgusted with thingsas they were and quite ready to substitute a new and purer conception andpractice for the old, mechanical one.

Evidence for this is the popularity of the Bible and other devotionalbooks. Before 1500 there were nearly a hundred editions of the LatinVulgate, and a number of translations into German and French. There werealso nearly a hundred editions, in Latin and various vernaculars, of TheImitation of Christ. There was so flourishing a crop of devotionalhandbooks that no others could compete with them in popularity. Forthose who could not read there were the Biblia Pauperum, picture-bookswith a minimum of text, and there were sermons by popular preachers. Ifsome of these tracts and homilies were crude and superstitious, otherswere filled with a spirit of love and honesty. Whereas the passion forpilgrimages and relics seemed to increase, there were men of clear visionto denounce the attendant evils. A new feature was the foundation of laybrotherhoods, like that of the Common Life, with the purpose ofcultivating a good character in the world, and of rendering socialservice. The number of these brotherhoods was great and their popularitygeneral.

[Sidenote: Clash of new spirit with old institutions]

Had the forces already at work within the church been allowed to operate,probably much of the moral reform desired by the best Catholics wouldhave been {27} accomplished quietly without the violent rending ofChristian unity that actually took place. But the fact is, that suchreforms never would or could have satisfied the spirit of the age. Menwere not only shocked by the abuses in the church, but they had outgrownsome of her ideals. Not all of her teaching, nor most of it, had becomerepugnant to them, for it has often been pointed out that the Reformerskept more of the doctrines of Catholicism than they threw away, but incertain respects they repudiated, not the abuse but the very principle onwhich the church acted. In four respects, particularly the ideals of thenew age were incompatible with those of the Roman communion.

[Sidenote: Sacramental theory of the church]

The first of these was the sacramental theory of salvation and itscorollary, the sacerdotal power. According to Catholic doctrine grace isimparted to the believer by means of certain rites: baptism,confirmation, the eucharist, penance, extreme unction, holy orders, andmatrimony. Baptism is the necessary prerequisite to the enjoyment of theothers, for without it the unwashed soul, whether heathen or child ofChristian parents, would go to eternal fire; but the "most excellent ofthe sacraments" is the eucharist, in which Christ is mysteriouslysacrificed by the priest to the Father and his body and blood eaten anddrunk by the worshippers. Without these rites there was no salvation,and they acted automatically (ex opere operato) on the soul of thefaithful who put no active hindrance in their way. Save baptism, theycould be administered only by priests, a special caste with "an indeliblecharacter" marking them off from the laity. Needless to remark theimmense power that this doctrine gave the clergy in a believing age.They were made the arbiters of each man's eternal destiny, and theirmoral character had no more to do with their binding and loosing sentencethan does the moral {28} character of a secular officer affect hisofficial acts. Add to this that the priests were unbound by ties offamily, that by confession they entered into everyone's private life,that they were not amenable to civil justice—and their position as aprivileged order was secure. The growing self-assurance andenlightenment of a nascent individualism found this distinctionintolerable.

[Sidenote: Other-worldliness]

Another element of medieval Catholicism to clash with the developingpowers of the new age was its pessimistic and ascetic other-worldliness.The ideal of the church was monastic; all the pleasures of this world,all its pomps and learning and art were but snares to seduce men fromsalvation. Reason was called a barren tree but faith was held to blossomlike the rose. Wealth was shunned as dangerous, marriage deprecated as anecessary evil. Fasting, scourging, celibacy, solitude, were cultivatedas the surest roads to heaven. If a good layman might barely shoulderhis way through the strait and narrow gate, the highest graces andheavenly rewards were vouchsafed to the faithful monk. All this gratedharshly on the minds of the generations that began to find life gloriousand happy, not evil but good.

[Sidenote: Worship of saints]

Third, the worship of the saints, which had once been a stepping-stone tohigher things, was now widely regarded as a stumbling-block. Though farfrom a scientific conception of natural law, many men had becomesufficiently monistic in their philosophy to see in the currenthagiolatry a sort of polytheism. Erasmus freely drew the parallelbetween the saints and the heathen deities, and he and others scourgedthe grossly materialistic form which this worship often took. If we maybelieve him, fugitive nuns prayed for help in hiding their sin; merchantsfor a rich haul; gamblers for luck; and prostitutes for generous {29}patrons. Margaret of Navarre tells as an actual fact of a man who prayedfor help in seducing his neighbor's wife, and similar instances ofperverted piety are not wanting. The passion for the relics of thesaints led to an enormous traffic in spurious articles. There appearedto be enough of the wood of the true cross, said Erasmus, to make a ship;there were exhibited five shin-bones of the ass on which Christ rode,whole bottles of the Virgin's milk, and several complete bits of skinsaved from the circumcision of Jesus.

[Sidenote: Temporal power of the church]

Finally, patriots were no longer inclined to tolerate the claims of thepopes to temporal power. The church had become, in fact, aninternational state, with its monarch, its representative legislativeassemblies, its laws and its code. It was not a voluntary society, forif citizens were not born into it they were baptized into it before theycould exercise any choice. It kept prisons and passed sentence(virtually if not nominally) of death; it treated with other governmentsas one power with another; it took principalities and kingdoms in fief.It was supported by involuntary contributions.[6]

The expanding world had burst the bands of the old church. It needed anew spiritual frame, and this frame was largely supplied by theReformation. Prior to that revolution there had been several distinctefforts to transcend or to revolt from the limitations imposed by theCatholic faith; this was done by the mystics, by the pre-reformers, bythe patriots and by the humanists.

[1] A ducat was worth intrinsically $2.25, or nine shillings, at a timewhen money had a much greater purchasing power than it now has.

[2] The grossus, English groat, German Groschen, was a coin which variedconsiderably in value. It may here be taken as intrinsically worth about8 cents or four pence, at a time when money had many times the purchasingpower that it now has.

[3] A spiritual relationship was established if a man and woman weresponsors to the same child at baptism.

[4] Presumably of affinity, i.e., a wife's sister, but there is nothingto show that this law did not also apply to consanguinity, and at onetime the pope proposed that the natural son of Henry VIII, the Duke ofRichmond, should marry his half sister, Mary.

[5] "Nota diligenter, quod huiusmodi gratiae et dispensationes nonconceduntur pauperibus." Taxa cancellariae apostolicae, in E.Friedberg: Lerbuch des katholischen und evangelischen Kirchenrechts,1903, pp. 389 ff.

[6] Maitland: Canon Law in the Church of England, p. 100.

SECTION 4. THE MYSTICS

One of the earliest efforts to transcend the economy of salvationoffered by the church was made by a school of mystics in the fourteenthand fifteenth {30} century. In this, however, there was protestneither against dogma nor against the ideal of other-worldliness, forin these respects the mystics were extreme conservatives, morereligious than the church herself. They were like soldiers whodisregarded the orders of their superiors because they thought theseorders interfered with their supreme duty of harassing the enemy. Withthe humanists and other deserters they had no part nor lot; they soughtto make the church more spiritual, not more reasonable. They bowed toher plan for winning heaven at the expense of earthly joy and glory;they accepted her guidance without question; they rejoiced in hersacraments as aids to the life of holiness. But they sorrowed to seewhat they considered merely the means of grace substituted for the endsought; they were insensibly repelled by finding a mechanical insteadof a personal scheme of salvation, an almost commercial debit andcredit of good works instead of a life of spontaneous and devotedservice. Feeling as few men have ever felt that the purpose and heartof religion is a union of the soul with God, they were shocked to seethe interposition of mediators between him and his creature, to findthat instead of hungering for him men were trying to make the bestbargain they could for their own eternal happiness. While rejectingnothing in the church they tried to transfigure everything. Acceptingpriest and sacrament as aids to the divine life they declined to regardthem as necessary intermediaries.

[Sidenote: Eckhart, 1260-1327]

The first of the great German mystics was Master Eckhart, a Dominicanwho lived at Erfurt, in Bohemia, at Paris, and at Cologne. Theinquisitors of this last place summoned him before their court on thecharge of heresy, but while his trial was pending he died. He was aChristian pantheist, teaching that God was the only true being, andthat man was capable of reaching {31} the absolute. Of all the mysticshe was the most speculative and philosophical. Both Henry Suso andJohn Tauler were his disciples. [Sidenote: Suso, 1300-66] Suso'secstatic piety was of the ultra-medieval type, romantic, poetic, andbent on winning personal salvation by the old means of severeself-torture and the constant practice of good works. Tauler, aDominican of Strassburg, belonged to a society known as The Friends ofGod. [Sidenote: Tauler c. 1300-61] Of all his contemporaries he inreligion was the most social and practical. His life was that of anevangelist, preaching to laymen in their own vernacular the gospel of apure life and direct communion with God through the Bible and prayer.Like many other popular preachers he placed great emphasis onconversion, the turning (Kehr) from a bad to a good life. Simplefaith is held to be better than knowledge or than the usual works ofecclesiastical piety. Tauler esteemed the holiest man he had ever seenone who had never heard five sermons in his life. All honest labor iscalled God's service, spinning and shoe-making the gifts of the HolySpirit. Pure religion is to be "drowned in God," "intoxicated withGod," "melted in the fire of his love." Transcending the common viewof the average Christian that religion's one end was his own salvation,Tauler taught him that the love of God was greater than this. He tellsof a woman ready to be damned for the glory of God—"and if such aperson were dragged into the bottom of hell, there would be the kingdomof God and eternal bliss in hell."

One of the fine flowers of German mysticism is a book writtenanonymously—"spoken by the Almighty, Eternal God, through a wise,understanding, truly just man, his Friend, a priest of the TeutonicOrder at Frankfort." The German Theology, [Sidenote: The GermanTheology] as it was named by Luther, teaches in its purest form entireabandonment to God, simple passivity in his hands, utter {32}self-denial and self-surrender, until, without the interposition of anyexternal power, and equally without effort of her own, the soul shallfind herself at one with the bridegroom. The immanence of God istaught; man's helpless and sinful condition is emphasized; and thereconciliation of the two is found only in the unconditional surrenderof man's will to God. "Put off thine own will and there will be nohell."

Tauler's sermons, first published 1498, had an immense influence onLuther. They were later taken up by the Jesuit Canisius who sought bythem to purify his church. [Sidenote: 1543] The German Theology wasfirst published by Luther in 1516, with the statement that save theBible and St. Augustine's works, he had never met with a book fromwhich he had learned so much of the nature of "God, Christ, man, andall things." But other theologians, both Protestant and Catholic, didnot agree with him. Calvin detected secret and deadly poison in theauthor's pantheism, and in 1621 the Catholic Church placed his work onthe Index.

The Netherlands also produced a school of mystics, later in bloomingthan that of the Germans and greater in its direct influence. Theearliest of them was John of Ruysbroeck, a man of visions andecstasies. [Sidenote: Ruysbroeck, 1293-1381] He strove to make hislife one long contemplation of the light and love of God. Two youngermen, Gerard Groote and Florence Radewyn, socialized his gospel byfounding the fellowship of the Brethren of the Common Life. [Sidenote:Groote, 1340-84] [Sidenote: Radewyn, 1350-1400] Though never an ordersanctioned by the church, they taught celibacy and poverty, and devotedthemselves to service of their fellows, chiefly in the capacity ofteachers of boys.

The fifteenth century's rising tide of devotion brought forth the mostinfluential of the products of all the mystics, the Imitation ofChrist by Thomas à Kempis. [Sidenote: Thomas à Kempis, c. 1380-1471]Written in a plaintive minor key of {33} resignation and pessimism, itsets forth with much artless eloquence the ideal of making one'spersonal life approach that of Christ. Humility, self-restraint,asceticism, patience, solitude, love of Jesus, prayer, and a diligentuse of the sacramental grace of the eucharist are the means recommendedto form the character of the perfect Christian. It was doubtlessbecause all this was so perfect an expression of the medieval idealthat it found such wide and instant favor. There is no questioning ofdogma, nor any speculation on the positions of the church; all this ispostulated with child-like simplicity. Moreover, the ideal of thechurch for the salvation of the individual, and the means supposed tosecure that end, are adopted by à Kempis. He tacitly assumes that theimitator of Christ will be a monk, poor and celibate. His wholeendeavor was to stimulate an enthusiasm for privation and a taste forthings spiritual, and it was because in his earnestness andsingle-mindedness he so largely succeeded that his book was eagerlyseized by the hands of thousands who desired and needed suchstimulation and help. The Dutch canon was not capable of rising to theheights of Tauler and the Frankfort priest, who saw in the love of Goda good in itself transcending the happiness of one's own soul. He justwanted to be saved and tried to love God for that purpose with all hismight. But this careful self-cultivation made his religionself-centered; it was, compared even with the professions of theProtestants and of the Jesuits, personal and unsocial.

Notwithstanding the profound differences between the Mystics and theReformers, it is possible to see that at least in one respect the twomovements were similar. It was exactly the same desire to get awayfrom the mechanical and formal in the church's scheme of salvation,that animated both. Tauler and Luther {34} both deprecated good worksand sought justification in faith only. Important as this is, it ispossible to see why the mystics failed to produce a real revolt fromthe church, and it is certain that they were far more than theReformers fundamentally, even typically Catholic. [Sidenote:Mysticism] It is true that mysticism is at heart always one, neithernational nor confessional. But Catholicism offered so favorable afield for this development that mysticism may be considered as theefflorescence of Catholic piety par excellence. Hardly any otherexpression of godliness as an individual, vital thing, was possible inmedieval Christendom. There is not a single idea in the fourteenth andfifteenth century mysticism which cannot be read far earlier inAugustine and Bernard, even in Aquinas and Scotus. It could never beanything but a sporadic phenomenon because it was so intenselyindividual. While it satisfied the spiritual needs of many, it couldnever amalgamate with other forces of the time, either social orintellectual. As a philosophy or a creed it led not so much tosolipsism as to a complete abnegation of the reason. Moreover it wasslightly morbid, liable to mistake giddiness of starved nerve andemotion for a moment of vision and of union with God. How much moretruly than he knew did Ruysbroeck speak when he said that the soul,turned inward, could see the divine light, just as the eyeball,sufficiently pressed, could see the flashes of fire in the mind!

SECTION 5. PRE-REFORMERS

The men who, in later ages, claimed for their ancestors a Protestantismolder than the Augsburg Confession, referred its origins not to themystics nor to the humanists, but to bold leaders branded by the churchas heretics. Though from the earliest age Christendom never lackedminds independent enough {35} to differ from authority and charactersstrong enough to attempt to cut away what they considered rotten inecclesiastical doctrine and practice, the first heretics that canreally be considered as harbingers of the Reformation were two sectsdwelling in Southern France, the Albigenses and the Waldenses.[Sidenote: Albigenses] The former, first met with in the eleventhcentury, derived part of their doctrines from oriental Manichaeism,part from primitive gnosticism. The latter were the followers of PeterWaldo, a rich merchant of Lyons who, about 1170, sold his goods andwent among the poor preaching the gospel. [Sidenote: Waldenses]Though quite distinct in origin both sects owed their success with thepeople to their attacks on the corrupt lives of the clergy, to theiruse of the vernacular New Testament, to their repudiation of part ofthe sacramental system, and to their own earnest and ascetic morality.The story of their savage suppression, at the instigation of PopeInnocent III, [Sidenote: 1209-29] in the Albigensian crusade, is one ofthe darkest blots on the pages of history. A few remnants of themsurvived in the mountains of Savoy and Piedmont, harried from time totime by blood-thirsty pontiffs. In obedience to a summons of InnocentVIII King Charles VIII of France massacred many of them. [Sidenote:1437]

The spiritual ancestors of Luther, however, were not so much the Frenchheretics as two Englishmen, Occam and Wyclif. [Sidenote: Occam, d. c.1349] William of Occam, a Franciscan who taught at Oxford, was themost powerful scholastic critic of the existing church. Untouched bythe classic air breathed by the humanists, he said all that could besaid against the church from her own medieval standpoint. He taughtdeterminism; he maintained that the final seat of authority was theScripture; he showed that such fundamental dogmas as the existence ofGod, the Trinity, and the Incarnation, cannot be deduced by logic fromthe given premises; he {36} proposed a modification of the doctrine oftransubstantiation in the interests of reason, approaching closely inhis ideas to the "consubstantiation" of Luther. Defining the church asthe congregation of the faithful, he undermined her governmentalpowers. This, in fact, is just what he wished to do, for he went aheadof almost all his contemporaries in proposing that the judicial powersof the clergy be transferred to the civil government. Not only, in hisopinion, should the civil ruler be totally independent of the pope, buteven such matters as the regulation of marriage should be left to thecommon law.

[Sidenote: Wyclif, 1324-84]

A far stronger impression on his age was made by John Wyclif, the mostsignificant of the Reformers before Luther. He, too, was an Oxfordprofessor, a schoolman, and a patriot, but he was animated by a deeperreligious feeling than was Occam. In 1361 he was master of BalliolCollege, where he lectured for many years on divinity. At the sametime he held various benefices in turn, the last, the pastorate ofLutterworth in Leicestershire, from 1374 till his death. He became areformer somewhat late in life owing to study of the Bible and of thebad condition of the English church. [Sidenote: 1374] At the peacecongress at Bruges as a commissioner to negotiate with papalambassadors for the relief of crying abuses, he became disillusioned inhis hope for help from that quarter. He then turned to the civilgovernment, urging it to regain the usurped authority of the church.This plan, set forth in voluminous writings, in lectures at Oxford andin popular sermons in London, soon brought him before the tribunal[Sidenote: 1377] of William Courtenay, Bishop of London, and, had henot been protected by the powerful prince, John of Lancaster, it mighthave gone hard with him. Five bulls launched against him by Gregory XIfrom Rome only confirmed him in his course, for he {37} appealed fromthem to Parliament. Tried at Lambeth he was forbidden to preach orteach, and he therefore retired for the rest of his life toLutterworth. [Sidenote: 1378] He continued his literary labors,resulting in a vast host of pamphlets.

Examining his writings we are struck by the fact that his program wasfar more religious and practical than rational and speculative. Savetransubstantiation, he scrupled at none of the mysteries ofCatholicism. It is also noticeable that social reform left him cold.When the laborers rose under Wat Tyler, [Sidenote: 1381] Wyclif sidedagainst them, as he also proposed that confiscated church property begiven rather to the upper classes than to the poor. The realprinciples of Wyclif's reforms were but two: to abolish the temporalpower of the church, and to purge her of immoral ministers. It was forthis reason that he set up the authority of Scripture against that oftradition; it was for this that he doubted the efficacy of sacramentsadministered by priests living in mortal sin; it was for this that hedenied the necessity of auricular confession; it was for this that hewould have placed the temporal power over the spiritual. The bulk ofhis writings, in both Latin and English, is fierce, measureless abuseof the clergy, particularly of prelates and of the pope. The head ofChristendom is called Antichrist over and over again; the bishops,priests and friars are said to have their lips full of lies and theirhands of blood; to lead women astray; to live in idleness, luxury,simony and deceit; and to devour the English church. Marriage of theclergy is recommended. Indulgences are called a cursed robbery.

To combat the enemies of true piety Wyclif relied on two agencies. Thefirst was the Bible, which, with the assistance of friends, heEnglished from the {38} Vulgate. None of the later Reformers was morebent upon giving the Scriptures to the laity, and none attributed to ita higher degree of inspiration. As a second measure Wyclif trained"poor priests" to be wandering evangelists spreading abroad the messageof salvation among the populace. For a time they attained considerablesuccess, notwithstanding the fact that the severe persecution to whichthey were subjected caused all of Wyclif's personal followers torecant. [Sidenote: 1401] The passage of the act De HaereticoComburendo was not, however, in vain, for in the fifteenth century anumber of common men were found with sufficient resolution to die fortheir faith. It is probable that, as Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop ofLondon wrote in 1523, the Lollards, as they were called, were the firstto welcome Lutheranism into Britain.

But if the seed produced but a moderate harvest in England it broughtforth a hundred-fold in Bohemia. Wyclif's writings, carried by Czechstudents from Oxford to Prague, were eagerly studied by some of theattendants at that university, the greatest of whom was John Huss.[Sidenote: Huss, 1369-1415] Having taken his bachelor's degree therein 1393, he had given instruction since 1398 and became the head of theuniversity (Rector) for the year 1402. Almost the whole content of hislectures, as of his writings, was borrowed from Wyclif, from whom hecopied not only his main ideas but long passages verbatim and withoutspecific acknowledgment. Professors and students of his own racesupported him, but the Germans at the university took offence and along struggle ensued, culminating in the secession of the Germans in abody in 1409 to found a new university at Leipsic. The quarrel, havingstarted over a philosophic question,—Wyclif and Huss being realistsand the Germans nominalists,—took a more serious turn when it came toa definition of the church {39} and of the respective spheres of thecivil and ecclesiastical authorities. Defining the church as the bodyof the predestinate, and starting a campaign against indulgences, Husssoon fell under the ban of his superiors. After burning the bulls ofJohn XXIII Huss withdrew from Prague. Summoned to the Council ofConstance, he went thither, under safe-conduct from the EmperorSigismund, and was immediately cast into a noisome dungeon. [Sidenote:1411, 1412]

[Sidenote: 1414]

The council proceeded to consider the opinions of Wyclif, condemning260 of his errors and ordering his bones to be dug up and burnt, as wasdone twelve years later. Every effort was then made to get Huss torecant a list of propositions drawn up by the council and attributed tohim. Some of these charges were absurd, as that he was accused ofcalling himself the fourth person of the Trinity. Other opinions, likethe denial of transubstantiation, he declared, and doubtless withtruth, that he had never held. Much was made of his saying that hehoped his soul would be with the soul of Wyclif after death, and theemperor was alarmed by his argument that neither priest nor king livingin mortal sin had a right to exercise his office. He was thereforecondemned to the stake.

His death was perfect. His last letters are full of calm resolution,love to his friends, and forgiveness to his enemies. Haled to thecathedral where the council sat on July 6, 1415, he was given one lastchance to recant and save his life. Refusing, he was stripped of hisvestments, and a paper crown with three demons painted on it put on hishead with the words, "We commit thy soul to the devil"; he was then ledto the public square and burnt alive. Sigismund, threatened by thecouncil, made no effort to redeem his safe-conduct, and in Septemberthe reverend fathers passed a decree that no safe-conduct to a heretic,and {40} no pledge prejudicial to the Catholic faith, could beconsidered binding. Among the large concourse of divines not one voicewas raised against this treacherous murder.

Huss's most prominent follower, Jerome of Prague, after recantation,returned to his former position and was burnt at Constance on May 30,1416. A bull of 1418 ordered the similar punishment of all hereticswho maintained the positions of Wyclif, Huss, or Jerome of Prague.

As early as September a loud remonstrance against the treatment oftheir master was voiced by the Bohemian Diet. The more radical party,known as Taborites, rejected transubstantiation, worship of the saints,prayers for the dead, indulgences, auricular confession, and oaths.They allowed women to preach, demanded the use of the vernacular indivine service and the giving of the cup to the laity. A crusade wasstarted against them, but they knew how to defend themselves. TheCouncil of Basle [Sidenote: 1431-6] was driven to negotiate with themand ended by a compromise allowing the cup to the laity and some otherreforms. Subsequent efforts to reduce them proved futile. Under KingPodiebrad the Ultraquists maintained their rights.

Some Hussites, however, continued as a separate body, callingthemselves Bohemian Brethren. First met with in 1457 they continue tothe present day as Moravians. They were subject to constantpersecution. In 1505 the Catholic official James Lilienstayn drew upan interesting list of their errors. It seems that their cardinaltenet was the supremacy of Scripture, without gloss, tradition, orinterpretation by the Fathers of the church. They rejected the primacyof the pope, and all ceremonies for which authority could not be foundin the Bible, and they denied the efficacy of masses for the dead andthe validity of indulgences.

{41} With much reason Wyclif and Huss have been called "Reformersbefore the Reformation." Luther himself, not knowing the Englishman,recognized his deep indebtedness to the Bohemian. All of theirprogram, and more, he carried through. His doctrine of justificationby faith only, with its radical transformation of the sacramentalsystem, cannot be found in these his predecessors, and this was adifference of vast importance.

SECTION 6. NATIONALIZING THE CHURCHES

Inevitably, the growth of national sentiment spoken of above reacted onthe religious institutions of Europe. Indeed, it was here that theconflict of the international, ecclesiastical state, and of the seculargovernments became keenest. Both kings and people wished to controltheir own spiritual affairs as well as their temporalities.

[Sidenote: The ecclesia Anglicana]

England traveled farthest on the road towards a national church. Forthree centuries she had been asserting the rights of her government todirect spiritual as well as temporal matters. The Statute of Mortmain[Sidenote: 1279] forbade the alienation of land from the jurisdictionof the civil power by appropriating it to religious persons. Thewithdrawing of land from the obligation to pay taxes and feudal dueswas thus checked. The encroachment of the civil power, both in Englandand France, was bitterly felt by the popes. Boniface VIII endeavoredto stem the flood by the bull Clericis laicos [Sidenote: 1296]forbidding the taxation of clergy by any secular government, and thebull Unam Sanctam [Sidenote: 1302] asserting the universal monarchyof the Roman pontiff in the strongest possible terms. But theseexorbitant claims were without effect. The Statute of Provisors[Sidenote: 1351 and 1390] forbade the appointment to English beneficesby the pope, and the Statute of Praemunire [Sidenote: 1353 and 1393]took away the right of {42} English subjects to appeal from the courtsof their own country to Rome. The success of Wyclif's movement waslargely due to his patriotism. Though the signs of strife with thepope were fewer in the fifteenth century, there is no doubt that thenational feeling persisted.

[Sidenote: The Gallican Church]

France manifested a spirit of liberty hardly less fierce than that ofEngland. It was the French King Philip the Fair who humiliatedBoniface VIII so severely that he died of chagrin. During almost thewhole of the fourteenth century the residence of a pope subservient toFrance at Avignon prevented any difficulties, but no sooner had theCouncil of Constance restored the head of the unified church to Romethan the old conflict again burst forth. [Sidenote: 1438] The extremeclaims of the Gallican church were asserted in the law known as thePragmatic Sanction of Bourges, by which the pope was left hardly anyright of appointment, of jurisdiction, or of raising revenue in France.The supremacy of a council over the pope was explicitly asserted, aswas the right of the civil magistrate to order ecclesiastical affairsin his dominions. When the pontiffs refused to recognize this almostschismatical position taken by France, the Pragmatic Sanction wasfurther fortified by a law sentencing to death any person who shouldbring into the country a bull repugnant to it. Strenuous efforts ofthe papacy were directed to secure the repeal of this document, and in1461 Pius II induced Louis XI to revoke it in return for politicalconcessions in Naples. This action, opposed by the University andParlement of Paris, proved so unpopular that two years later theGallican liberties were reasserted in their full extent.

Harmony was established between the interests of the curia and of theFrench government by the compromise known as the Concordat of Bologna.[Sidenote: 1516] The {43} concessions to the king were so heavy thatit was difficult for Leo X to get his cardinals to consent to them.Almost the whole power of appointment, of jurisdiction, and of taxationwas put into the royal hands, some stipulations being made against theconferring of benefices on immoral priests and against the frivolousimposition of ecclesiastical punishments. What the pope gained was theabandonment of the assertion made at Bourges of the supremacy of ageneral council. The Concordat was greeted by a storm of protest inFrance. The Sorbonne refused to recognize it and appealed at once to ageneral council. The king, however, had the refractory membersarrested and decreed the repeal of the Pragmatic Sanction in 1518.

In Italy and Germany the growth of a national state [Sidenote: Italy]was retarded by the fact that one was the seat of the pope, the otherof the emperor, each of them claiming a universal authority. Moreover,these two powers were continually at odds. The long investiturestrife, culminating in the triumph of Gregory VII at Canossa [Sidenote:1077] and ending in the Concordat of Worms, [Sidenote: 1122] could notpermanently settle the relations of the two. Whereas Aquinas and theCanon Law maintained the superiority of the pope, there were notlacking asserters of the imperial preëminence. William of Occam'sargument to prove that the emperor might depose an heretical pope wastaken up by Marsiglio of Padua, whose Defender of the Peace[Sidenote: c. 1324] ranks among the ablest of political pamphlets. Inorder to reduce the power of the pope, whom he called "the great dragonand old serpent," he advanced the civil government to a completesupremacy in ecclesiastical affairs. He stated that the only authorityin matters of faith was the Bible, with the necessary interpretationgiven it by a general council composed of both clergy and laymen; thatthe emperor had the right to convoke and {44} direct this council andto punish all priests, prelates and the supreme pontiff; that the CanonLaw had no validity; that no temporal punishment should be visited onheresy save by the state, and no spiritual punishment be valid withoutthe consent of the state.

[Sidenote: Germany]

With such a weapon in their hands the emperors might have taken an evenstronger stand than did the kings of England and France but for thelack of unity in their dominions. Germany was divided into a largenumber of practically independent states. It was in these and not inthe empire as a whole that an approach was made to a form of nationalchurch, such as was realized after Luther had broken the bondage ofRome. When Duke Rudolph IV of Austria in the fourteenth century statedthat he intended to be pope, archbishop, archdeacon and dean in his ownland, when the dukes of Bavaria, Saxony and Cleves made similar boasts,they but put in a strong form the program that they in part realized.The princes gradually acquired the right of patronage to churchbenefices, and they permitted no bulls to be published, no indulgencessold, without their permission. The Free Cities acted in much the sameway. The authority of the German states over their own spiritualitieswas no innovation of the heresy of Wittenberg.

For all Germany's internal division there was a certain nationalconsciousness, due to the common language. In no point were the peoplemore agreed than in their opposition to the rule of the Italian Curia.[Sidenote: 1382] At one time the monasteries of Cologne signed acompact to resist Gregory XI in a proposed levy of tithes, statingthat, "in consequence of the exactions by which the Papal Court burdensthe clergy the Apostolic See has fallen into contempt and the Catholicfaith in these parts seems to be seriously imperiled." Again, {45} aKnight of the Teutonic Order in Prussia [Sidenote: 1430] wrote: "Greedreigns supreme in the Roman Court, and day by day finds new devices andartifices for extorting money from Germany under pretext ofecclesiastical fees. Hence arise much outcry, complaint andheart-burning. . . . Many questions about the papacy will be answered,or else obedience will ultimately be entirely renounced to escape fromthese outrageous exactions of the Italians."

The relief expected from the Council of Basle failed, and abuses wereonly made worse by a compact between Frederick III and Nicholas V,known as the Concordat of Vienna. [Sidenote: 1448] This treaty was byno means comparable with the English and French legislation, but wasmerely a division of the spoils between the two supreme rulers at theexpense of the people. The power of appointment to high ecclesiasticalpositions was divided, annates were confirmed, and in general aconsiderable increase of the authority of the Curia was established.

Protests began at once in the form of "Gravamina" or lists ofgrievances drawn up at each Diet as a petition, and in part enactedinto laws. In 1452 the Spiritual Electors demanded that the emperorproceed with reform on the basis of the decrees of Constance. In 1457the clergy refused to be taxed for a crusade. In 1461 the princesappealed against the sale of indulgences. The Gravamina of this yearwere very bitter, complaining of the practice of usury by priests, ofthe pomp of the cardinals and of the pope's habit of giving promises ofpreferment to certain sees and then declaring the places vacant on theplea of having made a "mental reservation" in favor of some one else.The Roman clergy were called in this bill of grievances "publicfornicators, keepers of concubines, ruffians, pimps and sinners invarious other {46} respects." Drastic proposals of reform weredefeated by the pope.

[Sidenote: Gravamina]

The Gravamina continued. Those of 1479 appealed against the MendicantOrders and against the appointment of foreigners. They clamored for anew council and for reform on the basis of the decrees of Basle; theyprotested against judicial appeals to Rome, against the annates andagainst the crusade tax. It was stated that the papal appointees wererather fitted to be drivers of mules than pastors of souls. Such wordsfound a reverberating echo among the people. The powerful pen ofGregory of Heimburg, sometimes called "the lay Luther," roused hiscountrymen to a patriotic stand against the Italian usurpation.

The Diet of 1502 resolved not to let money raised by indulgences leaveGermany, but to use it against the Turks. Another long list ofgrievances relating to the tyranny and extortion of Rome was presentedin 1510. The acts of the Diet of Augsburg in the summer of 1518 areeloquent testimony to the state of popular feeling when Luther had justbegun his career. To this Diet Leo X sent as special legate CardinalCajetan, requesting a subsidy for a crusade against the Turk. It wasproposed that an impost of ten per cent. be laid on the incomes of theclergy and one of five per cent. on the rich laity. This was refusedon account of the grievances of the nation against the Curia, andrefused in language of the utmost violence. It was stated that thereal enemy of Christianity was not the Turk but "the hound of hell" inRome. Indulgences were branded as blood-letting.

When such was the public opinion it is clear that Luther only touched amatch to a heap of inflammable material. The whole nationalistmovement redounded to the benefit of Protestantism. The state-churchesof {47} northern Europe are but the logical development of previousseparatist tendencies.

SECTION 7. THE HUMANISTS

But the preparation for the great revolt was no less thorough on theintellectual than it was on the religious and political sides. Therevival of interest in classical antiquity, aptly known as theRenaissance, brought with it a searching criticism of all medievalstandards and, most of all, of medieval religion. The Renaissancestands in the same relationship to the Reformation that the so-called"Enlightenment" stands to the French Revolution. The humanists of thefifteenth century were the "philosophers" of the eighteenth.

The new spirit was born in Italy. If we go back as far as Dante[Sidenote: Dante, 1265-1321] we find, along with many modern elements,such as the use of the vernacular, a completely medieval conception ofthe universe. His immortal poem is in one respect but a commentary onthe Summa theologiae of Aquinas; it is all about the other world.The younger contemporaries of the great Florentine [Sidenote: Petrarch,1304-1374] began to be restless as the implications of the new spiritdawned on them. Petrarch lamented that literary culture was deemedincompatible with faith. Boccaccio was as much a child of this worldas Dante was a prophet of the next. [Sidenote: Boccaccio, 1313-1375]Too simple-minded deliberately to criticize doctrine, he wasinstinctively opposed to ecclesiastical professions. Devoting himselfto celebrating the pleasures and the pomp of life, he took especialdelight in heaping ridicule on ecclesiastics, representing them as thequintessence of all impurity and hypocrisy. The first story in hisfamous Decameron is of a scoundrel who comes to be reputed as a saint,invoked as such and performing miracles {48} after death. The secondstory is of a Jew who was converted to Christianity by the wickednessof Rome, for he reasoned that no cult, not divinely supported, couldsurvive such desperate depravity as he saw there. The third tale, ofthe three rings, points the moral that no one can be certain whatreligion is the true one. The fourth narrative, like many others,turns upon the sensuality of the monks. Elsewhere the author describesthe most absurd relics, and tells how a priest deceived a woman bypretending that he was the angel Gabriel. The trend of such a work wasnaturally the reverse of edifying. The irreligion is too spontaneousto be called philosophic doubt; it is merely impiety.

[Sidenote: Valla, 1406-56]

But such a sentiment could not long remain content with scoffing. Thebanner of pure rationalism, or rather of conscious classicalskepticism, was raised by a circle of enthusiasts. The most brilliantof them, and one of the keenest critics that Europe has ever produced,was Lorenzo Valla, a native of Naples, and for some years holder of abenefice at Rome. Such was the trenchancy and temper of his weaponsthat much of what he advanced has stood the test of time.

[Sidenote: The Donation of Constantine]

The papal claim to temporal supremacy in the Western world restedlargely on a spurious document known as the Donation of Constantine.In this the emperor is represented as withdrawing from Rome in order toleave it to the pope, to whom, in return for being cured of leprosy, hegives the whole Occident. An uncritical age had received this forgeryfor five or six centuries without question. Doubt had been cast on itby Nicholas of Cusa and Reginald Peacock, but Valla demolished it. Heshowed that no historian had spoken of it; that there was no time atwhich it could have occurred; that it is contradicted by othercontemporary acts; that the barbarous style contains {49} expressionsof Greek, Hebrew, and German origin; that the testimony of numismaticsis against it; and that the author knew nothing of the antiquities ofRome, into whose council he introduced satraps. Valla's work was sothoroughly done that the document, embodied as were its conclusions inthe Canon Law, has never found a reputable defender since. In time thecritique had an immense effect. Ulrich von Hutten published it in1517, and in the same year an English translation was made. In 1537Luther turned it into German.

[Sidenote: Valla attacks the Pope]

And if the legality of the pope's rule was so slight, what was itspractical effect? According to Valla, it was a "barbarous,overbearing, tyrannical, priestly domination." "What is it to you," heapostrophizes the pontiff, "if our republic is crushed? You havecrushed it. If our temples have been pillaged? You have pillagedthem. If our virgins and matrons have been violated? You have doneit. If the city is innundated with the blood of citizens? You areguilty of it all."

[Sidenote: Annotations on the New Testament]

Valla's critical genius next attacked the schoolman's idol Aristotleand the humanist's demigod Cicero. More important were hisAnnotations on the New Testament, first published by Erasmus in 1505.The Vulgate was at that time regarded, as it was at Trent defined tobe, the authentic or official form of the Scriptures. Taking in handthree Latin and three Greek manuscripts, Valla had no difficulty inshowing that they differed from one another and that in some cases theLatin had no authority whatever in the Greek. He pointed out a numberof mistranslations, some of them in passages vitally affecting thefaith. In short he left no support standing for any theory of verbalinspiration. He further questioned, and successfully, the authorshipof the Creed attributed {50} to the Apostles, the authenticity of thewritings of Dionysius the Areopagite and of the letter of Christ toKing Abgarus, preserved and credited by Eusebius.

[Sidenote: Attack on Christian ethics]

His attack on Christian ethics was still more fundamental. In hisDialogue on Free Will he tried with ingenuity to reconcile thefreedom of the will, denied by Augustine, with the foreknowledge ofGod, which he did not feel strong enough to dispute. In his work onThe Monastic Life he denied all value to asceticism. Others hadmocked the monks for not living up to their professions; he assertedthat the ideal itself was mistaken. But it is the treatise OnPleasure that goes the farthest. In form it is a dialogue on ethics;one interlocutor maintaining the Epicurean, the second the Stoical, andthe third the Christian standard. The sympathies of the author areplainly with the champion of hedonism, who maintains that pleasure isthe supreme good in life, or rather the only good, that the prostituteis better than the nun, for the one makes men happy, the other isdedicated to a painful and shameful celibacy; that the law againstadultery is a sort of sacrilege; that women should be common and shouldgo naked; and that it is irrational to die for one's country or for anyother ideal. . . . It is noteworthy that the representative of theChristian standpoint accepts tacitly the assumption that happiness isthe supreme good, only he places that happiness in the next life.

Valla's ideas obtained throughout a large circle in the half-centuryfollowing his death. Masuccio indulged in the most obscene mockery ofCatholic rites. Poggio wrote a book against hypocrites, attacking themonks, and a joke-book largely at the expense of the faithful.Machiavelli assailed the papacy with great ferocity, attributing to itthe corruption of Italian morals and the political disunion andweakness of {51} Italy, and advocating its annihilation. [Sidenote:Machiavelli, 1469-1530] In place of Christianity, habitually spoken ofas an exploded superstition, dangerous to the state, he would put thepatriotic cults of antiquity.

It is not strange, knowing the character of the popes, that paganexpressions should color the writings of their courtiers. Poggio was apapal secretary, and so was Bembo, a cardinal who refused to readPaul's epistles for fear of corrupting his Latinity. In his exquisitesearch for classical equivalents for the rude phrases of the gospel, hereferred, in a papal breve, to Christ as "Minerva sprung from the headof Jove," and to the Holy Ghost as "the breath of the celestialZephyr." Conceived in the same spirit was a sermon of Inghirami heardby Erasmus at Rome on Good Friday 1509. Couched in the purestCiceronian terms, while comparing the Saviour to Gurtius, Cecrops,Aristides, Epaminondas and Iphigenia, it was mainly devoted to anextravagant eulogy of the reigning pontiff, Julius II.

But all the Italian humanists were not pagans. There arose atFlorence, partly under the influence of the revival of Greek, partlyunder that of Savonarola, a group of earnest young men who sought toinvigorate Christianity by infusing into it the doctrines of Plato.The leaders of this Neo-Platonic Academy, Pico della Mirandola[Sidenote: Pico della Mirandola, 1462-94] and Marsiglio Ficino, soughtto show that the teachings of the Athenian and of the Galilean were thesame. Approaching the Bible in the simple literary way indicated byclassical study, Pico really rediscovered some of the teachings of theNew Testament, while in dealing with the Old he was forced to adopt aningenious but unsound allegorical interpretation. "Philosophy seeksthe truth," he wrote, "theology finds it, religion possesses it." Hisextraordinary personal influence extended through {52} lands beyond theAlps, even though it failed in accomplishing the rehabilitation ofItalian faith.

[Sidenote: Faber Stapulensis, c. 1455-1536]

The leader of the French Christian Renaissance, James Lefèvred'Étaples, was one of his disciples. Traveling in Italy in 1492, aftervisiting Padua, Venice and Rome, he came to Florence, learned to knowPico, and received from him a translation of Aristotle's Metaphysicsmade by Cardinal Bessarion. Returning to Paris he taught, at theCollege of Cardinal Lemoine, mathematics, music and philosophy. He didnot share the dislike of Aristotle manifested by most of the humanists,for he shrewdly suspected that what was offensive in the Stagyrite wasdue more to his scholastic translators and commentators than tohimself. He therefore labored to restore the true text, on which hewrote a number of treatises. It was with the same purpose that heturned next to the early Fathers and to the writer called Dionysius theAreopagite. But he did not find himself until he found the Bible. In1509 he published the Quintuplex Psalterium, the first treatise onthe Psalms in which the philological and personal interest wasuppermost. Hitherto it had not been the Bible that had been studied somuch as the commentaries on it, a dry wilderness of arid and futilesubtlety. Lefèvre tried to see simply what the text said, and as itbecame more human it became, for him, more divine. His preface is areal cry of joy at his great discovery. He did, indeed, interpreteverything in a double sense, literal and spiritual, and placed theemphasis rather on the latter, but this did not prevent a genuineeffort to read the words as they were written. Three years later hepublished in like manner the Epistles of St. Paul, with commentary.Though he spoke of the apostle as a simple instrument of God, he yetdid more to uncover his personality than any of the previous {53}commentators. Half mystic as he was, Lefèvre discovered in Paul thedoctrine of justification by faith only. To I Corinthians viii, hewrote: "It is almost profane to speak of the merit of works, especiallytowards God. . . . The opinion that we can be justified by works is anerror for which the Jews are especially condemned. . . . Our only hopeis in God's grace." Lefèvre's works opened up a new world to thetheologians of the time. Erasmus's friend Beatus Rhenanus wrote thatthe richness of the Quintuplex Psalter made him poor. Thomas Moresaid that English students owed him much. Luther used the two works ofthe Frenchman as the texts for his early lectures. From them he drewvery heavily; indeed it was doubtless Lefèvre who first suggested tohim the formula of his famous "sola fide."

The religious renaissance in England was led by a disciple of Picodella Mirandola, John Colet, [Sidenote: Colet, d. 1519] a man ofremarkably pure life, and Dean of St. Paul's. He wrote, though he didnot publish, some commentaries on the Pauline epistles and on theMosaic account of creation. Though he knew no Greek, and was not aneasy or elegant writer of Latin, he was allied to the humanists by hisdesire to return to the real sources of Christianity, and by his searchfor the historical sense of his texts. Though in some respects he wasunder the fantastic notions of the Areopagite, in others hisinterpretation was rational, free and undogmatic. He exercised aconsiderable influence on Erasmus and on a few choice spirits of thetime.

The humanism of Germany centered in the universities. At the close ofthe fifteenth century new courses in the Latin classics, in Greek andin Hebrew, began to supplement the medieval curriculum of logic andphilosophy. At every academy there sprang up a circle of "poets," asthey called themselves, often of {54} lax morals and indifferent toreligion, but earnest in their championship of culture. Nor were thesecircles confined entirely to the seats of learning. Many a city hadits own literary society, one of the most famous being that ofNuremberg. Conrad Mutianus Rufus drew to Gotha, [Sidenote: Mutian,1471-1526] where he held a canonry, a group of disciples, to whom heimparted the Neo-Platonism he had imbibed in Italy. Disregardingrevelation, he taught that all religions were essentially the same. "Iesteem the decrees of philosophers more than those of priests," hewrote.

[Sidenote: Reuchlin, 1455-1522]

What Lefèvre and Colet had done for the New Testament, John Reuchlindid for the Old. After studying in France and Italy, where he learnedto know Pico della Mirandola, he settled at Stuttgart and devoted hislife to the study of Hebrew. His De Rudimentis Hebraicis, [Sidenote:1506] a grammar and dictionary of this language, performed a greatservice for scholarship. In the late Jewish work, the Cabbala, hebelieved he had discovered a source of mystic wisdom. The extravaganceof his interpretations of Scriptual passages, based on this, not onlyrendered much of his work nugatory, but got him into a great deal oftrouble. The converted Jew, John Pfefferkorn, proposed, in a series ofpamphlets, that Jews should be forbidden to practise usury, should becompelled to hear sermons and to deliver up all their Hebrew books tobe burnt, except the Old Testament. When Reuchlin's aid in this piousproject was requested it was refused in a memorial dated October 6,1510, pointing out the great value of much Hebrew literature. TheDominicans of Cologne, headed by their inquisitor, James Hochstraten,made this the ground for a charge of heresy. The case was appealed toRome, and the trial, lasting six years, excited the interest of allEurope. In Germany it was argued with much heat in a host of {55}pamphlets, all the monks and obscurantists taking the side of theinquisitors and all the humanists, save one, Ortuin Gratius of Cologne,taking the part of the scholar. The latter received many warmexpressions of admiration and support from the leading writers of thetime, and published them in two volumes, the first in 1514, under thetitle Letters of Eminent Men. It was this that suggested to thehumanist, Crotus Bubeanus, the title of his satire publishedanonymously, The Letters of Obscure Men. In form it is a series ofepistles from monks and hedge-priests to Ortuin Gratius. [Sidenote:Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum]

Writing in the most barbarous Latin, they express their admiration forhis attack on Reuchlin and the cause of learning, gossip about theirdrinking-bouts and pot-house amours, expose their ignorance andgullibility, and ask absurd questions, as, whether it is a mortal sinto salute a Jew, and whether the worms eaten with beans and cheeseshould be considered meat or fish, lawful or not in Lent, and at whatstage of development a chick in the egg becomes meat and thereforeprohibited on Fridays. The satire, coarse as it was biting, failed towin the applause of the finer spirits, but raised a shout of laughterfrom the students, and was no insignificant factor in adding tocontempt for the church. The first book of these Letters, publishedin 1515, was followed two years later by a second, even more causticthan the first. This supplement, also published without the writer'sname, was from the pen of Ulrich von Hutten.

[Sidenote: Hutten, 1488-1523]

This brilliant and passionate writer devoted the greater part of hislife to war with Rome. His motive was not religious, but patriotic.He longed to see his country strong and united, and free from thegalling oppression of the ultramontane yoke. He published Valla'sDonation of Constantine, and wrote epigrams on the popes. Hisdialogue Fever the First is a {56} vitriolic attack on the priests.His Vadiscus or the Roman Trinity [Sidenote: 1520] scourges the vicesof the curia where three things are sold: Christ, places and women.When he first heard of Luther's cause he called it a quarrel of monks,and only hoped they would all destroy one another. But by 1519 he sawin the Reformer the most powerful of allies against the common foe, andhe accordingly embraced his cause with habitual zeal. His letters atthis time breathe out fire and slaughter against the Romanists ifanything should happen to Luther. In 1523, he supported his friendFrancis von Sickingen, in the attempt to assert by force of arms therights of the patriotic and evangelic order of knights. When this wasdefeated, Hutten, suffering from a terrible disease, wandered toSwitzerland, where he died, a lonely and broken exile. His epitaphshall be his own lofty poem:

I have fought my fight with courage,
Nor have I aught to rue,
For, though I lost the battle,
The world knows, I was true!

[Sidenote: Erasmus, 1466-1536]

The most cosmopolitan, as well as the greatest, of all the Christianhumanists, was Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. Though an illegitimatechild, he was well educated and thoroughly grounded in the classics atthe famous school of Deventer. At the age of twenty he was persuaded,somewhat against his will, to enter the order of Augustinian Canons atSteyn. Under the patronage of the Bishop of Cambrai he was enabled tocontinue his studies at Paris. [Sidenote: 1499-1509] For the next tenyears he wandered to England, to various places in Northern France andFlanders, and Italy, learning to know many of the intellectual leadersof the time. From 1509-14 he was in England, part of the timelecturing at Cambridge. He then spent some {57} years at Louvain,seven years at Basle and six years at Freiburg in the Breisgau,returning to Basle for the last year of his life.

Until he was over thirty Erasmus's dominant interest was classicalliterature. Under the influence of Colet and of a French Franciscan,John Vitrier, he turned his attention to liberalizing religion. Hisfirst devotional work, The Handbook of the Christian Knight,perfectly sets forth his program of spiritual, as opposed to formal,Christianity. [Sidenote: Enchiridion Militis Christiani, 1503] Itall turns upon the distinction between the inner and the outer man, themoral and the sensual. True service of Christ is purity of heart andlove, not the invocation of saints, fasting and indulgences.

In The Praise of Folly Erasmus mildly rebukes the foibles of men.[Sidenote: 1511] There never was kindlier satire, free from the savagescorn of Crotus and Hutten, and from the didactic scolding of SebastianBrant, whose Ship of Fools [Sidenote: 1494] was one of the author'smodels. Folly is made quite amiable, the source not only of somethings that are amiss but also of much harmless enjoyment. Thebesetting silliness of every class is exposed: of the man of pleasure,of the man of business, of women and of husbands, of the writer and ofthe pedant. Though not unduly emphasized, the folly of currentsuperstitions is held up to ridicule. Some there are who have turnedthe saints into pagan gods; some who have measured purgatory into yearsand days and cheat themselves with indulgences against it; sometheologians who spend all their time discussing such absurdities aswhether God could have redeemed men in the form of a woman, a devil, anass, a squash or a stone, others who explain the mystery of the Trinity.

In following up his plan for the restoration of a simpler Christianity,Erasmus rightly thought that a return from the barren subtleties of theschoolmen to {58} the primitive sources was essential. He wished toreduce Christianity to a moral, humanitarian, undogmatic philosophy oflife. His attitude towards dogma was to admit it and to ignore it.Scientific enlightenment he welcomed more than did either the Catholicsor the Reformers, sure that if the Sermon on the Mount survived,Christianity had nothing to fear. In like manner, while he did notattack the cult and ritual of the church, he never laid any stress onit. "If some dogmas are incomprehensible and some ritessuperstitious," he seemed to say, "what does it matter? Let usemphasize the ethical and spiritual content of Christ's message, for ifwe seek his kingdom, all else needful shall be added unto us." Hisfavorite name for his religion was the "philosophy of Christ,"[Sidenote: Philosophy of Christ] and it is thus that he persuasivelyexpounds it in a note, in his Greek Testament, to Matthew xi, 30:

Truly the yoke of Christ would be sweet and his burden light, if petty human institutions added nothing to what he himself imposed. He commanded us nothing save love one for another, and there is nothing so bitter that charity does not soften and sweeten it. Everything according to nature is easily borne, and nothing accords better with the nature of man than the philosophy of Christ, of which almost the sole end is to give back to fallen nature its innocence and integrity. . . . How pure, how simple is the faith that Christ delivered to us! How close to it is the creed transmitted to us by the apostles, or apostolic men. The church, divided and tormented by discussions and by heresy, added to it many things, of which some can be omitted without prejudice to the faith. . . . There are many opinions from which impiety may be begotten, as for example, all those philosophic doctrines on the reason of the nature and the distinction of the persons of the Godhead. . . . The sacraments themselves were instituted for the salvation of men, but we abuse them for lucre, for vain glory or for the oppression of the humble. . . . What rules, what superstitions we have about vestments! How many are judged as to {59} their Christianity by such trifles, which are indifferent in themselves, which change with the fashion and of which Christ never spoke! . . . How many fasts are instituted! And we are not merely invited to fast, but obliged to, on pain of damnation. . . . What shall we say about vows . . . about the authority of the pope, the abuse of absolutions, dispensations, remissions of penalty, law-suits, in which there is much that a truly good man cannot see without a groan? The priests themselves prefer to study Aristotle than to ply their ministry. The gospel is hardly mentioned from the pulpit. Sermons are monopolized by the commissioners of indulgences; often the doctrine of Christ is put aside and suppressed for their profit. . . . Would that men were content to let Christ rule by the laws of the gospel and that they would no longer seek to strengthen their obscurant tyranny by human decrees!

[Sidenote: Colloquies]

In the Familiar Colloquies, first published in 1518 and oftenenlarged in subsequent editions, Erasmus brought out his religiousideas most sharply. Enormous as were the sales and influence of hisother chief writings, they were probably less than those of this work,intended primarily as a text-book of Latin style. The firstconversations are, indeed, nothing more than school-boy exercises, butthe later ones are short stories penned with consummate art. Erasmusis almost the only man who, since the fall of Rome, has succeeded inwriting a really exquisite Latin. But his supreme gift was his drywit, the subtle faculty of exposing an object, apparently by a simplematter-of-fact narrative, to the keenest ridicule. Thus, in theColloquies, he describes his pilgrimage to St. Thomas's shrine atCanterbury, the bloody bones and the handkerchief covered with thesaint's rheum offered to be kissed—all without a disapproving word andyet in such a way that when the reader has finished it he wonders howanything so silly could ever have existed. Thus again he strips theworship of Mary, and all the {60} stupid and wrong projects she isasked to abet. In the conversation called The Shipwreck, the peoplepray to the Star of the Sea exactly as they did in pagan times, only itis Mary, not Venus that is meant. They offer mountains of wax candlesto the saints to preserve them, although one man confides to hisneighbor in a whisper that if he ever gets to land he will not pay onepenny taper on his vow. Again, in the Colloquy on the New Testament,a young man is asked what he has done for Christ. He replies:

A certain Franciscan keeps reviling the New Testament of Erasmus in his sermons. Well, one day I called on him in private, seized him by the hair with my left hand and punished him with my right. I gave him so sound a drubbing that I reduced his whole face to a mere jelly. What do you say to that? Isn't that maintaining the gospel? And then, by way of absolution for his sins I took this book [Erasmus's New Testament, a folio bound with brass] and gave him three resounding whacks on the head in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

"That," replies his friend, "was truly evangelic; defending the gospelby the gospel. But really it is time you were turning from a brutebeast into a man."

So it was that the man who was at once the gentlest Christian, theleading scholar, and the keenest wit of his age insinuated his opinionswithout seeming to attack anything. Where Luther battered down, heundermined. [Sidenote: Methods of argument] Even when he arguedagainst an opinion he called his polemic a "Conversation"—for that isthe true meaning of the word Diatribe. With choice of soft vocabulary,of attenuated forms, of double negatives, he tempered exquisitely hisLatin. Did he doubt anything? Hardly, "he had a shade of doubt"(subdubito). Did he think he wrote well? Not at all, but heconfessed that he produced "something more like Latin than the average"(paulo latinius). Did he {61} like anything? If so, he onlyadmitted—except when he was addressing his patrons—"that he was notaltogether averse to it." But all at once from these feather-lighttouches, like those of a Henry James, comes the sudden thrust that madehis stylus a dagger. Some of his epigrams on the Reformation have beenquoted in practically every history of the subject since, and will bequoted as often again.

[Sidenote: His wit]

But it was not a few perfect phrases that made him the power that hewas, but an habitual wit that never failed to strip any situation ofits vulgar pretense. When a canon of Strassburg Cathedral was showinghim over the chapter house and was boasting of the rule that no oneshould be admitted to a prebend who had not sixteen quarterings on hiscoat of arms, the humanist dropped his eyes and remarked demurely, withbut the flicker of a smile, that he was indeed honored to be in areligious company so noble that even Jesus could not have come up toits requirements. The man was dumfounded, he almost suspectedsomething personal; but he never forgot the salutary lesson sodelicately conveyed.

Erasmus was a man of peace; he feared "the tumult" which, if we trust aletter dated September 9, 1517—though he sometimes retouched hisletters on publishing them—he foresaw. "In this part of the world,"he wrote, "I am afraid that a great revolution is impending." It wasalready knocking at the door!

{62}

CHAPTER II

GERMANY

SECTION 1. THE LEADER

It is superfluous in these days to point out that no great historicalmovement is caused by the personality, however potent, of a singleindividual. The men who take the helm at crises are those who butexpress in themselves what the masses of their followers feel. Theneed of leadership is so urgent that if there is no really great man athand, the people will invent one, endowing the best of the small menwith the prestige of power, and embodying in his person the cause forwhich they strive. But a really strong personality to some extentguides the course of events by which he is carried along. Such a manwas Luther. [Sidenote: Luther, 1483-1546] Few have ever alikerepresented and dominated an age as did he. His heart was the mostpassionately earnest, his will the strongest, his brain one of the mostcapacious of his time; above all he had the gift of popular speech tostamp his ideas into the fibre of his countrymen. If we may borrow afigure from chemistry, he found public opinion a solutionsupersaturated with revolt; all that was needed to precipitate it was apebble thrown in, but instead of a pebble he added the most powerfulreagent possible.

On that October day when Columbus discovered the new world, Martin, aboy of very nearly nine, was sitting at his desk in the school atMansfeld. Though both diligent and quick, he found the crabbed Latinprimer, itself written in abstract Latin, very difficult, and wasflogged fourteen times in one morning by {63} brutal masters forfaltering in a declension. When he returned home he found his motherbending under a load of wood she had gathered in the forest. Both sheand his father were severe with the children, whipping them for slightfaults until the blood came. Nevertheless, as the son himselfrecognized, they meant heartily well by it. But for the self-sacrificeand determination shown by the father, a worker in the newly openedmines, who by his own industry rose to modest comfort, the career ofthe son would have been impossible.

Fully as much as by bodily hardship the boy's life was rendered unhappyby spiritual terrors. Demons lurked in the storms, and witches plaguedhis good mother and threatened to make her children cry themselves todeath. God and Christ were conceived as stern and angry judges readyto thrust sinners into hell. "They painted Christ," says Luther—andsuch pictures can still be seen in old churches—"sitting on a rainbowwith his Mother and John the Baptist on either side as intercessorsagainst his frightful wrath."

At thirteen he was sent away to Magdeburg to a charitable school, andthe next year to Eisenach, where he spent three years in study. Hecontributed to his support by the then recognized means of begging, andwas sheltered by the pious matron Ursula Cotta. In 1501 hematriculated at the old and famous university of Erfurt. [Sidenote:Erfurt] The curriculum here consisted of logic, dialectic, grammar,and rhetoric, followed by arithmetic, ethics, and metaphysics. Therewas some natural science, studied not by the experimental method, butwholly from the books of Aristotle and his medieval commentators, andthere were also a few courses in literature, both in the Latin classicsand in their later imitators. Ranking among the better {64} scholarsLuther took the degrees of bachelor in 1502 and of master of arts in1505, and immediately began the study of jurisprudence. While hisdiligence and good conduct won golden words from his preceptors hemingled with his comrades as a man with men. He was generous, evenprodigal, a musician and a "philosopher"; in disputations he was made"an honorary umpire" by his fellows and teachers. "Fair fortune andgood health are mine," he wrote a friend on September 5, 1501, "I amsettled at college as pleasantly as possible."

For the sudden change that came over his life at the age of twenty-oneno adequate explanation has been offered. Pious and serious as he was,his thoughts do not seem to have turned towards the monastic life as aboy, nor are the old legends of the sudden death of a friend wellsubstantiated. As he was returning to Erfurt from a visit home, he wasovertaken by a terrific thunderstorm, in which his excited imaginationsaw a devine warning to forsake the "world." In a fright he vowed toSt. Ann to become a monk and, though he at once regretted the rashpromise, on July 17, 1505, he discharged it by entering the Augustinianfriary at Erfurt. After a year's novitiate he took the irrevocablevows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. In 1507 he was ordainedpriest. In the winter of 1510-1 he was sent to Rome on business of theorder, and there saw much of the splendor and also of the corruption ofthe capital of Christendom. Having started, in 1508, to teachAristotle at the recently founded University of Wittenberg, a yearlater he returned to Erfurt, but was again called to Wittenberg tolecture on the Bible, a position he held all his life. [Sidenote: 1511]

During his first ten years in the cloister he underwent a profoundexperience. He started with the horrible and torturing idea that hewas doomed to hell. {65} "What can I do," he kept asking, "to win agracious God?" The answer given him by his teachers was that a manmust work out his own salvation, not entirely, but largely, by his ownefforts. The sacraments of the church dispensed grace and life to therecipient, and beyond this he could merit forgiveness by the asceticismand privation of the monastic life. Luther took this all in and strovefrantically by fasting, prayer, and scourging to fit himself forredemption. But though he won the reputation of a saint, he could notfree himself from the desires of the flesh. He was helpless; he coulddo nothing. Then he read in Augustine that virtue without grace is buta specious vice; that God damns and saves utterly without regard toman's work. He read in Tauler and the other mystics that the only truesalvation is union with God, and that if a man were willing to bedamned for God's glory he would find heaven even in hell. He read inLefèvre d'Étaples that a man is not saved by doing good, but by faith,like the thief on the cross.

In May, 1515, he began to lecture on Paul's Epistles to the Romans, andpondered the verse (i, 17) "The just shall live by his faith."[Sidenote: Justification by faith only] All at once, so forcibly thathe believed it a revelation of the Holy Ghost, the thought dawned uponhim that whereas man was impotent to do or be good, God was able freelyto make him so. Pure passivity in God's hands, simple abandonment tohis will was the only way of salvation; not by works but by faith inthe Redeemer was man sanctified. The thought, though by no means newin Christianity, was, in the application he gave it, the germ of thereligious revolution. In it was contained the total repudiation of themedieval ecclesiastical system of salvation by sacrament and by thegood works of the cloister. To us nowadays the thought seems remote;the question which called it forth outworn. But to the {66} sixteenthcentury it was as intensely practical as social reform is now; thechurch was everywhere with her claim to rule over men's daily lives andover their souls. All progress was conditioned on breaking her claims,and probably nothing could have done it so thoroughly as this idea ofjustification by faith only.

The thought made Luther a reformer at once. He started to purge hisorder of Pharisaism, and the university of the dross of Aristotle.Soon he was called upon to protest against one of the most obtrusive ofthe "good works" recommended by the church, the purchase ofindulgences. Albert of Hohenzollern was elected, through politicalinfluence and at an early age, to the archiepiscopal sees of Magdeburgand Mayence, this last carrying with it an electorate and the primacyof Germany. For confirmation from the pope in the uncanonicaloccupation of these offices, Albert paid a huge sum, the equivalent ofseveral hundred thousand dollars today. Mayence was already in debtand the young archbishop knew not where to turn for money. To helphim, and to raise money for Rome, Leo X declared an indulgence. Inorder to get a large a profit as possible Albert employed as his chiefagent an unscrupulous Dominican named John Tetzel. [Sidenote: Tetzel]This man went around the country proclaiming that as soon as the moneyclinked in the chest the soul of some dead relative flew frompurgatory, and that by buying a papal pardon the purchaser securedplenary remission of sins and the grace of God.

The indulgence-sellers were forbidden to enter Saxony, but they camevery near it, and many of the people of Wittenberg went out to buyheaven at a bargain. Luther was sickened by seeing what he believed tobe the deception of the poor people in being taught to rely on thesewretched papers instead of on real, lively faith. He accordinglycalled their value in question, {67} in Ninety-five Theses, or headsfor a scholastic debate, which he nailed to the door of the CastleChurch on October 31, 1517. [Sidenote: The Ninety-five Theses, 1517]He pointed out that the doctrine of the church was very uncertain,especially in regard to the freeing of souls from purgatory; thatcontrition was the only gate to God's pardon; that works of charitywere better than buying of indulgences, and that the practices of theindulgence-sellers were extremely scandalous and likely to fomentheresy among the simple. In all this he did not directly deny thewhole value of indulgences, but he pared it down to a minimum.

The Theses were printed by Luther and sent around to friends in othercities. They were at once put into German, and applauded to the echoby the whole nation. Everybody had been resentful of the extortion ofgreedy ecclesiastics and disgusted with their hypocrisy. All welcomedthe attack on the "holy trade," as its supporters called it. Tetzelwas mobbed and had to withdraw in haste. The pardons no longer had anysale. The authorities took alarm at once. Leo X directed the generalof the Augustinians to make his presumptuous brother recant.[Sidenote: February 3, 1518] The matter was accordingly brought up atthe general chapter of the Order held at Heidelberg in May. Luther waspresent, was asked to retract, and refused. On the contrary hepublished a Sermon on Indulgence and Grace and a defence of the thesesstating his points more strongly than before.

The whole of Germany was now in commotion. The Diet which met atAugsburg in the summer of 1518 was extremely hostile to the pope and tohis legate, Cardinal Cajetan. At the instance of this theologian, whohad written a reply to the Theses, and of the Dominicans, wounded inthe person of Tetzel, Luther was summoned to Rome to be tried. OnAugust 5 the {68} Emperor Maximilian promised his aid to the pope, andin order to expedite matters, the latter changed the summons to Rome toa citation before Cajetan at Augsburg, at the same time instructing thelegate to seize the heretic if he did not recant. At this junctureLuther was not left in the lurch by his own sovereign, Frederic theWise, Elector of Saxony, through whom an imperial safe-conduct wasprocured. Armed with this, the Wittenberg professor appeared beforeCajetan at Augsburg, was asked to recant two of his statements onindulgences, and refused. [Sidenote: October 12-14, 1518] A few dayslater Luther drew up an appeal "from the pope badly informed to thepope to be better informed," and in the following month appealed againfrom the pope to a future oecumenical council. In the meantime Leo X,in the bull Cum postquam, authoritatively defined the doctrine ofindulgences in a sense contrary to the position of Luther.

The next move of the Vicar of Christ was to send to Germany a specialagent, the Saxon Charles von Miltitz, with instructions either tocajole the heretic into retraction or the Elector into surrenderinghim. In neither of these attempts was he successful. [Sidenote:January 1519] At an interview with Luther the utmost he could do wasto secure a general statement that the accused man would abide by thedecision of the Holy See, and a promise to keep quiet as long as hisopponents did the same.

Such a compromise was sure to be fruitless, for the champions of thechurch could not let the heretic rest for a moment. The whole affairwas given a wider publicity than it had hitherto attained, and at thesame time Luther was pushed to a more advanced position than he had yetreached, by the attack of a theologian of Ingolstadt, John Eck. Whenhe assailed the Theses on the ground that they seriously impaired theauthority of the Roman see, Luther retorted:

{69} The assertion that the Roman Church is superior to all other churches is proved only by weak and vain papal decrees of the last four hundred years, and is repugnant to the accredited history of the previous eleven hundred years, to the Bible, and to the decree of the holiest of all councils, the Nicene.

[Sidenote: The Leipzig Debate, 1519]

A debate on this and other propositions between Eck on the one side andLuther and his colleague Carlstadt on the other took place at Leipzigin the days from June 27 to July 16, 1519. The climax of the argumenton the power of popes and councils came when Eck, skilfully manoeuvringto show that Luther's opinions were identical with those of Huss,forced from his opponent the bold declaration that "among the opinionsof John Huss and the Bohemians many are certainly most Christian andevangelic, and cannot be condemned by the universal church." The wordssent a thrill through the audience and throughout Christendom. Eckcould only reply: "If you believe that a general council, legitimatelyconvoked, can err, you are to me a heathen and a publican."Reconciliation was indeed no longer possible. When Luther hadprotested against the abuse of indulgences he did so as a loyal son ofthe church. Now at last he was forced to raise the standard of revolt,at least against Rome, the recognized head of the church. He had begunby appealing from indulgence-seller to pope, then from the pope to auniversal council; now he declared that a great council had erred, andthat he would not abide by its decision. The issue was a clear one,though hardly recognized as such by himself, between the religion ofauthority and the right of private judgment.

His opposition to the papacy developed with extraordinary rapidity.His study of the Canon Law made him, as early as March, 1519, brand thepope as either Antichrist or Antichrist's apostle. He {70} applaudedMelancthon, a brilliant young man called to teach at Wittenberg in1518, for denying transubstantiation. He declared that the cup shouldnever have been withheld from the laity, and that the mass consideredas a good work and a sacrifice was an abomination. His eyes wereopened to the iniquities of Rome by Valla's exposure of the Donation ofConstantine, published by Ulrich von Hutten in 1519. After reading ithe wrote:

Good heavens! what darkness and wickedness is at Rome! You wonder at the judgment of God that such unauthentic, crass, impudent lies not only lived but prevailed for many centuries, that they were incorporated into the Canon Law, and (that no degree of horror might be wanting) that they became as articles of faith.

Like German troops Luther was best in taking the offensive. Theseearly years when he was standing almost alone and attacking one abuseafter another, were the finest of his whole career. Later, when hecame to reconstruct a church, he modified or withdrew much of what hehad at first put forward, and re-introduced a large portion of themedieval religiosity which he had once so successfully and fiercelyattacked. The year 1520 saw him at the most advanced point he everattained. It was then that he produced, with marvellous fecundity, aseries of pamphlets unequalled by him and unexcelled anywhere, both inthe incisive power of their attack on existing institutions and in thepopular force of their language.

[Sidenote: To the Christian Nobility, 1520]

His greatest appeal to his countrymen was made in his Address to theChristian Nobility of the German Nation on the Improvement of theChristian Estate. In this he asserts the right of the civil power toreform the spiritual, and urges the government to exercise this right.The priests, says he, defend themselves against all outsideinterference by three "walls," of {71} which the first is the claimthat the church is superior to the state, in case the civil authoritypresses them; the second, the assertion, if one would correct them bythe Bible, that no one can interpret it but the pope; the third, ifthey are threatened with a general council, the contention that no onecan convoke such a council save the pope. Luther demolishes thesewalls with words of vast import. First, he denies any distinctionbetween the spiritual and temporal estates. Every baptized Christian,he asserts, is a priest, and in this saying he struck a mortal blow atthe great hierarchy of privilege and theocratic tyranny built up by theMiddle Ages. The second wall is still frailer than the first, says thewriter, for anyone can see that in spite of the priests' claims to bemasters of the Bible they never learn one word of it their whole lifelong. The third wall falls of itself, for the Bible plainly commandseveryone to punish and correct any wrong-doer, no matter what hisstation.

[Sidenote: Reform measures]

After this introduction Luther proposes measures of reform equallydrastic and comprehensive. The first twelve articles are devoted tothe pope, the annates, the appointment of foreigners to Germanbenefices, the appeal of cases to Rome, the asserted authority of thepapacy over bishops, the emperor, and other rulers. All these abuses,as well as jubilees and pilgrimages to Rome should be simply forbiddenby the civil government. The next three articles deal with sacerdotalcelibacy, recommending that priests be allowed to marry, and callingfor the suppression of many of the cloisters. It is further urged thatfoundations for masses and for the support of idle priests beabolished, that various vexatious provisions of the Canon Law berepealed, and that begging on any pretext be prohibited. Thetwenty-fourth article deals with the Bohemian schism, saying that Husswas wrongly {72} burned, and calling for union with the Hussites whodeny transubstantiation and demand the cup for the laity. Next, thewriter takes up the reform of education in the interests of a morebiblical religion. Finally, he urges that sumptuary laws be passed,that a bridle be put in the mouth of the great monopolists and usurers,and that brothels be no longer tolerated.

Of all the writer's works this probably had the greatest and mostimmediate influence. Some, indeed, were offended by the violence ofthe language, defended by Luther from the example of the Bible and bythe necessity of rousing people to the enormities he attacked. Butmost hailed it as a "trumpet-blast" calling the nation to arms. Fourthousand copies were sold in a few days, and a second edition wascalled for within a month. Voicing ideas that had been long, thoughvaguely, current, it convinced almost all of the need of a reformation.According to their sympathies men declared that the devil or the HolyGhost spoke through Luther.

[Sidenote: The Babylonian Captivity, 1520]

Though less popular both in form and subject, The Babylonian Captivityof the Church was not less important than the Address to the GermanNobility. It was a mortal blow at the sacramental system of thechurch. In judging it we must again summon the aid of our historicalimagination. In the sixteenth century dogmas not only seemed but werematters of supreme importance. It was just by her sacramental system,by her claim to give the believer eternal life and salvation throughher rites, that the church had imposed her yoke on men. As long asthat belief remained intact progress in thought, in freedom ofconscience, in reform, remained difficult. And here, as is frequentlythe case, the most effective arguments were not those which seem to uslogically the strongest. Luther made no appeal to reason as such. He{73} appealed to the Bible, recognized by all Christians as anauthority, and showed how far the practice of the church haddegenerated from her standard. [Sidenote: Sacraments] In the firstplace he reduced the number of sacraments, denying that name tomatrimony, orders, extreme unction and confirmation. In attackingorders he demolished the priestly ideal and authority. In reducingmarriage to a civil contract he took a long step towards thesecularization of life. Penance he considered a sacrament in a certainsense, though not in the strict one, and he showed that it had beenturned by the church from its original significance of "repentance" [1]to that of sacramental penance, in which no faith was required butmerely an automatic act. Baptism and the eucharist he considered theonly true sacraments, and he seriously criticized the prevalentdoctrine of the latter. He denied that the mass is a sacrifice or a"good work" pleasing to God and therefore beneficial to the soul eitherof living or of dead. He denied that the bread and wine aretransubstantiated into the body and blood of Jesus, though he held thatthe body and blood are really present with the elements. He demandedthat the cup be given to the laity.

The whole trend of Luther's thought at this time was to oppose theCatholic theory of a mechanical distribution of grace and salvation(the so-called opus operatum) by means of the sacraments, and tosubstitute for it an individual conception of religion in which faithonly should be necessary. How far he carried this idea may be seen inhis Sermon on the New Testament, that is on the Holy Mass,[2]published in the same year as the pamphlets just analysed. In it hemakes the essence of the sacrament forgiveness, and the vehicle of thisforgiveness the word of God apprehended by {74} faith, not the actualparticipation in the sacred bread and wine. Had he always been true tothis conception he would have left no place for sacrament or priest atall. But in later years he grew more conservative, until, underslightly different names, almost the old medieval ideas of church andreligion were again established, and, as Milton later expressed it,"New presbyter was but old priest writ large."

[1] In Latin penitentia means both penance and repentance.

[2] Cf. Matthew, xxvi, 28.

SECTION 2. THE REVOLUTION

[Sidenote: Germany]

Although the Germans had arrived, by the end of the fifteenth century,at a high degree of national self-consciousness, they had not, like theFrench and English, succeeded in forming a corresponding politicalunity. The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, though continuingto assert the vast claims of the Roman world-state, was in fact but aloose confederacy of many and very diverse territories. On a map drawnto the scale 1:6,000,000 nearly a hundred separate political entitiescan be counted within the limits of the Empire and there were manyothers too small to appear. The rulers of seven of these territorieselected the emperor; they were the three spiritual princes, theArchbishops of Mayence, Trèves and Cologne, the three German temporalprinces, the Electors of the Rhenish Palatinate, Saxony, andBrandenburg, and in addition the King of Bohemia, who, save forpurposes of the imperial choice, did not count as a member of theGermanic body. Besides these there were some powerful dukedoms, likeAustria and Bavaria, and numerous smaller bishoprics and counties.There were also many free cities, like Augsburg and Nuremberg, smallaristocratic republics. Finally there was a large body of "freeknights" or barons, whose tiny fiefs amounted often to no more than acastle and a few acres, but who owned no feudal superior save {75} theemperor. The unity of the Empire was expressed not only in the personof the emperor, but in the Diet which met at different places atfrequent intervals. Its authority, though on the whole increasing, wassmall.

With no imperial system of taxation, no professional army and nocentralized administration, the real power of the emperor dwindled.Such as it was he derived it from the fact that he was always electedfrom one of the great houses. Since 1438 the Hapsburgs, Archdukes ofAustria, had held the imperial office. Since 1495 there was also animperial supreme court of arbitration. [Sidenote: 1495] The firstimperial tax was levied in 1422 to equip a force against the Hussites.In the fifteenth century also the rudiments of a central administrationwere laid in the division of the realm into ten "circles," and the levyof a small number of soldiers. And yet, at the time of theReformation, the Empire was little better than a state in dissolutionthrough the centrifugal forces of feudalism.

So little was the Empire an individual unit that the policy of herrulers themselves was not imperial. The statesmanship of Maximilianwas something smaller than national; it was that of his Archduchy ofAustria. The policy of his successor, on the other hand, wasdetermined by something larger than Germany, the consideration of theSpanish and Burgundian states that he also ruled. Maximilian tried inevery way to aggrandize his personal power, not that of the GermanNation. [Sidenote: Maximilian I, 1493-1519] The Diet of Worms of 1495tried to remodel the constitution. It proclaimed a perpetual publicpeace, provided that those who broke it should be outlawed, and placedthe duty of executing the ban upon all territories within ninety milesof the offender. It also passed a bill for taxation, called the"common penny," which combined features of a poll tax, an {76} incometax and a property tax. The difficulty of collecting it was great;Maximilian himself as a territorial prince tried to evade it instead ofsetting his subjects the good example of paying it. He probablyderived no more than the trifling sum of 50,000-100,000 gulden from itannually. The Diet also revived the Supreme Court and gave it apermanent home at Frankfort-on-the-Main. Feeble efforts to follow upthis beginning of reform were made in subsequent Diets, but they failedowing to the insuperable jealousies of the princes and because theparty of national unity lost the sympathy of the common people, to whomalone they could look for support.

Maximilian's external policy, though adventurous and unstable, wassomewhat more successful. His only principle was to grasp whateveropportunity seemed to offer. Thus at one time he seriously proposed tohave himself elected pope. His marriage with Mary, the daughter ofCharles the Bold, added to the estates of his house Burgundy—the landcomprising what is now Belgium, Luxemburg, most of Holland and largeportions of north-eastern France. On the death of Mary, in 1482,Maximilian had much trouble in getting himself acknowledged as regentof her lands for their son Philip the Handsome. A part of the domainhe also lost in a war with France. This was more than made up,however, by the brilliant match he made for Philip in securing for himthe hand of Mad Joanna, the daughter and heiress of Ferdinand andIsabella of Spain. This marriage produced two sons, Charles andFerdinand. The deaths of Isabella (1504), of Philip (1506) and ofFerdinand of Aragon (1516) left Charles at the age of sixteen the rulerof Burgundy and of Spain with its immense dependencies in Italy and inAmerica. [Sidenote: Charles V, 1500-1558] From this time forth thepolicy of Maximilian concentrated in the effort to {77} secure thesuccession of his eldest grandson to the imperial throne.

When Maximilian died on January 12, 1519, there were several candidatesfor election. So little was the office considered national that thekings of France and England entered the lists, and the former, FrancisI, actually at one time secured the promise of votes from the majorityof electors. Pope Leo made explicit engagements to both Charles andFrancis to support their claims, and at the same time instructed hislegate to labor for the choice of a German prince, either Frederic ofSaxony, if he would in return give up Luther, or else Joachim ofBrandenburg. But at no time was the election seriously in doubt. Theelectors followed the only possible course in choosing Charles on June28. They profited, however, by the rivalry of the rich king of Franceto extort enormous bribes and concessions from Charles. The bankinghouse of Fugger supplied the necessary funds, and in addition theagents of the emperor-elect were obliged to sign a "capitulation"making all sorts of concessions to the princes. One of these, exactedby Frederic of Saxony in the interest of Luther, was that no subjectshould be outlawed without being heard.

The settlement of the imperial election enabled the pope once more toturn his attention to the suppression of the rapidly growing heresy.After the Leipzig debate the universities of Cologne and Louvain hadcondemned Luther's positions. Eck went to Rome in March, 1520, andimpressed the curia, which was already planning a bull condemning theheretic, with the danger of delay. After long discussions the bullExsurge Domine was ratified by the College of Cardinals andpromulgated by Leo on June 15. [Sidenote: Bull against Luther, 1520]In this, forty-one of Luther's sayings, relating to the sacraments ofpenance and the eucharist, to indulgences and {78} the power of thepope, to free will and purgatory, and to a few other matters, wereanathematized as heretical or scandalous or false or offensive to piousears. His books were condemned and ordered to be burnt, and unless heshould recant within sixty days of the posting of the bull in Germanyhe was to be considered a heretic and dealt with accordingly. Eck wasentrusted with the duty of publishing this fulmination in Germany, andperformed the task in the last days of September.

The time given Luther in which to recant therefore expired two monthslater. Instead of doing so he published several answers to "theexecrable bull of Anti-christ," and on December 10 publicly andsolemnly burnt it, together with the whole Canon Law. This he had cometo detest, partly as containing the "forged decretals," partly as thesanction for a vast mechanism of ecclesiastical use and abuse,repugnant to his more personal theology. The dramatic act, which senta thrill throughout Europe, symbolized the passing of some medievalaccretions on primitive Christianity. There was nothing left for thepope but to excommunicate the heretic, as was done in the bull DecetPontificem Romanum drawn up at Rome in January, [Sidenote: 1521] andpublished at Worms on May 6.

In the meantime Charles had come to Germany. For more than a yearafter his election he remained in Spain, where his position was veryinsecure on account of the revolt against his Burgundian officers.Arriving in the Netherlands in the summer of 1520 Charles was met bythe special nuncios of the pope, Caracciolo and Aleander. After he wascrowned emperor at Aix-la-Chapelle, he opened his first Diet, at Worms.[Sidenote: October 23, 1520 January 27, 1521 The Diet of Worms]

Before this august assembly came three questions of highest import.The first related to the dynastic {79} policy of the Hapsburgs. Forthe chronic war with France an army of 24,000 men and a tax of 128,000gulden was voted. The disposition of Württemberg caused some trouble.Duke Ulrich had been deposed for rebellion in 1518, and his land takenfrom him by the Swabian League and sold to the emperor in 1520.Together with the Austrian lands, which Charles secretly handed over tohis young brother Ferdinand, this territory made the nucleus ofHapsburg power in Germany.

The Diet then took up the question of constitutional reform. In orderto have a permanent administrative body, necessary during the longabsences of the emperor, an Imperial Council of Regency was establishedand given a seat at Nuremberg. [Sidenote: Council of Regency] Theemperor nominated the president and four of the twenty-two othermembers; each of the six German electors nominated one member; six werechosen by the circles into which the Empire was divided and six wereelected by the other estates. The powers of the council were limitedto the times when the emperor was away.

The third question treated by the Diet was the religious one. Asusual, they drew up a long list of grievances against the pope, towhich many good Catholics in the assembly subscribed. Next theyconsidered what to do with Luther. Charles himself, who could speak nolanguage but French, and had no sympathy whatever with a rebel from anyauthority spiritual or temporal, would much have preferred to outlawthe Wittenberg professor at once, but he was bound by his promise toFrederic of Saxony. Of the six electors, who sat apart from the otherestates, Frederic was strongly for Luther, the Elector Palatine wasfavorably inclined towards him, and the Archbishop of Mayencerepresented a mediating policy. The other three electors were opposed.Among the {80} lesser princes a considerable minority was for Luther,whereas among the representatives of the free cities and of theknights, probably a majority were his followers. The common people,though unrepresented, applauded Luther, and their clamors could notpass unheeded even by the aristocratic members of the Diet. [Sidenote:February 13] The debate was opened by Aleander in a speech dwelling onthe sacramental errors of the heretic and the similarity of hismovement to that of the detested Bohemians. After a stormy session theestates decided to summon the bold Saxon before them and accordingly acitation, together with a safe-conduct, was sent him.

Though there was some danger in obeying the summons, Luther's journeyto Worms, was a triumphal progress. Brought before the Diet in thelate afternoon of April 17, he was asked if a certain number of books,the titles of which were read, were his and if he would recant theheresy contained in them. The form of the questions took him bysurprise, for he had expected to be confronted with definite chargesand to be allowed to defend his positions. He accordingly asked fortime, and was granted one more day. [Sidenote: April 18, 1521] On hissecond appearance he made a great oration admitting that the books werehis and closing with the words:

Unless I am convicted by Scripture or by right reason (for I trust neither popes nor councils since they have often erred and contradicted themselves) . . . I neither can nor will recant anything since it is neither safe nor right to act against conscience. God help me. Amen.

There he stood, braving the world, for he could do no other. . . . Heleft the hall the hero of his nation.

Hoping still to convince him of error, Catholic theologians heldprotracted but fruitless conferences with him before his departure fromWorms on the 26th of {81} April. The sympathy of the people with himwas shown by the posting at Worms of placards threatening his enemies.Charles was sincerely shocked and immediately drew up a statement thathe would hazard life and lands on the maintenance of the Catholic faithof his fathers. An edict was drafted by Aleander on the model of onepromulgated in September in the Netherlands. [Sidenote: Luther banned]The Edict of Worms put Luther under the ban of the Empire, commandedhis surrender to the government at the expiration of his safe-conduct,and forbade all to shelter him or to read his writings. Though datedon May 8, to make it synchronize with a treaty between Charles and Leo,the Edict was not passed by the Diet until May 26. At this time manyof the members had gone home, and the law was forced on the remainingones, contrary to the wishes of the majority, by intrigue and imperialpressure.

After leaving Worms Luther was taken by his prince, Frederic the Wise,and placed for safe-keeping in the Wartburg, a fine old castle nearEisenach. [Sidenote: The Wartburg] Here he remained in hiding fornearly a year, while doing some of his most important work. Here hewrote his treatise On Monastic Vows, declaring that they are wrongand invalid and urging all priests, nuns and monks to leave thecloister and to marry. In thus freeing thousands of men and women froma life often unproductive and sterile Luther achieved one of thegreatest of his practical reforms. At the Wartburg also Luther beganhis translation of the Bible. The New Testament appeared in September1522, and the Old Testament followed in four parts, the last publishedin 1532.

[Sidenote: The radicals]

While Luther was in retirement at the Wartburg, his colleaguesCarlstadt and Melanchthon, and the Augustinian friar Gabriel Zwilling,took up the movement at Wittenberg and carried out reforms more radical{82} than those of their leader. The endowments of masses wereconfiscated and applied to the relief of the poor on new and betterprinciples. Prostitution was suppressed. A new order of divineservice was introduced, in which the words purporting that the mass wasa sacrifice were omitted, and communion was given to the laity in bothkinds. Priests were urged to marry, and monks were almost forced toleave the cloister. An element of mob violence early manifested itselfboth at Wittenberg and elsewhere. An outbreak at Erfurt against theclergy occurred in June, 1521, and by the end of the year riots tookplace at Wittenberg.

Even now, at the dawn of the revolution, appeared the beginnings ofthose sects, more radical than the Lutheran, commonly known asAnabaptist. The small industrial town of Zwickau had long been ahotbed of Waldensian heresy. Under the guidance of Thomas Münzer theclothweavers of this place formed a religious society animated by thedesire to renovate both church and state by the readiest and roughestmeans. Suppression of the movement at Zwickau by the governmentresulted only in the banishment, or escape, of some of the leaders.[Sidenote: December 27, 1521] Three of them found their way toWittenberg, where they proclaimed themselves prophets divinelyinspired, and conducted a revival marked with considerable, thoughharmless, extravagance.

[Sidenote: January 20, 1522]

As the radicals at Wittenberg made the whole of Northern Germanyuneasy, the Imperial Council of Regency issued a mandate forbidding allthe innovations and commanding the Elector of Saxony to stop them. Itis remarkable that Luther in this felt exactly as did the Catholics.Early in March he returned to Wittenberg with the express purpose ofchecking the reforms which had already gone too far {83} for him. Hispersonal ascendency was so great that he found no trouble in doing so.Not only the Zwickau prophets, but Carlstadt and Zwilling werediscredited. Almost all their measures were repealed, including thoseon divine service which was again restored almost to the Catholic form.Not until 1525 were a simple communion service and the use of Germanagain introduced.

[Sidenote: Rebellion of the knights, 1522-3]

It soon became apparent that all orders and all parts of Germany werein a state of ferment. The next manifestation of the revolutionaryspirit was the rebellion of the knights. This class, now in a state ofmoral and economic decay, had long survived any usefulness it had everhad. The rise of the cities, the aggrandizement of the princes, andthe change to a commercial from a feudal society all worked to thedisadvantage of the smaller nobility and gentry. About the only meansof livelihood left them was freebooting, and that was adopted withoutscruple and without shame. Envious of the wealthy cities, jealous ofthe greater princes and proud of their tenure immediately from theemperor, the knights longed for a new Germany, more centralized, morenational, and, of course, under their special direction. In theLutheran movement they thought they saw their opportunity; in Ulrichvon Hutten they found their trumpet, in Francis von Sickingen theirsword. A knight himself, but with possessions equal to those of manyprinces, a born warrior, but one who knew how to use the new weapons,gold and cannon, Sickingen had for years before he heard of Luther keptaggrandizing his power by predatory feuds. So little honor had he,that though appointed to high military command in the campaign againstFrance, he tried to win personal advantage by treason, playing off theemperor against King Francis, with whom, for a long time, he almost{84} openly sided. In 1520 he fell under the influence of Hutten, whourged him to espouse the cause of the "gospel" as that of Germanliberty. By August 1522 he became convinced that the time was ripe foraction, and issued a manifesto proclaiming that the feudal dues hadbecome unbearable, and giving the impression that he was acting as anally of Luther, although the latter knew nothing of his intentions andwould have heartily disapproved of his methods.

Sickingen's first march was against Trèves. The archbishop's"unchristian cannon" forced him to retire from this city. On October10 the Council of Regency declared him an outlaw. A league formed byTrèves, the Palatinate and Hesse, defeated him and captured his castleat Landstuhl in May, 1523. Mortally wounded he died on May 7.

Alike unhurt and unhelped by such incidents as the revolt of theknights, the main current of religious revolution swept onwards. Leo Xdied on December 1, 1521, and in his place was elected Adrian ofUtrecht, a man of very different character. [Sidenote: Adrian VI,1522-33] Though he had already taken a strong stand against Luther, hewas deeply resolved to reform the corruption of the church. To theDiet called at Nuremberg [Sidenote: Diet of Nuremberg, 1522] in thelatter part of 1522 he sent as legate Chieregato with a brief demandingthe suppression of the schism. It was monstrous, said he, that onelittle brother should seduce a whole nation from the path trodden by somany martyrs and learned doctors. Do you suppose, he asked, that thepeople will longer respect civil government if they are taught todespise the canons and decrees of the spiritual power? At the sametime Adrian wrote to Chieregato:

Say that we frankly confess that God permits this
persecution of his church on account of the sins of men,
especially those of the priests and prelates. . . . We
{85}
know that in this Holy See now for some years there have
been many abominations, abuses in spiritual things,
excesses in things commanded, in short, that all has become
perverted. . . . We have all turned aside in our ways,
nor was there, for a long time, any who did right,—no,
not one.

This confession rather strengthened the reform party, than otherwise,making its demands seem justified; and all that the Diet did towardsthe settlement of the religious question was to demand that a council,with representation of the laity, should be called in a German city. Along list of grievances against the church was again drawn up and laidbefore the emperor.

The same Diet took up other matters. The need for reform and theimpotence of the Council of Regency had both been demonstrated by theSickingen affair. A law against monopolies was passed, limiting thecapital of any single company to fifty thousand gulden. In order toprovide money for the central government a customs duty of 4 per cent.ad valorem was ordered. Both these measures weighed on the cities,which accordingly sent an embassy to Charles. They succeeded ininducing him to disallow both laws.

[Sidenote: Diet of Nuremberg, 1524]

The next Diet, which assembled at Nuremberg early in 1524, naturallyrefrained from passing more futile laws for the emperor to veto, but onthe other hand it took a stronger stand than ever on the religiousquestion. The Edict of Worms was still nominally in force and wasstill to all intents and purposes flouted. Luther was at large and hisfollowers were gaining. In reply to a demand from the government thatthe Edict should be strictly carried out, the Diet passed a resolutionthat it should be observed by each state as far as its prince deemed itpossible. Despairing of an oecumenical council the estates demandedthat a {86} German national synod be called at Spires before the closeof the year with power to decide on what was to be done for the timebeing.

There is no doubt that by this time the public opinion of NorthGermany, at least, was thoroughly Lutheran. Ferdinand hardlyexaggerated when he wrote his brother that throughout the Empire therewas scarce one person in a thousand not infected with the newdoctrines. [Sidenote: 1523] The place now occupied by newspapers andweekly reviews was taken by a vast swarm of pamphlets, most of whichhave survived. [Sidenote: Popular pamphlets] Those of the yearsimmediately following the Diet of Worms reveal the first enthusiasm ofthe people for the "gospel." The greater part of the broadsidesproduced are concerned with the leader and his doctrines. Thecomparison of him to Huss was a favorite one. One pamphleteer, atleast, drew the parallel between his trial at Worms and that of Christbefore Pilate. The whole bent of men's minds was theological.Doctrines which now seem a little quaint and trite were argued with newfervor by each writer. The destruction of images, the question of thereal presence in the sacrament, justification by faith, and free willwere disputed. Above all the Bible was lauded in the new translation,and the priests continued, as before, to be the favorite butt ofsarcasm.

Among the very many writers of these tracts the playwright ofNuremberg, Hans Sachs, took a prominent place. In 1523 he publishedhis poem on "the Nightingale of Wittenberg, whose voice sounds in theglorious dawn over hill and dale." This bird is, of course, Luther,and the fierce lion who has sought his life is Leo. [Sidenote: HansSachs] The next year Hans Sachs published no less than three pamphletsfavoring the reform. They were: 1. A Disputation between a Canon and aShoemaker, defending the Word of God and the Christian {87} Estate. 2.Conversation on the Hypocritical Works of the Clergy and their Vows, bywhich they hope to be saved to the disparagement of Christ's Blood. 3.A Dialogue against the Roman Avarice. Multiply these pamphlets, thecontents of which is indicated by their titles, by one hundred, and wearrive at some conception of the pabulum on which the people grew toProtestantism. Of course there were many pamphlets on the other side,but here, as in a thousand other cases, the important thing proved tobe to have the cause ventilated. So long as discussion was forced inthe channels selected by the reformers, even the interest excited bytheir adversaries redounded ultimately to their advantage.

[Sidenote: The Peasants' War, 1524-5]

The denunciation of authority, together with the message of theexcellence of the humblest Christian and the brotherhood of man,powerfully contributed to the great rising of the lower classes, knownas the Peasants' War, in 1524-5. It was not, as the name implied,confined to the rustics, for probably as large a proportion of thepopulace of cities as of the tillers of the soil joined it. Nor wasthere in it anything entirely new. The cry for justice was of longstanding, and every single element of the revolt, including the hatredof the clergy and demand for ecclesiastical reform, is to be found alsoin previous risings. Thus, the rebellion of peasants under Hans Böhm,commonly called the Piper of Niklashausen, in 1476, was brought aboutby a religious appeal. The leader asserted that he had specialrevelations from the Virgin Mary that serfdom was to be abolished, andthe kingdom of God to be introduced by the levelling of all socialranks; and he produced miracles to certify his divine calling. Therehad also been two risings, closely connected, the first, in 1513,deriving its name of "Bundschuh" from the peasant's tied shoe, a classemblem, and the {88} second, in 1514, called "Poor Conrad" after thepeasant's nickname. If the memory of the suppression of all theserevolts might dampen the hopes of the poor, on the other hand thesuccessful rise of the Swiss democracy was a perpetual example andencouragement to them.

[Sidenote: Causes]

The most fundamental cause of all these risings alike was, of course,the cry of the oppressed for justice. This is eternal, as is also oneof the main alignments into which society usually divides itself, theopposition of the poor and the rich. It is therefore not veryimportant to inquire whether the lot of the third estate was gettingbetter or worse during the first quarter of the sixteenth century. Ineither case there was a great load of wrong and tyranny to be thrownoff. But the question is not uninteresting in itself. As there arediametrically opposite answers to it, both in the testimony ofcontemporaries and in the opinion of modern scholars, it is perhapsincapable of being answered. In some districts, and in some respects,the lot of the poor was becoming a little easier; in other lands and indifferent ways it was becoming harder. The time was one of generalprosperity, in which the peasant often shared. The newer methods ofagriculture, manufacture and commerce benefited him who knew how totake advantage of them. That some did so may be inferred from thestatement of Sebastian Brant that the rustics dress like nobles, insatin and gold chains. On the other hand the rising prices would bearhard on those laborers dependent on fixed wages, though relieving theburden of fixed rents. The whole people, except the merchants,disliked the increasing cost of living and legislated against it to thebest of their ability. Complaints against monopoly were common, andthe Diets sometimes enacted laws against them. Foreign trade waslooked on with {89} suspicion as draining the country of silver andgold. Again, although the peasants benefited by the growing stabilityof government, they felt as a grievance the introduction of the newRoman law with its emphasis upon the rights of property and of thestate. Burdens directly imposed by the territorial governments wereprobably increasing. If the exactions from the landlords were notbecoming greater, it was simply because they were always at a maximum.At no time was the rich gentleman at a loss to find law and precedentfor wringing from his serfs and tenants all that they could possiblypay. [Sidenote: Peasant classes] The peasants were of three classes:the serfs, the tenants who paid a quit-rent, and hired laborers. Theformer, more than the others, perhaps, had now arrived at thedetermination to assert their rights. For them the Peasants' War wasthe inevitable break with a long economic past, now intolerable andhopeless. There is some evidence to show that the number of serfs wasincreasing. This process, by menacing the freedom of the others,united all in the resolve to stop the gradual enslavement of theirclass, to reckon with those who benefited by it.

How little now there was in the ideals of the last and most terrible ofthe peasant risings may be seen by a study of the programs of reformput forward from time to time during the preceding century. There isnothing in the manifestos of 1525 that may not be found in thepamphlets of the fifteenth century. The grievances are the same, andthe hope of a completely renovated and communized society is the same.One of the most influential of these socialistic pamphlets was theso-called Reformation of the Emperor Sigismund, written by anAugsburg clergyman about 1438, first printed in 1476, and reprinted anumber of times before the end of the century. Its title bears witnessto the Messianic belief of the people that one of their {90} great, oldemperors should sometime return and restore the world to a condition ofjustice and happiness. The present tract preached that "obedience wasdead and justice sick"; it attacked serfdom as wicked, denounced theecclesiastical law and demanded the freedom given by Christ.

The same doctrine, adapted to the needs of the time, is preached in theReformation of the Emperor Frederic III, published anonymously in1523. Though more radical than Luther it reflects some of his ideas.Still more, however, does it embody the reforms proposed at Nurembergin 1523. It may probably have been written by George Rüxner, calledJerusalem, an Imperial Herald prominent in these circles. It advocatedthe abolition of all taxes and tithes, the repeal of all imperial civillaws, the reform of the clergy, the confiscation of ecclesiasticalproperty, and the limitation of the amount of capital allowed any onemerchant to 10,000 gulden.

Though there was nothing new in either the manner of oppression or inthe demands of the third estate during the last decade preceding thegreat rebellion, there does seem to be a new atmosphere, or tone, inthe literature addressed to the lower classes. While on the one handthe poor were still mocked and insulted as they always had been byfoolish and heartless possessors of inherited wealth and position, fromother quarters they now began to be also flattered and courted. Thepeasant became in the large pamphlet literature of the time an idealfigure, the type of the plain, honest, God-fearing man. [Sidenote: Thepeasant idealized] Nobles like Duke Ulrich of Württemberg affected tobe called by popular nicknames. Carlstadt and other learned menproclaimed that the peasant knew better the Word of God and the way ofsalvation than did the learned. Many radical preachers, especially theAnabaptist {91} Münzer, carried the message of human brotherhood to thepoint of communism. There were a number of lay preachers, the mostcelebrated being the physician Hans Maurer, who took the sobriquet"Karsthans." This name, "the man with the hoe," soon became one of thecatch-words of the time, and made its way into popular speech as asynonym for the simple and pious laborer. Hutten took it up and urgedthe people to seize flails and pitchforks and smite the clergy and thepope as they would the devil. [Sidenote: 1521] Others preached hatredof the Jews, of the rich, of lawyers. Above all they appealed to theBible as the devine law, and demanded a religious reform as a conditionand preliminary to a thorough renovation of society. Although Lutherhimself from the first opposed all forms of violence, his clarionvoice rang out in protest against the injustice of the nobles. "Thepeople neither can nor will endure your tyranny any longer," he said tothem in 1523, "God will not endure it; the world is not what it oncewas when you drove and hunted men like wild beasts."

The rising began at Stühlingen, not far from the Swiss frontier, inJune 1524, and spread with considerable rapidity northward, until thegreater part of Germany was in the throes of revolution. The rebelswere able to make headway because most of the regular troops had beenwithdrawn to the Turkish front or to Italy to fight the emperor'sbattle against France. In South Germany, during the first six months,the gatherings of peasants and townsmen were eminently peaceable. Theywished only to negotiate with their masters and to secure somepractical reforms. But when the revolt spread to Franconia and Saxony,a much more radically socialistic program was developed and the rebelsshowed themselves readier to enforce their demands by arms. For theyear 1524 there {92} was no general manifesto put forward, but therewere negotiations between the insurgents and their quondam masters. Inthis district or in that, lists of very specific grievances werepresented and redress demanded. In some cases merely to gain time, inothers sincerely, the lords consented to reply to these petitions.They denied this or that charge, and they promised to end this or thatform of oppression. Neither side was prepared for civil war. In allit was more like a modern strike than anything else.

In the early months of 1525 several programs were drawn up of a moregeneral nature than those previously composed, and yet by no meansradical. The most famous of these was called The Twelve Articles,printed and widely circulated in February. [Sidenote: The TwelveArticles] The exact place at which they originated is unknown. Theauthorship has been much disputed, and necessarily so, for they werethe work of no one brain, but were as composite a production as is theConstitution of the United States. The material in them is drawn fromthe mouths of a whole people. Far more than in other popular writingsone feels that they are the genuine expression of the public opinion ofa great class. Probably their draftsman was Sebastian Lotzer, thetanner who for years past had preached apostolic communism. It is notimpossible that the Anabaptist Balthasar Hübmaier had a hand in them.Their demands are moderate and would be considered matters ofself-evident justice to-day. The first article is for the right ofeach community to choose its own pastor. The second protests againstthe minor tithes on vegetables paid to the clergy, though expresslyadmitting the legality of the tithes on grain. The third articledemands freedom for the serfs, the fourth and fifth, ask for the rightto hunt and to cut wood in the forests. The sixth, seventh and eightharticles {93} protest against excessive forced labor, illegal paymentsand exorbitant rents. The ninth article denounces the new (Roman) law,and requests the reëstablishment of the old (German) law. The tentharticle voices the indignation of the poor at the enclosure by the richof commons and other free land. The eleventh demands the abolition ofthe heriot, or inheritance-tax, by which the widow of a rustic wasobliged to yield to her lord the best head of cattle or other valuablepossession. The final article expresses the willingness of theinsurgents to have all their demands submitted to the Word of God.Both here and in the preamble the entire assimilation of divine andhuman law is postulated, and the charge that the Lutheran Gospel causedsedition, is met.

[Sidenote: Other manifestos]

Though the Twelve Articles were adopted by more of the bands ofpeasants than was any other program, yet there were several othermanifestos drawn up about the same time. Thus, in the Fifty-nineArticles of the Stühlingen peasants the same demands are put forthwith much more detail. The legal right to trial by due process of lawis asserted, and vexatious payments due to a lord when his peasantmarries a woman from another estate, are denounced. But here, too, andelsewhere, the fundamental demands were the same: freedom from serfdom,from oppressive taxation and forced labor, and for unrestricted rightsof hunting and woodcutting in the forests. Everywhere there is thesame claim that the rights of the people are sanctioned by the law ofGod, and generally the peasants assume that they are acting inaccordance with the new "gospel" of Luther. The Swabians expresslysubmitted their demands to the arbitration of a commission of four toconsist of a representative of the emperor, Frederic of Saxony, Lutherand either Melanchthon or Bugenhagen.

{94} When the revolt reached the central part of Germany it became atonce more socialistic and more bloody. [Sidenote: Münzer] The balefuleloquence of Thomas Münzer was exerted at Mühlhausen to nerve thepeople to strike down the godless with pitiless sword. Already inSeptember 1524 he preached: "On! on! on! This is the time when thewicked are as fearful as hounds. . . . Regard not the cries of thegodless. . . . On, while the fire is hot. Let not your swords be coldfrom blood. Smite bang, bang on the anvil of Nimrod; cast his tower tothe ground!" Other leaders took up the message and called for theextirpation of the tyrants, including both the clergy and the lords.Communism was demanded as in the apostolic age; property was denouncedas wrong. Regulation of prices was one measure put forward, and thecommitting of the government of the country to a university another.

The propaganda of deeds followed close upon the propaganda of words.During the spring of 1525 in central Germany forty-six cloisters andcastles were burned to the ground, while violence and rapine reignedsupreme with all the ferocity characteristic of class warfare. OnEaster Sunday, April 16, one of the best-armed bands of peasants, underone of the most brutal leaders, Jäcklein Rohrbach, attacked Weinsberg.The count and his small garrison of eighteen knights surrendered andwere massacred by the insurgents, who visited mockery and insult uponthe countess and her daughters. Many of the cities joined thepeasants, and for a short time it seemed as if the rebellion might besuccessful.

[Sidenote: Suppression of the rising]

But in fact the insurgents were poorly equipped, untrained, withoutcoöperation or leadership. As soon as the troops which won the battleof Pavia in Italy were sent back to Germany the whole movementcollapsed. [Sidenote: February 24, 1525] The Swabian League inflicteddecisive {95} defeats upon the rebels at Leipheim on April 4, and atWurzach ten days later. Other blows followed in May. In the center ofGermany the Saxon Electorate lay supine. Frederic the Wise died in themidst of the tumult [Sidenote: May 5, 1525] after expressing hisopinion that it was God's will that the common man should rule, andthat it would be wrong to resist the divine decree. His youngneighbor, Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, acted vigorously. After comingto terms with his own subjects by negotiations, he raised troops andmet a band of insurgents at Frankenhausen. He wished to treat withthem also, but Münzer's fanaticism, promising the deluded mensupernatural aid, nerved them to reject all terms. In the very ancientGerman style they built a barricade of wagons, and calmly awaited theattack of the soldiers. [Sidenote: May 15] Undisciplined and poorlyarmed, almost at the first shot they broke and fled in panic, more thanhalf of them perishing on the field. Münzer was captured, and, afterhaving been forced by torture to sign a confession of his misdeeds, wasexecuted. After this there was no strength left in the peasant cause.The lords, having gained the upper hand, put down the rising with greatcruelty. The estimates of the numbers of peasants slain vary so widelyas to make certainty impossible. Perhaps a hundred thousand in allperished. The soldiers far outdid the rebels in savage reprisals. Thelaborers sank back into a more wretched state than before; oppressionstalked with less rebuke than ever through the land.

SECTION 3. THE FORMATION or THE PROTESTANT PARTY

[Sidenote: Defections from Luther]

In the sixteenth century politics were theological. The groups intowhich men divided had religious slogans and were called churches, butthey were also political parties. The years following the Diet of {96}Worms saw the crystallization of a new group, which was at firstliberal and reforming and later, as it grew in stability, conservative.At Worms almost all the liberal forces in Germany had been behindLuther, the intellectuals, the common people with their wish for socialamelioration, and those to whom the religious issue primarily appealed.But this support offered by public opinion was vague; in the next yearsit became, both more definite and more limited. At the same time thatcity after city and state after state was openly revolting from thepope, until the Reformers had won a large constituency in the ImperialDiets and a place of constitutional recognition, there was going onanother process by which one after another certain elements at firstinclined to support Luther fell away from him. During these years heviolently dissociated himself from the extreme radicals and thus lostthe support of the proletariat. In the second place the growingdefiniteness and narrowness of his dogmatism and his failure to showhospitality to science and philosophy alienated a number ofintellectuals. Third, a great schism weakened the Protestant church.But these losses were counterbalanced by two gains. The first was theincreasing discipline and coherence of the new churches; the second wastheir gradual but rapid attainment of the support of the middle andgoverning classes in many German states.

[Sidenote: The Radicals]

Luther's struggle with radicalism had begun within a year after hisstand at Worms. He had always been consistently opposed to mobviolence, even when he might have profited by it. At Worms hedisapproved Hutten's plans for drawing the sword against the Romanists.When, from his "watchtower," he first spied the disorders atWittenberg, he wrote that notwithstanding the great provocation givento the common man by the clergy, yet tumult was the work of {97} thedevil. When he returned home he preached that the only weapon theChristian ought to use was the Word. "Had I wished it," said he then,"I might have brought Germany to civil war. Yes, at Worms I might havestarted a game that would not have been safe for the emperor, but itwould have been a fool's game. So I did nothing, but only let the Wordact." Driven from Wittenberg, the Zwickau prophets, assisted by ThomasMünzer, continued their agitation elsewhere. As long as theirpropaganda was peaceful Luther was inclined to tolerate it. "Let themteach what they like," said he, "be it gospel or lies." But when theybegan to preach a campaign of fire and sword, Luther wrote, in July1524, to his elector begging him "to act vigorously against theirstorming and ranting, in order that God's kingdom may be advanced byword only, as becomes Christians, and that all cause of sedition may betaken from the multitude [Herr Omnes, literally Mr. Everybody], morethan enough inclined to it already."

When the revolt at last broke out Luther was looked up to and appealedto by the people as their champion. In April 1525 he composed anExhortation to Peace on the Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants,[Sidenote: Exhortation to Peace] in which he distributed the blame forthe present conditions liberally, but impartially, on both sides,aristocrats and peasants. To the former he said that their tyranny,together with that of the clergy had brought this punishment onthemselves, and that God intended to smite them. To the peasants hesaid that no tyranny was excuse for rebellion. Of their articles heapproved of two only, that demanding the right to choose their pastorsand that denouncing the heriot or death-duty. Their second demand, forrepeal of some of the tithes, he characterized as robbery, and thethird, for freedom of the serf, as unjustified because it madeChristian {98} liberty a merely external thing, and because Paul hadsaid that the bondman should not seek to be free (I Cor. vii, 20 f).The other articles were referred to legal experts.

Hardly had this pamphlet come from the press before Luther heard of thedeeds of violence of Rohrbach and his fellows. Fearing that completeanarchy would result from the triumph of the insurgents, against whomno effective blow had yet been struck, he wrote a tract Against theThievish, Murderous Hordes of Peasants. [Sidenote: The peasantsdenounced] In this he denounced them with the utmost violence oflanguage, and urged the government to smite them without pity.Everyone should avoid a peasant as he would the devil, and should jointhe forces to slay them like mad dogs. "If you die in battle againstthem," said he to the soldiers, "you could never have a more blessedend, for you die obedient to God's Word in Romans 13, and in theservice of love to free your neighbor from the bands of hell and thedevil." A little later he wrote: "It is better that all the peasantsbe killed than that the princes and magistrates perish, because therustics took the sword without divine authority. The only possibleconsequence of their Satanic wickedness would be the diabolicdevastation of the kingdom of God." And again: "One cannot arguereasonably with a rebel, but one must answer him with the fist so thatblood flows from his nose." Melanchthon entirely agreed with hisfriend. "It is fairly written in Ecclesiasticus xxxiii," said he,"that as the ass must have fodder, load, and whip, so must the servanthave bread, work, and punishment. These outward, bodily servitudes areneedful, but this institution [serfdom] is certainly pleasing to God."

Inevitably such an attitude alienated the lower classes. From thistime, many of them looked not to {99} the Lutheran but to the moreradical sects, called Anabaptists, for help. The condition of theEmpire at this time was very similar to that of many countries today,where we find two large upper and middle-class parties, theconservative (Catholic) and liberal (Protestant) over against theradical or socialistic (Anabaptist).

[Sidenote: The Anabaptists]

The most important thing about the extremists was not their habit ofdenying the validity of infant baptism and of rebaptizing theirconverts, from which they derived their name. What really determinedtheir view-point and program was that they represented the poor,uneducated, disinherited classes. The party of extreme measures isalways chiefly constituted from the proletariat because it is the verypoor who most pressingly feel the need for change and because they havenot usually the education to judge the feasibility of the plans, manyof them quack nostrums, presented as panaceas for all their woes. Acomplete break with the past and with the existing order has no terrorsfor them, but only promise.

A radical party almost always includes men of a wide variety ofopinions. So the sixteenth century classed together as Anabaptists menwith not only divergent but with diametrically opposite views on themost vital questions. Their only common bond was that they all alikerejected the authoritative, traditional and aristocratic organizationof both of the larger churches and the pretensions of civil society.It is easy to see that they had no historical perspective, and thatthey tried to realize the ideals of primitive Christianity, as theyunderstood it, without reckoning the vast changes in culture and otherconditions, and yet it is impossible not to have a deep sympathy withthe men most of whose demands were just and who sealed their faith withperpetual martyrdom. {100} [Sidenote: Spread of radicalism]Notwithstanding the heavy blow to reform given in the crushing of thepeasants' rising, radical doctrines continued to spread among thepeople. As the poor found their spiritual needs best supplied in theconventicle of dissent, official Lutheranism became an establishedchurch, predominantly an aristocratic and middle-class party of vestedinterest and privilege.

It is sometimes said that the origin and growth of the Anabaptists wasdue to the German translation of the Bible. This is not true and yetthere is little doubt that the publication of the German version in1522 and the years immediately following, stimulated the growth of manysects. The Bible is such a big book, and capable of so many differentinterpretations, that it is not strange that a hundred differentschemes of salvation should have been deduced from it by those who cameto it with different prepossessions. While many of the Anabaptistswere perfect quietists, preaching the duty of non-resistance and thewickedness of bearing arms, even in self-defence, others found sanctionfor quite opposite views in the Scripture, and proclaimed that thegodless should be exterminated as the Canaanites had been. In ethicalmatters some sects practised the severest code of morals, while otherswere distinguished by laxity. By some marriage was forbidden; otherswanted all the marriage they could get and advocated polygamy. Thereligious meetings were similar to "revivals," frequently of the mosthysterical sort. Claiming that they were mystically united to God, orhad direct revelations from him, they rejected the ceremonies andsacraments of historic Christianity, and sometimes substituted for thempractices of the most absurd, or most doubtful, character. WhenMelchior Rink preached, his followers howled like dogs, bellowed likecattle, neighed like horses, and brayed like asses—some of them very{101} naturally, no doubt. In certain extreme cases the meetings endedin debauchery, while we know of men who committed murder in the beliefthat they were directed so to do by special revelation of God. Thus atSt. Gall one brother cut another's throat, while one of the saintstrampled his wife to death under the influence of the spirit. But itis unfair to judge the whole movement by these excesses.

The new sectaries, of course, ran the gauntlet of persecution. In 1529the emperor and Diet at Spires passed a mandate against them to thiseffect: "By the plenitude of our imperial power and wisdom we ordain,decree, oblige, declare, and will that all Anabaptists, men and womenwho have come to the age of understanding, shall be executed anddeprived of their natural life by fire, sword, and the like, accordingto opportunity and without previous inquisition of the spiritualjudges." Lutherans united with Catholics in passing this edict, andshowed no less alacrity in executing it. As early as 1525 theAnabaptists were persecuted at Zurich, where one of their earliestcommunities sprouted. Some of the leaders were drowned, others werebanished and so spread their tenets elsewhere. Catholic princesexterminated them by fire and sword. In Lutheran Saxony no less thanthirteen of the poor non-conformists were executed, and many moreimprisoned for long terms, or banished.

And yet the radical sects continued to grow. The dauntless zeal ofMelchior Hofmann braved all for the propagation of their ideas. For awhile he found a refuge at Strassburg, but this city soon became tooorthodox to hold him. He then turned to Holland, where the seed sowedfell into fertile ground. Two Dutchmen, the baker John Matthys ofHaarlem and the tailor John Beuckelssen of Leyden went to the episcopalcity of Münster in Westphalia [Sidenote: Münster] near the Dutch {102}border, and rapidly converted the mass of the people to their ownbelief in the advent of the kingdom of God on earth. An insurrectionexpelled the bishop's government and installed a democracy in February,1534. After the death of Matthys on April 5, a rising of the peopleagainst the dictatorial power of Beucklessen was suppressed by thisfanatic who thereupon crowned himself king under the title of John ofLeyden. Communism of goods was introduced and also polygamy. The citywas now besieged by its suzerain, the Bishop of Münster, and afterhorrible sufferings had been inflicted on the population, taken bystorm on June 25, 1535. The surviving leaders were put to death bytorture.

The defeat itself was not so disastrous to the Anabaptist cause as werethe acts of the leaders when in power. As the Reformer Bullinger putit: "God opened the eyes of the governments by the revolt at Münster,and thereafter no one would trust even those Anabaptists who claimed tobe innocent." Their lack of unity and organization told against them.Nevertheless the sect smouldered on in the lower classes, constantlysubject to the fires of martyrdom, until, toward the close of thecentury, it attained some cohesion and respectability. The laterBaptists, Independents, and Quakers all inherited some portion of itsspiritual legacies. To the secular historian its chief interest is inthe social teachings, which consistently advocated tolerance, andfrequently various forms of anarchy and socialism.

[Sidenote: Defection of the humanists]

Next to the defection of the laboring masses, the severest loss to theEvangelical party in these years was that of a large number ofintellectuals, who, having hailed Luther as a deliverer fromecclesiastical bondage, came to see in him another pope, not less {103}tyrannous than he of Rome. Reuchlin the Hebrew scholar and Mutian thephilosopher had little sympathy with any dogmatic subtlety. Zasius thejurist was repelled by the haste and rashness of Luther. The so-called"godless painters" of Nuremberg, George Penz and the brothers Hans andBartholomew Beham, having rejected in large part Christian doctrine,were naturally not inclined to join a new church, even when theydeserted the old.

But a considerable number of humanists, and those the greatest, afterhaving welcomed the Reformation in its first, most liberal and hopefulyouth, deliberately turned their backs on it and cast in their lot withthe Roman communion. The reason was that, whereas the old faithmothered many of the abuses, superstitions, and dogmatisms abominatedby the humanists, it had also, at this early stage in the schism,within its close a large body of ripe, cultivated, fairly tolerantopinion. The struggling innovators, on the other hand, though theypurged away much obsolete and offensive matter, were forced, partly bytheir position, partly by the temper of their leaders, to a rawself-assertiveness, a bald concentration on the points at issue,incompatible with winsome wisdom, or with judicial fairness. How thehumanists would have chosen had they seen the Index and Loyola, isproblematical; but while there was still hope of reshaping Rome totheir liking they had little use for Wittenberg.

I admit that for some years I was very favorably
inclined to Luther's enterprise [wrote Crotus Rubeanus in
1531] [Sidenote: Rubeanus], but when I saw that nothing
was left untorn and undefiled . . . I thought the devil
might bring in great evil in the guise of something good,
using Scripture as his shield. So I decided to remain
in the church in which I was baptized, reared and taught.
Even if some fault might be found in it, yet in time it
{104}
might have been proved, sooner, at any rate, than in the
new church which in a few years has been torn by so many sects.

Wilibald Pirckheimer, the Greek scholar and historian of Nuremberg,hailed Luther so warmly at first that he was put under the ban of thebull Exsurge Domine. By 1529, however, he had come to believe himinsolent, impudent, either insane or possessed by a devil.

I do not deny [he wrote] that at the beginning all Luther's acts did not seem to be vain, since no good man could be pleased with all those errors and impostures that had accumulated gradually in Christianity. So, with others, I hoped that some remedy might be applied to such great evils, but I was cruelly deceived. For, before the former errors had been extirpated, far more intolerable ones crept in, compared to which the others seemed child's play.

[Sidenote: Appeal to Erasmus]

To Erasmus, the wise, the just, all men turned as to an arbiter ofopinion. From the first, Luther counted on his support, and notwithout reason, for the humanist spoke well of the Theses andcommentaries of the Wittenberger. On March 28, 1519, Luther addresseda letter to him, as "our glory and hope," acknowledging hisindebtedness and begging for support. Erasmus answered in a friendlyway, at the same time sending a message encouraging the ElectorFrederic to defend his innocent subject.

Dreading nothing so much as a violent catastrophe, the humanist laboredfor the next two years to find a peaceful solution for the threateningproblem. Seeing that Luther's two chief errors were that he "hadattacked the crown of the pope and the bellies of the monks," Erasmuspressed upon men in power the plan of allowing the points in dispute tobe settled by an impartial tribunal, and of imposing silence on bothparties. At the same time he begged Luther to do nothing {105} violentand urged that his enemies be not allowed to take extreme measuresagainst him. But after the publication of the pamphlets of 1520 and ofthe bull condemning the heretic, this position became untenable.Erasmus had so far compromised himself in the eyes of the inquisitorsthat he fled from Louvain in the autumn of 1521, and settled in Basle.He was strongly urged by both parties to come out on one side or theother, and he was openly taunted by Ulrich von Hutten, a hot Lutheran,for cowardice in not doing so. Alienated by this and by the dogmatismand intolerance of Luther's writings, Erasmus finally defined hisposition in a Diatribe on Free Will. [Sidenote: 1524] As Luther'stheory of the bondage of the will was but the other side of hisdoctrine of justification by faith only—for where God's grace does allthere is nothing left for human effort—Erasmus attacked the verycenter of the Evangelical dogmatic system. The question, a deeppsychological and metaphysical one, was much in the air, Valla havingwritten on it a work published in 1518, and Pomponazzi having alsocomposed a work on it in 1520, which was, however, not published untilmuch later. It is noticeable that Erasmus selected this point ratherthan one of the practical reforms advocated at Wittenberg, with whichhe was much in sympathy. Luther replied in a volume on The Bondage ofthe Will reasserting his position more strongly than ever. [Sidenote:1525] How theological, rather than philosophical, his opinion was maybe seen from the fact that while he admitted that a man was free tochoose which of two indifferent alternatives he should take, he deniedthat any of these choices could work salvation or real righteousness inGod's eyes. He did not hesitate to say that God saved and damned soulsirrespective of merit. Erasmus answered again in a large work, theHyperaspistes (Heavy-Armed Soldier), which came {106} out in twoparts. [Sidenote: 1526-7] In this he offers a general critique of theLutheran movement. Its leader, he says, is a dogmatist, who neverrecoils from extremes logically demanded by his premises, no matter howrepugnant they may be to the heart of man. But for himself he is ahumanist, finding truth in the reason as well as in the Bible, andabhorring paradoxes.

The controversy was not allowed to drop at this point. Many a barbedshaft of wit-winged sarcasm was shot by the light-armed scholar againstthe ranks of the Reformers. "Where Lutheranism reigns," he wrotePirckheimer, "sound learning perishes." "With disgust," he confessedto Ber, "I see the cause of Christianity approaching a condition that Ishould be very unwilling to have it reach . . . While we arequarreling over the booty the victory will slip through our fingers.It is the old story of private interests destroying the commonwealth."Erasmus first expressed the opinion, often maintained since, thatEurope was experiencing a gradual revival both of Christian piety andof sound learning, when Luther's boisterous attack plunged the worldinto a tumult in which both were lost sight of. On March 30, 1527, hewrote to Maldonato:

I brought it about that sound learning, which among the Italians and especially among the Romans savored of nothing but pure paganism, began nobly to celebrate Christ, in whom we ought to boast as the sole author of both wisdom and happiness if we are true Christians. . . . I always avoided the character of a dogmatist, except in certain obiter dicta which seemed to me conducive to correct studies and against the preposterous judgments of men.

In the same letter he tells how hard he had fought the obscurantists,and adds: "While we were waging a fairly equal battle against thesemonsters, behold {107} Luther suddenly arose and threw the apple ofDiscord into the world."

In short, Erasmus left the Reformers not because they were too liberal,but because they were too conservative, and because he disapproved ofviolent methods. His gentle temperament, not without a touch oftimidity, made him abhor the tumult and trust to the voice ofpersuasion. In failing to secure the support of the humanistsProtestantism lost heavily, and especially abandoned its chance tobecome the party of progress. Luther himself was not only disappointedin the disaffection of Erasmus, but was sincerely rebelled by hisrationalism. A man who could have the least doubt about a doctrine wasto him "an Arian, an atheist, and a skeptic." He went so far as to saythat the great Dutch scholar's primary object in publishing the GreekNew Testament was to make readers doubtful about the text, and that thechief end of his Colloquies was to mock all piety. Erasmus, whoseservices to letters were the most distinguished and whose ideal ofChristianity was the loveliest, has suffered far too much in beingjudged by his relation to the Reformation. By a great Catholic[1] hehas been called "the glory of the priesthood and the shame," by aneminent Protestant scholar[2] "a John the Baptist and Judas in one."

[Sidenote: Sacramentarian schism]

The battle with the humanists was synchronous with the beginnings of afierce internecine strife that tore the young evangelical church intotwo parts. Though the controversy between Luther and his principalrival, Ulrich Zwingli, was really caused by a wide difference ofthought on many subjects, it focused its rays, like a burning-glass,upon one point, the doctrine of the real presence of the body and bloodof Christ in the {108} eucharist. The explanation of this mysteryevolved in the Middle Ages and adopted by the Lateran Council of 1215,was the theory, called "transubstantiation," that the substance of thebread turned into the substance of the body, and the substance of thewine into the substance of the blood, without the "accidents" ofappearance and taste being altered. Some of the later doctors of thechurch, Durand and Occam, opposed this theory, though they proposed anearly allied one, called "consubstantiation," that the body and bloodare present with the bread and wine. Wyclif and others, among whom wasthe Italian philosopher Pico della Mirandola, proposed the theory nowheld in most Protestant churches that the bread and wine are meresymbols of the body and blood.

At the dawn of the Reformation the matter was brought into prominenceby the Dutch theologian Hoen, from whom the symbolic interpretation[Sidenote: Symbolism] was adopted first by Carlstadt and then by theSwiss Reformers Zwingli and Oecolampadius. Luther himself wavered. Heattacked the sacrifice of the mass, in which he saw a "good work"repugnant to faith, and a great practical abuse, as in the endowedmasses for souls, but he finally decided on the question of the realpresence that the words "this is my body" were "too strong for him" andmeant just what they said.

After a preliminary skirmish with Carlstadt, resulting in the latter'sbanishment from Saxony, there was a long and bitter war of pens betweenWittenberg and the Swiss Reformers. Once the battle was joined it wassure to be acrimonious because of the self-consciousness of each side.Luther always assumed that he had a monopoly of truth, and that thosewho proposed different views were infringing his copyright, so tospeak. "Zwingli, Carlstadt and Oecolampadius would never have knownChrist's gospel rightly," he {109} opined, "had not Luther written ofit first." He soon compared them to Absalom rebelling against hisfather David, and to Judas betraying his Master. Zwingli on his sidewas almost equally sure that he had discovered the truth independentlyof Luther, and, while expressing approbation of his work, refused to becalled by his name. His invective was only a shade less virulent thanwas that of his opponent.

The substance of the controversy was far from being the straightalignment between reason and tradition that it has sometimes beenrepresented as. Both sides assumed the inerrancy of Scripture andappealed primarily to the same biblical arguments. Luther had nodifficulty in proving that the words "hoc est corpus meum" meant thatthe bread was the body, and he stated that this must be so even ifcontrary to our senses. Zwingli had no difficulty in proving that thething itself was impossible, and therefore inferred that the biblicalwords must be explained away as a figure of speech. In a long andlearned controversy neither side convinced the other, but each becameso exasperated as to believe the other possessed of the devil. In thespring of 1529 Lutherans joined Catholics at the Diet of Spires inrefusing toleration to the Zwinglians. The division of Protestants ofcourse weakened them. Their leading statesman, Philip, Landgrave ofHesse, seeing this, did his best to reconcile the leaders. For severalyears he tried to get them to hold a conference, but in vain. Finally,he succeeded in bringing together at his castle at Marburg on the Lahn,Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, Oecolampadius, and a large number ofother divines. [Sidenote: Marburg colloquy October 1-3, 1529] Thediscussion here only served to bring out more strongly theirreconcilability of the two "spirits." Shortly afterwards, when thequestion of a political alliance came up, the Saxon theologians drafteda memorial stating that {110} they would rather make an agreement withthe heathen than with the "sacramentarians." [Sidenote: 1530] Thesame attitude was preserved at the Diet of Augsburg, where theLutherans were careful to avoid all appearance of friendship with theZwinglians lest they should compromise their standing with theCatholics. Zwingli and his friends were hardly less intransigeant.

[Sidenote: October 11, 1531]

When Zwingli died in battle with the Catholic cantons and whenOecolampadius succumbed to a fever a few weeks later, Luther loudlyproclaimed that was a judgment of God and a triumph for his own party.Though there was no hope of reconciling the Swiss, the South GermanZwinglians, headed by the Strassburg Reformers Bucer and Capito,hastened to come to an understanding with Wittenberg, without whichtheir position would have been extremely perilous. Bucer claimed torepresent a middle doctrine, such as was later asserted by Calvin. Asno middle ground is possible, the doctrine is unintelligible, being, infact, nothing but the statement, in strong terms, of two mutuallyexclusive propositions. After much humiliation the divines succeeded,however, in satisfying Luther, with whom they signed the WittenbergConcord on May 29, 1536. The Swiss still remained without the pale,and Luther's hatred of them grew with the years. Shortly before hisdeath he wrote that he would testify before the judgment-seat of Godhis loathing for the sacramentarians. He became more and moreconservative, bringing back to the sacrament some of the medievalsuperstitions he had once expelled. He began again to call it anoffering and a sacrifice and again had it elevated in church for theadoration of the faithful. He wavered on this point, because, as hesaid, he doubted whether it were more his duty to "spite" the papistsor the sacramentarians. He finally decided on the latter, "and ifnecessary," {111} continued he, "I will have the host elevated three,seven, or ten times, for I will not let the devil teach me anything inmy church."

[Sidenote: Growth of Lutheranism in middle and upper classes]

Notwithstanding the bitter controversies just related Lutheranismflourished mightily in the body of the people who were neither peasantsnor intellectuals nor Swiss. The appeal was to the upper and middleclasses, sufficiently educated to discard some of the medievalism ofthe Roman Church and impelled also by nationalism and economicself-interest to turn from the tyranny of the pope. City after cityand state after state enlisted under the banner of Luther. Hecontinued to appeal to them through the press. As a popularpamphleteer he must be reckoned among the very ablest. His faults,coarseness and unbridled violence of language, did not alienate most ofhis contemporaries. Even his Latin works, too harshly described byHallam as "bellowing in bad Latin," were well adapted to the spirit ofthe age. But nothing like his German writings had ever been seenbefore. In lucidity and copiousness of language, in directness andvigor, in satire and argument and invective, in humor and aptness ofillustration and allusion, the numerous tracts, political andtheological, which poured from his pen, surpassed all that had hithertobeen written and went straight to the hearts of his countrymen. And hewon his battle almost alone, for Melanchthon, though learned andelegant, had no popular gifts, and none of his other lieutenants couldboast even second-rate ability.

[Sidenote: German Bible, 1522-32]

Among his many publications a few only can be singled out for specialmention. The continuation of the German Bible undoubtedly helped hiscause greatly. In many things he could appeal to it against the Romantradition, and the very fact that he claimed to do so while hisopponents by their attitude seemed to {112} shrink from this test,established the Protestant claim to be evangelical, in the eyes of thepeople. Next came his hymns, many popular, some good and one reallygreat. [Sidenote: Hymns, 1528] Ein' feste Burg has been well calledby Heine the Marseillaise of the Reformation. The Longer and ShorterCatechisms [Sidenote: Catechisms, 1529] educated the common people inthe evangelical doctrine so well that the Catholics were forced toimitate their enemy, though tardily, by composing, for the first time,catechisms of their own.

Having overthrown much of the doctrine and discipline of the old churchLuther addressed himself with admirable vigor and great success to thetask of building up a substitute for it. In this the combination ofthe conservative and at the same time thoroughly popular spirit of themovement manifested itself. In divine service the vernacular wassubstituted for Latin. New emphasis was placed upon preaching,Bible-reading and hymn-singing. Mass was no longer incomprehensible,but was an act of worship in which all could intelligently participate;bread and wine were both given to the laity, and those words of thecanon implying transubstantiation and sacrifice were omitted. Marriagewas relegated from the rank of a sacrament to that of a civil contract.Baptism was kept in the old form, even to the detail of exorcizing theevil spirit. Auricular confession was permitted but not insisted upon.

[Sidenote: Church government]

The problems of church government and organization were pressing. Twoalternatives, were theoretically possible, Congregationalism or statechurches. After some hesitation, Luther was convinced by theextravagances of Münzer and his ilk that the latter was the onlypracticable course. The governments of the various German states andcities were now given supreme power in ecclesiastical matters. Theytook over the property belonging to the old church and {113}administered it generally for religious or educational or charitablepurposes. A system of church-visitation was started, by which thecentral authority passed upon the competence of each minister. Powersof appointment and removal were vested in the government. The titleand office of bishop were changed in most cases to that of"superintendent," though in some German sees and generally in Swedenthe name bishop was retained.

[Sidenote: Lutheran accessions]

How genuinely popular was the Lutheran movement may be seen in the factthat the free cities, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Strassburg, Ulm, Lübeck,Hamburg, and many others were the first to revolt from Rome. In otherstates the government led the way. Electoral Saxony evolved slowlyinto complete Protestantism. Though the Elector Frederic sympathizedwith almost everything advanced by his great subject, he was toocautious to interfere with vested interests of ecclesiastical propertyand endowments. On his death [Sidenote: May 5, 1525] his brother Johnsucceeded to the title, and came out openly for all the reformsadvocated at Wittenberg. The neighboring state of Hesse was won about1524, [Sidenote: 1424-5] though the official ordinance promulgating theevangelical doctrine was not issued until 1526. A very importantacquisition was Prussia. [Sidenote: 1525] Hitherto it had beengoverned by the Teutonic Order, a military society like the KnightsTemplars. Albert of Brandenburg became Grand Master in 1511,[Sidenote: Albert of Brandenburg, 1490-1568] and fourteen years latersaw the opportunity of aggrandizing his personal power by renouncinghis spiritual ties. He accordingly declared the Teutonic Orderabolished and himself temporal Duke of Prussia, shortly afterwardsmarrying a daughter of the king of Denmark. He swore allegiance to theking of Poland.

The growth of Lutheranism unmolested by the imperial government wasmade possible by the {114} absorption of the emperor's energies in hisrivalry with France and Turkey and by the decentralization of theEmpire. [Sidenote: Leagues] Leagues between groups of German stateshad been quite common in the past, and a new stimulus to theirformation was given by the common religious interest. The first leagueof this sort was that of Ratisbon, [Sidenote: 1524] between Bavaria andother South German principalities; its purpose was to carry out theEdict of Worms. This was followed by a similar league in North Germanybetween Catholic states, known as the League of Dessau, [Sidenote:1525] and a Protestant confederation known as the League of Torgau.

[Sidenote: The Diet of Spires, 1526]

The Diet held at Spires in the summer of 1526 witnessed the strength ofthe new party, for in it the two sides treated on equal terms. Manyreforms were proposed, and some carried through against the obstructionby Ferdinand, the emperor's brother and lieutenant. The great questionwas the enforcement of the Edict of Worms, and on this the Diet passedan act, known as a Recess, providing that each state should act inmatters of faith as it could answer to God and the emperor. In effectthis allowed the government of every German state to choose between thetwo confessions, thus anticipating the principle of the Religious Peaceof Augsburg of 1555.

The relations of the two parties were so delicate that it seemed as ifa general religious war were imminent. In 1528, this was almostprecipitated by a certain Otto von Pack, who assured the Landgrave ofHesse that he had found a treaty between the Catholic princes for theextirpation of the Lutherans and for the expropriation of theirchampions, the Elector of Saxony and Philip of Hesse himself. This wasfalse, but the Landgrave armed and attacked the Bishops of Würzburg andBamberg, named by Pack as parties to the treaty, and he forced them topay an indemnity.

{115}

[Sidenote: Recess of Spires]

The Diet which met at Spires early in 1529 endeavored to deal asdrastically as possible with the schism. The Recess passed by theCatholic majority on April 7 was most unfavorable to the Reformers,repealing the Recess of the last Diet in their favor. Catholic stateswere commanded to execute the persecuting Edict of Worms, althoughLutheran states were forbidden to abolish the office of the (Catholic)mass, and also to allow any further innovations in their own doctrinesor practices until the calling of a general council. The princes wereforbidden to harbor the subjects of another state. The Evangelicalmembers of the Diet, much aggrieved at this blow to their faith,published a Protest [Sidenote: Protest, April 19] taking the groundthat the Recess of 1526 had been in the nature of a treaty and couldnot be abrogated without the consent of both parties to it. As thegovernment of Germany was a federal one, this was a question of"states' rights," such as came up in our own Civil War, but in theGerman case it was even harder to decide because there was no writtenConstitution defining the powers of the national government and thestates. It might naturally be assumed that the Diet had the power torepeal its own acts, but the Evangelical estates made a further pointin their appeal to the emperor, [Sidenote: April 25] by alleging thatthe Recess of 1526 had been passed unanimously and could only berepealed by a unanimous vote. The Protest and the appeal were signedby the Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, a few smaller states,and fourteen free cities. From the Protest they became immediatelyknown as "the Protesting Estates" and subsequently the name Protestantwas given to all those who left the Roman communion.

[1] Alexander Pope.

[2] Walther Köhler.

{116}

SECTION 4. THE GROWTH OF PROTESTANTISM UNTIL THE DEATH OF LUTHER

Certain states having announced that they would not be bound by thewill of the majority, the question naturally came up as to how far theywould defend this position by arms. [Sidenote: March 6, 1530]Luther's advice asked and given to the effect that all rebellion orforcible resistance to the constituted authorities was wrong. Passiveresistance, the mere refusal to obey the command to persecute or toact, otherwise contrary to God's law, he thought was right but hediscountenanced any other measures, even those taken in self-defence.All Germans, said he, were the emperor's subjects, and the princesshould not shield Luther from him, but leave their lands open to hisofficers to do what they pleased. This position Luther abandoned ayear later, when the jurists pointed out to him that the authority ofthe emperor was not despotic but was limited by law.

The Protest and Appeal of 1529 at last aroused Charles, slow as he was,to the great dangers to himself that lurked in the Protestant schism.Having repulsed the Turk and having made peace with France and the popehe was at last in a position to address himself seriously to thereligious problem. Fully intending to settle the trouble once for all,he came to Germany and opened a Diet at Augsburg [Sidenote: June 20,1530] to which were invited not only the representatives of the variousstates but a number of leading theologians, both Catholic and Lutheran,all except Luther himself, an outlaw by the Edict of Worms.

The first action taken was to ask the Lutherans to state their positionand this was done in the famous Augsburg Confession, [Sidenote: June25] read before the Diet by the Saxon Chancellor Brück. It had beendrawn up by {117} Melanchthon in language as near as possible to thatof the old church. Indeed it undertook to prove that there was in theLutheran doctrine "nothing repugnant to Scripture or to the Catholicchurch or to the Roman church." Even in the form of the Confessionpublished 1531 this Catholicizing tendency is marked, but in theoriginal, now lost, it was probably stronger. The reason of this wasnot, as generally stated, Melanchthon's "gentleness" and desire toconciliate all parties, for he showed himself more truculent to theZwinglians and Anabaptists than did Luther. It was due to the factthat Melanchthon [Sidenote: Melanchthon] was at heart half a Catholic,so much so, indeed, that Contarini and others thought it quite possiblethat he might come over to them. In the present instance he made hisdoctrine conform to the Roman tenets to such an extent that (in thelost original, as we may judge by the Confutation) eventransubstantiation was in a manner accepted. The first part of theConfession is a creed: the second part takes up certain abuses, orreforms, namely: the demand of the cup for the laity, the marriage ofpriests, the mass as an opus operatum or as celebrated privately,fasting and traditions, monastic vows and the power of the pope.

But the concessions did not satisfy the Catholics. A Refutation wasprepared by Eck and others, and read before the Diet on August 3.Negotiations continued and still further concessions were wrung fromMelanchthon, concessions of so dangerous a nature that hisfellow-Protestants denounced him as an enemy of the faith and appealedto Luther against him. Melanchthon had agreed to call the mass asacrifice, if the word were qualified by the term "commemorative," andalso promised that the bishops should be restored to their ancientjurisdictions, a measure justified by him as a blow at turbulentsectaries but one also most {118} perilous to Lutherans. On the otherhand, Eck made some concessions, mostly verbal, about the doctrine ofjustification and other points.

That with this mutually conciliatory spirit an agreement failed tomaterialize only proved how irreconcilable were the aims of the twoparties. [Sidenote: September 22] The Diet voted that the Confessionhad been refuted and that the Protestants were bound to recant. Theemperor promised to use his influence with the pope to call a generalcouncil to decide doubtful points, but if the Lutherans did not returnto the papal church by April 15, 1531, they were threatened withcoercion.

[Sidenote: League of Schmalkalden]

To meet this perilous situation a closer alliance was formed by theProtestant states at Schmalkalden in February 1531. This leagueconstantly grew by the admission of new members, but some attempts tounite with the Swiss proved abortive.

On January 5, 1531, Ferdinand was elected King of the Romans—the titletaken by the heir to the Empire—by six of the electors against thevote of Saxony. Three months later when the time granted the Lutheransexpired, the Catholics were unable to do anything, and negotiationscontinued. [Sidenote: July 23, 1532] These resulted in the Peace ofNuremberg, a truce until a general council should be called. It was animportant victory for the Lutherans, who were thus given time in whichto grow.

The seething unrest which found expression in the rebellion of theknights, of the peasants and of the Anabaptists at Münster, has beendescribed. One more liberal movement, which also failed, must bementioned at this time. It was as little connected with religion asanything in that theological age could be. [Sidenote: Lübeck, 1533-35]The city of Lübeck, under its burgomaster George Wullenwever, tried tofree itself from the influence of Denmark and at the same time to get amore popular {119} government. In 1536 it was conquered by ChristianIII of Denmark, and the old aristocratic constitution restored. Thetime was not ripe for the people to assert its rights in North Germany.

[Sidenote: May 1534]

The growth of Protestantism was at times assisted by force of arms.Thus, Philip of Hesse restored the now Protestant Duke Ulrich ofWurttemberg, who had been expelled for his tyranny by the SwabianLeague fifteen years before. This triumph was the more marked becausethe expropriated ruler was Ferdinand, King of the Romans. If in suchcases it was the government which took the lead, in others thegovernment undoubtedly compelled the people to continue Catholic evenwhen there was a strongly Protestant public opinion. Such was the casein Albertine Saxony,[1] whose ruler, Duke George, though an estimableman in many ways, was regarded by Luther as the instrument of Satanbecause he persecuted his Protestant subjects. When he died, hisbrother, [Sidenote: April, 1539] the Protestant Henry the Pious,succeeded and introduced the Reform amid general acclamation. Twoyears later this duke was followed by his son, the versatile buttreacherous Maurice. In the year 1539 a still greater acquisition cameto the Schmalkaldic League in the conversion of Brandenburg and itsElector Joachim II.

[Sidenote: Philip of Hesse, 1504-67]

Shortly afterwards the world was scandalized by the bigamy of Philip ofHesse. This prince was utterly spoiled by his accession to thegoverning power at the age of fifteen. Though he lived in flagrantimmorality, his religion, which, soon after he met Luther at Worms,became the Evangelical, was real enough to make his sins a burden toconscience. Much attracted {120} by the teachings of some of theAnabaptists and Carlstadt that polygamy was lawful, and by Luther'sassertion in the Babylonian Captivity that it was preferable todivorce, [Sidenote: 1526] he begged to be allowed to take more wives,but was at first refused. His conscience was quickened by an attack ofthe syphilis in 1539, and at that time he asked permission to take asecond wife and received it on December 10, from Luther, Melanchthon,and Bucer. His secret marriage to Margaret von der Saal [Sidenote:March 4, 1540] took place in the presence of Melanchthon, Bucer, andother divines. Luther advised him to keep the matter secret and ifnecessary even to "tell a good strong lie for the sake and good of theChristian church." Of course he was unable to conceal his act, and hisconduct, and that of his spiritual advisers, became a just reproach tothe cause. As no material advantages were lost by it, Philip mighthave reversed the epigram of Francis I and have said that "nothing waslost but honor." Neither Germany nor Hesse nor the Protestant churchsuffered directly by his act. [Sidenote: 1541] Indeed it leadindirectly to another territorial gain. Philip's enemy Duke Henry ofBrunswick, though equally immoral, attacked him in a pamphlet. Lutheranswered this in a tract of the utmost violence, called Jack Sausage.Henry's rejoinder was followed by war between him and the Schmalkaldicprinces, in which he was expelled from his dominions and theReformation introduced.

[Sidenote: 1541]

Further gains followed rapidly. The Catholic Bishop of Naumburg wasexpelled by John Frederic of Saxony, and a Lutheran bishop institutedinstead. About the same time the great spiritual prince, Hermann vonWied, Archbishop Elector of Cologne, became a Protestant, and invitedMelanchthon and Bucer to reform his territories. One of the lastgains, before the Schmalkaldic war, was the Rhenish Palatinate, under{121} its Elector Frederic III. [Sidenote: 1545] His troops foughtthen on the Protestant side, though later he turned against that church.

The opportunity of the Lutherans was due to the engagements of theemperor with other enemies. In 1535 Charles undertook a successfulexpedition against Tunis. The war with France simmered on until theTruce of Nice, intended to be for ten years, signed between the twopowers in 1538. In 1544 war broke out again, and fortune again favoredCharles. He invaded France almost to the gates of Paris, but did notpress his advantage and on September 18 signed the Peace of Crépygiving up all his conquests.

Unable to turn his arms against the heretics, Charles continued tonegotiate with them. The pressure he brought to bear upon the popefinally resulted in the summoning by Paul III of a council to meet atMantua the following year. [Sidenote: June 2, 1536] The Protestantswere invited to send delegates to this council, and the princes of thatfaith held a congress at Schmalkalden to decide on their course.[Sidenote: February 1537] Hitherto the Lutherans had called themselvesa part of the Roman Catholic church and had always appealed to a futureoecumenical or national synod. They now found this position untenable,and returned the papal citation unopened. Instead, demands for reform,known as the Schmalkaldic Articles, were drawn up by Luther. The fourprincipal demands were (1) recognition of the doctrine of justificationby faith only, (2) abolition of the mass as a good work or opusoperatum, (3) alienation of the foundations for private masses, (4)removal of the pretentions of the pope to headship of the universalchurch. As a matter of fact the council was postponed.

[Sidenote: April 19, 1539]

Failing to reach a permanent solution by this method, Charles was againforced to negotiate. The {122} Treaty of Frankfort agreed to a trucevarying in length from six to fifteen months according tocircumstances. This was followed by a series of religious conferenceswith the purpose of finding some means of reconciling the twoconfessions. [Sidenote: Religious Colloquies] Among the first ofthese were the meetings at Worms and Hagenau. Campeggio and Eck werethe Catholic leaders, Melanchthon the spokesman for the Lutherans.[Sidenote: 1540-1] Each side had eleven members on the commission, buttheir joint efforts were wrecked on the plan for limiting the papalpower and on the doctrine of original sin. When the Diet of Ratisbonwas opened in the spring of 1541 a further conference was held at whichthe two parties came closer to each other than they had done sinceAugsburg. The Book of Ratisbon was drawn up, emphasizing the points ofagreement and slurring over the differences. Contarini made wideconcessions, later condemned by the Catholics, on the doctrine ofjustification. Discussion of the nature of the church, the power ofthe pope, the invocation of saints, the mass, and sacerdotal celibacyseemed likely to result in some modus vivendi. What finallyshattered the hopes of union was the discussion of transubstantiationand the adoration of the host. As Contarini had found in thestatements of the Augsburg Confession no insuperable obstacle to anunderstanding he was astonished at the stress laid on them by theProtestants now.

[Sidenote: 1542]

It is not remarkable that with such results the Diet of Spires shouldhave avoided the religious question and have devoted itself to moresecular matters, among them the grant to the emperor of soldiers tofight the Turk. Of this Diet Bucer wrote "The Estates act under thewrath of God. Religion is relegated to an agreement betweencities. . . . The cause of our evils is that few seek the Lordearnestly, but {123} most fight against him, both among those who haverejected, and of those who still bear, the papal yoke." At the Diet ofSpires two years later the emperor promised the Protestants, in returnfor help against France, recognition until a German National Councilshould be called. For this concession he was sharply rebuked by thepope. [Sidenote: 1545] The Diet of Worms contented itself withexpressing its general hope for a "Christian reformation."

[Sidenote: 1545]

During his later years Luther's polemic never flagged. His last book,Against the Papacy of Rome, founded by the Devil, surpassed Ciceroand the humanists and all that had ever been known in the virulence ofits invective against "the most hellish father, St. Paul, or Paula III"and his "hellish Roman church." "One would like to curse them," hewrote, "so that thunder and lightning would strike them, hell fire burnthem, the plague, syphilis, epilepsy, scurvy, leprosy, carbuncles, andall diseases attack them"—and so on for page after page. Of coursesuch lack of restraint largely defeated its own ends. The SwissReformer Bullinger called it "amazingly violent," and a book than whichhe "had never read anything more savage or imprudent." Our judgment ofit must be tempered by the consideration that Luther suffered in hislast years from a nervous malady and from other painful diseases, duepartly to overwork and lack of exercise, partly to the quantities ofalcohol he imbibed, though he never became intoxicated.

Nevertheless, the last twenty years of his life were his happiest ones.His wife, Catherine von Bora, an ex-nun, and his children, brought himmuch happiness. Though the wedding gave his enemies plenty of openingsfor reviling him as an apostate, [Sidenote: June 13, 1525] and thoughit drew from Erasmus the scoffing jest that what had begun as a tragedyended as a comedy, it {124} crowned his career, symbolizing the returnfrom medieval asceticism to modern joy in living. Dwelling in the fineold friary, entertaining with lavish prodigality many poor relatives,famous strangers, and students, notwithstanding unremitting toil andnot a little bodily suffering, he expanded in his whole nature,mellowing in the warmth of a happy fireside climate. His daily routineis known to us intimately through the adoring assiduity of hisdisciples, who noted down whole volumes of his Table Talk.

[Sidenote: Death and character of Luther]

On February 18, 1546, he died. Measured by the work that heaccomplished and by the impression that his personality made both oncontemporaries and on posterity, there are few men like him in history.Dogmatic, superstitious, intolerant, overbearing, and violent as hewas, he yet had that inscrutable prerogative of genius of transformingwhat he touched into new values. His contemporaries bore his invectivebecause of his earnestness; they bowed to "the almost disgracefulservitude" which, says Melanchthon, he imposed upon his followers,because they knew that he was leading them to victory in a great andworthy cause. Even so, now, many men overlook his narrowness andbigotry because of his genius and bravery.

His grandest quality was sincerity. Priest and public man as he was,there was not a line of hypocrisy or cant in his whole being. A shamwas to him intolerable, the abomination of desolation standing where itought not. Reckless of consequences, of danger, of his popularity, andof his life, he blurted out the whole truth, as he saw it, "despite allcardinals, popes, kings and emperors, together with all devils andhell." Whether his ideal is ours or not, his courage in daring and hisstrength to labor for it must command our respect.

Next to his earnestness he owed his success to a {125} wonderful giftof language that made him the tongue, as well as the spear-point, ofhis people. [Sidenote: His eloquence] In love of nature, in wonder,in the power to voice some secret truth in a phrase or a metaphor, hewas a poet. He looked out on the stars and considered the "goodmaster-workman" that made them, on the violets "for which neither theGrand Turk nor the emperor could pay," on the yearly growth of corn andwine, "as great a miracle as the manna in the wilderness," on the"pious, honorable birds" alert to escape the fowler's net, or holding aDiet "in a hall roofed with the vault of heaven, carpeted with thegrass, and with walls as far as the ends of the earth." Or he wrote tohis son a charming fairy-tale of a pleasant garden where good childreneat apples and pears and cherries and plums, and where they ride onpretty ponies with golden reins and silver saddles and dance all dayand play with whistles and fifes and little cross-bows.

Luther's character combined traits not usually found in the samenature. He was both a dreamy mystic and a practical man of affairs; hesaw visions and he knew how to make them realities; he was aGod-intoxicated prophet and a cool calculator and hard worker forresults. His faith was as simple and passionate as his dogmaticdistinctions were often sophistical and arid. He could attack his foeswith berserker fury, and he could be as gentle with a child as only awoman can. His hymns soar to heaven and his coarse jests trail in themire. He was touched with profound melancholy and yet he had awholesome, ready laugh. His words are now brutal invectives and againblossom with the most exquisite flowers of the soul—poetry, music,idyllic humor, tenderness. He was subtle and simple; superstitious andwise; limited in his cultural sympathies, but very great in what heachieved.

[1] Saxony had been divided in 1485 into two parts, the Electorate,including Wittenberg, Weimar and Eisenach, and the Duchy, includingLeipzig and Dresden. The former was called after its first rulerErnestine, the latter Albertine.

{126}

SECTION 5. THE RELIGIOUS WAR AND THE RELIGIOUS PEACE

[Sidenote: The Schmalkaldic War, 1546-7]

Hardly had Luther been laid to rest when the first general religiouswar broke out in Germany. There had been a few small wars of thischaracter before, such as those of Hesse against Bamberg and Wurzburg,and against Württemberg, and against Brunswick. But the conflicts hadbeen successfully "localized." Now at last was to come a generalbattle, as a foretaste of the Thirty Years War of the next century.

It has sometimes been doubted whether the Schmalkaldic War was areligious conflict at all. The emperor asserted that his sole objectwas to reduce rebellious subjects to obedience. Several Protestantprinces were his allies, and the territories he conquered were not, forthe most part, forced to give up their faith. Nevertheless, it iscertain that the fundamental cause of the strain was the difference ofcreed. A parallel may be found in our own Civil War, in which Lincolntruly claimed that he was fighting only to maintain the union, and yetit is certain that slavery furnished the underlying cause of the appealto arms.

It has recently been shown that the emperor planned the attack on hisProtestant subjects as far back, at least, as 1541. All thenegotiations subsequent to that time were a mere blind in disguise hispreparations. For he labored indefatigably to bring about a conditionin which it would be safe for him to embark on the perilous enterprise.Though he was a dull man he had the two qualities of caution andpersistence that stood him in better stead than the more showy talentsof other statesmen. If, with his huge resources, he never did anythingbrilliant, still less did he ever take a gambler's chance of failing.

{127} The opportune moment came at last in the spring of 1546. Twoyears before, he had beaten France with the help of the Protestants,and had imposed upon her as one condition of peace that she should makeno allies within the Empire. In November of the same year he made analliance with Paul III, receiving 200,000 ducats in support of hiseffort to extirpate the heresy.

Other considerations impelled him to attack at once. The secession ofCologne and the Palatinate from the Catholic communion gave theProtestants a majority in the Electoral College. Still more decisivewas it that Charles was able at this time by playing upon thejealousies and ambitions of the states, to secure important allieswithin the Empire, including some of the Protestant faith. First,Catholic Bavaria forgot her hatred of Austria far enough to make commoncause against the heretics. Then, two great Protestant princes,Maurice of Albertine Saxony and John von Küstrin—a brother of JoachimII, Elector of Brandenburg—abandoned their coreligionists and barteredsupport to the emperor in return for promises of aggrandizement.

[Sidenote: January 1546]

A final religious conference held at Ratisbon demonstrated more clearlythan ever the hopelessness of conciliation. Whereas a semi-Lutherandoctrine of justification was adopted, the Protestants prepared twolong memoirs rejecting the authority of the council recently convenedat Trent. And then, in the summer, war broke out. At this moment theforces of the Schmalkaldic League were superior to those of itsenemies. But for poor leadership and lack of unity in command theywould probably have won.

Towards the last of August and early in September the Protestant troopsbombarded the imperial army at Ingolstadt, but failed to follow this upby a decisive {128} attack, as was urged by General Schärtlin ofAugsburg. Lack of equipment was partly responsible for this failure.When the emperor advanced, the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave ofHesse retired each to his own land. Another futile attempt of theLeague was a raid on the Tyrol, possibly influenced by the desire tostrike at the Council of Trent, certainly by no sound military policy.The effect of these indecisive counsels was that Charles had littletrouble in reducing the South German rebels, Augsburg, Ulm, Nuremberg,and Württemberg. The Elector Palatine hastened to come to terms bytemporarily abandoning his religion. [Sidenote: February, 1547] Acounter-reformation was also effected in Cologne. Augsburg bought theemperor's pardon by material concessions.

[Sidenote: October 1546]

In the meantime Duke Maurice of Albertine Saxony, having made a bargainwith the emperor, attacked his second cousin the Elector. ThoughMaurice was not obliged to abjure his faith, his act was naturallyregarded as one of signal treachery and he was henceforth known by thenickname "Judas." Maurice conquered most of his cousin's lands, exceptthe forts of Wittenberg and Gotha. Charles's Spanish army under Alvanow turned northward, forced a passage of the Elbe and routed thetroops of John Frederic at the battle of Mülberg, near Torgau, on April24, 1547. John Frederic was captured wounded, and kept in duranceseveral years. Wittenberg capitulated on May 19, and just a monthlater Philip of Hesse surrendered at Halle. He also was kept aprisoner for some years. Peace was made by the mediation ofBrandenburg. The electoral vote of Saxony was given to Maurice, andwith it the best part of John Frederic's lands, including Wittenberg.No change of religion was required. The net result of the war was to{129} increase the imperial power, but to put a very slight check uponthe expansion of Protestantism.

And yet it was for precisely this end that Charles chiefly valued hisauthority. Immediately, acting independently of the pope, he madeanother effort to restore the confessional unity of Germany. The Dietof Augsburg [Sidenote: 1547-8] accepted under pressure from him adecree called the Interim because it was to be valid only until thefinal decisions of a general council. Though intended to apply only toProtestant states—the Catholics had, instead, a formulareformationis—the Interim [Sidenote: The Interim, June 30, 1548],drawn up by Romanist divines, was naturally Catholic in tenor. Theepiscopal constitution was restored, along with the canon of the mass,the doctrine of the seven sacraments, and the worship of saints. Onsome doctrinal points vagueness was studied. The only concessions madeto the Reformation were the pro tempore recognition of the marriageof the clergy and the giving of the cup to the laity. Various otherdetails of practical reform were demanded. The Interim was intenselyunpopular with both parties. The pope objected to it and GermanCatholics, especially in Bavaria, strongly opposed it. The SouthGerman Protestant states accepted it only under pressure. Maurice ofSaxony adopted it in a modified form, known as the Leipzig Interim, inDecember 1548. The assistance rendered him by Melanchthon caused afierce attack on the theologian by his fellow-Lutherans. In enforcingthe Interim Maurice found his own profit, for when Magdeburg won thenickname of "our Lord God's pulpit" by refusing to accept it, Mauricewas entrusted with the execution of the imperial ban, and captured thecity on November 9, 1551.

Germany now fell into a confused condition, every state for itself.The emperor found his own {130} difficulties in trying to make his sonPhilip successor to his Brother Ferdinand. His two former Protestantallies, Maurice and John von Küstrin, made an alliance with France andwith other North German princes and forced the emperor to conclude theConvention of Passau. [Sidenote: 1552] This guaranteed afresh thereligious freedom of the Lutherans until the next Diet and forced theliberation of John Frederic and Philip of Hesse. Charles did notloyally accept the conditions of this agreement, but induced Albert,Margrave of Brandenburg-Culmbach, to attack the confederate princes inthe rear. After Albert had laid waste a portion of North Germany hewas defeated by Maurice at the battle of Sievershausen. [Sidenote:July 9, 1553] Mortally wounded, the brilliant but utterly unscrupulousvictor died, at the age of thirty-two, soon after the battle. As theconflict had by this time resolved itself into a duel between him andCharles, the emperor was now at last able to put through, at the Dietof Augsburg, a settlement of the religious question.

[Sidenote: Religious Peace of Augsburg, September 25, 1555]

The principles of the Religious Peace were as follows:

(1) A truce between states recognizing the Augsburg Confession andCatholic states until union was possible. All other confessions wereto be barred—a provision aimed chiefly at Calvinists.

(2) The princes and governments of the Free Cities were to be allowedto choose between the Roman and the Lutheran faith, but their subjectsmust either conform to this faith—on the maxim famous as cujus regioejus religio—or emigrate. In Imperial Free Cities, however, it wasspecially provided that Catholic minorities be tolerated.

(3) The "ecclesiastical reservation," or principle that when a Catholicspiritual prince became Protestant he should be deposed and a successorappointed {131} so that his territory might remain under the church.In respect to this Ferdinand privately promised to secure tolerationfor Protestant subjects in the land of such a prince. All claims ofspiritual jurisdiction by Catholic prelates in Lutheran lands were tocease. All estates of the church confiscated prior to 1552 were toremain in the hands of the spoliators, all seized since that date to berestored.

The Peace of Augsburg, like the Missouri Compromise, only postponedcivil war and the radical solution of a pressing problem. But as wecannot rightly censure the statesmen of 1820 for not insisting onemancipation, for which public opinion was not yet prepared, so itwould be unhistorical and unreasonable to blame the Diet of Augsburgfor not granting the complete toleration which we now see was bound tocome and was ideally the right thing. Mankind is educated slowly andby many hard experiences. Europe had lain so long under the dominationof an authoritative ecclesiastical civilization that the possibility ofcomplete toleration hardly occurred to any but a few eccentrics. Andwe must not minimize what the Peace of Augsburg actually accomplished.It is true that choice of religion was legally limited to twoalternatives, but this was more than had been allowed before.[Sidenote: Actual results] It is true that freedom of even this choicewas complete only for the rulers of the territories or Free Cities;private citizens might exercise the same choice only on leaving theirhomes. The hardship of this was somewhat lessened by the considerationthat in any case the nonconformist would not have to go far beforefinding a German community holding the Catholic or Lutheran opinions hepreferred. Finally, it must be remembered that, if the Peace ofAugsburg aligned the whole nation into two mutually hostile camps, itat least kept them from war for more than {132} half a century. Norwas this a mere accident, for the strain was at times severe. When theimperial knight, Grumbach, broke the peace by sacking the city ofWürzburg, [Sidenote: 1563-7] he was put under the ban, captured andexecuted. His protector, Duke John Frederic of Saxony, was alsocaptured and kept in confinement in Austria until his death.

Notwithstanding such an exhibition of centralized power, it is probablethat the Peace of Augsburg increased rather than diminished theauthority of the territorial states at the expense of the imperialgovernment. Charles V, worn out by his long and unsuccessful strugglewith heresy, after giving the Netherlands to his son Philip in 1555,abdicated the crown of the Empire to his brother Ferdinand in 1556.[Sidenote: Ferdinand, 1556-64] He died two years later in a monastery,a disappointed man, having expressed the wish that he had burned Lutherat Worms. The energies of Ferdinand were largely taken up with theTurkish war. His son, Maximilian II, [Sidenote: Maximilian II,1564-76] was favorably inclined to Protestantism.

[Sidenote: Catholic reaction]

Before Maximilian's death, however, a reaction in favor of Catholicismhad already set in. The last important gains to the Lutheran cause inGermany came in the years immediately following the Peace of Augsburg.Nothing is more remarkable than the fact that practically all theconquests of Protestantism in Europe were made within the first halfcentury of its existence. After that for a few years it lost, andsince then has remained, geographically speaking, stationary in Europe.It is impossible to get accurate statistics of the gains and losses ofeither confession. The estimate of the Venetian ambassador that onlyone-tenth of the German empire was Catholic in 1558 is certainly wrong.In 1570, at the height of the Protestant tide, probably 70 per cent. ofGermans—including Austrians—were Protestant. In 1910 the Germans ofthe {133} German Empire and of Austria were divided thus: Protestants37,675,000; Catholics 29,700,000. The Protestants were about 56 percent., and this proportion was probably about that of the year 1600.

[Sidenote: Lutheran schisms]

Historically, the final stemming of the Protestant flood was due to therevival of energy in the Catholic Church and to the internal weaknessand schism of the Protestants. Even within the Lutheran communionfierce conflicts broke out. Luther's lieutenants fought for hisspiritual heritage as the generals of Alexander fought for his empire.The center of these storms was Melanchthon until death freed him from"the rage of the theologians." [Sidenote: April 19, 1560] Always halfCatholic, half Erasmian at heart, by his endorsement of the Interim,and by his severe criticisms of his former friends Luther and JohnFrederic, he brought on himself the bitter enmity of those callingthemselves "Gnesio-Lutherans," or "Genuine Lutherans." Melanchthonabolished congregational hymn-singing, and published his true views,hitherto dissembled, on predestination and the sacrament. He wasattacked by Flacius the historian, and by many others. The dispute wastaken up by still others and went to such lengths that for a minorheresy a pastor, Funck, was executed by his fellow-Lutherans inPrussia, in 1566. "Philippism" as it was called, at first grew, butfinally collapsed when the Formula of Concord was drawn up in 1580 andsigned by over 8000 clergy. This document is to the Lutheran Churchwhat the decrees of Trent were to the Catholics. The "high" doctrineof the real presence was strongly stated, and all the sophistriesadvanced to support it canonized. The sacramental bread and wine weretreated with such superstitious reverence that a Lutheran priest whoaccidentally spilled the latter was punished by having his fingers cutoff. Melanchthon was against such "remnants of {134} papistry" whichhe rightly named "artolatry" or "bread-worship."

But the civil wars within the Lutheran communion were less bitter thanthe hatred for the Calvinists. By 1550 their mutual detestation hadreached such a point that Calvin called the Lutherans "ministers ofSatan" and "professed enemies of God" trying to bring in "adulterinerites" and vitiate the pure worship. The quarrel broke out again atthe Colloquy of Worms. Melanchthon and others condemned Zwingli, thus,in Calvin's opinion, "wiping off all their glory." Nevertheless Calvinhimself had said, in 1539, that Zwingli's opinion was false andpernicious. So difficult is the path of orthodoxy to find! In 1557the Zwinglian leader M. Schenck wrote to Thomas Blaurer that the errorof the papists was rather to be borne than that of the Saxons.Nevertheless Calvinism continued to grow in Germany at the expense ofLutheranism. Especially after the Formula of Concord the "Philippists"went over in large numbers to the Calvinists.

[Sidenote: Effect on the nation]

The worst thing about these distressing controversies was that theyseemed to absorb the whole energies of the nation. No period is lessproductive in modern German history than the age immediately followingthe triumph of the Reformation. The movement, which had begun soliberally and hopefully, became, temporarily at least, narrower andmore bigoted than Catholicism. It seemed as if Erasmus had been quiteright when he said that where Lutheranism reigned culture perished. Ofthese men it has been said—and the epigram is not a bad one—that theymade an intellectual desert and called it religious peace.

And yet we should be cautious in history of assuming post hoc propterhoc. That there was nothing {135} necessarily blighting inProtestantism is shown by the examples of England and Poland, where theReform was followed by the most brilliant literary age in the annals ofthese peoples. [Sidenote: 16th century literature] The latter part ofthe sixteenth century was also the great period of the literature ofSpain and Portugal, which remained Catholic, whereas Italy, equallyCatholic, notably declined in artistic production and somewhat also inletters. The causes of the alterations, in various peoples, of periodsof productivity and of comparative sterility, are in part inscrutable.In the present case, it seems that when a relaxation of intellectualactivity is visible, it was not due to any special quality inProtestantism, but was rather caused by the heat of controversy.

SECTION 7. NOTE ON SCANDINAVIA, POLAND, AND HUNGARY

[Transcriber's note: The above section number is what appears in theoriginal book, but it is a case of misnumbering, and is actually thechapter's sixth section.]

A few small countries bordering on the Empire, neither fully in thecentral stream of European culture, nor wholly outside of it, may betreated briefly. All of them were affected by the Protestantrevolution, the Teutonic peoples permanently, the others transiently.

Scandinavia looms large in the Middle Ages as the home of the teemingmultitudes of emigrants, Goths and Vandals, who swarmed over the RomanEmpire. Later waves from Denmark and the contiguous portion of Germanyflooded England first in the Anglo-Saxon conquest and then in theDanish. The Normans, too, originally hailed from Scandinavia. Butthough the sons of the North conquered and colonized so much of theSouth, Scandinavia herself remained a small people, neither politicallynor intellectually of the first importance. The three kingdoms ofDenmark, Norway, and Sweden became one in 1397; and, after Sweden'stemporary separation from the other two, were again united. Thefifteenth century saw the {136} great aggrandizement of the power ofthe prelates and of the larger nobles at the expense of the bönder,who, from a class of free and noble small proprietors degenerated notonly into peasants but often into serfs. [Sidenote: 1513] WhenChristian II succeeded to the throne, it was as the papal champion.His attempt to consolidate his power in Sweden by massacring themagnates under the pretext that they were hostile to the pope,[Sidenote: November 8-11, 1520] an act called the "Stockholm bath ofblood," aroused the people against him in a war of independence.

[Sidenote: Denmark]

Christian found Denmark also insubordinate. It is true that he madesome just laws, protecting the people and building up their prosperity,but their support was insufficient to counterbalance the hatred of thegreat lords spiritual and temporal. He was quick to see in theReformation a weapon against the prelates, and appealed for help toWittenberg as early as 1519. His endeavors throughout 1520 to getLuther himself to visit Denmark failed, but early in 1521 he succeededin attracting Carlstadt for a short visit. This effort, however, costhim his throne, for he was expelled on April 13, 1523, and wanderedover Europe in exile until his death. [Sidenote: 1559]

The Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, to whom the crown was offered, reignedfor ten years as Frederic I. Though his coronation oath bound him todo nothing against the church, he had only been king for three yearsbefore he came out openly for the Reformation. In this again we mustsee primarily a policy, rather than a conviction. He was supported,however, by the common people, who had been disgusted by theindulgences sold by Arcimboldi [Sidenote: 1516-19] and by the constantcorruption of the higher clergy. The cities, as in Germany, were thestrongest centers of the movement. The Diet of 1527 decreed thatLutherans should be recognized on equal terms with Catholics, thatmarriage of priests {137} and the regular clergy be allowed. In 1530 aLutheran confession was adopted.

Christian III, who reigned until 1559, took the final step, though atthe price of a civil war. His victory enabled him to arrest all thebishops, August 20, 1536, and to force them to renounce their rightsand properties in favor of the crown. Only one, Bishop Rönnow ofRoskilde, refused, and was consequently held prisoner until his death.The Diet of 1536 abolished Catholicism, confiscated all church propertyand distributed it between the king and the temporal nobles.Bugenhagen was called from Wittenberg to organize the church onLutheran lines. [Sidenote: 1537-9] In the immediately following yearsthe Catholics were deprived of their civil rights. The politicalbenefits of the Reformation inured primarily to the king andsecondarily to the third estate.

[Sidenote: Norway]

Norway was a vassal of Denmark from 1380 till 1814. At no time was itsdependence more complete than in the sixteenth century. Frederic Iintroduced the Reformation by royal decree as early as 1528, andChristian III put the northern kingdom completely under the tutelage ofDenmark, [Sidenote: 1536] in spiritual as well as in temporal matters.The adoption of the Reformation here as in Iceland seemed to be amatter of popular indifference.

[Sidenote: Sweden]

After Sweden had asserted her independence by the expulsion ofChristian II, Gustavus Vasa, an able ruler, ascended the throne.[Sidenote: Gustavus Vasa, 1523-60] He, too, saw in the Reformationchiefly an opportunity for confiscating the goods of the church. Theway had, indeed, been prepared by a popular reformer, Olaus Petri, butthe king made the movement an excuse to concentrate in his own handsthe spiritual power. The Diet of Westeras [Sidenote: 1527] passed thenecessary laws, at the same time expelling the chief leader of theRomanist party, John Brask, {138} Bishop of Linköping. The Reformationwas entirely Lutheran and extremely conservative. Not only theAnabaptists, but even the Calvinists, failed to get any hold upon theScandinavian peoples. In many ways the Reformation in Sweden wasparallel to that in England. Both countries retained the episcopalorganization founded upon the "apostolical succession." Olaus Magni,Bishop of Westeras, had been ordained at Rome in 1524, and in turnconsecrated the first Evangelical Archbishop, Lawrence Petri,[Sidenote: Petri 1499-1573] who had studied at Wittenberg, and wholater translated the Bible into Swedish [Sidenote: 1541] and protectedhis people from the inroads of Calvinism. The king, more and moreabsolutely the head of the church, as in England, did not hesitate topunish even prominent reformers when they opposed him. The reign ofGustavus's successor, Eric XIV, [Sidenote: Eric XIV, 1560-8] wascharacterless, save for the influx of Huguenots strengthening theProtestants. King John III [Sidenote: John III, 1569-92] made a final,though futile, attempt to reunite with the Roman Church. As Finlandwas at this time a dependency of Sweden, the Reformation tookpractically the same course as in Sweden itself.

[Sidenote: Poland]

A complete contrast to Sweden is furnished by Poland. If in the formerthe government counted for almost everything, in the latter it countedfor next to nothing. The theater of Polish history is the vast plainextending from the Carpathians to the Düna, and from the Baltic almostto the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. This region, lacking naturalfrontiers on several sides, was inhabited by a variety of races: Polesin the west, Lithuanians in the east, Ruthenians in the south and manyGermans in the cities. The union of the Polish and Lithuanian stateswas as yet a merely personal one in the monarch. Since the fourteenthcentury the crown of Poland had been elective, but the grand-ducalcrown of Lithuania was {139} hereditary in the famous house ofJagiello, and the advantages of union induced the Polish nobilityregularly to elect the heir to the eastern domain their king. Thoughtheoretically absolute, in practice the king had been limited by thepower of the nobles and gentry, and this limitation was given aconstitutional sanction in the law Nihil novi, [Sidenote: 1505]forbidding the monarch to pass laws without the consent of the deputiesof the magnates and lesser nobles.

The foreign policy of Sigismund I [Sidenote: Sigismund I, 1506-1548]was determined by the proximity of powerful and generally hostileneighbors. It would not be profitable in this place to follow atlength the story of his frequent wars with Muscovy and with the Tartarhordes of the Crimea, and of his diplomatic struggles with the Turks,the Empire, Hungary, and Sweden. On the whole he succeeded not only inholding his own, but in augmenting his power. He it was who finallysettled the vexatious question of the relationship of his crown to theTeutonic Order, which, since 1466, had held Prussia as a fief, though aconstantly rebellious and troublesome one. The election of Albert ofBrandenburg as Grand Master of the Order threatened more serioustrouble, [Sidenote: 1511] but a satisfactory solution of the problemwas found when Albert embraced the Lutheran faith and secularizedPrussia as an hereditary duchy, at the same time swearing allegiance toSigismund as his suzerain. [Sidenote: 1525] Many years laterSigismund's son conquered and annexed another domain of the Teutonicorder further north, namely Livonia. [Sidenote: 1561] War with Swedenresulted from this but was settled by the cession of Esthonia to theScandinavian power.

Internally, the vigorous Jagiello strengthened both the military andfinancial resources of his people. To meet the constant inroads of theTartars he established the Cossacks, a rough cavalry formed of thehunters, {140} fishers, and graziers of the Ukraine, quite analogous tothe cowboys of the American Wild West. From being a military body theydeveloped into a state and nation that occupied a special position inPoland and then in Russia. Sigismund's fiscal policy, by recoveringcontrol of the mint and putting the treasury into the hands of capablebankers, effectively provided for the economic life of the government.

[Sidenote: Reformation]

Poland has generally been as open to the inroads of foreign ideas as tothe attacks of enemies; a peculiar susceptibility to alien culture, duepartly to the linguistic attainments of many educated Poles and partlyto an independent, almost anarchical disposition, has made this nationreceive from other lands more freely than it gives. Every wave of newideas innundates the low-lying plain of the Vistula. So theReformation spread with amazing rapidity, first among the cities andthen among the peasants of that land. In the fifteenth century theinfluence of Huss and the humanists had in different ways formedchannels facilitating the inrush of Lutheranism. The unpopularity of awealthy and indolent church predisposed the body politic to the newinfection. Danzig, that "Venice of the North," had a Lutheran preacherin 1518; while the Edict of Thorn, intended to suppress the heretics,indicates that as early as 1520 they had attracted the attention of thecentral government. But this persecuting measure, followed thick andfast by others, only proved how little the tide could be stemmed bypaper barriers. The cities of Cracow, Posen, and Lublin, especiallysusceptible on account of their German population, were thoroughlyinfected before 1522. Next, the contagion attacked the countrydistricts and towns of Prussia, which had been pretty thoroughlyconverted prior to its secularization.

The first political effect of the Reformation was to {141} stimulatethe unrest of the lower classes. Riots and rebellions, analogous tothose of the Peasants' War in Germany, followed hard upon the preachingof the "gospel." Sigismund could restore order here and there, as hedid at Danzig in 1526 by a military occupation, by fining the town andbeheading her six leading innovators, but he could not suppress thegrowing movement. For after the accession of the lower classes camethat of the nobles and gentry who bore the real sovereignty in thestate. Seeing in the Reformation a weapon for humiliating andplundering the church, as well as a key to a higher spiritual life,from one motive or the other, they flocked to its standard, and, underleadership of their greatest reformer, John Laski, organized a powerfulchurch.

The reign of Sigismund II [Sidenote: Sigismund II, 1548-1572] saw thesocial upheaval by which the nobility finally placed the power firmlyin their own hands, and also the height of the Reformation. By a lawknown as the "Execution" the assembly of nobles finally got control ofthe executive as well as of the legislative branch of the government.At the same time they, with the cordial assistance of the king, boundthe country together in a closer bond known as the Union of Lublin.[Sidenote: 1569] Though Lithuania and Prussia struggled againstincorporation with Poland, both were forced to submit to a measure thatadded power to the state and opened to the Polish nobility greatopportunity for political and economic exploitation of these lands.Not only the king, but the magnates and the cities were put under theheel of the ruling caste. This was an evolution opposite to that ofmost European states, in which crown and bourgeoisie subdued the onceproud position of the baronage. But even here in Poland one sees therising influence of commerce and the money-power, in that the Polishnobility was largely composed of small {142} gentry eager and able toexploit the new opportunities offered by capitalism. In othercountries the old privilege of the sword gave way to the new privilegeof gold; in Poland the sword itself turned golden, at least in part;the blade kept its keen, steel edge, but the hilt by which it waswielded glittered yellow.

[Sidenote: Protestantism]

Unchecked though they were by laws, the Protestants soon developed aweakness that finally proved fatal to their cause, lack of organizationand division into many mutually hostile sects. [Sidenote: 1537] TheAnabaptists of course arrived, preached, gained adherents, and weresuppressed. [Sidenote: 1548] Next came a large influx of BohemianBrethren, expelled from their own country and migrating to a land offreedom, where they soon made common cause with the Lutherans.[Sidenote: 1558] Calvinists propagated the seeds of their faith withmuch success. Finally the Unitarians, led by Lelio Sozini, found ahome in Poland and made many proselytes, at last becoming so powerfulthat they founded the new city of Racau, whence issued the famousRacovian Catechism. At one time they seemed about to obtain themastery of the state, but the firm union of the Trinitarian Protestantsat Sandomir [Sidenote: 1570] checked them until all of them were sweptaway together by the resurging tide of Catholicism. Several versionsof the Bible, Lutheran, Socinian, and Catholic, were issued.

So powerful were the Evangelicals that at the Diet of 1555 they heldservices in the face of the Catholic king, and passed a law abolishingthe jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts. This measure, ofcourse, allowed freedom of all new sects, both those then in control ofthe Diet and the as yet unfledged Antitrinitarians. Nevertheless astrong wish was expressed for a national, Protestant church, and hadSigismund had the advantages, as he had the matrimonial difficulties,of Henry VIII, he might have {143} established such a body. But henever quite dared to take the step, dreading the hostility of Catholicneighbors. Singularly enough the championship of the Catholic causewas undertaken by Greek-Catholic Muscovy, [Sidenote: 1562] whose Czar,Ivan, represented his war against Poland as a crusade against the newiconoclasts. Unable to act with power, Sigismund cultivated such meansof combating Protestantism as were ready to his hand. His mosttrenchant weapon was the Order of Jesuits, who were invited to come inand establish schools. Moreover, the excellence of their colleges inforeign lands induced many of the nobility to send their sons to beeducated under them, and thus were prepared the seeds of theCounter-Reformation.

The death of Sigismund without an heir left Poland for a timemasterless. During the interregnum the Diet passed the Compact ofWarsaw by which absolute religious liberty was granted to allsects—"Dissidentes de Religione"—without exception. [Sidenote:January 28, 1573] But, liberal though the law was, it was vitiated inpractice by the right retained by every master of punishing his serfsfor religious as well as for secular causes. Thus it was that thelower classes were marched from Protestant pillar to Catholic post andback without again daring to rebel or to express any choice in thematter.

The election of Henry of Valois, [Sidenote: Henry, May 11, 1573] ayounger son of Catharine de' Medici, was made conditional on theacceptance of a number of articles, including the maintenance ofreligious liberty. The prince acceded, with some reservations, and wascrowned on February 21, 1574. Four months later he heard of the deathof his brother, Charles IX, making him king of France. Without daringto ask leave of absence, he absconded from Poland on June 18, therebyabandoning a throne which was promptly declared vacant.

The new election presented great difficulties, and {144} almost led tocivil war. While the Senate declared for the Hapsburg Maximilian II,the Diet chose Stephen Báthory, prince of Transylvania. [Sidenote:Stephen Báthory, 1576-86] Only the unexpected death of Maximilianprevented an armed collision between the two. Báthory, now inpossession, forced his recognition by all parties and led the land ofhis adoption into a period of highly successful diplomacy and ofvictorious war against Muscovy. His religious policy was one ofpacification, conciliation, and of supporting inconspicuously theJesuit foundations at Wilna, Posen, Cracow, and Eiga. But the fullfruits of their propaganda, resulting in the complete reconversion ofPoland to Catholicism were not reaped until the reign of his successor,Sigismund III, a Vasa, of Sweden. [Sidenote: Sigismund III, 1586-1632]

[Sidenote: Bohemia]

Bohemia, a Slav kingdom long united historically and dynastically withthe Empire, as the home of Huss, welcomed the Reformation warmly, theBrethren turning first to Luther and then to Calvin. After variousefforts to suppress and banish them had failed of large success, theCompact of 1567 granted toleration to the three principal churches. Asin Poland, the Jesuits won back the whole land in the next generation,so that in 1910 there were in Bohemia 6,500,000 Catholics and only175,000 Protestants.

[Sidenote: Hungary, 1526]

Hungary was so badly broken by the Turks at the battle of Mohács thatshe was able to play but little part in the development of Westerncivilization. Like her more powerful rival, she was also distracted byinternal dissention. After the death of her King Lewis at Mohács therewere two candidates for the throne, Ferdinand the Emperor's brother andJohn Zapolya, [Sidenote: Zapolya, 1526-40] "woiwod" or prince ofTransylvania. Protestantism had a considerable hold on the nobles,who, after the shattering of the national power, divided a portion ofthe goods of the church between them. {145} The Unitarian movement wasalso strong for a time, and the division this caused proved almostfatal to the Reformation, for the greater part of the kingdom was wonback to Catholicism under the Jesuits' leadership. [Sidenote:1576-1612] In 1910 there were about 8,600,000 Catholics in Hungary andabout 3,200,000 Protestants.

[Sidenote: Transylvania]

Transylvania, though a dependency of the Turks, was allowed to keep theChristian religion. The Saxon colonists in this state welcomed theReformation, formally recognizing the Augsburg Confession in a synod of1572. Here also the Unitarians attained their greatest strength, beingrecruited partly from those expelled from Poland. They drew theirinspiration not merely from Sozini, but from a variety of sources, forthe doctrine appeared simultaneously among certain Anabaptist andSpiritualist sects. Toleration was granted them on the same terms asother Christians. The name "Unitarian" first appears in a decree ofthe Transylvania Diet of the year 1600. An appreciable body of thispersuasion still remains in the country, together with a number ofLutherans, Calvinists, and Romanists, but the large majority of thepeople belong to two Greek Catholic churches.

{146}

CHAPTER III

SWITZERLAND

SECTION 1. ZWINGLI

[Sidenote: The Swiss Confederation]

Amid the snow-clad Alps and azure lakes of Switzerland there grew up arace of Germans which, though still nominally a part of the Empire,had, at the period now considered, long gone on its own distinct pathof development. Politically, the Confederacy arose in a popular revoltagainst the House of Austria. The federal union of the three forestcantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, first entered into in 1291 andmade permanent in 1315, was strengthened by the admission of Lucerne(1332), Zug (1352), Glarus (1351) and of the Imperial Cities of Zurich(1351) and Berne (1353). By the admission of Freiburg and Solothurn(1481), Basle (1501), Schaffhausen (1501) and Appenzell (1513) theConfederacy reached the number of thirteen cantons at which it remainedfor many years. By this time it was recognized as a practicallyindependent state, courted by the great powers of Europe. Allied tothis German Confederacy were two Romance-speaking states of a similarnature, the Confederacies of the Valais and of the Grisons.

The Swiss were then the one free people of Europe. Republicangovernment by popular magistrates prevailed in all the cantons.Liberty was not quite democratic, for the cantons ruled several subjectprovinces, and in the cities a somewhat aristocratic electorate heldpower; nevertheless there was no state in Europe approaching the Swissin self-government. Though they were generally accounted the bestsoldiers of the {147} day, their military valor did not redound totheir own advantage, for the hardy peasantry yielded to thesolicitations of the great powers around them to enter into foreign,mercenary service. The influential men, especially the priests, tookpensions from the pope or from France or from other princes, in returnfor their labors in recruiting. The system was a bad one for bothsides. Swiss politics were corrupted and the land drained of itsstrongest men; whereas the princes who hired the mercenaries oftenfound to their cost that such soldiers were not only the mostformidable to their enemies but also the most troublesome tothemselves, always on the point of mutiny for more pay and plunder.The Swiss were beginning to see the evils of the system, and prohibitedthe taking of pensions in 1503, though this law remained largely a deadletter. [Sidenote: September 13-14, 1515] The reputation of themountaineers suffered a blow in their defeat by the French atMarignano, followed by a treaty with France, intended by that power tomake Switzerland a permanent dependency in return for a large annualsubsidy payable to each of the thirteen cantons and to the Grisons andValais as well. The country suffered from faction. The rural or"Forest" cantons were jealous of the cities, and the latter, especiallyBerne, the strongest, pursued selfish policies of individualaggrandizement at the expense of their confederates.

As everywhere else, the cities were the centers of culture and ofsocial movements. Basle was famous for its university and for thegreat printing house of Froben. Here Albert Dürer had stayed for awhile during his wandering years. Here Sebastian Brant had studied andhad written his famous satire. Here the great Erasmus had come topublish his New Testament.

But the Reformation in Switzerland was only in [Sidenote: 1521-9] {148}part a child of humanism. Nationalism played its rôle in the revoltfrom Rome, memories of councils lingered at Constance and Basle, andthe desire for a purer religion made itself felt among the moreearnest. Switzerland had at least one great shrine, that ofEinsiedeln; to her Virgin many pilgrims came yearly in hopes of theplenary indulgence, expressly promising forgiveness of both guilt andpenalty of sin. Berne was the theater of one of the most reverberatingscandals enacted by the contemporary church. [Sidenote: The Jetzerscandal] A passionately contested theological issue of the day waswhether the Virgin had been immaculately conceived. This was denied bythe Dominicans and asserted by the Franciscans. Some of the Dominicansof the friary at Berne thought that the best way to settle the affairwas to have a direct revelation. For their fraudulent purposes theyconspired with John Jetzer, a lay brother admitted in 1506, who diedafter 1520. Whether as a tool in the hands of others, or as animposter, Jetzer produced a series of bogus apparitions, bringing theVirgin on the stage and making her give details of her conceptionsufficiently gross to show that it took place in the ordinary, and notin the immaculate, manner. [Sidenote: 1509] When the fraud was atlast discovered by the authorities, four of the Dominicans involvedwere burnt at the stake.

But the vague forces of discontent might never have crystallized into adefinite movement save for the leadership of Ulrich Zwingli.[Sidenote: Zwingli] He was born January 1, 1484, on the Toggenburg,amidst the lofty mountains, breathing the atmosphere of freedom andbeauty from the first. As he wandered in the wild passes he noticedhow the marmots set a sentry to warn them of danger, and how thesquirrel crossed the stream on a chip. When he returned to the home ofhis father, a local magistrate in easy circumstances, he heard {149}stirring tales of Swiss freedom and Swiss valor that planted in hissoul a deep love of his native land. The religion he learned was goodCatholic; and the element of popular superstition in it was far lessweird and terrible than in Northern Germany. He remembered one littletale told him by his grandmother, how the Lord God and Peter slepttogether in the same bed, and were wakened each morning by thehousekeeper coming in and pulling the hair of the outside man.

Education began early under the tuition of an uncle, the parish priest.At ten Ulrich was sent to Basle to study. Here he progressed well,becoming the head scholar, and here he developed a love of music andconsiderable skill in it. Later he went to school at Berne, where heattracted the attention of some friars who tried to guide him intotheir cloister, an effort apparently frustrated by his father. In theautumn of 1498 he matriculated at Vienna. For some unknown cause hewas suspended soon afterwards, but was readmitted in the spring of1500. Two years later he went to Basle, where he completed his studiesby taking the master's degree. [Sidenote: 1506] While here he taughtschool for a while. Theology apparently interested him little; hispassion was for the humanities, and his idol was Erasmus. Only in 1513did he begin to learn Greek.

If, at twenty-two, before he had reached the canonical age, Zwinglitook orders, and became parish priest at Glarus, it was less because ofany deep religious interest than because he found in the clericalcalling the best opportunity to cultivate his taste for letters. Hewas helped financially by a papal pension of fifty gulden per annum.His first published work was a fable. [Sidenote: 1510] The lion, theleopard, and the fox (the Emperor, France, and Venice) try to drive theox {150} (Switzerland) out of his pasture, but are frustrated by theherdsman (the pope). The same tendencies—papal, patriotic, andpolitical—are shown in his second book, [Sidenote: 1512] an account ofthe relations between the Swiss and French, and in The Labyrinth,[Sidenote: 1516] an allegorical poem. The various nations appear againas animals, but the hero, Theseus, is a patriot guided by the Ariadnethread of reason, while he is vanquishing the monsters of sin, shame,and vice. Zwingli's natural interest in politics was nourished by hisexperiences as field chaplain of the Swiss forces at the battles ofNovara [Sidenote: 1513] and Marignano. [Sidenote: 1515]

Was he already a Reformer? Not in the later sense of the word, but hewas a disciple of Erasmus. Capito wrote to Bullinger in 1536: "WhileLuther was in the hermitage and had not yet emerged into the light,Zwingli and I took counsel how to cast down the pope. For then ourjudgment was maturing under the influence of Erasmus's society and byreading good authors." Though Capito over-estimated the opposition ofthe young Swiss to the papacy, he was right in other respects.Zwingli's enthusiasm for the prince of humanists, perfectly evident inhis notes on St. Paul, stimulated him to visit the older scholar atBasle in the spring of 1516. Their correspondence began at the sametime. Is it not notable that in The Labyrinth the thread of Ariadneis not religion, but reason? His religious ideal, as shown by hisnotes on St. Paul, was at this time the Erasmian one of an ethical,undogmatic faith. He interpreted the Apostle by the Sermon on theMount and by Plato. He was still a good Catholic, without a thought ofbreaking away from the church.

[Sidenote: October, 1516-December, 1518]

From Glarus Zwingli was called to Einsiedeln, where he remained for twoyears. Here he saw the superstitious absurdities mocked by Erasmus.Here, too, {151} he first came into contact with indulgences, soldthroughout Switzerland by Bernard Samson, a Milanese Franciscan.Zwingli did not attack them with the impassioned zeal of Luther, butridiculed them as "a comedy." His position did not alienate him fromthe papal authorities, [Sidenote: September 1, 1516] for he appliedfor, and received, the appointment of papal acolyte. How littleserious was his life at this time may be seen from the fact that heopenly confessed that he was living in unchastity and even joked aboutit.

Notwithstanding his peccadillos, as he evidently regarded them, highhopes were conceived of his abilities and independence of character.When a priest was wanted at Zurich, [Sidenote: January 1, 1519] Zwingliapplied for the position and, after strenuous canvassing, succeeded ingetting it.

Soon after this came the turning-point in Zwingli's life, making of therather worldly young man an earnest apostle. Two causes contributed tothis. The first was the plague. Zwingli was taken sick in Septemberand remained in a critical condition for many months. As is so oftenthe case, suffering and the fear of death made the claims of the otherworld so terribly real to him that, for the first time, he cried untoGod from the depths, and consecrated his life to service of his Saviour.

[Sidenote: 1519]

The second influence that decided and deepened Zwingli's life was thatof Luther. He first mentions him in 1519, and from that time forth,often. All his works and all his acts thereafter show the impress ofthe Wittenberg professor. Though Zwingli himself sturdily assertedthat he preached the gospel before he heard of Luther, and that helearned his whole doctrine direct from the Bible, he deceived himself,as many men do, in over-estimating his own originality. He was trulyable to say that he had formulated some {152} of his ideas, independence on Erasmus, before he heard of the Saxon; and he stillretained his capacity for private judgment afterwards. He neverfollowed any man slavishly, and in some respects he was more radicalthan Luther; nevertheless it is true that he was deeply indebted to thegreat German.

Significantly enough, the first real conflict broke out at Zurich earlyin 1520. Zwingli preached against fasting and monasticism, and putforward the thesis that the gospel alone should be the rule of faithand practice. He succeeded in carrying through a practical reform ofthe cathedral chapter, but was obliged to compromise on fasting. Soonafterwards Zurich renounced obedience to the bishop. The ForestCantons, already jealous of the prosperity of the cities, endeavored tointervene, but were warned by Zwingli not to appeal to war, as it wasan unchristian thing. Opposition only drove his reforming zeal tofurther efforts.

In the spring of 1522 Zwingli formed with Anna Reinhard Meyer a unionwhich he kept secret for two years, when he married her in church. Inthe marriage itself, though it was by no means unhappy, there wassomething lacking of fine feeling and of perfect love.

[Sidenote: Reformation in Zurich]

As the reform progressed, the need of clarification was felt. This wasbrought about by the favorite method of that day, a disputation. TheCatholics tried in vain to prevent it, and it was actually held inJanuary, 1523, on 67 theses drawn up by Zwingli. Here, as so often, itwas found that the battle was half won when the innovators were heard.They themselves attributed this to the excellence of their cause; but,without disparaging that, it must be said that, as the psychology ofadvertising has shown, any thesis presented with sufficient force tocatch the public ear, is {153} sure to win a certain number ofadherents. [Sidenote: October 27, 1523] The Town Council of Zurichordered the abolition of images and of the mass. The opposition of thecathedral chapter considerably delayed the realization of this program.In December the Council was obliged to concede further discussion. Itwas not until Wednesday, April 12, 1525, that mass was said for thelast time in Zurich. Its place was immediately taken, the next day,Maundy Thursday, by a simple communion service. At the same time thelast of the convents were suppressed, or put in a condition assuringtheir eventual extinction. Other reforms included the abolition ofprocessions, of confirmation and of extreme unction. With homelycaution, a large number of simple souls had this administered to themjust before the time allotted for its last celebration. Organs weretaken out of the churches, and regular lectures on the Bible given.

Alarmed by these innovations the five original cantons,—Unterwalden,Uri, Schwyz, Lucerne and Zug,—formed a league in 1524 to suppress the"Hussite, Lutheran, and Zwinglian heresies." For a time it looked likewar. Zwingli and his advisers drew up a remarkably thorough plan ofcampaign, including a method of securing allies, many military details,and an ample provision for prayer for victory. War, however, wasaverted by the mediation of Berne as a friend of Zurich, and thecomplete religious autonomy of each canton was guaranteed.

The Swiss Reformation had to run the same course of separation from thehumanists and radicals, and of schism, as did the German movement.Though Erasmus was a little closer to the Swiss than he had been to theSaxon Reformers, he was alienated by the outrageous taunts of some ofthem and by the equally unwarranted attempts of others to show that heagreed {154} with them. "They falsely call themselves evangelical," heopined, "for they seek only two things: a salary and a wife."

Then came the break with Luther, of which the story has already beentold. The division was caused neither by jealousy, nor by the onedoctrine—that of the real presence—on which it was nominally fought.There was in reality a wide difference between the two types ofthought. The Saxon was both mystic and a schoolman; to him religionwas all in all and dogma a large part of religion. Zwingli approachedthe problem of salvation from a less personal, certainly from a lessagonized, and from a more legal, liberal, empiric standpoint. He feltfor liberty and for the value of common action in the state. Heinterpreted the Bible by reason; Luther placed his reason under thetuition of the Bible in its apparent meaning.

[Sidenote: Anabaptists, 1522]

Next came the turn of the Anabaptists—those Bolsheviki of thesixteenth century. Their first leaders appeared at Zurich and were fora while bosom friends of Zwingli. But a parting of the ways wasinevitable, for the humanist could have little sympathy with anuncultured and ignorant group—such they were, in spite of the factthat a few leaders were university graduates—and the statesman couldnot admit in his categories a purpose that was sectarian as against thestate church, and democratic as against the existing aristocracy.

[Sidenote: 1523]

His first work against them shows how he was torn between his desire tomake the Bible his only guide and the necessity of compromising withthe prevailing polity. As he was unable to condemn his opponents onany consistent grounds he was obliged to prefer against them twocharges that were false, though probably believed true by himself. Asthey were {155} ascetics in some particulars he branded them asmonastic; for their social program he called them seditious.

The suppression of the Peasants' Revolt had the effect in Switzerland,as elsewhere, of causing the poor and oppressed to lose heart, and ofalienating them from the cause of the official Protestant churches. Adisputation with the Anabaptist leaders was held at Zurich; [Sidenote:November 6-8, 1525] they were declared refuted, and the council passedan order for all unbaptized children to be christened within a week.The leaders were arrested and tried; Zwingli bearing testimony thatthey advocated communism, which he considered wrong as the Bible'sinjunction not to steal implied the right of private property. TheAnabaptists denied that they were communists, but the leaders werebound over to keep the peace, some were fined and others banished. Aspersecuting measures almost always increase in severity, it was notlong before the death penalty was denounced against the sectaries, andactually applied. In a polemic against the new sect entitled InCatabaptistarum Strophas Elenchus, [Sidenote: July 1527] Zwingli'sonly argument is a criticism of some inconsistencies in theAnabaptists' biblicism; his final appeal is to force. His strife withthem was harder than his battle with Rome. It seems that the reformerfears no one so much as him who carries the reformer's own principlesto lengths that the originator disapproves. Zwingli saw in thefearless fanatics men prepared to act in political and social mattersas he had done in ecclesiastical affairs; he dreaded anarchy or, atleast, subversion of the polity he preferred, and, like all the othermen of his age, he branded heresy as rebellion and punished it as crime.

[Sidenote: Theocracy]

By this time Zurich had become a theocracy of the same tyrannical typeas that later made famous by {156} Geneva. Zwingli took the positionof an Old Testament prophet, subordinating state to church. At firsthe had agreed with the Anabaptists in separating (theoretically) churchand state. But he soon came to believe that, though true Christiansmight need no government, it was necessary to control the wicked, andfor this purpose he favored an aristocratic polity. All matters ofmorals were strictly regulated, severe laws being passed againsttaverns and gambling. The inhabitants were forced to attend church.After the suppression of the Catholics and the radicals, theredeveloped two parties just as later in Geneva, the Evangelical and theIndifferent, the policy of the latter being one of more freedom, orlaxity, in discipline, and in general a preference of political toreligious ends.

[Sidenote: Basle November, 1522]

The Reformation had now established itself in other cities of GermanSwitzerland. Oecolampadius coming to Basle as the bearer ofEvangelical ideas, won such success that soon the bishop was deprivedof authority, [Sidenote: 1524] two disputations with the Catholics wereheld, [Sidenote: 1525] and the monasteries abolished. [Sidenote: 1527]Oecolampadius, after taking counsel with Zwingli on the best means ofsuppressing Catholic worship, branded the mass as an act worse thantheft, harlotry, adultery, treason, and murder, called a meeting of thetown council, and requested them to decree the abolition of Catholicworship. [Sidenote: October 27, 1527] Though they replied that everyman should be free to exercise what religion he liked, on Good Friday,1528, the Protestants removed the images from Oecolampadius's church,and grumbled because their enemies were yet tolerated. Liberty ofconscience was only assured by the fairly equal division of themembership of the town council. On December 23, 1528, two hundredcitizens assembled and presented a petition, drawn up by Oecolampadius,for the suppression of {157} the mass. On January 6, 1529, underpressure from the ambassadors of Berne and Zurich, the town council ofBasle decreed that all pastors should preach only the Word of God, andasked them to assemble for instruction on this point. The compromisesuited no one and on February 8 the long prepared revolution broke out.Under pretence that the Catholics had disobeyed the last decree, aProtestant mob surrounded the town hall, planted cannon, and forced thecouncil to expel the twelve Catholic members, meanwhile destroyingchurch pictures and statues. "It was indeed a spectacle so sad to thesuperstitious," Oecolampadius wrote to Capito, "that they had to weepblood. . . . We raged against the idols, and the mass died of sorrow."

A somewhat similar development took place in Berne, St. Gall,Schaffhausen, and Glarus. The favorite instrument for arousing popularinterest and support was the disputation. Such an one was held atBaden in May and June, 1526. Zwingli declined to take part in this andthe Catholics claimed the victory. This, however, did them rather harmthan good, for the public felt that the cards had been stacked. Asimilar debate at Berne in 1528 turned that city completely to theReformation. A synod of the Swiss Evangelical churches was formed in1527. This made for uniformity. The publication of the Bible in atranslation by Leo Jud and others, with prefaces by Zwingli, proved ahelp to the Evangelical cause. [Sidenote: 1530] This translation wasthe only one to compete at all successfully with Luther's.

The growing strength of the Protestant cantons encouraged them to carrythe reform by force in all places in which a majority was in favor ofit. Zwingli's far-reaching plans included an alliance with Hesse andwith Francis I to whom he dedicated his {158} two most importanttheological works, True and False Religion and An Exposition of theChristian Faith. [Sidenote: April, 1529] The Catholic cantonsreplied by making a league with Austria. War seemed imminent andZwingli was so heartily in favor of it that he threatened resignationif Zurich did not declare war. This was accordingly done on June 8.Thirty thousand Protestant soldiers marched against the Catholiccantons, which, without the expected aid from Austria, were able to putonly nine thousand men into the field. Seeing themselves hopelesslyoutnumbered, the Catholics prudently negotiated a peace without riskinga battle. [Sidenote: First Peace of Cappel] The terms of this firstPeace of Cappel forced the Catholics to renounce the alliance withAustria, and to allow the majority of citizens in each canton to decidethe religion they would follow. Toleration for Protestants wasprovided for in Catholic cantons, though toleration of the old religionwas denied in the Evangelical cantons.

This peace marked the height of Zwingli's power. He continued tonegotiate on equal terms with Luther, and he sent missionaries intoGeneva to win it to his cause and to the Confederacy. The Catholiccantons, stung to the quick, again sought aid from Austria and raisedanother and better army. [Sidenote: Defeat of Zwingli] Zwingli heardof this and advocated a swift blow to prevent it—the "offensivedefence." Berne refused to join Zurich in this aggression, but agreedto bring pressure to bear on the Catholics [Sidenote: May 1531] byproclaiming a blockade of their frontiers. An army was prepared by theForest Cantons, but Berne, whose entirely selfish policy was moredisastrous to the Evangelical cause than was the hostility of theleague, still refused to engage in war. Zurich was therefore obligedto meet it alone. An army of only two thousand Zurichers marched out,accompanied by Zwingli as field chaplain. Eight thousand Catholictroops attacked, utterly defeated them, and {159} killed many on thefield of battle. [Sidenote: October 11, 1531] Zwingli, who, though anon-combatant, was armed, was wounded and left on the field. Later hewas recognized by enemies, killed, and his body burned as that of aheretic.

The defeat was a disaster to Protestant Switzerland not so much onaccount of the terms of peace, which were moderate, as because of theloss of prestige and above all of the great leader. His spirithowever, continued to inspire his followers, and lived in the ReformedChurch. Indeed it has been said, though with exaggeration, that Calvinonly gave his name to the church founded by Zwingli, just as Americusgave his name to the continent discovered by Columbus. In manyrespects Zwingli was the most liberal of the Reformers. In his lastwork he expressed the belief that in heaven would be saved not onlyChristians and the worthies of the Old Testament but also "Hercules,Theseus, Socrates, Aristides, Antigonus, Numa, Camillus, the Catos andScipios. . . . In a word no good man has ever existed, nor shall thereexist a holy mind, a faithful soul, from the very foundation of theworld to its consummation, whom you will not see there with God."Nevertheless, Zwingli was a persecutor and was bound by many of thedogmatic prepossessions of his time. But his religion had in it lessof miracle and more of reason than that of any other founder of achurch in the sixteenth century. He was a statesman, and more willingto trust the people than were his contemporaries, but yet he was readyto sacrifice his country to his creed.

For a short time after the death of so many of its leading citizens inthe battle of Cappel, Zurich was reduced to impotence and despair. Norwas she much comforted or assisted by her neighbors. Oecolampadiusdied but a few weeks after his friend; while {160} Luther and Erasmussang paeans of triumph over the prostration of their rivals. EvenCalvin considered it a judgment of God. Gradually by her own strengthZurich won her way back to peace and a certain influence. [Sidenote:Bullinger, 1504-75] Zwingli's follower, Henry Bullinger, the son of apriest, was a remarkable man. He not only built up his own city buthis active correspondence with Protestants of all countries did a greatdeal to spread the cause of the Evangelical religion. In conjunctionwith Myconius, he drew up the first Swiss confession, [Sidenote: 1536]accepted by Zurich, Berne, Basle, Schaffhausen, St. Gall, Mülhausen andBiel; [Sidenote: 1549] and later he made the agreement with Calvinknown as the Consensus Tigurinus. In this the Zwinglian andCalvinistic doctrines of the eucharist were harmonized as far aspossible. But while the former decreased the latter increased, andGeneva took the place of Zurich as the metropolis of the Reformed faith.

SECTION 2. CALVIN

On January 15, 1527, Thomas von Hofen wrote Zwingli from Geneva that hewould do all he could to exalt the gospel in that city but that he knewit would be vain, for there were seven hundred priests working againsthim. This letter gives an insight into the methods by which newterritory was evangelized, the quarters whence came the new influences,and the forces with which they had to contend.

Among the early missionaries of "the gospel" in French-speaking lands,one of the most energetic was William Farel. [Sidenote: Farel,1489-1565] He had studied at Paris under Lèfevre d'Étaples, and wasconverted to Lutheranism as early as 1521. He went first to Basle,where he learned to know Erasmus. Far from showing respect to theolder and more famous man, he scornfully told him to his face thatFroben's wife knew more theology than {161} did he. Erasmus'sresentment showed itself in the nickname Phallicus that he fastened onhis antagonist. From Basle Farel went to Montbéliard and Aigle,preaching fearlessly but so fiercely that his friend Oecolampadiuswarned him to remember rather to teach than to curse. [Sidenote: 1528]After attending the disputation at Berne he evangelized westernSwitzerland. His methods may be learned from his work at Valangin onAugust 15, 1530. He attended a mass, but in the midst of it went up tothe priest, tore the host forcibly from his hands, and said to thepeople: "This is not the God whom you worship: he is above in heaven,even in the majesty of the Father." In 1532 he went to Geneva.Notwithstanding the fact that here, as often elsewhere, he narrowlyescaped lynching, he made a great impression. His red hair and hottemper evidently had their uses.

[Sidenote: Calvin, 1509-64]

The Reformer of French Switzerland was not destined to be Farel,however, but John Calvin. Born at Noyon, Picardy, his mother diedearly and his father, who did not care for children, sent him to thehouse of an aristocratic friend to be reared. In this environment heacquired the distinguished manners and the hauteur for which he wasnoted. When John was six years old his father, Gerard, had himappointed to a benefice just as nowadays he might have got him ascholarship. At the age of twelve Gerard's influence procured for hisson another of these ecclesiastical livings and two years later thiswas exchanged for a more lucrative one to enable the boy to go toParis. Here for some years, at the College of Montaigu, Calvin studiedscholastic philosophy and theology under Noel Beda, a medievallogic-chopper and schoolman by temperament. At the university Calvinwon from his fellows the sobriquet of "the accusative case," on accountof his censorious {162} and fault-finding disposition. At his father'swish John changed from theology to law. For a time he studied at theuniversities of Orleans and Bourges. At Orleans he came under theinfluence of two Protestants, Olivetan and the German Melchior Volmar.On the death of his father, in 1531, he began to devote himself to thehumanities. His first work, a commentary on Seneca's De Clementia,witnesses his wide reading, his excellent Latin style, and his ethicalinterests.

It was apparently through the humanists Erasmus and Lefèvre that he wasled to the study of the Bible and of Luther's writings. Probably inthe fall of 1533 he experienced a "conversion" such as stands at thehead of many a religious career. A sudden beam of light, he says, cameto him at this time from God, putting him to the proof and showing himin how deep an abyss of error and of filth he had been living. Hethereupon abandoned his former life with tears.

In the spring of 1534 Calvin gave up the sinecure benefices he hadheld, and towards the end of the year left France because of thegrowing persecution, for he had already rendered himself suspect.After various wanderings he reached Basle, where he published the firstedition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion. [Sidenote:Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536] It was dedicated, like twoof Zwingli's works, to Francis I, with a strong plea for the new faith.It was, nevertheless, condemned and burnt publicly in France in 1542.Originally written in Latin it was translated by the author into Frenchin 1541, and reissued from time to time in continually larger editions,the final one, of 1559, being five times as bulky as the firstimpression. The thought, too, though not fundamentally changed, wasrearranged and developed. Only in the redaction of 1541 was {163}predestination made perfectly clear. The first edition, like Luther'scatechism, took up in order the Decalogue, the Creed, the Lord'sPrayer, and the Sacraments. To this was added a section on Christianliberty, the power of the church, and civil government. In the lastedition the arrangement followed entirely the order of articles in theApostles' Creed, all the other matter being digested in its relation tofaith.

[Sidenote: A system of theology]

In the Institutes Calvin succeeded in summing up the whole ofProtestant Christian doctrine and practice. It is a work of enormouslabor and thought. Its rigid logic, comprehensiveness, and clarityhave secured it the same place in the Protestant Churches that theSumma of Aquinas has in the Roman theology. It is like the Summa,in other ways, primarily in that it is an attempt to derive anabsolute, unchangeable standard of dogma from premises consideredinfallible. Those who have found great freshness in Calvin, a new lifeand a new realism, can do so only in comparison with the olderschoolmen. Calvin simply went over their ground, introducing intotheir philosophy all the connotations that three centuries of progresshad made necessary. This is not denying that his work was well writtenand that it filled a need urgently felt at the time. Calvin cultivatedstyle, both French and Latin, with great care, for he saw its immenseutility for propaganda. He studied especially brevity, and thoughtthat he carried it to an extreme, though the French edition of theInstitutes fills more than eight hundred large octavo pages.However, all things are relative, and compared to many othertheologians Calvin is really concise and readable.

There is not one original thought in any of Calvin's works. I do notmean "original" in any narrow sense, for to the searcher for sources itseems that {164} there is literally nothing new under the sun. Butthere is nothing in Calvin for which ample authority cannot be found inhis predecessors. Recognizing the Bible as his only standard, heinterpreted it according to the new Protestant doctors. First andforemost he was dependent on Luther, and to an extent that cannot beexaggerated. Especially from the Catechisms, The Bondage of theWill, and The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Calvin drew allhis principal doctrines even to details. He also borrowed somethingfrom Bucer, Erasmus and Schwenckfeld, as well as from three writers whowere in a certain sense his models. Melanchthon's Commonplaces ofTheology, Zwingli's True and False Religion, and Farel's BriefInstruction in Christian Faith had all done tentatively what he nowdid finally.

[Sidenote: Theocentric character]

The center of Calvin's philosophy was God as the Almighty Will. Hiswill was the source of all things, of all deeds, of all standards ofright and wrong and of all happiness. The sole purpose of theuniverse, and the sole intent of its Creator, was the glorification ofthe Deity. Man's chief end was "to glorify God and enjoy him forever."God accomplished this self-exaltation in all things, but chieflythrough men, his noblest work, and he did it in various ways, by thesalvation of some and the damnation of others. And his act was purelyarbitrary; he foreknew and predestined the fate of every man from thebeginning; he damned and saved irrespective of foreseen merit. "God'seternal decree" Calvin himself called "frightful." [1] The outwardsign of election to grace he thought was moral behavior, and in thisrespect he demanded the uttermost from himself and from his followers.The elect, he thought, were certain of salvation. The highest virtuewas faith, a matter more {165} of the heart than of the reason. Thedivinity of Christ, he said, was apprehended by Christian experience,not by speculation. Reason was fallacious; left to itself the humanspirit "could do nothing but lose itself in infinite error, embroilitself in difficulties and grope in opaque darkness." But God hasgiven us his Word, infallible and inerrant, something that "has flowedfrom his very mouth." "We can only seek God in his Word," he said,"nor think of him otherwise than according to his Word."

Inevitably, Calvin sought to use the Bible as a rigid, moral law to befulfilled to the letter. His ethics were an elaborate casuistry, amethod of finding the proper rule to govern the particular act. Hepreached a new legalism; [Sidenote: Legalism] he took Scripture as thePharisees took the Law, and Luther's sayings as they took the Prophets,and he turned them all into stiff, fixed laws. Thus he crushed theglorious autonomy of his predecessor's ethical principles. It wasKant, who denied all Luther's specific beliefs, but who developed hisidea of the individual conscience, that was the true heir of hisspirit, not Calvin who crushed the spirit in elaborating every jot andtittle of the letter. In precisely the same manner Calvin killedLuther's doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. To Calvin thechurch was a sacramental, aristocratic organization, with anauthoritative ministry. The German rebelled against the idea of thechurch as such; the Frenchman simply asked what was the true church.So he brought back some of the sacramental miracle of baptism and theeucharist. In the latter he remained as medieval as Luther, nevergetting beyond the question of the mode of the presence of the body andblood of Christ in the bread and wine. His endeavor to rationalize thedoctrine of Augsburg, especially with reference to the Zwinglians, haddisastrous results. Only two {166} positions were possible, that thebody and blood were present, or that they were not. By endeavoring tofind some middle ground Calvin upheld a contradiction in terms: theelements were signs and yet were realities; the body was really therewhen the bread was eaten by a believer, but really not there when thesame bread was eaten by an infidel. The presence was actual, and yetparticipation could only occur by faith. While rejecting some ofLuther's explanations, Calvin was undoubtedly nearer his position thanthat of Zwingli, which he characterized as "profane."

As few instructed and thinking persons now accept the conclusions ofthe Institutes, it is natural to underestimate the power that theyexercised in their own day. This book was the most effective weapon ofProtestantism. This was partly because of the style, but, still morebecause of the faultless logic. [Sidenote: His logic] The success ofan argument usually depends far less on the truth of the premises thanon the validity of the reasoning. And the premises selected by Calvinnot only seemed natural to a large body of educated European opinion ofhis time, but were such that their truth or falsity was very difficultto demonstrate convincingly. Calvin's system has been overthrown notby direct attack, but by the flank, in science as in war the mosteffective way. To take but one example out of many that might begiven: what has modern criticism made of Calvin's doctrine of theinerrancy of Scripture? But this science was as yet all but unknown:biblical exegesis there was in plenty, but it was only to a minuteextent literary and historical; it was almost exclusively philologicaland dogmatic.

Calvin's doctrine of the arbitrary dealing out of salvation anddamnation irrespective of merit has often excited a moral rather thanan intellectual revulsion. To his true followers, indeed, likeJonathan {167} Edwards, it seems "a delightful doctrine, exceedingbright, pleasant and sweet." [Sidenote: Eternal damnation] But manymen agree with Gibbon that it makes God a cruel and capricious tyrantand with William James that it is sovereignly irrational and mean.Even at that time those who said that a man's will had no more to dowith his destiny than the stick in a man's hand could choose where tostrike or than a saddled beast could choose its rider, aroused anintense opposition. Erasmus argued that damnation given for inevitablecrimes would make God unjust, and Thomas More blamed Luther for callingGod the cause of evil and for saying "God doth damn so huge a number ofpeople to intolerable torments only for his own pleasure and for hisown deeds wrought in them only by himself." An English heretic, Coleof Faversham, said that the doctrine of predestination was meeter fordevils than for Christians. "The God of Calvin," exclaimed JeromeBolsec, "is a hypocrite, a liar, perfidious, unjust, the abetter andpatron of crimes, and worse than the devil himself."

But there was another side to the doctrine of election. There was acertain moral grandeur in the complete abandon to God and in theearnestness that was ready to sacrifice all to his will. And if wejudge the tree by its fruits, at its best it brought forth a strong andgood race. The noblest examples are not the theologians, Calvin andKnox, not only drunk with God but drugged with him, much lesspoliticians like Henry of Navarre and William of Orange, but the rankand file of the Huguenots of France, the Puritans of England, "thechoice and sifted seed wherewith God sowed the wilderness" of America.These men bore themselves with I know not what of lofty seriousness,and with a matchless disdain of all mortal peril and all earthlygrandeur. Believing themselves chosen vessels and elect instruments ofgrace, they could neither {168} be seduced by carnal pleasure nor awedby human might. Taught that they were kings by the election of God andpriests by the imposition of his hands, they despised the puny andvicious monarchs of this earth. They remained, in fact, what theyalways felt themselves to be, an elite, "the chosen few."

Having finished his great work, Calvin set out on his wanderings again.For a time he was at the court of the sympathetic Renée de France,Duchess of Ferrara. When persecution broke out here, he again flednorthward, and came, by chance, to Geneva. [Sidenote: Geneva] HereFarel was waging an unequal fight with the old church. NeedingCalvin's help he went to him and begged his assistance, calling on Godto curse him should he not stay. "Struck with terror," as Calvinhimself confessed, he consented to do so.

Beautifully situated on the blue waters of Lake Leman in full view ofMont Blanc, Geneva was at this time a town of 16,000 inhabitants, acenter of trade, pleasure, and piety. The citizens had certainliberties, but were under the rule of a bishop. As this personage wasusually elected from the house of the Duke of Savoy, Geneva had becomelittle better than a dependency of that state. The first years of thesixteenth century had been turbulent. The bishop, John, had at onetime been forced to abdicate his authority, but later had tried toresume it. The Archbishop of Vienne, Geneva's metropolitan, had thenexcommunicated the city and invited Duke Charles III of Savoy to punishit. The citizens rose under Bonivard, renounced the authority of thepope, expelled the bishop and broke up the religious houses. To guardagainst the vengeance of the duke, a league was made with Berne andFreiburg.

On October 2, 1532, William Farel arrived from Berne. At Geneva aselsewhere tumult followed his {169} preaching, but it met with suchsuccess that by January, 1534, he held a disputation which decided thecity to become evangelical. The council examined the shrines[Sidenote: 1535] and found machinery for the production of bogusmiracles; provisionally abolished the mass; [Sidenote: May 21, 1536]and soon after formally renounced the papal religion.

At this point Calvin arrived, and began preaching and organizing atonce. He soon aroused opposition from the citizens, galled at hisstrictness and perhaps jealous of a foreigner. [Sidenote: Calvinexpelled, February 1538] The elections to the council went againsthim, and the opposition came to a head shortly afterwards. The towncouncil decided to adopt the method of celebrating the eucharist usedat Rome. For some petty reason Calvin and Farel refused to obey, andwhen a riot broke out at the Lord's table, the council expelled themfrom the city.

Calvin went to Strassburg, where he learned to know Bucer andrepublished his Institutes. Here he married Idelette de Bure, thewidow of an Anabaptist, [Sidenote: August, 1540] who was never instrong health and died, probably of consumption, on March 29, 1549.Calvin's married life lacked tenderness and joy. The story that heselected his wife because he thought that by reason of her want ofbeauty she would not distract his thoughts from God, is not wellfounded, but it does illustrate his attitude towards her. The one ormore children born of the union died in infancy.

Calvin attended the Colloquy at Ratisbon, [Sidenote: 1541] in theresult of which he was deeply disappointed. In the meantime he had notlost all interest in Geneva. When Cardinal Sadoleto wrote, in the mostpolished Latin, an appeal to the city to return to the Roman communion,Calvin answered it. [Sidenote: September 1, 1539] The party opposedto him discredited itself by giving up the city's rights to Berne, and,was therefore overthrown. The perplexities presenting themselves tothe council were {170} beyond their powers to solve, and they feltobliged to recall Calvin, [Sidenote: Calvin returns, 1541] who returnedto remain for the rest of his life.

[Sidenote: Theocracy]

His position was so strong that he was able to make of Geneva a cityafter his own heart. The form of government he caused to prevail was astrict theocracy. The clergy of the city met in a body known as theCongregation, a "venerable company" that discussed and preparedlegislation for the consideration of the Consistory. In this largerbody, besides the clergy, the laity were represented by twelve elderschosen by the council, not by the people at large. The state andchurch were thus completely identified in a highly aristocratic polity.

"The office of the Consistory is to keep watch on the life of everyone." Thus briefly was expressed the delegation of as complete powersover the private lives of citizens as ever have been granted to acommittee. The object of the Ecclesiastical Ordinances was to create asociety of saints. The Bible was adopted as the norm; all itsprovisions being enforced except such Jewish ceremonies as wereconsidered abrogated by the New Testament. The city was divided intoquarters, and some of the elders visited every house at least once ayear and passed in review the whole life, actions, speech, and opinionsof the inmates. The houses of the citizens were made of glass; and thevigilant eye of the Consistory, served by a multitude of spies, was onthem all the time. In a way this espionage but took the place of theCatholic confessional. A joke, a gesture was enough to bring a manunder suspicion. The Elders sat as a regular court, hearing complaintsand examining witnesses. It is true that they could inflict onlyspiritual punishments, such as public censure, penance,excommunication, or forcing the culprit to demand pardon in church onhis knees. But when {171} the Consistory thought necessary, it couldinvoke the aid of the civil courts and the judgment was seldomdoubtful. Among the capital crimes were adultery, blasphemy,witchcraft, and heresy. Punishments for all offences wereastonishingly and increasingly heavy. During the years 1542-6 therewere, in this little town of 16,000 people, no less than fifty-eightexecutions and seventy-six banishments.

In judging the Genevan theocracy it is important to remember thateverywhere, in the sixteenth century, punishments were heavier thanthey are now, and the regulation of private life minuter.[2]Nevertheless, though parallels to almost everything done at Geneva canbe found elsewhere, it is true that Calvin intensified the medievalspirit in this respect and pushed it to the farthest limit that humannature would bear.

First of all, he compelled the citizens to fulfil their religiousduties. He began the process by which later the Puritans identifiedthe Jewish Sabbath and the Lord's Day. Luther had thought theinjunction to rest on the Seventh Day a bit of Jewish ceremonialabrogated by the new dispensation and that, after attending church, theChristian might devote the day to what work or pleasure he thoughtproper. Calvin, however, forbade all work and commanded attendance onsermons, of which an abundance were offered to the devout. In additionto Sunday services there were, as in the Catholic church, morningprayers every work day and a second service three days a week. Allceremonies with a vestige of popery about them were forbidden.[Sidenote: 1555] The keeping of Christmas was prohibited under pain offine and imprisonment.

"As I see that we cannot forbid men all diversions," sighed Calvin, "Iconfine myself to those that are really bad." This class wassufficiently large. The {172} theater was denounced from the pulpit,especially when the new Italian habit of giving women's parts toactresses instead of to boys was introduced. According to Calvin'scolleague Cop, "the women who mount the platform to play comedies arefull of unbridled effrontery, without honor, having no purpose but toexpose their bodies, clothes, and ornaments to excite the impuredesires of the spectators. . . . The whole thing," he added, "is verycontrary to the modesty of women who ought to be shamefaced and shy."Accordingly, attendance on plays was forbidden.

[Sidenote: Supervision of conduct]

Among other prohibited amusements was dancing, especially obnoxious asat that time dances were accompanied by kisses and embraces. Playingcards, cursing and swearing were also dealt with, as indeed they wereelsewhere. Among the odd matters that came before the Consistory were:attempted suicide, possessing the Golden Legend (a collection ofsaints' lives called by Beza "abominable trash"), paying for masses,betrothing a daughter to a Catholic, fasting on Good Friday, singingobscene songs, and drunkenness. A woman was chastized for taking toomuch wine even though it did not intoxicate. Some husbands were mildlyreprimanded, not for beating their wives which was tolerated bycontemporary opinion, but for rubbing salt and vinegar into the wales.Luxury in clothing was suppressed; all matters of color and qualityregulated by law, and even the way in which women did their hair. In1546 the inns were put under the direct control of the government andstrictly limited to the functions of entertaining—or rather ofboarding and lodging—strangers and citizens in temporary need of them.Among the numerous rules enforced within them the following may beselected as typical:

[Sidenote: Rules for inns]

If any one blasphemes the name of God or says, "By {173} the body,'sblood, zounds" or anything like, or who gives himself to the devil oruses similar execrable imprecations, he shall be punished. . . .

If any one insults any one else the host shall be obliged to deliverhim up to justice.

If there are any persons who make it their business to frequent thesaid inns, and there to consume their goods and substance, the hostshall not receive them.

Item the host shall be obliged to report to the government any insolentor dissolute acts committed by the guests.

Item the host shall not allow any person of whatever quality he be, todrink or eat anything in his house without first having asked ablessing and afterwards said grace.

Item the host shall be obliged to keep in a public place a FrenchBible, in which any one who wishes may read, and he shall not preventfree and honest conversation on the Word of God, to edification, butshall favor it as much as he can.

Item the host shall not allow any dissoluteness like dancing, dice orcards, nor shall he receive any one suspected of being a debauche orruffian.

Item he shall only allow people to play honest games without swearingor blasphemy, and without wasting more time than that allowed for ameal.

Item he shall not allow indecent songs or words, and if any one wishesto sing Psalms or spiritual songs he shall make them do it in a decentand not in a dissolute way.

Item nobody shall be allowed to sit up after nine o'clock at nightexcept spies.

Of course, such matters as marriage were regulated strictly. When aman of seventy married a girl of twenty-five Calvin said it was thepastor's duty to reprehend them. The Reformer often selected the womenhe thought suitable for his acquaintances who wanted wives. He alsodrew up a list of baptismal names which he thought objectionable,including the names of "idols,"—i.e. saints venerated nearGeneva—the names of kings and offices to whom God alone {174}appoints, such as Angel or Baptist, names belonging to God such asJesus and Emanuel, silly names such as Toussaint and Noel, double namesand ill-sounding names. Calvin also pronounced on the best sort ofstoves and got servants for his friends. In fact, there was never sucha busy-body in a position of high authority before nor since. Nowonder that the citizens frequently chafed under the yoke.

If we ask how much was actually accomplished by this minute regulationaccompanied by extreme severity in the enforcement of morals, variousanswers are given. When the Italian reformer Bernardino Occhinovisited Geneva in 1542, he testified that cursing and swearing,unchastity and sacrilege were unknown; that there were neither lawsuitsnor simony nor murder nor party spirit, but that universal benevolenceprevailed. Again in 1556 John Knox said that Geneva was "the mostperfect school of Christ that ever was on earth since the days of theapostles. In other places," he continued, "I confess Christ to betruly preached, but manners and religion so sincerely reformed I havenot yet seen in any place besides." But if we turn from these personalimpressions to an examination of the acts of the Consistory, we get avery different impression. [Sidenote: Morals of Geneva] The recordsof Geneva show more cases of vice after the Reformation than before.The continually increasing severity of the penalties enacted againstvice and frivolity seem to prove that the government was helpless tosuppress them. Among those convicted of adultery were two of Calvin'sown female relatives, his brother's wife and his step-daughter Judith.What success there was in making Geneva a city of saints was due to thefact that it gradually became a very select population. The worst ofthe incorrigibles were soon either executed or banished, and theirplaces taken by a large influx of {175} men of austere mind, drawnthither as a refuge from persecution elsewhere, or by the desire to sitat the feet of the great Reformer. Between the years 1549 and 1555 noless than 1297 strangers were admitted to citizenship. Practically allof these were immigrants coming to the little town for conscience'ssake.

[Persecution]

Orthodoxy was enforced as rigidly as morality. The ecclesiasticalconstitution adopted in 1542 brought in the Puritan type of divineservice. Preaching took the most important place in church,supplemented by Bible reading and catechetical instruction. Laws werepassed enforcing conformity under pain of losing goods and life. Thosewho did not expressly renounce the mass were punished. A little girlof thirteen was condemned to be publicly beaten with rods for sayingthat she wanted to be a Catholic. Calvin identified his own wishes anddignity with the commands and honor of God. One day he forbade acitizen, Philibert Berthelier, to come to the Lord's table. Berthelierprotested and was supported by the council. "If God lets Satan crushmy ministry under such tyranny," shrieked Calvin, "it is all over withme." The slightest assertion of liberty on the part of another wasstamped out as a crime. Sebastian Castellio, a sincere Christian andProtestant, but more liberal than Calvin, fell under suspicion becausehe called the Song of Songs obscene, and because he made a new Frenchversion of the Bible to replace the one of Olivetan officiallyapproved. He was banished in 1544. Two years later Peter Ameaux madesome very trifling personal remarks about Calvin, for which he wasforced to fall on his knees in public and ask pardon.

But opposition only increased. The party opposing Calvin he called theLibertines—a word then meaning something like "free-thinker" andgradually getting {176} the bad moral connotation it has now, just asthe word "miscreant" had formerly done. [Sidenote: January, 1547] Oneof these men, James Cruet, posted on the pulpit of St. Peter's churchat Geneva a warning to Calvin, in no very civil terms, to leave thecity. He was at once arrested and a house to house search made for hisaccomplices. This method failing to reveal anything except that Gruethad written on one of Calvin's tracts the words "all rubbish," hisjudges put him to the rack twice a day, morning and evening, for awhole month. The frightful torture failed to make Gruet incriminateanyone else, and he was accordingly tried for heresy. He was chargedwith "disparaging authors like Moses, who by the Spirit of God wrotethe divine law, saying that Moses had no more power than any otherman. . . . He also said that all laws, human and divine, were made atthe pleasure of man." He was therefore sentenced to death forblasphemy and beheaded on July 26, 1547, "calling on God as his Lord."After his death one of his books was found and condemned. To justifythis course Calvin alleged that Gruet said that Jesus Christ was agood-for-nothing, a liar, and a false seducer, and that he (Gruet)denied the existence of God and immortality. Evangelical freedom hadnow arrived at the point whore its champions first took a man's lifeand then his character, merely for writing a lampoon!

Naturally such tyranny produced a reaction. The enraged Libertinesnicknamed Calvin Cain, and saved from his hands the next personalenemy, Ami Perrin, whom he caused to be tried for treason. [Sidenote:October 16, 1551] A still more bitter dose for the theocrat was thatadministered by Jerome Bolsec, who had the audacity to preach againstthe doctrine of predestination. Calvin and Farel refuted him on thespot and had him arrested. Berne, Basle and Zurich intervened and,when solicited for {177} an expression on the doctrine in dispute,spoke indecisively. The triumph of his enemies at this rebuke was hardfor Calvin to bear and prepared for the commission of the mostregrettable act of his career.

[Sidenote: Servetus, 1531]

The Spanish physician Michael Servetus published, in Germany, a work onthe Errors concerning the Trinity. His theory was not that of amodern rationalist, but of one whose starting point was the authorityof the Bible, and his unitarianism was consequently of a decidedlytheological brand, recalling similar doctrines in the early church.Leaving Germany he went to Vienne, [Sidenote: 1553] in France, and gota good practice under an assumed name. He later published a workcalled, perhaps in imitation of Calvin's Institutio, The Restitutionof Christianity, setting forth his ideas about the Trinity, which hecompared to the three-headed monster Cerberus, but admitting thedivinity of Christ. He also denied the doctrine of original sin andasserted that baptism should be for adults only. He was poorly advisedin sending this book to the Reformer, with whom he had somecorrespondence. With Calvin's knowledge and probably at hisinstigation, though he later issued an equivocating denial, WilliamTrie, of Geneva, denounced Servetus to the Catholic inquisition atVienne and forwarded the material sent by the heretic to Calvin. OnJune 17, 1553, the Catholic inquisitor, expressly stating that he actedon this material, condemned Servetus to be burnt by slow fire, but heescaped and went to Geneva.

Here he was recognized and arrested. Calvin at once appeared as hisprosecutor for heresy. The charges against him were chiefly concernedwith his denial of the Trinity and of infant baptism, and with hisattack on the person and teaching of Calvin. As an example of thepoint to which Bibliolatry could suppress candor it may be mentionedthat one of the {178} charges against him was that he had assertedPalestine to be a poor land. This was held to contradict theScriptural statement that it was a land flowing with milk and honey.The minutes of the trial are painful reading. It was conducted on bothsides with unbecoming violence. Among other expressions used byCalvin, the public prosecutor, were these: that he regarded Servetus'sdefence as no better than the braying of an ass, and that the prisonerwas like a villainous cur wiping his muzzle. Servetus answered in thesame tone, his spirit unbroken by abuse and by his confinement in ahorrible dungeon, where he suffered from hunger, cold, vermin, anddisease. He was found guilty of heresy and sentenced to be burnt withslow fire. Calvin said that he tried to alter the manner of execution,but there is not a shred of evidence, in the minutes of the trial orelsewhere, that he did so. Possibly, if he made the request, it waspurely formal, as were similar petitions for mercy made by the Romaninquisitors. At any rate, while Calvin's alleged effort for mercyproved fruitless, he visited his victim in prison to read him aself-righteous and insulting lecture. Farel, also, reviled him on theway to the stake, at which he perished on October 26, 1553, [Sidenote:Death of Servetus] crying, "God preserve my soul! O Jesus, Son of theeternal God, have mercy on me!" Farel called on the bystanders towitness that these words showed the dying man to be still in the powerof Satan.

This act of persecution, one of the most painful in the history ofChristianity, was received with an outburst of applause from almost allquarters. Melanchthon, who had not been on speaking terms with Calvinfor some years, was reconciled to him by what he called "a signal actof piety." Other leading Protestants congratulated Calvin, whocontinued persecution systematically. Another victim of his wasMatthew {179} Gribaldi, whom he delivered into the hands of thegovernment of Berne, with a refutation of his errors. [Sidenote:1564.] Had he not died of the plague in prison he would probably havesuffered the same fate as Servetus.

[Sidenote: Complete theocracy, 1555]

Strengthened by his victory over heresy, Calvin now had the chance toannihilate his opponents. On May 15, 1555, he accused a number of themof treason, and provided proof by ample use of the rack. With theparty of Libertines completely broken, Calvin ruled from this timeforth with a rod of iron. The new Geneva was so cowed and subservientthat the town council dared not install a new sort of heating apparatuswithout asking the permission of the theocrat. But a deep rancorsmouldered under the surface. "Our incomparable theologian Calvin,"wrote Ambrose Blaurer to Bullinger, "labors under such hatred of somewhom he obscures by his light that he is considered the worst ofheretics by them." Among other things he was accused of levyingtribute from his followers by a species of blackmail, threateningpublicly to denounce them unless they gave money to the cause.

[Sidenote: International Calvinism]

At the same time his international power and reputation rose. Genevabecame the capital of Protestantism, from which mandates issued to allthe countries of Western Europe. Englishmen and Frenchmen, Dutchmenand Italians, thronged to "this most perfect school of Christ since theapostles" to learn the laws of a new type of Christianity. ForCalvin's Reformation was more thorough and logical than was Luther's.The German had regarded all as permitted that was not forbidden, andallowed the old usages to stand in so far as they were not repugnant tothe ordinances of the Bible. But Calvin believed that all wasforbidden save what was expressly allowed, and hence abolished assuperstitious accretions all the elements of the medieval cult thatcould find no warrant in the {180} Bible. Images, vestments, organs,bells, candles, ritual, were swept away in the ungarnishedmeeting-house to make way for a simple service of Bible-reading,prayer, hymn and sermon. The government of the church was left byCalvin in close connection with the state, but he apparently turnedaround the Lutheran conception, making the civil authority subordinateto the spiritual and not the church to the state.

Whereas Lutheranism appealed to Germans and Scandinavians, Calvinismbecame the international form of Protestantism. Even in Germany Calvinmade conquests at the expense of Luther, but outside of Germany, inFrance, in the Netherlands, in Britain, he moulded the type of reformedthought in his own image. It is difficult to give statistics, for itis impossible to say how far each particular church, like the Anglicanfor example, was indebted to Calvin, how far to Luther, and how far toother leaders, and also because there was a strong reaction againstpure Calvinism even in the sixteenth century. But it is safe to saythat the clear, cold logic of the Institutes, the good French andLatin of countless other treatises and letters, and the politicalthought which amalgamated easily with rising tides of democracy andindustrialism, made Calvin the leader of Protestantism outside of theTeutonic countries of the north. His gift for organization and thepains he took to train ministers and apostles contributed to thissuccess.

[Sidenote: Death of Calvin, May 27, 1564]

On May 27, 1564 Calvin died, worn out with labor and ill health at theage of fifty-five. With a cold heart and a hot temper, he had a clearbrain, an iron will, and a real moral earnestness derived from theconviction that he was a chosen vessel of Christ. Constantly torturedby a variety of painful diseases, he drove himself, by the demoniacstrength of his will, to perform labor that would have taxed thestrongest. {181} The way he ruled his poor, suffering body is symbolicof the way he treated the sick world. To him the maladies of his ownbody, or of the body politic, were evils to be overcome, at any cost ofpain and sweat and blood, by a direct effort of the will. As he neveryielded to fever and weakness in himself, so he dealt with the vice andfrivolity he detested, crushing it out by a ruthless application ofpower, hunting it with spies, stretching it on the rack and breaking iton the wheel. But a gentler, more understanding method would haveaccomplished more, even for his own purpose.

[Sidenote: Beza, 1519-1605]

His successor at Geneva, Theodore Beza, was a man after his own heartbut, as he was far weaker, the town council gradually freed itself fromspiritual tyranny. Towards the end of the century the pastors had beenhumbled and the questions of the day were far less the dogmaticniceties they loved than ethical ones such as the right to take usury,the proper penalty for adultery, the right to make war, and the bestform of government.

[1] "Decretum Dei aeternum horribile."

[2] See below. Chapter X, section 3.

{182}

CHAPTER IV

FRANCE

SECTION 1. RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION

[Sidenote: France]

Though, at the opening of the sixteenth century, the French may haveattained to no greater degree of national self-consciousness than hadthe Germans, they had gone much farther in the construction of anational state. The significance of this evolution, one of thestrongest tendencies of modern history, is that it squares the outwardpolitical condition of the people with their inward desires. When oncea nation has come to feel itself such, it cannot be happy until itspolity is united in a homogeneous state, though the reverse is alsotrue,—that national feeling is sometimes the result as well as thecause of political union. With the growth of a common language and ofcommon ideals, and with the improvement of the methods ofcommunication, the desire of the people for unity became stronger andstronger, until it finally overcame the centrifugal forces of feudalismand of particularism. These were so strong in Germany that only a veryimperfect federation could be formed by way of national government, butin France, though they were still far from moribund, external pressureand the growth of the royal power had forged the various provinces intoa nation such as it exists today. The most independent of the oldprovinces, Brittany, was now united to the crown by the marriage of itsduchess Anne to Louis XII. [Sidenote: Louis XII, 1498-1515]

{183}

Anne ==Louis XII Charles, Count==Louise
Duchess of | 1498-1515 of Angoulême | of Savoy
Brittany | |
| |
| |
| |
+————-+——————-+ |
|2 1| |
Renée==Hercules II, Claude==(1)Francis I Margaret==(1)Charles,
Duke of | 1515-47 Duke of
Ferrara | (2)==Eleanor, Alençon
| sister of ==(2)Henry II,
| Emperor | King of
| Charles V | Navarre
| |
Henry II==Catharine de' |
1547-59 | Medici d. 1589 Joan ==Anthony
| d'Albret| of
| | Bourbon
| | Duke of
| | Vendôme
+————+———+———+——+-+————————+ |
| | | | | | |
Francis II, | Henry III | Elizabeth (1)Margaret==Henry IV,
1559-60 | 1574-89 | ==(3)Philip II (2)Mary de' 1589-1610
==Mary, Queen | | King of Spain Medici
of Scots | |
| |
Charles IX Francis, Duke
1560-74 of Alençon and
Anjou, d. 1584

[Transcriber's note: "d." has been used here as a substitute for the "dagger" symbol (Unicode U+2020) that signifies the person's year of death.]

Geographically, France was nearly the same four hundred years ago as itis today, save that the eastern {184} frontier was somewhat fartherwest. The line then ran west of the three Bishoprics, Verdun, Metz andToul, west of Franche Comté, just east of Lyons and again west of Savoyand Nice.

Politically, France was then one of a group of semi-popular,semi-autocratic monarchies. The rights of the people were asserted bythe States General which met from time to time, usually at much longerintervals than the German Diets or the English Parliaments, and by theParlements of the various provinces. These latter were rather highcourts of justice than legislative assemblies, but their right toregister new laws gave them a considerable amount of authority. TheParlement of Paris was the most conspicuous and perhaps the mostpowerful.

[Sidenote: Concordat, 1516]

The power of the monarch, resting primarily on the support of thebourgeois class, was greatly augmented by the Concordat of 1516, whichmade the monarch almost the supreme head of the Gallican church. Fortwo centuries the crown had been struggling to attain this position.It was because so large a degree of autonomy was granted to thenational church that the French felt satisfied not to go to the extremeof secession from the Roman communion. It was because the king hadalready achieved a large control over his own clergy that he felt itunnecessary or inadvisable to go to the lengths of the Lutheran princesand of Henry VIII. In that one important respect the Concordat ofBologna took the place of the Reformation.

[Sidenote: Francis I, 1515-47]

Francis I was popular and at first not unattractive. Robust, fond ofdisplay, ambitious, intelligent enough to dabble in letters and art, hepiqued himself on being chivalrous and brave. But he wasted his lifeand ruined his health in the pursuit of pleasure. His face, as it hascome down to us in contemporary paintings, is disagreeable. He was, aswith unusual candor a {185} contemporary observer put it, a devil evento the extent of considerably looking it.

While to art and letters Francis gave a certain amount of attention, heusually from mere indolence allowed the affairs of state to be guidedby others. Until the death of his mother, Louise of Savoy, [Sidenote:1531] he was ruled by her. Thereafter the Constable Anne deMontmorency was his chief minister. The policy followed was theinherited one which was, to a certain point, necessary in the givenconditions. In domestic affairs, the king or his advisors endeavoredto increase the power of the crown at the expense of the nobles. Thelast of the great vassals strong enough to assert a quasi-independenceof the king was Charles of Bourbon. [Sidenote: 1523-4] He wasarrested and tried by the Parlement of Paris, which consistentlysupported the crown. Fleeing from France he entered the service ofCharles V, [Sidenote: 1526] and his restoration was made an article ofthe treaty of Madrid. His death in the sack of Rome closed theincident in favor of the king. [Sidenote: May, 1527]

The foreign policy of France was a constant struggle, now by diplomacy,now by arms, with Charles V. The principal remaining powers of Europe,England, Turkey and the pope, threw their weight now on one side now onthe other of the two chief antagonists. Italy was the field of most ofthe battles. Francis began his reign by invading that country anddefeating the Swiss at Marignano, thus conquering Milan. [Sidenote:September 14-15, 1515] The campaigns in Italy and Southern Franceculminated in the disastrous defeat of the French at Pavia. [Sidenote:February 24, 1525] Francis fought in person and was taken prisoner."Of all things nothing is left me but honor and life," he wrote hismother.

Francis hoped that he would be freed on the payment of ransom accordingto the best models of chivalry. He found, however, when he was removedto {186} Madrid in May, that his captor intended to exact the lastfarthing of diplomatic concession. Discontent in France and the ennuiand illness of the king finally forced him to sign a mostdisadvantageous treaty, [Sidenote: January 14, 1526] renouncing thelands of Burgundy, Naples and Milan, and ceding lands to Henry VIII.The king swore to the document, pledged his knightly honor, and asadditional securities married Eleanor the sister of Charles and lefttwo of his sons as hostages.

Even when he signed it, however, he had no intention of executing theprovisions of the treaty which, he secretly protested, had been wrungfrom him by force. The deputies of Burgundy refused to recognize theright of France to alienate them. Henry VIII at once made an allianceagainst the "tyranny and pride" of the emperor. Charles was sochagrined that he challenged Francis to a duel. This opera bouffeperformance ended by each monarch giving the other "the lie in thethroat."

Though France succeeded in making with new allies, the pope and Venice,the League of Cognac, [Sidenote: May, 1526] and though Germany was atthat time embarrassed by the Turkish invasion, the ensuing war turnedout favorably to the emperor. The ascendancy of Charles was so markedthat peace again had to be made in his favor in 1529. The treaty ofCambrai, as it was called, was the treaty of Madrid over again exceptthat Burgundy was kept by France. She gave up, however, Lille, Douaiand other territory in the north and renounced her suzerainty overMilan and Naples. Francis agreed to pay a ransom of two million crownsfor his sons. Though he was put to desperate straits to raise themoney, levying a 40 per cent. income tax on the clergy and a 10 percent. income tax on the nobles, he finally paid the money and got backhis children in 1530.

By this time France was so exhausted, both in {187} money and men, thata policy of peace was the only one possible for some years.Montmorency, the principal minister of the king, continued by an activediplomacy to stir up trouble for Charles. While suppressing Lutheransat home he encouraged the Schmalkaldic princes abroad, going to thelength of inviting Melanchthon to France in 1535. With the Englishminister Cromwell he came to an agreement, notwithstanding theProtestant tendencies of his policy. An alliance was also made withthe Sultan Suleiman, secretly in 1534, and openly proclaimed in 1536.In order to prepare for the military strife destined to be renewed atthe earliest practical moment, an ordinance of 1534 reorganized andstrengthened the army.

Far more important for the life of France than her incessant andinconclusive squabbling with Spain was the transformation passing overher spirit. It is sometimes said that if the French kings broughtnothing else back from their campaigns in Italy they brought back theRenaissance. [Sidenote: Reformation] There is a modicum of truth inthis, for there are some traces of Italian influence before the reignof Francis I. But the French spirit hardly needed this outsidestimulus. It was awakening of itself. Scholars like William Budé andthe Estiennes, thinkers like Dolet and Rabelais, poets like Marot, werethe natural product of French soil. Everywhere, north of the Alps noless than south, there was a spontaneous efflorescence of intellectualactivity.

The Reformation is often contrasted or compared with the Renaissance.In certain respects, where a common factor can be found, this mayprofitably be done. But it is important to note how different in kindwere the two movements. One might as well compare Darwinism andSocialism in our own time. The one was a new way of looking at things,a fresh {188} intellectual start, without definite program ororganization. The other was primarily a thesis: a set of tenets theobject of which was concrete action. The Reformation began in Franceas a school of thought, but it soon grew to a political party and a newchurch, and finally it evolved into a state within the state.

[Sidenote: Christian Renaissance]

Though it is not safe to date the French Reformation before theinfluence of Luther was felt, it is possible to see an indigenousreform that naturally prepared the way for it. Its harbinger wasLefèvre d'Étaples. This "little Luther" wished to purify the church,to set aside the "good works" thereof in favor of faith, and to makethe Bible known to the people. He began to translate it in 1521,publishing the Gospels in June 1523 and the Epistles and Acts andApocalypse in October and November. The work was not as good as thatof Luther or Tyndale. It was based chiefly on the Vulgate, though notwithout reference to the Greek text. Lefèvre prided himself on beingliteral, remarking, with a side glance at Erasmus's Paraphrases, thatit was dangerous to try to be more elegant than Scripture. He alsoprided himself on writing for the simple, and was immensely pleasedwith the favorable reception the people gave his work. To reach thehearts of the poor and humble he instituted a reform of preaching,instructing his friends to purge their homilies of the more grosslysuperstitious elements and of the scholastic theology. Instead of thisthey were to preach Christ simply with the aim of touching the heart,not of dazzling the mind.

Like-minded men gathering around Lefèvre formed a new school ofthought. It was a movement of revival within the church; its leaders,wishing to keep all the old forms and beliefs, endeavored to infuseinto them a new spirit. To some extent they were in conscious reactionagainst the intellectualism of Erasmus {189} and the Renaissance. Onthe other hand they were far from wishing to follow Luther, when heappeared, in his schism.

Among the most famous of these mystical reformers were WilliamBriçonnet, Bishop of Meaux, and his disciple, Margaret d'Angoulême,sister of Francis I. Though a highly talented woman Margaret was weakand suggestible. She adored her dissolute brother and was always, onaccount of her marriages, first with Charles, duke of Alençon,[Sidenote: 1509] and then with Henry d'Albret, king of Navarre,[Sidenote: 1527] put in the position of a suppliant for his support.She carried on an assiduous correspondence with Briçonnet as herspiritual director, being attracted first by him and then by Luther,chiefly, as it seems, through the wish to sample the novelty of theirdoctrines. She wrote The Mirror of the Sinful Soul in the best styleof penitent piety. [Sidenote: 1531] Its central idea is the love ofGod and of the "debonnaire" Jesus. She knew Latin and Italian, studiedGreek and Hebrew, and read the Bible regularly, exhorting her friendsto do the same. She coquetted with the Lutherans, some of whom sheprotected in France and with others of whom in Germany shecorresponded. She was strongly suspected of being a Lutheran, though asecret one. Capito dedicated to her a commentary on Hosea; Calvin hadstrong hopes of winning her to an open profession, but wasdisappointed. Her house, said he, which might have become the familyof Jesus Christ, harbored instead servants of the devil. Throughoutlife she kept the accustomed Catholic rites, and wrote with muchrespect to Pope Paul III. But fundamentally her religious idealism wasoutside of any confession.

This mystically pious woman wrote, in later life, the Heptameron, abook of stories published posthumously. Modelled on the Decameron,it consists {190} almost entirely of licentious stories, told withoutreprobation and with gusto. If the mouth speaketh from the fullness ofthe heart she was as much a sensualist in thought as her brother was indeed. The apparent contradictions in her are only to be explained onthe theory that she was one of those impressionable natures that,chameleon-like, always take on the hue of their environment.

But though the work of Lefèvre and of Briçonnet, who himself gave hisclergy an example of simple, biblical preaching, won many followers notonly in Meaux but in other cities, it would never have produced areligious revolt like that in Germany. The Reformation was animportation into France; "The key of heresy," as John Bouchet said in1531, "was made of the fine iron of Germany." At first almost all theintellectuals hailed Luther as an ally. Lefèvre sent him a greeting in1519, and in the same year Budé spoke well of him. His books were atthis time approved even by some doctors of the Sorbonne. But it took adecade of confusion and negation to clarify the situation sufficientlyfor the French to realize the exact import of the Lutheran movement,which completely transformed the previously existing policy of Lefèvre.The chief sufferer by the growth of Lutheranism was not at first theCatholic church but the party of Catholic reform. The schism rent theFrench evangelicals before it seriously affected the church. Some ofthem followed the new light and others were forced back into areactionary attitude.

[Sidenote: Luther's books.]

The first emissaries of Luther in France were his books. Frobenexported a volume containing nearly all he had published up to October,1518, immediately and in large quantities to Paris. In 1520 a studentthere wrote that no books were more quickly bought. At first only theLatin ones were intelligible to the {191} French, but there is reasonto believe that very early translations into the vernacular were made,though none of this period have survived. It was said that the books,which kept pouring in from Frankfort and Strassburg and Basle, excitedthe populace against the theologians, for the people judged them by thenewly published French New Testament. A bishop complained that thecommon people were seduced by the vivacity of the heretic's style.[Sidenote: 1523]

It did not take the Sorbonne long to define its position as one ofhostility. The university, which had been lately defending theGallican liberties and had issued an appeal from pope to futurecouncil, was one of the judges selected by the disputants of theLeipzig debate. Complete records of the speeches, taken by notaries,were accordingly forwarded to Paris by Duke George of Saxony, with arequest for an opinion. After brief debate the condemnation of Lutherby the university was printed. [Sidenote: April 15, 1521]

Neither was the government long in taking a position. That it shouldbe hostile was a foregone conclusion. Francis hated Lutheranismbecause he believed that it tended more to the overthrow of kingdomsand monarchies than to the edification of souls. He told Aleander, thepapal nuncio, that he thought Luther a rascal and his doctrinepernicious. [Sidenote: March, 1521]

[Sidenote: April 1523]

The king was energetically seconded by the Parlement of Paris. A royaledict provided that no book should be printed without the imprimatur ofthe university. The king next ordered the extirpation of the errors ofMartin Luther of Saxony, and, having begun by burning books, continued,as Erasmus observed was usually the case, by burning people. The firstto suffer was John Vallière. At the same time Briçonnet was summonedto Paris, [Sidenote: 1523] sharply reprimanded for leniency to hereticsand fined two hundred livres, in {192} consequence of which he issuedtwo decrees against the heresy, charging it with attempting to subvertthe hierarchy and to abolish sacerdotal celibacy. [Sidenote: 1524]When Lefèvre's doctrines were condemned, he submitted; those of hisdisciples who failed to do so were proscribed. But the efforts of thegovernment became more strenuous after 1524. Francis was at this timecourting the assistance of the pope against the emperor, and moreoverhe was horrified by the outbreak of the Peasants' War in Germany.Convinced of the danger of allowing the new sect to propagate itselfany further he commanded the archbishops and bishops of his realm to"proceed against those who hold, publish and follow the heresies,errors and doctrines of Martin Luther." [Sidenote: 1525] Lefèvre andsome of his friends fled to Strassburg. Arrests and executions againstthose who were sometimes called "heretics of Meaux," and sometimesLutherans, followed.

The theologians did not leave the whole burden of the battle to thegovernment. A swarm of anti-Lutheran tracts issued from the press.Not only the heresiarch, but Erasmus and Lefèvre were attacked. Theirtranslations of the Bible were condemned as blasphemies against Jeromeand against the Holy Ghost and as subverting the foundations of theChristian religion. Luther's sacramental dogmas and his repudiation ofmonastic vows were refuted.

Nevertheless the reform movement continued. At this stage it wasurban, the chief centers being Paris, Meaux, and Lyons. Many merchantsand artisans were found among the adherents of the new faith. Whilenone of a higher rank openly professed it, theology became, under thelead of Margaret, a fashionable subject. Conventicles were formed toread the Bible in secret not only among the middle classes but also atcourt. Short tracts continued to be the best {193} methods ofpropaganda, and of these many were translations. Louis de Berquin ofArtois, [Sidenote: Berquin, 1490-1529] a layman, proved the mostformidable champion of the new opinions. Though he did little buttranslate other men's work he did that with genius. His version ofErasmus's Manual of a Christian Knight was exquisitely done, and hisversion of Luther's Tesseradecas did not fall short of it. Tried andcondemned in 1523, he was saved by the king at the behest of Margaret.[Sidenote: 1526] The access of rigor during the king's captivity gaveplace to a momentary tolerance. Berquin, who had been arrested, wasliberated, and Lefèvre recalled from exile. But the respite was brief.Two years later, Berquin was again arrested, tried, condemned, andexecuted speedily to prevent reprieve on April 17, 1529. But thetriumph of the conservatives was more apparent than real. Lutheranismcontinued to gain silently but surely.

While the Reformation was growing in strength and numbers, it was alsobecoming more definite and coherent. Prior to 1530 it was almostimpossible to tell where Lutheranism began and where it ended. Therewas a large, but vague and chaotic public opinion of protest againstthe existing order. But after 1530 it is possible to distinguishseveral parties, three of which at first reckoned among the supportersof the Reformation, now more or less definitely separated themselvesfrom it. The first of these was the party of Meaux, the leaders ofwhich submitted to the government and went their own isolated way.Then there was a party of Erasmian reform, mainly intellectual butprofoundly Christian. Its leader, William Budé, felt, as did Erasmus,that it was possible to unite the classical culture of the Renaissancewith a purified Catholicism. Attached to the church, and equallyrepelled by some of the dogmas and by the apparent {194} social effectsof the Reformation, Budé, who had spoken well of Luther in 1519,repudiated him in 1521.

[Sidenote: Humanists]

Finally there was the party of the "Libertines" or free-thinkers, therepresentatives of the Renaissance pure and simple. Revolutionaries intheir own way, consciously rebels against the older culture of theMiddle Ages, though prepared to canvass the new religion and to toywith it, even to use it as an ally against common enemies, the interestof these men was fundamentally too different from that of the Reformersto enable them to stand long on the same platform. There was ClementMarot, [Sidenote: Marot] a charming but rather aimless poet, a protégéof Margaret and the ornament of a frivolous court. Though his poetictranslation of the Psalms became a Protestant book, his poetry is oftensensual as well as sensuous. Though for a time absenting himself fromcourt he re-entered it in 1536 at the same time "abjuring his errors."

[Sidenote: Rabelais]

Of the same group was Francis Rabelais, whose Pantagruel appeared in1532. Though he wrote Erasmus saying that he owed all that he was tohim, he in fact appropriated only the irony and mocking spirit of thehumanist without his deep underlying piety. He became a universalskeptic, and a mocker of all things. The "esprit gaulois," beyond allothers alive to the absurdities and inconsistency of things, found inhim its incarnation. He ridiculed both the "pope-maniacs" and the"pope-phobes," the indulgence-sellers and the inquisitors, thedecretals "written by an angel" and the Great Schism, priests and kingsand doubting philosophers and the Scripture. Paul III called him "thevagabond of the age." Calvin at first reckoned him among those who"had relished the gospel," but when he furiously retorted that heconsidered Calvin "a demoniacal imposter," the theologian of Genevaloosed against him a furious invective in his {195} Treatise onOffences. Rabelais was now called "a Lucian who by his diabolicfatuity had profaned the gospel, that holy and sacred pledge of lifeeternal." William Farel had in mind Rabelais's recent acceptance fromthe court of the livings of Meudon and St. Christophe de Jambet, whenhe wrote Calvin on May 25, 1553: "I fear that avarice, that root ofevil, has extinguished all faith and piety in the poets of Margaret.Judas, having sold Christ and taken the biretta, instead of Christ hasthat hard master Satan." [1]

[Sidenote: Catholic reform]

The stimulus given by the various attacks on the church, bothProtestant and infidel, showed itself promptly in the abundant spiritof reform that sprang up in the Catholic fold. The clergy and bishopbraced themselves to meet the enemy; they tried in some instances tosuppress scandals and amend their lives; they brushed up their theologyand paid more attention to the Bible and to education.

But the "Lutheran contagion" continued to spread and grow mightily. In1525 it was found only at Paris, Meaux, Lyons, Grenoble, Bourges, Toursand Alençon. Fifteen years later, though it was still confined largelyto the cities and towns, there were centers of it in every part ofFrance except in Brittany. The persecution at Paris only drove theheretics into hiding or banished them to carry their opinions broadcastover the land. The movement swept from the north and east. Thepropaganda was not the work of one class but of all save that of thegreat nobles. It was not yet a social or class affair, but a purelyintellectual and religious one. It is impossible to {196} estimate thenumbers of the new sect. In 1534 Aleander said there were thirtythousand Lutherans in Paris alone. On the contrary René du Bellay saidthat there were fewer in 1533 than there were ten years, previous.[Sidenote: Protestant progress] True it is that the Protestants wereas yet weak, and were united rather in protest against the establishedorder than as a definite and cohesive party. Thus, the most popularand successful slogans of the innovators were denunciation of thepriests as anti-Christs and apostates, and reprobation of images and ofthe mass as idolatry. Other catchwords of the reformers were, "theBible" and "justification by faith." The movement was without a headand without organization. Until Calvin furnished these the principalinspiration came from Luther, but Zwingli and the other German andSwiss reformers were influential. More and more, Lefèvre and hisschool sank into the background.

For a time it seemed that the need of leadership was to be supplied byWilliam Farel. His learning, his eloquence, and his zeal, togetherwith the perfect safety of action that he found in Switzerland, werethe necessary qualifications. The need for a Bible was at first met bythe version of Lefèvre, printed in 1532. But the Catholic spirit ofthis work, based on the Vulgate, was distasteful to the evangelicals.Farel asked Olivetan, an excellent philologist, to make a new version,which was completed by February 1535. Calvin wrote the preface for it.It was dedicated to "the poor little church of God." In doctrine itwas thoroughly evangelical, replacing the old "évêques" and "prêtres"by "surveillants" and "anciens," and omitting some of the Apocrypha.

Encouraged by their own growth the Protestants became bolder in theirattacks on the Catholics. The situation verged more and more towardsviolence; {197} neither side, not even the weaker, thought of tolerancefor both. On the night of October 17-18 some placards, written byAnthony de Marcourt, were posted up in Paris, Orleans, Rouen, Tours andBlois and on the doors of the king's chamber at Amboise. Theyexcoriated the sacrifice of the mass as a horrible and intolerableabuse invented by infernal theology and directly counter to the trueSupper of our Lord. The government was alarmed and took strong steps.Processions were instituted to appease God for the sacrilege. Within amonth two hundred persons were arrested, twenty of whom were sent tothe scaffold and the rest banished after confiscation of their goods.

But the government could not afford to continue an uninterruptedlyrigorous policy. The Protestants found their opportunity in theexigencies of the foreign situation. In 1535 Francis was forced by theincreasing menace of the Hapsburgs to make alliance not only with theinfidel but with the Schmalkaldic League. He would have had noscruples in supporting abroad the heresy he suppressed at home, but hefound the German princes would accept his friendship on no terms savethose of tolerance to French Protestants. Accordingly on July 16,1535, Francis was obliged to publish an edict ordering persecution tocease and liberating those who were in prison for conscience's sake.

But the respite did not last long. New rigors were undertaken in April1538. Marot retracted his errors, and Rabelais, while notfundamentally changing his doctrine, greatly softened, in the secondedition of his Pantagruel, [Sidenote: 1542] the abusive ridicule hehad poured on the Sorbonne. But by this time a new era wasinaugurated. The deaths of Erasmus and Lefèvre in 1536 gave the coupde grace to the party of the Christian {198} Renaissance, and thepublication of Calvin's Institutes in the same year finally gave theFrench Protestants a much needed leader and standard.

[1] Harvard Theological Review, 1919, p. 209. Margaret had diedseveral years before, but Rabelais was called her poet because he hadclaimed her protection and to her wrote a poem in 1545. Oeuvres deRabelais, ed. A. Lefranc, 1912, i, pp. xxiii, cxxxix. Cf. alsoCalvin's letter to the Queen of Navarre, April 28, 1545. Opera, xii,pp. 65 f.

SECTION 2. THE CALVINIST PARTY. 1536-1559

[Sidenote: Truce of Nice, 1538]

The truce of Nice providing for a cessation of hostilities betweenFrance and the Hapsburgs for ten years, was greeted with much joy inFrance. Bonfires celebrated it in Paris, and in every way the peoplemade known their longing for peace. Little the king cared for thewishes of his loyal subjects when his own dignity, real or imagined,was at stake. The war with Charles, that cursed Europe like anintermittent fever, broke out again in 1542. Again France was theaggressor and again she was worsted. The emperor invaded Champagne inperson, arriving, in 1544, at a point within fifty miles of Paris. Asthere was no army able to oppose him it looked as if he would march asa conqueror to the capital of his enemy. But he sacrificed theadvantage he had over France to a desire far nearer his heart, that ofcrushing his rebellious Protestant subjects. Already planning war withthe League of Schmalkalden he wished only to secure his own safety fromattack by his great rival. [Sidenote: Treaty of Crépy, 1544] Thetreaty made at Crépy was moderate in its terms and left things largelyas they were.

[Sidenote: Henry II, 1547-59]

On March 31, 1547, Francis I died and was succeeded by his son, HenryII, a man of large, strong frame, passionately fond of all forms ofexercise, especially of hunting and jousting. He had neither hisfather's versatility nor his fickleness nor his artistic interests.His policy was influenced by the aim of reversing his father's wishesand of disgracing his father's favorites.

[Sidenote: 1533]

While his elder brother was still alive, Henry had married Catharinede' Medici, a daughter of Lorenzo {199} II de' Medici of Florence. Thegirl of fourteen in a foreign country was uncomfortable, especially asit was felt, after her husband became Dauphin, that her rank was notequal to his. The failure to have any children during the first tenyears of marriage made her position not only unpleasant but precarious,but the birth of her first son made her unassailable. In rapidsuccession she bore ten children, seven of whom survived childhood.Though she had little influence on affairs of state during herhusband's reign, she acquired self-confidence and at last began to talkand act as queen.

[Sidenote: Diana of Poitiers]

At the age of seventeen Henry fell in love with a woman of thirty-six,Diana de Poitiers, to whom his devotion never wavered until his death,when she was sixty. Notwithstanding her absolute ascendancy over herlover she meddled little with affairs of state.

[Sidenote: Admiral Coligny, 1519-72]

The direction of French policy at this time fell largely into the handsof two powerful families. The first was that of Coligny. Of threebrothers the ablest was Gaspard, Admiral of France, a firm friend ofHenry's as well as a statesman and warrior. Still more powerful wasthe family of Guise, the children of Claude, Duke of Guise, who died in1527. [Sidenote: Francis of Guise] The eldest son, Francis, Duke ofGuise, was a great soldier. His brother, Charles, Cardinal ofLorraine, won a high place in the councils of state, and his sisterMary, by her marriage with James V of Scotland, brought added prestigeto the family. The great power wielded by this house owed much to theposition of their estates, part of which were fiefs of the French kingand part subject to the Empire. As suited their convenience they couldact either as Frenchmen or as foreign nobles.

[Sidenote: Expansion]

Under Henry France enjoyed a period of expansion such as she had nothad for many years. The {200} perpetual failures of Francis were atlast turned into substantial successes. This was due in large part tothe civil war in Germany and to the weakness of England's rulers,Edward VI and Mary. It was due in part to the irrepressible energy ofthe French bourgeois and gentlemen, in part to the genius of Francis ofGuise. The co-operation of France and Turkey, rather an identity ofinterests than a formal alliance, a policy equally blamed bycontemporaries and praised by historians, continued. But the successesachieved were due most of all to the definite abandonment of the hopeof Italian conquests and to the turning of French arms to regions moresuitable for incorporation under her government.

War having been declared on Charles, the French seized the ThreeBishoprics, at that time imperial fiefs, Metz, Verdun, and Toul. Alarge German army under Alva besieged Metz, but failed to overcome thebrilliant defence of Francis of Guise. Worn by the attrition ofrepulsed assaults and of disease the imperial army melted away. Whenthe siege was finally raised Guise distinguished himself as much by thehumanity with which he cared for wounded and sick enemies as he had byhis military prowess.

Six years later Guise added fresh laurels to his fame and newpossessions to France by the conquest of Calais and Guines, the lastEnglish possessions in French territory. The loss of Calais, which hadbeen held by England since the Hundred Years War, was an especiallybitter blow to the islanders. These victories were partlycounterbalanced by the defeats of French armies at St. Quentin on theSomme [Sidenote: 1557] and by Egmont at Gravelines. [Sidenote: 1558]When peace was signed at Cateau-Cambrésis, [Sidenote: Peace ofCateau-Cambrésis, 1559] France renounced all her conquests in thesouth, but kept the Three Bishoprics and Calais, all of which becameher permanent possessions.

[Sidenote: Calvinism]

{201} While France was thus expanding her borders, the internalrevolution matured rapidly. The last years of Francis and the reign ofHenry II saw a prodigious growth of Protestantism. What had begun as asect now became, by an evolution similar to that experienced inGermany, a powerful political party. It is the general fate of newcauses to meet at first with opposition due to habit and theinstinctive reaction of almost all minds against "the pain of a newidea." But if the cause is one suited to the spirit and needs of theage, it gains more and more supporters, slowly if left to itself,rapidly if given good organization and adequate means of presenting itsclaims. The thorough canvassing of an idea is absolutely essential towin it a following. Now, prior to 1536, the Protestants had got aconsiderable amount of publicity as well through their own writings asthrough the attacks of their enemies. But not until Calvin settled atGeneva and began to write extensively in French, was the causepresented in a form capable of appealing to the average Frenchman.Calvin gave not only the best apology for his cause, but also furnishedit with a definite organization, and a coherent program. He suppliedthe dogma, the liturgy, and the moral ideas of the new religion, and healso created ecclesiastical, political, and social institutions inharmony with it. A born leader, he followed up his work with personalappeals. His vast correspondence with French Protestants shows notonly much zeal but infinite pains and considerable tact in driving homethe lessons of his printed treatises.

Though the appeal of Calvin's dogmatic system was greater to an ageinterested in such things and trained to regard them as highlyimportant, than we are likely to suppose at present, this was notCalvinism's only or even its main attraction to intelligent people.Like {202} every new and genuine reform Calvinism had the advantage ofarousing the enthusiasm of a small but active band of liberals. Thereligious zeal as well as the moral earnestness of the age wasnaturally drawn to the Protestant side. As the sect was persecuted, noone joined it save from conscientious motives. Against the laziness orthe corruption of the prelates, too proud or too indifferent to give areason for their faith, the innovators opposed a tireless energy inseason and out of season; against the scandals of the court and theimmorality of the clergy they raised the banner of a new and sternmorality; to the fires of martyrdom they replied with the fires ofburning faith.

The missionaries of the Calvinists were very largely drawn fromconverted members of the clergy, both secular and regular, and fromthose who had made a profession of teaching. For the purposes ofpropaganda these were precisely the classes most fitted by training andhabit to arouse and instruct the people. Tracts were multiplied, andthey enjoyed, notwithstanding the censures of the Sorbonne, a briskcirculation. The theater was also made a means of propaganda, and aneffective one.

Picardy continued to be the stronghold of the Protestants throughoutthis period, though they were also strong at Meaux and throughout thenorth-east, at Orleans, in Normandy, and in Dauphiné. Great progresswas also made in the south, which later became the most Protestant ofall the sections of France.

[Sidenote: Catholic measures]

Catholics continued to rely on force. There was a counter-propaganda,emanating from the University of Paris, but it was feeble. TheJesuits, in the reign of Henry II, had one college at Paris and two inAuvergne; otherwise there was hardly any intellectual effort made toovercome the reformers. Indeed, the Catholics hardly had the munitionsfor such a combat. {203} Apart from the great independents, holdingthemselves aloof from all religious controversy, the more intelligentand enterprising portion of the educated class had gone over to theenemy.

But the government did its best to supply the want of argument by theexercise of authority. New and severe edicts against "the heresies andfalse doctrines of Luther and his adherents and accomplices" wereissued. The Sorbonne prohibited the reading and sale of sixty-fivebooks by name, including the works of Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin,Dolet, and Marot, and all translations of the Bible issued by thepublishing house of Estienne.

The south of France had in earlier centuries been prolific in sectsclaiming a Protestantism older than that of Augsburg. Like theBohemian Brethren they eagerly welcomed the Calvinists as allies andwere rapidly enrolled in the new church. Startled by the stirring ofthe spirit of reform, the Parlement of Aix, acting in imitation ofSimon de Monfort, [Sidenote: 1540] ordered two towns, Merindol andCabrières, destroyed for their heresy. The sentence was too drasticfor the French government to sanction immediately; it was thereforepostponed by command of the king, but it was finally executed, at leastin part. [Sidenote: 1545] A ghastly massacre took place in whicheight hundred or more of the Waldenses perished. A cry of horror wasraised in Germany, in Switzerland, and even in France, from which theking himself recoiled in terror.

Only a few days after his accession Henry issued an edict againstblasphemy, and this was followed by a number of laws against heresy. Anew court of justice was created to deal with heretics. [Sidenote:October 8, 1547] From its habit of sending its victims to the stake itsoon became known as the Chambre Ardente. Its powers were so extensivethat the clergy protested against them as {204} infringements of theirrights. In its first two years it pronounced five hundredsentences,—and what sentences! Even in that cruel age its punishmentswere frightful. Burning alive was the commonest. If the hereticrecanted on the scaffold he was strangled before the fire was lit; ifhe refused to recant his tongue was cut out. [Sidenote: June, 1551]Those who were merely suspected were cast into dungeons from which manynever came out alive. Torture was habitually used to extractconfession. For those who recanted before sentence milder, but stillsevere, punishments were meted out: imprisonment and various sorts ofpenance. By the edict of Chateaubriand a code of forty-six articlesagainst heresy was drawn up, and the magistrate empowered to putsuspected persons under surveillance.

In the face of this fiery persecution the conduct of the Calvinists waswonderfully fine. They showed great adroitness in evading the law byall means save recantation and great astuteness in using what poorlegal means of defence were at their disposal. On the other hand theysuffered punishment with splendid constancy and courage, very fewfailing in the hour of trial, and most meeting death in a state ofexaltation. Large numbers found refuge in other lands. During thereign of Henry II fourteen hundred fled to Geneva, not to mention themany who settled in the Netherlands, England, and Germany.

[Sidenote: Protestant growth]

Far from lying passive, the Calvinists took the offensive not only bywriting and preaching but by attacking the images of the saints. Manyof these were broken or defaced. One student in the university ofParis smashed the images of the Virgin and St. Sebastian and a stainedglass window representing the crucifixion, and posted up placardsattacking the cult of the saints. For this he was pilloried threetimes and then shut into a small hole walled in on all sides {205} savefor an aperture through which food was passed him until he died.

Undaunted by persecution the innovators continued to grow mightily innumbers and strength. The church at Paris, though necessarily meetingin secret, was well organized. The people of the city assembledtogether in several conventicles in private houses. By 1559 there wereforty fully organized churches (églises dressées) throughout France,and no less than 2150 conventicles or mission churches (églisesplantées). Estimates of numbers are precarious, but good reason hasbeen advanced to show that early in the reign of Henry the Protestantsamounted to one-sixth of the population. Like all enthusiasticminorities they wielded a power out of proportion to their numbers.Increasing continually, as they did, it is probable, but for thehostility of the government, they would have been a match for theCatholics. At any rate they were eager to try their strength. A newand important fact was that they no longer consisted entirely of themiddle classes. High officers of government and great nobles began tojoin their ranks. In 1546 the Bishop of Nîmes protected them openly,being himself suspected, probably with justice, of Calvinism. In 1548a lieutenant-general was among those prosecuted for heresy. Anthony ofBourbon, a descendant of Louis IX, a son of the famous Charles,Constable of France, and husband of Joan d 'Albret, queen of Navarre,who was a daughter of Margaret d'Angoulême, became a Protestant.[Sidenote: 1555] About the same time the great Admiral Coligny wasconverted, though it was some years before he openly professed hisfaith. His brother, d'Andelot, also adhered to the Calvinists but waslater persuaded by the king and by his wife to go back to the Catholicfold.

So strong had the Protestants become that the {206} French governmentwas compelled against its will to tolerate them in fact if not inprinciple, and to recognize them as a party in the state with aquasi-constitutional position. The synod held at Paris in May, 1559,was evidence that the first stage in the evolution of FrenchProtestantism was complete. This assembly drew up a creed called theConfessio Gallicana, setting forth in forty articles the purestdoctrine of Geneva. Besides affirming belief in the common articles ofChristianity, this confession asserted the dogmas of predestination,justification by faith only, and the distinctive Calvinistic doctrineof the eucharist. The worship of saints was condemned and thenecessity of a church defined. For this church an organization anddiscipline modelled on that of Geneva was provided. The country wasdivided into districts, the churches within which were to send to acentral consistory representatives both clerical and lay, the latter tobe at least equal in number to the former. Over the church of thewhole nation there was to be a national synod or "Colloque" to whicheach consistory was to send one clergyman and one or two lay elders.

Alarmed by the growth of the Protestants, Henry II was just preparing,after the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, to grapple with them moreearnestly than ever, when he died of a wound accidentally received in atournament. [Sidenote: July 10, 1559] His death, hailed by Calvin asa merciful dispensation of Providence, conveniently marks the ending ofone epoch and the beginning of another. For the previous forty yearsFrance had been absorbed in the struggle with the vast empire of theHapsburgs. For the next forty years she was completely occupied withthe wars of religion. Externally, she played a weak rôle because ofcivil strife and of a contemptible government. Indeed, all herinterests, both foreign and domestic, were from this {207} timeforgotten in the intensity of the passions aroused by fanaticism. Thedate of Henry's demise also marks a change in the evolution of theFrench government. Hitherto, for some centuries, the trend had beenaway from feudalism to absolute monarchy. The ideal, "une foi, uneloi, un roi" had been nearly attained. But this was now checked in twoways. The great nobles found in Calvinism an opportunity to asserttheir privileges against the king. The middle classes in the cities,especially in those regions where sectionalism was still strong, foundthe same opportunity but turned it to the advantage of republicanism.A fierce spirit of resistance not only to the prelates but to themonarch, was born. There was even a considerable amount of democraticsentiment. The poor clergy, who had become converted to Calvinism,were especially free in denouncing the inequalities of the old régimewhich made of the higher clergy great lords and left the humblerministers to starve. The fact is that the message of Calvinism wasessentially democratic in that the excellence of all Christians andtheir perfect equality before God was preached. [Sidenote: Equalitypreached] Interest in religion and the ability to discuss it was notconfined to a privileged hierarchy, but was shared by the humblest. Ina ribald play written in 1564 it is said:[1]

If faut que Jeanne [a servant] entre les pots
Parle de reformation;
La nouvelle religion
A tant fait que les chambrières,
Les serviteurs et les tripières
En disputent publiquement.

But while the gay courtier and worldling sneered at the religion ofmarket women and scullerymaids, he had little cause to scoff when hemet the Protestants {208} in debate at the town hall of his city, or onthe field of battle.

Finally, the year 1559 very well marks a stage in the development ofFrench Protestantism. Until about 1536 it had been a mere unorganizedopinion, rather a philosophy than a coherent body. From the date ofthe publication of the Institutes to that of the Synod of 1559 thenew church had become organized, self-conscious, and definitelypolitical in aims. But after 1559 it became more than a party; itbecame an imperium in imperio. There was no longer one governmentand one allegiance in France but two, and the two were at war.

[Sidenote: The Huguenots]

It was just at this time that the name of Huguenot applied to theProtestants, hitherto called "Lutherans," "heretics of Meaux" and, morerarely, "Calvinists." The origin of the word, first used at Tours in1560, is uncertain. It may possibly come from "le roi Huguet" or"Hugon," a night spectre; the allusion then would be to the ghostlymanner in which the heretics crept by night to their conventicles.Huguenot is also found as a family name at Belfort as early as 1425.It may possibly come from the term "Hausgenossen" as used in Alsace ofthose metal-workers who were not taken into the gild but worked athome, hence a name of contempt like the modern "scab." It may alsocome from the name of the Swiss Confederation, "Eidgenossen," andperhaps this derivation is the most likely, though it cannot beconsidered beyond doubt. Whatever the origin of the name the pictureof the Huguenot is familiar to us. Of all the fine types of Frenchmanhood, that of the Huguenot is one of the finest. Gallic gaiety istempered with earnestness; intrepidity is strengthened with a new moralfibre like that of steel. Except in the case of a few great lords, whojoined the party without serious conviction, the high standard of theHuguenot morals was recognized even by their enemies. In an age ofprofligacy the "men of the religion," as they called themselves, walkedthe paths of rectitude and sobriety.

[1] Remy Belleau: La Reconnue, act 4, scene 2.

{209}

Charles, Duke of Bourbon,
Constable of France, d. 1527
|
|
+————————————-+——-+—————————+
| | |
Anthony, Duke of Vendôme Charles, Cardinal Louis, Prince
==Joan d'Albret, Queen of of Bourbon of Condé
| Navarre, d. 1562
|
|
Henry IV
1589-1610
==(1)Margaret of France
==(2)Mary de' Medici

______________________________________________________________________

Claude, Duke of Guise, d. 1527
|
|
+————————————+—+——————+
| | |
| | |
Francis, Duke of Guise Charles, Cardinal Mary==James V
d. 1563 of Lorraine | of Scotland
| |
| Mary, Queen
| of Scots
|
+———————————-+——————————+
| | |
Henry, Duke of Guise Charles, Duke of Louis, Cardinal of
d. 1588 Mayenne Guise, d. 1588

[Transcriber's note: "d." has been used here as a substitute for the "dagger" symbol (Unicode U+2020) that signifies the person's year of death.]

{210}

SECTION 3. THE WARS OF RELIGION. 1559-1598

[Sidenote: Francis II, 1559-60]

Henry II was followed by three of his sons in succession, each of them,in different degrees and ways, a weakling. The first of them wasFrancis II, a delicate lad of fifteen, who suffered from adenoids.Child as he was he had already been married for more than a year toMary Stuart, a daughter of James V of Scotland and a niece of Francisof Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine. As she was the one passion ofthe morose and feeble king, who, being legally of age was able tochoose his own ministers, the government of the realm fell into thestrong hands of "the false brood of Lorraine." Fearing and hatingthese men above all others the Huguenots turned to the Bourbons forprotection, but the king of Navarre was too weak a character to affordthem much help. Finding in the press their best weapon the Protestantsproduced a flood of pamphlets attacking the Cardinal of Lorraine as"the tiger of France."

A more definite plan to rid the country of the hated tyranny was thatknown as the Conspiracy of Amboise. Godfrey de Barry, Sieur de laRenaudie, pledged several hundred Protestants to go in a body topresent a petition to the king at Blois. How much further theirintentions went is not known, and perhaps was not definitely formulatedby themselves. The Venetian ambassador spoke in a contemporarydispatch of a plot to kill the cardinal and also the king if he wouldnot assent to their counsels, and said that the conspirators relied, tojustify this course, on the {211} declaration of Calvin that it waslawful to slay those who hindered the preaching of the gospel. Hearingof the conspiracy, Guise and his brother were ready. They transferredthe court from Blois to Amboise, by which move they upset the plans ofthe petitioners and also put the king into a more defensible castle.Soldiers, assembled for the occasion, met the Huguenots as theyadvanced in a body towards Amboise, [Sidenote: The tumult of Amboise,March 1560] shot down La Renaudie and some others on the spot andarrested the remaining twelve hundred, to be kept for subsequent trialand execution. The suspicion that fastened on the prince of Condé, abrother of the king of Navarre, was given some color by his frankavowal of sympathy with the conspirators. Though the Guises pressedtheir advantage to the utmost in forbidding all future assemblies ofheretics, the tumult of Amboise was vaguely felt, in the sultryatmosphere of pent-up passions, to be the avant-courier of a terrificstorm.

The early death of the sickly king left the throne to his brotherCharles IX, a boy of nine. [Sidenote: Charles IX, 1560-74] As he wasa minor, the regency fell to his mother, Catharine de' Medici, who foralmost thirty years was the real ruler of France. [Sidenote: Policy ofCatharine de' Medici] Notwithstanding what Brantôme calls "ungembonpoint très-riche," she was active of body and mind. Her largecorrespondence partly reveals the secrets of her power: much tact andinfinite pains to keep in touch with as many people and as many detailsof business as possible. Her want of beauty was supplied by graciousmanners and an elegant taste in art. As a connoisseur and anindefatigable collector she gratified her love of the magnificent notonly by beautiful palaces and gorgeous clothes, but in having a storeof pictures, statues, tapestries, furniture, porcelain, silver, books,and manuscripts.

A "politique" to her fingertips, Catharine had neither sympathy norpatience with the fanatics who {212} would put their religion abovepeace and prosperity. Surrounded by men as fierce as lions, she showedno little of the skill and intrepidity of the tamer in keeping them,for a time, from each others' throats. Soon after Charles ascended thethrone, she was almost hustled into domestic and foreign war by theoffer of Philip II of Spain to help her Catholic subjects against theHuguenots without her leave. She knew if that were done that, as shescrawled in her own peculiar French, "le Roy mon fils nave jeameslantyere aubeysance," [1] and she was determined "que personne ne pentnous brouller en lamitie en la quele je desire que set deus Royaumesdemeurent pendant mauye." [2] Through her goggle eyes she saw clearlywhere lay the path that she must follow. "I am resolved," she wrote,"to seek by all possible means to preserve the authority of the king myson in all things, and at the same time to keep the people in peace,unity and concord, without giving them occasion to stir or to changeanything." Fundamentally, this was the same policy as that of HenryIV. That she failed where he succeeded is not due entirely to thedifference in ability. In 1560 neither party was prepared to yield orto tolerate the other without a trial of strength, whereas a generationlater many members of both parties were sick of war.

[Sidenote: December 13, 1560]

Just as Francis was dying, the States General met at Orleans. Thisbody was divided into three houses, or estates, that of the clergy,that of the nobles, and that of the commons. The latter was sodemocratically chosen that even the peasants voted. Whether they hadvoted in 1484 is not known, but it is certain that they did so in 1560,and that it was in the interests of the crown to let them vote is shownby the increase in {213} the number of royal officers among thedeputies of the third estate. The peasants still regarded the king astheir natural protector against the oppression of the nobles.

The Estates were opened by Catharine's minister, Michael de L'Hôpital.Fully sympathizing with her policy of conciliation, he addressed theEstates as follows: [Sidenote: February 24, 1561] "Let us abandon thosediabolic words, names of parties, factions and seditions:—Lutherans,Huguenots, Papists; let us not change the name of Christians."Accordingly, an edict was passed granting an amnesty to the Huguenots,nominally for the purpose of allowing them to return to the Catholicchurch, but practically interpreted without reference to this proviso.

But the government found it easier to pass edicts than to restrain thezealots of both parties. The Protestants continued to smash images;the Catholics to mob the Protestants. Paris became, in the words ofBeza, "the city most bloody and murderous among all in the world."Under the combined effects of legal toleration and mob persecution theHuguenots grew mightily in numbers and power. Their natural leader,the King of Navarre, indeed failed them, for he changed his faithseveral times, his real cult, as Calvin remarked, being that of Venus.His wife, Joan d'Albret, however, became an ardent Calvinist.

At this point the government proposed a means of conciliation that hadbeen tried by Charles V in Germany and had there failed. The leadingtheologians of both confessions were summoned to a colloquy at Poissy.[Sidenote: Colloquy of Poissy, August, 1561] Most of the Germandivines invited were prevented by politics from coming, but the notedItalian Protestant Peter Martyr Vermigli and Theodore Beza of Genevawere present. The debate turned on the usual points at issue, and wasof course indecisive, {214} though the Huguenots did not hesitate toproclaim their own victory.

[Sidenote: January, 1562]

A fresh edict of toleration had hardly been issued when civil war wasprecipitated by a horrible crime. Some armed retainers of the Duke ofGuise, coming upon a Huguenot congregation at Vassy in Champagne,[Sidenote: Massacre of Vassy, March 1, 1562] attacked them and murderedthree hundred. A wild cry of fury rose from all the Calvinists;throughout the whole land there were riots. At Toulouse, for example,fighting in the streets lasted four days and four hundred personsperished. It was one of the worst years in the history of France. Averitable reign of terror prevailed everywhere, and while the cropswere destroyed famine stalked throughout the land. Bands of robbersand ravishers, under the names of Christian parties but savages atheart, put the whole people to ransom and to sack. Indeed, the Wars ofReligion were like hell; the tongue can describe them better than theimagination can conceive them. The whole sweet and pleasant land ofFrance, from the Burgundian to the Spanish frontier, was widowed anddesolated, her pride humbled by her own sons and her Golden Liliestrampled in the bloody mire. Foreign levy was called in to supplystrength to fratricidal arms. The Protestants, headed by Condé andColigny, raised an army and started negotiations with England. TheCatholics, however, had the best of the fighting. They captured Rouen,defended by English troops, and, under Guise, defeated the Huguenotsunder Coligny at Dreux. [Sidenote: December 19, 1562]

[Sidenote: February 18, 1563]

Two months later, Francis of Guise was assassinated by a Protestantnear Orleans. Coligny was accused of inciting the crime, which hedenied, though he confessed that he was glad of it. [Sidenote: Edictof Amboise March 19, 1563] The immediate beneficiary of the death ofthe duke was not the Huguenot, {215} however, so much as Catharine de'Medici. Continuing to put into practise her policy of tolerance sheissued an edict granting liberty of conscience to all and liberty ofworship under certain restrictions. Great nobles were allowed to holdmeetings for divine service according to the reformed manner in theirown houses, and one village in each bailiwick was allowed to have aProtestant chapel.

How consistently secular was Catharine's policy became apparent at thistime when she refused to publish the decrees of the Council of Trent,fearing that they might infringe on the liberties of the Gallicanchurch. In this she had the full support of most French Catholics.She continued to work for religious peace. One of her methods wascharacteristic of her and of the time. She selected "a flyingsquadron" of twenty-four beautiful maids of honor of high rank and lowprinciples to help her seduce the refractory nobles on both sides. Inmany cases she was successful. Condé, in love with one—or possiblywith several—of these sirens, forgot everything else, his wife, hisparty, his religion. His death in 1569 threw the leadership of theHuguenots into the steadier and stronger grasp of Coligny.

But such means of dealing with a profoundly dangerous crisis were ofcourse but the most wretched palliatives. The Catholic bigots wouldpermit no dallying with the heretics. In 1567 they were strong enoughto secure the disgrace of L'Hôpital and in the following year to extorta royal edict unconditionally forbidding the exercise of the reformedcult. The Huguenots again rebelled and in 1569 suffered two severedefeats [Sidenote: Huguenots defeated] at Jarnac and at Moncontour.The Catholics were jubilant, fully believing, as Sully says, that atlast the Protestants would have to submit. But nothing is moreremarkable than the apparently slight effect of military success orfailure on the {216} strength and numbers of the two faiths. "We hadbeaten our enemies over and over again," cried the Catholic soldierMontluc in a rage, "we were winning by force of arms but they triumphedby means of their diabolical writings."

The Huguenots, however, did not rely entirely on the pen. Theirstronghold was no longer in the north but was now in the south andwest. The reason for this may be partly found in the preparation ofthe soil for their seed by the medieval heresies, but still more in thestrong particularistic spirit of that region. The ancient provinces ofPoitou and Guienne, Gascony and Languedoc, were almost as conscious oftheir southern and Provençal culture as they were of their Frenchcitizenship. The strength of the centralizing tendencies lay north ofthe Loire; in the south local privileges were more esteemed and moreinsisted upon. While Protestantism was persecuted by the government atParis it was often protected by cities of the south. [Sidenote: LaRochelle] The most noteworthy of these was La Rochelle on the Atlanticcoast near Bordeaux. Though coming late to the support of theReformation, its conversion was thorough and lasting. To protect thenew religion it successfully asserted its municipal freedom almost tothe point of independence. Like the Dutch Beggars of the Sea its armedprivateers preyed upon the commerce of Catholic powers, a mode ofwarfare from which the city derived immense booty.

The Huguenots tried but failed to get foreign allies. Neither Englandnor Germany sent them any help. [Sidenote: Battle of Mons, July 17,1572] Their policy of supporting the revolt of the Low Countriesagainst Spain turned out disastrously for themselves when the Frenchunder Coligny were defeated at Mons by the troops of Philip.

The Catholics now believed the time ripe for a decisive blow. Underthe stimulus of the Jesuits they {217} had for a short time beenconducting an offensive and effective propaganda. Leagues were formedto combat the organizations of the Huguenots, armed "Brotherhoods ofthe Holy Spirit" as they were called. The chief obstacle in their pathseemed to be a small group of powerful nobles headed by Coligny.Catharine and the Guises resolved to cut away this obstacle with theassassin's knife. Charles, who was personally on good terms withColigny, hesitated, but he was too weak a youth to hold out long.There seems to be good reason to believe that all the queen dowager andher advisers contemplated was the murder of a few leaders and that theydid not foresee one of the most extensive massacres in history.

Her first attempt to have Coligny assassinated [Sidenote: August 22,1572] aroused the anger of the Huguenot leaders and made them moredangerous than before. A better laid and more comprehensive plan wastherefore carried out on the eve of St. Bartholomew's day. [Sidenote:Massacre of St. Bartholomew, August 24, to October 3] Early in theevening of August 23, Henry of Guise, a son of Duke Francis, andColigny's bitterest personal enemy, went with armed men to the house ofthe admiral and murdered him. From thence they proceeded to the housesof other prominent Huguenots to slay them in the same manner. News ofthe man-hunt spread through the city with instant rapidity, the mobrose and massacred all the Huguenots they could find as well as anumber of foreigners, principally Germans and Flemings. De Thou saysthat two thousand were slain in Paris before noon of August 24. Ageneral pillage followed.

The king hesitated to assume responsibility for so serious a tumult.His letters of August 24 to various governors of provinces and toambassadors spoke only of a fray between Guise and Coligny, and statedthat he wished to preserve order. But with these very {218} letters hesent messengers to all quarters with verbal orders to kill all theleading Protestants. On August 27 he again wrote of it as "a great andlamentable sedition" originating in the desire of Guise to revenge hisfather on Coligny. The king said that the fury of the populace wassuch that he was unable to bring the remedy he wished, and he againissued directions for the preservation of order. But at the same timehe declared that the Guises had acted at his command to punish thosewho had conspired against him and against the old religion. In fact,he gave out a rapid series of contradictory accounts and orders, and inthe meantime, from August 25 to October 3 terrible series of massacrestook place in almost all the provinces. [Sidenote: Other massacres]Two hundred Huguenots perished at Meaux, from 500 to 1000 at Orleans, amuch larger number at Lyons. It is difficult to estimate the totalnumber of victims. Sully, who narrowly escaped, says that 70,000 wereslain. Hotman, another contemporary, says 50,000. Knowing how muchfigures are apt to be exaggerated even by judicious men, we must assumethat this number is too large. On the other hand the lowest estimategiven by modern Catholic investigators, 5000, is certainly too small.Probably between 10,000 and 20,000 is correct. Those who fell were theflower of the party.

Whatever may have been the precise degree of guilt of the Frenchrulers, which in any case was very grave, they took no pains to concealtheir exultation over an event that had at last, as they believed,ground their enemies to powder. In jubilant tone Catharine wrote toher son-in-law, Philip of Spain, that God had given her son the king ofFrance the means "of wiping out those of his subjects who wererebellious to God and to himself." Philip sent his heartycongratulations and heard a Te Deum sung. The pope struck a medal{219} with a picture of an avenging angel and the legend, "Ugonotorumstrages," and ordered an annual Te Deum which was, in fact, celebratedfor a long time. But on the other hand a cry of horror arose fromGermany and England. Elizabeth received the French ambassador dressedin mourning and declared to him that "the deed had been too bloody."

Though the triumph of the Catholics was loudly shouted, it was not ascomplete as they hoped. The Huguenots seemed cowed for a moment, butnothing is more remarkable than the constancy of the people.Recantations were extremely few. The Reformed pastors, nourished onthe Old Testament, saw in the affliction that had befallen them nothingbut the means of proving the faithful. Preparations for resistancewere made at once in the principal cities of the south. [Sidenote:Siege of La Rochelle] La Rochelle, besieged by the royal troops,evinced a heroism worthy of the cause. While the men repulsed thefurious assaults of the enemy the women built up the walls thatcrumbled under the powerful fire of the artillery. A faction ofcitizens who demanded surrender was sternly suppressed and the cityheld out until relief came from an unhoped quarter. The king'sbrother, Henry Duke of Anjou, was elected to the throne of Poland oncondition that he would allow liberty of conscience to PolishProtestants. In order to appear consistent the French governmenttherefore stopped for the moment the persecution of the Huguenots. Thesiege of La Rochelle was abandoned and a treaty made allowing libertyof worship in that city, in Nîmes and Montauban and in the houses ofsome of the great nobles.

In less than two years after the appalling massacre the Protestantswere again strong and active. A chant of victory sounded from theirdauntless ranks. More than ever before they became republican inprinciple. {220} Their pamphleteers, among them Hotman, fiercelyattacked the government of Catharine, and asserted their rights.

Charles was a consumptive. The hemorrhages characteristic of hisdisease reminded him of the torrents of blood that he had caused toflow from his country. Broken in body and haunted by superstitiousterrors the wretched man died on May 30, 1574. [Sidenote: Henry III,1547-89] He was succeeded by his brother, Henry III, recently electedking of Poland, a man of good parts, interested in culture and instudy, a natural orator, not destitute of intelligence. His mother'spet and spoiled child, brought up among the girls of the "flyingsquadron," he was in a continual state of nervous and sensualtitillation that made him avid of excitement and yet unable to endureit. A thunderstorm drove him to hide in the cellar and to tears. Hewas at times overcome by fear of death and hell, and at times hadcrises of religious fervour. But his life was a perpetual debauch,ever seeking new forms of pleasure in strange ways. He would walk thestreets at night accompanied by gay young rufflers in search ofadventures. He had a passion for some handsome young men, commonlycalled "the darlings," whom he kept about him dressed as women.

His reign meant a new lease of power to his mother, who worshipped himand to whom he willingly left the arduous business of government. Bythis time she was bitterly hated by the Huguenots, who paid theircompliments to her in a pamphlet entitled A wonderful Discourse on theLife, Deeds and Debauchery of Catharine de' Medici, perhaps written inpart by the scholar Henry Estienne. She was accused not only of crimesof which she was really guilty, like the massacre of St. Bartholomew,but of having murdered {221} the dauphin Francis, her husband's elderbrother, and others who had died natural deaths, and of havingsystematically depraved her children in order to keep the reins ofauthority in her own hands.

Frightened by the odium in which his mother was held, Henry III thoughtit wise to disavow all part or lot in St. Bartholomew and to concede tothe Huguenots liberty of worship everywhere save in Paris and inwhatever place the court might be for the moment.

So difficult was the position of the king that by this attempt toconciliate his enemies he only alienated his friends. The bigotedCatholics, finding the crown impotent, began to take energetic measuresto help themselves. In 1576 they formed a League to secure the benefitof association. [Sidenote: The League] Henry Duke of Guise drew upthe declaration that formed the constituent act of the League. Itproposed "to establish the law of God in its entirety, to reinstate andmaintain divine service according to the form and manner of the holy,Catholic and apostolic church," and also "to restore to the provincesand estates of this kingdom the rights, privileges, franchises, andancient liberties such as they were in the time of King Clovis, thefirst Christian king." This last clause is highly significant asshowing how the Catholics had now adopted the tactics of the Huguenotsin appealing from the central government to the provincial privileges.It is exactly the same issue as that of Federalism versus States'Rights in American history; the party in power emphasizes the nationalauthority, while the smaller divisions furnish a refuge for theminority.

The constituency of the League rapidly became large. The declarationof Guise was circulated throughout the country something like a monsterpetition, and those who wished bound themselves to support it. The{222} power of this association of Catholics among nobles and peoplesoon made it so formidable that Henry III reversed his former policy,recognized the League and declared himself its head.

[Sidenote: Estates General of Blois]

The elections for the States General held at Blois in 1576 provedhighly favorable to the League. The chief reason for theiroverwhelming success was the abstention of the Protestants from voting.In continental Europe it has always been and is now common forminorities to refuse to vote, the idea being that this refusal is initself a protest more effective than a definite minority vote would be.To an American this seems strange, for it has been proved time andagain that a strong minority can do a great deal to shape legislation.But the Huguenots reasoned differently, and so seated but oneProtestant in the whole assembly, a deputy to the second, or noble,estate. The privileged orders pronounced immediately for theenforcement of religious unity, but in the Third Estate there was awarm debate. John Bodin, the famous publicist, though a Catholic,pleaded hard for tolerance. As finally passed, the law demanded areturn to the old religion, but added the proviso that the means takenshould be "gentle and pacific and without war." So impossible was thisin practice that the government was again obliged to issue a decreegranting liberty of conscience and restricted liberty of worship.[Sidenote: 1577]

Under the oppression of the ruinous civil wars the people began to growmore and more restless. The king was extremely unpopular. Perhaps thepeople might have winked even at such outrages against decency as wereperpetrated by the king had not their critical faculties been sharpenedby the growing misery of their condition. The wars had bankrupted boththem and the government, and the desperate expedients of the latter toraise money only increased the poverty {223} of the masses. Everyestate, every province, was urged to contribute as much as possible,and most of them replied, in humble and loyal tone, but firmly, beggingfor relief from the ruinous exactions. The sale of offices, ofjustice, of collectorships of taxes, of the administration, of thearmy, of the public domain, was only less onerous than the sale ofmonopolies and inspectorships of markets and ports. The onlyprosperous class seemed to be the government agents and contractors.In fact, for the first time in the history of France the people werebecoming thoroughly disaffected and some of them semi-republican infeeling.

[Sidenote: 1584]

The king had no sons and when his only remaining brother died a newelement of discord and perplexity was introduced in that the heir tothe throne, Henry of Navarre, was a Protestant. Violent attacks on himwere published in the pamphlet press. The League was revived instronger form than before. Its head, Guise, selected as candidate forthe throne the uncle of Henry of Navarre, Charles, Cardinal of Bourbon,a stupid and violent man of sixty-four. The king hastened to maketerms with the League and commanded all Protestants to leave thecountry in six months. At this point the pope intervened to strengthenhis cause by issuing the "Bull of Deprivation" [Sidenote: 1585]declaring Henry of Navarre incapable, as a heretic, of succeeding tothe throne. Navarre at once denounced the bull as contrary to Frenchlaw and invalid, and he was supported both by the Parlement of Parisand by some able pamphleteers. Hotman published his attack on the"vain and blind fulmination" of the pontiff.

[Sidenote: Battle of Coutras, October 20, 1587]

An appeal to arms was inevitable. At the battle of Coutras, theHuguenots, led by Henry of Navarre, won their first victory. Whilethis increased {224} Navarre's power and his popularity with hisfollowers, the majority of the people rallied to the League. In the"war of the three Henrys" as it was called, the king had more to fearfrom Henry of Guise than from the Huguenot. Cooped up at the Tuileriesthe monarch was under so irksome a restraint that he was finallyobliged to regain freedom by flight, on May 12, 1588. The electionsfor the States General gave an enormous majority to the League. In anevil hour for himself the king resorted again to that much used weapon,assassination. By his order Guise was murdered. "Now I am king," hewrote with a sigh of relief. But he was mistaken. The League, morehostile than ever, swearing to avenge the death of its captain, was nowfrankly revolutionary.

It continued to exercise its authority under the leadership of aCommittee of Sixteen. These gentlemen purged the still royalistParlement of Paris. By the hostility of the League the king was forcedto an alliance with Henry of Navarre. This is interesting as showinghow completely the position of the two leading parties had becomereversed. The throne, once the strongest ally of the church, was nowsupported chiefly by the Huguenots who had formerly been in rebellion.Indeed by this time "the wars of religion" had become to a very largeextent dynastic and social.

On August 1, 1589, the king was assassinated by a Dominican fanatic.
His death was preceded shortly by that of Catharine de' Medici.

[Sidenote: Henry IV, 1589-1610]

Henry IV was a man of thirty-five, of middle stature, but very hardyand brave. He was one of the most intelligent of the French kings,vigorous of brain as of body. Few could resist his delicatecompliments and the promises he knew how to lavish. The glamour of hispersonality has survived even until now. In a song still popular he iscalled "the gallant king who knew {225} how to fight, to make love andto drink." He is also remembered for his wish that every peasant mighthave a fowl in his pot. His supreme desire was to see France, bleedingand impoverished by civil war, again united, strong and happy. Heconsistently subordinated religion to political ends. To him almostalone is due the final adoption of tolerance, not indeed as a naturalright, but as a political expedient.

The difficulties with which he had to contend were enormous. TheCatholics, headed by the Duke of Mayenne, a brother of Guise, agreed torecognize him for six months in order that he might have theopportunity of becoming reconciled to the church. But Mayenne, whowished to be elected king by the States General, soon commencedhostilities. The skirmish at Arques between the forces of Henry andMayenne, resulting favorably to the former, was followed by the battleof Ivry. [Sidenote: Battle of Ivry, March 14, 1590] Henry, with twothousand horse and eight thousand foot, against eight thousand horseand twelve thousand foot of the League, addressed his soldiers in astirring oration: "God is with us. Behold his enemies and ours; beholdyour king. Charge! If your standards fail you, rally to my whiteplume; you will find it on the road to victory and honor." At firstthe fortune of war went against the Huguenots, but the personal courageof the king, who, with "a terrible white plume" in his helmet led hiscavalry to the attack, wrested victory from the foe.

[Sidenote: Siege of Paris]

From Ivry Henry marched to Paris, the headquarters of the League. Withthirteen thousand soldiers he besieged this town of 220,000inhabitants, garrisoned by fifty thousand troops. With their usualself-sacrificing devotion, the people of Paris held out against thehorrors of famine. The clergy aroused the fanaticism of the populace,promising heaven to those who died; women protested that they would eat{226} their children before they would surrender. With provisions forone month, Paris held out for four. Dogs, cats, rats, and grass wereeaten; the bones of animals and even of dead people were ground up andused for flour; the skins of animals were devoured. Thirteen thousandpersons died of hunger and twenty thousand of the fever brought on bylack of food. But even this miracle of fanaticism could not have savedthe capital eventually, but for the timely invasion of France from thenorth by the Duke of Parma, who joined Mayenne on the Marne. Henryraised the siege to meet the new menace, but the campaign of 1591 wasfruitless for both sides.

[Sidenote: Anarchy]

France seemed to be in a state of anarchy under the operation of manyand various forces. Pope Gregory XIV tried to influence the Catholicsto unite against Henry, but he was met by protests from the Parlementsin the name of the Gallican Liberties. The "Politiques" were ready tosupport any strong de facto government, but could not find it. Thecities hated the nobles, and the republicans resented the "courteouswarfare" which either side was said to wage on the other, sparing eachother's nobles and slaughtering the commons.

[Sidenote: 1593]

At this point the States General were convoked at Paris by the League.So many provinces refused to send deputies that there were only 128members out of a normal 505. A serial publication by several authors,called the Satyre Menippée, poured ridicule on the pretentious of thenational assembly. Various solutions of the deadlock were proposed.Philip II of Spain offered to support Mayenne as Lieutenant General ofFrance if the League would make his daughter, as the heiress throughher mother, Elizabeth of Valois, queen. This being refused, Philipnext proposed that the young Duke of Guise should marry his daughter{227} and become king. But this proposal also won little support. Theenemies of Henry IV were conscious of his legitimate rights and jealousof foreign interference; the only thing that stood in the way of theirrecognizing him was his heresy.

[Sidenote: Henry's conversion]

Henry, finding that there seemed no other issue to an intolerablesituation, at last resolved, though with much reluctance, to change hisreligion. On July 25, 1593, he abjured the Protestant faith, kneelingto the Archbishop of Bourges, and was received into the bosom of theRoman church. That his conversion was due entirely to the belief that"Paris was worth a mass" is, of course, plain. Indeed, he franklyavowed that he still scrupled at some articles, such as purgatory, theworship of the saints, and the power of the pope. And it must beremembered that his motives were not purely selfish. The alternativeseemed to be indefinite civil war with all its horrors, and Henrydeliberately but regretfully sacrificed his confessional convictions onthe altar of his country.

The step was not immediately successful. The Huguenots were naturallyenraged. The Catholics doubted the king's sincerity. At Paris thepreachers of the League ridiculed the conversion from the pulpit. "Mydog," sneered one of them, "were you not at mass last Sunday? Comehere and let us offer you the crown." But the "politiques" rallied tothe throne and the League rapidly melted away. The Satyre Menippée,supporting the interests of Henry, did much to turn public opinion inhis favor.

A further impression was made by his coronation at Chartres in 1594.When the surrender of Paris followed, the king entered his capital toreceive the homage of the Sorbonne and the Parlement of Paris. Thesuperstitious were convinced of Henry's sincerity when he touched somescrofulous persons and they {228} were said to be healed. Curing the"king's evil" was one of the oldest attributes of royalty, and it couldnot be imagined that it would descend to an impostor.

Henry showed the wisest statesmanship in consolidating his power. Hebought up those who still held out against him at their own price,remarking that whatever it cost it would be cheaper than fighting them.He showed a wise clemency in dealing with his enemies, banishing onlyabout 130 persons. Next came absolution by Pope Clement VIII, who,after driving as hard a bargain as he could, finally granted it onSeptember 17, 1595.

But even yet all danger was not past. Enraged at seeing France escapefrom his clutches, Philip of Spain declared war, and he could stillcount on the support of Mayenne and the last remnant of the League.The daring action of Henry at Fontaine-Française on June 5, 1595, wherewith three hundred horse he routed twelve hundred Spaniards, sodiscouraged his enemies that Mayenne hastened to submit, and peace wassigned with Spain in 1598. The finances of the realm, naturally in achaotic state, were brought to order and solvency by a Huguenot noble,the Duke of Sully, Henry's ablest minister.

The legal status of the Protestants was still to be settled. It wasnot changed by Henry's abjuration, and the king was determined at allcosts to avoid another civil war. [Sidenote: Edict of Nantes, April13, 1598] He therefore published the Edict of Nantes, declared to beperpetual and irrevocable. By it liberty of conscience was granted toall "without being questioned, vexed or molested," and without being"forced to do anything contrary to their religion." Liberty of worshipwas conceded in all places in which it had been practised for the lasttwo years; i.e. in two places in every bailiwick except large towns,where services were to be held outside the walls, and {229} in thehouses of the great nobles. Protestant worship was forbidden at Parisand for five leagues (twelve and one-half miles) outside the walls.Protestants had all other legal rights of Catholics and were eligibleto all offices. To secure them in these rights a separate court ofjustice was instituted, a division of the Parlement of Paris to becalled the Edict Chamber and to consist of ten Catholic and sixProtestant judges. But a still stronger guarantee was given in theirrecognition as a separately organized state within the state. The kingagreed to leave two hundred towns in their hands, some of which, likeMontpellier, Montauban, and La Rochelle, were fortresses in which theykept garrisons and paid the governors. As they could raise 25,000soldiers at a time when the national army in time of peace was only10,000, their position seemed absolutely impregnable. So favorable wasthe Edict to the Huguenots that it was bitterly opposed by the Catholicclergy and by the Parlement of Paris. Only the personal insistence ofthe king finally carried it.

[Sidenote: Reasons for failure of French Protestantism]

Protestantism was stronger in the sixteenth century in France than itever was thereafter. During the eighty-seven years while the Edict ofNantes was in force it lost much ground, and when that Edict wasrevoked by a doting king and persecution began afresh, the Huguenotswere in no condition to resist. [Sidenote: 1685] From a totalconstituency at its maximum of perhaps a fifth or a sixth of the wholepopulation, the Protestants have now sunk to less than two per cent.(650,000 out of 39,000,000). The history of the rise and decline ofthe Huguenot movement is a melancholy record of persecution and ofheroism. How great the number of martyrs was can never be knownaccurately. Apart from St. Bartholomew there were several lessermassacres, the wear and tear of a generation of war, and {230} theunremitting pressure of the law that claimed hundreds of victims a year.

[Sidenote: Hostility of government]

Three principal causes can be assigned for the failure of theReformation to do more than fight a drawn battle in France. The firstand least important of these was the steady hostility of thegovernment. This hostility was assured by the mutually advantageousalliance between the throne and the church sealed in the Concordat ofBologna of 1516. But that the opposition of the government, heavily asit weighed, was not and could not be the decisive force in defeatingProtestantism is proved, in my judgment, by the fact that even when theHuguenots had a king of their own persuasion they were unable to obtainthe mastery. Had their faith won the support not only of aconsiderable minority, but of the actual majority of the people, theycould surely at this time have secured the government and made France aProtestant state.

[Sidenote: Protestantism came too late]

The second cause of the final failure of the Reformation was thetardiness with which it came to France. It did not begin to make itsreally popular appeal until some years after 1536, when Calvin'swritings attained a gradual publicity. This was twenty years laterthan the Reformation came forcibly home to the Germans, and in thosetwenty years it had made its greatest conquests north of the Rhine. Ofcauses as well as of men it is true that there is a tide in theiraffairs which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune, but which, oncemissed, ebbs to defeat. Every generation has a different interest; toevery era the ideals of that immediately preceding become stale andold-fashioned. The writings of every age are a polemic against thoseof their fathers; every dogma has its day, and after every wave ofenthusiam [Transcriber's note: enthusiasm?] a reaction sets in. Thusit was that the Reformation {231} missed, though it narrowly missed,the propitious moment for conquering France. Enough had been said ofit during the reign of Francis to make the people tired of it, but notenough to make them embrace it. By the time that Calvin had becomewell known, the Catholics had awakened and had seized many of theweapons of their opponents, a fresh statement of belief, a newenthusiasm, a reformed ethical standard. The Council of Trent, theJesuits, the other new orders, were only symptoms of a still morewidely prevalent Catholic revival that came, in France, just in thenick of time to deprive the Protestants of many of their claims topopular favor.

[Sidenote: Beaten by the Renaissance]

But probably the heaviest weight in the scale against the Reformationwas the Renaissance—far stronger in France than in Germany. The onemarched from the north, while the other was wafted up from Italy. Theymet, not as hostile armies but rather—to use a humble, commercialillustration—as two competing merchants. The goods they offered werenot the same, not even similar, but the appeal of each was of such anature that few minds could be the whole-hearted devotees of both. Thenew learning and the beauties of Italian art and literature sapped awaythe interest of just those intelligent classes whose support was neededto make the triumph of the Reformation complete. Terrible as were thelosses of the Huguenots by fire and sword, considerable as were thedefections from their ranks of those who found in the reformed Catholicchurch a spiritual refuge, still greater was the loss of the Protestantcause in failing to secure the adherence of such minds as Dolet andRabelais, Ronsard and Montaigne, and of the thousands influenced bythem. And a study of just these men will show how the Italianinfluence worked and how it grew stronger in its rivalry with thereligious interest. {232} Whereas Marot had found something tointerest him in the new doctrines, Ronsard bitterly hated them.Passionately devoted, as he and the rest of the Pleiade were, to thesensuous beauties of Italian poetry, he had neither understanding ofnor patience with dogmatic subtleties. In the Huguenots he saw nothingbut mad fanatics and dangerous fomentors of rebellion. In hisDiscourses on the Evils of the Times, he laid all the woes of Franceat the door of the innovators. And powerfully his greater lyricsseduced the mind of the public from the contemplation of divinity tothe enjoyment of earthly beauty.

The same intensification of the contrast between the two spirits isseen in comparing Montaigne with Rabelais. It is true that Rabelaisridiculed all positive religion, but nevertheless it fascinated him.His theological learning is remarkable. But Montaigne ignored religionas far as possible. [Sidenote: Montaigne's aloofness] Nourished fromhis earliest youth on the great classical writers, he had no interestapart from "the kingdom of man." He preferred to remain in the oldfaith because that course caused him the least trouble. He had nosympathy with the Protestants, but he did not hate them, as didRonsard. During the wars of religion, he maintained friendly relationswith the leaders of both parties. And he could not believe that creedwas the real cause of the civil strife. "Take from the Catholic army,"said he, "all those actuated by pure zeal for the church or for theking and country, and you will not have enough men left to form onecompany." It is strange that beneath the evil passions andself-seeking of the champions of each party he could not see the fierceflame of popular heroism and fanaticism; but that he, and thousands ofmen like him, could not do so, and could not enter, even byimagination, into the causes {233} which, but a half century earlier,had set the world on fire, largely explains how the religious issue hadlost its savour and why Protestantism failed in France.

[1] "The king my son will never have entire obedience."

[2] "That no one may embroil us in the friendship in which I desirethat these two kingdoms shall remain during my lifetime."

{234}

CHAPTER V

THE NETHERLANDS

SECTION 1. THE LUTHERAN REFORM

[Sidenote: The Netherlands]

The Netherlands have always been a favorite topic for the speculation ofthose philosophers who derive a large part of national character fromgeographical conditions. A land that needed reclaiming from the sea byhard labor, a country situated at those two great outlets of Europeancommerce, the mouths of the Rhine and the Scheldt, a borderland betweenGerman and Latin culture, naturally moulded a brave, stubborn, practicaland intelligent people, destined to play in history a part seeminglybeyond their scope and resources.

The people of the Netherlands became, to all intents, a state before theybecame a nation. The Burgundian dukes of the fourteenth and fifteenthcentury added to their fiefs counties, dukedoms and bishoprics, aroundthe nucleus of their first domain, until they had forged a compact andpowerful realm. [Sidenote: Philip the Good, 1419-67] Philip the Good,Duke of Burgundy and lord, under various titles, of much of theNetherlands, deserved the title of Conditor Belgii by his successfulwars on France and by his statesmanlike policy of centralization. Tofoster unity he created the States General—borrowing the name andfunction thereof from France—in which all of the seventeen provinces[1]of the Netherlands were represented on great occasions. Continuallyincreasing {235} in power with reference to the various localities, itremained subordinate to the prince, who had the sole right of initiatinglegislation. At first it met now in one city, then in another, but after1530 always convened at Brussels, and always used the French languageofficially.

[Sidenote: Charles the Bold, 1467-77]

Charles the Bold completed and yet endangered the work of Philip, for hewas worsted in mortal strife with Louis XI of France and, dying inbattle, left his dominions to his daughter, Mary. [Sidenote: Maximilian,1477-93] Her husband, the Emperor Maximilian, and her son, Philip theHandsome, [Sidenote: Philip the Handsome, 1493-1506] added to her realmsthose vast dominions that made her grandson, Charles, the greatestpotentate in Europe. Born in Ghent, reared in the Netherlands, andspeaking only the French of the Walloons, Charles was always regarded byhis subjects as one of themselves. He almost completed the unificationof the Burgundian state by the conquest of Tournay from France (1521),and the annexation of the independent provinces of Friesland (1523),Overyssel and Utrecht (1528), Groningen (1536) and Guelders (1543).Liège still remained a separate entity under its prince-bishops. Buteven under Charles, notwithstanding a general feeling of loyalty to thehouse of Hapsburg, each province was more conscious of its ownindividuality than were the people as a whole of common patriotism. Someof the provinces lay within the Empire, others were vassals of France, afew were independent. Dutch was regarded as a dialect of German. Themost illustrious Netherlander of the time, Erasmus, in discussing hisrace, does not even contemplate the possibility of there being a nationcomposed of Dutch and Flemish men. The only alternative that presentsitself to him is whether he is French or German and, having been born atRotterdam, he decides in favor of the latter.

{236}

[Sidenote: Classes]

The Burgundian princes found their chief support in the nobility, in anumerous class of officials, and in the municipal aristocracies. Thenobles, transformed from a feudal caste to a court clique, even thoughthey retained, as satellites of the monarch, much wealth and power, hadrelatively lost ground to the rising pretensions of the cities and of thecommercial class. The clergy, too, were losing their old independence insubservience to a government which regulated their tithes and forbadetheir indulgence-trade. In 1515 Charles secured from Leo X and again in1530 from Clement VII the right of nomination to vacant benefices. Hewas able to make of the bishops his tools and to curtail the freedom,jurisdiction, and financial privileges of the clergy considerably becausethe spiritual estate had lost favor with the people and received nosupport from them.

As the two privileged classes surrendered their powers to the monarch,the third estate was coming into its own. Not until the war ofindependence, however, was it able to withstand the combination ofbureaucracy and plutocracy that made common cause with the centralgovernment against the local rights of the cities and the customaryprivileges of the gilds. Almost everywhere the prince was able, with thetacit support of the wealthier burghers, to substitute for the officerselected by the gilds his own commissioners. [Sidenote: Revolt of Ghent]But this usurpation, together with a variety of economic ills for whichthe commoners were inclined, quite wrongly, to blame the government,caused general discontent and in one case open rebellion. The gilds ofGhent, a proud and ancient city, suffering from the encroachments ofcapitalism and from the decline of the Flemish cloth industry, had longasserted among their rights that of each gild to refuse to pay one of thetaxes, any one it chose, levied by the government. [Sidenote: 1539] Theattempt {237} of the government to suppress this privilege caused arising which took the characteristically modern form of a general strike.The regent of the Netherlands, Mary, yielded at first to the demands ofthe gilds, as she had no means of coercion convenient. Charles was inSpain at the time, but hurried northward, being granted free passagethrough France by the king who felt he had an interest in aiding hisfellow monarch to put down rebellious subjects. Early in 1540 Charlesentered Ghent at the head of a sufficient army. He soon meted out asanguinary punishment to the "brawlers" as the strikers were called,humbled the city government, deprived it of all local privileges,suppressed all independent corporations, asserted the royal prerogativeof nominating aldermen, and erected a fortress to overawe the burghers.Thus the only overt attempt to resist the authority of Charles V, apartfrom one or two insignificant Anabaptist riots, was crushed.

In matters of foreign policy the people of the Netherlands naturallywished to be guided in reference to their own interests and not to thelarger interests of the emperor's other domains. Wielding immensewealth—during the middle decades of the sixteenth century Antwerp wasboth the first port and the first money-market of Europe—and cherishingthe sentiment that Charles was a native of their land, they for some timesweetly flattered themselves that their interests were the center aroundwhich gravitated the desires and needs of the Empire and of Spain.Indeed, the balance of these two great states, and the regency ofMargaret of Austria, [Sidenote: Margaret of Austria, Regent, 1522-31] aHapsburg determined to give the Netherlands their due, for a time allowedthem at least the semblance of getting their wishes. But when Charles'ssister, Mary of Hungary, succeeded Margaret as regent, she was tooentirely {238} dependent on her brother, and he too determined to consultlarger than Burgundian interests, to allow the Netherlands more than thesmallest weight in larger plans. The most that she could do was tounify, centralize and add to the provinces, and to get what commercialadvantages treaties could secure. Thus, she redeemed Luxemburg from theMargrave of Baden to whom Maximilian had pawned it. Thus, also, shenegotiated fresh commercial treaties with England and unified thecoinage. But with all these achievements, distinctly advantageous to thepeople she governed, her efforts to increase the power of the crown andthe necessity she was under of subordinating her policy to that ofGermany and Spain, made her extremely unpopular.

The relationship of the Netherlands to the Empire was a delicate andimportant question. Though the Empire was the feudal suzerain of most ofthe Burgundian provinces, Charles felt far more keenly for his rights asan hereditary, local prince than for the aggrandizement of his Empire,and therefore tried, especially after he had left Austria to his brotherFerdinand, [Sidenote: September 7, 1522] to loosen rather than tostrengthen the bond. Even as early as 1512, when the Imperial Dietdemanded that the "common penny" be levied in the Netherlands, Charles'scouncil aided and abetted his Burgundian subjects in refusing to pay it.In 1530 the Netherlands, in spite of urgent complaints from the Diet,completely freed itself from imperial jurisdiction in the administrationof justice. Matters became still more complicated when Utrecht,Friesland, Groningen and Guelders, formerly belonging to the Westphaliandistrict of the Empire, were annexed by Charles as Burgundian prince.Probably he would not have been able to vindicate these acts of power,had not his victory at Mühlberg [Sidenote: 1547] freed him from the {239}restraints of the imperial constitution. A convention was made at thenext Diet of Augsburg, [Sidenote: Convention of June 26, 1548] providingthat henceforth the Netherlands should form a separate district, the"Burgundian circle," of the Empire, and that their prince, as such,should be represented in the Diet and in the Imperial Supreme Court.Taxes were so apportioned that in time of peace the Netherlands shouldcontribute to the imperial treasury as much as did two electors, and intime of war as much as three. This treaty nominally added to the Empiretwo new counties, Flanders and Artois, and it gave the whole Netherlandsthe benefit of imperial protection. But, though ratified by the StatesGeneral promptly, the convention remained almost a dead letter, and leftthe Netherlands virtually autonomous. As long as they were unmolestedthe Netherlands forgot their union entirely, and when, under the pressureof Spanish rule, they later remembered and tried to profit by it, theyfound that the Empire had no wish to revive it.

[Sidenote: Reformation]

The general causes of the religious revolution were the same in the LowCountries as in other lands. The ground was prepared by the mystics ofthe earlier ages, by the corruption of and hatred for the clergy, and buythe Renaissance. The central situation of the country made it especiallyopen to all currents of European thought. Printing was early introducedfrom Germany and expanded so rapidly in these years [Sidenote: 1525-55]that no less than fifty new publishing houses were erected. As Antwerpwas the most cosmopolitan of cities, so Erasmus was the most nearly thecitizen of the world in that era. The great humanist, who did so much toprepare for the Reformation, spent in his native land just those earlyyears of its first appearance when he most favored Luther.

{240} A group to take up with the Wittenberg professor's doctrines werethe Augustinians, many of whom had been in close relations with the Saxonfriaries. One of them, James Probst, had been prior of Wittenberg wherehe learned to know Luther well [Sidenote: 1515] and when he became priorof the convent at Antwerp he started a rousing propaganda in favor of thereform. [Sidenote: 1518] Another Augustinian, Henry of Zütphen, madehis friary at Dordrecht the center of a Lutheran movement. Hoen at theHague, Hinne Rode at Utrecht, Gerard Lister at Zwolle, Melchior Miritzschat Ghent, were soon in correspondence with Luther and became missionariesof his faith. His books, which circulated among the learned in Latin,were some of them translated into Dutch as early as 1520.

The German commercial colony at Antwerp was another channel for theinfiltration of the Lutheran gospel. [Sidenote: 1520-1] The manytravelers, among them Albert Dürer, brought with them tidings of therevolt and sowed its seeds in the soil of Flanders and Holland.Singularly enough, the colony of Portuguese Jews, the Marranos as theywere called, became, if not converts, at least active agents in thedissemination of Lutheran works.

[Sidenote: Catholic answers]

A vigorous counter-propaganda was at once started by the partisans of thepope. This was directed against both Erasmus and Luther and consistedlargely, according to the reports of the former, in the most violentinvective. Nicholas of Egmont, "a man with a white pall but a blackheart" stormed in the pulpit against the new heretics. Another maninterspersed a sermon on charity with objurgations against those whom hecalled "geese, asses, stocks, and Antichrists." [Sidenote: 1533] OneDominican said he wished he could fasten his teeth in Luther's throat,for he would not fear to go to the Lord's supper with that blood on his{241} mouth. It was at Antwerp, a little later, that were first coined,or at least first printed, the so celebrated epigrams that Erasmus wasLuther's father, that Erasmus had laid the eggs and Luther had hatchedthe chickens, and that Luther, Zwingli, Oecolampadius and Erasmus werethe four soldiers who had crucified Christ.

The principal literary opposition to the new doctrines came from theUniversity of Louvain. Luther's works were condemned by Cologne, andthis sentence was ratified by Louvain. [Sidenote: August 30, 1519] Anumber of the leading professors wrote against him, [Sidenote: November7] among them the ex-professor Adrian of Utrecht, recently created Bishopof Tortosa and cardinal, and soon to be pope.

The conservatives, however, could do little but scold until the arrivalof Charles V in June 1520, and of the papal nuncio Aleander in September.The latter saw Charles immediately at Antwerp and found him alreadydetermined to resist heresy. Acting under the edict procured at thattime, though not published until the following March 22, Aleander busiedhimself by going around and burning Lutheran works in various cities andpreaching against the heresy. [Sidenote: October, 1520] He found farmore opposition than one would think probable, and the burning of thebooks, as Erasmus said, removed them from the bookstores only, not fromthe hearts of the people. The nuncio even discovered, he said, at thisearly date, heretics who denied the real presence in the eucharist:evidently independent spirits like Hoen who anticipated the doctrinelater taken up by Carlstadt and Zwingli.

The validity of the Edict of Worms was affirmed for the Burgundianprovinces. The edict was read publicly at Antwerp [Sidenote: July 13,1521] while four hundred of Luther's books were burnt, three hundredconfiscated from the shops and one hundred brought by the people. {242}Whereas spiritual officers were at first employed, civil magistrates nowbegan to act against the innovators. In the beginning, attention waspaid to municipal privileges, but these soon came to be disregarded, andresistance on any pretext was treated as rebellion and treason. Thefirst persons to be arrested were the Prior of Antwerp, Probst,[Sidenote: 1522] who recanted, but later escaped and relapsed, and twoother intimate friends of Erasmus.

[Sidenote: The Inquisition]

Charles wished to introduce the Spanish inquisition, but his councillorswere all against it. Under a different name, however, it was exactlyimitated when Francis van der Hulst was appointed chief inquisitor by thestate, [Sidenote: April 23, 1522] and was confirmed by a bull of AdrianVI. [Sidenote: June 1, 1523] The original inquisitorial powers of thebishops remained, and a supreme tribunal of three judges was appointed in1524.

[Sidenote: Martyrs, July 1, 1523]

The first martyrs, Henry Voes and John Esch of Brussels, said Erasmus,made many Lutherans by their death. Luther wrote a hymn on the subjectand published an open letter to the Christians of the Netherlands.[Sidenote: 1524] Censorship of the press was established in Holland invain, for everything goes to show that Lutheranism rapidly increased.Popular interest in the subject seemed to be great. Every allusion toecclesiastical corruption in speeches or in plays was applauded.Thirty-eight laborers were arrested at Antwerp for assembling to read anddiscuss the gospel. [Sidenote: 1525] Iconoclastic outbreaks occurred inwhich crucifixes were desecrated. In the same year an Italian in Antwerpwrote that though few people were openly Lutheran many were secretly so,and that he had been assured by leading citizens that if the revoltingpeasants of Germany approached Antwerp, twenty thousand armed men wouldrise in the city to assist them. [Sidenote: July 31] When a Lutheranwas drowned in the Scheldt, {243} the act precipitated a riot. In 1527the English ambassador wrote Wolsey from the Netherlands that two personsout of three "kept Luther's opinions," and that while the English NewTestament was being printed in that city, repeated attempts on his partto induce the magistrates to interfere came to nothing. Protestant worksalso continued to pour from the presses. The Bible was soon translatedinto Dutch, and in the course of eight years four editions of the wholeBible and twenty-five editions of the New Testament were called for,though the complete Scriptures had never been printed in Dutch before.

[Sidenote: October 14, 1529]

Alarmed by the spread of heresy, attributed to too great mildness, thegovernment now issued an edict that inaugurated a reign of terror. Deathwas decreed not only for all heretics but for all who, not beingtheologians, discussed articles of faith, or who caricatured God, Mary,or the saints, and for all who failed to denounce heretics known to them.While the government momentarily flattered itself that heresy had beenstamped out, at most it had been driven under ground. One of the effectsof the persecution was to isolate the Netherlands from the Empireculturally and to some small extent commercially.

But heresy proved to be a veritable hydra. From one head sprang manydaughters, the Anabaptists, [Sidenote: Anabaptists] harder to deal withthan their mother. For while Lutheranism stood essentially for passiveobedience, and flourished nowhere save as a state church, Anabaptism wasfrankly revolutionary and often socialistic. Melchior Hoffmann, the moststriking of their early leaders, a fervent and uneducated fanatic, drivenfrom place to place, wandered from Sweden and Denmark to Italy and Spain[Sidenote: 1530-1533] preaching chiliastic and communistic ideas. Onlyfor three years was he much in the Netherlands, but it was there that hewon his greatest {244} successes. Appealing, as the Anabaptists alwaysdid, to the lower classes, he converted thousands and tens of thousandsof the very poor—beggars, laborers and sailors—who passionatelyembraced the teaching that promised the end of kings and governments andthe advent of the "rule of the righteous." Mary of Hungary was not farwrong when she wrote that they planned to plunder all churches, nobles,and wealthy merchants, in short, all who had property, and from the spoilto distribute to every individual according to his need. [Sidenote:October 7, 1531] A new and severer edict would have meant a generalmassacre, had it been strictly enforced, but another element entered intothe situation. The city bourgeoisies that had previously resisted thegovernment, now supported it in this one particular, persecution of theAnabaptists. When at Amsterdam [Sidenote: 1534] the sectaries rose andvery nearly mastered the city, death by fire was decreed for the men, bywater for the women. From Antwerp they were banished by a general edictespecially aimed at them supplemented by massacres in the northernprovinces. [Sidenote: June 24, 1535] After the crisis at Münster,though the Anabaptists continued to be a bugbear to the ruling classes,their propaganda lost its dangerously revolutionary character. MennoSimons of Friesland, after his conversion in 1536, became the leader ofthe movement and succeeded in gathering the smitten people into a largeand harmless body. The Anabaptists furnished, however, more martyrs thandid any other sect.

Lutheranism also continued to spread. The edict of 1540 confesses asmuch while providing new and sterner penalties against those who eveninterceded for heretics. The fact is that the inquisition as directedagainst Lutherans was thoroughly unpopular and was resisted in variousprovinces on the technical ground of local privileges. The Protestantsmanaged {245} to keep unnoticed amidst a general intention to connive atthem, and though they did not usually flinch from martyrdom they did notcourt it. The inquisitors were obliged to arrest their victims at thedead of night, raiding their houses and hauling them from bed, in orderto avoid popular tumult. [Sidenote: 1543] When Enzinas printed hisSpanish Bible at Antwerp the printer told him that in that city theScriptures had been published in almost every European language,doubtless an exaggeration but a significant one. Arrested and imprisonedat Brussels for this cause, Enzinas received while under duress visitsfrom four hundred citizens of that city who were Protestants. To controlthe book trade an oath was exacted of every bookseller [Sidenote: 1546]not to deal in heretical works and the first "Index of prohibited books,"drawn up by the University of Louvain, was issued. A censorship of playswas also attempted. This was followed by an edict of 1550 requiring ofevery person entering the Netherlands a certificate of Catholic belief.As Brabant and Antwerp repudiated a law that would have ruined theirtrade, it remained, in fact, a dead letter.

Charles's policy of repression had been on the whole a failure, duepartly to the cosmopolitan culture of the Netherlands and theircommercial position making them open to the importation of ideas as ofmerchandise from all Europe. It was due in part to the local jealousiesand privileges of the separate provinces, and in part to the strength ofcertain nobles and cities. The persecution, indeed, had a decidedlyclass character, for the emperor well knew Protestant nobles whom he didnot molest, while the poor seldom failed to suffer. And yet Charles hadaccomplished something. Even the Protestants were loyal, strange to say,to him personally. The number of martyrs in his reign has been estimatedat barely one thousand, {246} but it must be remembered that for everyone put to death there were a number punished in other ways. And thebody of the people was still Catholic, even in the North. It isnoteworthy that the most popular writer of this period, as well as thefirst to use the Dutch tongue with precision and grace, was Anna Bijns, alay nun, violently anti-Lutheran in sentiment. [Sidenote: Anna Bijns,1494-1575]

[1] Brabant, Limburg, Luxemburg, Guelders, Flanders, Artois, Hainaut,Holland, Zeeland, Malines, Namur, Lille, Tournay, Friesland, Utrecht,Overyssel and Groningen.

SECTION 2. THE CALVINIST REVOLT

When Charles V, weary of the heaviest scepter ever wielded by anyEuropean monarch from Charlemagne to Napoleon, sought rest for his soulin a monk's cell, he left his great possessions divided between hisbrother Ferdinand and his son Philip. To the former went Austria andthe Empire, to the latter the Burgundian provinces and Spain with itsvast dependencies in the New World.

[Sidenote: Spain and the Netherlands]

The result of this was to make the Netherlands practically a satelliteof Spain. Hitherto, partly because their interests had largelycoincided with those of the Empire, partly because by balancing Germanyagainst Spain they could manage to get their own rights, they had foundprosperity and had acquired a good deal of national power. Indeed,with their wealth, their central position, and growing strength asprovince after province was annexed, and their consciousness that theirruler was a native of Flanders, their pride had been rather gratifiedthan hurt by the knowledge that he possessed far larger dominions.[Sidenote: Abdication of Charles] But when Charles, weeping copiouslyand demanding his subjects' pardon, descended from the throne supportedby the young Prince of Orange, [Sidenote: October 25, 1555] and whenhis son Philip II had replied to his father in Spanish, even thosepresent had an uneasy feeling that the situation had changed for theworse, and that the Netherlands were being handed over from aBurgundian to a Spanish ruler. From {247} this time forth theinterests and sentiments of the two countries became more and moresharply divergent, and, as the smaller was sacrificed to the larger, aconflict became inevitable. The revolt that followed within ten yearsafter Philip had permanently abandoned the Netherlands to make his homein Spain [Sidenote: 1559] was first and foremost a nationalist revolt.Contrasted with the particularistic uprising of 1477 it evinced theenormous growth, in the intervening century, of a nationalself-consciousness in the Seventeen Provinces.

[Sidenote: Religious issue]

But though the catastrophe was apparently inevitable from politicalgrounds, it was greatly complicated and intensified by the religiousissue. Philip was determined, as he himself said, either to bring theNetherlands back to the fold of Rome or "so to waste their land thatneither the natives could live there nor should any thereafter desirethe place for habitation." And yet the means he took were even for hispurpose the worst possible, a continual vacillation between timidindulgence and savage cruelty. Though he insisted that his ministersshould take no smallest step without his sanction, he could never makeup his mind what to do, waited too long to make a decision and then,with fatal fatuity, made the wrong one.

[Sidenote: Calvinism]

At the same time the people were coming under the spell of a new and tothe government more dangerous form of Protestantism. Whereas theLutherans had stood for passive obedience and the Anabaptists forrevolutionary communism, the Calvinists appealed to the independentmiddle classes and gave them not only the enthusiasm to enduremartyrdom but also—what the others had lacked—the will and the powerto resist tyranny by force. Calvin's polity, as worked out in Geneva,was a subordination of the state to the church. His reforms werethorough and consciously social and political. Calvinism in all landsaroused {248} republican passions and excited rebellion against thepowers that be. This feature was the more prominent in the Netherlands[Sidenote: 1545] in that its first missionaries were French exiles whoirrigated the receptive soil of the Low Countries with doctrinessubversive of church and state alike. The intercourse with England,partly through the emigration from that land under Mary's reign, partlythrough the coming and going of Flemings and Walloons, also openeddoors to Protestant doctrine.

At first the missionaries came secretly, preaching to a few speciallyinvited to some private house or inn. People attended these meetingsdisguised and after dark. First mentioned in the edict of 1550, nineyears later the Calvinists drew up a Confessio Belgica, as a sign andan aid to union. Calvin's French writings could be read in thesouthern provinces in the original. Though as early as 1560 somenobles had been converted, the new religion undoubtedly made itsstrongest appeal, as a contemporary put it, "to those who had grownrich by trade and were therefore ready for revolution." It was amongthe merchants of the great cities that it took strongest root and fromthe middle class spread to the laborers; influenced not only by theexample of their masters, but sometimes also by the policy ofProtestant employers to give work only to co-religionists. In a shorttime it had won a very considerable success, though perhaps not theactual majority of the population. Many of the poor, hithertoAnabaptists, thronged to it in hopes of social betterment. Manyadventurers with no motive but to stir the waters in which they mightfish joined the new party. But on the whole, as its appeal wasprimarily moral and religious, its constituency was the moresubstantial, progressive, and intelligent part of the community.

The greatest weakness of the Protestants was their {249} division.Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anabaptist continued to compete for theleadership and hated each other cordially. The Calvinists themselveswere divided into two parties, the "Rekkelijken" or "Compromisers" andthe "Preciesen" or "Stalwarts." Moreover there were various othershades of opinion, not amounting quite to new churches. The pureErasmians, under Cassander, advocated tolerance. More pronounced wasthe movement of Dirck Volckertszoon Coornheert [Sidenote: Coornheert,1522-90] a merchant of Amsterdam who, in addition to advising hisfollowers to dissimulate their views rather than to court martyrdom,rejected the Calvinist dogma of predestination and tried to lay theemphasis in religion on the spirit of Jesus rather than on either dogmaor ritual.

Though the undertow was slowly but surely carrying the Low Countriesadrift from Spain, for the moment their new monarch, then at the age oftwenty-eight, seemed to have the winds and waves of politics all in hisfavor. He was at peace with France; he had nothing to fear fromGermany; his marriage with Mary of England made that country, alwaysthe best trader with the Netherlands, an ally. His first steps were torelieve Mary of Hungary of her regency and to give it to EmanuelPhilibert, to issue a new edict against heresy and to give permissionto the Jesuits to enter the Low Countries. [Sidenote: 1556]

The chief difficulties were financial. The increase in the yield ofthe taxes in the reign of Charles had been from 1,500,000 guilders[1]to 7,000,000 guilders. In addition to this, immense loans hadexhausted the credit of the government. The royal domain wasmortgaged. As the floating debt of the Provinces rose rapidly the{250} government was in need of a grant to keep up the army. The onlyway to meet the situation was to call the States General. [Sidenote:March, 1556] When they met, they complained that they were taxed moreheavily than Spain and demanded the removal of the Spanish troops, aforce already so unpopular that William of Orange refused to takecommand of it. In presenting their several grievances one provinceonly, Holland, mentioned the religious question to demand that thepowers of the inquisitors be curtailed. To obtain funds Philip wasobliged to promise, against his will, to withdraw the soldiers. Thiswas only done, under pressure, on January 10, 1561.

[Sidenote: 1559]

Philip had left the Netherlands professing his intention of returning,but hoping and resolving in his heart never to do so. His departuremade easier the unavoidable breach, but the struggle had already begun.Wishing to leave a regent of royal blood Philip appointed Margaret ofParma, a natural daughter of Charles V. Born in 1522, she had beenmarried at the age of fourteen to Alexander de' Medici, a nephew ofClement VII; becoming a widow in the following year she was in 1538married to Ottavio Farnese, a nephew of Paul III, at that time onlyfourteen years old. Given as her dower the cities of Parma andPiacenza, she had become thoroughly Italian in feeling.

[Sidenote: Anthony Perrenot Cardinal Granvelle, 1517-86]

To guide her Philip left, besides the Council of State, a special"consulta" or "kitchen cabinet" of three members, the chief of whom wasGranvelle. The real fatherland of this native of the Free County ofBurgundy was the court. As a passionate servant of the crown and aclever and knowing diplomat, he was in constant correspondence withPhilip, recommending measures over the head of Margaret. His acts madeher intensely unpopular and her attempts to coax and cozen publicopinion only aroused suspicion.

{251}

[Sidenote: Egmont, 1522-68]

Three members in the Council of State, Granvelle and two others, werepartisans of the crown; three other members may be said to representthe people. One of them was Lamoral Count of Egmont, the mostbrilliant and popular of the high nobility. Though a favorite ofCharles V on account of his proved ability as a soldier, his franknessand generosity, he was neither a sober nor a weighty statesman. Thepopular proverb, "Egmont for action and Orange for counsel," wellcharacterized the difference between the two leading members of theCouncil of State. William, prince of Orange, lacking the brilliantqualities of Egmont, far surpassed him in acumen and in strength ofcharacter. From his father, William Count of Nassau-Dillenburg,[Sidenote: William the Silent, 1533-84] he inherited important estatesin Germany near the Netherlands, and by the death of a cousin hebecame, at the age of eleven, Prince of Orange—a small, independentterritory in southern France—and Lord of Breda and Gertruidenberg inHolland. With an income of 150,000 guilders per annum he was by farthe richest man in the Netherlands, Egmont coming next with an incomeof 62,000. William was well educated. Though he spoke seven languagesand was an eloquent orator, he was called "the Silent" because of therare discretion that never revealed a secret nor spoke an imprudentword. In religion he was indifferent, being first a Catholic, then aLutheran, then a Calvinist, and always a man of the world. His broadtolerance found its best, or only, support in the Erasmian tendenciesof Coornheert. His second wife, Anne of Saxony, having provedunfaithful to him, he married, while she was yet alive, Charlotte ofBourbon. This act, like the bigamy of Philip of Hesse, was approved byProtestant divines. Behind them Egmont and Orange had the heartysupport of the patriotic and well educated native nobility. {252} Therising generation of the aristocracy saw only the bad side of the reignof Charles; they had not shared in his earlier victories but hadwitnessed his failure to conquer either France or Protestantism.

[Sidenote: New bishoprics]

In order to deal more effectively with the religious situationGranvelle wished to bring the ecclesiastical territorial divisions intoharmony with the political. Hitherto the Netherlands had been partlyunder the Archbishop of Cologne, partly under the Archbishop of Rheims.But as these were both foreigners Granvelle applied for and secured abull creating fourteen new bishoprics and three archbishoprics,[Sidenote: March 12, 1559] Cambrai, Utrecht, and Malines, of which thelast held the primacy. His object was doubtless in large part tofacilitate the extirpation of heresy, but it was also significant asone more instance of the nationalization of the church, a tendency sostrong that neither Catholic nor Protestant countries escaped from it.In this case all the appointments were to be made by the king withconsent of the pope. The people resented the autocratic features of aplan they might otherwise have approved; a cry was raised throughoutthe provinces that their freedom was infringed upon, and that the planfurnished a new instrument to the hated inquisition.

[Sidenote: February, 1561]

Granvelle, more than ever detested when he received the cardinal's hat,was dubbed "the red devil," "the archrascal," "the red dragon," "theSpanish swine," "the pope's dung." In July Egmont and Orange senttheir resignations from the Council of State to Philip, saying thatthey could no longer share the responsibility for Granvelle's policy,especially as everything was done behind their backs. Philip, however,was slow to take alarm. For the moment his attention was taken up withthe growth of the Huguenot party in France and his efforts centered onhelping the French Catholics against them. But the Netherlands were{253} importunate. In voicing the wishes of the people the province ofBrabant, with the capital, Brussels, the metropolitan see, Malines, andthe university, Louvain, took as decided a lead as the Parlement ofParis did in France. The estates of Brabant demanded that Orange bemade their governor. The nobles began to remember that they werelegally a part of the Empire. The marriage of Orange, on August 26,1561, with the Lutheran Anne of Saxony, was but one sign of therapprochment. Though the prince continued to profess Catholicism, heentertained many Lutherans and emphasized as far as possible hisposition as vassal of the Empire. Philip, indeed, believed that thewhole trouble came from the wounded vanity of a few nobles.

But Granvelle saw deeper. [Sidenote: 1561] When the Estates ofBrabant stopped the payment of the principal tax or "Bede," [2] andwhen the people of Brussels took as a party uniform a costume derivedfrom the carnival, a black cloak covered with red fool's heads, thecardinal, whose red hat was caricatured thereby, stated that nothingless than a republic was aimed at. This was true, though in theanticipation of the nobles, at least, the republic should have adecidedly aristocratic character. But Granvelle had no policy topropose but repression. In order to prevent condemned heretics frompreaching and singing on the scaffold a gag was put into their mouths.How futile a measure! The Calvinists no longer disguised, but armed—anew and significant fact—thronged to their conventicles. Emigrationcontinued on a large scale. By 1556 it was estimated that thirtythousand Protestants from the Low Countries were settled in or nearLondon. Elizabeth encouraged them to come, assigning them {254}Norwich as a place of refuge. [Sidenote: 1563] She also began to taximports from the Netherlands, a blow to which Philip replied byforbidding all English imports.

[Sidenote: Revolt]

Hitherto the resistance to the government had been mostly passive andconstitutional. But from 1565 may be dated the beginning of the revoltthat did not cease until it had freed the northern provinces foreverfrom Spanish tyranny. The rise of the Dutch Republic is one of themost inspiring pages in history. Superficially it has many points ofresemblance with the American War of Independence. In both there wasthe absentee king, the national hero, the local jealousies of theseveral provinces, the economic grievances, the rising national feelingand even the religious issue, though this had become very small inAmerica. But the difference was in the ferocity of the tyranny and theintensity of the struggle. The two pictures are like the samelandscape as it might be painted by Millet and by Turner: the one isdecent and familiar, the other lurid and ghastly. With trueAnglo-Saxon moderation the American war was fought like a game or anelection, with humanity and attention to rules; but in Holland andBelgium was enacted the most terrible frightfulness in the world; overthe whole land, mingled with the reek of candles carried in processionand of incense burnt to celebrate a massacre, brooded the sultry miasmaof human blood and tears. On the one side flashed the savage sword ofAlva and the pitiless flame of the inquisitor Tapper; on the other werearrayed, behind their dykes and walls, men resolved to win that freedomwhich alone can give scope and nobility to life.

[Sidenote: The Intellectuals]

And in the melée those suffered most who would fain have beenbystanders, the humanists. Persecuted by both sides, theintellectuals, who had once deserted the Reform now turned again to itas the lesser of the two {255} evils. They would have been glad tomake terms with any church that would have left them in liberty, butthey found the whips of Calvin lighter than the scorpions of Philip.Even those who, like Van Helmont, wished to defend the church and toreconcile the Tridentine decrees with philosophy, found that theirlabors brought them under suspicion and that what the church demandedwas not harmony of thought but abnegation of it.

The first act of the revolt may be said to be a secret compact, knownas the Compromise, [Sidenote: The Compromise, 1565] originally enteredinto by twenty nobles at Brussels and soon joined by three hundredother nobles elsewhere. The document signed by them denounced theEdicts as surpassing the greatest recorded barbarity of tyrants and asthreatening the complete ruin of the country. To resist them thesigners promised each other mutual support. In this as in subsequentdevelopments the Calvinist minority took the lead, but was supported bystrong Catholic forces. Among the latter was the Prince of Orange, notyet a Protestant. His conversion really made little difference in hisprogram; both before and after it he wanted tolerance or reconciliationon Cassander's plan of compromise. He would have greatly liked to haveseen the Peace of Augsburg, now the public law of the Empire, extendedto the Low Countries, but this was made difficult even to advocatebecause the Peace of Augsburg provided liberty only for the Lutheranconfession, whereas the majority of Protestants in the Netherlands werenow Calvinists. For the same reason little help could be expected fromthe German princes, for the mutual animosity that was the curse of theProtestant churches prevented their making common cause against thesame enemy.

As the Huguenots—for so they began to be called in Brabant as well asin France—were as yet too few {256} to rebel, the only course open wasto appeal to the government once more. A petition to make the Edictsmilder was presented to Margaret in 1566. One of her advisers bade hernot to be afraid of "those beggars." Originating in the scorn ofenemies, like so many party names, the epithet "Beggars" (Gueux)presently became the designation and a proud one, of the nobles who hadsigned the Compromise and later of all the rebels.

Encouraged by the regent's apparent lack of power to coerce them, theCalvinist preachers became daily bolder. Once again their religionshowed its remarkable powers of organization. Lacking nothing infunds, derived from a constituency of wealthy merchants, the preachersof the Reformation were soon able to forge a machinery of propagandaand party action that stood them in good stead against the greaternumbers of their enemies. Especially in critical times, discipline,unity, and enthusiasm make headway against the deadly hatred of enemiesand the deadlier apathy and timidity of the mass of mankind. It istrue that the methods of the preachers often aroused opposition.

[Sidenote: Iconoclasm]

The zeal of the Calvinists, inflamed by oppression and encouraged bythe weakness of the government, burst into an iconoclastic riot,[Sidenote: August 11, 1566] first among the unemployed at Armentières,but spreading rapidly to Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent, and then to thenorthern provinces, Holland and Zeeland. The English agent at Brusselswrote: "Coming into Oure Lady Church, yt looked like hell wher wereabove 1000 torches brannyng and syche a noise as yf heven and erth hadgone together with fallyng of images and fallyng down of costly works."Books and manuscripts as well as pictures were destroyed. The cry"Long live the Beggars" resounded from one end of the land to the {257}other. But withal there was no pillage and no robbery. The gold inthe churches was left untouched. Margaret feared a jacquerie but,lacking troops, had to look on with folded hands at least for themoment. By chance there arrived just at this time an answer fromPhilip to the earlier petition of the Beggars. The king promised toabolish the Spanish inquisition and to soften the edicts. Freedom ofconscience was tacitly granted, but the government made an exception,as soon as it dared, of those who had committed sacrilege in the recentriots. These men were outlawed.

[Sidenote: Civil war]

No longer fearing a religious war the Calvinists started it themselves.Louis of Nassau, a brother of Prince William, hired German mercenariesand invaded Flanders, where he won some slight successes. In Amsterdamthe great Beggar Brederode entered into negotiations with Huguenots andEnglish friends. The first battle between the Beggars and thegovernment troops, [Sidenote: March 13, 1567] near Antwerp, ended in arout for the former.

Philip now ordered ten thousand Spanish veterans, led by Alva, to marchfrom Italy to the Netherlands. Making their way through the FreeCounty of Burgundy and Lorraine they entered Brussels on August 9,1567. [Sidenote: Alva 1508-83] Ferdinand Alvarez de Toledo, Duke ofAlva, had won experience and reputation as a soldier in the Germanwars. Though self-controlled and courtly in manner, his passionatepatriotism and bigotry made him a fit instrument to execute Philip'sorders to make the Netherlands Spanish and Catholic. He began with nouncertain hand, building forts at Antwerp and quartering his troops atBrussels where their foreign manners and Roman piety gave offence tothe citizens. On September 9 he arrested the counts of Egmont andHorn, next to Orange the chief leaders of the patriotic party. Settingup a tribunal, called the Council of {258} Troubles, to deal with casesof rebellion and heresy, he inaugurated a reign of terror. He himselfspent seven hours a day in this court trying cases and signingdeath-warrants. Not only heretics were punished but also agitators andthose who had advocated tolerance. Sincere Catholics, indeed, notedthat the crime of heresy was generally the mere pretext for dealingwith patriots and all those obnoxious to the government. [Sidenote:Executions] For the first time we have definite statistics of thenumbers executed. For instance, on January 4, 1568, 48 persons weresentenced to death, on February 20, 37; on February 21, 71; on March20, 55; and so on for day after day, week in and week out. On March 3at the same hour throughout the whole land 1500 men were executed. Thetotal number put to death during the six years of Alva's administrationhas been variously estimated at from 6,000 to 18,000. The lower numberis probably nearer the truth, though not high enough. Emigration on ahitherto unknown scale within the next thirty or forty years carried400,000 persons from the Netherlands. Thousands of others fled to thewoods and became freebooters. The people as a whole were prostratedwith terror. The prosperity of the land was ruined by the wholesaleconfiscations of goods. Alva boasted that by such means he had addedto the revenues of his territories 500,000 ducats per annum.

William of Orange retired to his estates at Dillenburg not to yield tothe tyrant but to find a point d'appui from which to fight. Wishingto avoid anything that might cause division among the people he keptthe religious issue in the background and complained only of foreigntyranny. He tried to enlist the sympathies of the Emperor MaximilianII and to collect money and men. William's friend Villiers invaded theBurgundian State near Maastricht and Louis of Nassau marched withtroops into Friesland. {259} [Sidenote: April, 1568] By this timeAlva had increased his army by 10,000 German cavalry and both the rebelleaders were severely defeated.

This triumph was followed by an act of power and defiance on Alva'spart sometimes compared to the execution of Louis XVI by the FrenchRepublicans. Hitherto the sufferers from his reign of blood had not inany case been men of the highest rank. The first execution of noblestook place at Brussels on June 1, that of the captured Villiersfollowed on June 2, and that of Egmont and Horn on June 5.

Orange himself now took the field with 25,000 troops, a motleyaggregate of French, Flemish, and Walloon Huguenots and of Germanmercenaries. But he had no genius for war to oppose to the veterans ofAlva. Continually harassed by the Spaniards he was kept in fear forhis communications, dared not risk a general engagement and washumiliated by seeing his retreat, in November, turned into a rout.

[Sidenote: July 16, 1570]

Finding that severity did not pacify the provinces, Alva issued aproclamation that on the face of it was a general amnesty with pardonfor all who submitted. But he excepted by name several hundredemigrants, all the Protestant clergy, all who had helped them, alliconoclasts, all who had signed petitions for religious liberty, andall who had rebelled. As these exceptions included the greater portionof those who stood in need of pardon the measure proved illusory as ameans of reconciliation. Coupled with it were other measures,including the prohibition to subjects to attend foreign universities,intended to put a check on free trade in ideas.

[Sidenote: Taxation]

Alva's difficulties and the miseries of the unhappy land entrusted tohis tender mercies were increased by want of money. Notwithstandingthe privilege of {260} granting their own taxes the States General weresummoned [Sidenote: March 21, 1569] and forced to accept new imposts ofone per cent. on all property real and personal, ten per cent. on thesale of all movable goods and five per cent. on the sale of realestate. These were Spanish taxes, exorbitant in any case butabsolutely ruinous to a commercial people. A terrible financial panicfollowed. Houses at Antwerp that had rented for 300 gulden could nowbe had for 50 gulden. Imports fell off to such an extent that at thisport they yielded but 14,000 gulden per annum instead of 80,000 asformerly. The harbor was filled with empty boats; the market druggedwith goods of all sorts that no one would buy.

[Sidenote: Beggars of the Sea]

The cause of the patriots looked hopeless. Orange, discredited bydefeat, had retired to Germany. At one time, to avoid the clamors ofhis troops for pay, he was obliged to flee by night from Strassburg.But in this dark hour help came from the sea. Louis of Nassau, notprimarily a statesman like his brother but a passionate crusader forProtestantism, had been at La Rochelle and had there seen the excellentwork done by privateers. In emulation of his French brethren hegranted letters of marque to the sailors of Holland and Zeeland.Recruits thronged to the ships, Huguenots, men from Liège, and thelaborers of the Walloon provinces thrown out of work by the commercialcrisis. These men promptly won striking successes in preying onSpanish commerce. Their many and rich prizes were taken to England orto Emden and sold. Often they landed on the coasts and attacked smallCatholic forces, or murdered priests. On the night of March 31-April1, 1572, these Beggars of the Sea seized the small town of Brielle on alarge island at the mouth of the Meuse not far from the Hague. Thissuccess was immediately followed by the insurrection of Rotterdam andFlushing. The war was conducted with combined {261} heroism andfrightfulness. Receiving no quarter the Beggars gave none, and toavenge themselves on the unspeakable wrongs committed by Alva theythemselves at times massacred the innocent. But their success spreadlike wildfire. The coast towns "fell away like beads from a rosarywhen one is gone." Fortifications in all of them were strengthenedand, where necessary, dykes were opened. Reinforcements also came fromEngland.

[Sidenote: Revolution]

By this time the revolt had become a veritable revolution. It foundits battle hymn in the Wilhelmuslied and its Washington in William ofOrange. As all the towns of Holland save Amsterdam were in his hands,in June the provincial Estates met—albeit illegally, for there was noone authorized to convene them—assumed sovereign power and madeWilliam their Stat-holder. They voted large taxes and forced loansfrom rich citizens, and raised money from the sale of prizes taken atsea. All defect in prescriptive and legal power was made up by thepopularity of the prince, deeply loved by all classes, not only onaccount of his affability to all, even the humblest, but still morebecause of confidence in his ability. Never did his versatility,patience and skill in management shine more brightly. Among the troopsraised by the patriots he kept strict discipline, thus making bycontrast more lurid the savage pillage by the Spaniards. He kept farfrom fanatics and swashbucklers of whom there were plenty attracted tothe revolt. His master idea was to keep the Netherlands together andto free them from the foreigner. Complete independence of Spain wasnot at first planned, but it soon became inevitable.

For a moment there was a prospect of help from Coligny's policy ofprosecuting a war with Spain, but these hopes were destroyed by thedefeat of the French Huguenots near Mons [Sidenote: July 17, 1572] andby the massacre of Saint {262} Bartholomew. [Sidenote: August 24,1572] Freed from menace in this quarter and encouraged by hisbrilliant victory, Alva turned north with an army now increased to40,000 veterans. First he took Malines and delivered it to hissoldiers for "the most dreadful and inhuman sack of the day" as acontemporary wrote. The army then marched to Guelders and stormedZutphen under express orders from their general "not to leave one manalive or one building unburnt." "With the help of God," as Alvapiously reported, the same punishment was meted out to Naarden. Thenhe marched to the still royalist Amsterdam from which base he proceededto invest Haarlem. The siege was a long and hard one for theSpaniards, harassed by the winter weather and by epidemics. Alva wrotePhilip that it was "the bloodiest war known for long years" and beggedfor reinforcements. [Sidenote: July 12, 1573] At last famine overcamethe brave defenders of the city and it capitulated. Finding that hiscruelty had only nerved the people to the most desperate resistance,and wishing to give an example of clemency to a city that wouldsurrender rather than await storming, Alva contented himself withputting to death to the last man 2300 French, English, and Walloonsoldiers of the garrison, and five or six citizens. He also demanded aransom of 100,000 dollars[3] in lieu of plunder. Not content with thismeager largess the Spanish troops mutinied, and only the promise offurther cities to sack quieted them. The fortunes of the patriots werea little raised by the defeat of the Spanish fleet in the Zuiderzee bythe Beggars on October 12, 1573.

[Sidenote: Requesens]

For some time Philip had begun to suspect that Alva's methods were notthe proper ones to win back the affectionate loyalty of his people.Though he hesitated long he finally removed him late in 1573 and {263}appointed in his stead Don Louis Requesens. Had Philip come himself hemight have been able to do something, for the majority professedpersonal loyalty to him, and in that age, as Shakespeare reminds us,divinity still hedged a king. But not having the decision to act inperson Philip picked out a favorite, known from his constant attendanceon his master as "the king's hour-glass," in whom he saw the slavishlyobedient tool that he thought he wanted. The only difference betweenthe new governor and the old was that Requesens lacked Alva's ability;he had all the other's narrowly Spanish views, his bigotry andabsolutism.

Once arrived in the provinces committed to his charge, he had no choicebut to continue the war. But on January 27, 1574, Orange conqueredMiddelburg and from that date the Spanish flag ceased to float over anyportion of the soil of Holland or Zeeland. In open battle at Mook,however, [Sidenote: April 14, 1574] the Spanish veterans again achievedsuccess, defeating the patriots under Louis of Nassau, who lost hislife. The beginning of the year saw the investment of Leyden in greatforce. The heroism of the defence has become proverbial. When, inSeptember, the dykes were cut to admit the sea, so that the vessels ofthe Beggars were able to sail to the relief of the city, the siege wasraised. It was the first important military victory for the patriotsand marks the turning-point of the revolt. Henceforth the Netherlandscould not be wholly subdued.

Requesens summoned the States General and offered a pardon to all whowould submit. But the people saw in this only a sign of weakness. Aflood of pamphlets calling to arms replied to the advances of thegovernment. Among the pamphleteers the ablest was Philip van Marnix,[Sidenote: Marnix, 1538-98] a Calvinist who turned his powers of satireagainst Spain and the Catholic {264} church. William of Orange, now aProtestant, living at Delft, inspired the whole movement. Requesens,believing that if he were out of the way the revolt would collapse,like Alva offered public rewards for his assassination. That there wasreally no common ground was proved at a conference between the twofoes, broken off without result. In the campaign of 1575 the Spanisharmy again achieved great things, taking Oudewater, Schoonhoven andother places. But the rebels would not give up.

[Sidenote: March 5, 1576]

The situation was changed by the death of Requesens. Before hissuccessor could be appointed events moved rapidly. After takingZierikzee on June 29, the Spanish army turned to Aalst, quartered thesoldiers on the inhabitants, and forced the loyal city to pay the fullcosts of their maintenance. If even the Catholics were alienated bythis, the Protestants went so far as to preach that any Spaniard mightbe murdered without sin. In the concerted action against Spain theEstates of Brabant now took the leading part; meeting at Brussels theyintimidated the Council of State and raised an army of 3000 men. Bythis time Holland and Zeeland were to all intents and purposes anindependent state. The Calvinists, strong among the native population,were recruited by a vast influx of immigrants from other Provincesuntil theirs became the dominant religion. Holland and Zeeland pursueda separate military and financial policy. Alone among the provincesthey were prosperous, for they had command of the rich sea-bornecommerce.

The growth of republican theory kept pace with the progress of therevolt. Orange was surrounded by men holding the free principles ofDuplessis-Mornay and corresponding with him. Dutchmen now openlyvoiced their belief that princes were made for the sake of theirsubjects and not subjects for the sake {265} of princes. Even thoughthey denied the equal rights of the common people they asserted thesovereignty of the representative assembly. The Council of State,having assumed the authority of the viceroy during the interim, wasdeluged with letters petitioning them to shake off the Spanish yokeentirely. But, as the Council still remained loyal to Philip, onSeptember 4 its members were arrested, a coup d'état planned in theinterests of Orange and doubtless with his knowledge. It was, ofcourse, tantamount to treason. The Estates General now seizedsovereign powers. Still protesting their loyalty to the monarch'sperson and to the Catholic religion, they demanded virtual independenceand the withdrawal of the Spanish troops. To enforce their demandsthey collected an army and took possession of several forts. But theSpanish veterans never once thought of giving way. Gathering atAntwerp where they were besieged by the soldiers of the States General,[Sidenote: November 4, 1576] they attacked and then scattered the bandssent against them and proceeded to sack Antwerp like a captured town.In one dreadful day 7000 of the patriots, in part soldiers, in partnoncombatants, perished. The wealth of the city was looted. The armyof occupation boasted as of a victory of this deed of blood, known tothe Netherlanders as "the Spanish fury."

Naturally, such a blow only welded the provinces more firmly togetherand steeled their temper to an even harder resistance. Its immediateresult was a treaty, known as the Pacification of Ghent, between theprovinces represented in the States General on the one hand and Hollandand Zeeland on the other, for the purposes of union and of driving outthe foreigner. The religious question was left undecided, save thatthe northern provinces agreed to do nothing for the present against theRoman church. But, as {266} heretofore, the Calvinists, now inscribing"Pro fide et patria" on their banners, were the more active andpatriotic party.

[Sidenote: Don John, 1547-78]

On May 1, 1577, the new Governor-General, Don John of Austria, enteredBrussels. A natural son of Charles V, at the age of twenty-four he hadmade himself famous by the naval victory of Lepanto, and his name stillmore celebrated in popular legend on account of his innumerable amours.That he had some charm of manner must be assumed; that he had abilityin certain directions cannot be denied; but his aristocratic hauteur,his contempt for a nation of merchants and his disgust at dealing withthem, made him the worst possible person for the position of Governor.Philip's detailed instructions left nothing to the imagination: thegist of them was to assure the Catholic religion and obedience of hissubjects "as far as possible," to speak French, and not to take hismistresses from the most influential families, nor to alienate them inany other way. After force had been tried and failed the effect ofgentleness was to be essayed. Don John was to be a dove of peace andan angel of love.

But even if a far abler man had been sent to heal the troubles in theNetherlands, the breach was now past mending. In the States General,as in the nation at large, there were still two parties, one for Orangeand one for Philip, but both were determined to get rid of the devilishincubus of the Spanish army. The division of the two parties was tosome extent sectional, but still more that class division that seemsinevitable between conservatives and liberals. The king still had forhim the clergy, the majority of the nobles and higher bourgeoisie; withWilliam were ranged the Calvinists, the middle and lower classes andmost of the "intellectuals", lawyers, men of learning and thosepublicists known as the "monarchomachs." Many of {267} these werestill Catholics who wished to distinguish sharply between the religiousand the national issue. At the very moment of Don John's arrival theEstates passed a resolution to uphold the Catholic faith.

[Sidenote: February, 1577]

Even before he had entered his capital Don John issued the "PerpetualEdict" agreeing to withdraw the Spanish troops in return for a grant of600,000 guilders for their pay. He promised to respect the privilegesof the provinces and to free political prisoners, including the son ofOrange. In April the troops really withdrew. The small effect ofthese measures of conciliation became apparent when the Estates Generalvoted by a majority of one only to recognize Don John as theirStatholder. [Sidenote: May 12] So little influence did he have thathe felt more like a prisoner than a governor; he soon fled from hiscapital to the fortress of Namur whence he wrote urging his king tosend back the troops at once and let him "bathe in the blood of thetraitors."

William was as much pleased as John was enraged at the failure of thepolicy of reconciliation. While the majority of the states still hopedfor peace William was determined on independence at all costs. InAugust he sent a demand to the representatives to do their duty by thepeople, for he did not doubt that they had the right to depose thetyrant. Never did his prospects look brighter. Help was offered byElizabeth and the tide of republican feeling began to rise higher. Inproportion as the laborers were drawn to the party of revolt did thedoctrine of the monarchomachs become liberal. No longer satisfied withthe democracy of corporations and castes of the Middle Ages, the peoplebegan to dream of the individualistic democracy of modern times.

The executive power, virtually abandoned by Don John, now becamecentered in a Committee of {268} Eighteen, nominally on fortifications,but in reality, like the French Committee of Public Safety, supreme inall matters. This body was first appointed by the citizens ofBrussels, but the States General were helpless against it. It wassupported by the armed force of the patriots and by the personalprestige of Orange. His power was growing, for, with the capitulationof the Spanish garrison at Utrecht he had been appointed Statholder ofthat province. When he entered Brussels on September 23, he wasreceived with the wild acclamations of the populace. Opposition to himseemed impossible. And yet, even at this high-water mark of his power,his difficulties were considerable. Each province was jealous of itsrights and, as in the American Revolution, each province wished tocontribute as little as possible to the common fund. Moreover thereligious question was still extremely delicate. Orange's permissionto the Catholics to celebrate their rites on his estates alienated asmany Protestant fanatics as it conciliated those of the old religion.

[Sidenote: Archduke Matthew]

The Netherlands were not yet strong enough to do without powerfulforeign support, nor was public opinion yet ripe for the declaration ofan independent republic. Feeling that a statholder of some sort wasnecessary, the States General petitioned Philip to remove Don John andto appoint a legitimate prince of the blood. This petition was perhapsintentionally impossible of fulfilment in a way agreeable to Philip,for he had no legitimate brother or son. But a prince of the House ofHapsburg offered himself in the person of the Archduke Matthew, a sonof the Emperor Maximilian, recently deceased. [Sidenote: October 12,1576] Though he had neither ability of his own nor support from hisbrother, the Emperor Rudolph II, and though but nineteen years old, heoffered his services to the Netherlands and immediately went thither.With high statecraft William {269} drew Matthew into his policy, for hesaw that the dangers to be feared were anarchy and disunion. In somecities, notably Ghent, where another Committee of Eighteen wasappointed on the Brussels model, the lowest classes assumed adictatorship analagous to that of the Bolsheviki in Russia. At thesame time the Patriots' demand that Orange should be made Governor ofBrabant was distasteful to the large loyalist element in thepopulation. William at once saw the use that might be made of Matthewas a figure-head to rally those who still reverenced the house ofHapsburg and who saw in monarchy the only guarantee of order at homeand consideration abroad. Promptly arresting the Duke of Aerschot, apowerful noble who tried to use Matthew's name to create a separatefaction, Orange induced the States General first to decree Don John anenemy of the country [Sidenote: December 7, 1577] and then to offer thegovernorship of the Netherlands to the archduke, at the same timebegging him, on account of his youth, to leave the administration inthe hands of William. After Matthew's entry into Brussels [Sidenote:January 18, 1578] the States General swore allegiance to this puppet inthe hands of their greatest statesman.

Almost immediately the war broke out again. Both sides had been busyraising troops. At Gembloux Don John with 20,000 men defeated aboutthe same number of Patriot troops. [Sidenote: January 31] But thisfailed to clarify a situation that tended to become ever morecomplicated. Help from England and France came in tiny dribblets justsufficient to keep Philip's energies occupied in the cruel civil war.But the vacancy, so to speak, on the ducal throne of the Burgundianstate, seemed to invite the candidacy of neighboring princes and achance of seriously interesting France came when the ambition ofFrancis, Duke of Anjou, was stirred to become ruler of the LowCountries. William attempted also to make {270} use of him. In returnfor the promise to raise 12,000 troops, Anjou received from the StatesGeneral the title of "Defender of the Freedom of the Netherlandsagainst the tyranny of the Spaniards and their allies." The result wasthat the Catholic population was divided in its support between Matthewand Anjou, and that Orange retained the balance of influence.

[Sidenote: Protestant schism]

The insuperable difficulty in the way of success for the policy of thisgreat man was still the religious one. Calvinism had been largelydrawn off to Holland and Zeeland, and Catholicism remained the religionof the great majority of the population in the other provinces. Atfirst sight the latter appeared far from being an intractable force.In contrast with the fiery zeal of the Calvinists on the one hand andof the Spaniards on the other, the faith of the Catholic Flemings andWalloons seemed lukewarm, an old custom rather than a livingconviction. Most were shocked by the fanaticism of the Spaniards, whothus proved the worst enemies of their faith, and yet, within theNetherlands, they were very unwilling to see the old religion perish.When the lower classes at Ghent assumed the leadership they ratherforced than converted that city to the Calvinist confession. Theiracts were taken as a breach of the Pacification of Ghent and threatenedthe whole policy of Orange by creating fresh discord. To obviate this,William proposed to the States General a religious peace on the basisof the status quo with refusal to allow further proselyting.[Sidenote: July, 1578] But this measure, acceptable to the Catholics,was deeply resented by the Calvinists. It was said that one whochanged his religion as often as his coat must prefer human to divinethings and that he who would tolerate Romanists must himself be anatheist.

[Sidenote: Division of the Netherlands]

It was therefore, a primarily religious issue, and no difference ofrace, language or material interest, {271} that divided the Netherlandsinto two halves. For a time the common hatred of all the people forthe foreigner welded them into a united whole; but no sooner was thepressure of the Spanish yoke even slightly relaxed than the mutualantipathy of Calvinist and Catholic showed itself. If we look closelyinto the causes why the North should become predominantly Protestantwhile the South gradually reverted to an entirely Catholic faith, wemust see that the reasons were in part racial, in part geographical andin part social. Geographically and linguistically the Northernprovinces looked for their culture to Germany, and the Southernprovinces to France. Moreover the easy defensibility of Holland andZeeland, behind their moats, made them the natural refuge of a huntedsect and, this tendency once having asserted itself, the polarizationof the Netherlands naturally followed, Protestants being drawn anddriven to their friends in the North and Catholics similarly finding itnecessary or advisable to settle in the South. Moreover in theSouthern provinces the two privileged classes, clergy and nobility,were relatively stronger than in the almost entirely bourgeois andcommercial North. And the influence of both was thrown into the scaleof the Roman church, the first promptly and as a matter of course, thesecond eventually as a reaction from the strongly democratic tendencyof Calvinism. In some of the Southern cities there ensued at this timea desperate struggle between the Protestant democracy and the Catholicaristocracy. The few Protestants of gentle birth in the Walloonprovinces felt ill at ease in company with their Dutch co-religionistsand were called by them "Malcontents" because they looked askance atthe political principles of the North.

[Sidenote: January 1579]

The separatist tendencies on both sides crystallized as some of theSouthern provinces signed a league at {272} Arras on January 5 for theprotection of the Catholic religion. On the 29th this was answered bythe Union of Utrecht, signed by the representatives of Holland,Zeeland, Utrecht, Friesland, Guelders, Zutphen, and the city of Ghent,binding the said provinces to resist all foreign tyranny. Completefreedom of worship was granted, a matter of importance as the Catholicminority was, and has always remained, large. By this act a new statewas born. Orange still continued to labor for union with the Southernprovinces, but he failed. A bitter religious war broke out in thecities of the South. At Ghent the churches were plundered anew.[Sidenote: 1581] At Brussels and Antwerp the Protestant proletariatwon a temporary ascendancy and Catholic worship was forbidden in bothcities. A general emigration from them ensued. Under the stress ofthe religious war which was also a class war, the last vestiges ofunion perished. The States General ceased to have power to raise taxesor enforce decrees, and presently it was no more regarded.

Even William of Orange now abandoned his show of respect for themonarch and became wholly the champion of liberty and of the people.[Sidenote: 1580] The States General recognized Anjou as their prince,but at the same time drew up a very republican constitution. Therepresentatives of the people were given not only the legislative butalso the executive powers, including the direction of foreign affairs.The States of the Northern Provinces formally deposed Philip,[Sidenote: Deposition of Philip, 1581] who could do nothing in reply.A proclamation had already been issued offering 25,000 dollars and apatent of nobility to anyone who would assassinate Orange who wasbranded as "a traitor and rascal" and as "the enemy of the human race."

[Sidenote: October 1, 1578]

Don John, having died unlamented, was succeeded by Alexander Farnese, ason of the ex-regent Margaret {273} of Parma. [Sidenote: Farnese,1545-92] Though an Italian in temperament he united a rare diplomaticpliability with energy as a soldier. Moreover, whereas hispredecessors had despised the people they were sent to govern and hadhated the task of dealing with them, he set his heart on making asuccess. By this time the eyes of all Europe were fixed on thestruggle in the Low Countries and it seemed a worthy achievement toaccomplish what so many famous soldiers and statesmen had failed in.It is doubtless due to the genius of Farnese that the Spanish yoke wasagain fixed on the neck of the southern of the two confederacies intowhich the Burgundian state had spontaneously separated. Welcomed by alarge number of the signers of the Treaty of Arras, [Sidenote: 1579] hepromptly raised an army of 31,000 men, mostly Germans, attacked andtook Maastricht. A sickening pillage followed in which no less than1700 women were slaughtered. Seeing his mistake, on capturing the nexttown, Tournai, he restrained his army and allowed even the garrison tomarch out with the honors of war. Not one citizen was executed, thoughan indemnity of 200,000 guilders was demanded. His clemency helped hiscause more than his success in arms.

[Sidenote: Conquest of the South]

Slowly but surely his campaign of conquest progressed. It was a war ofsieges only, without battles. Bruges was taken after a longinvestment, and was mildly treated. [Sidenote: 1584] Ghentsurrendered and was also let off with an indemnity but without bloodypunishment. After a hard siege Antwerp capitulated. [Sidenote: 1585]Practically the whole of the Southern confederacy had been reduced toobedience to the king of Spain. The Protestant religion was forbiddenby law but in each case when a city was conquered the Protestants weregiven from two to four years either to become reconciled or to emigrate.

{274} But the land that was reconquered was not the land that hadrevolted. A ghastly ruin accompanied by a numbing blight on thoughtand energy settled on the once happy lands of Flanders and Brabant.The civil wars had so wasted the country that wolves prowled even atthe gates of great cities. The coup de grace was given to thecommerce of Antwerp by the barring of the Scheldt by Holland. Tradewith the East and West Indies was forbidden by Spain until 1640.

[Sidenote: Freedom of the North]

But the North, after a desperate struggle and much suffering,vindicated its freedom. Anjou tried first to make himself theirtyrant; [Sidenote: January 17, 1583] his soldiers at Antwerp attackedthe citizens but were beaten off after frightful street fighting. The"French fury" as it was called, taught the Dutch once again to distrustforeign governors, though the death of Anjou relieved them of fear.

[Sidenote: June, 1584]

But a sterner foe was at hand. Having reduced what is now calledBelgium, Farnese attacked the Reformation and the republicans in theirlast strongholds in Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht. The long war, of ahigh technical interest because of the peculiar military problems to besolved, was finally decided in favor of the Dutch. The result was duein part to the heroic courage of the people, in part to the highlydefensible nature of their country, saved time and again by that greatally, the sea.

[Sidenote: July 10, 1584]

A cruel blow was the assassination of Orange whose last words were "Godhave pity on this poor people." His life had been devoted to them inno spirit of ambition or vulgar pride; his energy, his patience, hisbreadth had served the people well. And at his death they showedthemselves worthy of him and of the cause. Around his body the Estatesof Holland convened and resolved to bear themselves manfully {275}without abatement of zeal. Right nobly did they acquit themselves.

[Sidenote: 1586, Leicester]

The bad ending of a final attempt to get foreign help taught the DutchRepublic once and for all to rely only on itself. Robert Dudley, Earlof Leicester, Elizabeth's favorite, was inaugurated as GovernorGeneral. His assumption of independent power enraged his royalmistress, whereas the Dutch were alienated by the suspicion that hesacrificed their interests to those of England, and by his militaryfailures. In less than two years he was forced to return home.[Sidenote: 1587]

[Sidenote: Oldenbarneveldt, 1547-1619]

Under the statesmanlike guidance of John van Oldenbarneveldt, since1586 Pensionary of Holland, a Republic was set up founded on thesupremacy of the Estates. Under his exact, prudent, and resoluteleadership internal freedom and external power were alike developed.Though the war continued long after 1588 the defeat of the Armada inthat year crippled Spain beyond hope of recovery and made the newnation practically safe.

[Sidenote: The Dutch Republic]

The North had suffered much in the war. The frequent inundation of theland destroyed crops. Amsterdam long held out against the rest ofHolland in loyalty to the king, but she suffered so much by theblockade of the Beggars of the Sea and by the emigration of hermerchants to nearby cities, that at last she gave in and cast her lotwith her people. From that time she assumed the commercial hegemonyonce exercised by Antwerp. Recovering rapidly from the devastations ofwar, the Dutch Republic became, in the seventeenth century, the firstsea-power and first money-power in the world. She gave a king toEngland and put a bridle in the mouth of France. She establishedcolonies in America and in the East Indies. With her celebrated newuniversity of Leyden, with {276} publicists like Grotius, theologianslike Jansen, painters like Van Dyke and Rembrandt, philosophers likeSpinoza, she took the lead in many of the fields of thought. Hermaterial and spiritual power, her tolerance and freedom, became theenvy of the world.

[1] The guilder, also called the "Dutch pound," at this time was worth40 cents intrinsically. Money had many times the purchasing power thatit has in 1920.

[2] The word, meaning "prayer," indicated, like the English"benevolence" and the French "don gratuit," that the tax had once beenvoluntarily granted.

[3] The dollar, or Thaler, is worth 75 cents, intrinsically.

{277}

CHAPTER VI

ENGLAND

SECTION 1. HENRY VIII AND THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 1509-47

[Sidenote: Henry VIII, 1509-47]

"The heavens laugh, the earth exults; all is full of milk and honey andnectar." With these words the accession of Henry VIII was announced toErasmus by his pupil and the king's tutor, Lord Mountjoy. This loverof learning thought the new monarch would be not only Octavus butOctavius, fostering letters and cherishing the learned. There was ageneral feeling that a new era was beginning and a new day dawningafter the long darkness of the Middle Age with its nightmares of BlackDeaths and Peasants' Revolts and, worst of all, the civil war that hadhumbled England's power and racked her almost to pieces within.

It was commonly believed that the young prince was a paragon: handsome,athletic, learned, generous, wise, and merciful. That he was fond ofsports, strong and in early life physically attractive, is wellattested. The principal evidences of his learning are the fulsometestimony of Erasmus and his work against Luther. But it has beenlately shown that Erasmus was capable of passing off, as the work of apowerful patron, compositions which he knew to be written by Latinsecretaries; and the royal author of the Defence of the SevenSacraments, which evinces but mediocre talent, received muchunacknowledged assistance.

If judged by his foreign relations Henry's statesmanship wasunsuccessful. His insincerity and perfidy often overreachedthemselves, and he was often {278} deceived. Moreover, he wasinconstant, pursuing no worthy end whatever. England was by herinsular location and by the nearly equal division of power on theContinent between France and the emperor, in a wonderfully safe andadvantageous place. But, so far was Henry from using this gift offortune, that he seems to have acted only on caprice.

[Sidenote: Domestic policy]

In domestic policy Henry achieved his greatest successes, in fact, veryremarkable ones indeed. Doubtless here also he was favored by fortune,in that his own ends happened in the main to coincide with the deepercurrent of his people's purpose, for he was supported by just thatwealthy and enterprising bourgeois class that was to call itself thepeople and to make public opinion for the next three centuries. Intime this class would become sufficiently conscious of its own power tomake Parliament supreme and to demand a reckoning even from the crown,but at first it needed the prestige of the royal name to conquer thetwo privileged classes, the clergy and the nobility. The merchants andthe moneyed men only too willingly became the faithful followers of achief who lavishly tossed to them the wealth of the church and thepolitical privileges of the barons. And Henry had just one strongquality that enabled him to take full advantage of this position; heseemed to lead rather than to drive, and he never wantonly challengedParliament. The atrocity of his acts was only equaled by theirscrupulous legality.

On Henry's morals there should be less disagreement than on his mentalgifts. Holbein's faithful portraits do not belie him. Thebroad-shouldered, heavy-jowled man, standing so firmly on his widelyparted feet, has a certain strength of will, or rather of boundlessegotism. Francis and Charles showed themselves persecuting, and werecapable of having a {279} defaulting minister or a rebel put to death;but neither Charles nor Francis, nor any other king in modern times,has to answer for the lives of so many nobles and ministers, cardinalsand queens, whose heads, as Thomas More put it, he kicked around likefootballs.

[Sidenote: Empson and Dudley executed, April 25, 1509]

The reign began, as it ended, with political murder. The miserly HenryVII had made use of two tools, Empson and Dudley, who, by minuteinquisition into technical offences and by nice adjustment of fines tothe wealth of the offender, had made the law unpopular and the kingrich. Four days after his succession, Henry VIII issued a proclamationasking all those who had sustained injury or loss of goods by thesecommissioners, to make supplication to the king. The floodgates ofpent-up wrath were opened, and the two unhappy ministers swept away byan act of attainder.

[Sidenote: War with France and Scotland]

The pacific policy of the first years of the reign did not last long.The young king felt the need of martial glory, of emulating the fifthHenry, of making himself talked about and enrolling his name on thelist of conquerors who, in return for plaguing mankind, have beendeified by them. It is useless to look for any statesmanlike purposein the war provoked with France and Scotland, but in the purpose forwhich he set out Henry was brilliantly successful: the French were soquickly routed near Guinegate [Sidenote: August 13, 1513] that theaction has been known in history as the Battle of the Spurs. While theking was still absent in France and his queen regent in England, hislieutenants inflicted a decisive defeat on the Scots [Sidenote:September] and slew their king, James IV, at Flodden. England wonnothing save military glory by these campaigns, for the invasion ofFrance was at once abandoned and that of Scotland not even undertaken.

[Sidenote: Wolsey, c. 1475-1530]

The gratification of the national vanity redounded the profit not onlyof Henry but of his minister, {280} Thomas Wolsey. A poor man, likethe other tools of the Tudor despot, he rose rapidly in church andstate partly by solid gifts of statesmanship, partly by baser arts. ByMay, 1515, Erasmus described him as all-powerful with the king and asbearing the main burden of public affairs on his shoulders, and fifteenyears later Luther spoke of him as "the demigod of England, or ratherof Europe." His position at home he owed to his ability to curry favorwith the king by shouldering the odium of unpopular acts. [Sidenote:May, 1521] When the Duke of Buckingham was executed for the crime ofstanding next in succession to the throne, Wolsey was blamed; manypeople thought, as it was put in a pun attributed to Charles V, that"it was a pity so noble a buck should have been slain by such ahound." Wolsey lost the support of the nobles by the pride thatdelighted to humble them, and of the commons by the avarice thataccumulated a corrupt fortune. But, though the rich hated him for hislaw in regard to enclosures, and the poor for not having that lawenforced, he recked little of aught, knowing himself secure under theroyal shield.

To make his sovereign abroad as great as at home, he took advantage ofthe nice balance of power existing on the Continent. "Nothing pleaseshim more than to be called the arbiter of Christendom," wroteGiustiniani, and such, in fact, he very nearly was. His diplomaticgifts were displayed with immense show during the summer of 1520, whenHenry met both Francis and Charles V, and promised each secretly tosupport him against his rival. The camp where the royalties of Franceand England met, near Guines, amid scenes of pageantry and chivalry soresplendent as to give it the name of The Field of Cloth of Gold, sawan alliance cemented by oath, only to be followed by a solemnengagement between Henry and Charles, {281} repugnant in everyparticular to that with France. When war actually broke out betweenthe two, England preferred to throw her weight against France, therebyalmost helping Charles to the throne of universal empire and raising upfor herself an enemy to menace her safety in many a crisis to come. Inthe end, then, Wolsey's perfidious policy failed; and his personalambition for the papacy was also frustrated.

But while "the congress of kings," as Erasmus called it, was disportingitself at Guines and Calais, the tide of a new movement was swiftly andsteadily rising, no more obeying them than had the ocean obeyed Canute.More in England than in most countries the Reformation was an importedproduct. Its "dawn came up like thunder" from across the North Sea.

Luther's Theses on Indulgences were sent by Erasmus to his Englishfriends Thomas More and John Colet little more than four months aftertheir promulgation. [Sidenote: March 5, 1518] By February, 1519,Froben had exported to England a number of volumes of Luther's works.One of them fell into the hands of Henry VIII or his sister Mary,quondam Queen of France, as is shown by the royal arms stamped on it.Many others were sold by a bookseller at Oxford throughout 1520, inwhich year a government official in London wrote to his son in thecountry, [Sidenote: March 3, 1520] "there be heretics here which takeLuther's opinions." The universities were both infected at the sametime. At Cambridge, especially, a number of young men, many of themlater prominent reformers, met at the White Horse Tavern regularly todiscuss the new ideas. The tavern was nicknamed "Germany" [Sidenote:1521] and the young enthusiasts "Germans" in consequence. Butsurprisingly numerous as are the evidences of the spread of Lutheranismin these early years, naturally it as yet had few prominent adherents.When Erasmus wrote Luther that he had well-wishers {282} [Sidenote:May, 1519] in England, and those of the greatest, he was exaggeratingor misinformed. At most he may have been thinking of John Colet, whosedeath in September, 1519, came before he could take any part in thereligious controversy.

At an early date the government took its stand against the heresy.Luther's books were examined by a committee of the University ofCambridge, [Sidenote: 1520] condemned and burnt by them, and soonafterwards by the government. At St. Paul's in London, [Sidenote: May12, 1521] in the presence of many high dignitaries and a crowd ofthirty thousand spectators Luther's books were burnt and his doctrine"reprobated" in addresses by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, andCardinal Wolsey. A little later it was forbidden to read, import orkeep such works, and measures were taken to enforce this law.Commissions searched for the said pamphlets; stationers and merchantswere put under bond not to trade in them; and the German merchants ofthe Steelyard were examined. When it was discovered [Sidenote: 1526]that these foreigners had stopped "the mass of the body of Christ,"commonly celebrated by them in All Hallows' Church the Great, atLondon, they were haled before Wolsey's legatine court, forced toacknowledge its jurisdiction, and dealt with.

With one accord the leading Englishmen declared against Luther.Cuthbert Tunstall, a mathematician and diplomatist, and later Bishop ofLondon, wrote Wolsey from Worms of the devotion of the Germans to theirleader, and sent to him The Babylonian Captivity with the comment,"there is much strange opinion in it near to the opinions of Boheme; Ipray God keep that book out of England." [Sidenote: January 21, 1521]Wolsey himself, biassed perhaps by his ambition for the tiara, laboredto suppress the heresy. Most important of all, Sir Thomas More waspromptly and decisively alienated. {283} It was More, according toHenry VIII, who "by subtle, sinister slights unnaturally procured andprovoked him" to write against the heretic. His Defence of the SevenSacraments, in reply to the Babylonian Captivity, though anextremely poor work, was greeted, on its appearance, as a masterpiece.[Sidenote: July, 1521] The handsome copy bound in gold, sent to Leo X,was read to the pope and declared by him the best antidote to heresyyet produced. In recognition of so valuable an arm, or of so valiant achampion, the pope granted an indulgence of ten years and ten periodsof forty days to the readers of the book, and to its author the longcoveted title Defender of the Faith. Luther answered the king withridicule and the controversy was continued by Henry's henchmen More,Fisher, and others. Stung to the quick, Henry, who had already urgedthe emperor to crush the heretic, now wrote with the same purpose tothe elector and dukes of Saxony and to other German princes.

[Sidenote: Growth of Lutheranism]

But while the chief priests and rulers were not slow to reject the new"gospel," the common people heard it gladly. The rapid diffusion ofLutheranism is proved by many a side light and by the veryproclamations issued from time to time to "resist the damnableheresies" or to suppress tainted books. John Heywood's The Four P's:a merry Interlude of a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Potycary and a Pedlar,written about 1528 though not published until some years later, is fullof Lutheran doctrine, and so is another book very popular at the time,Simon Fish's Supplication of Beggars. John Skelton's Colyn Clout,[Sidenote: c. 1522] a scathing indictment of the clergy, mentions that

Some have smacke
Of Luther's sacke,
And a brennyng sparke
Of Luther's warke.

{284} [Sidenote: William Tyndale's Bible]

But the acceptance of the Reformation, as apart from mere grumbling atthe church, could not come until a Protestant literature was built up.In England as elsewhere the most powerful Protestant tract was thevernacular Bible. Owing to the disfavor in which Wyclif's doctrineswere held, no English versions had been printed until the Protestantdivine William Tyndale highly resolved to make the holy book morefamiliar to the ploughboy than to the bishop.

Educated at both Oxford and Cambridge, Tyndale imbibed the doctrinesfirst of Erasmus, then of Luther, and finally of Zwingli. Applying forhelp in his project to the bishop of London and finding none,[Sidenote: 1524] he sailed for Germany where he completed a translationof the New Testament, and started printing it at Cologne. Driven henceby the intervention of Cochlaeus and the magistrates, he went to Wormsand got another printer to finish the job. [Sidenote: 1526] Of thesix thousand copies in the first edition many were smuggled to England,where Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London, tried to buy them all up,"thinking," as the chronicler Hall phrased it, "that he had God by thetoe when he indeed had the devil by the fist." The money went toTyndale and was used to issue further editions, of which no less thanseven appeared in the next ten years.

The government's attitude was that

Having respect to the malignity of this present time, with the inclination of the people to erroneous opinions, the translation of the New Testament should rather be the occasion of continuance or increase of errors among the said people than any benefit or commodity towards the weal of their souls.

But the magistrates were unable to quench the fiery zeal of Tyndale whocontinued to translate parts of the Old Testament and to print them andother tracts at Antwerp and at Cologne, until his martyrdom at {285}Vilvorde, near Brussels, on October 6, 1536. In 1913 a monument waserected on the place of his death.

Under the leadership of Tyndale on the one side and of More on theother the air became dark with a host of controversial tracts.[Sidenote: Controversial tracts] They are half filled with theologicalmetaphysic, half with the bitterest invective. Luther called HenryVIII "a damnable and rotten worm, a snivelling, drivelling swine of asophist"; More retorted by complaining of the violent language of "thisapostate, this open incestuous lecher, this plain limb of the devil andmanifest messenger of hell." Absurd but natural tactic, with a sureeffect on the people, which relishes both morals and scandal! To provethat faith justifies, the Protestants pointed to the debauchery of thefriars; to prove the mass a sacrifice their enemies mocked at "FriarMartin and Gate Callate his nun lusking together in lechery." But withall the invective there was much solid argument of the kind thatappealed to an age of theological politics. In England as elsewherethe significance of the Reformation was that it was the first issue ofsupreme importance to be argued by means of the press before the bar ofa public opinion sufficiently enlightened to appreciate its importanceand sufficiently strong to make a choice and to enforce its decision.

The party of the Reformation in England at first consisted of twoclasses, London tradesmen and certain members of what Bismarck longafterward called "the learned proletariat." In 1532 the bishops wereable to say:

In the crime of heresy, thanked be God, there hath no
notable person fallen in our time. Truth it is that
certain apostate friars and monks, lewd priests, bankrupt
merchants, vagabonds and lewd, idle fellows of corrupt
nature have embraced the abominable and erroneous
{286}
opinions lately sprung in Germany and by them have
been some seduced in simplicity and ignorance.

[Sidenote: Anti-clerical feeling]

But though both anti-clerical feeling and sympathy with the newdoctrines waxed apace, it is probable that no change would have takenplace for many years had it not been for the king's divorce. Theimportance of this episode, born of the most strangely mingled motivesof conscience, policy, and lust, is not that, as sometimes said, itproved the English people ready to follow their government in religiousmatters as sheep follow their shepherd. Its importance is simply thatit loosed England from its ancient moorings of papal supremacy, andthus established one, though only one, of the cardinal principles ofthe Protestant revolt. The Reformation consisted not only in areligions change but in an assertion of nationalism, in a class revolt,and in certain cultural revolutions. It was only the first that thegovernment had any idea of sanctioning, but by so doing it enabled thepeople later to take matters into their own hands and add the socialand cultural elements. Thus the Reformation in England ran a coursequite different from that in Germany. In the former the culturalrevolution came first, followed fast by the rising of the lower and thetriumph of the middle classes. Last of all came the successfulrealization of a national state. But in England nationalism camefirst; then under Edward the economic revolution; and lastly, under thePuritans, the transmutation of spiritual values.

[Sidenote: Divorce of Catherine of Aragon]

The occasion of the breach with Rome was the divorce of Henry fromCatharine of Aragon, who had previously married his brother Arthur whenthey were both fifteen, and had lived with him as his wife for fivemonths until his death. As marriage with a brother's widow wasforbidden by Canon Law, a {287} dispensation from the pope had beensecured, to enable Catharine to marry Henry. The king's scruples aboutthe legality of the act were aroused by the death of all the queen'schildren, save the Princess Mary, in which he saw the fulfilment of thecurse denounced in Leviticus xx, 21: "If a man shall take his brother'swife . . . they shall be childless." Just at this time Henry fell inlove with Anne Boleyn, [Sidenote: Anne Boleyn] and this furtherincreased his dissatisfaction with his present estate.

He therefore applied to the pope for annulment of marriage, but theunhappy Clement VII, now in the emperor's fist, felt unable to give itto him. He writhed and twisted, dallied with the proposals that Henryshould take a second wife, or that his illegitimate son the Duke ofRichmond should marry his half sister Mary; in short he was ready togrant a dispensation for anything save for the one horrible crime ofdivorce—as the annulment was then called. His difficulties in gettingat the rights of the question were not made easier by the readiness ofboth parties to commit a little perjury or to forge a little bull tofurther their cause.

Seeing no help in sight from Rome Henry began to collect the opinionsof universities and "strange doctors." The English, French, andItalian universities decided as the king wished that his marriage wasnull; Wittenberg and Marburg rendered contrary opinions. Manytheologians, including Erasmus, Luther, and Melanchthon, expressed theopinion that bigamy would be the best way to meet the situation.

But more was needed to make the annulment legal than the verdict ofuniversities. Repulsed by Rome Henry was forced to make an alliance,though it proved but a temporary one, with the Reforming andanti-clerical parties in his realm. At Easter, 1529, Lutheran booksbegan to circulate at court, books {288} advocating the confiscation ofecclesiastical property and the reduction of the church to a state ofprimitive simplicity. To Chapuis, the imperial ambassador, Henrypointedly praised Luther, whom he had lately called "a wolf of hell anda limb of Satan," remarking that though he had mixed heresy in hisbooks that was not sufficient reason for reproving and rejecting themany truths he had brought to light. To punish Wolsey for the failureto secure what was wanted from Rome, [Sidenote: November 4, 1530] thepampered minister was arrested for treason, but died of chagrin beforehe could be executed. "Had I served my God," said he, "as diligentlyas I have served my king, he would not have given me over in my greyhairs."

[Sidenote: Reformation Parliament, November 3, 1529]

In the meantime there had already met that Parliament that was to pass,in the seven years of its existence, the most momentous andrevolutionary laws as yet placed upon the statute-books. The electionswere free, or nearly so; the franchise varied from a fairly democraticone in London to a highly oligarchical one in some boroughs.Notwithstanding the popular feeling that Catharine was an injured womanand that war with the Empire might ruin the valuable trade withFlanders, the "government," as would now be said, that is, the king,received hearty support by the majority of members. The only possibleexplanation for this, apart from the king's acknowledged skill as aparliamentary leader, is the strength of the anti-clerical feeling.The rebellion of the laity against the clergy, and of the patriotsagainst the Italian yoke, needed but the example of Germany to burstall the dykes and barriers of medieval custom. The significance of therevolution was that it was a forcible reform of the church by thestate. The wish of the people was to end ecclesiastical abuses withoutmuch regard to doctrine; the wish of the king was to make himself {289}"emperor and pope" in his own dominions. While Henry studied Wyclif'sprogram, and the people read the English Testament, the lessons theyderived from these sources were at first moral and political, notdoctrinal or philosophic.

[Sidenote: Submission of the clergy, December 1530]

The first step in the reduction of the church was taken when theattorney-general filed in the court of King's Bench an informationagainst the whole body of the clergy for violating the statutes ofProvisors and Praemunire by having recognized Wolsey's legatineauthority. Of course there was no justice in this; the king himselfhad recognized Wolsey's authority and anyone who had denied it wouldhave been punished. But the suit was sufficient to accomplish thegovernment's purposes, which were, first to wring money from the clergyand then to force them to declare the king "sole protector and supremehead of the church and clergy of England." Reluctantly the Convocationof Canterbury accepted this demand in the form that the king was,"their singular protector, only and supreme lord and, as far as the lawof Christ allows, even Supreme Head." Henry further proposed that theoaths of the clergy to the pope be abolished and himself made supremelegislator. [Sidenote: May 15, 1532] Convocation accepted this demandalso in a document known as "the submission of the clergy."

If such was the action of the spiritual estate, it was natural that thetemporal peers and the Commons in parliament should go much further.[Sidenote: 1532] A petition of the Commons, really emanating from thegovernment and probably from Thomas Cromwell, complained bitterly ofthe tyranny of the ordinaries in ecclesiastical jurisdiction, ofexcessive fees and vexations and frivolous charges of heresy madeagainst unlearned laymen. [Sidenote: May 1532] Abuses of like naturewere dealt with in statutes limiting the fees exacted by priests andregulating {290} pluralities and non-residence. Annates were abolishedwith the proviso that the king might negotiate with the pope,—theintention of the government being thus to bring pressure to bear on thecuria. No wonder the clergy were thoroughly frightened. BishopFisher, their bravest champion, protested in the House of Lords: "ForGod's sake, see what a realm the kingdom of Boheme was, and when thechurch fell down, there fell the glory of the kingdom. Now with theCommons is nothing but 'Down with the church,' and all this meseemethis for lack of faith only."

[Sidenote: Marriage with Anne Boleyn]

It had taken Henry several years to prepare the way for his chiefobject, the divorce. His hand was at last forced by the knowledge thatAnne was pregnant; he married her on January 25, 1533, without waitingfor final sentence of annulment of marriage with Catharine. In sodoing he might seem, at first glance, to have followed the advice sofreely tendered him to discharge his conscience by committing bigamy;but doubtless he regarded his first marriage as illegal all the timeand merely waited for the opportunity to get a court that would sopronounce it. The vacancy of the archbishopric of Canterbury enabledhim to appoint to it Thomas Cranmer, [Sidenote: Cranmer] the obsequiousdivine who had first suggested his present plan. Cranmer was aLutheran, so far committed to the new faith that he had married; he wasintelligent, learned, a wonderful master of language, and capable atlast of dying for his belief. But that he showed himself pliable tohis master's wishes beyond all bounds of decency is a fact made all themore glaring by the firm and honorable conduct of More and Fisher. Hisworst act was possibly on the occasion of his nomination to theprovince of Canterbury; wishing to be confirmed by the pope heconcealed his real views and took an oath of obedience to the Holy See,having previously signed {291} a protest that he considered the oath amere form and not a reality.

The first use he made of his position was to pronounce sentence thatHenry and Catharine had never been legally married, though at the sametime asserting that this did not affect the legitimacy of Mary becauseher parents had believed themselves married. Immediately afterwards itwas declared that Anne was a lawful wife, and she was crowned queen,[Sidenote: 1533] amid the smothered execrations of the populace, onJune 1. On September 7, the Princess Elizabeth was born. Catharine'scause was taken up at Rome; Clement's brief forbidding the king toremarry was followed by final sentence in Catharine's favor. Her lastyears were rendered miserable by humiliation and acts of petty spite.When she died her late husband, with characteristic indecency,[Sidenote: January 1536] celebrated the joyous event by giving a ballat which he and Anne appeared dressed in yellow.

[Sidenote: March 1534]

The feeling of the people showed itself in this case finer and morechivalrous than that prevalent at court. The treatment of Catharinewas so unpopular that Chapuis wrote that the king was much hated by hissubjects. [Sidenote: January, 1536] Resolved to make an example ofthe murmurers, the government selected Elizabeth Barton, the "Holy Maidof Kent." After her hysterical visions and a lucky prophecy had wonher an audience, she fell under the influence of monks and prophesiedthat the king would not survive his marriage with Anne one month, andproclaimed that he was no longer king in the eyes of God. [Sidenote:April 1, 1534] She and her accomplices were arrested, attaintedwithout trial, and executed. She may pass as an English Catholicmartyr.

[Sidenote: Act in Restraint of Appeals, February 1533]

Continuing its course of making the king absolute master the Parliamentpassed an Act in Restraint of Appeals, the first constitutional breakwith Rome. {292} The theory of the government was set forth in thepreamble:

Whereas by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles, it is manifestly declared and expressed, that this realm of England is an Empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one supreme head and king . . . unto whom a body politic compact of all sorts and degrees of people, divided in terms, and by names of spirituality and temporally, be bounden and ought to bear, next to God, a natural and humble obedience. . . .

therefore all jurisdiction of foreign powers was denied.

[Sidenote: January 15, 1534]

When, after a recess, Parliament met again there were forty vacanciesto be filled in the Lower House, and this time care was taken that thenew members should be well affected. Scarcely a third of the spirituallords assembled, though whether their absence was commanded, or theirpresence not required, by the king, is uncertain. As, in earlierParliaments, the spiritual peers had outnumbered the temporal, this wasa matter of importance. Another sign of the secularization of thegovernment was the change in the character of the chancellors. Wolseywas the last great ecclesiastical minister of the reign; More andCromwell who followed him were laymen.

The severance with Rome was now completed by three laws. In the firstplace the definite abolition of the annates meant that henceforth theelection of archbishops and bishops must be under licence by the kingand that they must swear allegiance to him before consecration. Asecond act forbade the payment of Peter's pence and all other fees toRome, and vested in the Archbishop of Canterbury the right to grantlicences previously granted by the pope. A third act, for thesubjection of the clergy, put convocation under the royal power andforbade all privileges inconsistent with this. The new pope, Paul III,struck back, though {293} with hesitation, excommunicating the king,[Sidenote: 1535-8] declaring all his children by Anne Boleynillegitimate, and absolving his subjects from their oath of allegiance.

[Sidenote: 1534]

Two acts entrenched the king in his despotic pretensions. The Act ofSuccession, [Sidenote: Act of Succession] notable as the firstassertion by crown and Parliament of the right to legislate in thisconstitutional matter, vested the inheritance of the crown in the issueof Henry and Anne, and made it high treason to question the marriage.The Act of Supremacy [Sidenote: Act of Supremacy] declared that theking's majesty "justly and rightfully is and ought to be supreme headof the church of England," pointedly omitting the qualificationinsisted on by Convocation,—"as far as the law of Christ allows."Exactly how far this supremacy went was at first puzzling. That itextended not only to the governance of the temporalities of the church,but to issuing injunctions on spiritual matters and defining articlesof belief was soon made apparent; on the other hand the monarch neverclaimed in person the power to celebrate mass.

That the abrogation of the papal authority was accepted so easily isproof of the extent to which the national feeling of the English churchhad already gone. An oath to recognize the supremacy of the king wastendered to both convocations, to the universities, to the clergy andto prominent laymen, and was with few exceptions readily taken.Doubtless many swallowed the oath from mere cowardice; others took itwith mental reservations; and yet that the majority complied shows thatthe substitution of a royal for a papal despotism was acceptable to theconscience of the country at large. Many believed that they were notdeparting from the Catholic faith; but that others welcomed the act asa step towards the Reformation cannot be doubted. How strong was thehold of Luther on the country will presently be shown, but here {294}only one instance of the exuberance of the will for a purely nationalreligion need be quoted. "God hath showed himself the God of England,or rather an English God," wrote Hugh Latimer, [Sidenote: 1537] aleading Lutheran; not only the church but the Deity had become insular!

[Sidenote: Fisher]

But there were a few, and among them the greatest, who refused tobecome accomplices in the break with Roman Christendom. John Fisher,Bishop of Rochester, a friend of Erasmus and a man of admirablesteadfastness, had long been horrified by the tyranny of Henry. He hadstoutly upheld the rightfulness of Catharine's marriage, and now horefused to see in the monarch the fit ruler of the church. So stronglydid he feel on these subjects that he invited Charles to invade Englandand depose the king. This was treason, though probably the governmentthat sent him to the tower was ignorant of the act. When Paul IIIrewarded Fisher by creating him a cardinal [Sidenote: May 20, 1535]Henry furiously declared he would send his head to Rome to get the hat.[Sidenote: June 22] The old man of seventy-six was accordinglybeheaded.

[Sidenote: Sir Thomas More executed, July 6]

This execution was followed by that of Sir Thomas More, the greatestornament of his country. As More has been remembered almost entirelyby his noble Utopia and his noble death, it is hard to estimate hischaracter soberly. That his genius was polished to the highestperfection, that in a hard age he had an altogether lovely sympathywith the poor, and in a servile age the courage of his convictions,would seem enough to excuse any faults. But a deep vein of fanaticismran through his whole nature and tinctured all his acts, political,ecclesiastical, and private. Not only was his language violent in theextreme, but his acts were equally merciless when his passions werearoused. Appointed chancellor after the fall of Wolsey, he did notscruple to hit the man who was down, describing {295} him, in ascathing speech in Parliament, as the scabby wether separated by thecareful shepherd from the sound sheep. In his hatred of the newopinions he not only sent men to death and torture for holding them,but reviled them while doing it. "Heretics as they be," he wrote, "theclergy doth denounce them. And as they be well worthy, the temporalitydoth burn them. And after the fire of Smithfield, hell doth receivethem, where the wretches burn for ever."

As chancellor he saw with growing disapproval the course of the tyrant.He opposed the marriage with Anne Boleyn. The day after the submissionof the clergy he resigned the great seal. He could not long avoidfurther offence to his master, and his refusal to take the oath ofsupremacy was the crime for which he was condemned. His behaviourduring his last days and on the scaffold was perfect. He spent histime in severe self-discipline; he uttered eloquent words offorgiveness of his enemies, messages of love to the daughter whom hetenderly loved, and brave jests.

[Sidenote: Anabaptist martyrs, 1536]

But while More's passion was one that any man might envy, his couragewas shared by humbler martyrs. In the same year in which he wasbeheaded thirteen Dutch Anabaptists were burnt, as he would haveapproved, by the English government. Mute, inglorious Christs, theywere led like sheep to the slaughter and as lambs dumb before theirshearers. They had no eloquence, no high position, to make their wordsring from side to side of Europe and echo down the centuries; but theirmeek endurance should not go unremembered.

To take More's place as chief minister Henry appointed the mostobsequious tool he could find, Thomas Cromwell. [Sidenote: ThomasCromwell, 1485?-1540] To good purpose this man had studiedMachiavelli's Prince as a practical manual of tyranny. His mostimportant service to the crown was the {296} next step in the reductionof the medieval church, the dissolution of the monasteries. [Sidenote:Dissolution of the monasteries] Like other acts tending towards theReformation this was, on the whole, popular, and had been rehearsed ona small scale on several previous occasions in English history. Thepope and the king of France taught Edward II to dissolve thepreceptories, to the number of twenty-three, belonging to the Templars;in 1410 the Commons petitioned for the confiscation of all churchproperty; in 1414 the alien priories in England fell under theanimadversion of the government; their property was handed over to thecrown and they escaped only by the payment of heavy fines, byincorporation into English orders, and by partial confiscation of theirland. The idea prevailed that mortmain had failed of its object andthat therefore the church might rightfully be relieved of herill-gotten gains. These were grossly exaggerated, a pamphleteerbelieving that the wealth of the church amounted to half the propertyof the realm. In reality the total revenue of the spiritualityamounted to only L320,000; that of the monasteries to only L140,000.There had been few endowments in the fifteenth century; only eight newones, in fact, in the whole period 1399-1509. Colleges, schools, andhospitals now attracted the money that had previously gone to the monks.

Moreover, the monastic life had fallen on evil days. The abbeys nolonger were centers of learning and of the manufacture of books. Thefunctions of hospitality and of charity that they still exercised werenot sufficient to redeem them in the eyes of the people for the "gross,carnal, and vicious living" with which they were commonly and quiterightly charged. Visitations undertaken not by hostile governments butby bishops in the fifteenth century prove that much immorality obtainedwithin the cloister walls. By 1528 {297} they had become sointolerable that a popular pamphleteer, Simon Fish, in hisSupplication of Beggars, proposed that the mendicant friars beentirely suppressed.

[Sidenote: January 21, 1535]

A commission was now issued to Thomas Cromwell, empowering him to holda general visitation of all churches, monasteries, and collegiatebodies. The evidence gathered of the shocking disorders obtaining inthe cloisters of both sexes is on the whole credible and wellsubstantiated. Nevertheless these disorders furnished rather thepretext than the real reason for the dissolutions that followed.Cromwell boasted that he would make his king the richest inChristendom, and this was the shortest and most popular way to do it.

[Sidenote: 1536]

Accordingly an act was passed for the dissolution of all smallreligious houses with an income of less than L200 a year. The rightsof the founders were safe-guarded, and pensions guaranteed to thoseinmates who did not find shelter in one of the larger establishments.By this act 376 houses were dissolved with an aggregate revenue ofL32,000, not counting plate and jewels confiscated. Two thousand monksor nuns were affected in addition to about eight thousand retainers orservants. The immediate effect was a large amount of misery, but theresult in the long run was good. Perhaps the principal politicalimportance of this and the subsequent spoliations of the church was tomake the Reformation profitable and therefore popular with anenterprising class. For the lion's share of the prey did not go to thelion, but to the jackals. From the king's favorites to whom he threwthe spoils was founded a new aristocracy, a class with a strong vestedinterest in opposing the restoration of the papal church. To theProtestant citizens of London was now added a Protestant landed gentry.

{298} [Sidenote: Union with Wales, 1536]

Before the "Reformation Parliament" had ceased to exist, one more actof great importance was passed. Wales was a wild country, imperfectlygoverned by irregular means. By the first Act of Union in Britishhistory, Wales was now incorporated with England and the anomalies, ordistinctions, in its legal and administrative system, wiped out. Bysevere measures, in the course of which 5000 men were sent to thegallows, the western mountaineers were reduced to order during theyears 1534-40; and in 1543 their union with England was completed. Themeasure was statesmanlike and successful; it was undoubtedly aided bythe loyalty of the Welsh to their own Tudor dynasty.

[Sidenote: April 14, 1536]

When Parliament dissolved after having accomplished, during its sevenyears, the greatest permanent revolution in the history of England, ithad snapped the bands with Rome and determined articles of religiousbelief; it had given the king more power in the church than the popeever had, and had exalted his prerogative in the state to a pitch neverreached before or afterwards; it had dissolved the smaller monasteries,abridged the liberties of the subject, settled the succession to thethrone, created new treasons and heresies; it had handled grave socialproblems, like enclosures and mendicancy; and had united Wales toEngland.

[Sidenote: Execution of Anne Boleyn]

And now the woman for whose sake, one is tempted to say, the king haddone it all—though of course his share in the revolution does notrepresent the real forces that accomplished it—the woman he had wonwith "such a world of charge and hell of pain," was to be cast into theouter darkness of the most hideous tragedy in history. Anne Boleyn wasnot a good woman. And yet, when she was accused of adultery [Sidenote:May 19, 1536] with four men and of incest with her own brother, {299}though she was tried by a large panel of peers, condemned, andbeheaded, it is impossible to be sure of her guilt.

[Sidenote: Jane Seymour]

On the day following Anne's execution or, as some say, on May 30, Henrymarried his third wife, Jane Seymour. On October 12, 1537, she borehim a son, Edward. Forced by her husband to take part in thechristening, an exhausting ceremony too much for her strength, shesickened and died soon afterwards.

[Sidenote: Lutheran tracts]

In the meantime the Lutheran movement was growing apace in England. Inthe last two decades of Henry's reign seven of Luther's tracts and someof his hymns were translated into English. Five of the tracts provedpopular enough to be reprinted. One of them was The Liberty of aChristian Man, turned into English by John Tewkesbury whom, havingdied for his faith, More called "a stinking martyr." The hymns andsome of the other tracts were Englished by Miles Coverdale. Inaddition to this there was translated an account of Luther's death in1546, the Augsburg Confession and four treatises of Melanchthon, andone each of Zwingli, Oecolampadius and Bullinger,—this last reprinted.Of course these versions are not a full measure of Lutheran influence,but a mere barometer. The party now numbered powerful preachers likeLatimer and Ridley; Thomas Cranmer the Archbishop of Canterbury andThomas Cromwell, since May, 1534, the king's principal secretary. Theadherence of the last named to the Reforming party is perhaps the mostsignificant sign of the times. As his only object was to be on thewinning side, and as he had not a bit of real religious interest, itmakes it all the more impressive that, believing the cat was about tojump in the direction of Lutheranism, he should have tried to puthimself in the line of its trajectory {300} by doing all he could tofoster the Reformers at home and the Protestant alliance abroad.

[Sidenote: Coverdale, 1488?-1569]

One of the decisive factors in the Reformation again proved to be theEnglish Bible, completed, after the end of Tyndale's labors by a man ofless scholarship but equally happy mastery of language, MilesCoverdale. Of little original genius, he spent his life largely in thelabor of translating tracts and treatises by the German Reformers intohis native tongue. [Sidenote: The English Bible, 1535] His firstgreat work was the completion of the English Bible which was publishedby Christopher Froschauer of Zurich in 1535, the title-page statingthat it had been translated "out of Douche and Latyn"—the "Douche"being, of course, Luther's German version. For the New Testament andfor the Old Testament as far as the end of Chronicles, Tyndale'sversion was used; the rest was by Coverdale. The work was dedicated tothe king, and, as Cromwell had already been considering theadvisability of authorizing the English Bible, this was not anunwelcome thing. But as the government was as yet unprepared torecognize work avowedly based on German Protestant versions, [Sidenote:1537] they resorted to the device of re-issuing the Bible with the nameof Thomas Matthew as translator, though in fact it consisted entirelyof the work of Tyndale and Coverdale. [Sidenote: 1538-9] A lightrevision of this work was re-issued as the Great Bible, [Sidenote:October 11, 1538] and Injunctions were issued by Cromwell ordering aBible of the largest size to be set up in every church, and the peopleto be encouraged to read it. They were also to be taught the Lord'sprayer and creed in English, spiritual sermons were to be preached, andsuperstitions, such as going on pilgrimages, burning candles to saints,and kissing and licking relics, were to be discouraged.

At the same time Cromwell diligently sought a rapprochement with theGerman Protestants. The idea {301} was an obvious one that, having wonthe enmity of Charles, England should support his dangerous intestineenemies, the Schmalkaldic princes. In that day of theological politicsit was natural to try to find cement for the alliance in a commonconfession. Embassy after embassy made pilgrimages to Wittenberg,where the envoys had long discussions with the Reformers [Sidenote:January, 1536] both about the divorce and about matters of faith. Theytook back with them to England, together with a personal letter fromLuther to Cromwell, [Sidenote: April] a second opinion unfavorable tothe divorce and a confession drawn up in Seventeen Articles. In this,though in the main it was, as it was called, "a repetition and exegesisof the Augsburg Confession," considerable concessions were made to thewishes of the English. Melanchthon was the draughtsman and Luther theoriginator of the articles.

This symbol now became the basis of the first definition of faith drawnup by the government. Some such statement was urgently needed, for,amid the bewildering acts of the Reformation Parliament, the peoplehardly knew what the king expected them to believe. The king thereforepresented to Convocation a Book of Articles of Faith and Ceremonies,[Sidenote: July 11 The Book of Articles] commonly called the TenArticles, drafted by Fox on the basis of the memorandum he had receivedat Wittenberg, in close substantial and frequently in verbal agreementwith it. By this confession the Bible, the three creeds, and the actsof the first four councils were designated as authoritative; the threeLutheran sacraments of baptism, penance, and the altar were retained;justification by faith and good works jointly was proclaimed; the useof images was allowed and purgatory disallowed; the real presence inthe sacrament was strongly affirmed. The significance of the articles,however, is not so much their Lutheran provenance, as in theirpromulgation {302} by the crown. It was the last step in theenslavement of religion. "This king," as Luther remarked, "wants to beGod. He founds articles of faith, which even the pope never did."

[Sidenote: The Pilgrimage of Grace]

It only remained to see what the people would say to the new order.Within a few months after the dissolution of the Reformation Parliamentand the publication of the Ten Articles, the people in the north spreadupon the page of history an extremely emphatic protest. For this isreally what the Pilgrimage of Grace was—not a rebellion against king,property, or any established institution, but a great demonstrationagainst the policy for which Cromwell became the scapegoat. In thosedays of slow communication opinions travelled on the beaten roads ofcommerce. As late as Mary's reign there is proof that Protestantismwas confined to the south, east, and midlands,—roughly speaking to acircle with London as its center and a radius of one hundred miles. Inthese earlier years, Protestant opinion was probably even moreconfined; London was both royalist and anti-Roman Catholic; the portson the south-eastern coast, including Calais, at that time an Englishstation in France, and the university towns had strong Lutheran andstill stronger anti-clerical parties.

But in the wilds of the north and west it was different. There, hardlyany bourgeois class of traders existed to adopt "the religion ofmerchants" as Protestantism has been called. Perhaps more importantwas the mere slowness of the diffusion of ideas. The good old wayswere good enough for men who never knew anything else. The people werediscontented with the high taxes, and the nobles, who in the northretained feudal affections if not feudal power, were outraged by theascendency in the royal councils of low-born upstarts. Moreover, itseems that the clergy {303} were stronger in the north even before theinroads of the new doctrines. In the suppression of the lessermonasteries Yorkshire, the largest county in England, had lost the mostfoundations, 53 in all, and Lincolnshire the next most, 37. Irritationat the suppression itself was greatly increased among the clergy by theinsolence and thoroughness of the visitation, in which not onlymonasteries but parish priests had been examined. In resisting theking in the name of the church the priests had before them the exampleof the most popular English saint, Thomas Becket. They were the realfomenters of the demonstration, and the gentlemen, not the people, itsleaders.

Rioting began in Lincolnshire on October 1, 1536, and before the end ofthe month 40,000 men had joined the movement. A petition to the kingwas drawn up demanding that the church holidays be kept as before, thatthe church be relieved of the payment of first-fruits and tithes, thatthe suppressed houses be restored except those which the king "kept forhis pleasure only," that taxes be reduced and some unpopular officialsbanished.

Henry thundered an answer in his most high and mighty style: "Howpresumptuous then are ye, the rude commons of one shire, and that oneof the most brute and beastly of the whole realm, and of leastexperience to find fault with your prince in the electing of hiscouncillors and prelates!" He at once dispatched an army with orders"to invade their countries, to burn, spoil and destroy their goods,wives and children." [Sidenote: March 1537] Repression of the risingin Lincolnshire was followed by the execution of forty-six leaders.

But the movement had promptly spread to Yorkshire, where men gatheredas for a peaceable demonstration, [Sidenote: October 1536] and sworenot to enter "this pilgrimage of grace for the commonwealth, save onlyfor the {304} maintenance of God's faith and church militant,preservation of the king's person, and purifying the nobility of allvillein's blood and evil counsellors, to the restitution of Christ'schurch and the suppression of heretics' opinions." In Yorkshire it wasfeared that the money extorted from the abbeys was going to London; andthat the new treason's acts would operate harshly. Cumberland andWestmoreland soon joined the rising, their special grievance being theeconomic one of the rise of rents, or rather of the heavy fines exactedby landlords on the renewal of leases. An army of 35,000 was raised bythe insurgents but their leader, Robert Aske, did not wish to fight,though he was opposed by only 8,000 royal troops. He preferred aparley and demanded, in addition to a free pardon, the acceptance ofthe northern demands, the summons of a free Parliament, the restorationof the papal supremacy as touching the cure of souls, and thesuppression of the books of Tyndale, Huss, Luther, and Melanchthon.The king invited Aske to a personal interview, and promised to accedeto the demand for a Parliament if the petitioners would disperse. Anact of violence on a part of a few of the northerners was held toabsolve the government, and Henry, having gathered his forces,demanded, and secured, a "dreadful execution" of vengeance.

Though the Pilgrimage of Grace had some effect in warning Henry not todabble in foreign heresies, the policy he had most at heart, that ofmaking himself absolute in state and church, went on apace. Theculmination of the growth of the royal power is commonly seen in theStatute of Proclamations [Sidenote: Statute of Proclamations, 1539]apparently giving the king's proclamations the same validity as lawsave when they touched the lives, liberty, or property of subjects orwere repugnant to existing statutes. Probably, however, the intent ofParliament was not {305} to confer new powers on the crown but toregulate the enforcement of already existing prerogatives. As a matterof fact no proclamations were issued during the last years of Henry'sreign that might not have been issued before.

But the reform of the church by the government, in morals and usages,not in doctrine, proceeded unchecked. The larger monasteries had beenfalling into the king's hands by voluntary surrender ever since 1536; anew visitation and a new Act for the dissolution [Sidenote: 1539] ofthe greater monasteries completed the process.

[Sidenote: War on relics]

An iconoclastic war was now begun not, as in other countries, by themob, but by the government. Relics like the Blood of Hailes weredestroyed, and the Rood of Boxley, a crucifix mechanically contrived sothat the priests made it nod and smile or shake its head and frownaccording to the liberality of its worshipper, was taken down and themechanism exposed in various places. At Walsingham in Norfolk was anodding image of the Virgin, a bottle of her milk, still liquid, and aknuckle of St. Peter. The shrine, ranking though it did with Lorettoand Compostella in popular veneration, was now destroyed. With muchzest the government next attacked the shrine of St. Thomas Becket atCanterbury, thus revenging the humiliation of another Henry at thehands of the church. The martyr was now declared to be a rebel who hadfled from the realm.

[Sidenote: 1536]

The definition of doctrine, coupled with negotiations with theSchmalkaldic princes, continued briskly. The project for an alliancecame to nothing, for John Frederic of Saxony wrote that God would notallow them to have communication with Henry. Two embassies to Englandengaged in assiduous, but fruitless, theological discussion. Henryhimself, with the aid of Cuthbert Tunstall, drew up a long statement"against {306} the opinions of the Germans on the sacrament in bothkinds, private masses, and sacerdotal marriage." The reactionarytendency of the English is seen in the Institution of the ChristianMan, [Sidenote: Definitions of Faith] published with royal authority,and still more in the Act of the Six Articles. [Sidenote: 1537] Inthe former the four sacraments previously discarded are again "found."[Sidenote: 1539] In the latter, transubstantiation is affirmed, thedoctrine of communion in both kinds branded as heresy, the marriage ofpriests declared void, vows of chastity are made perpetually binding,private masses and auricular confessions are sanctioned. Denial oftransubstantiation was made punishable by the stake and forfeiture ofgoods; those who spoke against the other articles were declared guiltyof felony on the second offence. This act, officially entitled "forabolishing diversity in opinions" was really the first act ofuniformity. It was carried by the influence of the king and the laityagainst the parties represented by Cromwell and Cranmer. It ended theplans for a Schmalkaldic alliance. [Sidenote: July 10, 1539] Lutherthanked God that they were rid of that blasphemer who had tried toenter their league but failed.

By a desperate gamble Cromwell now tried to save what was left of hispro-German policy. Duke William of Cleves-Jülich-Berg had adopted anErasmian compromise between Lutheranism and Romanism, in some respectsresembling the course pursued by Henry. In this direction Cromwellaccordingly next turned and induced his master to contract a marriagewith Anne, [Sidenote: January 6, 1540] the duke's sister. As Henry hadoffered to the European audience three tragedies in his three formermarriages, he now, in true Greek style, presented in his fourth a farceor "satyric drama." The monarch did not like his new wife in theleast, and found means of ridding himself of her more speedily than wasusual even with him. Having shared her bed for six months {307} hedivorced her on the ground that the marriage had not been consummated.[Sidenote: July 28, 1540] The ex-queen continued to live as "theking's good sister" with a pension and establishment of her own, butCromwell vicariously expiated her failure to please. He was attainted,without trial, for treason, and speedily executed.

[Sidenote: Bluebeard's wives]

On the same day Henry married Catharine Howard, a beautiful girlselected by the Catholics to play the same part for them that AnneBoleyn had played for the Lutherans, and who did so more exactly thanher backers intended. Like her predecessor she was beheaded foradultery on February 13, 1542. On July 12, 1543, Bluebeard concludedhis matrimonial adventures by taking Catharine Parr, a lady who, likeSieyès after the Terror, must have congratulated herself on her rareability in surviving.

[Sidenote: Catholic reaction]

As a Catholic reaction marked the last eight years of Henry's reign, itmay perhaps be well to say a few words about the state of opinion inEngland at that time. The belief that the whole people took theirreligion with sheepish meekness from their king is too simple and toodishonorable to the national character to be believed. That theyappeared to do this is really a proof that parties were nearlydivided. Just as in modern times great issues are often decided ingeneral elections by narrow majorities, so in the sixteenth centurypublic opinion veered now this way, now that, in part guided by thegovernment, in part affecting it even when the channels by which it didso are not obvious. We must not imagine that the people took nointerest in the course of affairs. On the contrary the burning issuesof the day were discussed in public house and marketplace with the samevivacity with which politics are now debated in the New England countrystore. "The Word of God was disputed, rhymed, sung and jangled inevery alehouse and {308} tavern," says a contemporary state paper. Inprivate, graver men argued with the high spirit reflected in More'sdialogues.

Four parties may be plainly discerned. First and most numerous werethe strict Anglicans, orthodox and royalist, comprising the greaterpart of the crown-loving, priest-hating and yet, in intellectualmatters, conservative common people. Secondly, there were the pope'sfollowers, still strong in numbers especially among the clergy and inthe north. Their leaders were among the most high-minded of thenation, but were also the first to be smitten by the king's wrathwhich, as his satellites were always repeating in Latin proverb, meantdeath. Such men were More and Fisher and the London Carthusiansexecuted in 1535 for refusing the oath of supremacy. Third, there werethe Lutherans, an active and intelligent minority of city merchants andartisans, led by men of conspicuous talents and generally of highcharacter, like Coverdale, Kidley, and Latimer. With these leaderswere a few opportunists like Cranmer and a few Machiavellians likeCromwell. Lastly there was a very small contingent of extremists,Zwinglians and Anabaptists, all classed together as blasphemers and associal agitators. Their chief notes were the variety of their opinionsand the unanimity of their persecution by all other parties. Some ofthem were men of intelligible social and religious tenets; othersfurnished the "lunatic fringe" of the reform movement. Theproclamation banishing them from England [Sidenote: 1538] on pain ofdeath merely continued the previous practice of the government.

The fall of the Cromwell ministry, if it may be so termed by modernanalogy, was followed by a government in which Henry acted as his ownprime minister. {309} He had made good his boast that if his shirtknew his counsel he would strip it off.[1] Two of his great ministershe had cast down for being too Catholic, one for being too Protestant.Having procured laws enabling him to burn Romanists as traitors andLutherans as heretics, he established a régime of pure Anglicanism, theonly genuine Anglican Catholicism, however much it may have beenimitated in after centuries, that ever existed.

[Sidenote: Anti-protestant measures]

Measures were at once taken towards suppressing the Protestants andtheir Bible. One of the first martyrs was Robert Barnes, a personalfriend of Luther. Much stir was created by the burning, some yearslater, of a gentlewoman named Anne Askewe and of three men, atSmithfield. The revulsion naturally caused by this cruelty preparedthe people for the Protestant rule of Edward. The Bible was alsoattacked. The translation of 1539 was examined by Convocation in 1540and criticized for not agreeing more closely with the Latin. In 1543all marginal notes were obliterated and the lower classes forbidden toread the Bible at all.

Henry's reign ended as it began with war on France and Scotland, butwith little success. The government was put to dire straits to raisemoney. A forced loan of 10 per cent. on property was exacted in 1542and repudiated by law the next year. An income tax rising from fourpence to two shillings in the pound on goods and from eight pence tothree shillings on revenue from land, was imposed. Crown lands weresold or mortgaged. The last and most disastrous expedient was thedebasement of the coinage, the old equivalent of the modern issue ofirredeemable paper. As a consequence of this prices rose enormously.

[1] The metaphor came from Erasmus, De lingua, 1525, Opera, iv,682, where the words are attributed to Caecilius Metellus.

{310}

SECTION 2. THE REFORMATION UNDER EDWARD VI. 1547-1553

[Sidenote: Accession of Edward VI, January 28, 1547]

The real test of the popularity of Henry's double revolution,constitutional and religious, came when England was no longer guided byhis strong personality, but was ruled by a child and governed by a weakand shifting regency. It is significant that, whereas the prerogativeof the crown was considerably relaxed, though substantially handed onto Edward's stronger successors, the Reformation proceeded ataccelerated pace.

[Sidenote: Somerset Regent]

Henry himself, not so much to insure further change as to safeguardthat already made, appointed Reformers as his son's tutors and made themajority of the Council of Regency Protestant. The young king'smaternal uncle, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, was chosen by thecouncil as Protector and created Duke of Somerset. [Sidenote: 1547]Mildness was the characteristic of his rule. He ignored Henry'streason and heresy acts even before they had been repealed.

[Sidenote: Repeal of treason and heresy laws]

The first general election was held with little governmentinterference. Parliament may be assumed to have expressed the will ofthe nation when it repealed Henry's treason and heresy laws, theancient act De Haeretico comburendo, the Act of the Six Articles, andthe Statute of Proclamations.

To ascertain exactly what, at a given time, is the "public opinion" ofa political group, is one of the most difficult tasks of thehistorian.[1] Even nowadays it is certain that the will of themajority is frequently not reflected either in the acts of thelegislature or in the newspaper press. It cannot even be said that thewishes of the majority are always public opinion. In expressing thevoice of the people there is generally some section more vocal, morepowerful on account {311} of wealth or intelligence, and more deeply inearnest than any other; and this minority, though sometimes arelatively small one, imposes its will in the name of the people andidentifies its voice with the voice of God.

[Sidenote: Protestant public opinion]

Therefore, when we read the testimony of contemporaries that themajority of England was still Catholic by the middle of the sixteenthcentury, a further analysis of popular opinion must be made to accountfor the apparently spontaneous rush of the Reformation. Some of theseestimates are doubtless exaggerations, as that of Paget who wrote in1549 that eleven Englishmen out of twelve were Catholics. Butconceding, as we must, that a considerable majority was stillanti-Protestant, it must be remembered that this majority included mostof the indifferent and listless and almost all those who held theiropinions for no better reason than they had inherited them and refusedthe trouble of thinking about them. Nearly the solid north and west,the country districts and the unrepresented and mute proletariat of thecities, counted as Catholic but hardly counted for anything else. Thecommercial class of the towns and the intellectual class, which, thoughrelatively small, then as now made public opinion as measured by allordinary tests, was predominantly and enthusiastically Protestant.

If we analyse the expressed wishes of England, we shall find a mixtureof real religious faith and of worldly, and sometimes discreditable,motives. A new party always numbers among its constituency not onlythose who love its principles but those who hate its opponents. Withthe Protestants were a host of allies varying from those who detestedRome to those who repudiated all religion. Moreover every successfulparty has a number of hangers-on for the sake of political spoils, andsome who follow its fortunes {312} with no purpose save to fish introubled waters.

But whatever their constituency or relative numbers, the Protestantsnow carried all before them. In the free religious debate thatfollowed the death of Henry, the press teemed with satires andpamphlets, mostly Protestant. From foreign parts flocked allies, whilethe native stock of literary ammunition was reinforced by German andSwiss books. In the reign of Edward there were three new translationsof Luther's books, five of Melanchthon's, two of Zwingli's, two ofOecolampadius's, three of Bullinger's and four of Calvin's. ManyEnglish religious leaders were in correspondence with Bullinger, manywith Calvin, and some with Melanchthon. Among the prominent EuropeanProtestants called to England during this reign were Bucer and Fagiusof Germany, Peter Martyr and Bernardino Ochino of Italy, and the PoleJohn Laski.

The purification of the churches began promptly. [Sidenote: 1547]Images, roods and stained glass windows were destroyed, while thebuildings were whitewashed on the inside, properly to express theausterity of the new cult. Evidence shows that these acts,countenanced by the government, were popular in the towns but not inthe country districts.

[Sidenote: Book of Common Prayer, 1549]

Next came the preparation of an English liturgy. The first Book ofCommon Prayer was the work of Cranmer. Many things in it, includingsome of the most beautiful portions, were translations from the RomanBreviary; but the high and solemn music of its language must becredited to the genius of its translator. Just as the English Biblepopularized the Reformation, so the English Prayer Book strengthenedand broadened the hold of the Anglican church. Doctrinally, it was acompromise between Romanism, Lutheranism and Calvinism. Its use wasenforced by the Act of Uniformity, [Sidenote: 1549] {313} the first andmildest of the statutes that bore that name. Though it might becelebrated in Greek, Latin or Hebrew as well as in English, priestsusing any other service were punished with loss of benefices andimprisonment.

At this time there must have been an unrecorded struggle in the Councilof Regency between the two religious parties, followed by the victoryof the innovators. [Sidenote: End of 1549] The pace of theReformation was at once increased; between 1550 and 1553 England gaveup most of what was left of distinctively medieval Catholicism. Forone thing, the marriage of priests was now legalized. [Sidenote:Accelerated Reformation] That public opinion was hardly prepared forthis as yet is shown by the act itself in which celibacy of the clergyis declared to be the better condition, and marriage only allowed toprevent vice. The people still regarded priests' wives much asconcubines and the government spoke of clergymen as "sotted with theirwives and children." There is one other bit of evidence, of a mostsingular character, showing that this and subsequent Acts of Uniformitywere not thoroughly enforced. The test of orthodoxy came to be takingthe communion occasionally according to the Anglican rite. This was atfirst expected of everyone and then demanded by law; but the law wasevaded by permitting a conscientious objector to hire a substitute totake communion for him.

In 1552 the Prayer Book was revised in a Protestant sense. Bucer hadsomething to do with this revision, and so did John Knox. Little wasnow left of the mass, nothing of private confession or anointing thesick. Further steps were the reform of the Canon Law and thepublication of the Forty-two Articles of Religion. These were drawn upby Cranmer on the basis of thirteen articles agreed upon by aconference of three English Bishops, four English doctors, and twoGerman missionaries, Boyneburg and Myconius, in {314} May, 1538.Cranmer hoped to make his statement irenic; and in fact it containedsome Roman and Calvinistic elements, but in the main it was Lutheran.Justification by faith was asserted; only two sacraments were retained.Transubstantiation was denounced as repugnant to Scripture and privatemasses as "dangerous impostures." The real presence was maintained ina Lutheran sense: the bread was said to be the Body of Christ, and thewine the Blood of Christ, but only after a heavenly and spiritualmanner. It was said that by Christ's ordinance the sacrament is notreserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.

A reform of the clergy was also undertaken, and was much needed. In1551 Bishop Hooper found in his diocese of 311 clergymen, 171 could notrepeat the Ten Commandments, ten could not say the Lord's Prayer inEnglish, seven could not tell who was its author, and sixty-two wereabsentees, chiefly because of pluralities.

The notable characteristic of the Edwardian Reformation was itsmildness. There were no Catholic martyrs. It is true that hereticscoming under the category of blasphemers or deniers of Christianitycould still be put to death by common law, and two men were actuallyexecuted for speculations about the divinity of Christ, but such caseswere wholly exceptional.

[Sidenote: Social disorders]

The social disorders of the time, coming to a head, seemed to threatenEngland with a rising of the lower classes similar to the Peasants' Warof 1525 in Germany. The events in England prove that, however muchthese ebullitions might be stimulated by the atmosphere of thereligious change, they wore not the direct result of the new gospel.In the west of England and in Oxfordshire the lower classes rebelled{315} under the leadership of Catholic priests; in the east the rising,known as Kett's rebellion, took on an Anabaptist character. The realcauses of discontent were the same in both cases. The growing wealthof the commercial classes had widened the gap between rich and poor.The inclosures continued to be a grievance, by the ejection of smalltenants and the appropriation of common lands. But by far the greatestcause of hardship to the poor was the debasement of the coinage.Wheat, barley, oats and cattle rose in price to two or three timestheir previous cost, while wages, kept down by law, rose only 11 percent. No wonder that the condition of the laborer had becomeimpossible.

The demands of the eastern rising, centering at Norwich, bordered oncommunism. The first was for the enfranchisement of all bondsmen forthe reason that Christ had made all men free. Inclosures of commonsand private property in game and fish were denounced and furtheragrarian demands were voiced. The rebels committed no murder andlittle sacrilege, but vented their passions by slaughtering vastnumbers of sheep. All the peasant risings were suppressed by thegovernment, and the economic forces continued to operate against thewasteful agricultural system of the time and in favor of wool-growingand manufacture.

[Sidenote: Execution of Somerset, January 22, 1552]

After five years under Protector Somerset there was a change ofgovernment signalized, as usual under Henry VIII, by the execution ofthe resigning minister. Somerset suffered from the unpopularity of thenew religious policy in some quarters and from that following thepeasants' rebellion in others. As usual, the government was blamed forthe economic evils of the time and for once, in having debased thecoinage, justly. Moreover the Protector had been {316} involved byscheming rivals in the odium more than in the guilt of fratricide, forthis least bloody of all English ministers in that century, hadexecuted his brother, Thomas, Baron Seymour, a rash and ambitious manrightly supposed to be plotting his own advancement by a royal marriage.

Among the leaders of the Reformation belonging to the class of mereadventurers, John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, was the ablest and theworst. As the Protector held quasi-royal powers, he could only bedeposed by using the person of the young king. Warwick ingratiatedhimself with Edward and brought the child of thirteen to the council.Of course he could only speak what was taught him, but the name ofroyalty had so dread a prestige that none dared disobey him. At hiscommand Warwick was created Duke of Northumberland, [Sidenote:Northumberland and Suffolk] and his confederate, Henry Grey Marquis ofDorset, was created Duke of Suffolk. A little later these men, againusing the person of the king, had Somerset tried and executed.

The conspirators did not long enjoy their triumph. While Edward livedand was a minor they were safe, but Edward was a consumptive visiblydeclining. They had no hope of perpetuating their power save to alterthe succession, and this they tried to do. Another Earl of Warwick hadbeen a king-maker, why not the present one? Henry VIII's willappointed to succeed him, in case of Edward's death without issue, (1)Mary, (2) Elizabeth, (3) the heirs of his younger sister Mary who hadmarried Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Of this marriage there hadbeen born two daughters, the elder of whom, Frances, married HenryGrey, recently created Duke of Suffolk. The issue of this marriagewere three daughters, and the eldest of them, Lady Jane Grey, waspicked by the two dukes as the heir to the throne, and was married to{317} Northumberland's son, Guilford Dudley. The young king was nowappealed to, on the ground of his religious feeling, to alter thesuccession so as to exclude not only his Catholic sister Mary but hislukewarm sister Elizabeth in favor of the strongly Protestant LadyJane. Though his lawyers told him he could not alter the succession tothe crown, he intimidated them into drawing up a "devise" purporting todo this.

[1] See A. L. Lowell: Public Opinion and Popular Government, 1914.

SECTION 3. THE CATHOLIC REACTION UNDER MARY. 1553-58

[Sidenote: Proclamation of Queen Jane, July 10, 1553]

When Edward died on July 6, 1553, Northumberland had taken suchprecautions as he could to ensure the success of his project. He hadgathered his own men at London and tried to secure help from France,whose king would have been only too glad to involve England in civilwar. The death of the king was concealed for four days whilepreparations were being made, and then Queen Jane was proclaimed.Mary's challenge arrived the next day and she (Mary) at once beganraising an army. Had her person been secured the plot might havesucceeded, but she avoided the set snares. Charles V wished to supporther for religious reasons, but feared to excite patriotic feeling bydispatching an army and therefore confined his intervention todiplomatic representations to Northumberland.

[Sidenote: Accession of Mary]

There was no doubt as to the choice of the people. Even the strongestProtestants hated civil turmoil more than they did Catholicism, and thepeople as a whole felt instinctively that if the crown was put up as aprize for unscrupulous politicians there would be no end of strife.All therefore flocked to Mary, and almost without a struggle sheovercame the conspirators and entered her capital amid great rejoicing.Northumberland, after a despicable and fruitless recantation, wasexecuted and so were his son and his son's wife, Queen Jane. Sympathywas felt for her on {318} account of her youth, beauty and remarkabletalents, but none for her backers.

The relief with which the settlement was regarded gave the new queen atleast the good will of the nation to start with. This she graduallylost. Just as Elizabeth instinctively did the popular thing, so Maryseemed almost by fatality to choose the worst course possible. Herforeign policy, in the first place, was both un-English andunsuccessful. [Sidenote: Marriage of Mary and Philip, July 25, 1554]Almost at once Charles V proposed his son Philip as Mary's husband,and, after about a year of negotiation, the marriage took place. Thetremendous unpopularity of this step was due not so much to hostilityto Spain, though Spain was beginning to be regarded as the national foerather than France, but to the fear of a foreign domination. Englandhad never before been ruled by a queen, if we except the disastrousreign of Mathilda, and it was natural to suppose that Mary's husbandshould have the prerogative as well as the title of king. In vainPhilip tried to disabuse the English of the idea that he was assertingany independent claims; in some way the people felt that they werebeing annexed to Spain, and they hated it.

The religious aim of the marriage, to aid in the restoration ofCatholicism, was also disliked. Cardinal Pole frankly avowed thispurpose, declaring that

as Christ, being heir of the world, was sent down by his Father from the royal throne, to be at once Spouse and Son of the Virgin Mary and to be made the Comforter and Saviour of mankind; so, in like manner, the greatest of all princes upon earth, the heir of his father's kingdom, departed from his own broad and happy realms that he, too, might come hither into this land of trouble, to be the spouse and son of this virgin Mary . . . to aid in the reconciliation of this people to Christ and the church.

For Mary herself the marriage was most unhappy. {319} She was a brideof thirty-eight, already worn and aged by grief and care; herbridegroom was only twenty-seven. She adored him, but he almostloathed her and made her miserable by neglect and unfaithfulness. Herpassionate hopes for a child led her to believe and announce that shewas to have one, and her disappointment was correspondingly bitter.

So unpopular was the marriage coupled with the queen's religiouspolicy, that it led to a rebellion under Sir Thomas Wyatt. Thoughsuppressed, it was a dangerous symptom, especially as Mary failed toprofit by the warning. Her attempts to implicate her sister Elizabethin the charge of treason failed.

Had Mary's foreign policy only been strong it might have conciliatedthe patriotic pride of the ever present jingo. But under herleadership England seemed to decline almost to its nadir. The commandof the sea was lost and, as a consequence of this and of the militarygenius of the Duke of Guise, Calais, held for over two centuries, wasconquered by the French. [Sidenote: 1558] With the subsequent loss ofGuines the last English outpost on the continent was reft from her.

[Sidenote: Religious policy]

Notwithstanding Mary's saying that "Calais" would be found in her heartwhen she died, by far her deepest interest was the restoration ofCatholicism. To assist her in this task she had Cardinal ReginaldPole, in whose veins flowed the royal blood of England and whom thepope appointed as legate to the kingdom. Though Mary's own impulse wasto act strongly, she sensibly adopted the emperor's advice to go slowlyand, as far as possible, in legal forms. Within a month of hersuccession she issued a proclamation stating her intention to remainCatholic and her hope that her subjects would embrace the samereligion, but at the same time disclaiming the intention of forcingthem and forbidding strife and the use of {320} "those new-founddevilish terms of papist or heretic or such like."

Elections to the first Parliament were free; it passed two noteworthyActs of Repeal, [Sidenote: Repeal of Reforming acts] the firstrestoring the status quo at the death of Henry VIII, the secondrestoring the status quo of 1529 on the eve of the ReformationParliament. This second act abolished eighteen statutes of Henry VIIIand one of Edward VI, but it refused to restore the church lands. Thefate of the confiscated ecclesiastical property was one of the greatestobstacles, if not the greatest, in the path of reconciliation withRome. The pope at first insisted upon it, and Pole was deeply grievedat being obliged to absolve sinners who kept the fruits of their sins.But the English, as the Spanish ambassador Renard wrote, "would ratherget themselves massacred than let go" the abbey lands. The veryStatute of Repeal, therefore, that in other respects met Mary'sdemands, carefully guarded the titles to the secularized lands, makingall suits relating to them triable only in crown courts.

The second point on which Parliament, truly representing a largesection of public opinion, was obstinate, was in the refusal torecognize the papal supremacy. The people as a whole cared not whatdogma they were supposed to believe, but they for the most partcordially hated the pope. They therefore agreed to pass the acts ofrepeal only on condition that nothing was said about the royalsupremacy. To Mary's insistence they returned a blank refusal to actand she was compelled to wait "while Parliament debated articles thatmight well puzzle a general council," as a contemporary wrote.

Lords and Commons were quite willing to pass acts to strengthen thecrown and then to leave the responsibility {321} for further action toit. Thus the divorce of Henry and Catharine of Aragon was repealed andthe Revival of treason laws were revived. [Sidenote: Revival oftreason laws] Going even beyond the limit of Henry VIII it was madetreason to "pray or desire" that God would shorten the queen's days.Worse than that, Parliament revived the heresy laws. It is a strangecomment on the nature of legislatures that they have so often, as inthis case, protected property better than life, and made money moresacred than conscience. However, it was not Parliament but theexecutive that carried out to its full extent the policy of persecutionand religious reaction.

The country soon showed its opposition. A temporary disarray thatmight have been mistaken for disintegration had been produced in theProtestant ranks by the recantation of Northumberland. The restorationof the mass was accomplished in orderly manner in most places. TheEnglish formulas had been patient of a Catholic interpretation, anddoubtless many persons regarded the change from one liturgy to theother as a matter of slight importance. Moreover the majority made aprinciple of conformity to the government, believing that an act of thelaw relieved the conscience of the individual of responsibility. Buteven so, there was a large minority of recusants. Of 8800 beneficedclergy in England, 2000 were ejected for refusal to comply. A verylarge number fled to the Continent, forming colonies atFrankfort-on-the-Main and at Geneva and scattering in other places.The opinion of the imperial ambassador Renard that English Protestantsdepended entirely on support from abroad was tolerably true for thisreign, for their books continued to be printed abroad, and a fewfurther translations from foreign reformers were made. It isnoteworthy that these mostly treat of the {322} question, then so muchin debate, whether Protestants might innocently attend the mass.

Other expressions of the temper of the people were the riots in London.On the last day of the first Parliament a dog with a tonsured crown, arope around its neck and a writing signifying that priests and bishopsshould be hung, was thrown through a window into the queen's presencechamber. At another time a cat was found tonsured, surpliced, and witha wafer in its mouth in derision of the mass. The perpetrators ofthese outrages could not be found.

[Sidenote: Passive resistance]

A sterner, though passive, resistance to the government was gloriouslyevinced when stake and rack began to do their work. Mary was totallyunprepared for the strength of Protestant feeling in the country. Shehoped a few executions would strike terror into the hearts of all andrender further persecution unnecessary. But from the execution of thefirst martyr, John Rogers, it was plain that the people sympathizedwith the victims rather than feared their fate. Not content withwarring on the living, Mary even broke the sleep of the dead.[1] Thebodies of Bucer and Fagius were dug up and burned. The body of PeterMartyr's wife was also exhumed, though, as no evidence of heresy couldbe procured, it was thrown on a dunghill to rot.

[Sidenote: Martyrs, October 16, 1555]

The most famous victims were Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer. The firsttwo were burnt alive together, Latimer at the stake comforting hisfriend by assuring him, "This day we shall light such a candle, byGod's grace, in England, as I trust, shall never be put out." Aspecial procedure was reserved for Cranmer, as primate. Every effortwas made to get him to recant. He at first signed four submissionsrecognizing the {323} power of the pope as and if restored byParliament. He then signed two real recantations, and finally drew upa seventh document, repudiating his recantations, re-affirming hisfaith in the Protestant doctrine of the sacraments and denouncing thepope. By holding his right hand in the fire, when he was burned at thestake, he testified his bitter repentance for its act in signing therecantations. [Sidenote: March 21, 1556]

The total number of martyrs in Mary's reign fell very little, if atall, short of 300. The lists of them are precise and circumstantial.The geographical distribution is interesting, furnishing, as it does,the only statistical information available in the sixteenth century forthe spread of Protestantism. It graphically illustrates the fact, sooften noticed before, that the strongholds of the new opinions were thecommercial towns of the south and east. If a straight line be drawnfrom the Wash to Portsmouth, passing about twenty miles west of London,it will roughly divide the Protestant from the Catholic portions ofEngland. Out of 290 martyrdoms known, 247 took place east of thisline, that is, in the city of London and the counties of Essex,Hertford, Kent, Sussex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridge. Thirteen arerecorded in the south center, at Winchester and Salisbury, eleven atthe western ports of the Severn, Bristol and Gloucester. There werethree in Wales, all on the coast at St. David's; one in thesouth-western peninsula at Exeter, a few in the midlands, and not onenorth of Lincolnshire and Cheshire.

When it is said that the English changed their religion easily, thisrecord of heroic opposition must be remembered to the contrary. Mary'sreign became more and more hateful to her people until at last it ispossible that only the prospect of its speedy termination prevented arebellion. The popular epithet of {324} "bloody" rightly distinguishesher place in the estimate of history. It is true that her persecutionsinks into insignificance compared with the holocausts of victims tothe inquisition in the Netherlands. But the English people naturallyjudged by their own history, and in all of that such a reign of terrorwas unexampled. The note of Mary's reign is sterility and itsachievement was to create, in reaction to the policy then pursued, aferocious and indelible hatred of Rome.

[1] The canon law forbade the burial of heretics in consecrated ground,but it is said that Charles V refused to dig up Luther's body when hetook Wittenberg.

SECTION 4. THE ELIZABETHAN SETTLEMENT. 1558-88.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth, 1558-1603]

However numerous and thorny were the problems pressed for solution intothe hands of the maiden of twenty-five now called upon to rule England,the greatest of all questions, that of religion, almost settled itself.It is extremely hard to divest ourselves of the wisdom that comes afterthe event and to put ourselves in the position of the men of that timeand estimate fairly the apparent feasibility of various alternatives.But it is hard to believe that the considerations that seem sooverwhelming to us should not have forced themselves upon the attentionof the more thoughtful men of that generation.

In the first place, while the daughter of Anne Boleyn was predestinedby heredity and breeding to oppose Rome, yet she was brought up in theAnglican Catholicism of Henry VIII. At the age of eleven she hadtranslated Margaret of Navarre's Mirror of the Sinful Soul, a workexpressing the spirit of devotion joined with liberalism in creed andoutward conformity in cult. The rapid vicissitudes of faith in Englandtaught her tolerance, and her own acute intellect and practical senseinclined her to indifference. She did not scruple to give all parties,Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist, the impression, when it suited her,that she was almost in agreement with each of them. The accusation{325} that she was "an atheist and a maintainer of atheism" [Sidenote:1601] meant no more than that her interests were secular. She oncesaid that she would rather hear a thousand masses than be guilty of themillions of crimes perpetrated by some of those who had suppressed themass. She liked candles, crucifixes and ritual just as sheinordinately loved personal display. And politically she learned veryearly to fear the republicanism of Knox.

[Sidenote: Most of people Catholic]

The conservatism of Elizabeth's policy was determined also by theconsideration that, though the more intelligent and progressive classeswere Protestant, the mass of the people still clung to the Roman faith,and, if they had no other power, had at least the vis inertiae.Accurate figures cannot be obtained, but a number of indications aresignificant. In 1559 Convocation asserted the adherence of the clergyto the ancient faith. Maurice Clenoch estimated in 1561 that themajority of the people would welcome foreign intervention in favor ofMary Stuart and the old faith. Nicholas Sanders, a contemporaryCatholic apologist, said that the common people of that period weredivided into three classes: husbandmen, shepherds and mechanics. Thefirst two classes he considered entirely Catholic; the third class, hesaid, were not tainted with schism as a whole, but only in some parts,those, namely of sedentary occupation such as weavers, cobblers andsome lazy "aulici," i.e. servants and humble retainers of the great.The remote parts of the kingdom, he added, were least tainted withheresy and, as the towns were few and small, he estimated that lessthan one per cent. of the population was Protestant. Though thesefigures are a tremendous exaggeration of the proportion of Catholics,some support may be found for them in the information sent to the Curiain 1567 that 32 English nobles were Catholic, 20 {326} well affected tothe Catholics and 15 Protestants. Only slightly different is thereport sent in 1571 that at that time 33 English peers were Catholic,15 doubtful and 16 heretical. As a matter of fact, in religiousquestions we find that the House of Lords would have been Catholic butfor the bishops, a solid phalanx of government nominees.

[Sidenote: But most powerful class Protestants]

But if the masses were Catholic, the strategically situated classeswere Reformed. The first House of Commons of Elizabeth proved by itsacts to be strongly Protestant. The assumption generally made that itwas packed by the government has been recently exploded. Carefultesting shows that there was hardly any government interference. Ofthe 390 members, 168 had sat in earlier Parliaments of Mary, and thatwas just the normal proportion of old members. It must be rememberedthat the parliamentary franchise approached the democratic only in thetowns, the strongholds of Protestantism, and that in the small boroughsand in some of the counties the election was determined by just thatmiddle class most progressive and at this time most Protestant.

Another test of the temper of the country is the number of clergyrefusing the oath of supremacy. Out of a total number of about ninethousand only about two hundred lost their livings as recusants, andmost of these were Mary's appointees.

The same impression of Protestantism is given by the literature of thetime. The fifty-six volumes of Elizabethan divinity published by theParker Society testify to the number of Reformation treaties, tracts,hymns and letters of this period. During the first thirty years ofElizabeth's reign there were fifteen new translations of Luther'sworks, not counting a number of reprints, two new translations fromMelanchthon, thirteen from Bullinger and thirty-four from Calvin.{327} Notwithstanding this apparently large foreign influence, theEnglish Reformation at this time resumed the national charactertemporarily lost during Mary's reign. John Jewel's Apologia EcclesiaeAnglicanae [Sidenote: 1562] has been called by Creighton, "the firstmethodical statement of the position of the church of England againstthe church of Rome, and the groundwork of all subsequent controversy."

Finally, most of the prominent men of the time, and most of the risingyoung men, were Protestants. The English sea-captains, wolves of thesea as they were, found it advisable to disguise themselves in thesheep's clothing of zeal against the idolater. More creditable to thecause was the adherence of men like Sir William Cecil, later LordBurghley, a man of cool judgment and decent conversation. Coverdale,still active, was made a bishop. John Foxe published, all in theinterests of his faith, the most popular and celebrated history of thetime. Roger Ascham, Elizabeth's tutor, still looked to LutheranGermany as "a place where Christ's doctrine, the fear of God,punishment of sin, and discipline of honesty were held in specialregard." Edmund Spenser's great allegory, as well as some of his minorpoems, were largely inspired by Anglican and Calvinistic purposes.

[Sidenote: Conversion of the masses]

It was during Elizabeth's reign that the Roman Catholics lost themajority they claimed in 1558 and became the tiny minority they haveever since remained. The time and to some extent the process throughwhich this came to pass can be traced with fair accuracy. In 1563 thepolicy of the government, till then wavering, became more decided,indicating that the current had begun to set in favor of Protestantism.The failure of the Northern rising and of the papal bull in 1569-70,indicated the weakness of the ancient faith. In 1572 a carefulestimate of the {328} religious state of England was made by acontemporary, [Sidenote: Carleton's estimate] who thought that of thethree classes into which he divided the population, papist, Protestantand atheist (by which he probably meant, indifferent) the first wassmaller than either of the other two. Ten years later (1580-85) theJesuit mission in England claimed 120,000 converts. But in realitythese adherents were not new converts, but the remnant of Romanismremaining faithful. If we assume, as a distinguished historian hasdone, that this number included nearly all the obstinately devoted, asthe population of England and Wales was then about 4,000,000, theproportion of Catholics was only about 3 per cent. of the total, atwhich percentage it remained constant during the next century. Butthere were probably a considerable number of timid Roman Catholics notdaring to make themselves known to the Jesuit mission. But evenallowing liberally for these, it is safe to say that by 1585 themembers of that church had sunk to a very small minority.

Those who see in the conversion of the English people the result merelyof government pressure must explain two inconvenient facts. The firstis that the Puritans, who were more strongly persecuted than thepapists, waxed mightily notwithstanding. The second is that, duringthe period when the conversion of the masses took place, there were nomartyrdoms and there was little persecution. The change was, in fact,but the inevitable completion and consequence of the conversion of theleaders of the people earlier. With the masses, doubtless, the fullcontrast between the old and the new faiths was not realized.Attending the same churches if not the same church, using a liturgywhich some hoped would obtain papal sanction, and ignorant of thechanges made in translation from the Latin ritual, the uneducated didnot trouble themselves {329} about abstruse questions of dogma or evenabout more obvious matters such as the supremacy of the pope and themarriage of the clergy. Moreover, there were strong positive forcesattracting them to the Anglican communion. They soon learned to lovethe English prayer-book, and the Bible became so necessary that theCatholics were obliged to produce a version of their own. Englishinsularity and patriotism drew them powerfully to the bosom of theirown peculiar communion.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth's policy]

Though we can now see that the forces drawing England to theReformation were decisive, the policy of Elizabeth was at firstcautious. The old services went on until Parliament had spoken. Aswith Henry VIII, so with this daughter of his, scrupulous legality ofform marked the most revolutionary acts. Elizabeth had been proclaimed"Queen of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith &c," this"&c" being chosen to stand in place of the old title "Supreme Head ofthe Church," thus dodging the question of its assumption or omission.Parliament, however, very soon passed supremacy and uniformity acts tosupply the needed sanction. The former repealed Philip and Mary'sHeresy Act and Repealing Statute, revived ten acts of Henry VIII andone of Edward VI, but confirmed the repeal of six acts of Henry VIII.Next, Parliament proceeded to seize the episcopal lands. Its spiritwas just as secular as that of Henry's Parliaments, only there was lessecclesiastical property left to grab.

The Book of Common Prayer was revised by introducing into the recensionof 1552 a few passages from the first edition of 1549, previouslyrejected as too Catholic. Three of the Forty-two Articles of Religionof Edward were dropped, [Sidenote: The Thirty-nine Articles 1563] thusmaking the Thirty-nine Articles that have ever since been theauthoritative {330} statement of Anglican doctrine. Thus it is true tosome extent that the Elizabethan settlement was a compromise. It tookspecial heed of various parties, and tried to avoid offence toLutherans, Zwinglians, and even to Roman Catholics. But far more thana compromise, it was a case of special development. As it is usuallycompared with the English Dissenting sects, the church of England isoften said to be the most conservative of the reformed bodies. It isoften said that it is Protestant in doctrine and Catholic in ritual andhierarchy. But compared with the Lutheran church it is found to be ifanything further from Rome. In fact the Anglicans of the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries abhorred the Lutherans as "semi-papists."

[Sidenote: The Church of England]

And yet the Anglican church was like the Lutheran not only in itsconservatism as compared with Calvinism, but in its political aspects.Both became the strong allies of the throne; both had not only amarkedly national but a markedly governmental quality. Just as theReformation succeeded in England by becoming national in opposition toSpain, and remaining national in opposition to French culture, so theAnglican church naturally became a perfect expression of the Englishcharacter. Moderate, decorous, detesting extremes of speculation andenthusiasm, she cares less for logic than for practical convenience.

Closely interwoven with the religious settlement were the questions ofthe heir to the throne [Sidenote: Succession] and of foreign policy.Elizabeth's life was the only breakwater that stood between the peopleand a Catholic, if not a disputed, succession. The nearest heir wasMary Stuart, Queen of Scots, a granddaughter of Margaret Tudor, HenryVIII's sister. As a Catholic and a Frenchwoman, half by race andwholly by her first marriage to Francis II, she would have been most{331} distasteful to the ruling party in England. Elizabeth wastherefore desired and finally urged by Parliament to marry. Herrefusal to do this has been attributed to some hidden cause, as herlove for Leicester or the knowledge that she was incapable of bearing achild. But though neither of these hypotheses can be disproved,neither is necessary to account for her policy. It is true that itwould have strengthened her position to have had a child to succeedher; but it would have weakened her personal sway to have had ahusband. She wanted to rule as well as to reign. Her many suitorswere encouraged just sufficiently to flatter her vanity and to attainher diplomatic ends. First, her brother-in-law Philip sought her hand,and was promptly rejected as a Spanish Catholic. Then, there wasRobert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, apparently her favorite in spite ofhis worthless character, but his rank was not high enough. Then, therewere princes of Sweden and Denmark, an Archduke of Austria and two sonsof Catharine de' Medici's. The suit of one of the latter began whenElizabeth was thirty-nine years old and he was nineteen [Sidenote:1566] and continued for ten years with apparent zest on both sides.Parliament put all the pressure it could upon the queen to make herflirtations end in matrimony, but it only made Elizabeth angry. Twiceshe forbade discussion of the matter, and, though she afterwardsconsented to hear the petition, she was careful not to call anotherParliament for five years.

[Sidenote: Financial measures]

Vexatious financial difficulties had been left to Elizabeth. Largelyowing to the debasement of the currency royal expenditure had risenfrom L56,000 per annum at the end of Henry's reign to L345,000 in thelast year of Mary's reign. The government's credit was in a bad way,and the commerce of the kingdom deranged. [Sidenote: 1560] By thewise expedient of calling in the {332} debased coins issued since 1543,the hardest problems were solved.

[Sidenote: Underhand war]

Towards France and Spain Elizabeth's policy was one well described byherself as "underhand war." English volunteers, with governmentconnivance, but nominally on their own responsibility, fought in theranks of Huguenots and Netherlanders. Torrents of money poured fromEnglish churches to support their fellow-Protestants in France andHolland. English sailors seized Spanish galleons; if successful thequeen secretly shared the spoil; but if they were caught they might behanged as pirates by Philip or Alva. This condition, unthinkable now,was allowed by the inchoate state of international law; the very ideaof neutrality was foreign to the time. States were always trying toharm and overreach each other in secret ways. In Elizabethan Englandthe anti-papal and anti-Spanish ardor of the mariners made possiblethis buccaneering without government support, had not the rich prizesthemselves been enough to attract the adventurous. Doubtless far moreenergy went into privateering than into legitimate commerce.

Peace was officially made with France, recognizing the surrender ofCalais at first for a limited period of years. Though peace was stillnominally kept with Spain for a long time, the shift of policy from oneof hostility to France to one of enmity to Spain was soon manifest. Aslong, however, as the government relied chiefly on the commercialinterests of the capital and other large towns, and as long as Spaincontrolled the Netherlands, open war was nearly impossible, for itwould have been extremely unpopular with the merchants of both Londonand the Low Countries. In times of crisis, however, [Sidenote: 1569]an embargo was laid on all trade with Philip's dominions.

Elizabeth's position was made extremely delicate by {333} the fact thatthe heiress to her throne was the Scotch Queen Mary Stuart, who, since1568, had been a refugee in England and had been kept in a sort ofhonorable captivity. On account of her religion she became the centerof the hopes and of the actual machinations of all English malcontents.In these plots she participated as far as she dared.

[Sidenote: The Catholic Powers]

Elizabeth's crown would have been jeoparded had the Catholic powers, orany one of them, acted promptly. That they did not do so is proof,partly of their mutual jealousies, party of the excellence of Cecil'sstatesmanship. Convinced though he was that civil peace could only besecured by religious unity, for five years he played a hesitating gamein order to hold off the Catholics until his power should be strongenough to crush them. By a system of espionage, by permitting onlynobles and sailors to leave the kingdom without special licence, bywelcoming Dutch Protestant refugees, he clandestinely fostered thestrength of his party. His scheme was so far successful that the popehesitated more than eleven years before issuing the bull ofdeprivation. For this Elizabeth had also to thank the CatholicHapsburgs; in the first place Philip who then hoped to marry her, andin the second place the Emperor Ferdinand who said that if Elizabethwere excommunicated the German Catholics would suffer for it and thatthere were many German Protestant princes who deserved the ban as muchas she did.

Matters were clarified by the calling of the Council of Trent. Askedto send an embassy to this council Elizabeth refused for three reasons:(1) because she had not been consulted about calling the council; (2)because she did not consider it free, pious and Christian; (3) becausethe pope sought to stir up sedition in her realms. The council repliedto this snub by excommunicating her, but it is a significant sign ofthe {334} times that neither they nor the pope as yet dared to usespiritual weapons to depose her, as the pope endeavored to do a fewyears later.

[Sidenote: Anti-Catholic laws]

Whether as a reply to this measure or not, Parliament passed morestringent laws against Catholics. Cecil's policy, inherited fromThomas Cromwell, to centralize and unify the state, met with threefoldopposition; first from the papists who disliked nationalizing thechurch, second from the holders of medieval franchises who objected totheir absorption in a centripetal system, and third from the old nobleswho resented their replacement in the royal council by upstarts. Allthese forces produced a serious crisis in the years 1569-70. Thenorth, as the stronghold of both feudalism and Catholicism, led thereaction. The Duke of Norfolk, England's premier peer, plotted withthe northern earls to advance Mary's cause, and thought of marrying herhimself. Pope Pius V warmly praised their scheme which culminated in arebellion. [Sidenote: Rebellion, 1561] The nobles and commons alikewere filled with the spirit of crusaders, bearing banners with thecross and the five wounds of Christ. At the same time they voiced thegrievance of the old-fashioned farmer against the new-fangled merchant.Their banners inscribed "God speed the plough" bear witness to theagrarian element common to so many revolts. Their demands were therestoration of Catholicism, intervention in Scotland to put Mary backon her throne, and her recognition as heiress of England, and theexpulsion of foreign refugees. Had they been able to secure Mary'sperson or had the Scotch joined them, it is probable that they wouldhave seceded from the south of England.

But the new Pilgrimage of Grace was destined to no more success thanthe old one. Moray, Regent of Scotland, forcibly prevented assistancegoing to the {335} rebels from North Britain. Elizabeth prepared anoverwhelming army, but it was not needed. The rebels, seeing thehopelessness of their cause, dispersed and were pursued by an exemplarypunishment, no less than eight hundred being executed. Three yearslater Norfolk trod the traitor's path to the scaffold. His deathsealed the ruin of the old nobility whose privileges were incompatiblewith the new régime. In the same year a parliamentary agitation infavor of the execution of Mary witnessed how dead were medieval titlesto respect.

[Sidenote: Papal Bull, February 25, 1570]

Too late to have much effect, Pius V issued the bull Regnans inexcelsis, declaring that whereas the Roman pontiff has power over allnations and kingdoms to destroy and ruin or to plant and build up, andwhereas Elizabeth, the slave of vice, has usurped the place of supremehead of the church, has sent her realm to perdition and has celebratedthe impious mysteries of Calvin, therefore she is cut off from the bodyof Christ and deprived of her pretended right to rule England, whileall her subjects are absolved from their oaths of allegiance. The bullalso reasserted Elizabeth's illegitimacy, and echoed the complaint ofthe northern earls that she had expelled the old nobility from hercouncil. The promulgation of the bull, without the requisite warningand allowance of a year for repentance, was contrary to the canon law.

The fulmination was sent to Alva to the Netherlands and a devotee wasfound to carry it to England. Forthwith Elizabeth issued a masterlyproclamation vouchsafing that,

her majesty would have all her loving subjects to
understand that, as long as they shall openly continue in
the observation of her laws, and shall not wilfully and
manifestly break them by open actions, her majesty's means
is not to have any of them molested by any inquisition or
{336}
examination of their consciences in causes of religion, but
to accept and entreat them as her good and obedient subjects.

But to obviate the contamination of her people by political viewsexpressed in the bull, [Sidenote: Anti-papal laws] and to guard againstthe danger of a further rising in the interests of Mary Stuart, theParliament of 1571 passed several necessary laws. One of these forbadebringing the bull into England; another made it treasonable to declarethat Elizabeth was not or ought not to be queen or that she was aheretic, usurper or schismatic.

The first seventeen years of Elizabeth's reign had been blessedly freefrom persecution. The increasing strain between England and the papacywas marked by a number of executions of Romanists. A recent Catholicestimate is that the total number of this faith who suffered underElizabeth was 189, of whom 128 were priests, 58 laymen and three women;and to this should be added 32 Franciscans who died in prison ofstarvation. The contrast of 221 victims in Elizabeth's forty-fiveyears as against 290 in Mary's five years, is less important than thedifferent purpose of the government. Under Mary the executions werefor heresy; under Elizabeth chiefly for treason. It is true that thewhole age acted upon Sir Philip Sidney's maxim that it was the highestwisdom of statesmanship never to separate religion from politics.Church and state were practically one and the same body, and opinionsrepugnant to established religion naturally resulted in acts inimicalto the civil order. But the broad distinction is plain. Cecil put mento death not because he detested their dogma but because he fearedtheir politics.

Nothing proves more clearly the purposes of the English government thanits long duel with the Jesuit mission. [Sidenote: Jesuit mission] Itis unfair to say that the primary purpose {337} of the Curia was to getall the privileges of loyalty for English Catholics while secretlyinciting them to rise and murder their sovereign. But the very factthat the Jesuits were instructed not to meddle in politics and yet wereunable to keep clear of the law, proves how inextricably politics andreligion were intertwined. Immediately drawing the suspicion ofBurghley, they were put to the "bloody question" and illegallytortured, even while the government felt called upon to explain thatthey were not forced to the rack to answer "any question of theirsupposed conscience" but only as to their political opinions. But oneof these opinions was whether the pope had the right to depose thequeen.

[Sidenote: Character of Jesuits]

The history of these years is one more example of how much moreaccursed it is to persecute than to be persecuted. The Jesuits sent toEngland were men of the noblest character, daring and enduring all withfortitude, showing charity and loving-kindness even to their enemies.But the character of their enemies correspondingly deteriorated. Thatsense of fair play that is the finest English quality disappeared underthe stress of fanaticism. Not only Jesuits, but Catholic women andchildren were attacked; one boy of thirteen was racked and executed asa traitor. The persecution by public opinion supplied what theactivity of the government overlooked. In fact it was the governmentthat was the moderating factor. The act passed in 1585 banishing theJesuits was intended to obviate sterner measures. In dealing with themass of the population Burghley made persecution pay its way byresorting to fines as the principal punishment. During the last twentyyears of the reign no less than L6,000 per annum was thus collected.

The helpless rage of the popes against "the Jezebel of the north" waxeduntil one of them, Gregory XIII, {338} sanctioned an attempt at herassassination. [Sidenote: Conspiracies] In 1580 there appeared at thecourt of Madrid one Humphrey Ely, later a secular priest. He informedthe papal nunciature that some English nobles, mentioned by name, haddetermined to murder Elizabeth but wished the pope's own assurancethat, in case they lost their lives in the attempt, they should nothave fallen into sin by the deed. After giving his own opinion thatthe bull of Pius V gave all men the right to take arms against thequeen in any fashion, the nuncio wrote to Rome. From the papalsecretary, speaking in the pope's name, he received the following reply:

As that guilty woman of England rules two so noble realms of Christendom, is the cause of so much harm to the Catholic faith, and is guilty of the loss of so many million souls, there is no doubt that any one who puts her out of the world with the proper intention of serving God thereby, not only commits no sin but even wins merit, especially seeing that the sentence of the late Pius V is standing against her. If, therefore, these English nobles have really decided to do so fair a work, your honor may assure them that they commit no sin. Also we may trust in God that they will escape all danger. As to your own irregularity [caused to the nuncio as a priest by conspiracy to murder] the pope sends you his holy blessing.[1]

A conspiracy equally unsuccessful but more famous, because discoveredat the time, was that of Anthony Babington. Burghley's excellentsecret service apprised the government not only of the principals butalso of aid and support given to them by Philip II and Mary Queen ofScots. Parliament petitioned for the execution of Mary. Though therewas no doubt of her guilt, Elizabeth hesitated to give the dangerousexample of sending a crowned head to the block. {339} With habitualindirection she did her best to get Mary's jailer, Sir Amyas Paulet, toput her to death without a warrant. Failing in this, she finallysigned the warrant, [Sidenote: Mary beheaded, February 8, 1587] butwhen her council acted upon it in secret haste lest she should changeher mind, she flew into a rage and, to prove her innocence, heavilyfined and imprisoned one of the privy council whom she selected asscapegoat.

[Sidenote: War with Spain]

The war with Spain is sometimes regarded as the inevitable consequenceof the religious opposition of the chief Catholic and the chiefProtestant power. But probably the war would never have gone beyondthe stage of privateering and plots to assassinate in which it remainedinchoate for so long, had it not been for the Netherlands. Thecorner-stone of English policy has been to keep friendly, or weak, thepower controlling the mouths of the Rhine and the Scheldt. The war ofliberation in the Netherlands had a twofold effect; in the first placeit damaged England's best customer, and secondly, Spanish"frightfulness" shocked the English conscience. For a long time thepolicy of the queen herself was as cynically selfish as it couldpossibly be. She not only watched complacently the butcheries of Alva,but she plotted and counterplotted, now offering aid to the Prince ofOrange, now betraying his cause in a way that may have been sport toher but was death to the men she played with. Her aim, as far as shehad a consistent one, was to allow Spain and the Netherlands to exhausteach other.

Not only far nobler but, as it proved in the end, far wiser, was theaction of the Puritan party that poured money and recruits into thecause of their oppressed fellow-Calvinists. But an equally greatservice to them, or at any rate a greater amount of damage to Spain,was done by the hardy buccaneers, Hawkins and Drake, who preyed uponthe Spanish treasure {340} galleons and pillaged the Spanishsettlements in the New World. These men and their fellows not only cutthe sinews of Spain's power but likewise built the fleet.

[Sidenote: England's sea power]

The eventual naval victory of England was preceded by a long course ofsuccessful diplomacy. As the aggressor England forced the haughtiestpower in Europe to endure a protracted series of outrages. Not onlywere rebels supported, not only were Spanish fleets taken forcibly intoEnglish harbors and there stripped of moneys belonging to theirgovernment, but refugees were protected and Spanish citizens put todeath by the English queen. Philip and Alva could not effectivelyresent and hardly dared to protest against the treatment, because theyfelt themselves powerless. As so often, the island kingdom wasprotected by the ocean and by the proved superiority of her seamen.After a score of petty fights all the way from the Bay of Biscay to thePacific Ocean, Spanish sailors had no desire for a trial of strength inforce.

But in every respect save in sea power Spain felt herself immeasurablysuperior to her foe. Her wealth, her dominions, recently augmented bythe annexation of Portugal, were enormous; her army had been tried in ahundred battles. England's force was doubtless underestimated. AnItalian expert stated that an army of 10,000 to 12,000 foot and 2,000horse would be sufficient to conquer her. Even to the last it wasthought that an invader would be welcomed by a large part of thepopulation, for English refugees never wearied of picturing the hatredof the people for their queen.

But the decision was long postponed for two reasons. First, Spain wasfully employed in subduing the Netherlands. Secondly, the Catholicpowers hoped for the accession of Mary. But after the assassination ofOrange in 1584, and after the execution of the Queen {341} of Scots,these reasons for delay no longer existed. Drake carried the naval war[Sidenote: 1585] to the coasts of Spain and to her colonies. Theconsequent bankruptcy of the Bank of Seville and the wounded nationalpride brought home to Spaniards the humiliation of their position. Allthat Philip could do was to pray for help and to forbid the importationof English wares. [Sidenote: April 1587] In reply Drake fell upon theharbor of Cadiz and destroyed twenty-four or more warships and vastmilitary stores.

So at last the decision was taken to crush the one power that seemed tomaintain the Reformation, to uphold the Huguenots and the Dutchpatriots and to harry with impunity the champions of Catholicism. PopeSixtus V, not wishing to hazard anything, promised a subsidy of1,000,000 crowns of gold, the first half payable on the landing of theSpanish army, the second half two months later. Save this, Philip hadno promise of help from any Catholic power.

The huge scale of his preparations was only equaled by their vast lackof intelligence, insuring defeat from the first. The type of shipadopted was the old galley, intended to ram and grapple the enemy buttotally unfitted for manoeuvring in the Atlantic gales. The 130 shipscarried 2500 guns, but the artillery, though numerous, was small,intended rather to be used against the enemy crews than against theships themselves. The necessary geographical information for theinvasion of Britain in the year 1588 was procured from Caesar's DeBello Gallico. The admiral in chief, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, hadnever even commanded a ship before and most of the high officers wereequally innocent of professional knowledge, for sailors were despisedas inferior to soldiers. Three-fourths of the crews were soldiers, allbut useless in naval warfare of the new type. Blind zeal did little tosupply the lack {342} of foresight, though Philip spent hours on hisknees before the host in intercession for the success of his venture.The very names of the ships, though quite in accordance with Spanishpractice, seem symbolic of the holy character of the crusade: SantaMaria de Gracia, Neustra Señora del Rosario, San Juan Baptista, LaConcepcion.

On the English side there was also plenty of fanatical fury, but it wasaccompanied by practical sense. The grandfathers of Cromwell'sIronsides had already learned, if they had not yet formulated, themaxim, "Fear God and keep your powder dry." Some of the ships in theEnglish navy had religious names, but many were called by more secularappellations: The Bull, The Tiger, The Dreadnought, The Revenge. Tomeet the foe a very formidable and self-confident force of aboutforty-five ships of the best sort had gathered from the well-triedranks of the buccaneers. It is true that patronage did some damage tothe English service, but it was little compared to that of Spain. LordHoward of Effingham was made admiral on account of his title, but thevice-admiral was Sir Francis Drake, to whom the chief credit of theaction must fall.

[Sidenote: July, 1588]

The battle in the Channel was fought for nine days. There was nogeneral strategy or tactics; the English simply sought to isolate andsink a ship wherever they could. Their heavier cannon were usedagainst the enemy, and fire-ships were sent among his vessels. Whensix Spanish ships had foundered in the Channel, the fleet turnednorthward to the coasts of Holland. During their flight an uncertainnumber were destroyed by the English, and a few more fell a prey to theSea Beggars of Holland. The rest, much battered, turned north to sailaround Scotland. In the storms nineteen ships were wrecked on thecoasts of Scotland and Ireland; of thirty-five ships the Spaniardsthemselves {343} could give no account. For two months Philip was insuspense as to the fate of his great Armada, of which at last only ariddled and battered remnant returned to home harbors.

The importance of the victory over the Armada, like that of mostdramatic events, has been overestimated. To contemporaries, at leastto the victors and their friends it appeared as the direct judgment ofGod: "Flavit Deus et dissipati sunt." The gorgeous rhetoric of Rankeand Froude has painted it as one of the turning points in worldhistory. But in reality it rather marked than made an epoch. HadPhilip's ships won, it is still inconceivable that he could haveimposed his dominion on England any more than he could on theNetherlands. England was ripening and Spain was rotting for half acentury before the collision made this fact plain to all. The Armadadid not end the war nor did it give the death blow to Spanish power,much less to Catholicism. On the Continent of Europe things went onalmost unchanged.

But in England the effect was considerable. The victory stimulatednational pride; it strengthened the Protestants, and the left wing ofthat party. Though the Catholics had shown themselves loyal during thecrisis they were subjected, immediately thereafter, to the severestpersecution they had yet felt. This was due partly to nervousexcitement of the whole population, partly to the advance towards powerof the Puritans, always the war party.

[Sidenote: Puritans]

Even in the first years of the great queen there had been a number ofCalvinists who looked askance at the Anglican settlement as too much ofa compromise with Catholicism and Lutheranism. The Thirty-nineArticles passed Convocation by a single vote [Sidenote: 1563] asagainst a more Calvinistic confession. Low-churchmen (as they wouldnow be called) attacked the "Aaronic" {344} vestments of the Anglicanpriests, and prelacy was detested as but one degree removed from papacy.

The Puritans were not dissenters but were a party in the Anglicancommunion thoroughly believing in a national church, but wishing tomake the breach with Rome as wide as possible. They found fault withall that had been retained in the Prayer Book for which there was nodirect warrant in Scripture, and many of them began to use, in secretconventicles, the Genevan instead of the English liturgy. Theirleader, Thomas Cartwright, [Sidenote: Cartwright, 1535-1603] aprofessor of divinity at Cambridge until deprived of his chair by thegovernment, had brought back from the Netherlands ideals of apresbyterian form of ecclesiastical polity. In his view many "PopishAbuses" remained in the church of England, among them the keeping ofsaints' days, kneeling at communion, "the childish and superstitioustoys" connected with the baptismal service, the words then used in themarriage service by the man, "with my body I thee worship" by which thehusband "made an idol of his wife," the use of such titles asarchbishop, arch-deacon, lord bishop.

It was because of their excessively scrupulous conscience in thesematters, that the name "Puritan" was given to the Calvinist by hisenemy, at first a mocking designation analogous to "Catharus" in theMiddle Ages. But the tide set strongly in the Puritan direction. Timeand again the Commons tried to initiate legislation to relieve theconsciences of the stricter party, but their efforts were blocked bythe crown. From this time forth the church of England made an alliancewith the throne that has never been broken. As Jewel had beencompelled, at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, [Sidenote: 1562] todefend the Anglican church against Rome, so Richard Hooker, in hisfamous {345} Ecclesiastical Polity [Sidenote: 1594] was now forced todefend it from the extreme Protestants. In the very year in which thisfinely tempered work was written, a Jesuit reported that the Puritanswere the strongest body in the kingdom and particularly that they hadthe most officers and soldiers on their side. The coming Commonwealthwas already casting its shadow on the age of Shakespeare.

As a moral and religious influence Puritanism was of the utmostimportance in moulding the English—and American—character and it was,take it all in all, a noble thing. If it has been justly blamed for acertain narrowness in its hostility, or indifference, to art andrefinement, it more than compensated for this by the moral earnestnessthat it impressed on the people. To bring the genius of the Bible intoEnglish life and literature, to impress each man with the idea ofliving for duty, to reduce politics and the whole life of the state toethical standards, are undoubted services of Puritanism. Politically,it favored the growth of self-reliance, self-control and a sense ofpersonal worth that made democracy possible and necessary.

[Sidenote: Browne, 1550?-1633?]

To the left of the Puritans were the Independents or Brownists as theywere called from their leader Robert Browne, the advocate ofReformation without Tarrying for Any. He had been a refugee in theNetherlands, where he may have come under Anabaptist influence. Hisdisciples differed from the followers of Cartwright in separatingthemselves from the state church, in which they found many "filthytraditions and inventions of men." Beginning to organize hi separatecongregations about 1567, they were said by Sir Walter Raleigh to haveas many as 20,000 adherents in 1593. Though heartily disliked byre-actionaries and by the beati possidentes in both church {346} andstate, they were, nevertheless, the party of the future.

[1] A. O. Meyer: England und die katholische Kirche unter Elizabeth,p. 231.

SECTION 5. IRELAND

If the union of England and Wales has been a marriage—after acourtship of the primitive type; if the union with Scotland has been asuccessful partnership—following a long period of cut-throatcompetition; the position of Ireland has been that of a captive and aslave. To her unwilling mind the English domination has always been aforeign one, and this fact makes more difference with her than whetherher master has been cruel, as formerly, or kind, as of late.

[Sidenote: English rule]

The saddest period in all Erin's sad life was that of the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries, when to the old antagonism of race was added anew hatred of creed and a new commercial competition. The policy ofHenry was "to reduce that realm to the knowledge of God and obedienceof Us." The policy of Elizabeth was to pray that God might "call themto the knowledge of his truth and to a civil polity," and to assist theAlmighty by the most fiendish means to accomplish these ends. Thegovernment of the island was a crime, and yet for this crime someconsiderations must be urged in extenuation. England then regarded theIrish much as the Americans have seemed to regard the Indians, assavages to be killed and driven off to make room for a highercivilization. Had England been able to apply the method ofextermination she would doubtless have done so and there would then beno Irish question today. But in 1540 it was recognized that "toenterprise the whole extirpation and total destruction of all theIrishmen in the land would be a marvellous gumptious charge and greatdifficulty."

Being unable to accomplish this or to put Ireland at {347} the bottomof the sea, where Elizabeth's minister Walsingham often wished that itwere, the English had the alternatives of half governing or whollyabandoning their neighbors. The latter course was felt to be toodangerous, but had it been adopted, Ireland might have evolved anadequate government and prosperity of her own. It is true that she wasmore backward than England, but yet she had a considerable trade andculture. [Sidenote: Irish misery] Certain points, like Dublin andWaterford, had much commerce with the Continent. And yet, as to thenation as a whole, the report of 1515 probably speaks true in saying:"There is no common folk in all this world so little set by, so greatlydespised, so feeble, so poor, so greatly trodden under foot, as theking's poor common folk of Ireland." There was no map of the whole ofIreland; the roads were few and poor and the vaguest notions prevailedas to the shape, size and population of the country. The mostcivilized part was the English Pale around Dublin; the native Irishlived "west of the Barrow and west of the law," and were governed bymore than sixty native chiefs. Intermarriage of colonists and nativeswas forbidden by law. The only way the Tudor government knew ofasserting its suzerainty over these septs, correctly described as "theking's Irish enemies," was to raid them at intervals, slaying, robbingand raping as they went. It was after one of these raids in 1580 thatthe poet Spencer wrote:

The people were brought to such wretchedness that any
strong heart would have rued the same. Out of every
corner of the woods and glens they came, creeping forth
upon their hands, for their legs would not bear them.
They looked like anatomies of death; they spoke like
ghosts crying out of their graves. They did eat the dead
carrions, happy where they could find them; yea and one
{348}
another soon after, inasmuch as the very carcasses they
spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they
found a plot of watercresses or shamrocks, there they
thronged as to a feast for a time.

The Irish chiefs were not to be tamed by either kindness or force.Henry and Elizabeth scattered titles of "earl" and "lord" among the O'sand Macs of her western island, only to find that the coronet made notthe slightest difference in either their affections or their manners.They still lived as marauding chiefs, surrounded by wild kerns andgallowglasses fighting each other and preying on their own poorsubjects. "Let a thousand of my people die," remarked one of them,Neil Garv, "I pass not a pin. . . . I will punish, exact, cut and hangwhere and whenever I list." Had they been able to make common causethey might perhaps have shaken the English grasp from their necks, forit was commonly corrupt and feeble. Sir Henry Sidney was the strongestand best governor sent to the island during the century, but he wasable to do little. Though the others could be bribed and though one ofthem, the Earl of Essex, conspired with the chiefs to rebel, and thoughat the very end of Elizabeth's reign a capable Spanish army landed inIreland to help the natives, nothing ever enabled them to turn out thehated "Sassenach."

[Sidenote: English colonization]

England had already tried to solve the Irish problem by colonization.Leinster had long been a center of English settlement, and in 1573 thefirst English colony was sent to Ulster. But as it consisted chieflyof bankrupts, fugitives from justice and others "of so corrupt adisposition as England rather refuseth," it did not help matters muchbut rather "irrecuperably damnified the state." The Irish Parliamentcontinued to represent only the English of the Pale and of a few townsoutside of it. Though the inhabitants of the {349} Pale remainednominally Catholic, the Parliament was so servile that in 1541 itdestroyed the monasteries and repudiated the pope, [Sidenote: Religion]shortly after which the king took the title of Head of the IrishChurch. Not one penny of the confiscated wealth went to endow an Irishuniversity until 1591, when Trinity College was founded in theinterests of Protestantism. Though almost every other country ofEurope had its own printing presses before 1500, Ireland had none until1551, and then the press was used so exclusively for propaganda that itmade the very name of reading hateful to the natives. There were,however, no religious massacres and no martyrs of either cause. Thepersecuting laws were left until the following century.

[Sidenote: Commercial exploitation]

The rise of the traders to political power was more ominous than theinception of a new religion. The country was drained of treasure bythe exaction of enormous ransoms for captured chiefs. The Irishcloth-trade and sea-borne commerce were suppressed. The country wasflooded with inferior coin, thus putting its merchants at a vastdisadvantage. Finally, there was little left that the Irish were ableto import save liquors, and those "much corrupted."

With every plea in mitigation of judgment that can be offered, it mustbe recognized that England's government of Ireland proved a failure.If she did not make the Irish savage she did her best to keep them so,and then punished them for it. By exploiting Erin's resources sheimpoverished herself. By trying to impose Protestantism she madeIreland the very stronghold of papacy. By striving to destroy thesepts she created the nation.

{350}

CHAPTER VII

SCOTLAND

One of the most important effects of modern means of easy communicationbetween all parts of the world has been to obliterate or minimizedistinctions in national character and in degrees of civilization. Themanner of life of England and Australia differ less now than the mannerof life of England and Scotland differed in the sixteenth century. Thegreat stream of culture then flowed much more strongly in the centralthan in the outlying parts of Western Europe. The Latin nations, Italyand France, lay nearest the heart of civilization. But slightly lessadvanced in culture and in the amenities of life, and superior in somerespects, were the Netherlands, Switzerland, England and the southernand central parts of Germany. In partial shadow round about lay a beltof lands: Spain, Portugal, Northern Germany, Prussia, Poland, Hungary,Scandinavia, Scotland, and Ireland.

[Sidenote: Scotland]

Scotland, indeed, had her own universities, but her best scholars wereoften found at Paris, or in German or Italian academies. Scotchhumanists on the continent, the Scotch guard of the French king, andScotch monasteries, such as those at Erfurt and Würzburg, raised thereputation of the country abroad rather than advanced its nativeculture. Printing was not introduced until 1507. Brantôme in thesixteenth century, like Aeneas Silvius in the fifteenth, remarked theuncouthness of the northern kingdom.

Most backward of all was Scotland's political development. No kingarose strong enough to be at once {351} the tyrant and the saviour ofhis country; under the weak rule of a series of minors, regents andwanton women a feudal baronage with a lush growth of intestine war andcrime, flourished mightily to curse the poor people. When Sir DavidLyndsay asked, [Sidenote: 1528] Why are the Scots so poor? he gave thecorrect answer:

Wanting of justice, policy and peace,
Are cause of their unhappiness, alas!

Something may also be attributed to the poverty of the soil and thelack of important commerce or industries.

[Sidenote: Relations with England]

The policy of any small nation situated in dangerous proximity to alarger one is almost necessarily determined by this fact. In order toassert her independence Scotland was forced to make common cause withEngland's enemies. Guerrilla warfare was endemic on the borders,breaking out, in each generation, into some fiercer crisis. England,on the other hand, was driven to seek her own safety in the annexationof her small enemy, or, failing that, by keeping her as impotent aspossible. True to the maxims of the immoral political science that hascommonly passed for statesmanship, the Tudors consistently sought byevery form of deliberate perfidy to foster factions in North Britain,to purchase traitors, to hire stabbers, to subsidize rebels, to breedmischief, and to waste the country, at opportune intervals, with armiesand fleets. Simply to protect the independence that England denied andattacked, Scotch rulers became fast allies of France, to be counted on,in every war between the great powers, to stir up trouble in England'srear.

On neither side was the policy one of sheer hatred. North and souththe purpose increased throughout the century to unite the two countriesand thus put an end to the perennial and noxious war. If the earlyTudors {351} were mistaken in thinking they could assert a suzeraintyby force of arms, they also must be credited with laying thefoundations of the future dynastic union. Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII'ssister, was married to James IV of Scotland. Somerset hoped to effectthe union more directly by the marriage of Edward VI and Mary Queen ofScots. That a party of enlightened statesmen in England shouldconstantly keep the union in mind, is less remarkable under thecircumstances than that there should have been built up a considerablebody of Scotchmen aiming at the same goal. Notwithstanding thevitality of patriotism and the tenacity with which small nationsusually refuse to merge their own identity in a larger whole, verystrong motives called forth the existence of an English party. Onefavorable condition was the feudal disorganization of society. Factionwas so common and so bitter that it was able to call in the nationalenemy without utterly discrediting itself. A second element wasjealousy of France. For a time, with the French marriages of James Vwith Mary of Lorraine, a sister of the Duke of Guise, and of Mary Queenof Scots with Francis II, there seemed more danger that the littlekingdom should become an appanage of France than a satellite of hersouthern neighbor. The licentiousness of French officers and Frenchsoldiers on Scotch soil made their nation least loved when it was mostseen. [Sidenote: Influence of religion] But the great influenceovercoming national sentiment was religion. The Reformation thatbrought not peace but a sword to so much of Europe in this case unitedinstead of divided the nations.

It is sometimes said that national character reveals itself in thenational religion. This is true to some extent, but it is still moreimportant to say that a nation's history reveals itself in its forms offaith. From religious statistics of the present day one could {353}deduce with considerable accuracy much of the history of any people.

The contrast between the churches of England and Scotland is the moreremarkable when it is considered that the North of England was thestronghold of Catholicism, and that the Lowland Scot, next door to thecounties of the Northern Earls who rose against Elizabeth, flew to theopposite extreme and embraced Protestantism in its most pronouncedform. To say that Calvinism, uncompromising and bare of adornment,appealed particularly to the dour, dry, rationalistic Scot, is at bestbut a half truth and at worst a begging of the question. The reasonswhy England became Anglican and Scotland Presbyterian are foundimmediately not in the diversity of national character but in thecircumstances of their respective polities and history. England castloose from Rome at a time when the conservative influence of Luther waspredominant; Scotland was swept into the current of revolution underthe fiercer star of Calvin. The English reformation was started by thecrown and supported by the new noblesse of commerce. The Scotchrevolution was markedly baronial in tone. It began with the humanists,continued and flourished in the junior branches of great families,among the burgesses of the towns and among the more vigorous of theclergy, both regular and secular. The crown was consistently againstthe new movement, but the Scottish monarch was too weak to impose hiswill, or even to have a will of his own. Neither James V nor hisdaughter could afford to break with Rome and with France. James V,especially, was thrown into the arms of his clergy by the hostility ofhis nobles. Moreover, after the death of many nobles at the battle ofFlodden, the clergy became, for a time, [Sidenote: 1513] the strongestestate in the kingdom.

{354} Like the other estates the clergy were still in the Middle Ageswhen the Reformation [Sidenote: Reformation] came on them like a thiefin the night. In no country was the corruption greater. The bishopsand priests took concubines and ate and drank and were drunken andbuffeted their fellow men. They exacted their fees to the lastfarthing, an especially odious one being the claim of the priest to thebest cow on the death of a parishioner. As a consequence the parsonsand monks were hated by the laity.

Humanism shed a few bright beams on the hyperborean regions of Dundeeand Glasgow. Some Erasmians, like Hector Boece, prepared others forthe Reformation without joining it themselves; some, like GeorgeBuchanan, threw genius and learning into the scales of the new faith.The unlearned, too, were touched with reforming zeal. Lollardy sowed afew seeds of heresy. About 1520 Wyclif's version of the New Testamentwas turned into Scots by one John Nesbit, but it remained in manuscript.

In the days before newspapers tidings were carried from place to placeby wandering merchants and itinerant scholars. Far more than todaypropaganda was dependent on personal intercourse. One of the firstpreachers of Lutheranism in Scotland was a Frenchman named La Tour, whowas martyred on his return to his own country. The noble PatrickHamilton made a pilgrimage to the newly founded University of Marburg,and possibly to Wittenberg. Filled, as his Catholic countryman, BishopJohn Leslie put it, "with venom very poisonable and deadly . . . soakedout of Luther and other archheretics," he returned to find the martyr'scrown in his native land. [Sidenote: February 29, 1528] "The reek ofPatrick Hamilton" infected all upon whom it blew. Other young menvisited Germany. Some, like Alexander Alesius and John MacAlpine,found positions in {355} foreign universities. Others visitedWittenberg for a short time to carry thence the new gospel. A ScotchDavid[1] appears at Wittenberg in January 1528. Another Scot,"honorably born and well seen in scholastic theology, exiled from hisland on account of the Word," made Luther's acquaintance in May, 1529.Another of the Reformer's visitors was James Wedderburn whose brother,John, [Sidenote: 1540-2] translated some of the German's hymns, andpublished them as "Ane compendious Booke of Godly and spiritual Songs."

While men like these were bringing tidings of the new faith back totheir countrymen, others were busy importing and distributing Lutheranbooks. The Parliament prohibited [Sidenote: July 17, 1525] all worksof "the heretic Luther and his disciples," but it could not enforcethis law. The English agent at Antwerp reported to Wolsey that NewTestaments and other English works were bought by Scottish merchants[Sidenote: February 20, 1527] and sent to Edinburgh and St. Andrews.The popularity and influence of Tyndale's and Coverdale's Bible isproved by the rapid anglicizing, from this date onward, of the Scotsdialect. The circulation of the Scriptures in English is furtherproved by the repetition of the injunctions against using them. Butthe first Bible printed in Scotland was that of Alexander Arbuthnot in1579, based on the Geneva Bible in 1561.

[Sidenote: March 14, 1531]

Another indication of the growth of Lutheranism is the request of KingJames V to Consistory for permission to tax his clergy one-third oftheir revenues in order to raise an army against the swarm of hisLutheran subjects. As these Protestants met in private houses,Parliament passed a law, [Sidenote: 1540] "That none hold nor let beholden in their houses nor other ways, congregations or conventicles tocommune or dispute of {356} the Holy Scripture, without they betheologians approved by famous universities."

As the new party grew the battle was joined. At least twelve martyrsperished in the years 1539-40. [Sidenote: Pamphlets] The field wastaken on either side by an army of pamphlets, ballads and broadsides,of which the best known, perhaps, is David Lyndsay's Ane Satire of thethrie Estatis. In this the clergy are mercilessly attacked for greedand wantonness. [Sidenote: 1540] The New Testament is highly praisedby some of the characters introduced into the poem, but a pardonercomplains that his credit has been entirely destroyed by it and wishesthe devil may take him who made that book. He further wishes that"Martin Luther, that false loon, Black Bullinger and Melanchthon" hadbeen smothered in their chrisom-cloths and that St. Paul had never beenborn.

[Sidenote: Mary Stuart, born Dec. 8, 1542]

When James V died, he left the crown to his infant daughter of six daysold, that Mary whose beauty, crimes and tragic end fixed the attentionof her contemporaries and of posterity alike. For the first threeyears of her reign the most powerful man in the kingdom was DavidBeaton, Cardinal Archbishop of St. Andrews. His policy, of course, wasto maintain the Catholic religion, and this implied the defence ofScotch independence against England. Henry VIII, with characteristiclack of scruple, plotted to kidnap the infant queen and either tokidnap or to assassinate the cardinal. Failing in both, he sent anarmy north with orders to put man, woman and child to the swordwherever resistance was made. Edinburgh castle remained untaken, butHolyrood was burned and the country devastated as far as Sterling.

[Sidenote: Cardinal Beaton]

Defeated by England, Beaton was destined to {357} perish in conflictwith his other enemy, Protestantism. During this time of transitionfrom Lutheranism to Calvinism, the demands of the Scotch reformerswould have been more moderate than they later became. They woulddoubtless have been content with a free Bible, free preaching and thesequestration of the goods of the religious orders. Under GeorgeWishart, who translated the First Helvetic Confession, [Sidenote: 1536or 1537] the Kirk began to assume its Calvinistic garb and to take theaspect of a party with a definite political program. The place ofnewspapers, both as purveyors of information and as organs of publicopinion, was taken by the sermons of the ministers, most of thempolitical and all of them controversial. Of this party Beaton was thescourge. He himself believed that in 1545 heresy was almost extinct,and doubtless his belief was confirmed when he was able to put Wishartto death. [Sidenote: March 1, 1546] In revenge for this a fewfanatics murdered him. [Sidenote: May 29]

[Sidenote: John Knox]

In the consummation of the religious revolution during the next quarterof a century, one factor was the personality of John Knox. A bornpartisan, a man of one idea who could see no evil on his own side andno good on the other, as a good fighter and a good hater he has had fewequals. His supreme devotion to the cause he embraced made himcredulous of evil in his foes, and capable of using deceit and ofapplauding political murder. Of his first preaching against Romanismit was said, "Other have sned [snipped] the branches, but this manstrikes at the root," and well nigh the latest judgment passed uponhim, that of Lord Acton, is that he differed from all other Protestantfounders in his desire that the Catholics should be exterminated,either by the state or by the self-help of all Christian men. His notto speak the words of love and mercy from the gospel, but to curse and{358} thunder against "those dumb dogs, the poisoned and pestilentpapists" in the style of the Old Testament prophet or psalmist. Butwhile the harshness of his character has repelled many, his fundamentalconsistency and his courage have won admiration. As a great preacher,"or he had done with his sermon he was so active and vigorous that hewas like to ding the pulpit in blads and fly out of it." His style wasdirect, vigorous, plain, full of pungent wit and biting sarcasm.

Even the year of his birth is in dispute. The traditional date is1505; but it has been shown with much reason that the more likely dateis 1513 or 1514. That he had a university education and that he wasordained priest is all that is known of him until about 1540. Duringthe last months of Wishart's life Knox was his constant attendant. Hisown preaching continued the work of the martyr until June, 1547, whenSt. Andrews was captured by the French fleet and Knox was made a galleyslave for nineteen months. Under the lash and, what grieved him evenmore, constantly plied with suggestions that he should "commitidolatry" in praying to the image of Mary, his heart grew bitteragainst the French and their religion.

Released, either through the influence of the English government,[Sidenote: January 1549] or by an exchange of prisoners, Knox spent thenext five years in England. After filling positions as preacher atBerwick and Newcastle, [Sidenote: 1551] he was appointed royal chaplainand was offered the bishopric of Rochester, which he declined becausehe foresaw the troubles under Mary. As the pioneer of Puritanism inEngland he used his influence to make the Book of Common Prayer moreProtestant. Not long after Mary's accession Knox fled to theContinent, spending a few years at Frankfort and Geneva. He was muchimpressed by "that notable servant of {359} God, John Calvin" whosesystem he adopted with political modifications of his own.

In the meantime things were not going well in Scotland. The countryhad suffered another severe defeat [Sidenote: September 10, 1547] atthe hands of the English in the battle of Pinkie. The government waslargely in the hands of the Queen Dowager, Mary of Lorraine, whonaturally favored France, and who married her daughter, the Queen ofScots, to the Dauphin Francis, [Sidenote: April 24, 1558] both of thembeing fifteen years old. By treaty she conveyed Scotland to the kingof France, acting on the good old theory that her people were achattel. Though the pact, with its treason to the people, was secret,its purport was guessed by all. Whereas the accession of Francis IImomentarily bound Scotland closer to France, his death in the followingyear again cut her loose, and allowed her to go her own way.

All the while the Reformed party had been slowly growing in strength.Somerset took care to send plenty of English Bibles across the CheviotHill, rightly seeing in them the best emissaries of the Englishinterest. The Scotch were drawn towards England by the mildness of hergovernment as much as they were alienated from France by the ferocityof hers. In Scotland the English party, when it had the chance, madeno Catholic martyrs, but the French party continued to put heretics todeath. The execution of the aged Walter Milne, [Sidenote: 1558] thelast of the victims of the Catholic persecution, excited especialresentment.

Knox now returned to his own country for a short visit. [Sidenote:Knox, August, 1555] He there preached passionately against the mass andaddressed a letter to the Regent Mary of Lorraine, begging her to favorthe gospel. This she treated as a joke, and, after Knox had departed,she sentenced him to death and burnt him in effigy. From Geneva hecontinued to be the chief adviser of the {360} Protestant party whoseleaders drew up a "Common Band," usually known as the First ScottishCovenant. [Sidenote: December 3, 1557] The signers, including a largenumber of nobles and gentlemen headed by the earls of Argyle, Glencairnand Morton, promised to apply their whole power, substance and lives tomaintain, set forward and establish "the most blessed Word of God andhis congregation." Under the protection of this bond, reformedchurches were set up openly. The Lords of the Congregation, as theywere called, demanded that penal statutes against heretics be abrogatedand "that it be lawful to us to use ourselves in matters of religionand conscience as we must answer to God." This scheme of tolerationwas too advanced for the time.

[Sidenote: 1557]

As the assistance of Knox was felt to be desirable, the Lords of theCongregation urgently requested his return. [Sidenote: 1558] Beforedoing so he published his "Appellation" [Sidenote: May 2, 1559] to thenobles, estates and commonalty against the sentence of death recentlypassed on him. When he did arrive in Edinburgh, his preaching was likea match set to kindling wood. Wherever he went burst forth the flameof iconoclasm. Images were broken and monasteries stormed not, as hehimself wrote, by gentlemen or by "earnest professors of Christ," butby "the rascal multitude." In reckoning the forces of revolution, thejoy of the mob in looting must not be forgotten. [Sidenote: May 11]From Perth Knox wrote: "The places of idolatry were made equal with theground; all monuments of idolatry that could be apprehended, consumedwith fire; and priests commanded, under pain of death, to desist fromtheir blasphemous mass." Similar outbursts occurred at St. Andrews,and when Knox returned to Edinburgh, civil war seemed imminent.Pamphlets of the time, like The Beggars' Warning, [Sidenote: 1559]distinctly made the threat of social revolution.

{361} But as a matter of fact the change came as the most bloodless inEurope. The Reformers, popular with the middle and with part of theupper classes, needed only to win English support to make themselvesperfectly secure. The difficulty in this course lay in QueenElizabeth's natural dislike of Knox on account of his First Blast ofthe Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. In thiswar-whoop, aimed against the Marys of England and Scotland, Knox hadargued that "to promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion orempire above any realm is repugnant to nature, contrary to God, and,finally, it is the subversion of good order and of all equity andjustice." The author felt not a little embarrassment when a Protestantwoman ascended the throne of England and he needed her help. But tosave his soul he "that never feared nor flattered any flesh" could notadmit that he was in the wrong, nor take back aught that he had said.He seems to have acted on Barry Lyndon's maxim that "a gentleman fightsbut never apologizes." When he wrote Elizabeth, [Sidenote: July 20,1559] all he would say was that he was not her enemy and had neveroffended her or her realm maliciously or of purpose. He seasoned thisattempt at reconciliation by adding a stinging rebuke to the proudyoung queen for having "declined from God and bowed to idolatry,"during her sister's reign, for fear of her life.

But the advantages of union outweighed such minor considerations as badmanners, and early in 1560 a league was formed between England and theLords of the Congregation. Shortly after the death of Mary of Lorraine[Sidenote: June 11, 1560] the Treaty of Edinburgh [Sidenote: Treaty ofEdinburgh, July 6] was signed between the queen of England and thelords of Scotland. This provided: (1) that all English and Frenchtroops be sent out of Scotland except 120 French; (2) that all warlikepreparations cease; (3) that the {362} Berwickshire citadel of the sea,Eyemouth, be dismantled; (4) that Mary and Francis should disuse theEnglish title and arms; (5) that Philip of Spain should arbitratecertain points, if necessary; (6) that Elizabeth had not actedwrongfully in making a league with the Lords of the Congregation. Maryand Francis refused to ratify this treaty.

A supplementary agreement was proposed between Mary Stuart and herrebellious Protestant subjects. She promised to summon Parliament atonce, to make neither war nor peace without the consent of the estates,and to govern according to the advice of a council of twelve chosenjointly by herself and the estates. She promised to give no highoffices to strangers or to clergymen; and she extended to all a generalamnesty.

[Sidenote: Revolution]

The summons of Parliament immediately after these negotiations provedas disastrous to the old régime as the assembly of the French EstatesGeneral in 1789. Though bloodless, the Scotch revolution was asthorough, in its own small way, as that of Robespierre. Religion waschanged and a new distribution of political power secured, transferringthe ascendency of the crown and of the old privileged orders to a classof "new men," low-born ministers of the kirk, small "lairds" andburgesses. The very constitution of the new Parliament wasrevolutionary. In the old legislative assemblies between ten andtwenty greater barons were summoned; in the Parliament of 1560 no lessthan 106 small barons assembled, and it was to them, together with theburgesses of the cities, that the adoption of the new religion was due.A Confession of Faith, [Sidenote: Scottish Confession] on extremeCalvinistic lines, had been drawn up by Knox and his fellows; this waspresented to Parliament and adopted with only eight dissenting voices,those of five laymen and three bishops. The minority was overawed, notonly by the majority in {363} Parliament but by the public opinion ofthe capital and of the whole Lowlands.

[Sidenote: Laws of the estates]

Just a week after the adoption of the Confession, the estates passedthree laws: (1) Abolishing the pope's authority and all jurisdiction byCatholic prelates; (2) repealing all previous statutes in favor of theRoman church; (3) forbidding the celebration of mass. The law calls it"wicked idolatry" and provides that "no manner of person nor personssay mass, nor yet hear mass, nor be present thereat under pain ofconfiscation of all their goods movable and immovable and punishingtheir bodies at the discretion of the magistrate." The penalty for thethird offence was made death, and all officers were commanded to "takediligent suit and inquisition" to prevent the celebration of theCatholic rite. In reality, persecution was extremely mild, simplybecause there was hardly any resistance. Scarcely three Catholicmartyrs can be named, and there was no Pilgrimage of Grace. This isall the more remarkable in that probably three-fourths of the peoplewere still Catholic. The Reformation, like most other revolutions, wasthe work not of the majority, but of that part of the people that hadthe energy and intelligence to see most clearly and act most strongly.For the first time in Scotch history a great issue was submitted to apublic opinion sufficiently developed to realize its importance. Thegreat choice was made not by counting heads but by weighing character.

The burgher class having seized the reins of government proceeded touse them in the interests of their kirk. The prime duty of the statewas asserted to be the maintenance of the true religion. Ministerswere paid by the government. Almost any act of government might bemade the subject of interference by the church, for Knox's profession,"with the policy, mind {364} us to meddle no further than it hathreligion mixed in it," was obviously an elastic and self-imposedlimitation.

[Sidenote: Theocracy]

The character of the kirk was that of a democratic, puritanicaltheocracy. The real rulers of it, and through it of the state, werethe ministers and elders elected by the people. The democracy of thekirk consisted in the rise of most of these men from the lower ranks ofthe people; its theocracy in the claim of these men, once establishedin Moses' seat, to interpret the commands of God. "I see," said QueenMary, after a conversation with Knox, "that my subjects shall obey yourather than me." "Madam," replied Knox, "my study is that both princesand people shall obey God"—but, of course, the voice of the pulpit wasthe voice of God. As a contemporary put it: "Knox is king; what hewills obeyit is." Finally the kirk was a tyranny, as a democracy maywell be. In life, in manners, in thought, the citizen was obliged,under severe social penalty, to conform exactly to a very narrowstandard.

[Sidenote: Queen Mary in Scotland, August 19, 1561]

When Queen Mary, a widow eighteen years old, landed in Scotland, shemust have been aware of the thorny path she was to tread. It isimpossible not to pity her, the spoiled darling of the gayest court ofEurope, exposed to the bleak skies and bleaker winds of doctrines atEdinburgh. Endowed with high spirit, courage, no little cleverness andmuch charm, she might have mastered the situation had her character ordiscretion equaled her intellect and beauty. But, thwarted, nagged andbullied by men whose religion she hated, whose power she feared andwhose low birth she despised, she became more and more reckless in thepursuit of pleasure until she was tangled in a network of vice andcrime, and delivered helpless into the hands of her enemies.

{365} Her true policy, and the one which she began to follow, wasmarked out for her by circumstances. Scotland was to her but thestepping-stone to the throne of England. As Elizabeth's next heir shemight become queen either through the death of the reigning sovereign,or as the head of a Catholic rebellion. At first she prudently decidedto wait for the natural course of events, selecting as her secretary ofstate Maitland, "the Scottish Cecil," a staid politician bent onkeeping friends with England. But at last growing impatient, shecompromised herself in the Catholic plots and risings of thedisaffected southerners.

So, while aspiring to three crowns, Mary showed herself incapable ofkeeping even the one she had. Not religion but her own crimes andfollies caused her downfall, but it was over religion that the firstclash with her subjects came. She would have liked to restoreCatholicism, though this was not her first object, for she would havebeen content to be left in the private enjoyment of her own worship.Even on this the stalwarts of the kirk looked askance. Knox preachedas Mary landed that one mass was more terrible to him than ten thousandarmed invaders. Mary sent for him, hoping to win the hard man by adisplay of feminine and queenly graciousness. [Sidenote: August1561-December 1563] In all he had five interviews with her,picturesquely described by himself. On his side there were long, sternsermons on the duties of princes and the wickedness of idolatry, allrichly illustrated with examples drawn from the sacred page. On herside there was "howling together with womanly weeping," "more howlingand tears above that the matter did require," "so many tears that herchamber-boy could scarce get napkins enough to dry her eyes." Withabsurdly unconscious offensiveness and egotism Knox began acquaintancewith his sovereign by remarking that he was as well {366} content tolive under her as Paul under Nero. Previously he had maintained thatthe government was set up to control religion; now he informed Marythat "right religion took neither original nor authority from worldlyprinces but from the Eternal God alone." "'Think ye,' quoth she, 'thatsubjects, having power, may resist their princes?' 'If princes exceedtheir bounds, madam, they may be resisted and even deposed,'" repliedKnox. Mary's marriage was the most urgent immediate question ofpolicy. When Knox took the liberty of discussing it with her she burstout: "What have you to do with my marriage? Or what are you withinthis commonwealth?" "A subject born within the same," superblyretorted the East Lothian peasant, "and though neither earl, lord norbaron, God has made me a profitable member."

[Sidenote: Marriage with Darnley, July 1565]

Determined, quite excusably, to please herself rather than her advisersin the choice of a husband, Mary selected her cousin Henry Stuart LordDarnley; a "long lad" not yet twenty. The marriage was celebrated inJuly, 1565; the necessary papal dispensation therefor was actuallydrawn up on September 25 but was thoughtfully provided with a falsedate as of four months earlier. Almost from the first the marriage waswretchedly unhappy. The petulant boy insisted on being treated asking, whereas Mary allowed him only "his due." Darnley was jealous,probably with good cause, of his wife's Italian secretary, DavidRiccio, and murdered him in Mary's presence; [Sidenote: March 9, 1566]"an action worthy of all praise," pontificated Knox.

With this crime begins in earnest that sickening tale of court intrigueand blackest villainy that has commonly passed as the then history ofScotland. To revenge her beloved secretary Mary plotted with a newparamour, the Earl of Bothwell, an able soldier, a {367} nominalProtestant and an evil liver. On the night of February 9-10, 1567, thehouse of Kirk o' Field near Edinburgh where Darnley was staying andwhere his wife had but just left him, was blown up by gunpowder andlater his dead body was found near by. Public opinion at once laid thecrime at the right doors, and it did not need Mary's hasty marriagewith Bothwell [Sidenote: Marriage with Bothwell, May 15, 1567] toconfirm the suspicion of her complicity.

The path of those opposed to the queen was made easier by the fact thatshe now had an heir, James, [Sidenote: James VI, June 19, 1566] ofScotland the sixth and afterwards of England the first. The temper ofthe people of Edinburgh was indicated by the posting up of numerousplacards accusing Bothwell and Mary. One of these was a banner onwhich was painted a little boy kneeling and crowned, and thereon thelegend: "Avenge the death of my father!" Deeds followed words;[Sidenote: July 16] Parliament compelled the queen under threat ofdeath to abdicate in favor of her son and to appoint her half-brother,the Earl of Moray, regent. At the coronation of the infant king Knoxpreached. [Sidenote: July 29] A still more drastic step was takenwhen Parliament declared Mary guilty of murder [Sidenote: December 15]and formally deposed her from the throne. That Mary really was guiltyin the fullest degree there can be no reasonable doubt. An element ofmystery has been added to the situation by a dispute over thegenuineness of a series of letters and poems purporting to have beenwritten by Mary to Bothwell and known collectively as the CasketLetters. They were discovered in a suspiciously opportune way by herenemies. The originals not being extant, some historians have regardedthem in whole or in part as forgeries, but Robertson, Ranke, Froude,Andrew Lang and Pollard accept them as genuine. This is my opinion,but it seems to me that the fascination of {368} mystery has lent thedocuments undue importance. Had they never been found Mary's guiltwould have been established by circumstantial evidence.

Mary was confined for a short time in the castle of Lochleven, butcontrived to escape. As she approached Glasgow she risked a battle,[Sidenote: May, 1568] but her troops were defeated and she fled toEngland. Throwing herself on Elizabeth's mercy she found prison andfinally, after nineteen years, the scaffold. An inquiry was heldconcerning her case, but no verdict was rendered because it did notsuit Elizabeth to degrade her sister sovereign more than was necessary.Not for the murder of her husband, but for complicity in a plot againstElizabeth, was Mary finally condemned to die. In spite of the factthat she did everything possible to disgrace herself more deeply thanever, such as pensioning the assassin of her brother Moray, hersufferings made her the martyr of sentimentalists, and pieces ofembroidery or other possessions of the beautiful queen have been handeddown as the precious relics of a saint.[2]

All the murderous intrigues just narrated contributed thoroughly todisgrace the Catholic and royalist party. The revolution had leftsociety dissolved, full of bloodthirsty and false men. But though theProtestants had their share of such villains, they also had the oneconsistent and public-spirited element in the kingdom, namely Knox andhis immediate followers. Moray was a man rather above the averagerespectability and he confirmed the triumph of Protestantism in theLowlands in the few short years preceding his assassination in January,1570. But by this time the revolution had been so firmly accomplishedthat nothing could shake it. The deposition of a queen, though {369} adefiance of all the Catholic powers and of all the royalist sentimentof Europe, had succeeded. The young king was brought up a Protestant,and his mind was so thoroughly turned against his mother that heacquiesced without a murmur in her execution. At last peace andsecurity smiled upon North Britain. [Sidenote: Preparation for unionwith England] The coming event of the union with England cast itsbeneficent shadow over the reign of Elizabeth's successor.

[Sidenote: Absolution]

The Reformation ran the same course as in England earlier; one isalmost tempted to hypostatize it and say that it took the bit betweenits teeth and ran away with its riders. Actually, the man cast for therôle of Henry VIII was James VI; the slobbering pedant without drawingthe sword did what his abler ancestors could not do after a life-timeof battle. He made himself all but absolute, and this, demonstrably,as head of the kirk.

In 1584 Parliament passed a series of statutes known as the Black Acts,putting the bodies and souls of the Scotch under the yoke of the king,who was now pope as well. In 1587 the whole property of thepre-Reformation church, with some trifling exceptions, was confiscatedand put at the king's disposition. As in England, so here, the landsof abbeys and of prelates was thrown to new men of the pushing,commercial type. Thus was founded a landed aristocracy with interestsdistinct from the old barons and strong in supporting both king andReformation.

[Sidenote: Reaction in the kirk, 1592]

It is true that this condition was but temporary. Just as in Englandlater the Parliament and the Puritans called the crown to account, soin Scotland the kirk continued to administer drastic advice to themonarch and finally to put direct legal pressure upon him. The BlackActs were abrogated by Parliament in 1592 and from that time forthensued a struggle between the {370} king and the presbyteries which, inthe opinion of the former, agreed as well together as God and thedevil. Still more after his accession to the English throne James cameto prefer the episcopal form of church government as more subservient,and to act on the maxim, "no bishop, no king."

[1] Could he have been David Borthwick or David Lyndsay? See Luther'sletters and Dictionary of National Biography.

[2] Such a piece of embroidery has been kept in my mother's family fromthat day to this.

{371}

CHAPTER VIII

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION

SECTION 1. ITALY

It is sometimes so easy to see, after the event, why things should havetaken just the course they did take, that it may seem remarkable thatpolitical foresight is so rare. It is probable, however, that thestudy of history not only illumines many things, and places them intheir true perspective, but also tends to simplify too much,overemphasizing, to our minds, the elements that finally triumphed andcasting those that succumbed into the shadow.

[Sidenote: Italy]

However this may be, Italy of the sixteenth century appears to offer anunusually clear case of a logical sequence of effects due to previouslyascertainable causes. That Italy should toy with the Reformationwithout accepting it, that she should finally suppress it and alongwith it much of her own spiritual life, seems to be entirely due to hergeographical, political and cultural condition at the time when shefelt the impact of the new ideas.

In all these respects, indeed, there was something that might at firstblush have seemed favorable to the Lutheran revolt. Few lands weremore open to German and Swiss influences than was their transalpineneighbor. Commercially, Italy and Germany were united by a thousandbonds, and a constant influx of northern travellers, students, artists,officials and soldiers, might be supposed to carry with them thecontagion of the new ideas. Again, the lack of political unity mightbe supposed, as in Germany, so in Italy, {372} to facilitate sectionalreformation. Finally, the Renaissance, with its unparalleled freedomof thought and its strong anti-clerical bias, would at least insure afair hearing for innovations in doctrine and ecclesiastical ideals.

And yet, as even contemporaries saw, there were some things whichweighed far more heavily in the scale of Catholicism than did thosejust mentioned in the scale of Protestantism. In the first place theautonomy of the political divisions was more apparent than real. Tooweak and too disunited to offer resistance to any strong foreign power,contended for by the three greatest, Italy became gradually more andmore a Spanish dependency. After Pavia [Sidenote: 1525] and the treatyof Cateau-Cambrésis [Sidenote: 1529] French influence was reduced to athreat rather than a reality. Naples had long been an appendage of theSpanish crown; Milan was now wrested from the French, and one afteranother most of the smaller states passed into Spain's "sphere ofinfluence." The strongest of all the states, the papal dominions,became in reality, if not nominally, a dependency of the emperor afterthe sack of Rome. [Sidenote: 1527] Tuscany, Savoy and Venetiamaintained a semblance of independence, but Savoy was at that timehardly Italian. Venice had passed the zenith of her power, andFlorence, even under her brilliant Duke Cosimo de' Medici [Sidenote:Cosimo de' Medici, 1537-1574] was amenable to the pressure of theSpanish soldier and the Spanish priest.

Enormous odds were thrown against the Reformers because Italy was theseat of the papacy. In spite of all hatred of Roman morals and inspite of all distrust of Roman doctrine, this was a source of pride andof advantage of the whole country. As long as tribute flowed from allWestern Europe, as long as kings and emperors kissed the pontiff's toe,Rome was still in a sense the capital of Christendom. An example ofhow {373} the papacy was both served and despised has been left us bythe Florentine statesman and historian [Sidenote: Guiccidardini,1483-1540] Guiccidardini: "So much evil cannot be said of the Romancuria," he wrote, "that more does not deserve to be said of it, for itis an infamy, an example of all the shame and wickedness of the world."He might have been supposed to be ready to support any enemy of such aninstitution, but what does he say?

No man dislikes more than do I the ambition, avarice and effeminacy of the priests, not only because these vices are hateful in themselves but because they are especially unbecoming to men who have vowed a life dependent upon God. . . . Nevertheless, my employment with several popes has forced me to desire their greatness for my own advantage. But for this consideration I should have loved Luther like myself, not to free myself from the silly laws of Christianity as commonly understood, but to put this gang of criminals under restraint, so that they might live either without vices or without power.

From this precious text we learn much of the inner history ofcontemporary Italy. As far as the Italian mind was liberated inreligion it was atheistic, as far as it was reforming it went nofurther than rejection of the hierarchy. The enemies to be dreaded byRome were, as the poet Luigi Alamanni wrote, [Sidenote: Alamanni,1495-1556] not Luther and Germany, but her own sloth, drunkenness,avarice, ambition, sensuality and gluttony.

The great spiritual factor that defeated Protestantism in Italy was notCatholicism but the Renaissance. [Sidenote: Renaissance vs.Reformation] Deeply imbued with the tincture of classical learning,naturally speculative and tolerant, the Italian mind had alreadyadvanced, in its best representatives, far beyond the intellectualstage of the Reformers. The hostility of the Renaissance to theReformation was a deep and subtle antithesis of the interests of thisworld {374} and of the next. It is notable that whereas somephilosophical minds, like that of the brilliant Olympia Morata, who hadonce been completely skeptical, later came under the influence ofLuther, there was not one artist of the first rank, not one of thegreatest poets, that seems to have been in the least attracted by him.A few minor poets, like Folengo, [Sidenote: Folengo, 1491-1544] showedtraces of his influence, but Ariosto and Tasso were bitterly hostile.[Sidenote: Ariosto, 1531] The former cared only for his fantasticworld of chivalry and faery, and when he did mention, in a satirededicated to Bembo, that Friar Martin had become a heretic as Nicolettohad become an infidel, the reason in both cases is that they hadoverstrained their intellects in the study of metaphysical theology,"because when the mind soars up to see God it is no wonder that, itfalls down sometimes blind and confused." Heresy he elsewhere picturesas a devastating monster.

{375} But there was a third reason why the Reformation could notsucceed in Italy, and that was that it could not catch the ear of thecommon people. If for the churchman it was a heresy, and for thefree-thinker a superstition, for the "general public" of ordinarilyeducated persons it was an aristocratic fad. Those who did embrace itsdoctrines and read its books, and they were not a few of thesecond-rate humanists, cherished it as their fathers had cherished theneo-Platonism of Pico della Mirandola, as an esoteric philosophy. Solittle inclined were they to bring their faith to the people that theypreferred to translate the Bible into better Greek or classical Latinrather than into the vulgar Tuscan. And just at the moment when itseemed as if a popular movement of some sort might result from theefforts of the Reformers, or in spite of them, came the RomanInquisition and nipped the budding plant.

[Sidenote: Christian Renaissance]

But between the levels of the greatest intellectual leaders and that ofthe illiterate masses, there was a surprising number of groups of menand women more or less tinctured with the doctrines of the north. Andyet, even here, one must add that their religion was seldom pureLutheranism or Calvinism; it was Christianized humanism. There was thebrilliant woman Vittoria Colonna, who read with rapture the doctrine ofjustification by faith, but who remained a conforming Catholic all herlife. There was Ochino, the general of the Capuchins, whose defectioncaused a panic at Rome but who remained, nevertheless, an independentrather than an orthodox Protestant. Of like quality were Peter MartyrVermigli, an exile for his faith, and Jerome Bolsec, a native of Francebut an inhabitant of Ferrara, whence he took to Geneva an eccentricdoctrine that caused much trouble to Calvin. Finally, it was perfectlyin accordance with the Italian genius that the most radical ofProtestant dissenters, the unitarians Lelio and Fausto Sozzini, shouldhave been born in Siena.

Among the little nests of Lutherans or Christian mystics the mostimportant were at Venice, Ferrara and Naples. As early as 1519Luther's books found their way to Venice, and in 1525 one of theleading canon lawyers in the city wrote an elaborate refutation ofthem, together with a letter to the Reformer himself, informing himthat his act of burning the papal decretals was worse than that ofJudas in betraying, or of Pilate in crucifying, Christ. The firstsufferer for the new religion was Jerome Galateo. [Sidenote: 1530]Nevertheless, the new church waxed strong, and many were executed fortheir opinions. A correspondence of the brethren with Bucer and Lutherhas been preserved. In one letter they deeply deplore the schisms onthe doctrine of the eucharist as hurtful to their cause. The {376}famous artist Lorenzo Lotto [Sidenote: 1540] was employed to paintpictures of Luther and his wife, probably copies of Cranach. Theappearance of the Socinians about 1550, and the mutual animosity of theseveral sects, including the Anabaptist, was destructive. Probablymore fatal was the disaster of the Schmalkaldic war and the completetriumph of the emperor. The Inquisition finished the work of crushingout what remained of the new doctrines.

[Sidenote: Naples]

That Naples became a focus of Protestantism was due mainly to John deValdes, a deeply religious Spaniard. From his circle went out atreatise on justification entitled The Benefit of Christ's Death, byBenedict of Mantua, of which no less than 40,000 copies were sold, forit was the one reforming work to enjoy popularity rivalling that ofLuther and Erasmus. Influenced by Valdes, also, Bartholomew Forziotranslated Luther's Address to the German Nobility into Italian.

[Sidenote: Ferrara]

At the court of Ferrara the duchess, Renée de France, gathered a littlecircle of Protestants. Calvin himself spent some time here, and hisinfluence, together with the high protection of his patroness, made theplace a fulcrum against Rome. Isabella d'Este, originally of Ferraraand later Marchioness of Mantua, one of the brilliant women of theRenaissance, for a while toyed with the fashionable theology. CardinalBembo saw at her castle at Mantua paintings of Erasmus and Luther.[Sidenote: 1537] One of the courtly poets of Northern Italy, FrancisBerni, bears witness to the good repute of the Protestants. In hisRifacimento of Boiardo's Orlando Inamorato, he wrote: "Some rascalhypocrites snarl between their teeth, 'Freethinker! Lutheran!' butLutheran means, you know, good Christian."

[Sidenote: Roman prelates affected by Luther]

The most significant sign of the times, and the most ominous for thepapacy, was that among those affected by the leaven of Lutheranism weremany of the leading {377} luminaries in the bosom of the church. Thatthe Florentine chronicler Bartholomew Cerratani expressed his hope thatLuther's distinguished morals, piety and learning should reform thecuria was bad enough; that the papal nuncio Vergerio, after being senton a mission to Wittenberg, should go over to the enemy, was worse;that cardinals like Contarini and Pole should preach justification byfaith and concede much that the Protestants asked, was worst of all."No one now passes at Rome," wrote Peter Anthony Bandini about 1540,"as a cultivated man or a good courtier who does not harbor someheretical opinions." Paul Sarpi, the eminent historian of Trent,reports that Luther's arguments were held to be unanswerable at Rome,but that he was resisted in order that authority might be uphold. Forthis statement he appeals to a diary of Francis Chieregato, an eminentecclesiastic who died on December 6, 1539. As the diary has not beenfound, Lord Acton rejects the assertion, believing that Sarpi's wordcannot be taken unsupported. But a curious confirmation of Sarpi'sassertion, [Sidenote: Sarpi's assertion] and one that renders itacceptable, is found in Luther's table talk. Speaking on February 22,1538, he says that he has heard from Rome that it was there believed tobe impossible to refute him until St. Paul had been deposed. Horegarded this as a signal testimony to the truth of his doctrines; tous it is valuable only as an evidence of Roman opinion. It is not toomuch to say that at about that time the most distinguished Italianprelates were steering for Wittenberg and threatened to take Rome withthem. How they failed is the history of the Counter-reformation.

SECTION 2. THE PAPACY. 1522-1590

Nothing can better indicate the consternation caused at Rome by theappearance of the Lutheran revolt than {378} the fact that for thefirst time in 144 years and for the last time in history the cardinalselected as supreme pontiff a man who was not an Italian, Adrian ofUtrecht. [Sidenote: Adrian VI, 1522-September 1523] After teachingtheology at Louvain he had been appointed tutor to Prince Charles and,on the accession of his pupil to the Spanish throne was created Bishopof Tortosa, and shortly thereafter cardinal and Inquisitor General ofSpain. While in this country he distinguished himself equally by thejustness of his administration and by his bitter hatred of Luther,against whom he wrote several letters both to his imperial master andto his old colleagues at Louvain.

[Sidenote: December 1521]

The death of Leo X was followed by an unusually long conclave, onaccount of the even balance of parties. At last, despairing ofagreement, and feeling also that extraordinary measures were needed tomeet the exigencies of the situation, the cardinals, in January,offered the tiara to Adrian, who, alone among modern popes, kept hisbaptismal name while in office. The failure of Adrian VI to accomplishmuch was due largely to the shortness of his pontificate of only twentymonths, and still more to the invincible corruption he found at Rome.His really high sense of duty awakened no response save fear and hatredamong the courtiers of the Medicis. When he tried to restore theruined finances of the church he was accused of niggardliness; when hemade war on abuses he was called a barbarian; when he franklyconfessed, in his appeal to the German Diets, that perchance the wholeevil infecting the church came from the rottenness of the Curia, he wasassailed as putting arms into the arsenal of the enemy. His greatestcrime in the eyes of his court was that he was a foreigner, an austere,phlegmatic man, who could understand neither their tongue nor theirways.

{379} Exhausted by the fruitless struggle, Adrian sank into his grave,a good pope unwept and unhonored as few bad popes have ever been. Onhis tomb the cardinals wrote: "Here lies Adrian VI whose suprememisfortune in life was that he was called upon to rule." A likejudgment was expressed more wittily by the people, who erected amonument to Adrian's physician and labeled it, "Liberatori Patriae."

[Sidenote: Clement VII, 1523-34]

The swing of the pendulum so often noticed in politics was particularlymarked in the elections to the papacy of the sixteenth century. Inalmost every instance the new pope was an opponent, and in some sort acontrast, to his predecessor. In no case was this more true than inthe election of 1523. Deciding that if Adrian's methods were necessaryto save the church the medicine was worse than the disease, thecardinals lost no time in raising another Medici to the throne. Likeall of his race, Clement VII was a patron of art and literature, andtolerant of abuses. Personally moral and temperate, he cared littlesave for an easy life and the advancement of the Three Balls. He beganthat policy, which nearly proved fatal to the church, of treating theProtestants with alternate indulgence and severity. But for himselfthe more immediate trouble came not from the enemy of the church butfrom its protector. Though Adrian was an old officer of Charles V, itwas really in the reign of Clement that the process began by whichfirst Italy, then the papacy, then the whole church was put under theSpanish yoke.

[Sidenote: Spanish influence, 1525-6]

After Pavia and the treaty of Madrid had eliminated French influence,Charles naturally felt his power and naturally intended to have itrespected even by the pope. Irritated by Clement's perpetual deceitand intrigue with France, Charles addressed to him, in 1526, a documentwhich Ranke calls the most {380} formidable ever used by any Catholicprince to a pope during the century, containing passages "of which nofollower of Luther need be ashamed."

[Sidenote: Sack of Rome, May and September 1527]

Rather to threaten the pope than to make war on him, Charles gathered aformidable army of German and Spanish soldiers in the north under thecommand of his general Frundsberg. All the soldiers were restless andmutinous for want of pay, and in addition to this a powerful motiveworked among the German landsknechts. Many of them were Lutheran andlooked to the conquest of Rome as the triumph of their cause. As theyloudly demanded to be lead against Antichrist, Frundsberg found thathis authority was powerless to stop them. [Sidenote: March 16, 1527]When he died of rage and mortification the French traitor Charles,Constable of Bourbon, was appointed by the emperor in his place, and,finding there was nothing else to do, led the army against Rome andpromised the soldiers as much booty as they could take. Twice, in Mayand September, the city was put to the horrors of a sack, with all theatrocities of murder, theft and rapine almost inseparable from war. Inaddition to plundering, the Lutherans took particular pleasure indesecrating the objects of veneration to the Catholics. Many an imageand shrine was destroyed, while Luther was acclaimed pope by hisboisterous champions. But far away on the Elbe he heard of the sackand expressed his sorrow for it.

The importance of the sack of Rome, like that of other dramatic events,is apt to be exaggerated. It has been called the end of theRenaissance and the beginning of the Catholic reaction. It was neitherthe one nor the other, but only one incident in the long, stubbornprocess of the Hispanization of Italy and the church. For centuries noemperor had had so much power in Italy as had Charles. With Naples and{381} Milan were now linked Siena and Genoa under his rule; the statesof the church were virtually at his disposal, and even Florence, underits hereditary duke, Alexander de' Medici, was for a while under thecontrol of the pope and through him, of Charles.

Nor did the fall of the holy city put the fear of God into the heartsof the prelates for more than a moment. The Medici, Clement, who neversold his soul but only pawned it from time to time, without entirelyabandoning the idea of reform, indefinitely postponed it.Procrastinating, timid, false, he was not the man to deal with seriousabuses. He toyed with the idea of a council but when, on the mererumor that a council was to be called the prices of all salable officesdropped in a panic, he hesitated. Moreover he feared the council wouldbe used by the emperor to subordinate him even in spiritual matters.Perhaps he meant well, but abuses were too lucrative to be lightlyaffronted. As to Lutheranism, Clement was completely misinformed andalmost completely indifferent. While he and the emperor were at oddsit grew mightily. Here as elsewhere he was irresolute; hispontificate, as a contemporary wrote, was "one of scruples,considerations and discords, of buts and ifs and thens and moreovers,and plenty of words without effect."

[Sidenote: Paul III, 1534-49]

The pontificate of Paul III marks the turning point in the Catholicreaction. Under him the council of Trent was at last opened; the neworders, especially the Jesuits, were formed, and such instrumentalitiesas the Inquisition and Index of prohibited books put on a new footing.Paul III, a Farnese from the States of the Church, owed his electionpartly to his strength of character, partly to the weakness of hishealth, for the cardinals liked frequent vacancies in the Holy See.Cautious and choleric, prolix and stubborn, he had a real desire forreform and an earnest wish to avoid {382} quarrels with either of thegreat powers that menaced him, the emperor and France. The reformingspirit of the pope showed itself in the appointment of several men ofthe highest character to the cardinalate, among them Gaspar Contariniand Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. In other cases, however, theexigencies of politics induced the nomination of bad men, such as DelMonte and David Beaton. At the same time a commission was named torecommend practical reforms. The draft for a bull they presented forthis purpose was rejected by the Consistory, but some of theirrecommendations, such as the prohibition of the Roman clergy to visittaverns, theaters and gambling dens, were adopted.

[Sidenote: May, 1535 Consilium delectorum cardinalium et aliorumpraelatorum]

A second commission of nine ecclesiastics of high character, includingJohn Peter Caraffa, Contarini, Pole and Giberti, was created to make acomprehensive report on reform. The important memorial they drew upfully exposed the prevalent abuses. The root of all they found in theexaggeration of the papal power of collation and the laxity with whichit was used. Not only were morally unworthy men often made bishops andprelates, but dispensations for renunciation of benefices, forabsenteeism and for other hurtful practices were freely sold. Thecommission demanded drastic reform of these abuses as well as of themonastic orders, and called for the abolition of the venal exercise ofspiritual authority by legates and nuncios. But the reform memorial,excellent and searching as it was, led to nothing. At most it was ofsome use as a basis of reforms made by the Council of Trent later. Butfor the moment it only rendered the position of the church moredifficult. The reform of the Dataria, for example, the office whichsold graces, privileges, indults, dispensations and benefices, was{383} considered impossible because half of the papal revenue, or110,000 ducats annually, came from it. Nor could the fees of thePenitentiary be abolished for fear of bankruptcy, though in 1540 theywere partially reduced. [Sidenote: 1538] The most obvious results ofthe Consilium was to put another weapon into the hands of theLutherans. Published by an unauthorized person, it was at once seizedupon by the Reformers as proof of the hopeless depravity of the Curia.So dangerous did it prove to simple-minded Catholics that it waspresently put on the Index!

Paul's diplomacy tried to play off the Empire against France and todivert the attention of both to a crusade against the Turk. Hoping toadvance the cause of the church by means of the war declared by CharlesV on the Schmalkaldic League, the pope, in return for a subsidy,exacted a declaration in the treaty, that the reason of the war wasreligious and the occasion for it the refusal of the Protestants torecognize the Council of Trent's authority. But when Charles wasvictor he used his advantage only to strengthen his own prerogative,not effectively to suppress heresy. Paul now dreaded the emperor morethan he did the Protestants and his position was not made easier by thethreat of Charles to come to terms with the Lutherans did Paul succeedin rousing France against him. In fact, with all his squirming, PaulIII only sank deeper into the Spanish vassalage, while the championshipof the church passed from his control into that of new agencies that hehad created.

[Sidenote: Julius III, 1550-55]

It was perhaps an effort to free the Holy See from the Spanish yokethat led the cardinals to raise to the purple, as Julius III, CardinalJohn Mary Ciocchi del Monte who as one of the presidents of theoecumenical council had distinguished himself by his opposition to{384} the emperor. Nevertheless his pontificate marked a relaxation ofthe church's effort, for policy or strength to pursue reform he hadnone.

[Sidenote: Marcellus II, April 9-May 1, 1555]

Marcellus II, who was pope for twenty-two days, would hardly beremembered save for the noble Mass of Pope Marcellus dedicated to himby Palestrina.

With the elevation of Cardinal Caraffa to the tiara Peter's keys[Sidenote: Paul IV, 1555-9] were once more restored to strong hands anda reforming heart. The founder of the Theatines was a hot-bloodedNeapolitan still, in spite of his seventy-nine years, hale and hearty.Among the reforms he accomplished were some regulations relating to theresidence of bishops and some rules for the bridling of Jews, usurers,prostitutes, players and mountebanks. But he was unable to reformhimself. He advanced his young kinsmen shamelessly to politicaloffice. His jealousy of the Jesuits, in whom he saw a rival to his ownorder, not only caused him to neglect to use them but made him put themin a very critical position. Nor did he dare to summon again thecouncil that had been prorogued, for fear that some stronger powershould use it against himself. He chafed under the Spanish yoke,coming nearer to a conflict with Charles V and his son Philip II thanany pope had ventured to do. He even thought of threatening Philipwith the Inquisition, but was restrained by prudence. In his purposeof freeing Italy from foreign domination he accomplished nothingwhatever.

[Sidenote: Pius IV, 1560-5]

Pius IV was a contrast to the predecessor whom he hated. John AngeloMedici, of Milan, not connected with the Florentine family, was acheerful, well-wishing, beneficent man, genial and fond of life, a sonof the Renaissance, a patron of art and letters. The choice of a nameoften expresses the ideals and tendencies of a pope; that of Pius waschosen perhaps in imitation {385} of Pius II, Aeneas SylviusPiccolomini, the most famous humanist to sit on the fisherman's throne.And yet the spirit of the times no longer allowed the grosslicentiousness of the earlier age, and the cause of reform progressednot a little under the diplomatic guidance of the Milanese. In thefirst place, doubtless from personal motives, he made a fearful exampleof the kinsmen of his predecessor, four of whom he executed chiefly forthe reason that they had been advanced by papal influence. Thissalutary example practically put an end to nepotism; at least theunfortunate nephews of Paul IV were the last to aspire to independentprincipalities solely on the strength of kinship to a pope.

[Sidenote: Reforms]

The demand for the continuation and completion of the general council,which had become loud, was acceded to by Pius who thought, like theAmerican boss, that at times it was necessary to "pander to the publicconscience." The happy issue of the council, from his point of view,in its complete submissiveness to the papal prerogative, led Pius toemphasize the spiritual rather than the political claims of thehierarchy. In this the church made a great gain, for, as the historyof the time shows plainly, in the game of politics the papacy could nolonger hold its own against the national states surrounding it. Piusleaned heavily on Philip, for by this time Spain had become theacknowledged champion of the church, but he was able to do so withoutloss of prestige because of the gradual separation of the temporal fromthe spiritual power.

Among his measures the most noteworthy was one regulating the powers ofthe college of cardinals, while their exclusive right to elect thepontiff was maintained against the pretensions of the council. Thebest Catholic spirit of the time was represented in {386} CardinalCharles Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan, an excellent prelate who soughtto win back members of Christ to the fold by his good example, while hedid not disdain to use the harsher methods of persecution whennecessary. Among the amiable weaknesses of Pius was the belief,inherited from a bygone age, that the Protestants might still bereunited to the church by a few concessions, such as those of themarriage of the clergy and the use of the cup by the laity.

[Sidenote: Pius V, 1566-72]

With Pius V a sterner spirit entered into the councils of the church.The election of the Dominican and Chief Inquisitor Michael Ghislieriwas a triumph for the policy of Borromeo. His pitiless hatred of theheretics hounded Catharine de' Medici against the Huguenots, and PhilipII against the Dutch. Contrary to the dictates of prudence and thewishes of the greatest Catholic princes, he issued the bull deposingElizabeth. But he was severe to himself, an ascetic nicknamed for hismonkish narrowness "Friar Wooden-shoe" by the Roman populace. Heruthlessly reformed the Italian clergy, meting out terrible punishmentsto all sinners. Under his leadership Catholicism took the offensive inearnest and accomplished much. His zeal won him the name of saint, forhe was the last of the Roman pontiffs to be canonized.

But the reign of sainthood coupled with absolutism is apt to growirksome, and it was with relief that the Romans hailed the election ofHugo Buoncompagno as Gregory XIII. [Sidenote: Gregory XIII, 1572-85]He did little but follow out, somewhat weakly, the paths indicated byhis predecessors. So heavily did he lean on Spain that he was calledthe chaplain of Philip, but, as the obligations were mutual, and theCatholic king came also to depend more and more upon the spiritual armswielded by the papacy, it might just as well have been said that Philipwas the executioner employed by Gregory. The {387} mediocrity of hisrule did not prevent notable achievement by the Jesuits in the cause ofthe church. His reform of the calendar will be described more fullyelsewhere.

Gregory XIII offers an opportunity to measure the moral standard of thepapacy after half a century of reform. His policy was guided largelyby his ruling passion, love of a natural son, born before he had takenpriest's orders, whom he made Gonfaloniere of the church and would haveadvanced to still further preferment had not his advisers objected.Gregory was the pope who thanked God "for the grace vouchsafed untoChristendom" in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. He was also the popewho praised and encouraged the plan for the assassination ofElizabeth.[1]

[Sidenote: Sixtus V, 1585-90]

In the person of Sixtus V the spirit of Pius V returned to power.Felix Peretti was a Franciscan and an Inquisitor, an earnest man and ahard one. Like his predecessors pursuing the goal of absolutism, hehad an advantage over them in the blessing disguised as the disaster ofthe Spanish Armada. From this time forward the papacy was forced tochampion its cause with the spiritual weapons at its command, and thegain to it as a moral and religious power was enormous. In some waysit assumed the primacy of Catholic Europe, previously usurped by Spain,and attained an influence that it had not had since the Great Schism ofthe fourteenth century.

The reforms of Sixtus are important rather for their comprehensive thanfor their drastic quality. The whole machinery of the Curia was madeover, the routine of business being delegated to a number of standingcommittees known as Congregations, such as the Congregation ofCeremonies to watch over matters of precedence at the papal court, andthe Congregation {388} of the Consistory to prepare the work of theConsistory. The number of cardinals was fixed at seventy. Neweditions of the breviary and of the Index were carefully prepared. Atthe same time the moral reforms of Trent were laxly carried out, forwhile decrees enforcing them were promulgated by Sixtus with one hand,with the other he sold dispensations and privileges.

[1] Ante, p. 338.

SECTION 3. THE COUNCIL OF TRENT

While the popes were enjoying their jus incorrigibilitatis—as Lutherwittily expressed it—the church was going to rack and ruin. Had thesafety of Peter's boat been left to its captains, it would apparentlyhave foundered in the waves of schism and heresy. No such dangerousenemy has ever attacked the church as that then issuing from her ownbosom. Neither the medieval heretics nor the modern philosophers havewon from her in so short a time such masses of adherents. WhereVoltaire slew his thousands Luther slew his ten thousands, for Voltaireappealed only to the intellect, Luther appealed to the conscience.

[Sidenote: Decline of Protestantism]

The extraordinary thing about the Protestant conquests was their suddenend. Within less than fifty years the Scandinavian North, most ofGermany including Austria, parts of Hungary, Poland, most ofSwitzerland, and Great Britain had declared for the "gospel." Francewas divided and apparently going the same road; even in Italy therewere serious symptoms of disaffection. That within a single generationthe tide should be not only stopped but rolled back is one of the mostdramatic changes of fortune in history. The only country whichProtestantism gained after 1560 was the Dutch Republic. Large parts ofGermany and Poland were won back to the church, and Catholicism madesafe in all the Latin countries.

{389} [Sidenote: Spanish revival]

The spirit that accomplished this work was the spirit of Spain. Moreextraordinary than the rapid growth of her empire was the conquest ofEurope by her ideals. The character of the Counter-reformation wasdetermined by her genius. It was not, as it started to be in Italy, amore or less inwardly Christianized Renaissance. It was a distinct andpowerful religious revival, and one that showed itself, as many othershave done, by a mighty reaction. Medievalism was restored, largely bymedieval methods, the general council, the emphasis on tradition anddogma, coercion of mind and body, and the ministrations of a monasticorder, new only in its discipline and effectiveness, a reduplication ofthe old mendicant orders in spirit and ideal.

[Sidenote: Preparation for calling a council]

The Oecumenical Council was so double-edged a weapon that it is notremarkable that the popes hesitated to grasp it in their war with theheretic. They had uncomfortable memories of Constance and Basle, ofthe election and deposition of popes and of decrees limiting theirprerogatives. And, moreover, the council was the first authorityinvoked by the heretic himself. Adrian might have been willing to risksuch a synod, but before he had time to call one, his place was takenby the vacillating and pusillanimous Clement. Perpetually toying withthe idea he yet allowed the pressure of his courtiers and thedifficulties of the political situation—for France was opposed to thecouncil as an imperial scheme—indefinitely to postpone the summons.

The more serious-minded Paul III found another lion in his path. Hefor the first time really labored to summon the general synod, but hefound that the Protestants had now changed their position and would nolonger consent to recognize its authority under any conditions to whichhe could possibly assent. Though {390} his nuncio Vergerio received inGermany and even in Wittenberg a cordial welcome, it was soondiscovered that the ideas of the proper constitution of the councilentertained by the two parties were irreconciliable. Fundamentallyeach wanted a council in which its own predominance should be assured.The Schmalkaldic princes, on the advice of their theologians, asked fora free German synod in which they should have a majority vote, and inthis they were supported by Francis I and Henry VIII. Naturally nopope could consent to any such measures; under these discouragingcircumstances, the opening of the council was continually postponed,and in place of it the emperor held a series of religious colloquiesthat only served to make the differences of the two parties moreprominent.

[Sidenote: Summons of Council, November 19, 1544]

After several years of negotiation the path was made smooth and thebull Laetare Hierusalem summoned a general synod to meet at Trent onMarch 15, 1545, and assigned it three tasks: (1) The pacification ofreligious disputes by doctrinal decisions; (2) the reform ofecclesiastical abuses; (3) the discussion of a crusade against theinfidel. Delay still interfered with the opening of the assembly,which did not take place until December 15, 1545.

[Sidenote: First period, 1545-7]

The council was held at three separate periods with long intervals.The first period was 1545-7, the second 1551-2, the third 1562-3. Thecity of Trent was chosen in order to yield to the demand for a Germantown while at the same time selecting that one nearest to Italy, forthe pope was determined to keep the action of the synod under control.Two measures were adopted to insure this end, the initiative andpresidency of the papal legates and packing the membership. Thefaculties to be granted the legates were already decided upon in 1544;these lieutenants were to be, according to Father Paul Sarpi, angels ofpeace to preside, make {391} all necessary regulations, and publishthem "according to custom." The phrase that the council should decideon measures, "legatis proponentibus" was simply the constitutionalexpression of the principal familiar in many governments, that thelegislative should act only on the initiative of the executive, thusgiving an immense advantage to the latter. The second means ofsubordinating the council was the decision to vote by heads and not bynations and to allow no proxies. This gave a constant majority to theItalian prelates sent by the pope. So successful were these measuresthat the French ambassador bitterly jested of the Holy Ghost coming toTrent in the mailbags from Rome.

[Sidenote: Membership]

At the first session there were only thirty-four members entitled tovote: four cardinals, four archbishops, twenty-one bishops and fivegenerals of orders. There were also present other personages,including an ambassador from King Ferdinand, four Spanish secularpriests and a number of friars. The first question debated was theprecedence of dogma or reform. Regarding the council chiefly as aninstrument for condemning the heretics, the pope was in favor of takingup dogma first. The emperor, on the other hand, wishing rather toconciliate the Protestants and if possible to lure them back to the oldchurch, was in favor of starting with reform. The struggle, which wascarried on not so much on the floor of the synod as behind the members'backs in the intrigues of courts, was decided by a compromise to theeffect that both dogma and reform should be taken up simultaneously.But all enactments dealing with ecclesiastical irregularities were tobear the proviso "under reservation of the papal authority."

[Sidenote: Dogmatic decrees]

The dogmatic decrees at Trent were almost wholly oriented by thepolemic against Protestantism. {392} Practically nothing was definedsave what had already been taken up in the Augsburg Confession or inthe writings of Calvin, of Zwingli and of the Anabaptists. Inevitably,a spirit so purely defensive could not be animated by a primarilyphilosophical interest. The guiding star was not a system but apolicy, and this policy was nothing more nor less than that ofre-establishing tradition. The practice of the church was the standardapplied; many an unhistorical assertion was made to justify it and manya practice of comparatively recent growth was sanctioned by thepostulate that "it had descended from apostolic use." "By show ofantiquity they introduce novelty," was Bacon's correct judgment.

[Sidenote: Bible and tradition]

Quite naturally the first of the important dogmatic decrees was on thebasis of authority. The Protestants had acknowledged the Bible only;over against them the Tridentine fathers declared for the Bible andthe tradition of the church. The canon of Scripture was different fromthat recognized by the Protestants in that it included the Apocrypha.

[Sidenote: Justification]

After passing various reform decrees on preaching, catecheticalinstruction, privileges of mendicants and indulgences, the council tookup the thorny question of justification. Discussion was postponed forsome months out of consideration for the emperor, who feared it mightirritate the Protestants, and only gave his consent to it in the hopethat some ambiguous form acceptable to that party, might be found. Howdeeply the solifidian doctrine had penetrated into the very bosom ofthe church was revealed by the storminess of the debate. The passionsof the right reverend fathers were so excited by the consideration of afundamental article of their faith that in the course of disputationthey accused one another of conduct unbecoming to Christians, tauntedone another with {393} plebeian origin and tore hair from one another'sbeards. The decree as finally passed established the position thatfaith and works together justify, and condemned the semi-Lutherandoctrines of "duplicate justice" and imputed righteousness hithertoheld by such eminent theologians as Contarini and Cajetan.

Having accomplished this important work the council appeared to thepope ready for dissolution. The protests of the emperor kept ittogether for a few months longer, but an outbreak of the spotted feverand the fear of a raid during the Schmalkaldic war, served assufficient excuses to translate the council to Bologna. [Sidenote:March 1547] Though nothing was accomplished in this city the assemblywas not formally prorogued until September 13, 1549.

[Sidenote: Second period, 1551-2]

Under pressure from the emperor Pope Julius III convoked the synod fora second time at Trent on May 1, 1551. The personnel was different.The Jesuits Lainez and Salmeron were present working in the interestsof the papacy. No French clergy took part as Henry II was hostile.The Protestants were required to send a delegation, which was receivedon January 24, 1552. They presented a confession, but declined torecognize the authority of a body in which they were not represented.Several dogmatic decrees were passed on the sacraments, reassertingtransubstantiation and all the doctrines and usages of the church. Afew reform decrees were also passed, but before a great deal could beaccomplished the revolt of Maurice of Saxony put both emperor andcouncil in a precarious position and the latter was consequentlyprorogued for a second time on April 28, 1552.

[Sidenote: Third period, 1562-3]

When, after ten long years, the council again convened at the commandof Pius IV, in January, 1562, it is extraordinary to see how little theproblems confronting it had changed. Not only was the struggle {394}for power between pope and council and between pope and emperor stillgoing on, but hopes were still entertained in some quarters ofreconciling the schismatics. Pius invited all princes, whetherCatholic or heretical, to send delegates, but was rebuffed by some ofthem. The argument was then taken up by the Emperor Ferdinand who sentin an imposing demand for reforms, including the authorization of themarriage of priests, communion in both kinds, the use of the vulgartongue in divine service, and drastic rules for the improvement of theconvents and of the papal courts.

[Sidenote: Jesuits present]

The contention over this bone among the fathers, now far more numerousthan in the earlier days, waxed so hot that for ten whole months nosession could be held. Mobs of the partisans of the various factionsfought in the streets and bitter taunts of "French diseases" and"Spanish eruptions" were exchanged between them. For a time thesituation seemed inextricable and one cardinal prophesied the impendingdownfall of the papacy. But in the nick of time to prevent such acatastrophe the pope was able to send into the field the newlyrecruited praetorian guards of the Society of Jesuits. Under thecommand of Cardinal Morone these indefatigable zealots turned the flankof the opposing forces partly by intrigue at the imperial court, partlyby skilful manipulation of debate. The emperor's mind was changed;reforms demanded by him were dropped.

The questions actually taken up and settled were dogmatic ones, chieflyconcerning the sacrifice of the mass and the perpetuation of theCatholic customs of communion in one kind, the celebration of masses inhonor of saints, the celebration of masses in which the priest onlycommunicates, the mixing of water with the wine, the prohibition of theuse of the vulgar tongue, and the sanction of masses for the dead.Other {395} decrees amended the marriage laws, and enjoined thepreparation of an Index of prohibited books, of a catechism and ofstandard editions of missal and breviary.

[Sidenote: Subjection to papacy]

How completely the council in its last estate was subdued to the willof the pope is shown by its request that the decrees should all beconfirmed by him. This was done by Pius IV in the bull BenedictusDeus. [Sidenote: January 26, 1564] Pius also caused to be prepared asymbol known as the Tridentine Profession of Faith which was madebinding on all priests. Save that it was slightly enlarged in 1877 bythe pronouncement on Papal Infallibility, it stands to the present day.

[Sidenote: Reception of decrees]

The complete triumph of the papal claims was offset by the coolreception which the decrees received in Catholic Europe. Only theItalian states, Poland, Portugal and Savoy unreservedly recognized theauthority of all of them. Philip II, bigot as he was, preferred tomake his own rules for his clergy and recognized the laws of Trent withthe proviso "saving the royal rights." France sanctioned only thedogmatic, not the practical decrees. The emperor never officiallyrecognized the work of the council at all. Nor were the governmentsthe only recalcitrants. According to Sarpi the body of GermanCatholics paid no attention to the prescribed reforms and the councilwas openly mocked in France as claiming an authority superior to thatof the apostles.

To Father Paul Sarpi, indeed, the most intelligent observer of the nextgeneration, the council seemed to have been a failure if not a fraud.Its history he calls an Iliad of woes. The professed objects of thecouncil, healing the schism and asserting the episcopal power he thinksfrustrated, for the schism was made irreconciliable and the churchreduced to servitude.

But the judgment of posterity has reversed that of {396} the greathistorian, [Sidenote: Constructive work] at least as far as the valueof the work done at Trent to the cause of Catholicism is concerned. Ifthe church shut out the Protestants and recognized her limited domain,she at least took appropriate measures to establish her rule over whatwas left. Her power was now collected; her dogma was unified and madeconsistent as opposed to the mutually diverse Protestant creeds. Inseveral points, indeed, where the opinion of the members was divided,the words of the decrees were ambiguous, but as against the Protestantsthey were distinct and so comprehensive as rather to supersede than tosupplement earlier standards.

Nor should the moral impulse of the council be underestimated,ridiculed though it was by its opponents as if expressed in the maxim,"si non caste, tamen caute." Sweeping decrees for urgent reforms werepassed, and above all a machinery set up to carry on the good work. Inproviding for a catechism, for authoritative editions of the Vulgate,breviary and other standard works, in regulating moot points, instriking at lax discipline, the council did a lasting service toCatholicism and perhaps to the world. Not the least of the practicalreforms was the provision for the opening of seminaries to train thediocesan clergy. The first measure looking to this was passed in 1546;Cardinal Pole at once began to act upon it, and a decree of the thirdsession [Sidenote: 1563] ordered that each diocese should have such aschool for the education of priests. The Roman seminary, opened twoyears later, [Sidenote: 1565] was a model for subsequent foundations.

SECTION 4. THE COMPANY OF JESUS

If the Counter-reformation was in part a pure reaction to medievalism itwas in part also a religious revival. If this was stimulated by theProtestant {397} example, it was also the outcome of the rising tide ofCatholic pietism in the fifteenth century. Still more was it the answerto a demand on the part of the church for an instrument with which tocombat the dangers of heresy and to conquer spiritually the new worlds ofheathenism.

Great crises in the church have frequently produced new revivals ofmonasticism. From Benedict to Bernard, from Bernard to Francis andDominic, from the friars to the Jesuits, there is an evolution in theadaptation of the monastic life to the needs of Latin Christianity.Several new orders, [Sidenote: New monastic orders] all with more or lessin common, started in the first half of the sixteenth century. Under LeoX there assembled at Rome a number of men united by the wish to renewtheir spiritual lives by religious exercises. From this Oratory ofDivine Love, as it was called, under the inspiration of Gaetano di Tieneand John Peter Caraffa, arose the order of Theatines, [Sidenote: 1524] abody of devoted priests, dressing not in a special garb but in ordinarypriest's robes, who soon attained a prominent position in the Catholicreformation. Their especial task was to educate the clergy.

The order of the Capuchins [Sidenote: c. 1526] was an offshoot of theFranciscans. It restored the relaxed discipline of the early friars andits members went about teaching the poor. Notwithstanding the blow to itwhen its third vicar Bernardino Ochino became a Calvinist, it flourishedand turned its energies especially against the heretics.

Of the other orders founded at this time, the Barnabites (1530), theSomascians (1532), the Brothers of Mercy (1540), the Ursulines (1537),only the common characteristics can be pointed out. It is notable thatthey were all animated by a social ideal; not only the salvation of theindividual soul but also the {398} amelioration of humanity was now theirpurpose. Some of the orders devoted themselves to the education ofchildren, some to home missions or foreign missions, some to nursing thesick, some to the rescue of fallen women. The evolution of monasticismhad already pointed the way to these tasks; its apogee was reached withthe organization of the Company of Jesus.

[Sidenote: Typical Jesuit]

The Jesuit has become one of those typical figures, like the Puritan andthe buccaneer. Though less exploited in fiction than he was in the daysof Dumas, Eugene Sue and Zola, the mention of his name calls to theimagination the picture of a tall, spare man, handsome, courteous,obliging, but subtle, deceitful, dangerous, capable of nursing theblackest thoughts and of sanctioning the worst actions for theadvancement of his cause. The Lettres Provinciales of Pascal firststamped on public opinion the idea that the Jesuit was necessarilyimmoral and venomous; the implacable hatred of Michelet and Symonds hasbrought them as criminals before the bar of history. On the other handthey have had their apologists and friends even outside their own order.Let us neither praise nor blame, but seek to understand them.

[Sidenote: Loyola, c. 1493-1556]

In that memorable hour when Luther said his ever-lasting nay at Worms oneof his auditors was—or might have been for she was undoubtedly presentin the city—Germaine de Foix, the wife of the Margrave John ofBrandenburg. The beautiful and frivolous young woman had been by aformer marriage the second wife of Ferdinand the Catholic and at hiscourt she had been known and worshipped by a young page of good family,Iñigo de Loyola. Like the romantic Spaniard that he was he had taken, ashe told later, for his lady "no duchess nor countess but one far higher"and to her he paid court in the genuine spirit of old chivalry. Not thatthis prevented him from addressing {399} less disinterested attentions toother ladies, for, if something of a Don Quixote he was also something ofa Don Juan. Indeed, at the carnival of 1515, his "enormous misdemeanors"had caused him to be tried before a court of justice and little did hisplea of benefit of clergy avail him, for the judge failed to find atonsure on his head "even as large as a seal on a papal bull," and he wasprobably punished severely.

Loyola was a Basque, and a soldier to his fingertips. When the Frencharmy invaded Spain he was given command of the fortress of Pampeluna.Defending it bravely against desperate odds he was wounded [Sidenote: May23, 1521] in the leg with a cannon ball and forced to yield. The leg wasbadly set and the bone knit crooked. With indomitable courage he had itbroken and reset, stretched on racks and the protruding bone sawed off,but all the torture, in the age before anaesthetics, was in vain. Theyoung man of about twenty-eight—the exact year of his birth isunknown—found himself a cripple for life.

To while away the long hours of convalescence he asked for the romancesof chivalry but was unable to get them and read in their place legends ofthe saints and a life of Christ by Ludolph of Saxony. His imaginationtook fire at the new possibilities of heroism and of fame. "What if youshould be a saint like Dominic or Francis?" he asked himself, "ay, whatif you should even surpass them in sanctity?" His choice was fixed. Hetook Madonna for his lady and determined to become a soldier of Christ.

As soon as he was able to move he made a pilgrimage to Seville andManresa and there dedicated his arms in a church in imitation of theknights he had read about in Amadis of Gaul. Then, with a generalconfession and much fasting and mortification of the flesh, began aperiod of doubt and spiritual anguish {400} that has sometimes beencompared with that of Luther. Both were men of strong will andintellect, both suffered from the sense of sin. But Luther's developmentwas somewhat quieter and more normal—if, indeed, in the psychology ofconversion so carefully studied by James, the quieter is the more normal.At any rate where Luther had one vision on an exceptional occasion,Loyola had hundreds and had them daily. Ignatius saw the Trinity as aclavichord with three strings, the miracle of transubstantiation as lightin bread, Satan as a glistening serpent covered with bright, mysteriouseyes, Jesus as "a big round form shining as gold," and the Trinity againas "a ball of fire."

But with all the visions he kept his will fixed on his purpose.[Sidenote: 1523] At first this took the form of a vow to preach to theinfidels and he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, only to be turned back bythe highest Christian authority in that region, the politically-mindedFranciscan vicar.

[Sidenote: 1524]

On returning to Spain he went to Barcelona and started to learn Latinwith boys, for his education as a gentleman had included nothing butreading and writing his own tongue. Thence he went to the university ofAlcalá where he won disciples but was imprisoned for six weeks by theInquisition and forbidden to hold meetings with them. Practically thesame experience was repeated at Salamanca where he was detained by theHoly Office for twenty-two days and again prohibited from holdingreligious meetings. Thus he was chased out of Spain by the church hesought to serve. Turning his steps to Paris he entered the College ofMontaigu, and, if he here was free from the Inquisition he was publiclywhipped by the college authorities as a dangerous fanatic. Nevertheless,here he gathered his first permanent disciples, Peter Le Fèvre of Savoy,Francis Xavier of Pampeluna and two Castilians, {401} James Laynez andAlfonso Salmeron. The little man, hardly over five feet two inches high,deformed and scarred, at the age of thirty-five, won men to him by hissmile, as of a conqueror in pain, by his enthusiasm, his mission and hisbook.

[Sidenote: The Spiritual Exercises]

If one reckons the greatness of a piece of literature not by the beautyof the style or the profundity of the thought but by the influence it hasexercised over men, the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius will rank high.Its chief sources were the meditation and observation of its author. Ifhe took some things from Garcia de Cisneros, some from The Imitation ofChrist, some from the rules of Montaigu, where he studied, far more hetook from the course of discipline to which he had subjected himself atManresa. The psychological soundness of Loyola's method is found in hisdiscovery that the best way to win a man to an ideal is to kindle hisimagination. His own thought was imaginative to the verge of abnormalityand the means which he took to awaken and artificially to stimulate thisfaculty in his followers were drastic in the extreme.

The purpose of the Exercises is stated in the axiom that "Man wascreated to praise, reverence and serve God our Lord and thereby to savehis soul." To fit a man for this work the spiritual exercises weredivided into four periods called weeks, though each period might beshortened or lengthened at the discretion of the director. The firstweek was devoted to the consideration of sin; the second to that ofChrist's life as far as Palm Sunday; the third to his passion; and thefourth to his resurrection and ascension. Knowing the tremendous powerof the stimulant to be administered Ignatius inserted wise counsels ofmoderation in the application of it. But, subject only to the conditionthat the novice was not to be plied beyond what he could bear, he wasdirected in the first week of {402} solitary meditation to try to see thelength, breadth and depth of hell, to hear the lamentations andblasphemies of the damned, to smell the smoke and brimstone, to taste thebitterness of tears and of the worm of conscience and to feel theburnings of the unquenchable fire. In like manner in the other weeks hewas to try to picture to himself in as vivid a manner as possible all theevents brought before his mind, whether terrible or glorious. The end ofall this discipline was to be the complete subjection of the man to thechurch. The Jesuit was directed ever "to praise all the precepts of thechurch, holding the mind ready to find reasons for her defence and nowisein her offence." There must be an unconditional surrender to her notonly of the will but of the intelligence. "To make sure of being rightin all things," says Loyola, "we ought always to hold by the principlethat the white I see I should believe to be black if the hierarchicalchurch were so to rule it."

Inspired by this ideal the small body of students, agreeing to be calledhenceforth the Company of Jesus—a military term, the socii being thecompanions or followers of a chief in arms—took vows to live in povertyand chastity [Sidenote: August 15, 1540] and to make a pilgrimage toJerusalem. With this object they set out to Venice and then turnedtowards Rome for papal approbation of their enterprise. Their firstreception was chilling, but they gradually won a few new recruits andIgnatius drafted the constitution [Sidenote: September 27, 1540] for anew order which was handed to the pope by Contarini and approved in thebull Regimini militantis ecclesiae, which quotes from the formula ofthe Jesuits:

Whoever wishes to fight for God under the standard
of the cross and to serve the Lord alone and his vicar on
earth the Roman pontiff shall, after a solemn vow of
perpetual chastity, consider that he is part of a society
instituted chiefly for these ends, for the profit of souls in
{403}
life and Christian doctrine, for the propagation of the
faith through public preaching, the ministry of God's
word, spiritual exercises and works of charity, and
especially for the education of children and ignorant persons
in Christianity, for the hearing of confession and for the
giving of spiritual consolation.

Moreover it is stated that the members of the new order should be boundby a vow of special obedience to the pope and should hold themselvesready at his behest to propagate the faith among Turks, infidels,heretics or schismatics, or to minister to believers.

[Sidenote: April 1547]

Ignatius was chosen first general of the order. The pope then cancelledthe previous limitation of the number of Jesuits to 60 [Sidenote: 1544]and later issued a large charter of privileges for them. [Sidenote:1549] They were exempted from taxes and episcopal jurisdiction; nomember was to be allowed to accept any dignity without the general'sconsent, nor could any member be assigned to the spiritual direction ofwomen. Among many other grants was one to the effect that the faithfulmight confess to them and receive communion without permission of theirparish priests. A confirmation of all privileges and a grant of otherswas made in a bull of July 21, 1550.

[Sidenote: Organization of the Society of Jesus, 1550]

The express end of the order being the world-domination of the church,its constitution provided a marvellously apt organization for thispurpose. Everything was to be subordinate to efficiency. Detachmentfrom the world went only so far as necessary for the completer conquestof the world. Asceticism, fasting, self-discipline were to be moderateso as not to interfere with health. No special dress was prescribed, forit might be a hindrance rather than a help. The purpose being to winover the classes rather than the masses, the Jesuits were particular toselect as members only robust men of agreeable appearance, calm minds and{404} eloquence. That an aspirant to the order should also be rich andof good family was not requisite but was considered desirable. Men ofbad reputation, intractible, choleric, or men who had ever been taintedwith heresy, were excluded. No women were recruited.

After selection, the neophyte was put on a probation of two years. Hewas then assigned to the class of scholars for further discipline. Hewas later placed either as a temporal coadjutor, a sort of lay brothercharged with inferior duties, or as a spiritual coadjutor, who took thethree irrevocable vows. Finally, there was a class, to which admissionwas gained after long experience, the Professed of Four Vows, the fourthbeing one of special obedience to the pope. A small number of secretJesuits who might be considered as another class, were charged withdangerous missions and with spying.

[Sidenote: General]

Over the order was placed a General who was practically, though nottheoretically, absolute. On paper he was limited by the possibility ofbeing deposed and by the election, independently of his influence, of an"admonitor" and some assistants. In practice the only limitations of hispower were the physical ones inherent in the difficulties ofadministering provinces thousands of miles away. From every province,however, he received confidential reports from a multitude of spies.

The spirit of the order was that of absolute, unquestioning, blindobedience. The member must obey his superior "like a corpse which can beturned this way or that, or a rod that follows every impulse, or a ballof wax that might be moulded in any form." The ideal was an old one; thefamous perinde ac cadaver itself dates back to Francis of Assisi, butnowhere had the ideal been so completely realized as by the companions ofIgnatius. In fact, in this as in other respects, the {405} Jesuits werebut a natural culmination of the evolution of monasticism. More and morehad the orders tended to become highly disciplined, unified bodies, aptto be used for the service of the church and of the pope.

[Sidenote: Growth]

The growth of the society was extraordinarily rapid. By 1544 they hadnine establishments, two each in Italy, Spain and Portugal and one eachin France, Germany and the Netherlands. When Loyola [Sidenote: July 31,1556] died Jesuits could be found in Japan and Brazil, in Abyssinia andon the Congo; in Europe they were in almost every country and includeddoctors at the largest universities and papal nuncios to Poland andIreland. There were in all twelve provinces, about 65 residences and1500 members.

Their work was as broad as their field, but it was dedicated especiallyto three several tasks: education, war against the heretic, and foreignmissions. Neither of the first two was particularly contemplated by thefounders of the order in their earliest period. At that time they wererather like the friars, popular preachers, catechists, confessors andcharitable workers. But the exigencies of the time called them to supplyother needs. The education of the young was the natural result of theirdesire to dominate the intellectual class. Their seminaries, at firstadapted only to their own uses, soon became famous.

[Sidenote: Combating heresy]

In the task of combating heresy they were also the most successful of thepapal cohorts. Though not the primary purpose of the order, it soon cameto be regarded as their special field. The bull canonizing Loyola[Sidenote: 1623] speaks of him as an instrument raised up by divineprovidence especially to combat that "foulest of monsters" Martin Luther.Beginning in Italy the Jesuits revived the nearly extinct popular piety.Going among the poor as missionaries they found many who knew no prayers,many who had not confessed for {406} thirty or forty years, and a host ofpriests as blind as their flocks.

In most other Catholic countries they had to fight for the right toexist. In France the Parlement of Paris was against them, and even afterthe king had granted them permission to settle in the country in 1553,the Parlement accused them of jeoparding the faith, destroying the peaceof the church, supplanting the old orders and tearing down more than theybuilt up. Nevertheless they won their way to a place of great power,until, sitting at the counsels of the monarch, they were able to crushtheir Catholic opponents, the Jansenists, as completely as theirProtestant enemies were crushed by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

In the Netherlands the Jesuits were welcomed as allies of the Spanishpower. The people were impressed by their zeal, piety, anddisinterestedness, and in the Southern provinces they were able to bearaway a victory after a fierce fight with Calvinism.

In England, where they showed the most devotion, they met with the leastsuccess. The blood of their martyrs did not sow the ground with Catholicseed, and they were expelled by statute under Elizabeth.

[Sidenote: Jesuit victories]

The most striking victories of the Jesuits were won in Central Europe.When the first of their company, Peter Faber, entered Germany in 1540, hefound nearly the whole country Lutheran. The Wittelsbachs of Bavariawere almost the only reigning family that never compromised with theReformers and in them the Jesuits found their starting point and theirmost constant ally. Called to the universities of Ingolstadt and Viennatheir success was great and from these foci they radiated in alldirections, to Poland, to Hungary, to the Rhine. One of their mosteminent missionaries was Peter Canisius, whose catechism, published in1555 in three forms, short, long and middle, and in two {407} languages,German and Latin, became the chief spiritual text-book of the Catholics.The idea and selection of material was borrowed from Luther and he wasimitated also in the omission of all overt polemic material. This lastfeature was, of course, one of the strongest.

[Sidenote: Missions to heathens]

But the conquests of the Company of Jesus were as notable in lands beyondEurope as they were in the heart of civilization. They were not, indeed,pioneers in the field of foreign missions. The Catholic church showeditself from an early period solicitous for the salvation of the nativesof America and of the Far East. The bull of Alexander VI stated that hismotive in dividing the newly discovered lands between Spain and Portugalwas chiefly to assist in the propagation of the faith. That theProtestants at first developed no activity in the conversion of theheathen was partly because their energies were fully employed in securingtheir own position, and still more, perhaps, because, in the sixteenthcentury, Spain and Portugal had a practical monopoly of the transoceanictrade and thus the only opportunities of coming into contact with thenatives.

Very early Dominican and Franciscan friars went to America. Though someof them exemplified Christian virtues that might well have impressed thenatives, the greater number relied on the puissant support of the Toledosword. Though the natives, as heathen born in invincible ignorance, wereexempt from the jurisdiction of the inquisitor, they were driven byterror if not by fire, into embracing the religion of their conquerors.If some steadfast chiefs told the missionaries that they would rather goto hell after death than live for ever with the cruel Christians, thetribes as a whole, seeing their dreaded idols overthrown and theirtemples uprooted, embraced the religion of the stronger God, as theyquailed before his {408} votaries. Little could they understand of themysteries of the faith, and in some places long continued to worshipChrist and Mary with the ritual and attributes of older deities. Butnominally a million of them were converted by 1532, and when the Jesuitsarrived a still more successful effort was made to win over the red man.The important mission in Brazil, served by brave and devoted brothers ofIgnatius, achieved remarkable results, whereas in Paraguay the Jesuitsfounded a state completely under their own tutelage.

In the Far East the path of the missionary was broken by the trader. AtGoa the first ambassadors of Christ were friars, and here they erected acathedral, a convent, and schools for training native priests. But thegreatest of the missionaries to this region was Francis Xavier,[Sidenote: Xavier, 1506-52] the companion of Loyola. Not forgetting thevow which he, together with all the first members of the society, hadtaken, [Sidenote: April 1541] he sailed from Lisbon, clothed withextraordinary powers. The pope made him his vicar for all the landsbathed by the Indian Ocean, [Sidenote: May, 1542] and the king ofPortugal gave him official sanction and support. Arriving at Goa he puthimself in touch with the earlier missionaries and began an earnest fightagainst the immorality of the port, both Christian and native. His motto"Amplius" led him soon to virgin fields, among the natives of the coastand of Ceylon. In 1545 he went to Cochin-China, thence to the Moluccasand to Japan, preaching in every place and baptizing by the thousand andten thousand.

Though Xavier was a man of brilliant endowments and though he waspassionately devoted to the cause, to neither of his good qualities didhe owe the successes, whether solid or specious, with which he has beencredited. In the first place, judged by the standards of modernmissions, the superficiality of his work was {409} almost inconceivable.He never mastered one of the languages of the countries which he visited.He learned by rote a few sentences, generally the creed and some phraseson the horrors of hell, and repeated them to the crowds attracted to himby the sound of a bell. He addressed himself to masses rather than toindividuals and he regarded the culmination of his work as being merelythe administration of baptism and not the conversion of heart orunderstanding. Thus, he spent hours in baptizing, with all possiblespeed, sick and dying children, believing that he was thus rescuing theirsouls from limbo. Probably many of his adult converts never understoodthe meaning of the application of water and oil, salt and spittle, thatmake up the ritual of Catholic baptism.

[Sidenote: Use of force]

In the second place, what permanent success he achieved was due largelyto the invocation of the aid of the civil power. One of the mostilluminating of Xavier's letters is that written to King John of Portugalon January 20, 1548, in which he not only makes the reasonable requestthat native Christians be protected from persecution by their countrymen,but adds that every governor should take such measures to convert them aswould insure success to his preaching, for without such support, he says,the cause of the gospel in the Indies would be desperate, few would cometo baptism and those who did come would not profit much in religion.Therefore he urges that every governor, under whose rule many nativeswere not converted, should be mulcted of all his goods and imprisoned onhis return to Portugal. What the measures applied by the Portugeseofficers must have been, under such pressure, can easily be inferred froma slight knowledge of their savage rule.

It has been said that every organism carries in {410} itself the seeds ofits own decay. The premature corruption [Sidenote: Decay of Jesuits] ofthe order was noticed by its more earnest members quite early in itscareer. The future general Francis Borgia wrote: [Sidenote: 1560] "Thetime will come when the Company will be completely absorbed in humansciences without any application to virtue; ambition, pride and arrogancewill rule." The General Aquaviva said explicitly, [Sidenote: 1587] "Loveof the things of this world and the spirit of the courtier are dangerousdiseases in our Company. Almost in spite of us the evil creeps in littleby little under the fair pretext of gaining princes, prelates, and thegreat ones of the world."

A principal cause of the ultimate odium in which the Jesuits were held aswell as of their temporary successes, was their desire for speedyresults. [Sidenote: Efficiency] Every one has noticed the immenseversatility of the Jesuits and their superficiality. They producedexcellent scholars of a certain rank, men who could decipher Latininscriptions, observe the planets, publish libraries of historicalsources, of casuistry and apologetic, or write catechisms or epigrams.They turned with equal facility to preaching to naked savages and to theproduction of art for the most cultivated peoples in the world. And yetthey have rarely, if ever, produced a great scholar, a great scientist, agreat thinker, or even a great ascetic. They were not founded for suchpurposes; they were founded to fight for the church and they did thatwith extraordinary success.

[Sidenote: Failure]

But their very efficiency became, as pursued for its own sake it mustalways become, soulless. In terms suggested by the Great War, theJesuits were the incarnation of religious militarism. To set up an idealof aggrandizement, to fill a body of men with a fanatical enthusiasm forthat ideal and then to provide an organization and disciplinemarvellously adapted to conquest, that is what the Prussian schoolmasterwho {411} proverbially won Sadowa, and the Jesuits who beat back theReformation, have known how to do better than anyone else. Their methodstook account of everything except the conscience of mankind.

Moreover, there can be no doubt that in their eager pursuit of tangibleresults they lowered the ethical standards of the church. Wishing toopen her doors as widely as possible to all men, and finding that theycould not make all men saints, they brought down the requirements foradmission to the average human level. One cannot take the denunciationsof Jesuitical "casuistry" and "probabilism" at their face value, but onecan find in Jesuit works on ethics, and in some of their early works,very dangerous compromises with the world. [Sidenote: Jesuiticalcompromises] One reads in their books how the bankrupt, without sinningmortally, may defraud his creditors of his mortaged goods; how theservant may be excused for pilfering from his master; how a rich man maypardonably deceive the tax-collector; how the adulteress may rightfullydeny her sin to her husband, even on oath.[1] Doubtless these areextreme instances, but that they should have been possible at all is amelancholy warning to all who would, even for pious ends, substituteinferior imitations for genuine morality.

[1] Substantiation of these statements in excerpts from Jesuit works ofmoral theology, printed in C. Mirbt: Quellen zur Geschichte desPapst-tums[3], 1911, pp. 447 ff.

SECTION 5. THE INQUISITION AND INDEX

Not only by propaganda appealing to the mind and heart did the Catholicchurch roll back the tides of Reformation and Renaissance, but bycoercion also. In this the church was not alone; the Protestants alsopersecuted and they also censored the press with the object ofpreventing their adherents from reading the arguments of theiropponents. But the Catholic {412} church was not only more consistentin the application of her intolerant theories but she almost alwaysassumed the direction of the coercive measures directly instead ofapplying them through the agency of the state. Divided as they were,dependent on the support of the civil government and hampered, at leastto some slight extent, by their more liberal tendencies, theProtestants never had instrumentalities half as efficient or one-tenthas terrible as the Inquisition and the Index.

The Inquisition was a child of the Middle Ages. For centuries beforeLuther the Holy Office had cauterized the heretical growths on the bodyof Mother Church. The old form was utilized but was given a new leaseof life by the work it was called upon to perform against theProtestants. Outside of the Netherlands the two forms of theInquisition which played the largest part in the battles of thesixteenth century were the Spanish and the Roman.

[Sidenote: Spanish Inquisition]

The Inquisition was licensed in Spain by a bull of Sixtus IV of 1478,and actually established by Ferdinand and Isabella in Castile in 1480,and soon afterwards in their other dominions. It has sometimes beensaid that the Spanish Inquisition was really a political rather than anecclesiastical instrument, but the latest historian of the subject,whose deep study makes his verdict final, has disposed of this theory.Though occasionally called upon to interfere in political matters, thiswas exceptional. Far more often it asserted an authority and anindependence that embarrassed not a little the royal government. Onthe other hand it soon grew so great and powerful that it was able toignore the commands of the popes. On account of its irresponsiblepower it was unpopular and was only tolerated because it was soefficient in crushing out the heresy that the people hated.

{413} [Sidenote: Procedure]

The annals of its procedure and achievements are one long record ofdiabolical cruelty, of protracted confinement in dungeons, of endlessdelay and browbeating to break the spirit, of ingenious tortures and ofracked and crushed limbs and of burning flesh. In mitigation ofjudgment, it must be remembered that the methods of the civil courtswere also cruel at that time, and the punishments severe.

As the guilt of the suspected person was always presumed, every effortwas made to secure confession, for in matters of belief there is noother equally satisfactory proof. Without being told the nature of hiscrime or who was the informant against him, the person on trial wassimply urged to confess. An advocate was given him only to takeadvantage of his professional relations with his client by betrayinghim. The enormous, almost incredible procrastination by which theaccused would be kept in prison awaiting trial sometimes for five orten or even twenty years, usually sufficed to break his spirit or tounbalance his mind. Torture was first threatened and then applied.All rules intended to limit its amount proved illusory, and it wasapplied practically to any extent deemed necessary, and to all classes;nobles and clergy were no less obnoxious to it than were commons. Norwas there any privileged age, except that of the tenderest childhood.Men and women of ninety and boys and girls of twelve or fourteen wereracked, as were young mothers and women with child. Insanity, however,if recognized as genuine, was considered a bar to torture.

Acquittal was almost, though not quite, unknown. Sometimes sentencewas suspended and the accused discharged without formal exoneration.Very rarely acquittal by compurgation, that is by oath of the accusedsupported by the oaths of a number of persons that they believed he wastelling the truth, was allowed. {414} Practically the only plea opento the suspect was that the informers against him were actuated bymalice. As he was not told who his accusers were this was difficultfor him to use.

[Sidenote: Penalties]

The penalties were various, including scourging, the galleys andperpetual imprisonment. Capital punishment by fire was pronounced notonly on those who were impenitent but on those who, after having beenonce discharged, had relapsed. In Spain, heretics who recanted beforeexecution were first strangled; the obstinately impenitent were burnedalive. Persons convicted of heresy who could not be reached were burntin effigy.

Acting on the maxim ecclesia non sitit sanguinem the Inquisitors didnot put their victims to death by their own officers but handed themover to the civil authorities for execution. With revolting hypocrisythey even adjured the hangmen to be merciful, well knowing that thelatter had no option but to carry out the sentence of the church.Magistrates who endeavored to exercise any discretion in favor of thecondemned were promptly threatened with excommunication.

If anything could be wanting to complete the horror it was supplied bythe festive spirit of the executions. The Auto da Fe, [Sidenote:Auto da Fe] or act of faith, was a favorite spectacle of theSpaniards; no holiday was quite complete without its holocaust of humanvictims. The staging was elaborate, and the ceremony as impressive aspossible. Secular and spiritual authorities were ordered to be presentand vast crowds were edified by the horrible example of the untimelyend of the unbeliever. Sundays and feast days were chosen for thesespectacles and on gala occasions, such as royal weddings andchristenings, a special effort was made to celebrate one of these holybutcheries.

The number of victims has been variously estimated. {415} An actualcount up to the year 1540, that is, before Protestantism became aserious factor, shows that 20,226 were burned in person and 10,913 ineffigy, and these figures are incomplete. It must be remembered thatfor every one who paid the extreme penalty there were a large number ofothers punished in other ways, or imprisoned and tortured while ontrial. When Adrian of Utrecht, afterwards the pope, was InquisitorGeneral 1516-22, 1,620 persons were burned alive, 560 in effigy and21,845 were sentenced to penance or other lighter punishments.Roughly, for one person sentenced to death ten suffered milderpenalties.

[Sidenote: Crimes punished]

Heresy was not the only crime punished by the Inquisition; it also tookcharge of blasphemy, bigamy and some forms of vice. In its early yearsit was chiefly directed against the Jews who, having been forced to thebaptismal font, had relapsed. Later the Moriscos or christened Moorssupplied the largest number of victims. As with the Jews, race hatredwas so deep an ingredient of the treatment meted out to them that thenominal cause was sometimes forgotten, and baptism often failed to save"the new Christian" who preserved any, even the most innocent, of thenational customs. Many a man and woman was tortured for not eatingpork or for bathing in the Moorish fashion.

As Protestantism never obtained any hold in Spain, the Inquisition hadcomparatively little trouble on that account. During the sixteenthcentury a total number of 1995 persons were punished as Protestants ofwhom 1640 were foreigners and only 355 were Spaniards. Even thesefigures exaggerate the hold that the Reformation had in Spain, for anyerror remotely resembling the tenets of Wittenberg immediately classedits maintainer as Lutheran. The first case known was found in Majorcain 1523, but it was not until 1559 {416} that any considerable numbersuffered for this faith. In that year 24 Lutherans were burnt atRodrigo and Seville, 32 in 1562, and 19 Calvinists in 1569.

The dread of the Spanish Inquisition was such that only in thosedependencies early and completely subdued could it be introduced.Established in Sicily in 1487 its temporal jurisdiction was suspendedduring the years 1535-46, when it was revived by the fear ofProtestantism. Even during its dark quarter, however, it was able topunish heretics. In an auto celebrated at Palermo, [Sidenote: May30, 1541] of the twenty-two culprits three were Lutherans and nineteenJews. The capitulation of Naples in 1503 expressly excluded theSpanish Inquisition, nor could it be established in Milan. ThePortuguese Inquisition was set up in 1536.

[Sidenote: New World]

The New World was capable of offering less resistance. Nevertheless,for many years the inquisitorial powers were vested in the bishops sentover to Mexico and Peru, and when the Inquisition was established inboth countries in 1570 it probably meant no increase of severity. Thenatives were exempt from its jurisdiction and it found littlecombustible material save in captured Protestant Europeans. A Flemingwas burned at Lima in 1548, and at the first auto held at Mexico in1574 thirty-six Lutherans were punished, all English captives, two byburning and the rest by scourging or the galleys.

[Sidenote: Roman Inquisition]

The same need of repelling Protestantism that had helped to give a newlease of life to the Spanish Inquisition called into being her sisterthe Roman Inquisition. By the bull Licet ab initio, [Sidenote: July21, 1542] Paul IV reconstituted the Holy Office at Rome, directing andempowering it to smite all who persisted in condemned opinions lestothers should be seduced by their example, not only in the papal statesbut in all the nations of Christendom. It was authorized to pronounce{417} sentence on culprits and to invoke the aid of the secular arm topunish them with prison, confiscation of goods and death. Itsauthority was directed particularly against persons of high estate,even against heretical princes whose subjects were loosed from theirobligation of obedience and whose neighbors were invited to take awaytheir heritage.

[Sidenote: Procedure]

The procedure of the Holy Office at Rome was characterized by theAugustinian Cardinal Seripando as at first lenient, but later, hecontinues, "when the superhuman rigor of Caraffa [one of the firstInquisitors General] held sway, the Inquisition acquired such areputation that from no other judgment-seat on earth were more horribleand fearful sentences to be expected." Besides the attention it paidto Protestants it instituted very severe processes against JudaizingChristians and took cognizance also of seduction, of pimping, ofsodomy, and of infringment of the ecclesiastical rules for fasting.

[Sidenote: Italy]

The Roman Inquisition was introduced into Milan by Michael Ghislieri,afterwards pope, and flourished mightily under the protecting care ofBorromeo, cardinal archbishop of the city. It was established byCharles V, notwithstanding opposition, in Naples. [Sidenote: 1547]Venice also fought against its introduction but nevertheless finallypermitted it. [Sidenote: 1544] During the sixteenth century in thatcity there were no less than 803 processes for Lutheranism, 5 forCalvinism, 35 against Anabaptists, 43 for Judaism and 199 for sorcery.In countries outside of Italy the Roman Inquisition did not take root.Bishop Magrath endeavored in 1567 to give Ireland the benefit of theinstitution, but naturally the English Government allowed no such thing.

[Sidenote: Censorship of the press]

A method of suppressing given opinions and propagating others probablyfar more effective than the {418} mauling of men's bodies is theguidance of their minds through direction of their reading andinstruction. Naturally, before the invention of printing, and in anilliterate society, the censorship of books would have slightimportance. Plato was perhaps the first to propose that the reading ofimmoral and impious books be forbidden, but I am not aware that hissuggestion was acted upon either in the states of Greece or in paganRome. Examples of the rejection of certain books by the early churchare not wanting. Paul induced the Ephesian sorcerers to burn theirbooks; certain fathers of the church advised against the reading ofheathen authors; [Sidenote: c. 496] Pope Gelasius made a decree on thebooks received and those not received by the church, and Manichaeanbooks were publicly burnt.

[Sidenote: Fourth century]

The invention of printing brought to the attention of the church thedanger of allowing her children to choose their own reading matter.[Sidenote: Printing] The first to animadvert upon it was Berthold,Archbishop of Mayence, the city of Gutenberg. On the 22d of March,1485, he promulgated a decree to the effect that, whereas the divineart of printing had been abused for the sake of lucre and whereas bythis means even Christ's books, missals and other works on religion,were thumbed by the vulgar, and whereas the German idiom was too poorto express such mysteries, and common persons too ignorant tounderstand them, therefore every work translated into German must beapproved by the doctors of the university of Mayence before beingpublished.

[Sidenote: June 1, 1501]

The example of the prelate was soon followed by popes and councils.Alexander VI forbade as a detestable evil the printing of booksinjurious to the Catholic faith, and made all archbishops officialcensors for their dioceses. This was enforced by a decree of the FifthLateran Council setting forth that {419} although printing has broughtmuch advantage to the church [Sidenote: May 4, 1515] it has alsodisseminated errors and pernicious dogmas contrary to the Christianreligion. The decree forbids the printing of any book in any city ordiocese of Christendom without license from the local bishop or otherecclesiastical authority.

This sweeping edict was supplemented by others directed against certainbooks or authors, but for a whole generation the church left thecensorship chiefly to the discretion of the several nationalgovernments. This was the policy followed also by the Protestants,both at this time and later. [Sidenote: Protestant censorship]Neither Luther, nor any other reformer for a long time attempted todraw up regular indices of prohibited books. Examples of somethingapproaching this may be found in the later history of Protestantism,but they are so unimportant as to be negligible.

[Sidenote: National censorship, 1502]

The national governments, however, laid great stress on licensing. Thefirst law in Spain was followed by an ever increasing strictness underthe inquisitor who drew up several indices of prohibited books,completely independent of the official Roman lists. The German Dietsand the French kings were careful to give their subjects the benefit oftheir selection of reading matter. In England, too, lists ofprohibited books were drawn up under all the Tudors. Mary restrictedthe right to print to licensed members of the Stationers' Company;Elizabeth put the matter in the hands of Star Chamber. [Sidenote:1559] A special license was required by the Injunctions, and a laterlaw was aimed at "seditious, schismatic or libellous books and otherfantastic writings." [Sidenote: 1588]

[Sidenote: Catalogues of dangerous books]

The idea of a complete catalogue of heretical and dangerous writingsunder ecclesiastical censure took its rise in the Netherlands. Afterthe works of various authors had been severally prohibited in distinct{420} proclamations, the University of Louvain, at the emperor'scommand, drew up a fairly extensive list in 1546 and again, somewhatenlarged, in 1550. It mentions a number of Bibles in Greek, Latin andthe vernaculars, the works of Luther, Carlstadt, Osiander, Ochino,Bullinger, Calvin, Oecolampadius, Jonas, Calvin, Melanchthon, Zwingli,Huss and John Pupper of Goch, a Dutch author of the fifteenth centuryrevived by the Protestants. It is remarkable that the works of Erasmusare not included in this list. Furthermore it is stated that certainapproved works, even when edited or translated by heretics, might beallowed to students. Among the various scientific works condemned arean Anatomy printed at Marburg by Eucharius Harzhorn, H. C. Agrippa'sDe vanitate scientiarum, and Sebastian Münster's Cosmographiauniversalis, a geography printed in 1544. The Koran is prohibited,and also a work called "Het paradijs van Venus," this latter presumablyas indecent. Finally, all books printed since 1525 without name ofauthor, printer, time, and place, are prohibited.

[Sidenote: Roman Index]

Partly in imitation of this work of Louvain, partly in consequence ofthe foundation of the Inquisition, the Roman Index of Prohibited Bookswas promulgated. Though the bull founding the Roman Inquisition saidnothing about books, their censure was included in practice. Under theinfluence of the Holy Office at Lucca a list of forbidden works wasdrawn up by the Senate at Lucca, [Sidenote: 1545] including chiefly thetracts of Italian heretics and satires on the church. The fourthsession Council of Trent [Sidenote: April 8, 1546] prohibited theprinting of all anonymous books whatever and of all others on religionuntil licensed. A further indication of increasing severity may befound in a bull issued by Julius III [Sidenote: 1550] who complainedthat authors licensed to read heretical {421} books for the purpose ofrefuting them were more likely to be seduced by them, and who thereforerevoked all licenses given up to that time.

[Sidenote: September, 1557]

When the Roman Inquisition issued a long list of volumes to be burntpublicly, including works of Erasmus, Machiavelli and Poggio, thismight be considered the first Roman Index of Prohibited Books; but thefirst document to bear that name was issued by Paul IV. [Sidenote:1559] It divided writings into three classes: (1) Authors who haderred ex professo and whose whole works were forbidden; (2) Authorswho had erred occasionally and some of whose books only were mentioned;(3) Anonymous books. In addition to these classes 61 printers werenamed, all works published by whom were banned. The Index strove to beas complete as possible. Its chief though not its only source was thecatalogue of Louvain. Many editions and versions of the Bible werelisted and the printing of any translation without permission of theInquisition was prohibited. Particular attention was paid to Erasmus,who was not only put in the first class by name but was signalized ashaving "all his commentaries, notes, annotations, dialogues, epistles,refutations, translations, books and writings" forbidden.

[Sidenote: Tridentine censorship, February 26, 1562]

The Council of Trent again took up the matter, passing a decree to theeffect that inasmuch as heresy had not been cured by the censorshipthis should be made much stricter, and appointing a commission inorder, as, regardless of the parable,[1] it was phrased, to separatethe tares from the wheat. The persons appointed for this delicate workcomprised four archbishops, nine bishops, two generals of orders andsome "minor theologians." After much sweat they brought forth a reporton most of the doubtful authors though {422} the most difficult of all,Erasmus, they relinquished to the theological faculties of Louvain andParis for expurgation.

[Sidenote: 1564]

The results of their labors were published by Paul IV under the name ofthe Tridentine Index. It was more sweeping, and at the same time morediscriminating than the former Index. Erasmus was changed to thesecond class, only a portion of his works being now condemned. Amongthe non-ecclesiastical authors banned were Machiavelli, Guicciardiniand Boccaccio. It is noteworthy that the Decameron was expurgatednot chiefly for its indecency but for its satire of ecclesiastics.Thus, a tale of the seduction of an abbess is rendered acceptable bychanging the abbess into a countess; the story of how a priest led awoman astray by impersonating the angel Gabriel is merely changed bymaking the priest a layman masquerading as a fairy king.

The principles upon which the prohibition of books rested were setforth in ten rules. The most interesting are the following: (1) Booksprinted before 1515 condemned by popes or council; (2) Versions of theBible; (3) books of heretics; (4) obscene books; (5) works onwitchcraft and necromancy.

In order to keep the Index up to date continual revision was necessary.To insure this Pius V appointed a special Congregation of the Index,which has lasted until the present day. From his time to ours morethan forty Indices have been issued. Those of the sixteenth centurywere concerned mainly with Protestant books, those of later centurieschiefly deal, for the purposes of internal discipline, with bookswritten by Catholics. One of the functions of the Congregation was toexpurgate books, taking out the offensive passages. A separate Indexexpurgatorius, pointing out the passages to be deleted or correctedwas {423} published, and this name has sometimes incorrectly beenapplied to the Index of prohibited books.

[Sidenote: Effect of the censorship]

The effect of the censorship of the press has been variously estimated.The Index was early dubbed sica destricta in omnes scriptores andSarpi called it "the finest secret ever discovered for applyingreligion to the purpose of making men idiotic." Milton thunderedagainst the censorship in England as "the greatest discouragement andaffront that can be offered to learning and learned men." The evil ofthe system of Rome was, in his opinion, double, for, as he wrote in hisimmortal Areopagitica, "The Council of Trent and the SpanishInquisition engendering together brought forth and perfected thosecatalogues and expurging indexes that rake through the entrails of manyan old good author with a violation worse than any that could beoffered to his tomb." When we remember that the greatest works ofliterature, such as the Divine Comedy, were tampered with, and that,in the Spanish Expurgatorial Index of 1640 the list of passages to bedeleted or to be altered in Erasmus's works takes 59 double-columned,closely printed folio pages, we can easily see the point of Milton'sindignant protest. But, to his mind, it was still worse to subject abook to the examination of unfit men before it could secure itsimprimatur. Not without reason has liberty of the press been madeone of the cornerstones of the temple of freedom.

Various writers have labored to demonstrate the blighting effect thatthe censorship was supposed to have on literature. But it issurprising how few examples they can bring. Lea, who ought to know theSpanish field exhaustively, can only point to a few professors oftheology who were persecuted and silenced for expressing unconventionalviews on biblical criticism. He conjectures that others must have{424} remained mute through fear. But, as the golden age of Spanishliterature came after the law made the printing of unlicensed bookspunishable by death, [Sidenote: 1558] it is hard to see whereinliterature can have suffered. The Roman Inquisition did not preventthe appearance of Galileo's work, though it made him recant afterwards.The strict English law that playwrights should not "meddle with mattersof divinity or state" made Shakespeare careful not to express hisreligious and political views, but it is hard to see in what way ithampered his genius.

And yet the influence of the various press laws was incalculably greatand was just what it was intended to be. It affected science less thanone would think, and literature hardly at all, but it moulded theopinions of the masses like putty in their rulers' hands. That therank and file of Spaniards and Italians remained Catholic, and the vastmajority of Britons Protestant, was due more to the bondage of thepress than to any other one cause. Originality was discouraged, thepeople to some degree unfitted for the free debate that is at thebottom of self-government, the hope of tolerance blighted, and the pathopened that led to religious wars.

[1] Matthew xiii, 28-30.

{425}

CHAPTER IX

THE IBERIAN PENINSULA AND THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE

SECTION 1. SPAIN

[Sidenote: Reformation, Renaissance and Exploration]

If, through the prism of history, we analyse the white light ofsixteenth-century civilization into its component parts, three colorsparticularly emerge: the azure "light of the Gospel" as the Reformersfondly called it in Germany, the golden beam of the Renaissance inItaly, and the blood-red flame of exploration and conquest irradiatingthe Iberian peninsula. Which of the three contributed most to modernculture it is hard to decide. Each of the movements startedseparately, gradually spreading until it came into contact, and thusinto competition and final blending with the other movements. It wasthe middle lands, France, England and the Netherlands that, feeling theimpulses from all sides, evolved the sanest and strongest synthesis.While Germany almost committed suicide with the sword of the spirit,while Italy sank into a voluptuous torpor of decadent art, while Spainreeled under the load of unearned Western wealth, France, Englandand Holland, taking a little from each of their neighbors, and nottoo much from any, became strong, well-balanced, brilliant states.But if eventually Germany, Italy and Spain all suffered fromover-specialization, for the moment the stimulus of new ideas and newpossibilities gave to each a sort of leadership in its own sphere.While Germany and Italy were busy winning the realms of the spirit andof the mind, Spain very nearly conquered the empire of the land and ofthe sea.

{426} [Sidenote: Ferdinand, 1479-1516 and Isabella, 1474-1504]

The foundation of her national greatness, like that of the greatness ofso many other powers, was laid in the union of the various states intowhich she was at one time divided. The marriage of Ferdinand of Aragonand Isabella of Castile was followed by a series of measures that putSpain into the leading position in Europe, expelled the alien racialand religious elements of her population, and secured to her a vastcolonial empire. The conquest of Granada from the Moors, theacquisition of Cerdagne and Roussillon from the French, and theannexation of Naples, doubled the dominions of the Lions and Castles,and started the proud land on the road to empire. It is true thateventually Spain exhausted herself by trying to do more than even heryoung powers could accomplish, but for a while she retained thehegemony of Christendom. The same year that saw the discovery ofAmerica [Sidenote: 1492] and the occupation of the Alhambra, was alsomarked by the expulsion or forced conversion of the Jews, of whom165,000 left the kingdom, 50,000 were baptized, and 20,000 perished inrace riots. The statesmanship of Ferdinand showed itself in a morefavorable light in the measures taken to reduce the nobles, feudalanarchs as they were, to fear of the law. To take their place in thegovernment of the country he developed a new bureaucracy, which also,to some extent, usurped the powers of the Cortes of Aragon and of theCortes of Castile. [Sidenote: Francis Ximénez de Cisneros, 1436-1517]In the meantime a notable reform of the church, in morals and inlearning if not in doctrine, was carried through by the great CardinalXiménez.

[Sidenote: Charles V, 1516-1556]

When Charles, the grandson of the Catholic Kings, succeeded Ferdinandhe was already, through his father, the Archduke Philip, the lord ofBurgundy and of the Netherlands, and the heir of Austria. His electionas emperor made him, at the age of nineteen, the {427} greatest princeof Christendom. To his gigantic task he brought all the redeemingqualities of dullness, for his mediocrity and moderation served hispeoples and his dynasty better than brilliant gifts and boundlessambition would have done. "Never," he is reported to have said in1556, "did I aspire to universal monarchy, although it seemed wellwithin my power to attain it." Though the long war with France turnedever, until the very last, in his favor, he never pressed his advantageto the point of crushing his enemy to earth. But in Germany and Italy,no less than in Spain and the Netherlands, he finally attainedsomething more than hegemony and something less than absolute power.

[Sidenote: Revolt of the Communes]

Though Spain benefited by his world power and became the capital stateof his far flung empire, "Charles of Ghent," as he was called, did notat first find Spaniards docile subjects. Within a very few years ofhis accession a great revolt, or rather two great synchronous revolts,one in Castile and one in Aragon, flared up. The grievances in Castilewere partly economic, the servicio (a tax) and the removal of moneyfrom the realm, and partly national as against a strange king and hisforeign officers. Not only the regent, Adrian of Utrecht, but manyimportant officials were northerners, and when Charles left Spain to becrowned emperor, [Sidenote: 1520] the national pride could no longerbear the humiliation of playing a subordinate part. The revolt of theCastilian Communes began with the gentry and spread from them to thelower classes. Even the grandees joined forces with the rebels, thoughmore from fear than from sympathy. The various revolting communesformed a central council, the Santa Junta, and put forth a programre-asserting the rights of the Cortes to redress grievances. Meetingfor a time with no resistance, the rebellion disintegrated {428}through the operation of its own centrifugal forces, disunion and lackof leadership. So at length when the government, supplied with a smallforce of German mercenaries, struck on the field of Villalar, therebels suffered a severe defeat. [Sidenote: April, 1521] A few citiesheld out longer, Toledo last of all; but one by one they yielded,partly to force, partly to the wise policy of concession and redressfollowed by the government.

In our own time Barcelona and the east coast of Spain has been thehotbed of revolutionary democracy and radical socialism. Even so, therising in Aragon known as the Hermandad (Brotherhood) [Sidenote: TheHermandad] contemporary with that in Castile, not only began earlierand lasted longer, but was of a far more radical stamp. Here were nonobles airing their slights at the hands of a foreign king, but herethe trade-gilds rose in the name of equality against monarch and noblesalike. Two special causes fanned the fury of the populace to a whiteheat. The first was the decline of the Mediterranean trade due to therise of the Atlantic commerce; the other was the racial element.Valencia was largely inhabited by Moors, the most industrious, soberand thrifty, and consequently the most profitable of Spanish laborers.The race hatred so deeply rooted in human nature added to the ferocityof the class conflict. Both sides were ruined by the war which,beginning in 1519, dragged along for several years until theproletariat was completely crushed.

[The Cortes]

The armed triumph of the government hardly damaged popular liberties asembodied in the constitution of the Cortes of Castile. When Charlesbecame king this body was not, like other parliaments, ordinarily arepresentative assembly of the three estates, but consisted merely ofdeputies of eighteen Castilian cities. Only on special occasions, suchas a coronation, were nobles and clergy summoned to participate. Itsgreat {429} power was that of granting taxes, though somehow it neversucceeded, as did the English House of Commons, in making the redressof grievances conditional upon a subsidy. But yet the power amountedto something and it was one that neither Charles nor Philip commonlyventured to violate. Under both of them meetings of the Cortes werefrequent.

Though never directly attacked, the powers of the Cortes declinedthrough the growth of vast interests outside their competence. Thedirection of foreign policy, so absorbing under Charles, and the chargeof the enormous and growing commercial interests, was confided not tothe representatives of the people, but to the Royal Council of Castile,an appointative body of nine lawyers, three nobles, and one bishop.Though not absolutely, yet relatively, the functions of the Cortesdiminished until they amounted to no more than those of a provincialcouncil.

What reconciled the people to the concentration of new powers in thehands of an irresponsible council was the apparently dazzling successof Spanish policy throughout the greater part of the sixteenth century.No banner was served like that of the Lions and Castles; no troops inthe world could stand against her famous regiments; no generals wereequal to Cortez and Alva; no statesmen abler than Parma, no admirals,until the Armada, more daring than Magellan[1] and Don John, nochampions of the church against heretic and infidel like Loyola andXavier.

[Sidenote: The Spanish Empire]

That such an empire as the world had not seen since Rome should withina single life-time rise to its zenith and, within a much shorter time,decline to the verge of ruin, is one of the melodramas of history.Perhaps, in reality, Spain was never quite so great as she looked, norwas her fall quite so complete as it seemed. But {430} the phenomena,such as they are, sufficiently call for explanation.

First of all one is struck by the fortuitous, one might almost say,unnatural, character of the Hapsburg empire. While the union ofCastile and Aragon, bringing together neighboring peoples and filling apolitical need, was the source of real strength, the subsequentaccretions of Italian and Burgundian territories rather detracted fromthan added to the effective power of the Spanish state. Philip wouldhave been far stronger had his father separated from his crown not onlyAustria and the Holy Roman Empire of Germany, but the Netherlands aswell. The revolt of the Dutch Republic was in itself almost enough toruin Spain. Nor can it be said that the Italian states, won by thesword of Ferdinand or of Charles, were valuable accessions to Spanishpower.

[Sidenote: Colonies]

Quite different in its nature was the colonial empire, but in this itresembled the other windfalls to the house of Hapsburg in that it wasan almost accidental, unsought-for acquisition. The Genoese sailor whowent to the various courts of Europe begging for a few ships in whichto break the watery path to Asia, had in his beggar's wallet all thekingdoms of a new world and the glory of them. For a few years Spaindrank until she was drunken of conquest and the gold of America. Thatthe draught acted momentarily as a stimulant, clearing her brain andnerving her arm to deeds of valor, but that she suffered in the endfrom the riotous debauch, cannot be doubted. She soon learned that allthat glittered was not wealth, and that industries surfeited with metaland starved of raw materials must perish. The unearned coin proved tobe fairy gold in her coffers, turning to brown leaves and dust when shewanted to use it. It became a drug in her markets; it could notlawfully be exported, and no {431} amount of it would purchase muchhonest labor from an indolent population fed on fantasies of wealth.The modern King Midas, on whose dominions the sun never set, was cursedwith a singular and to him inexplicable need of everything that moneywas supposed to buy. His armies mutinied, his ships rotted, and nevercould his increasing income catch up with the far more rapidlyincreasing expenses of his budget.

The poverty of the people was in large part the fault of the governmentwhich pursued a fiscal policy ideally calculated to strike at the verysources of wealth. While, under the oppression of an ignorantpaternalism, unhappy Spain suffered from inanition, she was tended by aphysician who tried to cure her malady by phlebotomy. There have beenworse men than Philip II, [Sidenote: Philip II, 1556-98] but there havebeen hardly any who have caused more blood to flow from the veins oftheir own people. His life is proof that a well-meaning bigot can domore harm than the most abandoned debauchee. "I would rather lose allmy kingdoms," he averred, "than allow freedom of religion." And again,to a man condemned by the Inquisition for heresy, "If my own son wereas perverse as you, I myself would carry the faggot to burn him."Consistently, laboriously, undeterred by any suffering or any horror,he pursued his aim. He was not afraid of hard work, scribbling reamsof minute directions daily to his officers. His stubborn calm wasimperturbable; he took his pleasures—women, autos-da-fe andvictories—sadly, and he suffered such chagrins as the death of fourwives, having a monstrosity for a son, and the loss of the Armada andof the Netherlands, without turning a hair.

Spain's foreign policy came to be more and more polarized by the riseof English sea-power. Even under Charles, when France had been thechief enemy, {432} [Sidenote: Spain vs. England] the Hapsburgs saw thedesirability of winning England as a strategic point for theiruniversal empire. This policy was pursued by alternating alliance withhostility. For six years of his boyhood Charles had been betrothed toMary Tudor, Henry VIII's sister, to whom he sent a ring inscribed,"Mary hath chosen the better part which shall not be taken away fromher." His own precious person, however, was taken from her to bebestowed on Isabella of Portugal, by whom he begot Philip. When thisson succeeded him, notwithstanding the little unpleasantness of HenryVIII's divorce, he advised him to turn again to an English marriage,and Philip soon became the husband of Queen Mary. After her deathwithout issue, he vainly wooed her sister, until he was graduallyforced by her Protestant buccaneers into an undesired war.

Notwithstanding all that he could do to lose fortune's favors, shecontinued for many years to smile on her darling Hapsburg. After anaval disaster inflicted by the Turks on the Spaniard off the coast ofTripoli, the defeated power recovered and revenged herself in the greatnaval victory of Lepanto, in October 1571. The lustre added to theLions and Castles by this important success was far outshone by theacquisition of Portugal and all her colonies, in 1581. Though not thenearest heir, Philip was the strongest, and by bribery and menaces wonthe homage of the Portuguese nobles after the death of the aged kingHenry on January 31, 1580. For sixty years Spain held the lessercountry and, what was more important to her, the colonies in the EastIndies and in Africa. So vast an empire had not yet been heard of, orimagined possible, in the history of the world. No wonder that itsshimmer dazzled the eyes not only of contemporaries, but of posterity.According to Macaulay, {433} Philip's power was equal to that ofNapoleon, and its ruin is the most instructive lesson in history of hownot to govern.

How hollow was this semblance of might was demonstrated by the firststalwart peoples that dared to test it, first by the Dutch and then byEngland. The story of the Armada has already been told. Itspreparation marked the height of Philip's effort and the height of hisincompetence. Its annihilation was a cruel blow to his pride. But inSpain, barring a temporary financial panic, things went much the sameafter 1588 as before it. The full bloom of Spanish culture, gorgeouswith Velasquez and fragrant with Cervantes and Calderon, followed hardupon the defeat of the Armada.

[Sidenote: War with the Moors]

The fact is that Spain suffered much more from internal disorders thanfrom foreign levy. The chief occasion of her troubles was the presenceamong her people of a large body of Moors, hated both for their raceand for their religion. With the capitulation of Granada, theenjoyment of Mohammedanism was guaranteed to the Moors, but thistolerance only lasted for six years, when a decree went out that allmust be baptized or must emigrate from Andalusia. In Aragon, however,always independent of Castile, they continued to enjoy religiousfreedom. Charles at his coronation took a solemn oath to respect thefaith of Islam in these lands, but soon afterwards, frightened by therise of heresy in Germany, he applied to Clement to absolve him fromhis oath. This sanction of bad faith, at first creditably withheld,[Sidenote: 1524] was finally granted and was promptly followed by ageneral order for expulsion or conversion. Throughout the whole ofSpain the poor Moriscos now began to be systematically pillaged andpersecuted by whoever chose to do it. All manner of taxes, tithes,servitudes and fines {434} were demanded of them. The last straw thatbroke the endurance of a people tried by every manner of tyranny andextortion, was an edict ordering all Moors to learn Castilian withinthree years, after which the use of Arabic was to be forbidden,prohibiting all Moorish customs and costumes, and strictly enjoiningattendance at church.

As the Moors had been previously disarmed and as they had no militarydiscipline, rebellion seemed a counsel of despair, but it ensued. Thepopulace rose in helpless fury, and for three years defied the might ofthe Spanish empire. But the result could not be doubtful. A nakedpeasantry could not withstand the disciplined battalions that hadproved their valor on every field from Mexico to the Levant and fromSaxony to Algiers. It was not a war but a massacre and pillage. Thewhole of Andalusia, the most flourishing province in Spain, beautifulwith its snowy mountains, fertile with its tilled valleys, and sweetwith the peaceful toil of human habitation, was swept by a universalstorm of carnage and of flame. The young men either perished infighting against fearful odds, or were slaughtered after yielding asprisoners. Those who sought to fly to Africa found the avenues ofescape blocked by the pitiless Toledo blades. The aged were hunteddown like wild beasts; the women and young children were sold intoslavery, to toil under the lash or to share the hated bed of theconqueror. The massacre cost Spain 60,000 lives and three millionducats, not to speak of the harm that it did to her spirit.

[1] A Portuguese in Spanish service.

SECTION 2. EXPLORATION

[Sidenote: Division of the New World between Spain and Portugal]

When Columbus returned with glowing accounts of the "India" he hadfound, the value of his work was at once appreciated. Forthwith beganthat struggle for colonial power which has absorbed so much of the{435} energies of the European nations. In view of the Portuguesediscoveries in Africa, it was felt necessary to mark out the "spheresof influence" of the two powers at once, and, with an instinctiveappeal to the one authority claiming to be international, the Spanishgovernment immediately applied to Pope Alexander VI for confirmation inthe new-found territories. Acting on the suggestion of Columbus thatthe line of Spanish influence be drawn one hundred leagues west of anyof the Cape Verde Islands or of the Azores, the pope, with magnificentself-assurance, issued a bull, Inter caetera divinae, [Sidenote: May4, 1493] of his own mere liberality and in virtue of the authority ofPeter, conferring on Castile forever "all dominions, camps, posts, andvillages, with all the rights and jurisdictions pertaining to them,"west of the parallel, and leaving to Portugal all that fell to the eastof it. Portugal promptly protested that the line was too far east, andby the treaty of Tordesillas; [Sidenote: 1494] it was moved to 370leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, thus falling between the 48thand 49th parallel of longitude. The intention was doubtless to conferon Spain all land immediately west of the Atlantic, but, as a matter offact, South America thrusts so far to the eastward, that a portion ofher territory, later claimed as Brazil, fell to the lot of Portugal.

[Sidenote: Spanish adventurers]

Spain lost no time in exploiting her new dominions, during the nextcentury hundreds of ships carried tens thousands of adventurers to seektheir fortune in the west. For it was not as colonists that most ofthem went, but in a spirit compounded of that of the crusader, theknight-errant, and the pirate. If there is anything in the paradoxthat artists have created natural beauty, it is a truer one to say thatthe Spanish romances created the Spanish colonial empire. The men whosailed on the great adventure had feasted {436} on tales of paladinsand hippogrifs, of enchanted palaces and fountains of youth, andmiraculously fair women to be rescued and then claimed by knights.They read in books of travel purporting to tell the sober truth ofsatyrs and of purple unicorns and of men who spread their feet overtheir heads for umbrellas and of others whose heads grew between theirshoulders. No wonder that when they went to a strange country theyfound the River of Life in the Orinoco, colonies of Amazons in thejungle, and El Dorado, the land of gold, in the riches of Mexico andPeru! It is a testimony to the imaginative mood of Europe, as well asto the power of the pen, that the whole continent came to be called,not after its discoverer, but after the man who wrote the bestromances—mostly fictions—about his travels in it.

[Sidenote: Exploitation of natives]

In the Greater Antilles, where Spain made her first colonies, her ruleshowed at its worst. The soft native race, the Caribs, almostcompletely disappeared within half a century. The best modernauthority estimates that whereas the native population of Española(Haiti) was between 200,000 and 300,000 in 1493, by 1548 hardly 5000Indians were left. In part the extinction of the natives was due tonew diseases and to the vices of civilization, but far more to theheartless exploitation of them by the conquerors. Bartholomew de lasCasas, the first priest to come to this unfortunate island, tellsstories of Spanish cruelty that would be incredible were they not sowell supported. With his own eyes he saw 3000 inoffensive Indiansslaughtered at a single time; of another batch of 300 he observed thatwithin a few months more than half perished at hard labor. Again, hesaw 6000 Indian children condemned to work in the mines, of whom few ornone long survived. In vain a bull of Paul III declared the Indianscapable of becoming {437} Christians and forbade their enslavement. Invain the Spanish government tried to mitigate at least some of thehardships of the natives' lot, [Sidenote: 1537] ordering that theyshould be well fed and paid. The temptation to exploit them was toostrong; and when they perished the Spaniards supplied their place byimporting negroes from Africa, a people of tougher fibre.

Spanish exploration, followed by sparse settlement, soon opened up thegreater part of the Americas south of the latitude of the present cityof San Francisco. Of many expeditions into the trackless wilderness,only a few were financially repaying; the majority were a drain on theresources of the mother country. In every place where the Spaniard setfoot the native quailed and, after at most one desperate struggle, wentdown, never again to loose the conqueror's grip from his throat or tomove the conqueror's knee from his chest. Even the bravest were ashelpless as children before warriors armed with thunder and riding uponunknown monsters.

But in no place, save in the islands, did the native races whollydisappear as they did in the English settlements. The Spaniards camenot like the Puritans, as artisans and tillers of the soil intent onfounding new homes, but as military conquerors, requiring a race ofhelots to toil for them. For a period anarchy reigned; the captainsnot only plundered the Indians but fought one another fiercely for moreroom—more room in the endless wilderness! Eventually, however,conditions became more stable; Spain imposed her effective control, herlanguage, religion and institutions on a vast region, doing for SouthAmerica what Rome had once done for her.

The lover of adventure will find rich reward in tracing the discoveryof the Mississippi by De Soto, of Florida by Ponce de Leon, and of thewhole course of {438} the Amazon by Orellana who sailed down it fromPeru, or in reading of Balboa, "when with eagle eyes he stared at thePacific." A resolute man could hardly set out exploring withoutstumbling upon some mighty river, some vast continent, or someunmeasured ocean. But among all these fairly-tales [Transcriber'snote: fairy-tales?] there are some that are so marvellous that theywould be thought too extravagant by the most daring writers of romance.That one captain with four hundred men, and another with two hundred,should each march against an extensive and populous empire, cut downtheir armies at odds of a hundred to one, put their kings to the swordand their temples to the torch, and after it all reap a harvest of goldand precious stones such as for quantity had never been heard ofbefore—all this meets us not in the tales of Ariosto or of Dumas, butin the pages of authentic history.

[Conquest of Mexico]

In the tableland of Mexico dwelt the Aztecs, the most civilized andwarlike of North American aborigines. Their polity was that of aSpartan military despotism, their religion the most grewsome known toman. Before their temples were piled pyramids of human skulls; thedeities were placated by human sacrifice, and at times, according tothe deicidal and theophagous rites common to many primitivesuperstitions, themselves sacrificed in effigy or in the person of abeautiful captive and their flesh eaten in sacramental cannibalism.Though the civilization of the Aztecs, derived from the earlier andperhaps more advanced Mayans, was scarcely so high as that of theancient Egyptians, they had cultivated the arts sufficiently to workthe mines of gold and silver and to hammer the precious metals intoelaborate and massive ornaments.

When rumors of their wealth reached Cuba it seemed at last as if thedream of El Dorado had come true. Hernando Cortez, a cultured,resolute, brave and {439} politic leader, gathered a force of fourhundred white men, with a small outfit of artillery and cavalry, and,on Good Friday, 1519, landed at the place now called Vera Cruz andmarched on the capital. The race of warriors who delighted in nothingbut slaughter, was stupefied, partly by an old prophecy of the comingof a god to subdue the land, partly by the strange and terrible arms ofthe invaders. Moreover their neighbors and subjects were ready to riseagainst them and become allies of the Spaniards. In a few months ofcrowded battle and massacre they lay broken and helpless at the feet ofthe audacious conqueror, who promptly sent to Spain a glowing accountof his new empire and a tribute of gold and silver. Albert Dürer inAugust, 1520, saw at Brussels the "things brought the king from the newgolden land," and describes them in his diary as including "a wholegolden sun, a fathom in breadth, and a whole silver moon of the samesize, and two rooms full of the same sort of armour, and also all kindsof weapons, accoutrements and bows, wonderful shields . . . altogethervalued at a hundred thousand guidon. And all my life," he adds, "Ihave never seen anything that so rejoiced my heart as did these things."

[Conquest of Peru]

If an artist, familiar with kings and courts and the greatest marts ofEurope could write thus, what wonder that the imagination of the worldtook fire? The golden sun and the silver moon were, to all men who sawthem, like Helen's breasts, the sun and moon of heart's desire, to lurethem over the western waves. Twelve years after Cortez, came Pizarrowho, with a still smaller force conquered an even wealthier and morecivilized empire. The Incas, unlike the Mexicans, were a mild race,living in a sort of theocratic socialism, in which the emperor, as god,exercised absolute power over his subjects and in return cared {440}for at least their common wants. The Spaniards outdid themselves inacts of treachery and blood. In vain the emperor, Atahualpa, aftervoluntarily placing himself in the hands of Pizarro, filled the roomused as his prison nine feet high with gold as ransom; when he couldgive no more he was tried on the preposterous charges of treason toCharles V and of heresy, and suffered death at the stake. Pizarrocoolly pocketed the till then undreamed of sum of 4,500,000 ducats,[1]worth in our standards more than one hundred million dollars.

[Sidenote: Circumnavigation of the globe, 1519-22]

But the crowning act of the age of discovery was the circumnavigationof the globe. The leader of the great enterprise that put the seal ofman's dominion on the earth, was Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese inSpanish service. With a fleet of five vessels, only one of which put aring around the world, and with a crew of about 275 men of whom only 18returned successful, he sailed from Europe. [Sidenote: September 20,1519] Coasting down the east of South America, [October 21, 1519]exploring the inlets and rivers, he entered the straits that bear hisname and covered their 360 miles in thirty-eight days. After followingthe coast up some distance north, he struck across the Pacific, thebreadth of which he much underestimated. For ninety-eight days he wasdriven by the east trade-wind without once sighting land save twodesert islands, while his crew endured extremities of hunger, thirstand scurvy. At last he came to the islands he called, after thethievish propensities of their inhabitants, the Ladrones, making hisfirst landing at Guam. Spending but three days here to refit andprovision, he sailed again on March 9, [Sidenote: 1521] and a weeklater discovered the islands known, since 1542, as the Philippines.{441} In an expedition against a savage chief the great leader met hisdeath on April 27, 1521. As other sailors and as he, too, hadpreviously been as far to the east as he now found himself, he hadpractically completed the circumnavigation of the globe. The mostsplendid triumph of the age of discovery coincided almost to a day withthe time that Luther was achieving the most glorious deed of theReformation at Worms.

[Sidenote: September 1522]

Magellan's ship, the Vittoria, proceeded under Sebastian del Cano, andfinally, with thirty-one men, of whom only eighteen had started out inher, came back to Portugal. The men who had burst asunder one of thebonds of the older world, were, nevertheless, deeply troubled by astrange, medieval scruple. Having mysteriously lost a day by followingthe sun in his westward course, they did penance for having celebratedthe fasts and feasts of the church on the wrong dates.

[Sidenote: Portuguese Exploration]

While Spain was extending her dominions westward, little Portugal wasbuilding up an even greater empire in both hemispheres. In thefifteenth century, this hardy people, confined to their coast andwithout possibility of expanding inwards, had seen that their futurelay upon the water. To the possessor of sea power the ocean makes ofevery land bordering on it a frontier, vulnerable to them andimpervious to the enemy. The first ventures of the Portuguese werenaturally in the lands near by, the North African coast and the islandsknown as the Madeiras and the Azores. Feeling their way southwardalong the African coast they reached the Cape of Good Hope but did notat once go much further. [Sidenote: 1486 or 1488] This path to Indiawas not broken until eleven years later, when Vasco da Gama, after avoyage of great daring [Sidenote: 1497-8]—he was ninety-three days atsea on a course of 4500 miles from the Cape Verde Islands to SouthAfrica—reached Calicut on May 20, 1498. This city, now sunken in thesea, was {442} then the most flourishing port on the Malabar Coast,exploited entirely by Mohammedan traders. Spices had long been thestaple of Venetian trade with the Orient, and when he returned withrich cargo of them the immediate effect upon Europe was greater thanthat of the voyage of Columbus. Trade seeks to follow the line ofleast resistance, and the establishment of a water way between Europeand the East was like connecting two electrically charged bodies in aLeyden jar by a copper wire. The current was no longer forced througha poor medium, but ran easily through the better conductor. With morerapidity than one would think possible in that age, the commercialconsequences of the discovery were appreciated. The trade of theLevant died away, and the center of gravity was transferred from theMediterranean to the Atlantic. While Venice decayed Lisbon rose withmushroom speed to the position of the great emporium of Europeanocean-borne trade, until she in her turn was supplanted by Antwerp.

Da Gama was soon imitated by others. [Sidenote: 1500] Cabral madecommercial settlements at Calicut and the neighboring town of Cochin,and came home with unheard-of riches in spice, pearls and gems.[Sidenote: 1503] Da Gama returned and bombarded Calicut, and Francisd'Almeida was made Governor of India [Sidenote: 1505] and tried toconsolidate the Portuguese power there on the correct principle thatwho was lord of the sea was lord of the peninsula. The rough methodsof the Portuguese and their competition with the Arab traders made warinevitable between the two rivals. To the other causes of enmity thatof religion was added, for, like the Spaniards, the Portuguese tried tocombine the characters of merchants and missionaries, of pirates andcrusaders. When the first of Da Gama's sailors to land at Calicut wasasked what he sought, his laconic answer, "Christians {443} andspices," had in it as much of truth as of epigrammatic neatness.

[Sidenote: Portuguese cruelty to Indians]

Had the Portuguese but treated the Hindoos humanely they would havefound in them allies against the Mohammedan traders, but all of them,not excepting their greatest statesman, Alphonso d'Albuquerque, pursueda policy of frightfulness. When Da Gama met an Arab ship, aftersacking it, he blew it up with gunpowder and left it to sink in flameswhile the women on board held up their babies with piteous cries totouch the heart of this knight of Christ and of mammon. Without theleast compunction Albuquerque tells in his commentaries how he burnedthe Indian villages, put part of their inhabitants to death and orderedthe noses and ears of the survivors cut off.

[Sidenote: Trade]

Nevertheless, the Portuguese got what they wanted, the wealthy trade ofthe East. Albuquerque, failing to storm Calicut, seized Goa farthernorth and made it the chief emporium. But they soon felt the need ofstations farther east, for, as long as the Arabs held Malacca, wherespices were cheaper, the intruders did not have the monopoly theydesired. Accordingly Albuquerque seized this city on the MalayStraits, [Sidenote: 1511] which, though now it has sunk intoinsignificance, was then the Singapore or Hong-Kong of the Far East.Sumatra, Java and the northern coast of Australia were explored, theMoluccas were bought from Spain for 350,000 ducats, and even Japan andChina were reached by the daring traders. In the meantime posts wereestablished along the whole western and eastern coasts of Africa and inMadagascar. But wherever they went the Portuguese sought commercialadvantage not permanent settlement. Aptly compared by a Chineseobserver to fishes who died if taken from the sea, they founded anempire of vast length out of incredible thinness.

{444} [Sidenote: Brazil]

The one exception to this rule, and an important one, was Brazil. Theleast showy of the colonies and the one that brought in the least quickprofit eventually became a second and a greater Portugal, outstrippingthe mother country in population and dividing South America almostequally with the Spanish. In many ways the settlement of this colonyresembled that of North America by the English more than it did theviolent and superficial conquests of Spain. Settlers came to it lessas adventurers than as home-seekers and some of them fled fromreligious persecution. The great source of wealth, the sugar-cane, wasintroduced from Madeira in 1548 and in the following year the mothercountry sent a royal governor and some troops.

[Sidenote: Decadence of Portugal]

But even more than Spain Portugal overtaxed her strength in her graspfor sudden riches. The cup that her mariners took from the gorgeousEastern enchantress had a subtle, transforming drug mingled with itsspices, whereby they were metamorphosed, if not into animals, at leastinto orientals, or Africans. While Lisbon grew by leaps and bounds thecountry-side was denuded, and the landowners, to fill the places of thepeasants who had become sailors, imported quantities of negro slaves.Thus not only the Portuguese abroad, but those at home, undeterred byracial antipathy, adulterated their blood with that of the darkpeoples. Add to this that the trade, immensely lucrative as it seemed,was an enormous drain on the population of the little state; and thecauses of Portugal's decline, almost as sudden as its rise, are inlarge part explained. So rapid was it, indeed, that it was noticed notonly by foreign travellers but by the natives. Camoens, though hededicated his life to composing an epic in honor of Vasco da Gama,lamented his country's decay in these terms:

{445}
O pride of empire! O vain covetise
Of that vain glory that we men call fame . . .
What punishment and what just penalties
Thou dost inflict on those thou dost inflame . . .
Thou dost depopulate our ancient state
Till dissipation brings debility.

Nor were artificial causes wanting to make the colonies expensive andthe home treasury insolvent. The governors as royal favorites regardedtheir appointments as easy roads to quick wealth, and they plunderednot only the inhabitants but their royal master. The inefficient andextravagant management of trade, which was a government monopoly,furnished a lamentable example of the effects of public ownership. Andwhen possible the church interfered to add the burden of bigotry tothat of corruption. An amusing example of this occurred when asupposed tooth of Buddha was brought to Goa, to redeem which the Rajahof Pegu offered a sum equal to half a million dollars. While thegovernment was inclined to sell, the archbishop forbade the acceptanceof such tainted money and ordered the relic destroyed.

[Sidenote: 1521-80]

Within Portugal itself other factors aided the decline. From theaccession of John III to the amalgamation with Spain sixty years later,the Cortes was rarely summoned. The expulsion of many Jews in 1497,the massacre and subsequent exile of the New Christians or Marranos,[Sidenote: 1506-7] most of whom went to Holland, commenced an era ofdestructive bigotry completed by the Inquisition. [Sidenote: TheInquisition established, 1536] Strict censorship of the press and theeducation of the people by the Jesuits each added their bit to theforces of spiritual decadence.

For the fury of religious zeal ill supplied the exhausted powers of astate fainting with loss of blood and from the intoxication ofcorruption. Gradually her grasp relaxed on North Africa until onlythree {446} small posts in Morocco were left her, those of Ceuta,Arzila and Tangier. A last frantic effort to recover them and topunish the infidel, undertaken by the young King Sebastian, ended indisaster and in his death in 1578. After a short reign of two years byhis uncle Henry, who as a cardinal had no legitimate heirs, Portugalfeebly yielded to her strongest suitor, Philip II, [Sidenote:1580-1640] and for sixty years remained a captive of Spain.

[Sidenote: Other nations explore]

Other nations eagerly crowded in to seize the trident that was fallingfrom the hands of the Iberian peoples. There were James Cartier ofFrance, and Sebastian Cabot and Sir Martin Frobisher and Sir FrancisDrake of England, and others. They explored the coast of North Americaand sought a Northwest Passage to Asia. Drake, after a voyage of twoyears and a half, [Sidenote: 1577-80] duplicated the feat of Magellan,though he took quite a different course, following the American westerncoast up to the Golden Gate. He, too, returned "very richly fraughtwith gold, silver, silk and precious stones," the best incentive tofurther endeavor. But no colonies of permanence and consequence wereas yet planted by the northern nations. Until the seventeenth centurytheir voyages were either actuated by commercial motives or were purelyadventurous. The age did not lack daring explorers by land as well asby sea. Lewis di Varthema rivalled his countryman Marco Polo by anextensive journey in the first decade of the century. Like Burckhardtand Burton in the nineteenth century he visited Mecca and Medina as aMohammedan pilgrim, and also journeyed to Cairo, Beirut, Aleppo andDamascus and then to the distant lands of India and the Malay peninsula.

[Sidenote: Russia]

It may seem strange to speak of Russia in connection with the age ofdiscovery, and yet it was precisely in the light of a new and strangeland that our English ancestors regarded it. Cabot's voyage to the{447} White Sea in the middle of the century was every whit as new anadventure as was the voyage to India. Richard Chancellor and othersfollowed him and established a regular trade with Muscovy, [Sidenote:1553] and through it and the Caspian with Asia. The rest of Europe,west of Poland and the Turks, hardly heard of Russia or felt its impactmore than they now do of the Tartars of the Steppes.

But it was just at this time that Russia was taking the first strideson the road to become a great power. How broadly operative were someof the influences at work in Europe lies patent in the singularparallel that her development offers to that of her more civilizedcontemporaries. Just as despotism, consolidation, and conquest werethe order of the day elsewhere, so they were in the eastern plains ofEurope. Basil III [Sidenote: Basil III, 1505-33] struck down therights of cities, nobles and princes to bring the whole country underhis own autocracy. Ivan the Terrible, [Sidenote: Ivan IV, 1533-84]called Czar of all the Russias, added to this policy one of extensiveterritorial aggrandizement. Having humbled the Tartars he acquiredmuch land to the south and east, and then turned his attention to thewest, where, however, Poland barred his way to the Baltic. Just as inits subsequent history, so then, one of the great needs of Russia wasfor a good port. Another of her needs was for better technicalprocesses. Anticipating Peter the Great, Ivan endeavored to get Germanworkmen to initiate good methods, but he failed to accomplish much,partly because Charles V forbade his subjects to go to add strength toa rival state.

[Sidenote: Europe vs. Asia]

While Europe found most of the other continents as soft as butter toher trenchant blade, she met her match in Asia. The theory ofHerodotus that the course of history is marked by alternate movementseast and west has been strikingly confirmed by {449} subsequent events.In a secular grapple the two continents have heaved back and forth,neither being able to conquer the other completely. If the empires ofMacedon and Rome carried the line of victory far to the orient, theywere avenged by the successive inroads of the Huns, the Saracens, theMongols and the Turks. If for the last four centuries the line hasagain been pushed steadily back, until Europe dominates Asia, it is farfrom certain that this condition will be permanent.

In spiritual matters Europe owes a balance of indebtedness to Asia, andby far the greater part of it to the Semites. The Phoenician alphabetand Arabian numerals are capital borrowed and yielding how enormous ausufruct! Above all, Asiatic religions—albeit the greatest of themwas the child of Hellas as well as of Judaea—have conquered the wholeworld save a few savage tribes. Ever since the cry of "There is no Godbut Allah and Mahomet is his prophet" had aroused the Arabian nomadsfrom their age-long slumber, it was as a religious warfare that thecontest of the continents revealed itself. After the scimitar hadswept the Greek Empire out of Asia Minor and had cut Spain fromChristendom, the crusades and the rise of the Spanish kingdoms hadgradually beaten it back. But while the Saracen was being slowly butsurely driven from the western peninsula, the banner of the Crescent inthe east was seized by a race with a genius for war inverselyproportional to its other gifts. [Sidenote: The Turks] The Turks, whohave never added to the arts of peace anything more important than thefabrication of luxurious carpets and the invention of a sensuous bath,were able to found cannon and to drill battalions that drove the armiesof nobler races before them. From the sack of Constantinople in 1453to the siege of Vienna in 1529 and even to some extent long after that,the {449} majestic and terrible advance of the janizaries threatenedthe whole fabric of Europe.

[Sidenote: Selim I, 1512-20]

Under Sultan Selim I the Turkish arms were turned to the east andsouth. Persia, Kurdistan, Syria and Egypt were crushed, while thetitle of Caliph, and with it the spiritual leadership of the Mahommetanworld, was wrested from the last of the Abassid dynasty. But it wasunder his successor, Suleiman the Magnificent, [Sidenote: Suleiman1520-6] that the banner of the prophet, "fanned by conquest's crimsonwing," was borne to the heart of Europe. Belgrade and Rhodes werecaptured, Hungary completely overrun, and Vienna besieged. The navalexploits of Khair-ed-din, called Barbarossa, carried the terror of theTurkish arms into the whole Mediterranean, subdued Algiers and defeatedthe Christian fleets under Andrew Doria.

On the death of Suleiman the Crescent Moon had attained the zenith ofits glory. The vast empire was not badly administered; someauthorities hold that justice was better served under the Sultan thanunder any contemporary Christian king. A hierarchy of officials,administrative, ecclesiastical, secretarial and military, held officedirectly under the Sultan, being wisely granted by him sufficientliberty to allow initiative, and yet kept under control direct enoughto prevent the secession of distant provinces.

The international position of the infidel power was an anomalous one.Almost every pope tried to revive the crusading spirit against thearch-enemy of Christ, and the greatest epic poet of the sixteenthcentury chose for his subject the Delivery of Jerusalem in a holy war.On the other hand the Most Christian King found no difficulty in makingalliances with the Sublime Porte, and the same course was advocated,though not adopted, by some of the Protestant states of Germany.Finally, that champion of the church, Philip {450} II, for the firsttime in the history of his country, [Sidenote: 1580] made a peace withthe infidel Sultan recognizing his right to exist in the society ofnations.

The sixteenth century, which in so much else marked a transition frommedieval to modern times, in this also saw the turning-point of events,inasmuch as the tide drawn by the Half Moon to its flood about 1529,from that time onwards has steadily, if very slowly, ebbed.

[1] Allowing $2.40 to a ducat this would be $10,800,000 intrinsicallyat a time when money had ten times the purchasing power that it hastoday.

{451}

CHAPTER X

SOCIAL CONDITIONS

SECTION 1. POPULATION

[Sidenote: Unity of civilized world]

Political history is that of the state; economic and intellectualhistory that of a different group. In modern times this group includesall civilized nations. Even in political history there are manystriking parallels, but in social development and in culture the recentevolution of civilized peoples has been nearly identical. Thisfundamental unity of the nations has grown stronger with the centurieson account of improving methods of transport and communication.Formally it might seem that in the Middle Ages the white nations weremore closely bound together than they are now. They had one church, anearly identical jurisprudence, one great literature and one languagefor the educated classes; they even inherited from Rome the ideal of asingle world-state. But if the growth of national pride, the divisionof the church and the rise of modern languages and literatures havebeen centrifugal forces, they have been outweighed by the advent of newinfluences tending to bind all peoples together. The place of a singlechurch is taken by a common point of view, the scientific; the place ofLatin as a medium of learning has been taken by English, French, andGerman, each one more widely known to those to whom it is not nativenow than ever was Latin in the earlier centuries. The fruits ofdiscovery are common to all nations, who now live under similarconditions, reading the same books and (under different names) the samenewspapers, doing the same {452} business and enjoying the sameluxuries in the same manner. Even in matters of government we arevisibly approaching the perhaps distant but apparently certain goal ofa single world-state.

[Sidenote: Changes in population]

In estimating the economic and cultural conditions of the sixteenthcentury it is therefore desirable to treat Western Europe as a whole.One of the marked differences between all countries then and now is inpopulation. No simple law has been discovered as to the causes of thefluctuations in the numbers of the people within a given territory.This varies with the wealth of the territory, but not in direct ratioto it; for it can be shown that the wealth of Europe in the last fourhundred years has increased vastly more than its population. Nor canit be discovered to vary directly in proportion to the combined amountand distribution of wealth, for in sixteenth-century England while thenumber of the people was increasing wealth was being concentrated infewer hands almost as fast as it was being created. It is obvious thatsanitation and transportation have a good deal to do with thepopulation of certain areas. The largest cities of our own times couldnot have existed in the Middle Ages, for they could not have beenprovisioned, nor have been kept endurably healthy without elaborateaqueducts and drains.

Other more obscure factors enter in to complicate the problems ofpopulation. Some nations, like Spain in the sixteenth and Ireland inthe nineteenth century, have lost immensely through emigration. Thecause of this was doubtless not that the nation in question was growingabsolutely poorer, but that the increase of wealth or in accessibilityto richer lands made it relatively poorer. It is obvious again thatgreat visitations like pestilence or war diminish population directly,though the effect of such factors is usually {453} temporary. How muchvoluntary sterility operates is problematical. Aegidius Albertinus,writing in 1602, attributed the growth in population of Protestantcountries since the Reformation to the abolition of sacerdotalcelibacy, and this has also been mentioned as a cause by a recentwriter. Probably the last named forces have a very slight influence;the primary one being, as Malthus stated, the increase of means ofsubsistence.

As censuses were almost unknown to sixteenth-century Europe outside ofa few Italian cities, the student is forced to rely for his data onvarious other calculations, in some cases tolerably reliable, in othersdeplorably deficient. The best of these are the enumerations ofhearths made for purposes of taxation in several countries. Othercounts were sometimes made for fiscal or military, and occasionally forreligious, purposes. Estimates by contemporary observers supplementour knowledge, which may be taken as at least approximately correct.

[Sidenote: England and Wales]

The religious census of 1603 gave the number of communicants in Englandand Wales as 2,275,000, to which must be added 8475 recusants. Adding50 per cent. for non-communicants, we arrive at the figure of3,425,000, which is doubtless too low. Another calculation based on arecord of births and deaths yields the figure 4,812,000 for the year1600. The average, 4,100,000, is probably nearly correct, of whichabout a tenth in Wales. England had grown considerably during thecentury, this increase being especially remarkable in the large towns.Whereas, in 1534, 150,000 quarters of wheat were consumed in Londonannually, the figure for 1605 is 500,000. The population in the sametime had probably increased from 60,000 to 225,000. No figures worthanything can be given for Ireland, and for Scotland it is only safe tosay {454} that in 1500 the population was about 500,000 and in 1600about 700,000.

[Sidenote: The Netherlands]

Enumerations of hearths and of communicants give good bases forreckoning the population of the Netherlands. Holland, the largest ofthe Northern provinces, had about 200,000 people in 1514; Brabant thegreatest of the Southern, in 1526 had 500,000. The population of thelargest town, Antwerp, in 1526 was 88,000, in 1550 about 110,000. Atthe same time it is remarkable that in 1521 Ghent impressed Dürer asthe greatest city he had seen in the Low Countries. For the wholeterritory of the Netherlands, including Holland and Belgium, and alittle more on the borders, the population was in 1560 about 3,000,000.This is the same figure as that given for 1567 by Lewis Guicciardini.Later in the century the country suffered by war and emigration.

[Sidenote: Germany]

The lack of a unified government, and the great diversity ofconditions, makes the population of Germany more difficult to estimate.Brandenburg, having in 1535 an area of 10,000 square miles, and apopulation between 300,000 and 400,000, has been aptly compared forsize and numbers to the present state of Vermont. Bavaria had in 1554a population of 434,000; in 1596 of 468,000. Würzburg had in 1538 only12,000; Hamburg in 1521 12,000 and in 1594 19,000. Danzig had in 1550about 21,000. The largest city in central Germany, if not in the wholecountry—as a chronicler stated in 1572—was Erfurt, with a populationof 32,000 in 1505. It was the center of the rising Saxon industries,mining and dying, and of commerce. Lübeck, Cologne, Nuremberg andAugsburg equalled or perhaps surpassed it in size, and certainly inwealth. The total population of German Switzerland was over 200,000.The whole German-speaking population of Central Europe amounted toperhaps twenty millions {455} in 1600, though it had been reckoned bythe imperial government in 1500 as twelve millions.

[Sidenote: France]

The number of Frenchmen did not greatly increase in France in the 16thcentury. Though the borders of the state were extended, she sufferedterribly by religious wars, and somewhat by emigration. Not only didmany Huguenots flee from her to Switzerland, the Netherlands andEngland, but economic reasons led to large movements from the south andperhaps from the north. To fill up the gap caused by emigration fromSpain a considerable number of French peasants moved to that land; andit is also possible that the same class of people sought new homes inBurgundy and Savoy to escape the pressure of taxes and dues. Variousestimates concur in giving France a population of 15,000,000 to16,000,000. The Paris of Henry II was by far the largest city in theworld, numbering perhaps 300,000; but when Henry IV besieged it it hadbeen reduced by war to 220,000. After that it waxed mightily again.

[Sidenote: Italy]

Italy, leader in many ways, was the first to take accurate statisticsof population, births and deaths. These begin by the middle of thefifteenth century, but are rare until the middle of the sixteenth, whenthey become frequent. Notwithstanding war and pestilence the numbersof inhabitants seemed to grow steadily, the apparent result in thestatistics being perhaps in part due to the increasing rigor of thecensus. Herewith follow specimens of the extant figures: The city ofBrescia had 65,000 in 1505, and 43,000 in 1548. During the sameperiod, however, the people in her whole territory of 2200 square mileshad increased from 303,000 to 342,000. The city of Verona had 27,000in 1473 and 52,000 in 1548; her land of 1200 square miles had in thefirst named year 99,000, in the last 159,000. The kingdom of Sicilygrew from 600,000 in 1501 to {456} 800,000 in 1548, and 1,180,000 in1615. The kingdom of Naples, without the capital, had about 1,270,000people in 1501; 2,110,000 in 1545; the total including the capitalamounted in 1600 to 3,000,000. The republic of Venice increased from1,650,000 in 1550 to 1,850,000 in 1620. Florence with her territoryhad 586,000 in 1551 and 649,000 in 1622. In the year 1600 Milan withLombardy had 1,350,000 inhabitants; Savoy in Italy 800,000; continentalGenoa 500,000; Parma, Piacenza and Modena together 500,000; Sardinia300,000; Corsica 150,000; Malta 41,000; Lucca 110,000. The populationof Rome fluctuated violently. In 1521 it is supposed to have beenabout 55,000, but was reduced by the sack to 32,000. After this itrapidly recovered, reaching 45,000 under Paul IV (1558), and 100,000under Sixtus V (1590). The total population of the States of theChurch when the first census was taken in 1656 was 1,880,000.

[Sidenote: Spain]

The final impression one gets after reading the extremely divergentestimates of the population of Spain is that it increased during thefirst half of the century and decreased during the latter half. Thehighest figure for the increase of population during the reign ofCharles V is the untrustworthy one of Habler, who believes the numberof inhabitants to have doubled. This belief is founded on theconviction that the wealth of the kingdom doubled in that time. Butthough population tends to increase with wealth, it certainly does notincrease in the same proportion as wealth, so that, considering thisfact and also that the increase in wealth as shown by the doubling ofincome from royal domains was in part merely apparent, due to thefalling value of money, we may dismiss Habler's figure as too high.And yet there is good evidence for the belief that there was aconsiderable increment. The cities especially gained with the newstimulus to {457} commerce and industry. In 1525 Toledo employed10,000 workers in silk, who had increased fivefold by 1550.Unfortunately for accuracy these figures are merely contemporaryguesses, but they certainly indicate a large growth in the populationof Toledo, and similar figures are given for Seville, Burgos and othermanufacturing and trading centers. From such estimates, however,combined with the censuses of hearths, peculiarly unsatisfactory inSpain as they excluded the privileged classes and were, as theirviolent fluctuations show, carelessly made, we may arrive at theconclusion that in 1557 the population of Spain was barely 9,000,000.

More difficult, if possible, is it to measure the amount of the declinein the latter half of the century. [Sidenote: Decline] It was widelynoticed and commented on by contemporaries, who attributed it in partto the increase in sheep-farming (as in England) and in part toemigration to America. There were doubtless other more important andmore obscure causes, namely the increasing rivalry in both commerce andindustry of the north of Europe and the consequent decay of Spain'smeans of livelihood. The emigration amounted on the average to perhaps4000 per annum throughout the century. The total Spanish population ofAmerica was reckoned by Velasco in 1574 at 30,500 households, or152,500 souls. This would, however, imply a much larger emigration,probably double the last number, to account for the many Spaniards lostby the perils of the sea or in the depths of the wilderness. It isknown, for example, that whereas the Spanish population of Venezuelawas reckoned at 200 households at least 2000 Spaniards had gone tosettle there. An emigration of 300,000 before 1574, or say 400,000 forthe whole century, would have left a considerable gap at home. Add tothis the industrial decline by which {458} Altamira reckons that thecities of the center and north, which suffered most, lost from one-halfto one-third of their total population, and it is evident that a veryconsiderable shrinkage took place. The census of 1594 reported apopulation of 8,200,000.

[Sidenote: Portugal]

The same tendency to depopulation was noticed to a much greater degreeby contemporary observers of Portugal. Unfortunately, no evenapproximately accurate figures can be given. Two million is almostcertainly too large for 1600.

[Sidenote: General table]

The following statistical table will enable the reader to form someestimate of the movements of population. Admitting that the margin oferror is fairly large in some of the earlier estimates, it is believedthat they are sufficiently near the truth to be of real service.

Country 1500 1600 England and Wales . . . . . . . . 3,000,000 4,100,000

Scotland . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500,000 700,000

The Netherlands (Holland and
Belgium) (1550) . . . . . . . . 3,000,000

Germany (including Austria, German
Switzerland, Franche Comté and
Savoy north of the Alps, but
excluding Hungary, the Netherlands,
East and West Prussia) . . . . . 12,000,000 20,000,000

France (1550) . . . . . . . . . . 16,000,000

Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10,000,000 13,000,000

Spain (1557 and 1594) . . . . . . 9,000,000[1] 8,200,000

Poland with East and West Prussia 3,000,000

Denmark . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600,000

Sweden, Norway and Finland . . . . 1,400,000

[1] For a higher estimate—ten to twelve millions in 1500—see note inbibliography.

SECTION 2. WEALTH AND PRICES

[Sidenote: Gigantic increase in wealth since 16th century]

If the number of Europe's inhabitants has increased fourfold sinceLuther's time, the amount of her wealth has increased in a vastlygreater ratio. The difference {459} between the twentieth and thesixteenth centuries is greater than anyone would at first blush believepossible. Moreover it is a difference that is, during times of peace,continually increasing. During the century from the close of theNapoleonic to the opening of the Great War, the wealth of the whiteraces probably doubled every twenty-five years. The new factors thatmade this possible were the exploited resources of America, and thesteam-engine. Prior to 1815 the increase of the world's wealth wasmuch slower, but if it doubled once a century,—as would seem notimprobable—we should have to allow that the world of 1914 was onehundred and twenty-eight times as rich as it was in 1514.

[Sidenote: Change from poverty to affluence emphasized]

Of course such a statement cannot pretend to anything like exactitude;the mathematical figure is a mere figure of speech; it is intended onlyto emphasize the fact that one of the most momentous changes during thelast four centuries has been that from poverty to affluence. That thestatement, surprising as it may seem, is no exaggeration, may be borneout by a few comparisons.

[Sidenote: War a test of a nation's financial strength]

One of the tests of a nation's financial strength is that of war.Francis I in time of war mustered at most an army of 100,000, and hereached this figure, or perhaps slightly exceeded it, only once duringhis reign, in the years 1536-7. This is only half the number ofsoldiers, proportionately to the population, that France maintained intime of peace at the opening of the twentieth century. And for morethan four years, at a time when war was infinitely more expensive thanit was when Pavia was fought, France kept in the field about an evenfive millions of men, more than an eighth of her population instead ofabout one one-hundred-and-fiftieth. Similar figures could be given forGermany and England. It is true that the power of {460} modern statesis multiplied by their greater facilities for borrowing, but with allallowances the contrast suggests an enormous difference of wealth.

[Sidenote: Labor power of the world]

Take, as a standard of comparison, the labor power of the world. In1918 the United States alone produced 685,000,000 tons of coal. Eachton burned gives almost as much power as is expended by two laborersworking for a whole year. Thus the United States from its coal onlyhad command of the equivalent of the labor of 1,370,000,000 men, ormore than thrice the adult male labor power of the whole world; morethan fifty times the whole labor power of sixteenth-century Europe.This does not take account of the fact that labor is far moreproductive now than then, even without steam. The comparison isinstructive because the population of the United States in 1910 wasabout equal to that of the whole of Europe in 1600.

The same impression would be given by a comparison of the production ofany other standard product. More gold was produced in the year 1915than the whole stock of gold in the world in 1550, perhaps in 1600.More wheat is produced annually in Minnesota than the granaries of thecities of the world would hold four centuries ago.

[Sidenote: Poverty of the Middle Ages]

In fact, there was hardly wealth at all in the Middle Ages, onlydegrees of poverty, and the sixteenth century first began to see theaccumulation of fortunes worthy of the name. In 1909 there were 1100persons in France with an income of more than $40,000 per annum; amongthem were 150 with an income of more than $200,000. In England in 1916seventy-nine persons paid income taxes on estates of more than$125,000,000. On the other hand the richest man in France, JacquesCoeur, whose fortune was proverbial like that of Rockefeller today, hadin 1503 a capital of only {461} $5,400,000. The total wealth of thehouse of Fugger about 1550 has been estimated at $32,000,000, thoughthe capital of their bank was never anything like that. The contrastwas greatest among the very richest class, but it was sufficientlystriking in the middle classes. Such a condition as comfort hardlyexisted.

The same impression will be given to the student of public finance. Asmore will be said in another paragraph on the revenues of the principalstates, only one example need be given here for the sake of contrast.The total revenue of Francis I was $256,000 per annum, that of Henry IIeven less, $228,000. The revenue of France in 1905 was $750,000,000.Henry VIII often had more difficulty in raising a loan of L50,000 thanthe English government had recently in borrowing six billions.

[Sidenote: Value of money]

It is impossible to say which is the harder task, to compare the totalwealth of the world at two given periods, or to compare the value ofmoney at different times. Even the mechanical difficulties in thecomparison of prices are enormous. When we read that wheat atWittenberg sold at one gulden the scheffel, it is necessary todetermine in the first place how much a gulden and how much a scheffelrepresented in terms of dollars and bushels. When we discover thatthere were half a dozen different guldens, and half a dozen separatemeasures known as scheffels, varying from province to province and fromtime to time, and varying widely, it is evident that great caution isnecessary in ascertaining exactly which gulden and exactly whichscheffel is meant.

When coin and measure have been reduced to known quantities, thereremains the problem of fixing the quality. Cloth is quoted in thesixteenth century as of standard sizes and grades, but neither of theseimportant factors is accurately known to any modern {462} economist.One would think that in quoting prices of animals an invariablestandard would be secured. Quite the contrary. So much has the breedof cattle improved that a fat ox now weighs two or three times what agood ox weighed four centuries ago. Horses are larger, stronger andfaster; hens lay many more eggs, cows give much more milk now thanformerly. Shoes, clothes, lumber, candles, are not of the same qualityin different centuries, and of course there is an ever increasing listof new articles in which no comparison can be made.

[Sidenote: Fluctuation in coinage]

Nevertheless, some allowance can be made for all factors involved, asfar as they are mechanical; some comparisons can be given that bear asufficiently close relation to exactitude to form the basis from whichcertain valid deductions can be drawn. Now first as to the intrinsicvalue, in amounts of gold and silver in the several coins. The vastfluctuation in the value of the English shilling, due to the successivedebasements and final restitution of the coinage, is thus expressed:

Year Troy grains Year Troy grains 1461 . . . . . . 133 1551 . . . . . . 20 1527 . . . . . . 118 1552 . . . . . . 88 1543 . . . . . . 100 1560 . . . . . . 89 1545 . . . . . . 60 1601 . . . . . . 86 1546 . . . . . . 40 1919 . . . . . . 87.27

A similar depreciation, more gradual but never rectified, is seen inthe value of French money. The standard of reckoning was the livretournois, which varied intrinsically in value of the silver put into itas follows:

Years Intrinsic value of silver
1500 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 cents
1512-40 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 cents
1541-60 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 cents
1561-72 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 cents
{463}
1573-79 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 cents
1580-1600 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 cents

[Sidenote: Value of Spanish coins]

The standard Spanish gold coin after 1497 was the ducat, which had3.485 grammes of gold (value in our money $2.40). This was dividedinto 375 maravedis, which therefore had a value of about two-thirds ofa cent each. A Castilian marc of gold had 230 grammes or a value ofabout $16. After 1537 a handsome silver coin, known as the peso fuerteor "piece of eight" because each contained eight reals, was minted inAmerica. Its value was about $1.06 of our money, it being thepredecessor of our dollar.

The great difficulty with the coinage of Germany and Italy is not somuch in its fluctuation as in the number of mints. The name gulden[Sidenote: Gulden a general term] was given to almost any coin,originally, as its etymology signifies, a gold piece, but later also toa silver piece. Among gold guldens there was the Rhenish guldenintrinsically worth $1.34; the Philip's gulden in the Netherlands of 96cents and the Carolus gulden coined after 1520 and worth $1.14. Butthe coin commonly used in reckoning was the silver gulden, worthintrinsically 56 cents. This was divided into 20 groschen. Othercoins quite ordinarily met with in the literature of the times arepounds (7.5 cents), pfennigs (various values), stivers, crowns, nobles,angels ($2), and Hungarians ducats ($1.75). Since 1518 the chiefsilver coin was the thaler, at first considered the equal of a silvergulden. The law of 1559, however, made them two different coins,restoring the thaler to what had probably been its former value of 72cents, and leaving the imperial gulden in law, what it had commonlybecome in fact, a lesser amount of silver.

The coinage of Italy was dominated by the gold gulden or florin ofFlorence and the ducat of Venice, {464} each worth not far from $2.25of our money. Both these coins, partly on account of their beauty,partly because of the simple honesty with which they were kept at thenominal standard, attained just fame throughout the Middle Ages andthereafter, and became widely used in other lands.

[Sidenote: Wheat]

The standard of value determined, it is now possible to compare theprices of some staple articles. First in importance comes wheat, whichfluctuated enormously within short periods at the same place and interms of the same amounts of silver. From Luther's letters we learnthat wheat sold at Wittenberg for one gulden a scheffel in 1539 and forthree groschen a scheffel in 1542, the latter price being considered"so cheap as never before," the former reached in a time almost offamine and calling for intervention on the part of the government.However we interpret these figures (and I believe them to mean thatwheat sold at from twelve cents to eighty cents a bushel) theycertainly indicate a tremendous instability in prices, due to the poorcommunications and backward methods of agriculture, making years ofplenty alternate with years of hunger. In the case of Wittenberg, thelower level was nearer the normal, for in 1527 wheat was there sold attwenty cents a bushel. In other parts of Germany it was dearer; atStrassburg from 1526-50 it averaged 30 cents a bushel; from 1551-75 itwent up to an average of 58 cents, and from 1576-1600 the average againrose to 80 cents a bushel.

Prices also rose in England throughout the century even in terms ofsilver. Of course part of the rise in the middle years was due to thedebasement of the coinage. Reduced to bushels and dollars, thefollowing table shows the tendency of prices:

1530 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 cents a bushel
1537 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 cents
{465}
1544 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 cents
1546 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 cents
1547 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 cents
1548 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 cents
1549 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 cents
1550 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 cents
1572 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 cents
1595 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $1.14

Wheat in France averaged 23 cents a bushel prior to 1540, after whichit rose markedly in price, touching $1.50 in 1600, under exceptionalconditions. In order to compare with prices nowadays we must rememberthat $1 a bushel was a remarkably good price before the late war,during which it was fixed at $2.20 by the American government. Barleyin England rose from 6 cents a bushel in 1530 to 10 cents in 1547 and33 cents in 1549. It was in 1913 70 cents a bushel. Oats rose from 5cents a bushel in England in 1530 to 18 cents in 1549; in 1913 38 cents.

[Sidenote: Animals]

Animals sold much lower in the sixteenth century than they do now,though it must be remembered that they are worth more after severalcenturies of careful breeding. Horses then sold at $2.50 in Englandand at $4 to $11 in France; the average price in 1913 was $244 forworking animals. Cows were worth $2 in England in 1530; from $4 to$6.40 in France; oxen apparently came considerably higher, averaging inEngland $10 a head in 1547 and in France from $9 to $16 a yoke. Atpresent they are sold by weight, averaging in 1913 9 cents per lb., or$90 for one weighing a thousand pounds. Beef then cost about 2/3 of acent a pound instead of 40 cents as in 1914. A sheep was sold in 1585at $1.60, a large swine at $5, and pigs at 26 cents apiece. Pork cost2 cents a pound; hens sold in England at 12 cents a piece and geese andducks for the same; at Wittenberg geese fetched only 6 cents in 1527.Eggs might have been bought at 2 cents a dozen.

{466} [Sidenote: Groceries]

Wholesale prices of groceries, taken mostly from an English table drawnup about 1580, were as follows: Oil was $140 the ton, or 55 cents agallon; train-oil was just half that price; Newfoundland fish cost then$2.50 the quintal dry, as against $7.81 in 1913. Gascon wines (claret)varied according to quality, from 16 cents to 24 cents a quart. Saltfetched $7.50 a ton, which is very close to the price that it was in1913 ($1.02 per bbl. of 280 lbs.). Soap was $13 the hundredweight.Pepper and sugar cost nearly the same, about $70 the hundredweight, orfar higher than they were in 1919, when each cost $11 thehundredweight. Spices also cost more in the sixteenth century thanthey do now, and rose throughout the century. By 1580 the wholesaleprice per hundredweight was $224 for cloves, the same for nutmegs, $150for cinnamon, $300 for mace. Ginger was $90 the hundredweight, andcandles 6.6 cents the lb. as against 7.25 cents now.

[Sidenote: Drygoods]

Drygoods varied immensely in cost. Raw wool sold in England in 1510for 4 cents per lb., as against 26 cents just four hundred years later.Fine cloth sold at $65 "the piece," the length and breadth of which itis unfortunately impossible to determine accurately. Different gradescame in different sizes, averaging a yard in width, but from 18 yardsto 47 yards in length, the finer coming in longer rolls. Sortingcloths were $45 the piece. Linen cost 20 cents a yard in 1580; Mary,Queen of Scots, five years later paid $6.50 the yard for purple velvetand 28 cents the yard for buckram to line the same. The coarse clothesof the poor were cheaper, a workman's suit in France costing $1.80 in1600, a child's whole wardrobe $3.40, and a soldier's uniform $4.20.The prices of the poorest women's dresses ranged from $3 to $6 each.In 1520 Albert Dürer paid in the Netherlands 17 cents for one pair ofshoes, 33 cents for another and 20 cents for a {467} pair of woman'sgloves. A pair of spectacles cost him 22 cents, a pair of gloves forhimself 38 cents.

[Sidenote: Metals]

Metals were dearer in the sixteenth century than they are now. Ironcost $60 a ton in 1580 against $22 a ton in 1913. Lead fetched $42 theton and tin $15 the cwt. The ratio of gold to silver was about 1 to11. The only fuel much used was wood, which was fairly cheap but ofcourse not nearly as efficient as our coal.

[Sidenote: Interest]

Interest, as the price of money, varied then as it does now in inverseratio to the security offered by the debtor, and on the whole withinmuch the same range that it does now. The best security was believedto be that of the German Free Cities, governed as they were by thecommercial class that appreciated the virtue of prompt and honestpayment. Accordingly, we find that they had no trouble in borrowing at5 per cent., their bonds taking the form of perpetual annuities, likethe English consols. So eagerly were these investments sought thatthey were apportioned on petition as special favors to the creditors.The cities of Paris and London also enjoyed high credit. The nationalgovernments had to pay far higher, owing to their poverty anddishonesty. Francis I borrowed at 10 per cent.; Charles V paid higherin the market of Antwerp, the extreme instance being that of 50 percent. per annum. In 1550 he regularly paid 20 per cent., a ruinousrate that foreshadowed his bankruptcy and was partly caused by itsforecast. Until the recent war we were accustomed to think of thegreat nations borrowing at 2-4 per cent., but during the war the rateimmensely rose. Anglo-French bonds, backed by the joint and severalcredit of the two nations, sold on the New York Stock Exchange in 1918at a price that would yield the investor more than 12 per cent., andCity of Paris bonds at a rate of more than 16 per cent.

{468} Commercial paper, or loans advanced by banks to merchants on goodsecurity, of course varied. The lowest was reached at Genoa where fromtime to time merchants secured accommodation at 3 per cent. Theaverage in Germany was 6 per cent. and this was made the legal rate byBrandenburg in 1565. But usurers, able to take advantage of thenecessities of poor debtors, habitually exacted more, as they do now,and loans on small mortgages or on pawned articles often ran at 30 percent. On the whole, the rate of interest fell slightly during thecentury.

[Sidenote: Real estate]

The price of real estate is more difficult to compare than almostanything, owing to the individual circumstances of each purchase. Landin France sold at rates ranging from $8 to $240 the acre. Lutherbought a little farm in the country for $340, and a piece of propertyin Wittenberg for $500. After his death, in 1564, the house he livedin, a large and handsome building formerly the Augustinian Cloister,fetched $2072. The house can be seen today[1] and would certainly, onewould think, now bring fifteen times as much.

[Sidenote: Books]

Books were comparatively cheap. The Greek Testament sold for 48 cents,a Latin Testament for half that amount, a Latin folio Bible publishedin 1532 for $4, Luther's first New Testament at 84 cents. One mightget a copy of the Pandects for $1.60, of Vergil for 10 cents, a Greekgrammar for 8 cents, Demosthenes and Aeschines in one volume at 20cents, one of Luther's more important tracts for 30 cents and thecondemnation of him by the universities in a small pamphlet at 6 cents.One of the things that has gone down most in price since that day ispostage. Dürer while in the Netherlands paid a messenger 17 cents todeliver a {469} letter (or several letters?), presumably sent to hishome in Nuremberg.

[Sidenote: Wages]

In accordance with the general rule that wages follow the trend ofprices sluggishly, whether upwards or downwards, there is less changeto be observed in them throughout the sixteenth century than there isin the prices of commodities. Subject to government regulation, theremuneration of all kinds of labor remained nearly stationary while thecost of living was rising. Startling is the difference in the rewardsof the various classes, that of the manual laborers being cruelly low,that of professional men somewhat less in proportion to the cost ofliving than it is today, and that of government officers being veryhigh. No one except court officials got a salary over $5000 a year,and some of them got much more. In 1553 a French chamberlain was paid$51,000 per annum.

A French navvy received 8 cents a day in 1550, a carpenter as much as26 cents. A male domestic was given $7 to $12 a year in addition tohis keep and a woman $5 to $6. As the number of working days inCatholic countries was only about 250 a year, workmen made from $65 toas low as $20. If anything, labor was worse paid in Germany than itwas in France. Agricultural labor in England was paid in two scales,one for summer and one for winter. It varied from 3 cents to 7 cents aday, the smaller sum being paid only to men who were also boarded. Insummer freemasons and master carpenters got from 8 cents to 11 centsfor a terribly long day, in winter 6 cents to 9 cents for a shorterday. The following scale was fixed by law in England in 1563: A hiredfarmer was to have $10 a year and $2 for livery; a common farm hand wasallowed $8.25 and $1.25 extra for livery; a "mean servant" $6 and $1.25respectively, a man child {470} $4 and $1; a chief woman cook $5 and$1.60, a mean or simple woman $3 and $1; a woman child $2.50 and $1.All were of course boarded and lodged.

The pay of French soldiers under Francis I was for privates $28 a yearin time of war; this fell to $1 a year in time of peace; for captains$33 a month in time of peace and $66 in time of war. Captains in theEnglish navy received $36 a month; common seamen $1.25 a month forwages and the same allowance for food.

[Sidenote: Pay of clergymen]

The church fared little better than the army. In Scotland, a poorcountry but one in which the clergy were respected, by the law of 1562,a parson if a single man was given $26 a year, if a married man amaximum of $78 a year; probably a parsonage was added. Doubtless manyProtestant ministers eked out their subsistence by fees, as theCatholic priests certainly did. Dürer gave 44 cents to a friar whoconfessed his wife. Every baptism, marriage and burial was taxed acertain amount. In France one could hire a priest to say a mass atfrom 60 cents to $7 in 1500, and at from 30 to 40 cents in 1600. Atthis price it has remained since, a striking instance of religiousconservatism working to the detriment of the priest, for the same moneyrepresents much less in real wages now than it did then.

[Sidenote: Physicians]

Fees for physicians ranged from 33 to 44 cents a visit in Germany about1520. Treatment and medicine were far higher. At Antwerp Dürer paid$2.20 for a small quantity of medicine for his wife. Fees weresometimes given for a whole course of attendance. In England we hearof such "cures" paid for at from $3.30 to $5. Very little, if any,advice was given free to the poor. The physicians for the French kingreceived a salary of $200 a year and other favors. William Butts,physician to Henry VIII, had $500 per {471} annum, in addition to aknighthood; and his salary was increased to over $600 for attending theDuke of Richmond.

[Sidenote: Teachers]

Teachers in the lower schools were regarded as lackeys and paidaccordingly. Nicholas Udal, head master of Eton, received $50 perannum and various small allowances. University professors were treatedmore liberally. Luther and Melanchthon at Wittenberg got a maximum of$224 per annum, which was about the same as the stipend of leadingprofessors in other German universities and at Oxford and Cambridge.The teacher also got a small honorarium from each student. When PaulIII restored the Sapienza at Rome he paid a minimum of $17 per annum tosome friars who taught theology and who were cared for by their order,but he gave high salaries to the professors of rhetoric and medicine.Ordinarily these received $476 a year, but one professor of theclassics reached the highwater-mark with nearly $800.

[Sidenote: Royalties]

The rewards of literary men were more consistently small in thesixteenth century than they are now, owing to the absence of effectivecopyright. An author usually received a small sum from the printer towhom he first offered his manuscript, but his subsequent royalties, ifany, depended solely on the goodwill of the publisher. A Wittenbergprinter offered Luther $224 per annum for his manuscripts, but theReformer declined it, wishing to make his books as cheap as possible.In 1512 Erasmus got $8.40 from Badius the Parisian printer for a newedition of his Adages. In fact, the rewards of letters, such as theywere, were indirect, in the form of pensions, gifts and benefices fromthe great. Erasmus got so many of these favors that he lived more thancomfortably. Luther died almost a rich man, so many honoraria did hecollect from noble admirers. Rabelais was given a benefice, though{472} he only lived two years afterwards to enjoy its fruits. HenryVIII gave $500 to Thomas Murner for writing against Luther. But thelot of the average writer was hard. Fulsome flattery was the mostlucrative production of the muse.

[Sidenote: Artists]

Artists fared better. Dürer sold one picture for $375 and another for$200, not counting the "tip" which his wife asked and received on eachoccasion from the patron. Probably his woodcuts brought him more fromthe printers than any single painting, and when he died he left thethen respectable sum of $32,000. He had been offered a pension of $300per annum and a house at Antwerp by that city if he would settle there,but he preferred to return to Nuremberg, where he was pensioned $600 ayear by the emperor. Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo both received$129 a month for work done for a prince, and the latter was given apension of $5200 a year by Paul III. Raphael in 1520 left an estate of$140,000.

[Sidenote: Value of money]

If a comparison of the value of money is made, the final impressionthat one gets is that an ounce of gold was in 1563, let us say,expected to do about ten times as much work as the same weight ofprecious metal performed in 1913.[2] If a few articles were thenactually dearer, they were comparatively unimportant and were balancedby other articles even more than ten times as cheap. But a dollar willbuy so many articles now which did not exist in former ages that aplausible case can be made out for the paradox that money is now worthmore than it ever was before. If an ounce of gold would in Luther'stime exchange for a much larger quantity of simple necessaries than itwill purchase now, on the other hand a man with an income of $5000 ayear is far better off than a man with the {473} same income, or indeedwith any income, was then.

[Sidenote: Trend of prices]

Notwithstanding the great difficulties of making out any fair indexnumber representing the cost of living and applicable to long periods,owing to the fact that articles vary from time to time, as when candlesare replaced by gas and gas by electricity, yet the general trend ofprices can be pretty plainly ascertained. Generally speaking,prices—measured in weight of gold and not in coin—sank slowly from1390 till 1520 under the influence of better technical methods ofproduction and possibly of the draining of gold and silver to theOrient. From 1520 till 1560 prices rose quite slowly on account of theincreased production of gold and silver and its more rapid circulationby means of better banking. From 1560 to 1600 prices rose withenormous rapidity, partly because of the destruction of wealth andincrease in the cost of production following in the wake of the Frenchand Dutch wars of religion, and still more, perhaps, on account of thetorrent of American silver suddenly poured into the lap of Europe.Taking the century as a whole, we find that wheat rose the most, asmuch as 150 per cent. in England, 200 per cent. in France and 300 percent. in Germany. Other articles rose less, and in some cases remainedstationary, or sank in price. Money wages rose slowly, far less thanthe cost of living.

[Sidenote: Increase in volume of precious metals]

Apart from special circumstances affecting the production of particularclasses of goods, the main cause of the general trend of prices upwardswas probably the increase in the volume of the precious metals. Justhow great this was, it is impossible to determine, and yet acalculation can be made, yielding figures near enough the actual to beof service. From the middle of the fifteenth century there had been aconsiderable increase in the production of silver from German, Bohemianand Hungarian mines. Although this {474} increase was much more thanis usually allowed for—equalling, in the opinion of one scholar, theproduce of American mines until nearly the middle of the sixteenthcentury—it was only enough to meet the expanding demands of commerce.Before America entered the market, there was also a considerable importof gold from Asia and Africa. The tide of Mexican treasure began toflood Spain about 1520, but did not reach the other countries in largequantities until about 1560. When we consider the general impressionconcerning the increase of the currency immediately following thepillage of the Aztecs and Incas, the following statistics of theEnglish mint are instructive, if they are not enigmatical. During thefirst fourteen years of Henry VIII (1509-23) the average amount of goldminted in England was 24,666 troy pounds per annum, and of silver31,225 troy pounds. But in the years 1537-40, before the greatdebasement of the currency had taken place, the amount of gold coinedfell to 3,297 Troy pounds per annum, and that of silver rose only to52,974 troy pounds. As each pound of gold was at that time worth asmuch as eleven pounds of silver, this means that the actual amount ofnew money put into circulation each year in the latter period was lessthan a third of that minted in the earlier years. The figures alsoindicate the growing cheapness of silver, stimulating its import, whilethe import of gold was greatly restricted, according to Gresham's lawthat cheap money drives out dear.

[Sidenote: Estimates of gold and silver products]

The spoil of Mexico and Peru has frequently been over-estimated, bynone more extravagantly than by the Conquistadores and theircontemporaries. But the estimates of modern scholars vary enormously.Lexis believes that the total amount of gold produced by Europe andAmerica from 1501 to 1550 (the greater part, of course, by America)amounted to $134,000,000. {475} F. de Laiglesio, on the other hand,thinks that not more than $4,320,000 was mined in America before 1555.The most careful estimate, that made by Professor Haring, arrives atthe following results, [Sidenote: Haring's estimate] the amounts beinggiven in pesos each worth very nearly the same as our dollar. Mexicanproduction:

1521-44 1345-60 Gold . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,348,900 343,670 Silver . . . . . . . . . . . 4,130,170 22,467,111

For Peru the proportions of gold and silver cannot be separated, butthe totals taken together from 1531-1560 amounted to probably84,350,600 pesos. Other small sums came from other parts of the NewWorld, and the final total for production of gold and silver inAmerica until 1560 is given at 139,720,000 pesos. This is a reductionto 70 per cent. of the estimate of Lexis. Assuming that the samecorrection must be made on all of the estimates given by Lexis we havethe following figures for the world's production of precious metals inkilogrammes and in dollars:[3]

Gold Silver
Average per annum Average per annum
in
pesos or
dollars
of 25

in kilos in dollars kilos grammes1493-1520 . . . 4270 3,269,000 31,570 1,262,800 1521-44. . . 4893 3,425,000 52,010 2,080,400 1545-60 . . .4718 3,302,600 184,730 7,389,200 1561-80 . . . 47183,302,600 185,430 7,417,200 1581-1600 . . . 46413,268,700 230,480 9,219,200

{476} Combining these figures we see that the production of gold waspretty steady throughout the century, making a total output of about$330,000,000. The production of silver, however, greatly increasedafter 1544. From the beginning of the century to that year it amountedto $75,285,600; from 1545 to 1600 inclusive it increased to$450,955,200, making a total output for the century of $526,240,800.Of course these figures only roughly approximate the truth;nevertheless they give a correct idea of the general processes at work.Even for the first half of the century the production of the preciousmetals was far in excess of anything that had preceded, and thisoutput, large as it was, was nearly tripled in the last half of thecentury. These figures, however, are extremely modest compared withthose of recent times, when more gold is mined in a year than was thenmined in a century. The total amount mined in 1915 was $470,000,000;in 1917 $428,000,000; for the period 1850 to 1916 inclusive the totalamount mined was $13,678,000,000.

[1] See the photograph in my Life and Letters of Luther, p. 364.

[2] No valid comparison can be made for the years after 1913, for inmost nations paper currencies have ousted gold.

[3] These figures are based on those of Sommerlad in theHandwörter-buch der Staatswissenschaften, s.v. "Preis," taken fromWiebe, who based on Lexis. Figures quite similar to those of Sommerladare given by C. F. Bastable in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, s.v."Money." I have incorporated Haring's corrections.

SECTION 3. INSTITUTIONS

[Sidenote: The monarchies]

For a variety of reasons the sixteenth century was as monarchical inmind as the twentieth century is democratic. Immemorial prescriptionthen had a vigor since lost, and monarchy descended from classical andbiblical antiquity when kings were hedged with a genuine divinity. Thestudy of Roman law, with its absolutist maxims, aided in the formationof royalist sentiment. The court as the center of fashion attracted abrilliant society, while the small man satisfied his cravings forgentility by devouring the court gossip that even then clogged thepresses. It is probable that one reason why the throne became sopopular was that it was, next to the church, the best advertised {477}article in the world. But underlying these sentimental reasons forloyalty there was a basis of solid utility, predisposing men to supportthe scepter as the one power strong enough to overawe the nobles. Onetyrant was better than many; one lion could do less harm than a pack ofwolves and hyaenas. In the greater states men felt perfectly helplesswithout a king to rule the anarchical chaos into which society wouldhave dissolved without him. When the Spanish Communes rebelled againstCharles V they triumphed in the field, but their attempt simplycollapsed in face of their utter inability to solve the problem ofgovernment without a royal governor. They were as helpless as beeswithout a queen. Indeed, so strong was their instinct to get a royalhead that they tried to preserve themselves by kidnapping Charles'smother, poor, mad Joanna, to fill the political vacuum that they hadmade. So in the civil wars in France; notwithstanding the morepromising materials for the formation of a republic in that country,all parties were, in fact, headed by claimants to the throne.

[Sidenote: Councils of State]

Next to the king came the Council of State, composed of princes of theblood, cardinals, nobles and some officers and secretaries of state,not always of noble blood but frequently, especially in the cases ofthe most powerful of them, scions of the middle class. What proportionof the executive power was wielded by the Council depended on thepersonal character of the monarch. Henry VIII was always master;Elizabeth was more guided than guiding; the Councils of the Valois andHapsburgs profited by the preoccupation or the stupidity of theirmasters to usurp the royal power for themselves. In public opinion theCouncil occupied a great place, similar to that of an English Cabinettoday. The first Anglican prayerbook {478} contains petitions for theCouncil, though it did not occur to the people to pray for Parliamentuntil the next century.

The countries were governed no longer by the nobles as such but byofficials appointed by the crown. It is an indication of the growingnationalization of policy that the sixteenth century saw the firstestablishment of permanent diplomatic agents. The first ambassadors,selected largely from a panel of bishops, magistrates, judges andscholars, were expected to function not only as envoys but also asspies. Under them was a host of secret agents expected to do underhandwork and to take the responsibility for it themselves so that, if foundout, they could be repudiated.

[Sidenote: Parliaments]

Very powerful was the national popular assembly: the Parliament, theDiet, the States General, or the Cortes. Its functions, prescriptiveand undefined, were commonly understood to include the granting oftaxes. The assent of the body was also required, to a varying degree,for the sanction of other laws. But the real power of the people'srepresentatives lay in the fact that they were the chief organ for theexpression of that public opinion which in all countries and at alltimes it is unsafe for governments to disregard. Sitting in two ormore chambers to represent the several estates or sometimes—as in theGerman Diet—subdivisions of these estates, the representatives werecomposed of members of the privileged orders, the clergy and nobility,and of the elected representatives of the city aristocracies. Themajority of the population, the poor, were unrepresented. That thisclass had as great a stake in the commonwealth as any other, and thatthey had a class consciousness capable of demanding reforms and oftaking energetic measures to secure them, is shown by a number ofrebellions of the proletariat, and yet it is not unfair to them, or{479} disdainful, to say that on most matters they were toouninstructed, too powerless and too mute to contribute much to thatbody of sentiment called public opinion, one condition of which seemsto be that to exist it must find expression.

[Sidenote: Influence of the Estates General]

The Estates General, by whatever name they were called, supplemented inFrance by provincial bodies called Parlements partaking of the natureof high courts of justice, and in Germany by the local Diets (Landtag)of the larger states, exercised a very real and in some cases adecisive influence on public policy. The monarch of half the worlddared not openly defy the Cortes of Aragon or of Castile; the imperiousTudors diligently labored to get parliamentary sanction for theirtyrannical acts, and, on the few occasions when they could not do so,hastened to abandon as gracefully as possible their previousintentions. In Germany the power of the Diet was not limited by theemperor, but by the local governments, though even so it wasconsiderable. When a Diet, under skilful manipulation or byunscrupulous trickery, was induced by the executive to pass anunpopular measure, like the Edict of Worms, the law became a deadletter. In some other instances, notably in its long campaign againstmonopolies, even when it expressed the popular voice the Diet failedbecause the emperor was supported by the wealthy capitalists. Onlyrecently it has been revealed how the Fuggers of Augsburg and theirallies endeavored to manipulate or to frustrate its work in the matterof government regulation of industry and commerce.

[Sidenote: Public finance]

The finances of most countries were managed corruptly and unwisely.The taxes were numerous and complicated and bore most heavily on thepoor. From ordinary taxes in most countries the privileged orders wereexempt, though they were forced to contribute {480} special sums leviedby themselves. The general property tax (taille) in France yielded2,400,000 livres tournois in 1517 and 4,600,000 in 1543. The taxeswere farmed; that is, the right of collecting them was sold at auction,with the natural result that they were put into the hands ofextortioners who made vast fortunes by oppressing the people. Revenuesof the royal domain, excises on salt and other articles, import andexport duties, and the sale of offices and monopolies, supplemented thedirect taxes. The system of taxation varied in each country. Thus inSpain the 10 per cent. tax on the price of an article every time it wassold and the royalty on precious metals—20 per cent. after1504—proved important sources of revenue. Rome drove a lucrativetrade in spiritual wares. Everywhere, fines for transgressions of thelaw figured more largely as a source of revenue than they do nowadays.

[Sidenote: Wasteful expenditures]

Expenditures were both more wasteful and more niggardly than they aretoday. Though the service of the public debt was trifling comparedwith modern standards, and though the administration of justice was notexpensive because of the fee system, the army and navy cost a gooddeal, partly because they were composed largely of well paidmercenaries. The personal extravagances of the court were among theheaviest burdens borne by the people. The kings built palaces: theywallowed in cloth of gold; they collected objects of art; theysquandered fortunes on mistresses and minions; they made constantprogresses with a retinue of thousands of servants and horses. The twogreatest states, France and Spain, both went into bankruptcy in 1557.

[Sidenote: Public order]

The great task of government, that of keeping public order, protectinglife and property and punishing the criminal, was approached by ourforbears with more gusto than success. The laws were terrible, butthey {481} were unequally executed. In England among capital crimeswere the following: murder, arson, escape from prison, hunting by nightwith painted faces or visors, embezzling property worth more than 40shillings, carrying horses or mares into Scotland, conjuring,practising witchcraft, removing landmarks, desertion from the army,counterfeiting or mutilating coins, cattle-lifting, house-breaking,picking of pockets. All these were punished by hanging, but crimes ofspecial heinousness, such as poisoning, were visited with burning orboiling to death. The numerous laws against treason and heresy havealready been described. Lesser punishments included flogging, pillory,branding, the stocks, clipping ears, piercing tongues, and imprisonmentin dungeons made purposely as horrible as possible, dark, noisome denswithout furniture or conveniences, often too small for a man to standupright or to lie at full length.

[Sidenote: Number of executions]

With such laws it is not surprising that 72,000 men were hanged underHenry VIII, an average of nearly 2,000 a year. The number at present,when the population of England and Wales has swollen to tenfold of whatit was then, is negligible. Only nine men were hanged in the UnitedKingdom in the years 1901-3; about 5,000 are now on the averageannually convicted of felony. If anything, the punishments wereharsher on the Continent than in Britain. The only refuge of thecriminal was the greed of his judges. At Rome it was easy and regularto pay a price for every crime, and at other places bribery was more orless prevalent.

[Sidenote: Cruel trial methods]

The methods of trying criminals were as cruel as their punishments. Onthe Continent the presumption was held to be against the accused, andthe rack and its ghastly retinue of instruments of pain were freelyused to procure confession. Calvin's hard saying that when men feltthe pain they spoke the truth merely {482} expressed the currentdelusion, for legislators and judges, their hearts hardened in part bythe example of the church, concurred in his opinion. The exceptionalprotest of Montaigne deserves to be quoted for its humanity: "All thatexceeds simple death is absolute cruelty, nor can our laws expect thathe whom the fear of decapitation or hanging will not restrain should beawed by imagining the horrors of a slow fire, burning pincers orbreaking on the wheel."

The spirit of the English law was against the use of torture, which,however, made progress, especially in state trials, under the Tudors.A man who refused to plead in an English court was subjected to thepeine forte et dure, which consisted in piling weights on his chestuntil he either spoke or was crushed to death. To enforce the lawsthere was a constabulary in the country, supplemented by the regulararmy, and a police force in the cities. That of Paris consisted of 240archers, among them twenty-four mounted men. The inefficiency of someof the English officers is amusingly caricatured in the persons ofDogberry and Verges who, when they saw a thief, concluded that he wasno honest man and the less they had to meddle or make with him the morefor their honesty.

[Sidenote: Blue laws]

If, in all that has just been said, it is evident that the legislationof that period and of our own had the same conception of the functionof government and only differed in method and efficiency, there was onevery large class of laws spread upon the statute-books of medievalEurope that has almost vanished now. A paternal statesmanship soughtto regulate the private lives of a citizen in every respect: thefashion of his clothes, the number of courses at his meals, how manyguests he might have at wedding, dinner or dance, how long he should bepermitted to haunt the tavern, and how much he should drink, how he{483} should spend Sunday, how he should become engaged, how dance, howpart his hair and with how thick a stick he should be indulged in theluxury of beating his wife.

The "blue laws," as such regulations on their moral side came to becalled, were no Protestant innovation. The Lutherans hardly made anychange whatever in this respect, but Calvin did give a new and bitingintensity to the medieval spirit. His followers, the Puritans, in thenext century, almost succeeded in reducing the staple of a Christianman's legitimate recreation to "seasonable meditation and prayer." Butthe idea originated long before the evolution of "the non-conformistconscience."

The fundamental cause of all this legislation was sheer conservatism.[Sidenote: Spirit of conservatism] Primitive men and savages have sostrong a feeling of the sanction of custom that they have, as Bagehotexpresses it, fairly screwed themselves down by their unreasoningdemands for conformity. A good deal of this spirit has survivedthroughout history and far more of it, naturally, was found fourcenturies ago than at present, when reason has proved a solvent for somany social institutions. There are a good many laws of the periodunder survey—such as that of Nuremberg against citizens parting theirhair—for which no discoverable basis can be found save the idea thatnew-fangled fashions should not be allowed.

Economic reasons also played their part in the regulation of the habitsof the people. Thus a law of Edward VI, after a preamble setting forththat divers kinds of food are indifferent before God, neverthelesscommands all men to eat fish as heretofore on fast days, not as areligious duty but to encourage fishermen, give them a livelihood andthus train men for the navy.

A third very strong motive in the mind of the {484} sixteenth-centurystatesmen, was that of differentiating the classes of citizens. Theblue laws, if they may be so called in this case, were secretions ofthe blue blood. To make the vulgar know their places it was essentialto make them dress according to their rank. The intention of An Actfor the Reformation of excess in Apparel, [Sidenote: Apparel accordingto rank] passed by the English Parliament in 1532, was stated to be,

the necessary repressing and avoiding and expelling of the excess daily more used in the sumptuous and costly apparel and array accustomably worn in this Realm, whereof hath ensued and daily do chance such sundry high and notorious detriments of the common weal, the subversion of good and politic order in knowledge and distinction of people according to their estates, pre-eminences, dignities and degrees to the utter impoverishment and undoing of many inexpert and light persons inclined to pride, mother of all vices.

The tenor of the act prescribes the garb appropriate to the royalfamily, to nobles of different degree, to citizens according to theirincome, to servants and husbandmen, to the clergy, doctors of divinity,soldiers, lawyers and players. Such laws were common in all countries.A Scotch act provides "that it be lauchful to na wemen to weir[clothes] abone [above] their estait except howries." This law was notonly "apprevit" by King James VI, but endorsed with his own royal hand,"This acte is verray gude."

Excessive fare at feasts was provided against for similar reasons andwith almost equal frequency. By an English proclamation [Sidenote:1517] the number of dishes served was to be regulated according to therank of the highest person present. Thus, if a cardinal was guest orhost, there might be nine courses, if a lord of Parliament six, for acitizen with an income of five hundred pounds a year, three. Elsewherethe number of guests at all {485} ordinary functions as well as thenumber and price of gifts at weddings, christenings and like occasions,was prescribed.

[Sidenote: 1526]

Games of chance were frequently forbidden. Francis I ordered alieutenant with twenty archers to visit taverns and gaming houses andarrest all players of cards, dice and other unlawful games. This didnot prevent the establishment of a public lottery, [Sidenote: 1539] apractice justified by alleging the examples of Italian cities inraising revenue by this means. Henry III forbade all games of chance"to minors and other debauched persons," [Sidenote: 1577] and this wasfollowed six years later by a crushing impost on cards and dice,interesting as one of the first attempts to suppress the instruments ofvice through the taxing power. Merry England also had many lawsforbidding "tennis, bowles, dicing and cards," the object being toencourage the practice of archery.

Tippling was the subject of occasional animadversion by the variousgovernments, though there seemed to be little sentiment against ituntil the opening of the following century. The regulation of thenumber of taverns and of the amount of wine that might be kept in agentleman's cellar, as prescribed in an English law, [Sidenote: 1553]mentions not the moral but the economic aspect of drinking. Thepurchase of French wines was said to drain England of money.

Though the theater also did not suffer much until the time of Cromwell,plays were forbidden in the precincts of the city of London. The Bookof Discipline in Scotland forbade attendance at theaters. [Sidenote:1574] Calvin thoroughly disapproved of them, and even Lutherconsidered them "fools' work" and at times dangerous.

Commendable efforts to suppress the practice of duelling were led bythe Catholic church. Clement {486} VII forbade it in a bull,[Sidenote: 1524] confirmed by a decree of Council of Trent. [Sidenote:1563] An extraordinarily worded French proclamation of 1566 forbade"all gentlemen and others to give each other the lie and, if they dogive each other the lie, to fight a duel about it." Other governmentstook the matter up very sluggishly. Scotland forbade "the greatliberty that sundry persons take in provoking each other to singularcombats upon sudden and frivol occasions," without license from hismajesty.

Two matters on which the Puritans felt very keenly, [Sidenote: 1551]blasphemy and Sabbath-breaking, were but scantily looked after in thecentury of the Reformation. Scotland forbade "grievous and abominableoaths, swearing, execrations and blasphemation," and somewhat similarlaws can be found in other countries. Scotland was also a pioneer inforbidding on the Sabbath all work, "gaming, playing, passing totaverns and ale-houses and wilful remaining away from the parish kirkin time of sermon."

[Sidenote: Mail]

Government has other functions than the enforcement of the civil andcriminal law. Almost contemporary with the opening of the century wasthe establishment of post offices for the forwarding of letters. AfterMaximilian had made a start in the Netherlands other countries were notslow to follow his example. Though under special governmentsupervision at first these letter-carriers were private men.

[Sidenote: Sanitation]

In the Middle Ages there had been efforts to safeguard publicsanitation. The sixteenth century did not greatly improve on them.Thus, Geneva passed a law that garbage and other refuse should not beallowed to lie in the streets for more than three days in summer oreight days in winter. In extreme cases quarantine was adopted as aprecaution against epidemics.

{487} [Sidenote: War]

It is the most heart-breaking or the most absurd fact in human history,according as the elements involved are focused in a humane or in acynical light, that the chief energies of government as well as themost zealous forces of peoples, have been dedicated since civilizationbegan to the practice of wholesale homicide. As we look back from theexperience of the Great War to the conflicts of other times, they seemto our jaded imaginations almost as childish as they were vicious. Inthe sixteenth century, far more than in the nineteenth, the nationsboiled and bubbled with spleen and jealousy, hurled Thrasonical threatsand hyperbolic boasts in each other's teeth, breathing out mutualextermination with no compunctious visitings of nature to stay theirhungry swords—but when they came to blows they had not the power ofboys. The great nations were always fighting but never fought to afinish. In the whole century no national capital west of Hungary, saveRome and Edinburgh, was captured by an enemy. The real harm was notdone on the battlefield, where the carnage was incredibly small, but inthe raids and looting of town and country by the professional assassinswho filled the ranks of the hireling troops. Then, indeed, cities wereburned, wealth was plundered and destroyed, men were subjected tonameless tortures and women to indescribable outrages, and childrenwere tossed on pikes. Nor did war seem then to shock the publicconscience, as it has at last succeeded in doing. The people sawnothing but dazzling glory in the slaughter of foemen on the strickenfield, in the fanfare of the trumpets and the thunder of the captainsand the shouting. Soldiers, said Luther, founding his opinion on thecanon law, might be in a state of grace, for war was as necessary aseating, drinking or any other business. Statesmen like Machiavelli andBacon were keen for the largest armies {488} possible, as the mainstayof a nation's power. Only Erasmus was a clear-sighted pacifist, alwaysdeclaiming against war and once asserting that he agreed with Cicero inthinking the most unjust peace preferable to the justest war.Elsewhere he admitted that wars of self-defence were necessary.

[Sidenote: Arms]

Fire-arms had not fully established their ascendancy in the period ofFrundsberg, or even of Alva. As late as 1596 an English soldierlamented that his countrymen neglected the bow for the gun.Halberdiers with pikes were the core of the army. Artillery sometimesinflicted very little damage, as at Flodden, sometimes considerable, asat Marignano, where, with the French cavalry, it struck down the tillthen almost invincible Swiss infantry. In battle arquebusiers andmusketeers were interspersed with cross-bowmen. Cannon of a large typegave way to smaller field-guns; even the idea of the machine-gunemerged in the fifteenth century. The name of them, "organs," wastaken from their appearance with numerous barrels from which as many asfifty bullets could be discharged at a time. Cannon were transportedto the field on carts. Rifles were invented by a German in 1520, butnot much used. Pistols were first manufactured at Pistoia—whence thename—about 1540. Bombs were first used in 1588.

The arts of fortification and of siege were improved together, manyingenious devices being called into being by the technically difficultwar of the Spaniards against the Dutch. Tactics were not so perfect asthey afterwards became and of strategy there was no consistent theory.Machiavelli, who wrote on the subject, based his ideas on the practiceof Rome and therefore despised fire-arms and preferred infantry tocavalry. Discipline was severe, and needed to be, notwithstandingwhich there were sporadic and often very annoying {489} mutinies.Punishments were terrible, as in civil life. Blasphemy, cards, dicing,duelling and women were forbidden in most regular armies, but in timeof war the soldiers were allowed an incredible license in pillaging andin foraging. Rings and other decorations were given as rewards ofvalor. Uniforms began first to be introduced in England by Henry VIII.

[Sidenote: Personnel of the armies]

The personnel of the armies was extremely bad. Not counting the smallnumber of criminals who were allowed to expiate their misdeeds bymilitary service, the rank and file consisted of mercenaries who onlytoo rapidly became criminals under the tutelage of Mars. There were afew conscripts, but no universal training such as Machiavellirecommended. The officers were nobles or gentlemen who served for theprestige and glory of the profession of arms, as well as for the goodpay.

[Sidenote: Size of armies compared]

But the most striking difference between armies then and now is not intheir armament nor in their quality but in the size. Great battleswere fought and whole campaigns decided with twenty or thirty thousandtroops. The French standing army was fixed by the ordinance of 1534 atseven legions of six thousand men each, besides which were themercenaries, the whole amounting to a maximum, under Francis I, ofabout 100,000 men. The English official figures about 1588 gave thearmy 90,000 foot soldiers and 9000 horse, but these figures weregrossly exaggerated. In fact only 22,000 men were serviceable at thecrisis of England's war with Spain. Other armies were proportionatelysmall. The janizaries, whose intervention often decided battles,numbered in 1520 only 12,000. They were perhaps the best troops inEurope, as the Turkish artillery was the most powerful known. What allthese figures show, in short, is that the phenomenon of nations withevery man physically fit in {490} the army, engaging in a death grappleuntil one goes down in complete exhaustion, is a modern development.

[Sidenote: Sea power]

The influence of sea power upon history has become proverbial, if,indeed, it has not been overestimated since Admiral Mahan first wrote.It may be pointed out that this influence is far from a constantfactor. Sea power had a considerable importance in the wars of Greeceand of Rome, but in the Middle Ages it became negligible. Only withthe opening of the seven seas to navigation was the command of thewaves found to secure the avenues to wealth and colonial expansion. InPortugal, Spain, and England, "the blue water school" of marinersspeedily created navies whose strife was apparently more decisive forthe future of history than were the battles of armies on land.

When the trade routes of the Atlantic superseded those of theMediterranean in importance, naturally methods of navigation changed,and this involved a revolution in naval warfare greater than thatcaused by steam or by the submarine. From the time that Helen's beautylaunched a thousand ships until the battle of Lepanto, the oar had beenthe chief instrument of locomotion, though supplemented, even fromHomeric times, by the sail. Naval battles were like those on land; theenemy keels approached and the soldiers on each strove to board andmaster the other's crew. The only distinctly naval tactic was that of"ramming," as it was called in a once vivid metaphor.

But the wild winds and boisterous waves of the Atlantic broke the oarin the galley-slave's hand and the muscles in his back. Once again manharnessed the hostile forces of nature; the free breezes were broken tothe yoke and new types of sailing ships were driven at racing speedacross the broad back of the sea. Swift, yare vessels were built, atfirst smaller than the {491} old galleons but infinitely moremanageable. And the new boats, armed with thunder as they were cladwith wings, no longer sought to sink or capture enemies at closequarters, but hurled destruction from afar. Heavy guns took the placeof small weapons and of armed prow.

It was England's genius for the sea that enabled her to master the newconditions first and most completely and that placed the trident in herhands so firmly that no enemy has ever been able to wrest it from her.Henry VIII paid great attention to the navy. He had fifty-threevessels with an aggregate of 11,268 tons, an average of 200 tons each,carrying 1750 soldiers, 1250 sailors and 2085 guns. Under Elizabeththe number of vessels had sunk to 42, but the tonnage had risen to17,055, and the crews numbered 5534 seamen, 804 gunners and 2008soldiers. The largest ships of the Tudor navy were of 1000 tons; theflagship of the Spanish Armada was 1150 tons, carrying 46 guns and 422men. How tiny are these figures! A single cruiser of today has alarger tonnage than the whole of Elizabeth's fleet; a large submarineis greater than the monsters of Philip.

SECTION 4. PRIVATE LIFE AND MANNERS

Of all the forces making for equality among men probably the educationof the masses by means of cheap books and papers has been thestrongest. But this force has been slow to ripen; at the close of theMiddle Ages the common man was still helpless. The old privilegedorders were indeed weakened and despoiled of part of theirprerogatives, but it was chiefly by the rise of a new aristocracy, thatof wealth.

[Sidenote: Nobility]

The decay of feudalism and of ecclesiastical privilege took the form ofa changed and not of an abolished position for peer and priest. Theywere not cashiered, {492} but they were retained on cheaper terms. Thefeudal baron had been a petty king; his descendant had the option ofbecoming either a highwayman or a courtier. As the former alternativebecame less and less rewarding, the greater part of the old noblesabandoned their pretensions to independence and found a congenialsphere as satellities of a monarch, "le roi soleil," as a typical kingwas aptly called, whose beams they reflected and around whom theycircled.

As titles of nobility began now to be quite commonly given to men ofwealth and also to politicians, the old blood was renewed at theexpense of the ancient pride. Not, indeed, that the latter showed anysigns of diminishing. The arrogance of the noble was past alltoleration. Men of rank treated the common citizens like dirt beneaththeir feet, and even regarded artists and other geniuses as menials.Alphonso, duke of Ferrara, wrote to Raphael in terms that no king wouldnow use to a photographer, calling him a liar and chiding him fordisrespect to his superior. The same duke required Ariosto toprostitute his genius by writing an apology for a fratricide committedby his grace. The duke of Mayenne poniarded one of his most devotedfollowers for having aspired to the hand of the duke's widoweddaughter-in-law. So difficult was it to conceive of a "gentleman"without gentle blood that Castiglione, the arbiter of manners, laysdown as the first prerequisite to a perfect courtier that he shall beof high birth. And of course those who had not this advantagepretended to it. An Italian in London noticed in 1557 that allgentlemen without other title insisted on being called "mister."

[Sidenote: Professions]

One sign of the break-up of the old medieval castes was the newclassification of men by calling, or profession. It is true that twoof the professions, the {493} higher offices in army and church, becameapanages of the nobility, and the other liberal vocations were almostas completely monopolized by the children of the moneyed middle class;nevertheless it is significant that there were new roads by which menmight rise. No class has profited more by the evolution of ideas thanhas the intelligentsia. From a subordinate, semi-menial position,lawyers, physicians, educators and journalists, not to mention artistsand writers, have become the leading, almost the ruling, body of ourwestern democracies.

[Sidenote: Clergy]

Half way between a medieval estate and a modern calling stood theclergy. In Catholic countries they remained very numerous; there were136 episcopal or archiepiscopal sees in France; there were 40,000parish priests, with an equal number of secular clergy in subordinatepositions, 24,000 canons, 34,000 friars, 2500 Jesuits (in 1600), 12,000monks and 80,000 nuns. Though there were doubtless many worthy menamong them, it cannot honestly be said that the average were fittedeither morally or intellectually for their positions. Grossly ignorantof the meaning of the Latin in which they recited their masses and ofthe main articles of their faith, many priests made up for thesedefects by proficiency in a variety of superstitious charms. Thepublic was accustomed to see nuns dancing at bridals and priestshaunting taverns and worse resorts. Some attempts, serious andpartially successful, at reform, have been already described. Profaneand amatory plays were forbidden in nunneries, bullfights were banishedfrom the Vatican and the dangers of the confessional were diminished bythe invention of the closed box in which the priest should sit and hearhis penitent through a small aperture instead of having her kneeling athis knees. So depraved was public opinion on the subject of theconfession that a {494} prolonged controversy took place in Spain as towhether minor acts of impurity perpetrated by the priest whileconfessing women were permissible or not.

[Sidenote: Conditions of the Protestant clergy]

Neither was the average Protestant clergyman a shining and a burninglight. So little was the calling regarded that it was hard to fill it.At one time a third of the parishes of England were said to lackincumbents. The stipends were wretched; the social position obscure.The wives of the new clergy had an especially hard lot, being regardedby the people as little better than concubines, and by Parliamentcalled "necessary evils." The English government had to issueinjunctions in 1559 stating that because of the offence that has comefrom the type of women commonly selected as helpmates by parsons, nomanner of priest or deacon should presume to marry without consent ofthe bishop, of the girl's parents, "or of her master or mistress whereshe serveth." Many clergymen, nevertheless, afterwards marrieddomestics.

Very little was done to secure a properly trained ministry. Less thanhalf of the 2000 clergymen ordained at Wittenberg from 1537-60 wereuniversity men; the majority were drapers, tailors and cobblers,"common idiots and laymen" as they were called—though the word "idiot"did not have quite the same disparaging sense that it has now. Norwere the reverend gentlemen of unusually high character. As nothingwas demanded of them but purity of doctrine, purity of life sank intothe background. It is really amazing to see how an acquaintance ofLuther's succeeded in getting one church after he had been dismissedfrom another on well-founded charges of seduction, and how he wasthereafter convicted of rape. This was perhaps an extreme case, butthat the majority of clergymen were morally unworthy is the {495}melancholy conviction borne in by contemporary records.

[Sidenote: Character of sermons]

Sermons were long, doctrinal and political. Cranmer advised Latimernot to preach more than an hour and a half lest the king grow weary.How the popular preacher—in this case a Catholic—appealed to hisaudience, is worth quoting from a sermon delivered at Landau in 1550.

The Lutherans [began the reverend gentleman] are opposed to the worship of Mary and the saints. Now, my friends, be good enough to listen to me. The soul of a man who had died got to the door of heaven and Peter shut it in his face. Luckily, the Mother of God was taking a stroll outside with her sweet Son. The deceased addresses her and reminds her of the Paters and Aves he has recited in her glory and the candles he has burnt before her images. Thereupon Mary says to Jesus: "It's the honest truth, my Son." The Lord, however, objected and addressed the suppliant: "Hast thou never heard that I am the way and the door to life everlasting?" he asks. "If thou art the door, I am the window," retorted Mary, taking the "soul" by the hair and flinging it through the open casement. And now I ask you whether it is not the same whether you enter Paradise by the door or by the window?

There was a naïve familiarity with sacred things in our ancestors thatcannot be imitated. Who would now name a ship "Jesus," as Hawkins'sbuccaneering slaver was named? What serious clergyman would nowcompare three of his friends to the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,as did Luther? The Reformer also wrote a satire on the calling of acouncil, in the form of a letter from the Holy Ghost signed by Gabrielas notary and witnessed by Michael the Provost of Paradise and Raphael,God's Court Physician. At another time he made a lampoon on thecollection of {496} relics made by his enemy the Archbishop of Mayence,stating that they contained such things as "a fair piece of Moses' lefthorn, a whole pound of the wind that blew for Elijah in the cave onMount Horeb and two feathers and an egg of the Holy Ghost" as a dove.All this, of course, not in ribald profanity, but in works intended foredification. . . .

[Sidenote: The city]

Though beautiful, the city of our ancestors was far from admirable inother ways. Filth was hidden under its comely garments, so that itresembled a Cossack prince—all ermine and vermin. Its narrow streets,huddled between strong walls, were over-run with pigs and chickens andfilled with refuse. They were often ill-paved, flooded with mud andslush in winter. Moreover they were dark and dangerous at night,infested with princes and young nobles on a spree and with othercriminals.

[Sidenote: The house]

Like the exterior, the interior of the house of a substantial citizenwas more pretty than clean or sweet smelling. The high wainscoting andthe furniture, in various styles, but frequently resembling what is nowknown as "mission," was lovely, as were the ornaments—tapestries,clocks, pictures and flowers. But the place of carpets was supplied byrushes renewed from time to time without disturbing the underlying massof rubbish beneath. Windows were fewer than they are now, and firesstill fewer. Sometimes there was an open hearth, sometimes a huge tilestove. Most houses had only one or two rooms heated, sometimes, as inthe case of the Augustinian friary at Wittenberg, only the bathroom,but usually also the living room.

[Sidenote: Dress]

The dress of the people was far more various and picturesque thannowadays. Both sexes dressed in gaudy colors and delighted in strangefashions, so that, {497} is Roger Ascham said, "he thought himself mostbrave that was most monstrous in misorder." For women the fashion ofdecolleté was just coming in, as so many fashions do, from thedemi-monde. To Catharine de' Medici is attributed the invention of thecorset, an atrocity to be excused only by her own urgent need of one.

[Sidenote: Food]

The day began at five in summer and at seven in winter. A heavybreakfast was followed by a heavier dinner at ten, and supper at five,and there were between times two or three other tiffins or "drinkings."The staple food was meat and cereal; very few of our vegetables wereknown, though some were just beginning to be cultivated. [Sidenote:1585-6] The most valuable article of food introduced from the newworld was the potato. Another importation that did not becomethoroughly acclimatized in Europe was the turkey. Even now they arerare, but there are several interesting allusions to them in theliterature of that time, one of the year 1533 in Luther's table talk.Poultry of other sorts was common, as were eggs, game and fish. Thecooking relied for its highest effects on sugar and spices. Theordinary fruits—apples, cherries and oranges—furnished a wholesomeand pleasing variety to the table. Knives and spoons were used ineating, but forks were unknown, at least in northern Europe.

[Sidenote: Drink]

All the victuals were washed down with copious potations. Awater-drinker, like Sir Thomas More, was the rarest of exceptions. Thepoor drank chiefly beer and ale; the mildest sort, known as "smallbeer," was recommended to the man suffering from too strong drink ofthe night before. Wine was more prized, and there were a number ofvarieties. There being no champagne, Burgundy was held in high esteem,as were some of the strong, sweet, Spanish and Portuguese {498} wines.The most harmless drinks were claret and Rhine wine. There were some"mixed drinks," such as sack or hippocras, in which beer or wine wassophisticated with eggs, spices and sugar. The quantities habituallydrunk were large. Roger Ascham records that Charles V drank the besthe ever saw, never less than a quart at a draft. The breakfast tableof an English nobleman was set out with a quart of wine and a quart ofbeer, liquor then taking the place of tea, coffee, chocolate and allthe "soft" beverages that now furnish stimulation and sociability.

[Sidenote: Tobacco, 1573]

"In these times," wrote Harrison, "the taking-in of the smoke of anIndian herb called 'Tobaco' by an instrument formed like a little ladle. . . is greatly taken up and used in England against rewmes [colds]and some other diseases." Like other drugs, tobacco soon came to beused as a narcotic for its own sake, and was presently celebrated as"divine tobacco" and "our holy herb nicotian" by the poets. What,indeed, are smoking, drinking, and other wooings of pure sensation atthe sacrifice of power and reason, but a sort of pragmatized poetry?Some ages, and those the most poetical, like that of Pericles and thatof Rabelais, have deified intoxication and sensuality; others, markedlyour own, have preferred the accumulation of wealth and knowledge tosensual indulgence. It is a psychological contrast of importance.

Could we be suddenly transported on Mr. Wells's time machine fourhundred years back we should be less struck by what our ancestors hadthan by what they lacked. Quills took the place of fountain pens,pencils, typewriters and dictaphones. Not only was postage dearer butthere were no telephones or telegrams to supplement it. The world'snews of yesterday, which we imbibe with our morning cup, then sifteddown slowly through various media of {499} communication, mostly oral.It was two months after the battle before Philip of Spain knew the fateof his own Armada. The houses had no steam heat, no elevators; thebusy housewife was aided by no vacuum cleaner, sewing machine and gasranges; the business man could not ride to his office, nor the farmerto his market, in automobiles. There were neither railways norsteamships to make travel rapid and luxurious.

[Sidenote: Travel]

Nevertheless, journeys for purposes of piety, pleasure and businesswere common. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, Compostella, Loretto,Walsingham and many other shrines were frequent in Catholic countries.Students were perpetually wandering from one university to another:merchants were on the road, and gentlemen felt the attractions ofsight-seeing. The cheap and common mode of locomotion was on foot.Boats on the rivers and horses on land furnished the alternatives. Theroads were so poor that the horses were sometimes "almost shipwrecked."The trip from Worms to Rome commonly took twelve days, but could bemade in seven. Xavier's voyage from Lisbon to Goa took thirteenmonths. Inns were good in France and England; less pleasant elsewhere.Erasmus particularly abominated the German inns, where a large livingand dining room would be heated to a high temperature by a stove aroundwhich travelers would dry their steaming garments. The smells causedby those operations, together with the fleas and mice with which thepoorer inns were infested, made the stay anything but luxurious. Anycomplaint was met by the retort, "If you don't like it, go somewhereelse," a usually impracticable alternative. When the traveller wasescorted to his bedroom, he found it very cold in winter, though thefeatherbeds kept him warm enough. He would see his chamber filled withother beds occupied by his travelling companions of both {500} sexes,and he himself was often forced to share his bed with a stranger. Thecustom of the time was to take one bath a week. For this there werepublic bath-houses, [Sidenote: Baths] frequented by both sexes. Acommon form of entertainment was the "bath-party."

[Sidenote: Sports]

With the same insatiable gusto that they displayed in other matters thecontemporaries of Luther and Shakespeare went in for amusements. Neverhas the theater been more popular. Many sports, like bear-baiting andbull-baiting, were cruel. Hunting was also much relished, thoughhumane men like Luther and More protested against the "silly and woefulbeastes' slaughter and murder." Tennis was so popular that there were250 courts in Paris alone. The game was different from the modern inthat the courts were 121 feet long, instead of 78 feet, and the woodenballs and "bats"—as racquets are still called in England—were muchharder. Cards and dice were passionately played, a game called"triumph" or "trump" being the ancestor of our whist. Chess was playednearly as now.

Young people loved dances and some older people shook their heads overthem, then as now. Melanchthon danced, at the age of forty-four, andLuther approved of such parties, properly chaperoned, as a means ofbringing young people together. On the other hand dances wereregulated in many states and prohibited in others, like Zurich andGeneva. Some of the dances were quite stately, like the minuet, otherswere boisterous romps, in which the girls were kissed, embraced andwhirled around giddily by their partners. The Scotch ambassador'scomment that Queen Elizabeth "danced very high" gives an impression ofagility that would hardly now be considered in the best taste.

[Sidenote: Manners]

The veneer of courtesy was thin. True, humanists, {501} publicists andauthors composed for each other eulogies that would have beenhyperboles if addressed to the morning stars singing at the dawn ofcreation, but once a quarrel had been started among the touchy race ofwriters and a spouting geyser of inconceivable scurrility burst forth.No imagery was too nasty, no epithet too strong, no charge too base tobring against an opponent. The heroic examples of Greek and Romaninvective paled before the inexhaustible resources of learnedbillingsgate stored in the minds of the humanists and theologians. Toaccuse an enemy of atheism and heresy was a matter of course; to addcharges of unnatural vice or, if he were dead, stories of suicide andof the devils hovering greedily over his deathbed, was extremelycommon. Even crowned heads exchanged similar amenities.

Withal, there was growing up a strong appreciation of the merits ofcourtesy. Was not Bayard, the captain in the army of Francis I a"knight without fear and without reproach"? Did not Sir Philip Sidneydo one of the perfect deeds of gentleness when, dying on the battlefield and tortured with thirst, he passed his cup of water to a commonsoldier with the simple words, "Thy need is greater than mine"? One ofthe most justly famous and most popular books of the sixteenth centurywas Baldessare Castiglione's Book of the Courtier, called by Dr.Johnson the best treatise on good breeding ever written. Published inItalian in 1528, it was translated into Spanish in 1534, into French in1537, into English and Latin in 1561, and finally into German in 1566.There have been of it more than 140 editions. It sets forth an idealof a Prince Charming, a man of noble birth, expert in games and in war,brave, modest, unaffected, witty, an elegant speaker, a good dancer,familiar with literature and accomplished in music, as well as a man ofhonor {502} and courtesy. It is significant that this ideal appealedto the time, though it must be confessed it was rarely reached.Ariosto, to whom the first book was dedicated by the author, depicts,as his ideals, knights in whom the sense of honor has completelyreplaced all Christian virtues. They were always fighting each otherabout their loves, much like the bulls, lions, rams and dogs to whomthe poet continually compares them. Even the women were hardly safe intheir company.

Sometimes a brief anecdote will stamp a character as no longdescription will do. The following are typical of the manners of ourforbears:

One winter morning a stately matron was ascending the steps of thechurch of St. Gudule at Brussels. They were covered with ice; sheslipped and took a precipitate and involuntary seat. In the anguish ofthe moment, a single word, of mere obscenity, escaped her lips. Whenthe laughing bystanders, among whom was Erasmus, helped her to herfeet, she beat a hasty retreat, crimson with shame. Nowadays ladies donot have such a vocabulary at their tongue's end.

The Spanish ambassador Enriquez de Toledo was at Rome calling onImperia de Cugnatis, a lady who, though of the demi-monde, lived like aprincess, cultivated letters and art, and had many poets as well asmany nobles among her friends. Her floors were carpeted with velvetrugs, her walls hung with golden cloth, and her tables loaded withcostly bric-a-brac. The Spanish courtier suddenly turned and spatcopiously in the face of his lackey and then explained to the slightlystartled company that he chose this objective rather than soil thesplendor he saw around him. The disgusting act passed for a delicateand successful flattery.

[Sidenote: 1538]

Among the students at Wittenberg was a certain Simon Lemchen, orLemnius, a lewd fellow of the baser {503} sort who published twovolumes of scurrilous epigrams bringing unfounded and nasty chargesagainst Luther, Melanchthon and the other Reformers and their wives.When he fled the city before he could be arrested, Luther revengedhimself partly by a Catilinarian sermon, partly by composing, forcirculation among his friends, some verses about Lemnius in which thescurrility and obscenity of the offending youth were well over-trumped.One would be surprised at similar measures taken by a professor ofdivinity today.

[Sidenote: Morals]

In measuring the morals of a given epoch statistics are not applicable;or, at any rate, it is probably true that the general impression onegets of the moral tone of any period is more trustworthy than would begot from carefully compiled figures. And that one does get such animpression, and a very strong one, is undeniable. Everyone has in hismind a more or less distinct idea of the ethical standards of ancientAthens, of Rome, of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the PuritanCommonwealth, the Restoration, the Victorian Age.

The sixteenth century was a time when morals were perhaps not muchworse than they are now, but when vice and crime were more flaunted andtalked about. Puritanism and prudery have nowadays done their best toconceal the corruption and indecency beneath the surface. But ourancestors had no such delicacy. The naïve frankness of the age, bothwhen it gloried in the flesh and when it reproved sin, gives afull-blooded complexion to that time that is lacking now. The largeaverage consumption of alcohol—a certain irritant to moralmaladies—and the unequal administration of justice, with laws at oncesavage and corruptly dispensed, must have had bad consequences.

The Reformation had no permanent discernible {504} effect on moralstandards. Accompanied as it often was with a temporary zeal forrighteousness, it was too often followed by a breaking up ofconventional standards and an emphasis on dogma at the expense ofcharacter, that operated badly. Latimer thought that the EnglishReformation had been followed by a wave of wickedness. Luther saidthat when the devil of the papacy had been driven out, seven otherdevils entered to take its place, and that at Wittenberg a man wasconsidered quite a saint who could say that he had not broken the firstcommandment, but only the other nine. Much of this complaint must beset down to disappointment at not reaching perfection, and over againstit may be set many testimonies to the moral benefits assured by thereform.

[Sidenote: Violence]

It was an age of violence. Murder was common everywhere. On theslightest provocation a man of spirit was expected to whip out a rapieror dagger and plunge it into his insulter. The murder of unfaithfulwives was an especial point of honor. Benvenuto Cellini boasts ofseveral assassinations and numerous assaults, and he himself got offwithout a scratch from the law, Pope Paul III graciously protestingthat "men unique in their profession, like Benvenuto, were not subjectto the laws." The number of unique men must have been large in theHoly City, for in 1497 a citizen testified that he had seen more than ahundred bodies of persons foully done to death thrown into the Tiber,and no one bothered about it.

[Sidenote: Brigandage]

Brigandage stalked unabashed through the whole of Europe. By 1585 thenumber of bandits in the papal states alone had risen to 27,000.Sixtus V took energetic means to repress them. One of his stratagemsis too characteristic to omit mentioning. He had a train of mulesloaded with poisoned food and then {505} drove them along a road heknew to be infested by highwaymen, who, as he had calculated, actuallytook them and ate of the food, of which many died.

Other countries were perhaps less scourged by robbers, but none wasfree. Erasmus's praise of Henry VIII, in 1519, for having cleared hisrealm of free-booters, was premature. In the wilder parts, especiallyon the Scotch border, they were still rife. In 1529 the Armstrongs ofLidderdale, just over the border, could boast that they had burned 52churches, besides making heavy depredations on private property. WhenJames V took stern measures to suppress them, [Sidenote: 1532] andinstituted a College of Justice for that purpose, the good law wasunpopular.

Bands of old soldiers and new recruits wandered through France, Spainand the Netherlands. The worst robbers in Germany were the freeknights. From their picturesque castles they emerged to pillagepeaceful villages and trains of merchandise going from one walled cityto another. In doing so they inflicted wanton mutilations on theunfortunate merchants whom they regarded as their natural prey. Eventhe greatest of them, like Francis von Sickingen, were not ashamed to"let their horses bite off travellers' purses" now and then. But itwas not only the nobles who became gentlemen of the road. A well-to-domerchant of Berlin, named John Kohlhase, was robbed of a couple ofhorses by a Saxon squire, and, failing to get redress in the corruptcourts, threw down the gauntlet to the whole of Electoral Saxony in aproclamation that he would rob, burn and take reprisals until he wasgiven compensation for his loss. For six years [Sidenote: 1534-40] hemaintained himself as a highwayman, but was finally taken and executedin Brandenburg.

[Sidenote: Fraud]

Fraud of all descriptions was not less rampant than force. WhenMachiavelli reduced to a reasoned {506} theory the practice of allhypocrisy and guile, the courts of Europe were only too ready to listento his advice. In fact, they carried their mutual attempts atdeception to a point that was not only harmful to themselves, butridiculous, making it a principle to violate oaths and to debase thecurrency of good faith in every possible way. There was also muchuntruth in private life. Unfortunately, lying in the interests ofpiety was justified by Luther, while the Jesuits made a soul-rottingart of equivocation.

[Sidenote: Unchastity]

The standard of sexual purity was disturbed by a reaction against theasceticism of the Middle Ages. Luther proclaimed that chastity wasimpossible, while the humanists gloried in the flesh. Public opinionwas not scandalized by prostitution; learned men occasionally debatedwhether fornication was a sin, and the Italians now began to call aharlot a "courteous woman" [Sidenote: c. 1500] (courtesan) as theycalled an assassin a "brave man" (bravo). Augustine had said thatharlots were remedies against worse things, and the church had not onlywinked at brothels, but frequently licensed them herself. Bastardy wasno bar to hereditary right in Italy.

The Reformers tried to make a clean sweep of the "social evil." UnderLuther's direction brothels were closed in the reformed cities. Whenthis was done at Strassburg the women drew up a petition, stating thatthey had pursued their profession not from liking but only to earnbread, and asked for honest work. Serious attempts were made to giveit to them, or to get them husbands. At Zurich and some other citiesthe brothels were left open, but were put under the supervision of anofficer who was to see that no married men frequented them. Thereformers had a strange ally in the growing fear of venereal diseases.Other countries followed Germany in their war on the prostitute. InLondon the public houses of ill fame {507} were closed in 1546, inParis in 1560. An edict of July 23, 1566 commanded all prostitutes toleave Rome, but when 25,000 persons, including the women and theirdependents, left the city, the loss of public revenue induced the popeto allow them to return on August 17 of the same year.

[Sidenote: Polygamy]

One of the striking aberrations of the sixteenth century, as it seemsto us, was the persistent advocacy of polygamy as, if not desirable initself, at least preferable to divorce. Divorce or annulment ofmarriage was not hard to obtain by people of influence, whetherCatholic or Protestant, but it was a more difficult matter than it isin America now. In Scotland there was indeed a sort of trial marriage,known as "handfasting," by which the parties might live together for ayear and a day and then continue as married or separate. But,beginning with Luther, many of the Reformers thought polygamy lesswrong than divorce, on the biblical ground that whereas the former hadbeen practised in the Old Testament times and was not clearly forbiddenby the New Testament, divorce was prohibited save for adultery. Lutheradvanced this thesis as early as 1520, when it was purely theoretical,but he did not shrink from applying it on occasion. It isextraordinary what a large body of reputable opinion was prepared totolerate polygamy, at least in exceptional cases. Popes, theologians,humanists like Erasmus, and philosophers like Bruno, all thought aplurality of wives a natural condition.

[Sidenote: Marriage]

But all the while the instincts of the masses were sounder in thisrespect than the precepts of their guides. While polygamy remained afreakish and exceptional practice, the passions of the age wereabsorbed to a high degree by monogamous marriage. Matrimony havingbeen just restored to its proper dignity as the best estate for man,its praises were {508} sounded highly. The church, indeed, remainedtrue to her preference for celibacy, but the Inquisition found muchbusiness in suppressing the then common opinion that marriage wasbetter than virginity. To the Reformers marriage was not only thenecessary condition of happiness to mankind, but the typically holyestate in which God's service could best be done. From all sidespaeans arose celebrating matrimony as the true remedy for sin and alsoas the happiest estate. The delights of wedded love are celebratedequally in Luther's table talk and letters and in the poems of theItalian humanist Pontano. "I have always been of the opinion," writesAriosto, "that without a wife at his side no man can attain perfectgoodness or live without sin." "In marriage there is one mind in twobodies," says Henry Cornelius Agrippa, "one harmony, the same sorrows,the same joys, an identical will, common riches, poverty and honors,the same bed and the same table. . . . Only a husband and wife canlove each other infinitely and serve each other as long as both dolive, for no love is either so vehement or so holy as theirs."

The passion for marriage in itself is witnessed by the practice ofwidows and widowers of remarrying as soon and as often as possible.[Sidenote: Remarriage common] Luther's friend, Justus Jonas, marriedthrice, each time with a remark to the effect that it was better tomarry than to burn. The English Bishop Richard Cox excused his secondmarriage, at an advanced age, by an absurd letter lamenting that he hadnot the gift of chastity. Willibrandis Rosenblatt married insuccession Louis Keller, Oecolampadius, Capito and Bucer, theecclesiastical eminence of her last three husbands giving her, onewould think, an almost official position. Sir Thomas More married asecond wife just one month after his first wife's death.

{509} [Sidenote: Treatment of wives]

Sad to relate, the wives so necessary to men's happiness werefrequently ill treated after they were won. In the sixteenth centurywomen were still treated as minors; if married they could make no will;their husbands could beat them with impunity, for cruelty was no causefor divorce. Sir Thomas More's home-life is lauded by Erasmus as avery paragon, because "he got more compliance from his wife by jokesand blandishments than most husbands by imperious harshness." One ofthese jokes, a customary one, was that his wife was neither pretty noryoung; one of the "blandishments," I suppose, was an epigram by SirThomas to the effect that though a wife was a heavy burden she might beuseful if she would die and leave her husband money. In Utopia, heassures us, husbands chastise their wives.

[Sidenote: Position of woman]

In the position of women various currents crossed each other. The oldhorror of the temptress, inherited from the early church, the loftyscorn exhibited by the Greek philosophers, mingled with strands ofchivalry and a still newer appreciation of the real dignity of womanand of her equal powers. Ariosto treated women like spoiled children;the humanists delighted to rake up the old jibes at them in mustyauthors; the divines were hardest of all in their judgment. "Naturedoth paint them forth," says John Knox of women, "to be weak, frail,impatient, feeble and foolish, and experience hath declared them to beunconstant, variable, cruel and void of the spirit of council andregimen." "If women bear children until they become sick andeventually die," preaches Luther, "that does no harm. Let them bearchildren till they die of it; that is what they are for." In 1595 thequestion was debated at Wittenberg as to whether women were humanbeings. The general tone was one of disparagement. An anthology mightbe made of the {510} proverbs recommending (à la Nietzsche) the whip asthe best treatment for the sex.

But withal there was a certain chivalry that revolted against all thisbrutality. Castiglione champions courtesy and kindness to women on thehighest and most beautiful ground, the spiritual value of woman's love.Ariosto sings:

No doubt they are accurst and past all grace
That dare to strike a damsel in the face,
Or of her head to minish but a hair.

Certain works like T. Elyot's Defence of Good Women and likeCornelius Agrippa's Nobility and Excellence of the Female Sex,witness a genuine appreciation of woman's worth. Some critics haveseen in the last named work a paradox, like the Praise of Folly, suchas was dear to the humanists. To me it seems absolutely sincere, evenwhen it goes so far as to proclaim that woman is as superior to man asman is to beast and to celebrate her as the last and supreme work ofthe creation.

[Sidenote: Children]

The family was far larger, on the average, in the sixteenth centurythan it is now. One can hardly think of any man in this generationwith as many as a dozen children; it is possible to mention several ofthat time with over twenty. Anthony Koberger, the famous Nurembergprinter had twenty-five children, eight by his first and seventeen byhis second wife. Albert Dürer was the third of eighteen children ofthe same couple, of whom apparently only three reached maturity. JohnColet, born in 1467, was the eldest of twenty-two brothers and sistersof whom by 1499 he was the only survivor. Of course these familieswere exceptional, but not glaringly so. A brood of six to twelve was avery common occurrence.

Children were brought up harshly in many families, {511} strictly inalmost all. They were not expected to sit in the presence of theirparents, unless asked, or to speak unless spoken to. They must needsbow and crave a blessing twice a day. Lady Jane Grey complained thatif she did not do everything as perfectly as God made the world, shewas bitterly taunted and presently so nipped and pinched by her nobleparents that she thought herself in hell. The rod was much resortedto. And yet there was a good deal of natural affection. Few fathershave even been better to their babies than was Luther, and he humanelyadvised others to rely as much on reward as on punishment—on the appleas on the switch—and above all not to chastise the little ones soharshly as to make them fear or hate their parents.

The patria potestas was supposed to extend, as it did in Rome, duringthe adult as during the callow years. Especially did public opinioninsist on children marrying according to the wishes of their parents.Among the nobility child-marriage was common, a mere form, of course,not at once followed by cohabitation. A betrothal was a very solemnthing, amounting to a definite contract. Perfect liberty was allowedthe engaged couple, by law in Sweden and by custom in many othercountries. All the more necessary, in the opinion of the time, toprevent youths and maidens betrothing themselves without their parents'consent.

[Sidenote: Health]

Probably the standard of health is now higher than it was then, and theaverage longevity greater. It is true that few epidemics have everbeen more fatal than the recent influenza; and on the other hand onecan point to plenty of examples of sixteenth-century men who reached acrude and green old age. Statistics were then few and unreliable. In1905 the death-rate in London was 15.6 per thousand; in the years1861-1880 it averaged 23 per thousand. It has been {512} calculatedthat this is just what the death-rate was in London in a healthy yearunder Elizabeth, but it must be remembered that a year without somesort of epidemic was almost exceptional.

[Sidenote: Epidemics]

Bubonic plague was pandemic at that time, and horribly fatal. Many ofthe figures given—as that 200,000 people perished in Moscow in 1570,50,000 at Lyons in 1572, and 50,000 at Venice during the years 1575-7,must be gross exaggerations, but they give a vivid idea of the popularidea of the prevalent mortality. Another scourge was the sweatingsickness, first noticed as epidemic in 1485 and returning in 1507,1517, 1528 and 1551. Tuberculosis was probably as wide-spread in thesixteenth as it is in the twentieth century, but it figured lessprominently on account of worse diseases and because it was seldomrecognized until the last stages. Smallpox was common, unchecked as itwas by vaccination, and with it were confounded a variety of zymoticdiseases, such as measles, which only began to be recognized asdifferent in the course of the sixteenth century. One disease almostcharacteristic of former ages, so much more prevalent was it in them,due to the more unwholesome food and drink, was the stone.

Venereal diseases became so prominent in the sixteenth century that ithas often been thought that the syphilis was imported from America.This, however, has been denied by authorities who believe that it camedown from classical antiquity, but that it was not differentiated fromother scourges. The Latin name variola, like the English pox, wasapplied indiscriminately to syphilis, small-pox, chicken-pox, etc.Gonorrhea was also common. The spread of these diseases was assistedby many causes besides the prevalent moral looseness; by lack ofcleanliness in public baths, for example.

{513} Useless to go through the whole roster of the plagues. Sufficeit to say that whatever now torments poor mortals, from tooth-ache tocold in the head, and from rheumatism to lunacy, was known to ourancestors in aggravated forms. Deleterious was the use of alcohol, theevils of which were so little understood that it was actuallyprescribed for many disorders of which it is a certain irritant. Addto this the lack of sanitary measures, not only of disinfection but ofcommon cleanliness, and the etiology of the phenomena is satisfactorilyaccounted for.

[Sidenote: Medicine]

If even now medicine as a science and an art seems backward comparedwith surgery, it has nevertheless made considerable advances since itbegan to be empirical. In the Middle Ages it was almost purelydogmatic; men did not ask their eyes and minds what was the nature ofthe human body and the effect of this or that drug on it, they askedAristotle, or Hippocrates, or Galen or Avicenna. The chief rivalries,and they were bitter, were between the Greek and the Arabian schools.[Sidenote: c. 1550] Galenism finally triumphed just before thebeginnings of experiment and research were made. The greatest name inthe first half of the century was that of Theophrastus Paracelsus,[Sidenote: Paracelsus, 1493-1541] as arrant a quack as ever lived, butone who did something to break up the strangle-hold of tradition. Heworked out his system a priori from a fantastic postulate of theparallelism between man and the universe, the microcosm and themacrocosm. He held that the Bible gave valuable prescriptions, as inthe treatment of wounds by oil and wine.

[Sidenote: Surgery]

Under the leadership of Ambroise Paré [Sidenote: Paré, 1510-90] surgeryimproved rather more than medicine. Without anaesthetics, indeed,operations were difficult, but a good deal was accomplished. Paréfirst made amputation on a large scale possible by inventing a ligaturefor {514} large arteries that effectively controlled hemorrhage. Thisbarber's apprentice, who despised the schools and wrote in thevernacular, made other important improvements in the surgeon'stechnique. It is noteworthy that each discovery was treated as a tradesecret to be exploited for the benefit of a few practitioners and notgiven freely to the good of mankind.

In obstetrics Paré also made discoveries that need not be detailedhere. Until his time it was almost universal for women to be attendedin childbirth only by midwives of their own sex. Indeed, so strong wasthe prejudice on this point that women were known to die of abdominaltumors rather than allow male physicians to examine them. Theadmission of men to the profession of midwife marked a considerableimprovement in method.

[Sidenote: Lunacy]

The treatment of lunacy was inept. The poor patients were whipped orotherwise tormented for alluding to the subject of their monomania.Our ancestors found fun in watching the antics of crazed minds, andmade up parties to go to Bedlams and tease the insane. Indeed, some ofthe scenes in Shakespeare's plays, in which madness is depicted, andwhich seem tragic to us, probably had a comic value for the groundlingsbefore whom the plays were first produced.

[Sidenote: Hospitals]

As early as 1510 Luther saw one of the hospitals at Florence. He tellshow beautiful they were, how clean and well served by honorable matronstending the poor freely all day without making known their names and atnight returning home. Such institutions were the glory of Italy, forthey were sadly to seek in other lands. When they were finallyestablished elsewhere, they were too often left to the care of ignorantand evil menials. The stories one may read of the Hôtel-Dieu, atParis, are fairly hair-raising.

{515}

CHAPTER XI

THE CAPITALISTIC REVOLUTION

SECTION 1. THE RISE OF THE POWER OF MONEY

[Sidenote: Reformation and economic revolution]

Parallel with the Reformation was taking place an economic revolutioneven deeper and more enduring in its consequences. Both Reformationand Revolution were manifestations of the individualistic spirit of theage; the substitution, in the latter case, of private enterprise andcompetition for common effort as a method of producing wealth and ofdistributing it. Both were prepared for long before they actuallyupset the existing order; both have taken several centuries to unfoldtheir full consequences, and in each the truly decisive steps weretaken in the sixteenth century.

It is doubtless incorrect to see either in the Reformation or in theeconomic revolution a direct and simple cause of the other. Theyinteracted and to a certain extent joined forces; but to a greaterdegree each sought to use the other, and each has at times beencredited, or blamed, with the results of the other's operations.Contemporaries noticed the effects, mostly the bad effects, of the riseof capitalism, and often mistakenly attributed them to the Reformation;and the new kings of commerce were only too ready to hide behind themask of Protestantism while despoiling the church. Like otherhistorical forces, while easily separable in thought, the two movementswere usually inextricably interwoven in action.

[Sidenote: Rise of capitalism]

Capitalism supplanted gild-production because of its fitness as asocial instrument for the production and {516} storing of wealth. Incompetition with capital the medieval communism succumbed in one lineof business after another—in banking, in trade, in mining, in industryand finally in agriculture—because it was unable to produce theresults that capital produced. By the vast reward that the newersystem gave to individual enterprise, to technical improvement and toinvestment, capitalism proved the aptest tool for the creation andpreservation of wealth ever devised. It is true that the manifoldmultiplication of riches in the last four centuries is due primarily toinventions for the exploitation of natural resources, but thecapitalistic method is ideally fitted for the utilization of these newdiscoveries and for laying up of their increment for ultimate socialuse. And this is an inestimable service to any society. Only a fairlyrich people can afford the luxuries of beauty, knowledge, and power,that enhance the value of life and allow it to climb to ever greaterheights. To balance this service, it must be taken into account thatcapitalism has lamentably failed justly to distribute rewards. Itstendency is to intercept the greater part of the wealth it creates forthe benefit of a single class, and thereby to rob the rest of thecommunity of their due dividend.

[Sidenote: Primary cause of the capitalistic revolution]

So delicate is the adjustment of society that an apparently trivial newfactor will often upset the whole equilibrium and produce the mostincalculable results. Thus, the primary cause of the capitalisticrevolution appears to have been a purely mechanical one, the increasein the production of the precious metals. Wealth could not be storedat all in the Middle Ages save in the form of specie; nor without itcould large commerce be developed, nor large industry financed, nor wasinvestment possible. Moreover the rise of prices consequent on theincrease of the precious metals gave a powerful stimulus to manufactureand a {517} fillip to the merchant and to the entrepreneur such as theyhave rarely received before or since. It was, in short, thedevelopment of the power of money that gave rise to the money power.

In the earlier Middle Ages there prevailed a "natural economy," orsystem in which payments were made chiefly in the form of services andby barter; this gave place very gradually to our modern "money economy"in which gold and silver are both the normal standards of value and thesole instruments of exchange. Already in the twelfth century money wasbeing used in the towns of Western Europe; not until the latefourteenth or fifteenth did it become a dominant factor in rural life.This change was not the great revolution itself, but was theindispensable prerequisite of it, and in large part its direct cause.

[Sidenote: Money-making kings]

Gold and silver could now be hoarded in the form of money, and so thefirst step was taken in the formation of large fortunes, known to theancient world, but almost absent in the Middle Ages. The first greatfortunes were made by kings, by nobles with large landed estates, andby officers in government service. Henry VII left a large fortune tohis son. Some of the popes and some of the princes of Germany andItaly hoarded money even when they were paying interest on a debt,—atestimony to the increasing estimate of the value of hard cash. Thechief nobles were scarcely behind the kings in accumulating treasure.Their vast revenues from land were much more like government impoststhan like rents. Thus Montmorency in France gave his daughter a dowryamounting to $420,000. The duke of Gandia in Spain owned estatespeopled by 60,000 Moriscos and yielding a princely revenue. Vastransoms were exacted in war, and fines, confiscation and pillage filledthe coffers of the lords. After the atrocious war against theMoriscos, the duke of {518} Lerma sold their houses on his estates for500,000 ducats.

[Sidenote: Officials]

In the monarchies of Europe the only avenue to wealth at first open toprivate men was the government service. Offices, benefices, naval andmilitary commands, were bought with the expectation, often justified,of making money out of them. The farmed revenues yielded immenseprofit to the collectors. No small fortunes were reaped by Empson andDudley, the tools of Henry VII, but they were far surpassed by thehoards of Wolsey and of Cromwell. Such was the great fortune made inFrance by Semblançay, the son of a plain merchant of Tours, who turnedthe offices of treasurer and superintendent of finances to such goodaccount that he bought himself large estates and baronies. Fortunes ona proportionately smaller scale were made by the servants of the Germanprinces, as by John Schenitz, a minion of the Archbishop Elector Albertof Mayence. So insecure was the tenure of riches accumulated in royalor princely service that most of the men who did so, including allthose mentioned in this paragraph, ended on the scaffold, save, indeed,Wolsey, who would have done so had he not died while awaiting trial.

It is to be noted that, though land was the principal form of wealth inthe Middle Ages, no great fortunes were made from it at the beginningof the capitalistic era, save by the titled holders of enormousdomains. The small landlords suffered at the expense of the burghersin Germany, and not until these burghers turned to the country andbought up landed estates did agriculture become thoroughly profitable.

[Sidenote: Banking]

The intimate connection of government and capitalism is demonstrated bythe fact that, next to officials, government concessionaires andbankers were the first to make great fortunes. At this time bankingwas {519} closely dependent on public loans and was therefore the firstgreat business to be established on the capitalistic basis. The first"trust" was the money trust. Though banking had been well started inthe Middle Ages, it was still in an imperfect state of development.Jews and goldsmiths made a considerable number of commercial loans butthese loans were always regarded by the borrower as temporaryexpedients; the habitual conduct of business on borrowed capital wasunknown. But, just as the new output of the German mines wasincreasing the supply of precious metals, the greater costliness ofwar, due to the substitution of mercenaries and fire-arms for feudallevies equipped with bows and pikes, made the governments of Europeneed money more than ever before. They made great loans at home andabroad, and it was the interest on these that expanded the bankingbusiness until it became an international power. Well before thesixteenth century men had made a fine art of receiving deposits,loaning capital and performing other financial operations, but it wasnot until the late fifteenth century that the bankers reaped the fullreward of their skill and of the new opportunities. The three balls inthe arms of the Medici testify to the heights to which a profession,once humble, might raise its experts. In Italy the science ofaccounting, [Sidenote: Science of accounting] or of double-entrybookkeeping, originated; it was slowly adopted in other lands. Thefirst English work on the subject is that by John Gouge in 1543,entitled: "A Profitable Treatyce called the Instrument or Boke to learnto know the good order of the keeping of the famouse reconnynge, calledin Latin, Dare et Habere, and, in Englyshe, Debitor and Creditor." Itwas in Italy that modern technique of clearing bills was developed; thesimple system by which balances are settled not by full payment of eachdebt in money, but by comparing {520} the paper certificates ofindebtedness. This immense saving, as developed by the Genoese, wassoon extended from their own city to the whole of Northern Italy, sothat the bankers would meet several times a year in the firstinternational clearing-house. From Genoa the same system was thenapplied to distant cities, with great profit, even more in securitythan in saving of capital. If bills payable at Antwerp were bought atGenoa, they were paid at Antwerp by selling bills on Lisbon, perhaps,and these in turn by selling exchange on Genoa. These processes seemsimple and are now universal, but how vastly they facilitated thedevelopment of banking and business when first discovered can hardly beover-estimated.

From the improvement of exchange the Genoese soon proceeded toarbitrage, a transaction more profitable and more socially useful atthat time when poor communications made the differences in pricesbetween bills of exchange, bullion, coins, stocks and bonds in distantmarkets more considerable than they are now. The Genoese bankers alsoinvented the first substitutes for money in the form of circulatingnotes. In all this, and in other ways, they made enormous profits thatsoon induced others to copy them.

[Sidenote: Great firms]

Though the Italians invented modern banking they were eventuallysurpassed by the Germans, if not in technique at least in the size ofthe firms established. The largest Florentine bank in 1529 was that ofThomas Guadegni with a capital of 520,000 florins ($1,170,000). Thecapital of the house of Fugger at Augsburg, distinct from the personalfortunes of its members, was in 1546, 4,700,000 gold gulden($11,500,000). The average annual profits of the Fuggers during theyears 1511-27 were 54.5 per cent.; from 1534-6, 2.2 per cent.; from1540-46, 19 per cent.; from 1547-53, 5.6 per cent. Another Augsburgfirm, the Welsers, averaged 9 per {521} cent. for the fifteen years1502-17. Dividends were not declared annually, but a general castingup of accounts was made every few years and a new balance struck, eachpartner withdrawing as much as he wished, or leaving it to be creditedto his account as new capital.

[Sidenote: Risks of banking]

Though the Fuggers and other firms soon went into large business of allsorts, they remained primarily bankers. As such they enjoyed boundlesscredit with the public from whom they received deposits at regularinterest. The proportion of these deposits to the capital continuallyrose. This general tendency, together with the habit of changing theamount of capital every few years, is evident from the following tableof the liabilities of the Fuggers in gold gulden at several differentperiods:

Year Capital Deposits 1527 . . . . . . . 2,000,000 290,000 1536 . . . . . . . 1,500,000 900,000 1546 . . . . . . . 4,700,000 1,300,000 1563 . . . . . . . 2,000,000 3,100,000 1577 . . . . . . . 1,300,000 4,000,000

A smaller Augsburg firm, the Haugs, had in 1560, a capital of 140,000florins and deposits of 648,000. As all these deposits were subject tobe withdrawn at sight, and as the firms usually kept a very smallreserve of specie, it would seem that banking was subject to greatrisks. The unsoundness of the method was counterbalanced by the factthat most of the deposits were made by members of the banker's family,or by friends, who harbored a strong sentiment against embarrassing thebank by withdrawing at inconvenient seasons. Doubtless the almostuniformly profitable career of most firms for many years concealed manydangers.

The crash came finally as the result of the bankruptcy {522} of theSpanish and French governments. [Sidenote: Bankruptcy of France andSpain, 1557] Spain's repudiation of her debt was partial, taking theform of consolidation and conversion; France, however, simply stoppedall payments of interest and amortization. Many banks throughoutEurope failed, and drew down with them their creditors. The years1557-64 saw the first of these characteristically modern phenomena,international financial crises. There were hard times everywhere.Other states followed the example of the French and Spanishgovernments, England constituting the fortunate exception. Recoveryfollowed at length, however, and speculation boomed; but a secondSpanish state bankruptcy [Sidenote: 1575] brought on another crisis,and there was a third, following the defeat of the Armada. The failureof many of the great private companies was followed by the institutionof state banks. The first to be erected was the Banco di Rialto inVenice. [Sidenote: 1587]

The banks were the agencies for the spread of the capitalistic systemto other fields. The great firms either bought up, or obtained asconcessions from some government, the natural resources requisite forthe production of wealth. One of the very first things seized by themwere the mines. [Sidenote: Mining] Indeed, the profitableexploitation of the German mines especially dates from theiracquisition by the Fuggers and other bankers late in the fifteenthcentury. Partly by the development of new methods of refining ore, butchiefly by driving large numbers of laborers to their maximum effort,the new mine-owners increased the production of metal almost at abound, and thereby poured untold wealth into their own coffers. Thetotal value of metals produced in Germany in 1525 amounted to$4,800,000 per annum, and employed over 100,000 men. Until 1545 theGerman production of silver was greater than the American, and copperwas almost as valuable {523} a product. Notwithstanding its increasedproduction, its value doubled between 1527 and 1557. The shares inthese great companies were, like the "Fugger letters," or certificatesof interest-bearing deposits in banks, assignable and were activelytraded in on various bourses. Each share was a certificate ofpartnership which then carried with it unlimited liability for thedebts of the company. One of the favorite speculative issues was foundin the shares of the Mansfeld Copper Co., established in 1524 with acapital of 70,000 gulden, which was increased to 120,000 gulden in 1528.

[Sidenote: Commerce]

Whereas, in banking and in mining, capital had almost created theopportunities for its employment, in commerce it partly supplanted theolder system and partly entered into new paths. In the Middle Agesdomestic, and to some extent international, commerce was carried on byfairs adapted to bring producer and consumer together and hence reducethe functions of middleman to the narrowest limits. Such was theannual fair at Stourbridge; such the famous bookmart atFrankfort-on-the-Main, and such were the fairs in Lyons, Antwerp, andmany other cities. Only in the larger towns was a market perpetuallyopen. Foreign commerce was also carried on by companies formed on theanalogy of the medieval gilds.

New conditions called for fresh means of meeting them. The greatchange in sea-borne trade effected by the discovery of the new routesto India and America, was not so much in the quantity of goods carriedas in the paths by which they traveled. The commerce of the two inlandseas, the Mediterranean and the Baltic, relatively declined, while thatof the Atlantic seaboard grew by leaps and bounds. New and largecompanies came into existence, formed on the joint-stock principle.Over them the various governments exercised a large control, givingthem a semi-political character.

{524} [Sidenote: Portugal]

As Portugal was the first to tap the wealth of the gorgeous East, intoher lap fell the stream of gold from that quarter. The secret of herwindfall was the small bulk and enormous value of her cargoes. FromMalabar she fetched pepper and ginger, from Ceylon cinnamon and pearls,from Bengal opium, the only known conqueror of pain, and with itfrankincense and indigo. Borneo supplied camphor, Amboyna nutmegs andmace, and two small islands, Temote and Tidor, offered cloves. Theseproducts sold for forty times as much in London or in Antwerp as theycost in the Orient. No wonder that wealth came in a gale of perfume toLisbon. The cost of the ship and of the voyage, averaging two yearsfrom departure to return, was $20,000, and any ship might bring back acargo worth $750,000. But the risks were great. Of the 104 ships thatsailed from 1497-1506 only 72 returned. In the following century ofabout 800 Portuguese vessels engaged in the India trade nearlyone-eighth were lost. Even the risk of loss in sailing from Lisbon tothe ports of northern Europe was appreciable. The king of Portugalinsured ships on a voyage from Lisbon to Antwerp for a premium of sixper cent.

[Sidenote: Spain]

Spain found the path towards the setting sun as golden as Portugal hadfound the reflection of his rising beams. At her height she had athousand merchant galleons. The chief imports were the preciousmetals, but they were not the only ones. Cochineal, selling at $370 ahundredweight in London, surpassed in value any spice from Celebes.Dye-wood, ebony, some drugs, nuts and a few other articles richlyrepaid importation. There was also a very considerable export trade.Cadiz and Seville sent to the Indies annually 2,240,000 gallons ofwine, with quantities of oil, clothes and other necessities. Manyships, not {525} only Spanish but Portuguese and English, were weightedwith human flesh from Africa as heavily as Christian with his blackload of sin, and in the case of Portugal, at least, the load almostsent its bearer to the City of Destruction.

But Spanish keels made other wakes than westward. To Flanders oil andwool were sent to be exchanged for manufactured wares, tapestries andbooks. Italy asked hides and dyes in return for her brocades, pearlsand linen. The undoubtedly great extent of Spanish commerce even inplaces where it had no monopoly, is all the more remarkable in that itwas at the first burdened by what in the end choked it, governmentregulation. Cadiz had the best harbor, but Seville was favored by theking; even ships allowed to unload at Cadiz could do so only oncondition that their cargoes be transported directly to Seville. Aparticularly crushing tax was the alcabala, or 10 per cent. impost onall sales. Other import duties, royalties on metals, excise on food,monopolies, and petty regulations finally handicapped Spain's merchantsso effectually that they fell behind those of other countries in therace for supremacy.

[Sidenote: France]

As the mariners of the Iberian peninsula drooped under the shackles ofunwise laws, hardy sailors sprang into their places. Neither of theother Latin nations, however, was able to do so. The once proudsupremacy of Venice and of Genoa was gone; the former sank as Lisbonrose and the latter, who held her own at least as a money market until1540, was about that time surpassed, though she was never whollysuperseded, by Antwerp. Italy exported wheat, flax, woad and otherproducts, but chiefly by land routes or in foreign keels. Nor wasFrance able to take any great part in maritime trade. Content with thefreight brought her by other nations, she sent out few {526}expeditions, and those few, like that of James Cartier, had no presentresult either in commerce or in colonies. Her greatest mart was Lyons,the fairs there being carefully fostered by the kings and beingnaturally favored by the growth of manufacture, while the maritimeharbors either declined or at least gained nothing. For a few years LaRochelle battened on religious piracy, but that was all.

[Sidenote: Germany]

In no country is the struggle for existence between the medieval andthe modern commercial methods plainer than in Germany. The trade ofthe Hanse towns failed to grow, partly for the reason that theirmerchants had not command of the fluid wealth that raised topre-eminence the southern cities. There were, indeed, other causes forthe decline of the Hanseatic Baltic trade. The discovery of newroutes, especially the opening of Archangel on the White Sea,short-circuited the current that had previously flowed through theKattegat and the Skager Rak. Moreover, the development of bothwheat-growing and of commerce in the Netherlands and in England proveddisastrous to the Hanse. The shores of the Baltic had at one time beenthe granary of Europe, but they suffered somewhat by the greater yieldof the more intensive agriculture introduced at that time elsewhere.Even then their export continued to be considerable, though divertedfrom the northern to the southern ports of Europe. In 1563, forexample, 6630 loads of grain were exported from Königsberg, and in 15737730 loads.

The Hanse towns lost their English trade in competition with the newcompanies there formed. A bitter diplomatic struggle was carried on byHenry VIII. The privileges to the Germans of the Steelyard confirmedand extended by him were abridged by his son, partly restored by Maryand again taken {527} away by Elizabeth. The emperor, in agreementwith the cities' senates, started retaliatory measures against Englishmerchants, endeavoring to assure the Hanse towns that they should atleast "continue the ancient concord of their dear native country andthe good Dutches that now presently inhabit it." He therefore orderedEnglish merchants banished, against which Elizabeth protested.

While the North of Germany was suffering from its failure to adaptitself to new conditions, a power was rising in the South capable oflevying tribute not only from the whole Empire but from the habitableearth. Among the merchant princes who, in Augsburg, in Nuremberg, inStrassburg, placed on their own brows the golden crown of riches, theFuggers were both typical and supreme. James Fugger "the Rich,"[Sidenote: James Fugger, 1459-1525] springing from a family alreadyopulent, was one of those geniuses of finance that turn everythingtouched into gold. He carried on a large banking business, he loanedmoney to emperors and princes, he bought up mines and fitted outfleets, he re-organized great industries, he speculated in politics andreligion. For the princes of the empire he farmed taxes; for the popehe sold indulgences at a 33 1/3 per cent. commission, and collectedannates and other dues. In Hungary, in Spain, in Italy, in the NewWorld, his agents were delving for money and skilfully diverting itinto his coffers. He was also a pillar of the church and aphilanthropist, founding a library at Augsburg and building modeltenements for poor workers. He became the incarnation of a new GreatPower, that of international finance. A contemporary chronicler says:"emperors, kings, princes and governors have sent ambassage unto him;the pope hath greeted him as his beloved son and hath embraced him;cardinals have risen before him. . . . He hath become the glory {528}of the whole German land." His sons, Raymond, Anthony and Jerome, wereraised by Charles V to the rank and privileges of counts, bannerets andbarons.

Throughout the century corporations became less and less familypartnerships and more and more impersonal or "soulless." They weresemi-public, semi-private affairs, resting on special charters andactively promoted, not only in Germany but in England and othercountries, by the emperor, king, or territorial prince. On the otherhand the capital was largely subscribed by private business men and thedirection of the companies' affairs was left in their hands. Liabilitywas unlimited.

[Sidenote: Monopolies]

In their methods many of the sixteenth century corporations weresurprisingly "modern." Monopolies, corners, trusts and agreements tokeep up prices flourished, notwithstanding constant legislation againstthem, as that against secret schedules of prices passed by the Diet ofNuremberg. [Sidenote: 1522-33] Particularly noteworthy were thenumber of agreements to create a monopoly price in metals. [Sidenote:1524] Thus a ring of German mine-owners was formed artificially toraise the price of silver, a measure defended publicly on the groundthat it enriched Germany at the expense of the foreigner. Anotherexample was the formation of a tinning company under the patronage ofDuke George of Saxony. [Sidenote: 1518] It proposed agreements withits Bohemian rivals to fix the price of tin, [Sidenote: 1549] but theseusually failed even after a monopoly of Bohemian tin had been grantedby Ferdinand to Conrad Mayr of Augsburg.

[Sidenote: Corners]

The immense difficulty of cornering any of the larger articles ofcommerce was not so well appreciated in the earlier time as it is now.Nothing is more instructive than the history of the mercury "trusts" ofthose years. [Sidenote: 1523] When the competing companies owningmines at Idria in Carniola amalgamated for the purpose of {529}enhancing the price of quicksilver, the attempt broke down by reason ofthe Spanish mines. Accordingly, one Ambrose Höchstetter of Augsburg[Sidenote: 1528] conceived the ambitious project of cornering the wholesupply of the world. As has happened so often since, the higher pricebrought forth a much larger quantity of the article than had beenreckoned with, the so-called "invisible supply"; the corner broke downand Höchstetter failed with enormous liabilities of 800,000 gulden, anddied in prison. The crash shook the financial world, but wasnevertheless followed by still better planned and better financedefforts of the Fuggers to put the whole quicksilver product of theworld into an international trust. These final attempts were more orless successful. Another ambitious scheme, which failed, was that ofConrad Rott of Augsburg [Sidenote: 1570 ff.] to get a monopoly ofpepper. He agreed to buy six hundred tons of pepper from the king ofPortugal one year and one thousand tons the next, at the rate of 680ducats the ton, but even this failed to give him the desired monopoly.

[Sidenote: Regulation of monopolies]

Just as in our own memory the trusts have aroused popular hatred andhave brought down on their heads many attempts, usually unsuccessful,of governments to deal with them, so at the beginning of thecapitalistic era, intense unpopularity was the lot of the newcommercial methods and their exponents. Monopolies were fiercelydenounced in the contemporary German tracts and every Diet made someeffort to deal with them. First of all the merchants had to meet notonly the envy and prejudices of the old order, but the positiveteachings of the church. The prohibition of usury, and the doctrinethat every article had a just or natural price, barred the road of theearly entrepreneur. Aquinas believed that no one should be allowed tomake more money than he needed and that profits on {530} commerceshould be scaled down to such a point that they would give only areasonable return. This idea was shared by Catholic and Protestantalike in the first years of the Reformation; it can be found in Geilerof Kaiserberg and in Luther. In the Reformer's influential tract, Tothe German Nobility, [Sidenote: 1520] usury and "Fuggerei" aredenounced as the greatest misfortunes of Germany. Ulrich von Huttensaid that of the four classes of robbers, free-booting knights,lawyers, priests and merchants, the merchants were the worst.

The imperial Diets reflected popular opinion faithfully enough to trytheir best to bridle the great companies. The Diet of Trèves-Cologne[Sidenote: 1512] asked that monopolies and artificial enhancement ofthe prices of spice, copper and woolen cloth be prohibited. To effectthis acts were passed intended to insure competition. [Sidenote: 1523]This law against monopolies, however, was not vigorously enforced untilthe Imperial Treasurer cited before his tribunal many merchants ofAugsburg accused of violating it. The panic-stricken offendersfeverishly hastened to make interest with the princes and citymagistrates. But their main support was the emperor, who intervenedenergetically in their favor. From this time the bankers and greatmerchants labored hard at each Diet to place the control of monopoliesin the hands of the monarch. In return for his constant support he wasmade a large sharer in the profits of the great houses.

In the struggle with the Diets, at last the capitalists were thoroughlysuccessful. The Imperial Council of Regency passed an epoch-makingordinance, [Sidenote: 1525] kept secret for fear of the people,expressly allowing merchants to sell at the highest prices they couldget and recognizing certain monopolies said to be in the nationalinterest as against other countries, and justified for the wages theyprovided for labor. About this {531} time, for some reason, theagitation gradually died down. It is probable that the religiouscontroversy took the public's mind off economic questions and thePeasant's War, like all unsuccessful but dangerous risings of the poor,was followed by a strong reaction in favor of the conservative rich.Moreover, it is evident that the currents of the time were too strongto be resisted by the feeble methods proposed by the reformers. Whenwe remember that the chief practical measure recommended by Luther wasthe total prohibition of trading in spices and other foreign wares thattook money out of the country, it is easy to see that the regulation ofa complex industry was beyond the scope of his ability. And little, ifany, enlightenment came from other quarters.

[Sidenote: The Netherlands]

While the towns of southern Germany were becoming the world's bankingand industrial centers, the cities of the Netherlands became its chiefstaple ports. For generations Antwerp had had two fairs a year, but in1484 it started a perpetual market, open to all merchants, even toforeigners, the whole year round, and in addition to this it increasedits fairs to four. Later a new Merchants' Exchange or Bourse was built[Sidenote: 1531] in which almost all the transactions now seen on ourstock or produce exchanges took place. There was wild speculation,partly on borrowed money, especially in pepper, the price of whichfurnished a sort of barometer of bourse feeling. Bets on prices and onevents were made, and from this practice various forms of insurancetook their rise.

[Sidenote: Antwerp]

The discovery of the new world brought an era of prosperity to Antwerpthat doubtless put her at the head of all commercial cities until theSpanish sword cut her down. In 1560 there were commonly 2500 shipsanchored in her harbor, as against 500 at Amsterdam, her chief rivaland eventual heir. Of these not {532} uncommonly as many as 500 sailedin one day, and, it is said, 12,000 carriages came in daily, 2000 withpassengers and 10,000 with wares. Even if these statements areconsiderable exaggerations, a reliable account of the exports in thesingle year 1560 shows the real greatness of the town. The totalimports in that year amounted to 31,870,000 gulden ($17,848,000),divided as follows: Italian silks, satins and ornaments 6,000,000gulden; German dimities 1,200,000; German wines 3,000,000; Northernwheat 3,360,000; French wine 2,000,000; French dyes 600,000; Frenchsalt 360,000; Spanish wool 1,250,000; Spanish wine 1,600,000;Portuguese spices 2,000,000; English wool 500,000; English cloth10,000,000. The last named article indicates the decay of Flemishweaving due to English competition. For a time there had been war tothe knife with English merchants, following the great commercial treatypopularly called the Malus Intercursus. [Sidenote: 1506] Accordingto the theory then held that one nation's loss was another's gain,[Sidenote: Commercial policy] this treaty was considered a masterpieceof policy in England and the foundation of her commercial greatness.It and its predecessor, the Magnus Intercursus, [Sidenote: 1496]marked the new policy, characteristic of modern times, that madecommercial advantages a chief object of diplomacy and of legislation.Protective tariffs were enacted, the export of gold and silverprohibited, and sumptuary laws passed to encourage domestic industries.The policy as to export varied throughout the century and according tothe article. The value of ships was highly appreciated. Sir WalterRaleigh opined that command of the sea meant command of the world'sriches and ultimately of the world itself. Sir Humphrey Gilbert drewup a report advocating the acquisition of colonies as means ofproviding markets for home products. So little were the rights of thenatives {533} considered that Sir Humphrey stated that the savageswould be amply rewarded for all that could be taken from them by theinestimable gift of Christianity.

[Sidenote: Buccaneering]

As little regard was shown for the property of Catholics as for that ofheathens. Merry England drew her dividends from slave-trading and frombuccaneering as well as from honest exchange of goods. There issomething fascinating about the career of a man like Sir John Hawkingwhose character was as infamous as his daring was serviceable. Heearly learned that "negroes were very good merchandise in Hispaniolaand that they might easily be had upon the coast of Guinea," and so,financed by the British aristocracy and blessed by Protestant patriots,he chartered the Jesus of Lübeck and went burning, stealing andbody-snatching in West African villages, crowded his hold full ofblacks and sold those of them who survived at $800 a head in theIndies. Quite fittingly he received as a crest "a demi-Moor, proper,in chains." He then went preying on the Spanish galleons, and at onetime swindled Philip out of $200,000 by pretending to be a traitor anda renegade; thus he rose from slaver to pirate and from pirate toadmiral.

[Sidenote: English commerce]

So pious, patriotic and profitable a business as buccaneering absorbeda greater portion of England's energies than did ordinary maritimecommerce. A list of all ships engaged in foreign trade in 1572 showsthat they amounted to an aggregate of only 51,000 tons burden, lessthan that of a single steamer of the largest size today. The largestship that could reach London was of 240 tons, but some twice as largeanchored at other harbors. Throughout the century trade multiplied,that of London, which profited the most, ten-fold. If the customs'dues furnish an accurate barometer for the volume of trade, whileLondon was increasing the other ports were falling behind not only{534} relatively but positively. In the years 1506-9 London yielded tothe treasury $60,000 and other ports $75,000; in 1581-2 London paid$175,000 and other ports only $25,000.

As she grew in size and wealth London, like Antwerp, felt the need ofpermanent fairs. From the continental city Sir Thomas Gresham, theEnglish financial agent in the Netherlands, brought architect andmaterials [Sidenote: 1568] and erected the Royal Exchange on the northside of Cornhill in London, where the same institution stands today.Built by Gresham at his own expense, it was lined by a hundred smallshops rented by him. As the new was rung in, the old passed away. Theancient restrictions on the fluidity of capital were almost broken down[Sidenote: 1542 and 1571] by the end of Elizabeth's reign. Thestatutes of bankruptcy, giving new and strong securities to creditors,marked the advent to power of the commercial class. Capitalism tookform in the chartering of large companies. The first of these, "themistery and company of the Merchant Adventurers for the discovery ofregions, dominions, islands and places unknown," [Sidenote: 1553]commonly called the Russia Company, was a joint-stock corporation with240 members, each with a share valued at $125. It traded principallywith Russia, but, before the century was out, was followed by theLevant Company, the East India Company, and others, for theexploitation of other regions.

To northern Spain England sent coarse cloth, cottons, sheepskins,wheat, butter and cheese, and brought back wine, oranges, lemons andtimber. To France went wax, tallow, butter, cheese, wheat, rye,"Manchester cloth," beans and biscuit in exchange for pitch, rosin,feathers, prunes and "great ynnions that be xii or xiiii ynchesaboute," iron and wine. To the Russian Baltic ports, Riga, Reval andNarva went coarse cloth, "corrupt" (i.e., adulterated) wine,cony-skins, {535} salt and brandy, and from the same came flax, hemp,pitch, tar, tallow, wax and furs. Salmon from Ireland and other fishfrom Scotland and Denmark were paid for by "corrupt" wines. To theItalian ports of Leghorn, Barcelona, Civita Vecchia and Venice, and tothe Balearic Isles went lead, fine cloth, hides, Newfoundland fish andlime, and from them came oil, silk and fine porcelain. To Barbary wentfine cloth, ordnance and artillery, armor and timber for oars, though,as a memorandum of 1580 says, "if the Spaniards catch you trading withthem, you shall die for it." Probably what they objected to most wasthe sale of arms to the infidel. From Barbary came sugar, saltpetre,dates, molasses and carpets. Andalusia demanded fine cloth and cambricin return for wines called "seckes," sweet oil, raisins, salt,cochineal, indigo, sumac, silk and soap. Portugal took butter, cheese,fine cloth "light green or sad blue," lead, tin and hides in exchangefor salt, oil, soap, cinnamon, cloves, nutmegs, pepper and all otherIndian wares.

While the English drove practically no trade with the East Indies, tothe West Indies they sent directly oil, looking-glasses, knives,shears, scissors, linen, and wine which, to be salable, must be"singular good." From thence came gold, pearls "very orient and bigwithall," sugar and molasses. To Syria went colored cloth of thefinest quality, and for it currants and sweet oil were taken. Theestablishment of an English factor in Turkey [Sidenote: 1582] with theexpress purpose of furthering trade with that country is an interestinglandmark in commercial history.

Even as late as the reign of Elizabeth England imported almost all"artificiality," as high-grade manufactures of a certain sort werecalled. A famous Elizabethan play turns on the scarcity of needles,[Sidenote: Gammer Gurton's Needle, c. 1559] the whole household beingturned upside down to look for {536} the one lost by Gammer Gurton.These articles, as well as knives, nails, pins, buttons, dolls,tennis-balls, tape, thread, glass, and laces, were imported from theNetherlands and Germany. From the same quarter came "small wares forgrocers,"—by which may be meant cabbages, turnips and lettuce,—andalso hops, copper and brass ware.

[Sidenote: Manufacture]

Having swept all before it in the domains of banking, mining and trade,capitalism, flushed with victory, sought for new worlds to conquer andfound them in manufacture. Here also a great struggle was necessary.Hitherto the opposition to the new companies had been mainly on thepart of the consumer; now the hostility of the laborer was aroused.The grapple of the two classes, in which the wage-earner went down,partly before the arquebus of the mercenary, partly under the lash andbranding-iron of pitiless laws, will be described in the next section.Here it is not the strife of the classes, but of the two economicsystems, that is considered. Capitalism won economically before itimposed its yoke on the vanquished by the harsh means of soldier andpolice. It won, in the final analysis, not because of the inherentpower of concentrated wealth, though it used and abused thisrecklessly, but because, in the struggle for existence, it proveditself the form of life better fitted to survive in the conditions ofmodern society. It called forth technical improvements, it stimulatedindividual effort, it put an immense premium on thrift and investment,it cheapened production by the application of initially expensive butultimately repaying, apparatus, it effected enormous economies inwholesale production and distribution. Before the new methods ofbusiness the old gilds stood as helpless, as unready, as bowmen in theface of cannon.

{537} [Sidenote: Gilds]

Each medieval "craft" or "mistery" [1] was in the hands of a gild, allthe members of which were theoretically equal. Each passed through theranks of apprentice and other lower grades until he normally became amaster-workman and as such entitled to a full and equal share in themanagement. The gild managed its property almost like that of anendowment in the hands of trustees; it supervised the whole life ofeach member, took care of him when sick, buried him when dead andpensioned his widow. In these respects it was like some mutual benefitsocieties of our day. Almost inevitably in that age, it was under theprotection of a patron saint and discharged various religious duties.It acted as a corporate whole in the government of the city and marchedand acted as one on festive occasions.

As typical of the organization of industry at the turning-point may begiven the list of gilds at Antwerp drawn up by Albert Dürer: [Sidenote:1520] There were goldsmiths, painters, stone-cutters, embroiderers,sculptors, joiners, carpenters, sailors, fishermen, butchers,cloth-weavers, bakers, cobblers, "and all sorts of artisans and manylaborers and merchants of provisions." The list is fully assignificant for what it omits as for what it includes. Be it notedthat there was no gild of printers, for that art had grown up since thecrafts had begun to decline, and, though in some places found as agild, was usually a combination of a learned profession and acapitalistic venture. Again, in this great banking and trading port,there is no mention of gilds of wholesale merchants (for the "merchantsof provisions" were certainly not this) nor of bankers. These were twofully capitalized businesses. Finally, observe that there were manyskilled and unskilled laborers {538} not included in a special gild.Here we have the beginning of the proletariat. A century earlier therewould have been no special class of laborers, a century later no gildsworth mentioning.

The gilds were handicapped by their own petty regulations.Notwithstanding the fact that their high standards of craftsmanshipproduced an excellent grade of goods, they were over-regulated andhide-bound, averse to new methods. There was as great a contrastbetween their meticulous traditions and the freer paths of the newcapitalism as there was between scholasticism and science. They couldneither raise nor administer the funds needed for foreign commerce andfor export industries. Presently new technical methods were adopted bythe capitalists, a finer way of smelting ores, and a new way of makingbrass, invented by Peter von Hoffberg, that saved 50 per cent. of thefuel previously used. In the textile industries came first thespinning-wheel, then the stocking-frame. So in other manufactures, newmachinery required novel organization. Significant was the growth ofnew towns. The old cities were often so gild-ridden that they decayed,while places like Manchester sprang up suddenly at the call ofemployment. The constant effort of the gild had been to suppresscompetition and to organize a completely stationary society. In adynamic world that which refuses to change, perishes. So the gilds,while charging all their woes to the government, really chokedthemselves to death in their own bands.

[Sidenote: Capitalistic production]

There is perhaps some analogy between the progress of capitalism in thesixteenth century and the process by which the trusts have come todominate production in our own memory. The larger industries, andespecially those connected with export trade, were seized andreorganized first; for a long time, indeed throughout {539} thecentury, the gilds kept their hold on small, local industries. For along time both systems went on side by side; the encroachment wassteady, but gradual. The exact method of the change was two-fold. Inthe first place the constitution of the gild became more oligarchical.The older members tended to restrict the administration more and more;they increased the number of apprentices by lengthening the years ofapprenticeship and reduced the poorer members to the rank of journeymenwho were expected to work, not as before for a limited term of years,but for life, as wage-earners. When the journeymen rebelled, they wereput down. The English Clothworkers' Court Book, for example, enactedthe rule in 1538 that journeymen who would not work on conditionsimposed by the masters should be imprisoned for the first offence andwhipped and branded for the second. Nevertheless, to some extent, themaster's calling was kept open to the more enterprising and intelligentlaborers. It is this opportunity to rise that has always broken up thesolidarity of the working class more than anything else.

[Sidenote: Great commercial companies]

But a second transforming influence worked faster from without than didthe internal decay of the gild. This was the extension of thecommercial system to manufacture. The gilds soon found themselves atthe mercy of the great new companies that wanted wares in largequantities for export. Thus the commercial company came either toabsorb or to dominate the industries that supplied it. An example ofthis is supplied by the Paris mercers, who, from being mainly dealersin foreign goods, gradually became employers of the crafts. Similarlythe London haberdashers absorbed the crafts of the hatters and cappers.The middle man, who commanded the market, soon found the strategicvalue of his position for controlling {540} the supply of articles.Commercial capital rapidly became industrial. One by one the greatgilds fell under the control of commercial companies. One of the lastinstances was the formation of the Stationers' Company by which theprinters were reduced to the rank of an industry subordinate to that ofbooksellers.

[Sidenote: Legislation on gilds]

Finally came the legislative attack on the gilds, that broke whatlittle power they had left. There is now a tendency to minimise theresult of legislation in this field, but the impression that one getsby perusing the statutes not only of England but of Continentalcountries is that, while perhaps the governments would not haveadmitted any hostility to the gilds as such, they were strongly opposedto many features of them, and were determined to change them inaccordance with the interests of the now dominant class. The policy ofthe moneyed men was not to destroy the crafts, but to exploit them;indeed they often found their old franchises extremely useful inarrogating to themselves the powers that had once belonged to the gildas a whole. The town governments were elected by the wealthy burghers;Parliaments soon came to side with them, and the monarch had alreadybeen bribed into an ally.

To give specific examples of the new trend is easy. When the greattapestry manufacture of Brussels was reorganized [Sidenote: 1544] on abasis very favorable to the capitalists, the law sanctioning this stepspoke contemptuously of the mutual benefit and religious functions ofthe gild as "petty details." [Sidenote: 1515] Brandenburg nowregulated the terms on which entrance to a gild should be allowedinstead of leaving the matter as of old to the members themselves.[Sidenote: 1540] The Polish nobility, jealous of the cities' monopolyof trade, demanded the total abolition of the gilds. [Sidenote: 1503ff.] A series of measures in England weakened the power of the gilds;under Edward VI [Sidenote: 1547] their endowments for religiouspurposes were {541} attacked, and this hurt them far more than wouldappear on the surface. The important Act Touching Weavers [Sidenote:1555] both witnessed the unhappy condition of the misteries and,without seeming to do so, still further put them in the power of theirmasters. The workmen, it seems, had complained "that the rich andwealthy clothiers oppress them" by building up factories, or workshopsin which many looms were installed, instead of keeping to the oldcommission or sweat-shop system, by which piece work was given out anddone by each man at home. The gild-workmen preferred this method,because their great rival was the newly developed proletariat, massesof men who could only be accommodated in large buildings. The act,under the guise of redressing the grievance, in reality confirmed thepowers of the capitalists, for, while forbidding the use of factoriesoutside of cities, it allowed them within towns and in the fournorthern counties, thus fortifying the monopolists in those placeswhere they were strong, and hitting their rivals elsewhere. Furtherlegislation, like the Elizabethan Statute of Apprentices, [Sidenote:1563] strengthened the hands of the masters at the expense of thejourneymen. Such examples are only typical; similar laws were enactedthroughout Europe. By act after act the employers were favored at theexpense of the laborers.

[Sidenote: Agriculture]

There remained agriculture, at that time by far the largest and mostimportant of all the means by which man wrings his sustenance fromnature. Even now the greater part of the population in most civilizedcountries—and still more in semi-civilized—is rural, but four hundredyears ago the proportion was much larger. England was a predominantlyagricultural country until the eighteenth century,—England, the mostcommercial and industrial of nations! Though {542} the last field tobe attacked by capital, agriculture was as thoroughly renovated in thesixteenth century by this irrigating force as the other manners oflivelihood had been transformed before it.

Medieval agriculture was carried on by peasants holding small amountsof land which would correspond to the small shops and slender capitalof the handicraftsman. Each local unit, whether free village or amanor, was made up of different kinds of land,—arable, commons forpasturing sheep and cattle, forests for gathering firewood and forherding swine and meadows for growing hay. The arable land was dividedinto three so-called "fields," or sections, each field partitioned intosmaller portions called in England "shots," and these in turn weresubdivided into acre strips. Each peasant possessed a certain numberof these tiny lots, generally about thirty, ten in each field.Normally, one field would be left fallow each year in turn, one fieldwould be sown with winter wheat or rye (the bread crop), and one fieldwith barley for beer and oats for feeding the horses and cattle. Intothis system it was impossible to introduce individualism. Each man hadto plow and sow when the village decided it should be done. And thecommons and woodlands were free for all, with certain regulations.[2]

[Sidenote: Medieval farming methods]

The art of farming was not quite primitive, but it had changed lesssince the dawn of history than it has changed since 1600. Instead ofgreat steam-plows and all sorts of machinery for harrowing andharvesting, small plows were pulled by oxen, and hoes and rakes wereplied by hand. Lime, marl and manure were used for fertilizing, butscantily. The cattle were {543} small and thin, and after a hardwinter were sometimes so weak that they had to be dragged out topasture. Sheep were more profitable, and in the summer season goodreturns were secured from chickens, geese, swine and bees. Diseases ofcattle were rife and deadly. The principles of breeding were hardlyunderstood. Fitzherbert, who wrote on husbandry in the early sixteenthcentury, along with some sensible advice makes remarks, on theinfluence of the moon on horse-breeding, worthy of Hesiod. Indeed, thematter was left almost to itself until a statute of Henry VIII providedthat no stallions above two years old and under fifteen hands high beallowed to run loose on the commons, and no mares of less than thirteenhands, lest the breed of horses deteriorate. It was to meet the samesituation that the habit of castrating horses arose and became commonabout 1580.

[Sidenote: Capitalistic change]

The capitalistic attack on communistic agriculture took two principalforms. In some countries, like Germany, it was the consequence of thechange from natural economy to money economy. The new commercial menbought up the estates of the nobles and subjected them to a moreintense cultivation, at the same time using all the resources of lawand government to make them as lucrative as possible.

[Sidenote: Inclosures]

But in two countries, England and Spain, and to some small extent inothers, a profitable opportunity for investment was found insheep-farming on a large scale. In England this manifested itself in"inclosures," by which was primarily meant the fencing in for privateuse of the commons, but secondarily came to be applied to theconversion of arable land into pasture[3] and the substitution of largeholdings for small. The cause of the movement was the demand for woolin cloth-weaving, largely for export trade.

{544} [Sidenote: Complaint against inclosures]

Contemporaries noticed with much alarm the operations of this economicchange. A cry went up that sheep were eating men, that England wasbeing turned into one great pasture to satisfy the greed of the rich,while the land needed for grain was abandoned and tenants forciblyejected. The outcry became loudest about the years 1516-8, when acommission was appointed to investigate the "evil" of inclosures. Itwas found that in the past thirty years the amount of land in the eightcounties most affected was 22,500 acres. This was not all for grazing;in Yorkshire it was largely for sport, in the Midlands for plowing, inthe south for pasture.

The acreage would seem extremely small to account for the complaint itexcited. Doubtless it was only the chief and most typical of thehardships caused to a certain class by the introduction of new methods.One is reminded of the bitter hostility to the introduction ofmachinery in the nineteenth century, when the vast gain in wealth tothe community as a whole, being indirect, seemed cruelly purchased atthe cost of the sufferings of those laborers who could not adaptthemselves to the novel methods. Evolution is always hard on a certainclass and the sufferers quite naturally vociferate their woes withoutregard to the real causes of the change or to the larger interests ofsociety.

Certain it is that inclosures went on uninterrupted throughout thecentury, in spite of legislative attempts to stop them. Indeed, theycould hardly help continuing, when they were so immensely profitable.Land that was inclosed for pasture brought five pounds for every threepounds it had paid under the plow. Sheep multiplied accordingly. Thelaw of 1534 spoke of some men owning as many as 24,000 sheep, andunwittingly gave, in the form of a complaint, the cause thereof, {545}namely that the price of wool had recently doubled. The law limitedthe number of sheep allowed to one man to 2000. The people arose andslaughtered sheep wholesale in one of those unwise and blind, but notunnatural, outbursts of sabotage by which the proletariat now and thenseeks to destroy the wealth that accentuates their poverty. Then asalways, the only causes for unwelcome alterations of their manner oflife seen by them was the greed and heartlessness of a ring of men, orof the government. The deeper economic forces escaped detection, or atleast, attention.

During the period 1450-1610 it is probable that about 2 3/4 per cent.of the total area of England had been inclosed. The counties mostaffected were the Midlands, in some of which the amount of landaffected was 8 per cent. to 9 per cent. of the total area. But thoughthe aggregate seems small, it was a much larger proportion, in the thenthinly settled state of the realm, of the total arable land,—of thisit was probably one-fifth. Under Elizabeth perhaps one-third of theimproved land was used for grazing and two-thirds was under the plow.

[Sidenote: Spain: the Mesta]

In Spain the same tendency to grow wool for commercial purposesmanifested itself in a slightly different form. There, not by theinclosure of commons, but by the establishment of a monopoly by theCastilian "sheep-trust," the Mesta, did a large corporation come toprevail over the scattered and peasant agricultural interests. TheMesta, which existed from 1273 to 1836, reached the pinnacle of itspower in the first two-thirds of the sixteenth century. [Sidenote:1568] When it took over from the government the appointment of theofficer supposed to supervise it in the public interest, the AlcaldeEntregador, it may be said to have won a decisive victory forcapitalism. At that time it owned {546} as many as seven millionsheep, and exported wool to the weight of 55,000 tons and to the valueof $560,000, per annum.

[Sidenote: Wheat growing]

Having mastered the sources of wealth offered by wool-growing, thecapitalists next turned to arable land and by their transformation ofit took the last step in the commercializing of life. Even now, inEngland, land is not regarded as quite the same kind of investment as afactory or railroad; there is still the vestige of a tradition that thetenant has customary privileges against the right of the owner of theland to exploit it for all it is worth. But this is indeed a faintghost of the medieval idea that the custom was sacred and the profit ofthe landlord entirely secondary. The longest step away from themedieval to the modern system was taken in the sixteenth century, andits outward and visible sign was the substitution of the leasehold forthe ancient copyhold. The latter partook of the nature of a vestedright or interest; the former was but a contract for a limited, oftenfor a short, term, at the end of which the tenant could be ejected, therent raised, or, as was most usual, an enormous fine (i.e., fee)exacted for renewal of the lease.

The revolution was facilitated by, if it did not in part consist of,the acquisition of the land by the new commercial class, resulting inincreased productivity. New and better methods of tillage wereintroduced. The scattered thirty acres of the peasant wereconsolidated into three ten-acre fields, henceforth to be used as theowner thought best. One year a field would be under a cereal crop; thenext year converted into pasture. This improved method, known as"convertible husbandry" practiced in England and to a lesser extent onthe Continent, was a big step in the direction of scientificagriculture. Regular rotation of crops {547} was hardly a commonpractice before the eighteenth century, but there was something like itin places where hemp and flax would be alternated with cereals.Capitalists in the Netherlands built dykes, drained marshes and dugexpensive canals. Elsewhere also swamps were drained and irrigationbegun. But perhaps no single improvement in technique accounted forthe greater yield of the land so much as the careful and watchfulself-interest of the private owner, as against the previoussemi-communistic carelessness.