HISTORY

OF THE

CHRISTIAN CHURCH

BY

GEORGE H. DRYER

Volume III

THE REFORMATION

1517-1648 A. D.

INTRODUCTION.

The purpose of this volume is to place the reader in a position to understand the greatest movement which has affected human thought, human life, and human civilization since the conversion of the Roman Empire and the Teutonic peoples. The endeavor is to make plain the causes, the course, and the results of that movement which is more influential to-day than in any other period of its history.

The problem which presents itself to a thinking man is this: The edifice of mediaeval civilization rested upon authority irrespective of the consent of those affected by it. Children were born; immediately, usually within eight days, they were compelled by law to be baptized. As such they were Christians and members of the Church, and subject to all its authority, prescriptions, and commands. Thus the rule and authority of the Church included every soul of the population. The bond of Church authority was the bond of a common citizenship in a society with sharply-divided classes and jurisdictions. Hence the crime of crimes was disobedience to the Church. It was held not only to cut off from eternal salvation, but it cut off from all civil, social, and economic relations, privileges, and obligations. All power, therefore, of the Church, the State, and of society was used to keep that authority intact. It was the keystone of the whole social fabric. On the other hand, that authority rested on force, and, so far as the vast majority of the population was concerned, on force alone. This coercion of the individual thought and conscience, conspicuous in the words in which Charles V pronounced sentence upon Luther at Worms, is the corner-stone of the whole system of the Mediaeval Church. Upon it rests its theology, with its doctrine of the sacraments and the Church, its ritual, and its jurisprudence; for all presuppose a population subject, irrespective of their will, to the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. This fact will help to understand why heresy was looked upon as such a crime, and why it was visited with such exemplary and awful punishments. It was not mere deliberate cruelty, but the conviction that everything dear to the human soul and to human society and civilization was at stake. The problem is, how was this basis changed and what took its place ? To accomplish this change was the task of the Reformers and the Reformation. It must afford a new basis for religion, government, society, and civilization, instead of the authority of the Church. The basis proposed was the consent of the individual, while the standard of his belief and conduct should be the Scriptures of the Christian faith. What was the result ?

If we look around we see the governments, the institutions, the social and even the economic life of man, adjusting themselves to this basis. In religion the appeal is to the individual reason and conscience, either with or without the aid of historic prescription. It is needless to say which principle has triumphed in the life of modern Christendom.

Nor is it doubtful which principle best serves the moral and spiritual elevation of the race. To understand this transformation is the task of the student of the Reformation.

It may be said that this transition has come because men have grown indifferent to religion and hostile to the Christian faith. Whatever may have been true at some period of the past, it seems that the history of the last most changeful century has shown three things: (i) That man is “incurably religious;” (2) That a religion of denial can never satisfy the human spirit; (3) That in any consideration of comparative religions, Christianity stands supreme as the survival of the fittest. It is the belief of the author that no generation of men since the Reformation has been so profoundly influenced as the present generation by the teachings and ideals of the Christian faith.

Such being the purpose of the volume, some reference to the distinctive characteristics of its presentation is fitting. It seeks by a statement of the facts, full and exact, to afford sufficient and reliable materials for an intelligent judgment. For opinions in regard to historical characters and tendencies, and for any philosophy of history independent of the facts, the author has little use. If any one wishes history without the facts he will not need this book. Only from a knowledge of the facts does history, or reflection upon it, become of value to us. It is possible to write history without dates, but not possible without the use of the names of persons and parties and places. Yet time is the frame in which all is set, and without regard to the succession of time all historic events lose their significance. Dates may be unsightly on the page, and they may interrupt the story; but they are not obstacles, but essential aids to its understanding.

The effort is here made to enter into the life of five generations of men; to understand the ideas and the characters which molded the thought of each of them and controlled their life; to make both ideas and characters so clear and distinct that any one of ordinary intelligence can trace their action and comprehend the result. The forces were Titanic, the results escape no observer.

Born in the throes of that troubled time were the Jesuit system and that of John Calvin. They both included the education of the young, a discipline of the will and conduct, and a sharply-conceived theology and creed. Both were for their time, and neither are fitted for ours. Would that a nobler birth of a new time might take their place!

This history, therefore, puts an emphasis upon some sections generally but slightly treated. All Western Christendom and its civilization is heir, in direct succession, to the Mediaeval Church; it is also heir to the Renaissance. It does not seem possible to write of the causes of the Reformation, or of the defects which hindered its universal triumph, without a consideration of the work and the results of the Renaissance.

So in the great clash of opposing principles and claims this work gives more than the usual space to Ignatius Loyola and his system, and the effect it had upon the Counter Reformation. In like manner, more than usual consideration is given to John Calvin

Introduction.

vii

and his work, and to the Churches which are spiritually descended from him, in Switzerland, Germany, France, and England, and the new nations like Scotland and the United Netherlands. The religion of North America is from many sources, but the controlling element has been that received from the Churches and peoples influenced by John Calvin. The characters formed by his creed, like Coligny Orange, and Cromwell, are household words among us. The work of Arminius is not neglected. More than the usual space is given to the reign of Elizabeth. It is impossible to understand Puritanism, either in Old or New England, without knowing its origin. The consequences of the Thirty Years’ War on the religious life of Europe, and its results in the Peace of Westphalia, seem to demand the space allotted.

In the ordinary histories of the Reformation there is so little given to show the life of the Roman Catholic Church during this period, its reforms, and the causes of the Counter Reformation, that the moral and religious forces seem only on the side of the Reformation. The only wonder is, then, with so much in its favor and so little against it, that the Reformation was not as successful in the latter part of the sixteenth century as in the first twenty-five years of its existence. The reader of this volume will see both sides, and will understand that the might of the Reformation was not shown so much in the rapid conquests before 1540 as in that successful resistance which culminated in 1588, in 1609, and in 1648.

The value of this history and a knowledge of the times of which it treats will be, in part, to put an end to some hateful and injurious misconceptions. In the first place, the Roman Catholic Church, since the Council of Trent, is no longer the Mediaeval Church. Though mediaeval claims are not formally disowned, the possibility of their exercise is forever gone. Elizabeth was the last sovereign excommunicated by name, and whose subjects were absolved from their allegiance by the Pope of Rome. No land has been laid under an interdict since the failure at Venice in 1607. So the Inquisition is dead beyond the possibility of revival. Religious faith and religious worship are free in the Roman Catholic lands of Europe. The author has preached in Munich and Rome with as little fear of molestation as Roman Catholic prelates experience in London or New York. Evangelical preaching and teaching among Roman Catholic populations has not now, and never will have, anything to fear from the law.

On the other hand, all statements that the Roman Catholics are drilling, and have secret supplies of arms, and are preparing for an armed rising, and that the hierarchy would wish to see repeated the massacre of St. Bartholomew or the fires of Bloody Mary, are figments of the imagination. The rising up of a fraction of a free people in riot and massacre against the great majority is something which history has never seen, and it is safe to say will never see. Such tales only hurt the Evangelical cause, and give the Roman Catholics the advantage of a Church falsely calumniated. Let us understand the facts of history, and lie not against the truth, nor sow seeds of suspicion, distrust, and contempt.

On the other hand, we need to be on our guard as American citizens against all attempts to make our politics or our institutions serve the interests of the Roman Catholic Church, instead of those of the whole people, against any perversion of historic truth, or any stifling of free inquiry, or hindrance to popular intelligence.

But far more dangerous than all of these to Evangelical religion are five things which we must remedy, and in which the Roman Catholics set us a good example: (i) The lack of attendance upon public worship in our Churches; (2) The lack of reverence for God and all that pertains to his service; (3) The lack of discipline of ourselves, our families, and our Churches; (4) Our need of larger ministration to the material as well as the spiritual needs of our fellow-men; (5) We must set ourselves to win whole populations to Christ.

If we will cure these defects, and maintain—(1) Our reverence for truth; (2) Our knowledge of the Scriptures; (3) Our direct access to God through our Lord Jesus Christ; (4) Our experience of the forgiveness of sins; (5) Our freedom of the truth and of the faith—we may meet our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens on a plane of mutual respect, and we shall not fear harm from them, and may expect good to come to them in this age, which has seen the predominance in arts and arms, in wealth, in power and influence, pass from the Roman Catholic to the Evangelical nations, and in no small measure because of the individual enterprise, the energy of character, and high intelligence born of their faith. The long, slow march of the centuries reveals the higher and the lower forms of the Christian faith. It also reveals the need of the Christian Church for that abundant measure of the Spirit of her Lord which shall produce new forms of life and activity, which shall carefully preserve all that is good in the old, and yet make manifest a perfection and power that her history has never known, to fit her for the immense achievements of evangelization and conquest to which in this new century she is called.

The term “Evangelical” is in these pages generally preferred to “ Protestant.” Protestant originally was a political term having meaning only in the affairs of the German Empire. As a term inclusive of the followers of the Reformation it is a grievous misnomer. The basis of the Reformation was not a negative protest, but a positive affirmation of the gospel, the right to read it and the right to live by it. The Greek word for gospel is evangelion. Evangelical is the term which distinguishes those who follow the Reformation from those who acknowledge spiritual obedience to the Pope of Rome.

The author has used the sources, works, and correspondence, in Latin, German, French, and Italian, as his foundation of his representation of Erasmus, Charles V, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ignatius Loyola, William of Orange, and others, and the best and recent literature on the subjects treated in these languages. He regrets that lack of space prevents giving the titles.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PART I. THE RENAISSANCE.

Characteristics—Contrasts—Periods—Scope—Origin— Rise of the Renaissance—Language.

Boccaccio—Other Scholars of Petrarch—The Revival of Greek Studies—Greek Scholars—Chrysoloras—Filelfo—Poggio— Valla—The Council of Florence—Bessarion—Capture of Constantinople—Dangers of the Study of Antiquity—The Invention of Gunpowder—The Invention of Printing— The Beginning of Modern Art—The Glory of Florence— Origin and Growth of Florence—The Medici—Cosmo de’ Medici—The Circle of Cosmo—The Rebirth of the Arts— Architecture — Sculpture—Painting — The Center of the Renaissance—The Era of Lorenzo de* Medici—Lorenzo’s Circle—Copying—Translations—Architecture — Sculpture —Painting—Ghirlandajo—Filippo Lippi—Botticelli—Signorelli—Mantegna—Bellini—The Political Condition of Italy—Venice—Milan—The Visconti—The Sforza—Verona —Rimini—Naples—The Papal States — The Papacy of the Later Middle Ages—Nicholas V—Calixtus III—Pius II—Paul II—Sixtus IV—Innocent VIII—The Culmination of the Renaissance, 1494-1527—The Death of Lorenzo de’ Medici—The Political Relations of Florence and Italy— Discovery of America and Fall of Granada—The French Invasion of Italy—The Revolution in Florence—The Expulsion of the Medici—Influence of Savonarola’s Teachings—The Fate of Florence—The Artists of this Era—Fra Bartolommeo — Perugino — Pinturicchio — Leonardo da Vinci—Raphael—Michael Angelo—Correggio—Andrea del Sarto—Giorgione—Titian—Architects : Barmante, Peruzzi,

Giuliano de Sangalio,Jacopo Sansovino—The Renaissance in other Lands : Germany, France, Flanders and Holland, Spain—Political Relations of Italy—The Consolidation of the Papal States—The Pope and Venice—The Pope and France—Italian Political Relations under Leo X—Results —The Papal Court—Alexander VI—Caesar Borgia—Julius II—Leo X—Necessity of Reformation—Leo X and Charles

V—Hadrian VI—The March on Rome—The Assault—The Sack of Rome

Part II

THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY AND ENGLAND.

The Reformation in Germany.

Introduction—Martin Luther at Magdeburg, at Eisenach, at Erfurth—Luther as a Monk—Luther as a Professor— Luther in Rome—Luther at Wittenberg—His Religious Life—The Mystics—Luther’s Position—The Theses—The Doctrine of Indulgences—The Sale of Indulgences— Result of the Sale—The Condition of Germany—The Government—Revival of Learning—Luther and Rome— Luther and Cajetan—Luther and Miltitz—Luther and Eck—The Bull against Luther—The Effect of the Controversy—Luther’s Work—Events preceding the Diet of Worms—The Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation—Luther Cited to Worms—The Assembly at Worms—Luther Before the Reichstag at Worms—Attitude of Charles V—The Ban—Luther at Wartburg—Luther Back to Wittenberg—Luther’s Labors—Political Affairs in Germany—Ulrich Zwingli—Erasmus and Luther—Condition of the Peasants—The Outbreak—Luther’s Attitude— The Progress and Issue of the Revolt—Luther’s Marriage —Luther’s Family Life—The Anabaptist Movement—The Origin — Thomas Miinzer — Balthazer Hubmaier—John Denk—Ludwig Hetzer—Melchoir Hoffmann—The Teachings of the Anabaptists—German Political Relations— Founding of the Evangelical State Church—The Conference at Marburg—The Augsburg Confession—The League of Smalkald — The Death of Zwingli—Effects of the

League of Smalkald—The Wittenberg Concord—Advancing Power of the League—The Fall of Anabaptism—The After-Fortunes of the Anabaptists—John D. Joris—Menno Simons—Bigamy of Philip of Hesse—Philip and Henry of Brunswick—Consequences of Philip’s Bigamy—Position of Evangelical Party—The Conference at Regensburg— The Change in the Smalkald League—The Duchy of Gueldres—Herman, Archbishop of Cologne—Philip of Hesse and Henry of Brunswick—The Reichstag at Speyer —Xhe Campaigns and Treaties—Charles V and the Pope— Preparations of Charles V for the Smalkald War—Luther’s Last Years and Death—Character of Martin Luther—The Smalkald War—The Interim, June 30, 1548—Leipzig Interim—Maurice of Saxony—The End of Maurice—Peace of Augsburg—Close of the Career of Charles V—Provisions of the Peace of Augsburg—Consequences of the Peace of Augsburg—Results of the German Reformation, m-199

The Reformation in England.

Growth of the Royal Power—The Tudor Sovereigns—Henry VIII and Absolute Power—Personal Appearance of Henry VIII—Thomas Wolsey—Wolsey’s Foreign Policy—Wol-sey’s Personal Appearance—Wolsey’s Domestic Policy— John Colet—Sir Thomas More—More’s Habits—More’s Religion—More’s Career—Erasmus’s Greek New Testament—The Oxford Reformers—John Wyclif—The Cambridge Reformers—William Tyndale—Hugh Latimer— Forces Preparing for the Reformation Before the Divorce —Facts which Determined the Direction of the Reformation—Henry as a Roman Catholic—The Divorce in the Court of the Legate—Thomas Cranmer—The Divorce and Morality—Clement VII and the Divorce—The Divorce Case Ended—Position of Cranmer—Henry’s Reformation —Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher—Policy of Thomas Cromwell—The Dissolution of the Monasteries—The Religious Policy—Domestic Life of Henry VIII—Anne Boleyn—Jane Seymour—Anne of Cleves—Catherine Howard— Catherine Parr — The Statute of Six Articles — Stephen Gardiner—Death of Henry VIII—Condition of the People, the Clergy, and Religion—Political Changes of

Edward’s Reign: Measures of Repression, Reformation of the Church of England, Marriage of Priests—Cranmer’s Service to the English People and Church—The Prayer-book—The Articles of Religion—The Reign of Edward

VI—The Reign of Mar}'—Cardinal Pole—The Persecution —The Oxford Martyrs: Ridley and Latimer—Cranmer— Cranmer’s Execution—The End of the Reign—Character of the Persecution,...............200-249

Part

THE COUNTER REFORMATION AND THE GENEVAN REFORM—1540-1583.

Thb Reformation in Latin Lands—The Obstacles to its Triumphs.

Attitude Toward the Papacy and Its Abuses—The Church— The State—The People—Tradition—Art—The Bible,

251-260

The Papacy, I534~i559-

Paul III, 1468—Julius III—Marcellus II—Paul IV—The Papacy, ^I559^-I59°—Pius IV—Pius V—Gregory XIII—Sixtus V— The Council of Trent—The Church of France at the Opening of the Reformation—The Council of Trent, a Council of the Latin Church,..........260-278

The Inquisition—The Jesuits.

Ignatius Loyola—The Education of Loyola—The Founding of the Company of Jesus—The Founder and Aims of the Order—Progress of the Order—Educational Work of the Order—The Jesuits in Germany—Companions of Loyola— Death of ^Loyola—Character of Loyola—Defects—The “Spiritual Exercises”—The Presupposition—The Method —The Goal—The Characteristics of the Order—The Jesuit Education—Jesuits and the Confessional—The Political Influence of the Jesuits,............279-310

The Genevan Reform.

The Historical Significance of John Calvin—Loyola and Calvin—Life of Calvin—Calvin’s Conversion—Calvin an Exile—Calvin at Geneva—Calvin’s Banishment from Geneva —Calvin’s Courtship and Marriage—Calvin’s Rule at Geneva—The Struggle for the Discipline—Calvin and Servetus —The Theology of Calvin—Predestination and Election— Evangelism and Missions — Reprobation — Personal Appearance—Daily Work—Works—Influence, . . . 311-348

Reformers, Saints, and Scholars.

Reformers: Alphonso Valdes, Juan Valdes, Bernardino Ochino, Peter Martyr, Pietro Carnesecchi, Aonio Paleario, Carac-ciola, Curio, Renata d’Este, Pietro Paolo Vergerio, Bartholomew Carranza—The Saints: Filippo Neri, Carlo Borromeo, Francisco Xavier, St. Theresa—The Scholars: Flacius, Chemnitz, Baronius, Bellarmine, .... 348-369

The Genevan Reform in France.

Characteristics of the Reform—The Influence of Geneva—The Failure to Reform the Church and Nation—The Leadership of the Aristocracy—Effect of the Genevan Teaching— The Attitude of the French Scholars and Clergy—The French Clergy after the Concordat — The Reform at Meaux—Jacques Lefevre—Guillaume Brigonnet—The Persecution under Francis I—The Epoch of Martyrs—The Placards—Henry II—Anne de .Bourg— Francis II—The Tumult of Amboise—Colloquy of Poissy—Edict of Toleration, ................ ..... 369-388

The Religious Wars.

House of Guise—Gaspard de Coligni—The Chatillon Brothers—The Leadership of the Reformed—Catherine de Medici—The First Religious War—The Conditions of the Peace—The Second Religious War—The Third Religious War—The Peace of St. Bartholomew—The Plot—The Massacre—Catherine de’ Medici to Philip II—The English Privy Council 011 the Massacre—Character of Coligni— Coligni on his Brother—Coligni to his Wife—The Second Period of the Civil Wars—Characteristics of these Wars— The Third Period of the Civil Wars,.......388-412

The Genevan Reform in the Netherlands.

The Reformation in the Netherlands—The New Political Issue in the Netherlands—William of Orange—The Splendid Prince and Favorite of Fortune—His Career—Orange, the Great Noble and Leader of the Opposition—First Marriage of Orange—The Housekeeping of Orange—Iconoclasm— Years of Exile—Alva’s Reign of Terror—Anne of Saxony; her Marriage to Orange — The Taking of Brill—The Founder of the United Province—Alva’s Measures— Orange Joins the Reformed—Requescens—Marriage of Orange to Charlotte of Bourbon—The Union of the Provinces — Don John of Austria — Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma—Orange’s Estate—Marriage of Orange with Louise Coligni—Plots against his Life—His Assassination at Delft—Personal Appearance of Orange—Character of Orange,................412-436

The Genevan Reform in Scotland.

Birth and Relatives of Mary, Queen of Scots—Patrick Hamilton—George Wishart—The Roman Catholic Church in Scotland—Clerical Morals—The Monks—The Church and Marriage—Miracles—The Covenant—Walter Mills—The Return of Knox—Preaching of Knox—The Reformation Established—The Queen’s Return—John Knox—Knox in Exile on the Continent—His Appearance—His Preaching —Queen Mary and John Knox—Mary’s Marriage—Darn-ley—Bothwell—Darnley’s Murder—The Netherlands after his Death—Mary’s Marriage to Bothwell—Mary at Loch-leven—The Casket Letters—Mary’s Escape—The Regent Murray—The Regent Lenox—The Regent Morton—The Establishment of the Kirk of Scotland—Labors of Knox— Knox’s Marriage and Family—Last Days of Knox—The Death of Knox—The Scotch Church—Knox and Education—His Intolerance—Knox on Civil Rulers—The New Reign,.....................43M62

The Reformation in England under Queen Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Tudor—Elizabeth’s Council—Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury—The Act of Supremacy—The Act of Uniformity—The State of the Church of England—The Puritan Party — The Advertisement — Puritans in the House of Commons—Thomas Cartwright—Cartwright and Whitgift—Walter Travers—New Persecutions—Death of Parker—John Jewel—Edmund Grindal—The Answer of the Commons—The Archbishop and the Queen—The Archbishop’s Letter—John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury—John Aylmer—The Puritan Petitions—Persecutions —Admonition of the Privy Council—Puritans in the Parliament—The Roman Catholics—Plots against Elizabeth— Trial of Mary, Queen of Scots—Elizabeth and Mary— Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots—Persecutions of the Roman Catholics—The Spanish Armada, .... 463-492

The Reformation and Counter-Reformation of Germany—1555-1588.

The Advance of the Evangelical Faith—The Emperors—Fatal Divergence among the Evangelicals—The Formula of Concord—The Advance of the Reformed Church—Frederick III, Elector Palatine—Louis IV, Elector Palatine—The Advance of the Counter-Reformation—Rudolph II—Geb-hard Truchses, Elector of Cologne,.......492-502

The Reformation in Poland, Hungary, and Transylvania.

Poland—Hungary—Transylvania—Advance in Hungary—Affairs in Sweden,................502-504

$art Jourtlj*

THE FADING WAR AND THE TRUCE. Contrasts of the Former and this Period.

The Papacy—Clement VIII—The Absolution of Henry IV— Henry IV, Personal Appearance—His Fight with the League—The League in Paris—Abjuration of Henry IV— End of the League—Edict of Nantes—The Netherlands— Maurice of Orange—Fuentes—Archduke Albert—Death of Philip II—Anna van den Hove,.......505”5^I9

Vol. 3

xviii

Table of Contents.

England from the Defeat of the Armada untii, the Death of Elizabeth.

Personal Appearance of Elizabeth—Elizabeth and the English People—Her Courage—Changes in her Council—Rise of the Independents—Robert Browne—Principles of the Independents—The Martin Mar-Prelate Tracts—John Penry —-John Udall—John Greenwood—Henry Barrow—Persecutions of the Puritans—Richard Hooker—Death of Elizabeth, ..................... 519-530

Germany—1588-1600.

Frederick IV, Elector Palatine—The Papacy—Paul V—Spain —Philip III—France—Henry IV—Assassination of Henry —Regency of Marie de’ Medici—The Roman Catholic Revival in France—St. Francis de Sales—St. Vincent de Paul,..................... 530-549

England.

James I—Two Doctrines of Political Sovereignty—Richard Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury—George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury—The Reign of James I—Conflict in the Hapsburg Dominions—The Protestant Union—The League—The Succession of Cleves—The Emperor Matthias—The Netherlands—The Siege of Ostend—Naval Victories — The Truce — The Arminian Controversy — Jacobus Arminius—What the Remonstrants affirmed and denied—Their Political Theory of the Church—Jan van Olden Barneveldt—The Synod of Dort—The Execution of Olden Barneveldt—The Effects of the Synod of Dort, 549-569

Part iFtffy.

THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR.

Outbreak of the War in Bohemia.

Ferdinand II—Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria—The Papacy— Gregory XV—Urban VIII—Innocent X, .... 571-579

Vol. 3

Table of Contents.

XIX

The Evangelical Princes.

Frederick V, Elector Palatine—John George, Elector of Saxony—George William, Elector of Brandenburg—The Bohemian War—The Battle of White or Winter Mountain— Roman Catholic Missions—The Danish War—Wallenstein -The Edict of the Restitution—Wallenstein Deposed—The Reichstag, 1630—Cardinal Richelieu—Gustavus Adolphus —His Marriage—His Wars—Gustavus as a Soldier—His Military Discipline—His Address to his Council—His First Campaign in Germany—The Campaign—The Battle of Breitenfeld—After Breitenfeld—Gustavus and the Jesuits —Why He did not March on Vienna—Gustavus at Kreutz-nach—Wallenstein again at Head of the Imperial Army— The Campaign—The Siege of Nuremberg—On the Way to Liitzen—Liitzen—His Funeral—Wallenstein after Liitzen —The Assassination of Wallenstein—The Battle of Nord-lingen—The Treaty of Prague—France Declares War— Swede and Saxon—The Battle of Wittstock—Death of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar—The Swedes under Baner— France and Spain—Swedes under Torstenson—Victories of the French—Swedes under Wrangel—The Last Years of the War—The Horrors of the Thirty Years’ War— Famine—Pestilence—Roman Catholic Conversions,

Provisions of the Peace of Westphalia—1648. Princes and Powers—The Constitution of the Empire—The

England During the Thirty Years’ War.

Charles I—Stafford—William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury —The Long Parliament—Oliver Cromwell—Personal Ap-

579-625

Religious Peace,

625-627.

pearance of Oliver Cromwell,

627-638

Vol. 3

Conclusion.

THE LITERATURE.

THE author esteeming it best not to append footnotes, gives here the main sources of his information. Most of these books he has thoroughly read, and all of them he has used.

The Renaissance.

Sources.

“Divina Comedia,” Dante; “Decameron,” Boccaccio; “Prediche,” Savonarola; “L,e Rime,” Petrarch; “Opera,” n vols., “ Colloquia,” Erasmus; “Inscriptions Romanse infimi ^vi Romse Existantes,” Pietro A. Galletti, 3 vols., 1740; “Delle Istori Fiorentino” to 1492, “Discorsi,” “II Principe e Scritti Politici,” Mac-chiavelli; “Storia Fiorentina, 1523-1538,” Benedetto Varchi, 2 vols., 1843; “Storia d’ltalia, 1490-1532,” Francesco Guicciardini; “I,e Vite dei celebri Pittori, Scultori, ed Architetti,” Giorgio Vasari (translated, with corrections and notes, by E. H. Blashfield); “Tavole Chronologiche e Sincrone della Storia Fiorentina,” Alfred Reumont, 1841; “Sacco di Roma,” a daily journal by Jacopo Buonaparte, 1756, a vivid description by an eye-witness of the sack of Rome 111 1527-

General Histories.

“Der Stadt Rom,” Ferdinand Gregorovius, 10 vols., translated in 13 vols. (vols. 8-10 in the German edition covers this period); “ Die Papste der Renaissance,” Ludwig Pastor, 3 vols. Both of these works are invaluable. The first volume of “ Geschichte der deutschen Volkes Seit deni Ausgange des Mittel-alters,” by Johannes Janssen, is of use for Germany, as is the corresponding volume in “ Histoire de France,” by Henri Martin.

Special Histories.

“The Civilization of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy,” Jacob Burkhardt, 2 vols. (English translation, 1878); “The Renaissance in Italy,” J. A. Sjmi-onds, 7 vols., 1875-1890; “Lorenzo di Medici and his Times,” Alfred Reumont, 2 vols., 1876. Histories of art and biographies of artists. See also “Makers of Florence” and “ Makers of Venice,” by Mrs. Oliphant. “ Popes of the Renaissance,” Mandel Creighton, 5 vols. This work is much inferior to Dr. Pastor’s, but is the best in English. “ Erasmus,” by J. A. Froude, is a very skillful and entertaining presentation of the man and his times. “The Cloister and the Hearth,” by Charles Reade. This is the best picture of the life of the Renaissance, being largely drawn from the letters of Erasmus. “History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella,” by W. H. Prescott, 3 vols., 1872; “Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries,” by H. Hallam, 4 vols., 1870; “ Bilder aus der Deutschen Vergangenheit,” by Gustav Freytag, 2 vols.

The Reformation in Germany.

Sources.

“ Correspondenz Charles V,” Lanz, 3 vols; “Nunciature Berichte,” Professor Friedberg, last 4 vols; “ Acta Novissima Reichstag zu Worms,” 1521, Miinchener Historische Commission, 1896. This is an invaluable source, and supersedes all previous works of the kind.

Luther’s “ Werke,” ed. Walch, 24 vols. This has the documentary sources. A new improved American edition of Walch is now in course of publication. The Erlanger edition of Luther’s “Werke” is small, usable, and to be commended. Luther’s “ Corre-spondenz Vollstandig,” ed. DeWette, 6 vols., gives all of Luther’s letters in Latin and German.

General Histories.

“Deutscher Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation,” 5 vols., Leopold von Ranke; first three translated in English. “Deutsche Geschichte im Zeit alter der Counter Reformation, 1555-1620,” 2 vols., 18891895, Moritz Ritter worthily carries on the work of Von Ranke. “The Thirty Years’ War,” 2 vols., Anton Gindley, English translation. “ Die Reformation,” etc., 3 vols., Ignaz Dollinger; also in English translation. Moderate Roman Catholic. “Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes,” Janssen, Vols. II and III, extremely Roman Catholic. “Deutsche Geschichte,” Lamprecht, Vol. V. Good and popular. “ The Period of the Reformation, 1517-1648,” Ludwig Hausser; English translation, 1874. The best history in one volume. “The History of the Great Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in Germany and Switzerland,” Merle d’Aubigne, 5 vols.; English translation, 1846. Evangelical and extremely partisan.

More Popular.

“The Reformation,” George P. Fisher, 1873; “The Era of the Protestant Revolution,” F. Seebohm, 1875; “The Thirty Years’ War” and “Wallenstein,” by Friedrich Schiller. In spite of all written since, Schiller is well worth reading. “The Thirty Years’ War,” S. R. Gardiner; “Gustavus Adolphus in Germany and Other Lectures on the Thirty Years’ War,” R. C. Trench.

VOL ₃

xxiv

The Literature.

Special Historic.

“History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V,” Wm. Robertson, 3 vols., 1870. “Das Leben Karl’s V,” H. Baumgarten, 3 vols. This is the latest and best. “Martin Luther, Sein Leben und Schriften,” 2 vols., 1883, and “Luther’s Theologie,” 2 vols., by Julius Kostlin. See also histories of doctrine by Hagen-bach, Shedd, Sheldon, and others. “Life of Gustavus Adolphus,” Walter Harte, 2 vols., 1754. “ Life of Gustavus Adolphus,” C. R. L. Fletcher, 1896. “Creeds of Christendom,” P. SchafF, 3 vols., 1877. “History of Protestant Theology,” J. A. Dorner, 2 vols.; English translation, 1871. The author is also indebted to lectures on this period from Professors Harnack and Max Lenz in Berlin, and Meyer-Dysinger in Munich. “Bilder aus der Deutschen Vergangenheit,” Gustav Freytag. Of great value, “Church and State,” Geffcken. “The Thirty Years’ War” in “Aus Drei Jahrhunderten,” K. T. Heigel. “Luther’s Table Talk,” (English translation), Hazlitt, 1895. “History of the Christian Church,” William Moeller, Vol. Ill, 1894.

The Reformation in England.

Sources.

“Calendar of English State Papers,” Brewer, 3 vols., and later “Acts and Monuments,” John Foxe. Documents in “The History of the Reformation in England,” Gilbert Burnet, ed. Pocock, 7 vols.; and in “Annals of Ecclesiastical History,” Strype, 4 vols. “Documents Illustrative of English Church History,” H. Gee and W. J. Hardy. Hugh Latimer’s “Works;” “Zurich Letters;” “Letters” of Erasmus.

Histories.

“History of England, 1509-1588,” J. A. Froude, 12 vols. A brilliant work, but never wholly trustworthy, especially weak in the reign of Henry VIII. “ History

Vol. 3

The Literature.

XXV

of England, 1603-1642,” S. R. Gardiner, 10 vols. “The Civil War and Protectorate,” S. R. Gardiner, 4 vols. Thorough and impartial. “ The Puritans under Queen Elizabeth, 1558-1603,” Hopkins, 3 vols. Valuable for sources and for general view. “ History of England,” John R. Green, 4 vols. Superseding all works like Hume’s or Knight’s. “A History of England Principally During the Sixteenth Century,” Leopold von Ranke, 6 vols., 1876; English translation. “A History of the Church of England,” R. W. Dixon, 4 vols. “ Constitutional History of the Church of England,” Felix Makower, 1895. “Periods of European History:” “The Sixteenth Century,” good and late, Johnson, 1896. “Period V, 1588-1715,” Wakeman. “A History of the Church of England,” G. G. Perry. “The English Reformation of the Sixteenth Century,” W. H. Becket. A popular account. “ Church and State under the Tudors,” G. W. Child. See also Tennyson’s “Queen Mary.” “The Constitutional History of England from the Accession of Henry VII to the Death of George III,” Henry Hallam, 2 vols., 1885. “Ecclesiastical Polity,” Richard Hooker, 3 vols. “Fifth Book of Ecclesiastical Polity,” F. Paget.

The Counter Reformation.

Sources.

“ History of the Popes, their Church and State,” Leopold von Ranke, 3 vols., 1884. Unsurpassed. 3d volume gives sources. “Historia del Concilio Triden-tino,” Fra Paola Sarpi, 2 vols., 1761. The severest arraignment of the papacy by a Roman Catholic author. “ Historia del Concilio Tridentino,” S. Pallavicino, 1657: In answer to Sarpi. “Canones et Decreta Con-cilii Tridentini,” 1845; “Council of Trent,” Dollinger, “ Kleinere Schriften.” “History of the Inquisition,” W. H. Rule, 2 vols., 1874. “The Inquisition,” Dollin-

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xxvi

The Literature.

ger, “ Kleinere Schriften,” 1890. “Vita del P. Ignatio Loiola,” dal R. P. Pietro Rabadinera, 1555. The best authority. “Ignatius von Loyola und die Gegend Reformation,” Eberhard Gotthein, 1895. The best modern work. “Spiritual Exercises,” Ignatius Loyola; translated by Nicholas Wiseman, 1828. “Der Jesuiten Orden,” Johannes Huber, 1873. “Histoire de St. Francis de Xavier,” Daurignac, 1857. “ Biografia di S. Carolo Borromeo,” Aristide Sala, 1858. ‘ Vita Pio Quinto,” P. A. Maffei, 1712. “Vita di S. Filippo Neri,” Bacci. “ Vita di Santa Teresa,” F. Ribera, 1876. “ Opera della Santa Teresa,” 2 vols., 1707. “Vita di S. Caterina de Ricci,” Bayonne, 1874. “Le Lettere Spir-ituale,” S. Caterina de Ricci, 1861. “Bernardino Ochino,” Benrath, 1872. “Storia d’ltalia, 1534-1814,” Carlo Botta, 14 vols., 1838. “L’ Reformatori nel Secvolo XVI,” Luigi Annelli, 2 vols., 1891. “Stato e Chiesa Secondo Fra Paolo Sarpi,” Francesco Scaduto, 1885. “I Gesuiti e la Repubblica di Venezia, Docu-menti Diplomatici,” G. Cappelletti, 1873.

The; Genevan Reform.

Sources.

Calvin’s Works, 63 vols., particularly “Institutes of the Christian Religion,” 2 vols., and “ Correspondence,” 2 vols., ed. Bonnet.

Histories.

“ Calvin and Geneva,” Kampschulte, 2 vols. Roman Catholic, but accurate and fair. “ History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin,” J. H. Merle d’Aubigne, 7 vols., 1864-1877; English translation. “ Swiss Reformation,” Philip Schaff. Has all his good qualities. “Life of Calvin,” Paul Henry, 2 vols., 1849; English translation. “Life of Calvin,” J. H. Dyer, 1850. “St. Louis and Calvin,” Guizot. “Calvin and Servetus,” Dr. Willis. An excellent study.

Vol. 3

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xxvii

The Genevan Reform in France.

Histories.

“Histoire de France,” Henri Martin. “Histoire de France,” Victor Drury, 2 vols. “Rise of the Huguenots,” 2 vols., “The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre,” 2 vols., and “The Huguenots and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes,” 2 vols., Henry M. Baird. Volumes that are a credit to American scholarship. “Gaspard di Coligni,” Walter Besant. A work of value and interest. “ France under Mazarin, with a Review of the Administration of Richelieu,” 2 vols., and “Richelieu,” 1900, J. Breck Perkins. These volumes are written from a thorough knowledge, and are both valuable and attractive.

The Genevan Reform in the Netherlands.

Histories.

“Philip II of Spain,” W. H. Prescott, 3 vols., 1876. The ripest work of a great historian, though a fragment. “ The Rise of the Dutch Republic,” 3 vols., 1880, and “The United Netherlands,” 3 vols., 1880, J. Iy. Motley. These works are brilliant and scholarly; they are vivid rather than judicial. “William the Silent, Prince of Orange,” Ruth Putnam, 2 vols., 1895. A good work, based on the sources.

The Genevan Reform in Scotland.

Histories.

“History of Scotland,” J. H. Burton, 8 vols., 1875. A work whose solid merit time will enhance rather than obscure. “History of Scotland,” John Knox. “ Life of John Knox,” McCrie, 2 vols. “John Knox,” William M. Taylor. Popular in style; valuable.

The Fading War and the Truce.

Histories.

“John of Olden Barneveldt,” 2 vols., 1874, and “Works of Jacob Arminius,” 3 vols., 1853, English translation, J. L. Motley. “Life of Episcopius” and

VOL ₃

xxviii

The Literature.

“Deutsche Geschichte,” 2d vol., Moritz Ritter. “History of England, 1603-1642,” Gardiner. “Oliver Cromwell,” John Morley, 1900. “Richelieu,” “ Maza-rin,” Perkins. “ Vita di S. Francesco de Sales,” 2 vols., 1869, and “Vita di S. Vincenzo de Paoli,” 2 vols.,

1837.

Thirty Years’ War.

Histories.

See German Reformation. “ History of Russia from the Earliest Times to 1877,” A. Rambaud, 2 vols.; English translation, 1879. “History of the Holy Eastern Church,” A. P. Stanley. “History of Poland,” James Fletcher, 1831. “The Ottoman Power in Europe,” E. A. Freeman, 1877. “History of the Ottoman Turks,” E. S. Creasy, 1877. “The Barbary Corsairs,” S. Lane-Poole. See “ Constantinople,” “Spain,” and “Holland,” De Amicis, for color.

VOL 3

I’art First.

THE RENAISSANCE. 13

THE RENAISSANCE.

The Renaissance was the awakening of the intellectual life and creative genius of the Latin and Teutonic races. These races, so long under the tutelage and discipline of the Mediaeval Church, now came to the consciousness of a young and vigorous manhood. This manhood demanded intellectual liberty, the independence and development of the individual. It demanded the right to think, the right to feel, the right to enjoy, as the heirlooms of the intellect, the privilege of genius. For the Renaissance, like all purely intellectual movements, was aristocratic, and only indirectly affected the life of the people.

Unconsciousness belongs to youth. Only races in their youth could know the ignorance from which the Renaissance was the awakening. For the Greek Church and the Greek race there could be no such revival. The old races, their culture and civilization, had been swept away from Gaul and Spain, and from Italy itself. The tuition of the Mediaeval Church had trained the childhood of the new and barbarous races who were their successors. These races were rude and strong and astonishing in the unsuspected capabilities of their manhood. Such an awakening comes but once to men and nations. The Renaissance revealed to men the past, with its literature, art, and civilization; the enlarging bounds and significance ot

15

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the world in which men dwelt; and, beyond all, the possibilities of the human spirit for expansion and training, for enjoyment and achievement in this life. The story of the beginning and development of modern intellectual life and culture can never fail of the deepest interest to any who care to know how we became what we are.

What this awakening was to Europe and to human progress can be best understood by comparing mediaeval with modern life. This comparison, chiefly by contrast, includes the whole sphere of human activity; the intellectual, political, economic, social, artistic, and religious life of men. Only as we grasp the immense significance of this contrast can we understand the age of transition, the Renaissance.

The ruling principle of the intellectual life of the Middle Ages was authority. God, to the Mediaeval Church and the men it trained, was the supreme authority. Hence authority was the supreme ruling conception in all the life of the time. God, to us, is the primal and supreme reason, of which each of us has a part by virtue of the light which enlighteneth every man which cometh into the world. Hence we justify our opinions and base our action upon the reason of things. We shall learn in time that both views have their rights, and must be tempered by a recognition of the Supreme IyOve regnant in the universe. God is power; he is reason; he is also love. The races, the society, the civilization which accepts and acts upon the whole truth possesses the future; for it inherits the immutable promises based upon the nature of God and all he has made. The union of these attributes makes the life of God, it makes the perfecting life of men.

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As authority ruled the intellectual life of the Middle Ages, so the accordant action was reverence, submission. From the modern conception the duty enforced is inquiry, investigation. They shut up Roger Bacon twelve years for searching into the secrets of nature. Into the lap of our scientific discoverers we pour our millions.

Authority ruled in all political and civil relations; hence inequality was the law in every rank of life. Man had value only as he belonged to a caste, a class, a guild, or some corporate form of society. Each class had its own law and customs by which it was governed. In modern life equality in civil and political rights, equality before a common law, is the foundation of our political institutions. This equality is based upon the recognition and value of manhood in the individual. They dwelt upon the duties which men owe according to their station in life; we upon rights common to all men. In their political conflicts they strove to enlarge or to retain the privileges of a class or corporate body in society or the State. In modern political conflicts we seek to enlarge the liberty, or to increase the well-being of the individual citizen. Their appeal w^Tas to the force in the hands of the legitimate authorities who gave and enforced the law; ours is to public opinion, which sooner or later finds expression in law, and can always in the end secure its enforcement. In the application of the law they held a man guilty until he had proved his innocence, and thought it legitimate and laudable to torture a man with fiendish cruelty, if other witness was wanting, in order to secure his confession upon which to base his conviction. Their maxim was,

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rather a hundred innocent men should be punished than that one guilty man should escape. We presume a man innocent until he is proved guilty, we have abolished torture, and think it better that a hundred guilty men should escape than that one innocent man should be unjustly punished.

In the economic realm they believed trade to have always a taint of fraud, and the taking of interest upon capital to be a sin. We seek national prosperity in expanding trade, and base our national finances and international politics upon national debts, followed by every kind of corporate and individual credit upon which interest is paid. For economic as well as religious reasons they promoted celibacy; we believe national prosperity to be based upon an increasing population.

Socially, in mediaeval life, the gentleman was the man armed, prepared always to fight, and not slow to shed blood in his own quarrels, of which he kept on hand a good supply; with us it is the distinction of a gentleman that his keen sense of honor and consideration for those about him keep him, not only from arms, but also from courts, and even the strictures of polite society. In the mediaeval world unhealthy dwellings, dirt, disease, the plague, and famine were always present; we pride ourselves upon our cleanliness, sanitation, and comfort.

In the sphere of art the Middle Ages saw the beautiful and blessed only in another and better world. The true attitude of mind was contempt for this world; dwelling upon its vanity, the pettiness of its action and enjoyment, its baseness and cruelty, and

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19

its awful end. With us, as in the Sermon on the Mount, the beauty and joy of this life are foregleams and illustrations of the larger thought of God, and give meaning and content to the promises of the life beyond this. Hence, except in architecture and illuminating manuscripts, both essentially religious in character, the art of the Middle Ages was but the rude experiments of the half-awakened mind, the unskilled hand and eye. With us the technical skill has gone beyond the illuminating thought or the transforming imagination.

In the religious world even greater was the contrast. The center of the thought and life of the Middle Ages was the Church: its sacraments, its ritual and discipline, its saints, its relics and pilgrimages, its penances and indulgences. With the men of that time the Church, in its sacraments, made the officiating priest a mediator without whom the soul might not come to God. With them the ritual and service of the Church were the sufficient means of Christian instruction, keeping the Scriptures in an unknown tongue; for the Vulgate translation was the infallible standard for doctrine. With us Christ is the center of Christian thought, and the man Christ Jesus the sole mediator between God and man. For us the chief means of instruction must be the written Word of God—Christ’s Gospel, the preparation which preceded it, and the explanation and work of those who first preached it. The Holy Scriptures are the basis of unceasing preaching in the public services of the Church, taught in the Sunday-school, and read in the home as the best of spiritual guides. We seek the

The Christian Church.

most accurate translation from the original Greek and Hebrew tongues, and spare no pains or expense to secure a text the most exact.

Their conception of practical religion was a mortification of this life to insure eternal blessedness. Ours is a rectification of inward being and life through Christ’s redemption, which brings the soul into personal communication and participation with the Divine, and thus possesses eternal life. They laid stress upon form and observance, the externals of religious life; we upon the internal spiritual life—acceptance with God, living in the Spirit, and the imitation of Christ. With them heresy was the chiefest of crimes, punishable with death, and the heretic an outlaw with whom no promises were binding and no faith was to be kept. With us religious toleration, as much as civil liberty, is the corner-stone of society and the State. In religion, as in all else, the men'of mediaeval times looked ever backward toward the Fathers, the Councils, and the Doctors of the Church. In our time Christian men direct their gaze toward the unseen to-morrow, toward the greater light yet to break forth from God’s Word, and the advent of the reigning Christ.

In comparison with ours the world of mediaeval times was small. The Crusaders first broke through its bounds, and made the East known to all after generations; men with other languages, ruling ideas, religion, and civilization. Columbus doubled the extent of the known world, an historical event taken in all its consequences the most momentous since the beginning of the Christian Church. Vasco da Gama made it possible to reach India, and later China, with

The Renaissance.

21

out the intervention of the Arab or Turkish States or any Moslem Power. This fact led to the economic ruin of Venice and the flourishing Italian, South German, and Flemish cities; and which forever threw the Mohammedan States out of the path of material advancement and national prosperity. Finally came Copernicus to unveil the heavens, as the Spaniards and Portuguese, following “ the world-seeking Genoese,” had revealed the unsuspected extent of the terrestrial globe. It was a new world in which men lived; it was a new age which dawned. The races of Western and Central Europe could not pass from the old to the new without two great transitions, the one intellectual and the other spiritual—the Renaissance and the Reformation. These have powerfully molded, throughout Christendom and as far as its influence extends, the individual and the social life of man.

These contrasts, true as a general statement of facts and conditions, yet perhaps in particulars requiring qualification or even exception, bring us to the consideration of that transition which has shaped the intellectual culture of modern times. The Renaissance, like all movements of the human spirit which have fashioned society and civilization, passed through different stages of development. These may be divided roughly by dates, between which the distinctive characteristics appear which separate one era from another. If the dawn of the Renaissance begins with Dante, it will extend to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453. The ruling tendency of the intellectual life of these one hundred and fifty years was the enthusiasm for Greek and Latin studies

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which made their literatures the basis of our common culture. It was the era of the beginning of modern painting, sculpture, and Italian architecture. The period of the expansion of the Renaissance would include the next forty years, until the invasion of the French under Charles VIII, in 1494. In this era, as in the preceding, Florence was the center and home of the movement. This was the age of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lorenzo the Magnificent. These were the great days of Florence and her art. Here wrought Leonardo da Vinci, the youthful Michael Angelo, Fra Bartolomeo, and a crowd of scholars, thinkers, and artists such as no city has been able to match in the modern world. Yet after this great age came the culmination of the Renaissance. This filled the less than forty years between the French invasion and the sack of Rome in 1527. The center of the power and achievement was now at Rome. To Rome came the great artists who had made their native Florence forever illustrious. Such were Michael Angelo, Bramante, Fra Bartolomeo, and Pinturicchio. Hither came also the Urbanese Raphael, who had done splendid work at Florence, his master Perugino, and a crowd of other famous artists. The new St. Peter’s, the frescoes of the Vatican, and the Moses of Michael Angelo are the great monuments of this period, as of the art of the Renaissance.

Beyond Italy the movement made itself felt in France, where Leonardo da Vinci died and Benvenuto Cellini wrought. It crossed the Alps to Germany, where Reuchlin brought in a new era in scholarship and teaching, and Hutten wrote, and Diirer wrought in many arts. Holland felt its power, and in Erasmus

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23

produced the representative figure of the Renaissance. And across the Channel, in England, Sir Thomas More stands as the noblest character of that great movement in any land. Here, indeed, we have figures enough to arrest our attention and to crowd our canvas.

Where should such a great, intellectual movement have its birth? Where but in Italy? The past must give up its treasures and reveal its life and civilization, so that men might better understand the meaning and value of the present world and the present life. The past and the present must become intelligible before men could forge the keys which should force the locks guarding the secrets and resources of the future.

Italy was the seat of Roman power. To Italy were drawn, used, and stored all the treasures of the ancient world. Their focus was Rome; nowhere else were they found in such splendor and abundance. Here the antique world forced itself upon even the most careless observer. Here were the remains of the great architectural achievements of the Romans. Here were their amphitheaters, basilicas, palaces, and temples; here, even more luxurious, their villas and their baths, crowded with the choicest statuary and the rarest decorative painting and mosaic work of the ancient capital of the world; and here also were miles of their splendid tombs. Much was buried; but enough was in sight to astonish the beholder, and to incite the curiosity and reward the endeavor of all who cared for the life or beauty of ancient Rome. Here, longest prevailed, was most at home, and was best understood, her language. Here were most abun

24    The Christian Church.

dant and best explained the noblest remains of her literature. Here could be found impressive and significant memorials of the art, the civilization, the public and private life. Man’s awakening intellect found here material for inquiry and rich reward, for exertion before its eyes and beneath its feet. On the other hand, Italy, most in contact with the East, increasing in material prosperity through its trade, forming numerous and independent centers of civic life led by Venice and Florence, had more wealth, refinement and learning than any other part of Europe. Italy was the home of the Renaissance. Here it began ; this was the center from which its life and influence went forth, and here it reached its most luxurious development.

Where shall be found the origin and source of the Renaissance? Not in any single act like the nailing of the Theses upon the church door at Wittenberg, or the convocation of the States-General in 1789, or the firing upon Fort Sumter in 1861. Intellectual movements are more difficult to trace; but there will be no mistake in putting Dante at the dividing line between the life of the mediaeval time and that which was to take its place. In his great vision he summoned up all that was grand and inspiring in the ideas and society of the Middle Ages, and made it our heritage forever. But Dante did this in a modern tongue, and gave to the world the first great masterpiece of modern European literature. The Crusades were just finishing at his birth. They had given a new intellectual horizon and a broader life to Europe; the old utter ignorance could never return. Dante could not but feel the influence of his changing age.

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The greatest of mankind not only sum up the past, but by creative genius cause the universal in human nature to assume new forms and a richer life. This Dante did; this did Shakespeare and Scott, and the leaders of the Romantic movement of the nineteenth century.

The first effort of the Renaissance was to ennoble the native speech, to make it the worthy and apt instrument whereby the noblest thoughts, the loftiest imagination, the profoundest feeling, and all the varied activity of human life can command audience and awaken response to the soul of man. Modern tongues, so long little more than dialects beside the Latin of the Church, the language of diplomacy, of learning, and of all international intercourse, came now to show their possibilities of dignity, beauty, and grace, which were to give them the empire of the future. The awakened races began to speak; to speak what the world and coming generations might well delight to hear; to speak so that every man might come into fellowship with the supreme efforts of genius through the tongue in which he was born. The founders of modern literature were three Italians—Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Contemporary with the two latter were the father of English poetry, Geoffrey Chaucer, and the father of English prose, John Wyclif. Italian and English were the first of modern tongues to found a literature which should speak to all times and to all nations.

The attainment of commanding excellence by the Italian tongue through the precision and grandeur of Dante, the new form and graceful charm of Petrarch’s sonnets, made it impossible for men to be content

26

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with the barbarous Latin of the Middle Ages. Petrarch was as much, or more, admired for the Latin style of his letters as for his Italian verse. Men could not seek to write Latin worthy of the purer age, and in the language of Cicero and Livy, the great masters of that tongue, without an intense longing for a larger acquaintance with the riches of the literature of that great people which once ruled the world. Hence came the new era in the study and use of the Latin tongue. Men could not know the language without wishing to know the life and thought of that most masterful of races, the monuments of whose rule are found in every land, from the sands of the Sahara to the Highlands of Scotland. Necessarily men came to study the monuments as well as the literature of old Rome. They studied them with an absorbing interest and a growing enthusiasm and love for the life and splendor of that great world buried for nearly a thousand years, and yet in which was still rooted so much of the language and civilization of Southern and Western Europe.

If Dante was the prophet of the new era he was an unconscious seer. The first leader in the intellectual awakening of Europe was Francesco Petrarcha, or Petrarch. His father, a Florentine lawyer and a friend of Dante’s, was exiled from Florence with him in 1302. During this exile Petrarch was born at Arezzo, July 20, 1304. His mother brought him up at a little villa on the Arno above Florence until 1312. In that year his father removed to Avignon, the seat of the Papal Court, that he might more profitably practice his profession. Petrarch, after completing his preparatory studies at Carpentras, studied law at

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27

Montpelier and Bologna until 1326, when the death of his father brought him back to Avignon. In order now to obtain a living he entered the clerical life, and was probably ordained priest. Nevertheless he had two illegitimate children. Though enjoying the patronage of the Papal Court, no one has given a more scathing picture of the Avignon papacy. He had no call or fitness for the work of the clergy, nor would he accept promotion in its ranks. He lived in isolation at Vaucluse, and afterward at Parma (where he was the first to feel and to reveal to the world the charm of natural scenery), the life of a literary man, supported by the minor clerical preferments which he held. He first saw Laura, a married woman, the inspiration and theme of his sonnets, in 1327. She died of the plague in 1348, and her death made him a graver and more serious man.

In 1341, King Robert of Naples invited him to his court, the same year he was crowned poet on the Capitol at Rome. From this time he enjoyed a European reputation, and was in friendly relations with the reigning princes of Italy. He made his home at Milan with the Visconti, from 1353 to 1362, and was their ambassador at Venice, to the emperor at Prague, and at Paris. After the death of his son he removed to Padua, where he spent the next seven years, until 1369, when he retired to the little town of Arqua, where he died, July 18, 1374. It is the distinction of Petrarch that, in seeking self-culture, there was awakened in him an unquenchable enthusiasm for antiquity, its literature and history, which caused him to call Europe, and especially Italy, to recognize the greatness and intellectual value of the life and civili

28

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zation which had been submerged beneath the waves of barbarian conquest. Petrarch, not only in his Italian poetry revealed the grace and charm of his native tongue in a new poetic form, but came to know and use the Latin language of the purer age, and to love the great writers of that tongue. He was the first to gather manuscripts for libraries and to collate them, to collect coins, and to seek the preservation of antique monuments. Petrarch was also the first to feel that patriotism for Italy which achieved national realization in 1870. He had the defects of a selfcentered literary life; he was vain and arrogant; but his faults can never cause us to forget the service he rendered in giving the impulse to his age which resulted in the intellectual culture and artistic achievements of the Renaissance. At the same time the unfortunate tribune, Cola di Rienzo, was the first to recognize and call attention to the value of the historic monuments and to collect the inscriptions of Rome.

The admiration for the ancient world and thirst for its larger knowledge awakened by Petrarch was deepened and extended by his scholars.

Boccaccio.    _r ,

. The greatest of these was Boccaccio, the first of modern novelists, the first great prose-writer of the Italian tongue. Giovanni Boccaccio was the illegitimate son of a merchant of Florence, who brought him up with the tenderest care. He was born at Certaldo, in Florentine territory, twenty miles southwest of that city, in 1313.

Boccaccio studied law, but settled as a merchant at Naples in 1333, where he remained until 1341. In that year he met Maria, the natural daughter of King Robert of Naples, and who though mar-

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ried, formed with him an illegal connection. She was the Fiametta of his poetry. The same year he returned to Florence at his father’s request, and remained there three years. In 1344 he returned to Naples, where he lived until the death of his father in 1350. During these years he wrote most of the tales of the Decameron, though it was first published in 1353. On the death of his father he returned to Florence, which was his home for the next ten years. He lived as a man of the world, acquainted with the emperor and kings. In 1350 he met Petrarch, and formed a life-long friendship. Petrarch knew no Greek, but Boccaccio learned the language from Leone Pilato, a Thessalian adventurer, whom Boccaccio caused to be appointed to a chair in the University of Florence, the first professor of Greek in Italy. Boccaccio copied Dante with his own hand, wrote his life and a comment on the first sixteen cantos of the “ Inferno.” Two years before his death he began lectures on Dante in the University of Florence. In 1360 the poet retired to Certaldo, and in the next year occurred his conversion. He thought to become a monk, but was dissuaded by a manly and sensible letter from Petrarch. In 1362 he became a priest. His natural children died before him, and through spending large sums for books he became impoverished, but refused splendid offers of hospitality. In his native Certaldo, beautiful for situation on the banks of the Elsa, he died, December 21,1375. In Boccaccio’s prose, on which rests his fame, is seen the Italian nature, its grace and elegance and impulsiveness, but also the coarseness and indecency of the time and people. Unfortunately the first of novelists did much to bring

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this class of literature into disrepute. With his delight in the beauty and joy of life he brought in that undisguised sensuality which has since so often tainted Italian literature.

Other scholars of Petrarch who delighted in classical studies were Giovanni da Ravenna, once his sec-other retary, and Luigi Marsigli, a monk of Flor-Schoiars of ence, who became the teacher of Coluccio Petrarch. ^ Salutato, the first of the great chancellors of Florence. These men greatly influenced for a long period of years the current usage by the purity and excellence of the Latin style of the official language of the Republic of Florence. Salutato held the office from 1375 to 1406, which brings us into the fifteenth century, the great century of the Renaissance. The Latin language and literature had now secured their permanent place in the secular culture and polite learning of Italy and Europe.

A greater effort was required to revive the language and literature of Greece. Latin had been pre-The Revival ^serve^ ^as the language of the Church. In of Greek that language were known the Scriptures studies. _an(j _tk_e Fathers, like Jerome and Augustine. In that tongue were the canons of the Councils, the decretals of the Popes, and the writings of the schoolmen. When came to be revived the study of Roman law in the Universities of Bologna and Padua, and of medicine at Salerno and Montpelier, the literature of both professions was in Latin. Latin was the common speech of learning and the circles of the court, while to the humblest it was not a foreign tongue, because from earliest childhood heard in the daily services of the Church.

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It was different with the language of ancient Hellas. This, it is true, was yet the living language of a people with a past of great glory; a people whose educated classes were familiar with the poets, orators, historians, and philosophers of that language’s noblest prime. No great barbarian conquest had submerged that literature and made it unknown to the men who still spoke the language of Greece, though modified by long descent. But, on the other hand, the division between the Greek and Latin Churches, now centuries old, begun by mutual anathemas of the chief of the clergy on both sides, had ripened into a bitter contempt and inveterate hatred. Though the Mediaeval Church built its theology on the philosophy of Aristotle, he was mainly known, even to theologians, through a Latin translation. Yet who could know the literature of the elder Rome or the life of the antique world and not wish to know the source of all in it which was most profound, most inspiring, and most beautiful,—the literature and art of Greece? The supreme charm of the artistic sense of the Greeks, the comprehensiveness, variety, and power of their thought, must attract all men who come to know the world in which Rome ruled.

In tracing the progress of Greek studies in this period there can only be pointed out three or four men by whose agency chiefly the Greek lan- _Greek guage, thought, and life came to be an influ- Scholars, ential element in the life of the Renaissance. ^Chry^so,ora5* Manuel Chrysoloras was the first great teacher of Greek in Italy. Born in the Greek Empire, he came from Venice to teach Greek at Florence in 1399. Later he came to Rome, and taught Greek to most

32

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of the great humanists, or lovers of classical studies, of his time.

Another eminent scholar and teacher was Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481). At the age of eighteen he began teaching at Padua. The next year

Filelfo. , ^{&    &    J} ,

he went to Venice, and two years later he became Venetian consul general at Constantinople. Here he remained seven years, and studied under John Chrysoloras, the brother of Manuel, and married the daughter of his teacher, the beautiful Theodora Chrysoloras. Filelfo boasted that he was the only man in Europe who had at his command the entire literature of Greece and Rome, and used equally well the languages of Cicero and Xenophon. Through a long life he enjoyed an immense reputation, and taught in all the great cities of Italy. But great learning does not make a good man, and Filelfo was a sophist, a culumniator, and a man of pleasure.

A man of broader scholarship, and the first promotor of antiquarian studies, was Francesco Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459). P°ggi° studied

Poggio.    .

Latin under John of Ravenna, and Greek under Manuel Chrysoloras. Under Boniface IX he became a papal secretary, and afterward attended the Council of Constance. There he saw Jerome, the friend and disciple of John Huss, burned at the stake, and has left us the best account of his trial and martyrdom. At this time Poggio visited the monasteries of Switzerland and Germany, collecting precious manuscripts of the classic literatures. After the return of Martin V to Rome he held the office of secretary to the Pope for the next thirty years. Then he removed to Florence, and was chancellor of that city until his

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death three years later. Poggio was a man of varied culture. He translated Xenophon and Diodorus, and was the author of a history of Florence. He was an antiquary and epigraphist as well as a collector of manuscripts, and has high claim to our remembrance for having described the monuments of Rome which were in existence in 1431. In personal character Poggio was worldly and religiously indifferent. Though holding office for most of his life in the Papal Court, he was never ordained, and wrote in bitter scorn of the priests.

Another name which can not fail ot mention in any account of the Renaissance is Laurentius Valla (1406-1459), the first of historical critics. ^ Valla not only knew Latin and Greek, but he knew how to use them. Translating Herodotus and Thucydides, he was one of the founders of philological criticism. Born at Rome, he taught in Piacenza and Padua, and soon obtained an office in the Papal Court. For five years from 1435 he was at Naples, and enjoyed the patronage of King Alfonso. While at Naples he wrote a treatise, “ De Voluptate ”— “On Pleasure”—in which he presented a perfectly heathen view of life. In 1440 he published his demonstration of the falsity of the pretended Donation of Constantine, which established his reptation as an historical critic of the first rank. He will always be honored as the first of that long line of men who have taught us to see facts as they are, and not as they come to us by tradition. Nicholas V invited him to return to Rome in 1448, and there he remained in honorable employment until his death. This man, Epicurean in thought and morals, and first in the at-

3

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tack upon the forged claims of the papacy, was a canon of St.John Lateran, and lies buried in that basilica.

The interest in Greek studies was greatly increased by the event which caused the failure of the Council of Basel, the meeting of the Council of ^Florence'¹ Florence ^m *439 f°^r the union of the Greek and Latin Churches. However illusory was this union, and however little it aided in saving Constantinople from the Turk, if indeed it did not accelerate its ruin, nevertheless the Council brought learned Greeks to Italy, some of whom remained. The most renowned was Johannes

Bessarion.    .

Bessanon (1389-1475), who was made cardinal of the Roman Church in 1439. Bessarion possessed a rare library of six hundred manuscript volumes, worth 30,000 gold gulders. For more than thirty years, in which he was a potent element in the Church life and learned society of Italy, he unceasingly advanced, not only the study of Greek literature, but of the Platonic philosophy.

This awakened interest in Greek studies prepared Europe for two great events,— the pontificate of Nicholas V (1447-1453), and the taking by ^the Cap- ^'^ur^^:s Constantinople. Nicholas V, ture of con- Tommaso Parentucelli, was a poor boy, the Nicho”as^Pv* ^{son a} Physician, whose early death threw him on his own resources. He thirsted for learning, and by hard work won his mastery of it. For twenty years he was the steward of the household of Cardinal Albergati, and traveled with him in Germany, France, and England. Three years after the death of his patron and friend he was created cardinal, and the following year chosen Pope. Com-

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ing to wealth and power, Nicholas retained the tastes of a scholar, and made it his aim to advance classical learning and the humanistic studies. Through his means were gathered priceless treasures of Greek and Roman literature. His collection of five thousand manuscripts became the foundation of the Vatican library. The acquisition of such treasures he made the fashion among the Italian princes of that time. He gave the great example of the patronage of the learned studies and the foundation of libraries, in which work also Cosmo and Lorenzo de’ Medici were distinguished. Nicholas planned to rebuild Rome and to make it the great capital of Christendom. The plan was worthy of a great mind and a great ruler, if not in harmony with his position as the chief bishop and ruler of the Christian Church. To gain money to this end he encouraged, by indulgences of every sort, the great jubilee of 1450. The immense sums then gathered were applied to carry out this plan. The intolerance and indifference of the Pope left the Greek Empire to its fate; and in the loss of Constantinople, Christendom suffered the deadliest blow since Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, eight centuries before, became lost to the Christian faith.

But often for historic calamities, as for personal misfortunes, there is a compensation. The soil had been long preparing; now came the precious seed. The capture of Constantinople dispersed the scholars of the Greek tongue and the treasures of their libraries in the lands of Christendom. Naturally these exiles came first, and settled in greater numbers in Italy. From that happy conjuncture of the East and West, Greek became an integral part of modern culture.

36    The Christian Church.

But had this devotion to the past, to the great names and works of antiquity, no dangers? The an-^    , cient world was the heathen world. Its

Dangers of    _{# #}

the study of literature and art were steeped in idolatry, Antiquity. _an^ _{nQt &    Q}£ ^    mythology,

was tainted with a moral corruption more destructive to the higher life of men and nations than is the deadliest plague to the physical life. There was danger to the Christian faith. Men could not worship at Mount Olympus and bow in adoration before the Man of Calvary. There was danger to the moral life. Men could not recall the life described with unquestioned truth in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and not feel the influence of that pestilential breath which had destroyed the races of the ancient world. It is the same question which meets us to-day in the use of the Greek and Latin classics and the study of antique life and art. But God was in that ancient world. Its highest thought testifies of him and of the need of human redemption. Their poets and philosophers teach this as plainly, though in a different manner, as do the Hebrew prophets. Men can not afford to ignore, but need to profit by, the experience and achievements of the noblest endowed races of the world before Christ. Their bequest is an immortal heritage.

But it is as true to-day as in the Renaissance that, unless the spirit of Christ rules in the thought of the student and the society by which he is surrounded, the study of the life and the thought of the ancient world leads to heathenism; heathenism, it may be, more enlightened and less corrupt because of a Christian atmosphere and environment, but nevertheless

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heathenism. And heathenism the most refined and the most thoughtful is yet an immense retrogression. Morally it is downfall. It has no salvation for the individual, and no future for society.

Two inventions had a great effect upon the history of their times and the development of the Renaissance. Learning and the fine arts, like any of the _{The Inven}. products of civilization, require the estab- tionofOun-lishment of peace and a settled civil order P°^wder* which insures to each man the enjoyment of the fruits of his toil. This was impossible under the rule of the feudal nobility. Nothing contributed more surely to break their power than the use of gunpowder. This made the common burgher able to contend with the mail-clad knight; or, rather, made useless the knight’s armor, and transferred the superiority from cavalry to infantry. The use of cannon finds its first authentic mention in a decree of the Florentine Government, preserved in its archives, bearing date of February 11, 1326, though the Moors are said to have used them the year previous in the siege of Braga. Artillery was in common use in Italy before 1344, but came to European fame through the English at the battle of Crecy, in 1346. The use of fire-arms for infantry is of later date. The invention of gunpowder led to the formation of standing armies, the consolidation of States, and the reign of internal peace, while trained soldiers or mercenaries fought in foreign wars. The great cities, with the exception of those wasted by the English in the French war, enjoyed peace in the fifteenth century. They might be disturbed by civic revolutions, but they knew no sack of foreign soldiery which overthrew the prosperity and destroyed in

33    The Christian Church.

bloody havoc the accumulation of centuries of wealth and culture. When this came, or when to ward it off the Italian cities sold their liberties, their civilization and the Italian Renaissance received a mortal blow.

The other great discovery, which even more directly affected the course of the intellectual move-Theinven- ^ment known as the Renaissance, was the

tionof invention of printing. The first printed Printing. document _cf which, we have knowledge was an edition of “ Letters of Indulgence,” issued in behalf of the kingdom of Cyprus by Nicholas V, in 1454. The first printed book was a Latin Bible, issued in 1456. These were printed at Mainz, on the Rhine. Printing-presses were next established at Strasburg, in 1460, and at Bamberg the next year. In 1465, two Germans established the first printing-press outside their native land at the Benedictine monastery of Subiaco, which was two years later removed to Rome. In 1469, the first printing-press was established at Venice by a German. Aldus Manutius made Venetian printing famous through the Aldine press, which he founded. He carried it on from 1494 to 1515, when he left it to his descendants. Presses were first set up at Paris in 1470; two years later in Spain, at Valencia; in London in 1477; and the next year at Oxford. By 1488 they were in Constantinople, but came to Scotland only in 1505, and did not reach Ireland until 1551.

This great invention made possible popular education, popular representative government, and the knowledge of the Scriptures by the people in their own tongue. It became the effective organ of public opinion, and by its agency made possible the Refor-

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mation and the revolutions by which civil liberty was established in England and the United States. In its effect upon the Renaissance it displaced gradually the army of copyists; it presented in convenient and permanent form, not only the Holy Scriptures, but the masterpieces of the great authors of antiquity, the poets, historians, and philosophers, and those who described the life and art of Greece and Rome. After the Latin Bible, were printed the Church Fathers and the great classic authors of the ancient world. It is worthy of note that, though the press was in a monastery, the first book printed in Italy was not the Bible, but a Latin grammar, and this was followed by Cicero’s “ De Oratore,” and Lactan-tius. It is remarkable that, after such an immense extension of the art of printing and perfection of its mechanical appliances, the books printed by the first generation of printers have never been surpassed in distinctness and permanence of impression, as well as in beauty and elegance of page and type.

We have traced that intellectual awakening which has made the languages of Greece and Rome the great culture-tongues of modern times, the _Beginning recognized means of intellectual discipline ofMod-in education, largely because they reveal, ^ernArt‘ as no others, what man has been, and at the same time the perennial element, the unchanging factors, of man’s being, amid all changes of generations and centuries. But this awakening, which revealed the antique world, did not stop with its language and literature. Its art was a revelation of almost as great significance. The newly-awakened life and mind of

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the prosperous and wealthy Italian communities could but turn to the work of the artists of the elder time beneath their eyes, as the work of their fathers now brought again to human vision. Great public edifices and homes of wealth and refinement came to owe an increasing debt to the study of antique art. Baths, basilicas, and forums, even in ruins, were mighty and influential object lessons left by a race of great builders. The noblest masters, like Bramante, Raphael, and Michael Angelo, studied these works with the greatest enthusiasm. They knew how to profit by them and surpass them. Of even greater importance to the development of the fine arts were the remains of ancient sculpture, and of less though great influence were the mosaic pavements and the fresco decoration upon the walls of villas and private residences. Yet genius, not opportunity, is the first element in the development of new eras in the history of art. The inspiration of living men who are able to appreciate and reward artistic achievement is more potent than the best examples of dead masters, though they have their lesson for all time. Hence the development of art, like that of literary culture, had its source and center at Florence, and not at Rome.

The literary movement of the Renaissance, which affected all the Italian universities, and the courts of

the Italian princes, formed its center at

The Glory j?i_orence> in Florence was founded the

of Florence.

first public library, the first academy of learned men in modern Europe, and on the banks of the Arno was dispensed the most splendid patronage of scholarship. But Florence, surpassed in beauty of situation by Naples and Venice and in imperial asso

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ciations by Rome, is yet the loveliest of Italian cities. It was fitting that here the fine arts should have their second birth, and that a crowd of distinguished men in the fifteenth century should make her fame, as the city of the intellect and the arts, second in the history of human culture only to that of Athens. What other city can boast of such a roll of names as Dante and Boccaccio, Cimabue and Giotto, Fra Angelico and Fra Bartolommeo, Brunelleschi and Bramante, Ghiberti and Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci and Michael Angelo? Not only nowhere else was there such a crowd of distinguished men, but nowhere else as in Florence could be found such refinement and elegance in social life, and nowhere else had the inspiration of culture and the sensitiveness of artistic taste so permeated all classes. If we replace Socrates by Savonarola, the age of the Medici more nearly resembles the age of Pericles than any other in European history. Alas! the parallel goes further; the Athenians poisoned their philosopher, the noblest figure of their history, and Florence burned her prophet. In both cases the sentence which condemned the worthiest representative of their moral life, presaged the speedy ruin, not only of the State, but of the civilization which made memorable the age.

Florence was great before the Medici were known. Her history began in the twelfth century. She had been benefited and strengthened by the _0rig_inand great Countess Matilda. She rapidly grew Growth of in varied industry and wealth. In 1282 ^F,orence-she adopted a republican form of government, in which the citizens, according to their calling or arts, ruled themselves through a Council, with priors, like

42

The Christian Church.

the ancient consuls, and a gonfalonier, or military commander, each with a short term of office of a few months. This remained the form of the constitution until the overthrow of the Republic. The citizens loved Florence, and gave freely of their wealth to beautify and ennoble their city. When, about 1340, the Venetian ambassadors remonstrated with the magistrates of Florence at the beginning of the famous campanile of their cathedral on account of its cost, they showed to the Venetians the chests of gold which they had accumulated, and which were devoted to the completion of one of the most perfect structures ever designed or erected by man.

Before the days of the Medici, Dante and Boccaccio, Cimabue and Giotto had won undying fame for Florence. Florentine bankers furnished Ed-

The Medici.    ,

ward III of England money for his French wars, and were nearly ruined when he failed to repay them. She maintained her commercial supremacy through her relations with Venice and the East and beyond the Alps, and the excellence of her manufactures of silk and wool. The Medici first acquired riches in the fourteenth century. In 1378, Silvestro de’ Medici entered the magistracy of the Republic; he was recognized as the leader of the popular party against the civic aristocracy, and this position was held with increasing vigor by his grandson, Giovanni de’ Medici, who was elected gonfalonier of the Republic in 1421. He was the wealthiest man of his time, and on his death he was succeeded in his commercial relations and political leadership by his son Cosmo.

The leader of the party opposed to Cosmo de’ Medici, justly fearing that the wealth and the popu-

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larity of the house of Medici, joined to the remarkable political abilities of its head, would make him an enemy to the liberties of Florence, sought cosmo Cosmo’s death in 1433. He was unable ^de’ ^Medici. to secure a capital condemnation, but only a sentence of exile against the popular leader. Cosmo went to Venice, where he was received with great honor, and where he increased his influence. Here he began that collection of manuscripts which he made the foundation of the famous Laurentian Library of his native city. In adding to the treasures of this library, Vespasiano Batticci was his agent and friend, as was also the celebrated Tommaso Parentucelli, Nicholas V, before he became cardinal. After a year of exile, Cosmo de’ Medici returned to Florence and to supreme power in her government, a position he held unshaken for thirty years, until his death in 1464. The first business man of his times, and a consummate politician, he lived on terms of social equality and social intercourse with the citizens, whose freedom he was steadily but insidiously withdrawing from them.

About Cosmo de’ Medici gathered the distinguished men of his time. Such were Niccolo Niccoli (1363-1436), a pupil of Marsigli, a collector _The Circle of manuscripts and antiquarian antiquities, ^of Cosmo, a fastidious critic and noted scholar, who was a delightful host to literary men. On his death he left his library to his native city, thus founding the first of public libraries in the modern world. In this circle met Leonardo Bruni, chancellor of Florence from 1429-1443. He was a famous Latin scholar, and wrote a history of Florence. His tomb is one of the most notable in that Westminster Abbey of great

44    The Christian Church.

Italians, Santa Croce, in his native city. There also came Carlo Aretino, Bruni’s successor (1443-1459), celebrated for his prodigious memory and his skeptical indifference. Here also was found Traversari, a celebrated Greek scholar and the general of the Car-moldolensian order; and, noblest of them all, Manetti (1396-1459), a devout Christian, learned in Latin and Greek, and also in Hebrew. He showed his ability and patriotism, not only as ambassador of Florence in Venice, Naples, and Rome, but also in governing her subject districts with wisdom and justice. His eloquence, capacity, and high character made him feared by the Medici, who procured his banishment. Nicholas V called him to Rome as apostolic secretary, but on the death of this Pope, he passed on to Naples, where he died.

But the renown of the city by the Arno, the center of the Renaissance, culminated not in her scholars

The Rebirth ^an(^ literary ^{men w}^°    office

of the Fine in her government, but in her sons who

^Art8’ founded in modern times the arts of paint-Architecture. _an(j _scuipt_{ure an}d Italian architecture.

For its purpose nothing can surpass a Gothic cathedral. It is the grandest and most enduring symbolism of faith achieved by man. But in spite of the magnificent structure at Milan and the beauty of those at Sienna and Orvieto, it is not at home in Italy. Immense glass windows are hardly tolerable in that sunny clime. The Italian builder is essentially decorative in his tastes; he requires not only sculpture, but also painting, to complete his work. For this purpose he must have wall space. The climate and his needs combined to make the lofty cu-

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pola, very different from the low dome of the Byzantine architecture, the distinguishing feature of Italian church architecture. The church could now be cool, afford all needed space for chapels and interior decorations, and yet be flooded with light at the meeting of the transepts and the nave above the high altar. It need only be remarked that such a church, not more than a Gothic structure, is adapted to congregational service or evangelical worship. The voice of the preacher and the singing of the congregation alike would be lost unless confined in a section of the building such as the choir or the nave. The first great example of this style of church building is the Duomo, or cathedral, of Florence. Arnolfo del Cambio (1240-1314), was the first great architect of Florence. He built the Palazzo Vecchio, severe, commanding, and impressive, and marked out the general architectural features of the city. In 1294 was begun, under his direction, the great Duomo. The cupola, which is its distinctive feature, was built from 14201434 by Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1444). In 1403 Brunelleschi visited Rome. This visit formed an era in his life and in the history of his art. Here he studied the works of old Roman builders, and doubtless the Pantheon suggested his own great dome at Florence, as a century later it encouraged Michael Angelo to hang the vaster cupola of St. Peter’s in the air. In 1418, after a vigorous competition, Brunelleschi secured the opportunity which made sure his fame and founded the new style of church architecture.

About 1430, Michelozzo, a pupil of Brunelleschi, built the Palazzo Riccardi, the house of the Medici.

46    The Christian Church.

In the same territory began the triumphs of Italian sculpture. Nicholas of Pisa, who died in 1278, gave

new direction to the development of the

Sculpture.    __    .

art. He and his son Giovanni, who died m 1320, kept close to the work of the architect, as is shown in the fact that their masterpieces are the pulpits at Pisa, Sienna, and Pistoja. Their pupil, Andrea Pisano (died after 1349) came to Florence and carved statues for the facade and campanile of its Duomo. A Florentine, versatile in the arts, as were many after him, was Andrea Orcagna (1329-1389), a pupil of Giotto’s, a painter, sculptor, and architect. From his hand came the beautiful Bargello at Florence, the frescoes of the Strozzi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella, and the tabernacle in Or San Michele. His brother Bernardo painted the unforgettable frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa.

Lorenzo de’ Cino Ghiberti (1378-1455), wrought the marvelous bronze doors of the Baptistry at Florence. He secured the commission in competition with the plans of Quercia and Donatello in 1403, and its execution occupied him for more than fifty years. His competitor, Giacomo della Quercia, proved his genius at Sienna in the Duomo and Fonte Gaja, and in a tomb in the Duomo at Lucca. The work of these sculptures, while auxiliary to architecture, is very different from the symbolism and grotesque fantasy of the Gothic carving. Personality, dignity, and grace are seen in the work of the earliest Italian sculptors. The first sculptor to stand independent of architecture was Donato Donatello (1383-1466). His statues command attention and compel admiration irrespective of their architectural setting. Such are

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his bronzes Magdalen and David and marble St. George at Florence, and the bronze John the Baptist at Sienna.

Much more than sculpture is the art of painting indebted to Florence. Cimabue (1240-1306) opened the new era of modern painting. To ob-

•    • n    r , *    r    , Painting.

tam a true idea of the human form he studied the work of the sculptors of antiquity. His work shows noble grouping and natural expression, though his colors are crude and he had no idea of perspective. In 1270, when Charles of Anjou came to Florence, his painting of the Virgin was carried in triumph through the streets to Santa Maria Novella. Thenceforth painting was at home in Florence. Those who have seen this painting and his Virgin at Assisi will testify that he gave dignity and beauty to the human countenance before unknown in Christian art.

A much greater artist was Giotto Bordone (1276*337)- I*¹ Giotto there is a union of good drawing with breadth and grace and a great improvement in the use of color. His works show originality of conception and great fertility of genius. The most noted examples are in the Arena Chapel at Padua, the Church of St. Francis at Assisi, the chapels of Santa Croce in Florence, the convent of Santa Chiara at Naples, and in the sacristy of St. Peter’s at Rome. To the balance and symmetry of composition and the harmony of color which make notable his frescoes must be added his fame as the designer and builder of the campanile of the Duomo at Florence, such a memorial as but few of the sons of men leave to after times.

43

The Christian Church.

A young man born in Florence, Masaccio (14021429), greatly advanced the art of painting in fresco. His representation of the life and martyrdom, on the wheel, of St. Catherine of Alexandria, in the chapel of San Clemente at Rome, justifies his fame.

But after Giotto the greatest painter of this period was the monk of Florence, Fra Angelico (1387-1455). Fra Angelico was the most spiritual and devout of the Italian painters. He would never take money for his art, but made his painting an act of worship. No man ever painted angels as did this Florentine. None who have seen his work at Perugia and at Florence can forget the purity, the adoration, and the triumph they express. Even when reproduced they are among our most precious treasures. He lies buried in the choir of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva at Rome, where rest the remains of the two Popes of the house of Medici, Leo X and Clement VII.

This brief retrospect is merely the record of the distinctive achievements of individual poets, scholars, and artists. The characteristic of the age was the development of personality—a personality bound to distinguish itself in every way. And for high ambitions there were large rewards. In such an age of conquest of new worlds great prizes awaited the first comers. Columbus was comparatively late in the series of discoverers of new worlds. Before him were those who, in the great century whose closing decade he made forever renowned, had discovered the marvelous though buried world of the language and literature, the philosophy and art of Ancient Greece and Rome, and those who had opened the worlds of modern painting and sculpture. Out of such an age

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rightly sprang Columbus forth, and Copernicus and Galileo worthily closed the cycle of discovery of worlds. Personal distinction was the note of the age. The work of the Renaissance was begun; men began to know, to think, and to do, with a freedom, independence, and skill which gave promise of a creative spirit, the excellence, variety, and abundance of whose achievements make memorable the age to all after generations. The dawn of the Renaissance was passed. The movement came to the full expansion of its vigorous youth, 1453-1494, in th© culmination of the civic and artistic life of Florence. The age of Lorenzo the Magnificent was at hand.

THE CENTER OF THE RENAISSANCE, 1453-1494.

Cosmo de’ Medici left Florence in splendor at his death in 1464. He was succeeded by his son Pietro, who,"weakened in health, died five years The Era of later, and left the rule of Florence to Lorenzo, his son, Lorenzo the Magnificent, from 1469 until his death in 1492. Lorenzo was the true successor of Cosmo de’ Medici. Around him gathered the most brilliant men of a brilliant age, without the mention of whose names and deeds the history of the Renaissance can never be written. Learned, generous, and splendid, Lorenzo governed as the wisest prince and statesman of his time, and yet lived on a footing of social equality with the people and great men of Florence, so that, through personal distinction, through knowledge and taste, through patronage of learning and the arts, and through the splendor of a magnificent capital, he always seemed the first citizen rather than the ruler of the State. Yet Lorenzo had

4

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The Christian Church.

the fatal taint of the Renaissance. His defect was not in the knowledge or refinement of taste, but in morals. Not a faithful husband himself, the influence of his life and his court could but aid in that demoralization of society which kindled the wrath of Savonarola. When he should have been at the beginning of his career, he died at forty-four, and left a name and city glorious indeed, but whose glory was soon to pale, and whose liberty, like its fame, was soon to expire in the miserable despotism of the Medicean house. Lorenzo will always be noted for the union of high and rare qualities and great practical wisdom with manners at once engaging, splendid, and popular.

About Lorenzo were gathered the scholars of his time. Such were Bartolommeo Scala, chancellor of Lorenzo’s Florence, and author of a Latin history of

circle. _th_e Fi_rst Crusade. Such was the Latin professor, Christoforo Landino (1424-1504), who translated into Italian the works of Pliny the Elder, and lectured on Petrarch, but is best known to us by his edition of Dante. The best scholar of his time and a noted teacher was Angelo Polizano (1454-1494). Po-lizano was Professor of Greek and Latin Literature in the University of Florence, and tutor of the children of Lorenzo de’ Medici. Though ill-formed and with a squint in his vision, he attracted to his lecture room the scholars from all lands. The German Reuchlin and the Englishmen Grocyn and Linacre were his pupils.

More distinguished than these scholars were those whose study of Plato gave renown to the Academy of Florence. The first of these was Marcilio de’

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Fincio (1433-1499). Fincio was a famous Greek and Latin scholar. He translated the works of Plato into Latin and wrote a treatise on his doctrine of immortality. He is celebrated as the inaugurator of Platonic studies in Latin Christendom, and for making them an element in the development of the Renaissance. A philosopher, he was amiable in character and a devout Christian.

But the most remarkable of all this band of learned men was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (14641494). Of noble birth, according to a contemporary, nature seemed to have showered upon him all her gifts. He was equally accomplished as a courtier and renowned as a scholar. It is said that he needed to read a page but once to have forever fixed in his memory the words as well as the thought. He knew not only Greek and Latin, but mathematics and philosophy, and studied theology at Paris. He studied the Oriental languages, and especially delighted in Hebrew, while he was devoted to the Platonic philosophy. Gentle, modest, and devout, his is one of the most attractive figures of that marvelous time. For some philosophic positions he had taken in nine hundred theses, which he offered to defend at Rome, he was placed under papal censure in i486, and was not absolved until 1493. Few stranger or cruder contrasts meet us in the history of this stormy century than when in Florence, the center and home of Renaissance, Pico della Mirandola was compelled to receive absolution from the hands of Alexander VI.

Men of mark in scholarship were also found in the smaller Italian courts. Such a man was Guarino da Verona (1370-1460), who studied five years at

52

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Constantinople, and came to Ferrara in 1429. He was noted for his method and exact discipline. His moral character was equal to his learning. At ninety years of age he died, the father of six sons and seven daughters. Of like character was Giovanni Aurispa (ⁱ369-i459), who also studied in Constantinople and returned laden with learning and manuscripts. He taught in Ferrara and lived there the life of a quiet scholar.

It is difficult to make understood the interest and enthusiasm with which men sought for and prized

the manuscripts of the classic literatures,

Copying.    . .

and sought to make them accessible m libraries and through copies and translations. Manuscripts were sought by princes and men of wealth, and became an accredited sign of culture. The bringing to light of an unknown author by the Greek refugees, or in the monasteries of Switzerland or Germany, excited much more enthusiasm than the discovery in our time of the Sinaitic manuscript of the Bible, or the Civic Constitutions of Aristotle, or the Teaching of the Twelve. With what zeal, then, were the copies multiplied ! The Marquis of Urbino employed thirty or forty copyists, and Pope Nicholas V surpassed him. The Florentine bookseller Vespasiano Baticci employed forty-five copyists twenty-two months in preparing two hundred volumes for Cosmo de’ Medici. Poggio copied Quintil-lian in twenty-two days. Copying a Bible cost from twenty-five to forty golden gulders, while copying the letters of Jerome cost one hundred. The price for Cicero’s Letters was ten ducats, and for the works of Livy one hundred and twenty.

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Nicholas V made great efforts to have all the great authors of Greece translated into Latin. Translations were made for him of the historians

Translations.

Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, Diodorus, and Appian, and of the philosophers Philo, Theophrastus, Ptolemaeus, Aristotle, and Plato, and he paid liberally for the work. The translation of the Greek poets was a more arduous task, and waited for a later day.

In this period the great architects who were to make their names famous at Rome were in their boyhood or young manhood at Florence. Architecture. Such were Bramante, Peruzzi, and Giu- Alberti, liano de’ Sangallo. Yet an architect born at Venice and celebrated as a painter, poet, and philosopher, Leon Battista Alberti, made illustrious this era. He wrought at Rome for Nicholas V on the papal palace, the Aqua Vergina, and the Piazza di Trevi. At Florence his most celebrated work is the facade of Santa Maria Novella. He began the most beautiful of Florentine palaces, the Palazzo Strozzi, which was finished by Benedetto da Majano (1442-1497). In this period was built the celebrated Certosa at Pavia, and the Sistine Chapel and the Ponte Sisto at Rome, as well as the Roman churches of S. Agostino and S. Maria della Pace.

In sculpture, Lucca della Robbia (1400-1482), was achieving success in carving stone, and in founding the artistic excellence of glazed terra-cotta

Sculpture.

work, which has been a lesson and a delight to all after generations. Mino da Fiesole (14311484) and his followers brought grace and sweetness into the art of sculpture. His charm is felt by those

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seeing his work in the Badia at Florence, or in S. Maria Sopra Minerva at Rome. A man of greater fame was Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488), a goldsmith, painter, and sculptor. As a painter his chief title to fame is that he was the master of Leonardo da Vinci. His noted works are the tombs of Giovanni and Pietro de’ Medici at San Lorenzo, of Cardinal Forteguerra, the bronze David in the Bargello, and Christ and Thomas at Or San Michele in Florence. In 1479 he received the commission to make a bronze equestrian statue of the Venetian general, Bartolommeo Colleoni. He wrought on it until his death in 1488, when he had it ready for the founder. This was intrusted to another hand, but the completed work, finished in 1496, justified the delay and pains. It has ever since ranked as the most artistic equestrian statue in the world. Precision and delicacy of line are its characteristics. The expression of dignity and strength is greater in many modern statues.

This was a great era in the history of Italian painting. The cradle and the theater of the best

Italy has known was in Florence. A pupil

Painting. . V, .    .    ^{r r}

of Fra Angelico was Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1497), who showed his influence, but greatly surpassed him. The fine frescoes in the chapel of Riccardi Palace, of the Adoration of the Magi, are well preserved. The same can not be said of the twenty-four scenes from the Old Testament in the Campo Santo at Pisa, where he spent sixteen years and received five hundred dollars for each of them in our money. They are rich and festive, and crowded with abundant life.

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Ghirlandajo (i 449-1494), surpassed all previous efforts in fresco-painting. His work may be seen in Florence in the churches of Ognissanti, _Ghir|andaj0 the Palazzo Vecchio, the most celebrated in the choir of Santa Maria Novella, and the story of St. Francis in the Santa Trinita, and the calling of Andrew and Peter in the Sistine Chapel at Rome. He excelled in the composition of large scenes with a true perspective. He had inexhaustible fertility, few men having left so much for eleven years of labor. He said he wished he might cover the entire walls of Florence with his paintings.

Fra Filippo Lippi (1412-1469) was left an orphan at two years of age, and brought up in a convent, which, however, he left at twenty, though _FllippoLippi still under the vows, for the work and life of a painter, for which he had unusual gifts. He surpassed his contemporaries in color and technique as well as in the effect of life. Browning has celebrated an altar-piece in the Uffizi at Florence. None can see his Virgin Enthroned at Spoleto, his last work, and not feel his power. His tomb here was erected at the cost of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Vasari tells us that, while painting for a convent, he asked for a model, and a novice, a beautiful Florentine maiden, being given him, he carried her off and lived with her. She was the mother of his son.

That son was Filippino Lippi (1460-1505), a painter of ability, as testify his Adoration of the Magi and his Virgin and Saints in the Uffizi. Very different men, however, were the three Florentine painters of whom we have now to speak.

Sandro Botticelli (1446-1510) was a pupil of Fra

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Filippo Lippi. He was original, and had immense industry and invention. His figures, elongated, wistful, and sentimental, are all his own. For

Botticelli. ’ , ,    ’ ,    „ ,

many they have a great charm; to all they show genius and originality. Fine examples of his work are found in Florence, and in the Sistine Chapel at Rome are three paintings by him—Moses at the Well, Destruction of Korah, and Temptation of Christ—all of which have his charm without his marked peculiarities. His pictures show knowledge of the human figure, refinement, and poetic sentiment. He was an ardent follower of Savonarola, and remained true to his teachings until his death.

Luca Signorelli (1441-1523) impresses one as the most powerful Florentine painter before Michael Angelo, and from him the latter did not fail

Signorelli.    _ „ „

to profit. He was a master of the human body and of foreshortening. One painting of his is in the Sistine Chapel—Moses at the Rock. His greatest work was the frescoes at Orvieto, where he wrought four years, and for which he received eight hundred ducats, equal to forty-four thousand dollars in our money.

Two great artists wrought outside of Florence in this period. Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) was born of poor parents at Padua. He became

Mantegna,    .    .    .

the favorite of Squarcione, a famous virtuoso, who possessed the largest collection of statues, reliefs, and vases of any man of his time, and was a teacher of art as well. Here Mantegna developed a taste for the antique and a knowledge of perspective and ancient statuary which caused that precision and severity of line which makes him seem like a

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Roman in the fifteenth century. He was the most noted engraver of his generation. His celebrated works are nine pictures representing the triumph of Caesar, now at Hampton Court, London; a Madonna, in the Louvre; and a dead Christ, in the Brera at Milan, which is a fearful example of his power.

Giovanni Bellini (1426-1516) was the son and brother of painters of no ordinary merit. His father, Jacopo, had studied painting at Florence; _BelIin, his brother-in-law was Mantegna. In his paintings we see the beginning of the famous Venetian school. They show splendor and solemnity, having a richness and charm which makes them a joy to behold.

Yet these works of Florentine art were not the most marvelous thing of this marvelous age, but rather that in this time and in this place wrought the most original, the most beautiful, and the most powerful of modern painters. The oldest, Leonardo da Vinci, was born in 1452; Michael Angelo Buona-rotti, in 1474; Raffael Santi, in 1483; Antonio Allegri da Correggio, in 1494; Andrea del Sarto, in 1487; and at Venice Titian, in 1477. Where, in any time or in any place, is there anything like such a company of brilliant men, so richly dowered with the highest gifts of artistic genius ?

The political condition of Italy in the time of the Renaissance was complex and unique. In few periods of modern history are there more striking _

r r i • 1 r T 1 ^The Political

contrasts. It was a fateful period for Italy condition of as it closed by consigning her to foreign ^lta,y ^Untu servitude for three hundred and fifty years; a servitude, alas! the more bitter that the way had been paved for it by a steady degeneration of the

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national character. A sketch of the political relations in Italy at this time, even though brief, can not fail to be of interest. We considered the dawn of the Renaissance irrespective of political relations, as it was an intellectual movement, and hence only indirectly affected by them. After 1453 this is no longer the case. No part of the history of the Italian Renaissance can be understood after that time without reference to political relations.

We have incidentally related the history of Florence in connection with the story of the Medici.

Florence was a city state. So were Venice and Genoa and Milan, and these will first claim our consideration. At this period Venice was the great maritime and commercial power, not only of Italy, but of the Eastern Mediterranean. Her trade brought her great wealth and increasing luxury in private, and splendor in public life. Though crowds of Greek scholars came to her, and the most precious manuscripts of the East passed through her hands, she did not become a home of learning until Aldus established there his press in 1494. Nor did art begin to bloom until late, when Giovanni Bellini became the first great Venetian painter. Since the conquest of Constantinople, Venice found all her powers engaged in the unequal contest, which she sustained alone during the remainder of the century, of resisting the advance of the Turk in the waters of that great sea of which she possessed the capital and the eastern shores. Genoa, the ancient rival of Venice, found her power eclipsed. Until well on into the next century she was under the influence, now of Milan, and now of France.

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The great Lo mbard capital disputed the pre-eminence in Northern Italy of Venice and Florence. The Visconti family began its rule in Milan early in the fourteenth century. Otto Visconti, _Th™vte"onti. Archbishop of Milan, imprisoned Napo-leone della Torre and five of his relatives in iron cages, and so began the rule of his nephew Matteo Visconti, who obtained the sovereignty of Milan in 1311, and so founded the line of ducal rulers in his house. Matteo was a prudent despot, ruling more by superior ability and craft than by violence. In 1322 he was succeeded by his son Galeazzo, surnamed II Grande, who was imprisoned by the Emperor Louis of Bavaria in 1327. The same year his son Azzo succeeded to his rule. Two years later Azzo murdered his uncle Marco, and consolidated his power, but died the same year, leaving his dominions to another uncle, Lucchino, a moody, jealous, and cruel despot. His brother Giovanni, Archbishop of Milan, succeeded him. Then the duchy fell to the three sons of his brother Stefano—Matteo, Barnabo, and Galeazzo. The brothers caused Matteo, who was a degraded sensualist, to be assassinated in 1355, and then they ruled together in harmony. Barnabo, a cold-blooded, cruel tyrant, ruled at Milan, while Galeazzo, the handsomest man of his age, accomplished and magnificent, ruled at Pavia, 1355-1378. He was one of the wealthiest princes of his time. His daughter, Volante, married the Duke of Clarence, son of Edward III of England, while his son, Gian Galeazzo, married Isabella, daughter of Kir»g John of France.

Gian Galeazzo (1378-1402), through treachery,

6o    The Chrisiian Church.

seized his uncle Barnabo and his sons, and thus became Lord of Milan in 1385. He poisoned his uncle in prison. Gian Galeazzo was the type of intellectual ability and selfishness, without the vices common to princes. By prudent management of his duchy he became enormously wealthy. He gained possession of the principal cities of Tuscany by ruining their reigning families, and annexed to his dominions Bologna, Sienna, Lucca, and Pisa. Personally a coward, he gave great impulse to that employment of the leaders of the bands of mercenaries which was the scourge of Italy for that century. He founded the Certosa at Pavia, and renewed its university, while he began the great Duomo at Milan. When at the height of his prosperity he died of the plague.

Gian Maria Visconti, who succeeded him, gave such rein to his cruelty and lust that the Milanese nobility murdered him, and threw him into the street, in 1412.

Filippo Maria Visconti, the last of his house, ruled at Pavia from 1402 to 1412, and at Milan from the

death of his brother until his own in 1447.

TheSforza. „    , .    7 .

He was ugly m appearance and cruel m

disposition, a timid and suspicious tyrant. He employed Francesco Sforza as general in 1431, and ten years later gave him as wife his daughter Bianca. Three years after the death of his father-in-law, and after the Milanese had enjoyed a brief period of freedom, Sforza became Duke of Milan (1450-1466). Though a soldier of fortune he ruled firmly, wisely, and well. His son Galeazzo Maria (1466-1476) succeeded him, but for his abominable crimes was murdered in the presence of his people at church before the high altar, 1476. His son, Gian Galeazzo Maria,

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a minor, reigned three years under the tutelage of his mother, when his uncle Ludovico, surnamed II Moro (1479-1500), seized the citadel and took possession of the government.

If any one should think that, on account of the artistic development and splendor of the public life of this period, it was superior to our own time _Verona in general happiness and public welfare, a consideration of such facts as those above related will give a slight view of the fraud, treachery, and unbridled violence of the times. Besides the Kingdom of Naples and the States of the Church and the city states we have been just considering, the rest of Italy was under the control of despots who raised themselves to power, and retained it, by means which made Italian policy a synonym of all that was most perfidious, most cruel, and most base, to the rest of Europe and in the history of Christian nations. Such families of despots ruled in the Italian cities, as, at Verona, Can-Grande Scala, the friend and patron of Dante, and his nephew, Mastino, who ruled from 1312-1351. The city, then at the height of its power, fell to the three sons of Mastino. The two younger killed the eldest, and the stronger of these killed the weaker, and died in 1374. He left his dominions to two bastards; of these Antonio killed the other in 1381, and the same year Visconti took possession of Verona.

Such a tyrant was Sigismondo Pandolfo Maletesta, Lord of Rimini, who murdered three wives in succession, and lived in incest with his children. .

’    Rimini.

Yet he built the Church of San Francesco at Rimini, but dedicated in it a shrine to his concubine. He also brought from the Morea, in Greece,

62    The Christian Church.

the remains of the Greek philosopher, Gemisthus Pletho, and buried them with honor in the same church.

No wonder that a historian of the time says: “ Murders, poisonings, rapes, and treasons were common incidents of private as well as of public life. The palaces of the nobles swarmed with professional cutthroats. Popes granted indulgences beforehand for the commission of crimes of lust and violence.”

The Kingdom of Naples, as a fief of the Papal See, had been ruled by Charles of Anjou and his descendants in different lines from 1268 to 1435, * when Johanna II died, the last of a race which had ruled Naples for one hundred and seventy years. After seven years of war, Alfonso, King of Aragon and Sicily, made good his claim to the throne. In 1443, Pope Eugenius IV gave him the investiture of the kingdom which he had conquered, with the succession to his illegitimate son Fer-rante, afterward King Ferrante, or Ferdinand II. Under King Alfonso the kingdom prospered and increased in wealth and power. His court surpassed in splendor and magnificence the courts of all former Neapolitan kings. Alfonso patronized learning. He protected and supported Laurentius Valla against his enemies at the court of Rome. Valla became the instructor of the celebrated Pontanus, famous afterward as the royal secretary, the tutor of Don Ferrante, and the founder of the Academy of Naples. The court of Alfonso also afforded generous hospitality to the numerous Greek scholars who fled from the rule of the Turk at the taking of Constantinople, and came to Naples, bring-

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ing with them their libraries, often the sole remnant of their fortune. Not a few, after stopping a little time, passed on to Florence to kindle there the flame of the new learning. On his father’s death, in 1458, Ferrante came to the throne. He was one of the best educated and most accomplished sovereigns of his time. In his reign of almost forty years he greatly increased the resources of his kingdom, especially by encouraging the silk industry, which was said to give employment to half the inhabitants of the capital, and also the manufacture of wool. He had a most brilliant court. It was thronged with accomplished men, who formed an academy, under the presidency of Pon-tanus, on the model of that at Florence. Learned men from all other parts of Italy came to Naples to lecture and to enjoy the rewards of the court; for Ferrante was munificent as well as learned. But morally he was not above the level of his age. He was perfidious and cruel, and his want of character, especially the cruelty and cowardice of his son Alfonso, caused the loss of his kingdom. Yet enlightened and wise as he was, Ferrante’s death in 1494 was an irretrievable loss, not only for Naples, but for Italy. It was the beginning of centuries of sorrows.

In this century the restored papacy, after Nicholas V, came to be the most influential factor in Italian politics. By the papacy Italy was brought _Papaistate5 into contact with all Christendom. More than the commerce of Venice, and the arts of Florence, Rome brought Italy into relationship with the other nations of Europe. Through its religious orders and ecclesiastical organization and oversight of the public morals, and as a court of appeals, it knew the

64    The Christian Church.

internal affairs of every Italian State. Jealous of its interests and of its supremacy, it had the most intimate diplomatic relations with all the larger Italian courts. Indeed owing to its unique position and union of spiritual and temporal interests, while far from the most powerful, it was the most influential in the peninsula.

The history of the papacy in the later Middle Ages was one of the crudest contrasts. At no time were Papacy of tke claims of the Roman supremacy more the Later pronounced or more far-reaching, or the Middle Ages. ]i_Umiii_ations which it experienced more complete. The great age of the papacy of Gregory

VII, of Innocent III, and of Boniface VIII, was forever passed. With the opening of the fourteenth century began the Babylonish captivity of seventy years at Avignon (1305-1375). In those years Rome knew no sovereign pontiff. The capital of Western Christendom was indeed a widow. The palaces and churches fell into ruin ; rubbish filled many of the streets, and the population fell to seventeen thousand souls. Scarcely had the Pope come back from Avignon when the great Schism broke out. This divided the Latin Church into opposing papal camps, with two, and at last three, Popes for forty years (1378-1418), until it was closed by the Councils of Constance and Basel (1414-1447). Only with Nicholas V, the first and best of the Popes of the Renaissance, was the victorious papacy able to think of something beyond self-preservation. In this century and a half of strife and humiliation the papacy had been losing steadily in respect and moral influence. It was to be proved if, with restored power and much

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greater wealth, it was to secure again the respect and regain the moral leadership of Christendom. A sketch of the papal history from the reign of Nicholas V to the outbreak of the Reformation will show conclusively whether this effort was successful. We will consider it in this section only to the French Invasion in 1494, which unsettled all Italian affairs.

Nicholas V, Tommaso Parentucelli, was the greatest Pope of his century and the first of the Renaissance. He refounded Rome as a papal

• ^    ^ r- 1 r 1 TT •    Nicholas V.

capital, and was the founder of the Vatican library. He rebuilt the walls of Rome, and strengthened Castle St. Angelo. By him was begun the rebuilding of St. Peter’s and the Vatican palace. To the Vatican library he gave nine thousand manuscripts, the choice collection of a lifetime. Nicholas V was a munificent patron of scholars, antiquaries, and translators. With him began the splendor and learning of the Roman court.

Nicholas V was succeeded by Calixtus III (14551458), the first of the Borgias to come to power in Rome. His whole endeavor was to stir up

.    ~ Calixtus III.

Europe to war against the Turks, but with little effect. His remaining strength was absorbed in seeking to extend the temporal power of the Popes, by excluding Ferrante from the throne of Naples. To this end, but in vain, he revoked the Bull of Eugenius IV confirming his title, and in advancing the fortunes of the family of Borgia.

Pius II, iEneas Piccolomini (1458-1464), was the most skillful literary man who ever occupied _p ^ ^ the papal chair. His letters are among the most valuable literary remains of the fifteenth

5

66    The Christian Church.

century. He had been a man of pleasure, and a pronounced opponent of the papal power. A skillful diplomatist, he had known when to change his party. Henceforth he spent his life in striving to undo the work of his earlier years. He made great efforts to arouse Europe against the Turk; but the time for favorable resistance was passed. The same energy and earnestness spent twenty years before might have produced different results.

Paul II, Pietro Barbo (1464-1471), was the nephew of Eugenius IV. He was a Venetian of refined tastes, p«ui 11 l°^viⁿ£ pleasure and splendor. It was his greatest delight to amass a magnificent collection of jewels and precious stones.

Sixtus IV, Francesco della Rovere (1471-1484), was a Franciscan monk, and had maintained a high

character as a man of piety and learning;

SixtUS iv.    , . .    _ ,    . , _r

but ambition to found a princely lamily

overcame him. Unlike most of the Popes of the Renaissance, he had no children of his own; but he seemed all the more eager to give wealth and power to his nephews. Through him the Medici for the first time came into close relation with Rome. At first Sixtus was pleased with Lorenzo when he came to congratulate him upon his elevation to the papal throne, and made him his grand treasurer, so that the papal banking was done through his house. This feeling soon changed. Moved by his nephew, Cardinal Riario, Sixtus sanctioned a conspiracy against the lives of the brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici in 1478. At its head was a rival banker, Pazzi, and Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa. Cardinal Riario

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came on to Florence to see to the execution of the plan, and paid all the expenses. It was Easter-day. With incredible blasphemy Cardinal Riario was celebrating mass in the Duomo while his hired cutthroats were lying in wait before the high altar to assassinate the rulers of Florence. Giuliano was stricken down and killed. Lorenzo, though wounded, saved himself in the sacristy of the cathedral. The conspiracy failed. Four of its leaders were hung from the windows of the Palazzo Vecchio, including Pazzi and the Archbishop. But the red-handed cardinal, chief contriver of the murder, was saved from the people by Lorenzo, because it was not politic to seem to think him guilty. The dead Giuliano was supposed to be the father of the child, born after his death, who became Clement VII. Thus one Pope sanctions the murder of the father of one who was to succeed him. The failure of the conspiracy only enraged the Pope. Instead of disowning the conspiracy, he excommunicated Lorenzo, laid Florence under an interdict, and stirred up the King of Naples to make war upon that city. The Florentines were defeated; but Lorenzo went to Naples and made plain to King Ferrante that their mutual interests could be better promoted by peace than by war. Only when he found himself without an ally after two years of unavailing hostility, in which he had used all the arms of the Church in this private quarrel, did the head of Christendom make peace with Lorenzo, whom he had so deeply injured. Yet Sixtus was without covetousness, and a magnificent patron of art. He built the famous Sistine Chapel, and called to Rome the best artists of their

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time for its adornment. By him was built the Sistine bridge over the Tiber, and he became the second founder of the Vatican library.

Innocent VIII, Giovanni Battista Cibo (1484-1492), was amiable, but neither learned nor pious. To Cardinal Julian Rovere, nephew of Sixtus IV,

Innocent VIII.    ^ -r , ■ JL ^ ₁ ,

afterward Pope Julius II, he owed his election, and he governed during his reign until Innocent came under the stronger influence of Lorenzo de’ Medici. The strongest influence moving Innocent was, like his predecessor, to found a princely family, and this he sought to do by marrying his children into the most powerful reigning families of Italy. In 1487, Francesco Cibo, the son of Pope Innocent VIII, was married to Magdalena, the daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici. One consequence of this marriage was that Lorenzo’s son Giovanni, afterward Leo X, was made Cardinal in petto, or secret, when fourteen years old, and openly declared such three years later. Thus the ties allying the house of Medici to the papacy came to be of the closest character—a fact of vast significance to Christendom, and of fatal consequence to the papacy.

THE CULMINATION OP THE RENAISSANCE.

1494-1527.

The new era of the Renaissance was the most splendid in the history of art Europe has ever seen. In it were produced the masterpieces of modern painting and sculpture, and the vastest construction of Christian architecture, though another century was required to complete it. This era may well be called the culmination of the Renaissance; for when it ended

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the Italian Renaissance was dead, and that of no other nation can compare with it.

The opening years of this era found the center of the Renaissance still at Florence. And the life and fortunes of Florence greatly influenced its movement. A sketch of. the momentous changes witnessed in Florence in the closing decade of the fifteenth century will be essential to this history.

Lorenzo de’ Medici lay dying at Careggi. He knew well Girolamo Savonarola. In 1491 the Dominican monk of Ferrara had just made his power _{Death of} supreme as a preacher in the cathedral of Lor«nzo de’' Florence. Lorenzo was afraid of his pop- ^Med,cl* ularity, and sought to make him change the severity of his discourses. Savonarola replied: “Tell your master that, though I am a humble stranger and he Lord of Florence, I shall remain and he depart.” He foretold the speedy death of Lorenzo, Pope Innocent

VIII, and of King Ferrante of Naples. In July, 1491, Savonarola was made prior of San Marco. This convent had been built and endowed by the Medici. It was the custom for the newly-elected prior to make a visit of recognition and homage to the head of their house. This Savonarola refused to do; to God alone he owed the election, and to God alone would he promise submission. Lorenzo said, “ This stranger comes to dwell in my house, yet will not stoop to make me a visit.”

Nevertheless, when Lorenzo came to die, conscious of a life which, through pleasure-seeking, through licentious living and lack of truth, was little fitted to meet the Divine judgment, he sent for the fearless prior of San Marco, and sought absolution at his

70    The Christian Church.

hands. It is said Savonarola demanded three things as essential to Lorenzo’s receiving it: First, “You must repent and feel true faith in God’s mercy.” Lorenzo assented. Second, “ You must give up your ill-gotten wealth.” This, with hesitation, Lorenzo promised. Third, “You must restore the liberties of Florence.” At this, Lorenzo turned his face to the wall and made no reply, and the prior of San Marco left without granting Lorenzo absolution.

On the death of Lorenzo the power came into the hands of his eldest son, Pietro, a youth without talents and without virtue. It had been for many

The Political    ,    .    .

Relations of years Lorenzo s policy to maintain an alli-

Fiorence and _ance between Florence, Milan, and Naples as ^italy* a counterpoise to the power of Venice which was much the strongest of the Italian States. Milan was the center of disturbance. The wife of the weak and incapable Gian Galeazzo, nominal Duke of Milan, was Bona of Naples, daughter of Alfonso, son and heir of Ferrante, King of Naples. The citadel of Milan had been seized in 1479 by Ludovico II Morro, and he had gradually drawn all power to himself and governed the duchy. Ludovico was morose, gloomy, and suspicious, but thoroughly unscrupulous and intensely ambitious. Undoubtedly he was best fitted to rule; he strengthened in every way his power. December 1, 1493, his niece, Bianca Sforza, sister of Gian Galeazzo, married, as her second husband, Maximilian, Kmperor of Germany. Lorenzo would have striven to maintain peace between Naples and Milan at all hazards, and to quiet the suspicions of Ludovico, Pietro pursued the contrary course. When the ambassadors of Florence, Milan, and Naples came to

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7i

Rome to congratulate Pope Alexander VI upon his election, Ludovico proposed that the ambassadors of the three powers should be received by Alexander together. Pietro declined, and made evident a league with Naples, which Ludovico feared might be against himself. Ludovico decided to call in the French to his aid; a decision fatal for Italy.

While Alfonso was preparing by force of arms to assert the rights of his daughter’s husband and her children, Maximilian and Francesco Sforza, to the Duchy of Milan, enemies .were gathering round the Kingdom of Naples. The Pope was usually the hereditary enemy of its reigning house. By April, 1493, he had formed a league with Venice, Milan, Sienna, Ferrara, and Mantua against Naples which was renewed a year later. The French invasion was really directed against Naples, as the French king sought to revive the claims of the House of Anjou to that throne.

In the meantime two events of world-wide interest had taken place. October 12, 1492, Columbus discovered America, and landed at Lisbon, on his _{Discovery of} return, March 6, 1493. January 2, 1492, America, the arms of Ferdinand and Isabella subdued Fail of Granada, and drove the last Moslem from ^Granada* the soil of Spain, where they had ruled or divided the country for nearly eight hundred years. The consequence of these two events was an immense increase in the power of Spain. She immediately came to the front in European politics. This consequence was of vast and baleful significance for Italy. Then began that rivalry for European supremacy between France and Spain, of w⁷hich Italy was the theater for the next

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fifty years, and which filled and controlled for the next two centuries the history of Europe.

And now events hastened with dramatic and startling rapidity. The old and worthless Emperor The French Frederick III closed the most inglorious invasianof reign Germany ever knew, August 19, ^ltaIy* 1493, and was succeeded by his son, the enlightened and chivalrous Maximilian (1493-1519). Julian della Rovere, the ablest of the cardinals, afterward Julius II, fearing for his life at the court of his unscrupulous enemy Alexander VI, fled to France, and joined with Ludovico in calling the French armies into Italy. The one man who could have gathered the forces which might have arrested the storm, King Ferrante of Naples, died April 23, 1493. The Kingdom of Naples was left to his son Alfonso, who was cruel, cowardly, and incapable. With incredible folly, unless he was sure of speedy and overwhelming victory, he began military operations against Ludovico of Milan. The King of France, Charles VIII, responded to the call for help. With ninety thousand French soldiers he entered Italy, September 3, 1494. The Middle Ages and the prosperity of the Italian States were at an end. Thenceforward their history for three hundred and fifty years is a record of servitude broken only by a change of masters. Charles and his army easily overcame all resistance. He entered Florence November 17, 1494, but, after a treaty, left the city eleven days later. Ludovico had his nephew, Gian Galeazzo, strangled October 22, 1494, and, abandoning, the French received the investiture of the duchy from the Emperor Maximilian. The French monarch entered Rome the last day of the

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year. In the Eternal City he made a treaty with the Pope by which he pledged to him obedience, and left Rome on the 28th of January. The twenty-second of February he entered Naples, having traversed the whole peninsula, practically without resistance. To march through Italy with a superior force was proven not difficult; to hold the country thus gained was something very different. The last day of March, 1495, the Pope, Venice, Milan, and Spain formed an alliance against Charles VIII. Spain was the important member of this confederacy, though Milan, being on the king’s line of retreat, could do him great harm. Charles found it necessary, after leaving a garrison at Naples, where he had made only enemies, to think of getting back to France. On his return he arrived at Rome, June 1st, and found Alexander VI had left a few days before. The king staid but four days, and before July the Pope was back in his capital. Against all probability, Charles was victorious at Foronuova, July 6, 1495, and soon was back again in France. Before the end of the year Alfonso II of Naples was dead, and was succeeded by his son Ferdinand II, who, with the Spanish General Gonsalvo, the conqueror of Granada, drove out the French, and entered Naples, July 7, 1495. But October 7, 1496, King Ferdinand died, and less than two years later Charles VIII followed him out of this world. Charles VIII was without character or ability for a great undertaking. Yet weak and unstable as he was, he had nevertheless twice traversed the whole length of the Italian peninsula at the head of a victorious army. The fatal secret of the wealth, beauty, and weakness of Italy was discovered; henceforth she was a prey

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to the strongest. The French invasion, like a storm-cloud, had passed over Italy, leaving wreck and ruin behind it. In 1499, Ludovico was driven from Milan by a second invasion of the French under Louis XII (1498-1515), the successor of Charles VIII. The next year the duchy was finally taken from him, though he lingered on, despised and a prisoner in France, where he died in 1508. The house of Ferrante was driven from Naples. Ferdinand II had been succeeded by his uncle Frederick, who was taken by the French in their second invasion in 1501. He remained their prisoner, dying at Tours, September 9, 1504. Results equally important had occurred in Florence.

Lorenzo’s refusal of Savonarola’s request delayed the change only about two years. Pietro de’ Medici The Revoiu- bad been in alliance with Naples against tion in Fior- ^e French, but no sooner did the French army draw near to Florence than he hast-

The Expul-    .

sion of the ened to its camp and made a most humili-Medici. ating surrender. This was sufficient to overthrow 'the rule of the Medici, which had now prevailed for nearly seventy years. Pietro Capponi declared “it was time to put an end to this baby government,” and Florence agreed with him. The new government sent ambassadors to the French king. Savonarola was one of them. Capponi was a bold and intelligent leader. When the king added exorbitant demands, Capponi tore up the treaty before his face. When the king said, “ We will sound the trumpets,” to lead the soldiers against the citizens, Capponi replied, “We will ring our bells,” to summon the population to arms. This firmness had the desired effect, and secured the speedy departure of the French army.

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Savonarola now became for the next three and a half years the ruler of Florence. He held up before the kingdom the ideal of the Divine Kingdom, of a State ruled by the Gospel. His practical aims were: (i) To bring in the fear of God and a reformation of manners; (2) To promote the public welfare rather than private interests; (3) To provide a general amnesty for political offenders; (4) To form a Council like that of Venice, without a doge. Jesus Christ was to be the ruler of Florence. The taxation was reformed. The dissolute manners of the city of artists and pleasure were changed under the influence of the character and preaching of the eloquent prior of San Marco. In the carnival of 1497, in the Piazza of the Signoria, were burned the rejected vanities, including obscene and offensive books and paintings, for which 22,000 scudi were offered, equal to $220,000 of our money. The same ceremony was observed at the carnival of

1498. It could not be that righteousness should prevail at Florence, and not arouse the undying enmity of Alexander VI at Rome. Slowly but surely he wrought the doom of the great prior of the Dominicans. Like all government, especially all government which strictly enforces righteous laws, Savonarola’s rule excited enmity. A conspircy was formed against the government in the latter part of 1497. Five noble Florentines were put to death, one of whom, Bernardo del Nero, by his age, ability, and influence had the respect of the citizens. It was believed that Savonarola might have prevented the execution of this sentence, and because he did not he lost the support of the moderate portion of the citizens. Alexander VI bided his time. When he could not silence he excommunicated

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the noblest preacher of his time. When at last, through the imprudence of Savonarola, the ordeal by fire was accepted in the Piazza del Signoria, and because it was not carried through, the populace turned upon him and stormed San Marco, and took its great prior and two of his brethren prisoners. Then Alexander strove to have the man who dared denounce him sent to Rome. This at least the Florentines would not do. They tortured, hanged, and burned with their own hands the noblest citizen Florence ever had, May 23, 1498.

Savonarola was the prophet of the Renaissance. He saw and rebuked its fearful moral corruption. If there had been salvation for that society and age it might have come through his teachings. But only destruction awaited it, and^the Reformation came from beyond the Alps. A church and a city which could adore Alexander VI and burn Savonarola was ripening to its fall.

But the influence of Savonarola did not die. Some artists—such as Botticelli and Fra Bartolommeo—be-infiuence of came his devoted followers. Others, like ^Teaching’s.⁸ Michael Angelo, felt and owned his influ-

Fate of ^ence during life, and drew from it the in-Fiorence. spiration for their noblest works. From his death the glory of Florence pales. The republican government was maintained until 1512, when the power of Julius II restored the rule of the Medici in Florence. Their rule was strengthened under Leo X, son of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and under his cousin, Clement VII. In 1527 there came a change; then Clement’s alliance with the French brought down upon him the wrath and arms of the Emperor Charles

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V. The rule of the Medici was again overthrown. Florence enjoyed a brief three years’ freedom until, according to a compact between Charles V and the Pope, the troops of the empire besieged Florence. The city made a heroic resistance; Michael Angelo assisted in the defense of all that was dearest to him, but in vain. The cit}^r surrendered to the Prince of Orange, who soon afterward died. Florence became a part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, under the house of Medici, until the extinction of that house in 1738. Her glorious history was ended forever.

Much more worthy of our attention than the politics of the time are the lives and work of those sons of genius who have made these years for- The Artists of

ever memorable. We can only note a few the culmination of the

of the greatest names, and they were great Renaissance, indeed. Before we reach them we may well >494-i5*7« stop and catch a glimpse of their forerunners, Fra Bartolommeo, Perugino, and Pinturicchio. The world counts the works of the men of this era among its greatest treasures. They can not be valued by money, yet one of them would be worth a stupendous ransom for a king. In 1884 a single Madonna of Raphael’s, and that far from his best, brought $350,000. Intelligent people need to know, in their connection, something at least of these master-works and of the men who wrought them. The necessary relation of this knowledge to an understanding of the Reformation will appear as we see the failure of the Renaissance to reform the moral life, and its influence in repelling the purely spiritual worship of the Reformers, and the repellent effect of their utter lack of artistic taste or appreciation.

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Baccio della Porta (1469-1517) was one of the noblest in character, and one of the most excellent of the Fra Florentine painters. He was born near Bartolommeo. Florence, and was a pupil of Cosimo Ros-selli. He early came under the influence of Savonarola, and became his devoted follower. His master’s tragic fate so impressed the painter that in 1500 he became a monk, and lived most of his life in Savonarola’s convent of San Marco. For four years after entering the convent he did no artistic work; but resumed it at the command of the prior. About this time he made the acquaintance of Raphael, and his influence over the younger painter was marked and helpful. After Michael Angelo and Raphael had come to the height of their fame, Fra Bartolommeo visited them at Rome. He confessed their superiority, yet before leaving painted a San Sebastian that showed they alone rose above him. He maintained his friendship with Raphael until his death at San Marco at the early age of forty-eight. The works of Fra Bartolommeo are best seen in Florence. They show a nobility of subject, a breadth of treatment, a richness, beauty, and solidity of color, surpassed only by the greatest masters.

An artist of original power, with unusual grace and charm, with a rich though rather monotonous . scheme of color, was Pietro Vanucci, called Perugmo. p_erUgj_no (i^6-1^24). He will always be

famous as the master of Raphael, whose Madonnas show his influence, but more, of course, in his first period. The paintings from his hand in Perugia, Florence, and Rome show his ability. The beauty of his female figures is remarkable. He was was one of

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the earliest painters to paint in oils, and he excelled in perspective. The three paintings in the Sistine Chapel, Moses and Zipporah, the Baptism of Christ, and Christ giving the Keys to Peter, he painted from 1483-1486. From i486 to 1499 he lived in Florence. In 1499 he decorated the hall of the Cambio in Perugia. His works are best seen in Perugia, Florence, and Rome, though fine examples are found in London and in Lyons, France. He resided in Perugia until 1504, when he returned to Florence. After a stay of two years in Florence, he found the work of Michael Angelo and Raphael prefered to his, and returned to Perugia, where he remained until his death. •

A pupil and assistant of Perugino’s was Bernardo Pinturicchio (1454-1513). This painter was a thorough naturalist, and gives a clear and pleas-

^&    ,    f Pinturicchio.

ant representation of the manners and customs of his time. His best work is seen at Rome and Sienna. From 1482 to 1498 he worked in Rome. There he executed the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, those in the Church of Santa Maria del’ Popolo, and the series in the Borgia apartment of the Vatican. At Sienna he designed and executed the noble series of frescoes illustrating the life of Pius II, a native of Sienna, which are found in the library of the cathedral.

The way was now prepared for the greatest masters of modern painting. They were contemporary in this age, and have never been surpassed. Leonardo da Leonardo da Vinci (145 2-1519) was the Vinci, eldest of these great artists, and in power and versatility of genius unsurpassed. He was an illegitimate child, born in his father’s castle of Vinci, near Florence. In

8o    The Christian Church.

that place he was carefully reared by his father, a Florentine lawyer. Leonardo was beautiful in person, with tact and charm of manner which made him a favorite. He was the most accomplished man of his age, an age of great men. In his early years he was apprenticed to Verrocchio, and by 1472 he was enrolled in the painters’ guild of Florence. In 1478 he received an independent commission from the Signory of Florence. More than any other artist he became a student of nature, of anatomy, perspective, chemistry, and engineering. For seven years from 1480 he was under the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici. In 1483-4 he traveled in the East from Alexandria to Constantinople. In 1485 he entered the service of Ludovico II Moro at Milan. For the next fourteen years, or until

1499, he resided at Milan and remained in the ducal service. Here he executed the great equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza, twenty-six feet in height, in bronze. Within a few years this masterpiece was destroyed. Here also he painted the fresco of the Last Supper on the wall of the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, which, with all defacements and restorations, is still one of the greatest pictures of the world; in composition and action the very greatest. For the next three years Leonardo visited the northern Italian courts, and was in the employment of the most famous prince of the time, Caesar Borgia. From 1503 to 1506 he lived in Florence with Michael Angelo and Raphael as the most famous artist of his day. From 1506 to 1515 his residence was at Milan, though he was in Rome from September, 1514, until the last of the following year. In 1516, Leonardo went to France, where he died at Cloux,

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May 2, 1519. If we had but the drawings and sketches of Leonardo we should acknowledge him as one of the greatest of the sons of men. They bear the signet impress of power. The drawing of the head of Christ in the Brera at Milan shows the hand of a great master. To the author, at least, his paintings are not attractive, but he has never seen a drawing of Leonardo’s which was not of great value as a revelation of his mind and art. No other artist of anything like his ability has left so little of his completed work to posterity.

After these forerunners come the splendid sons of the Renaissance. If unfailing charm; if uniform excellence and progressive power, with easy and admirable mastery of the problems of    ^

his art; if exquisite sense of beauty, combined with natural refinement and grace, make a great artist, then Raphael Santi, or Sanzio (1483-152°), is the greatest of painters. It would be difficult to name another man who, dying at thirty-seven years of age, left so much of undying value to the world.

Raphael was the son of a painter of some note, Giovanni Santi, and was born at Urbino the same year that to a German miner came his first-born son, Martin Luther. A stronger contrast can hardly be imagined than between these two great men and their careers. Raphael’s father died when he was eleven years of age, his mother three years before. Probably he became a pupil of Perugino in 1499 ; for he began to execute independent work in 1502. He left Perugia for Florence in 1504, and remained in the stimulating atmosphere of that capital of art until 1508. There he learned from Michael Angelo and Signorelli, from

6

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Leonardo da Vinci and Fra Bartolommeo, with whom he formed ties of closest friendship. The Madonna del Gran Duca and Cardellino at Florence, the Madonna del Gardino at Vienna, the Andsidei Madonna at London, and The Entombment in the Borghese Gallery at Rome were painted during these four years.

In September, 1508, Raphael was at Rome, where he remained until his death. There he found the chief artists of Florence and of Northern Italy. With Michael Angelo at their head, there wrought Signorelli, Perugino, Pinturicchio, with Peruzziand Sodoma.

In the palace of the Vatican, Raphael now painted those marvelous frescoes of the Stanze, including The School of Athens and The Dispute Concerning the Sacrament. In these years he painted the frescoes for the Villa Farnesina and the Church of St. Maria della Pace, designed the Chigi Chapel in the Church of St. Maria del Popolo with the mosaics, and also the celebrated tapestries of the Vatican. These show something of his range of composition and fertility of design. Then came the crown of all his work, the Madonnas of Foglino at Rome, Della Sedia at Florence, Di San Sisto, or Sistine Madonna, at Dresden, and his last great work, which was borne before his bier at his funeral, The Transfiguration, at Rome. It might well be said of him as of an English poet, “ He touched nothing he did not adorn.” The coarse For-narina at the Barberini palace in Rome is not from his hand.

Raphael lived in the Trastevere region, across the Tiber. His morals were not better than those of his time. He knew and loved the beautiful daughter of a baker who came from Sienna to Rome. Hence

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Fornarina, “little bakeress.” She seems to have been the chief model for his Madonnas. We only know, and that recently, that the very week he was taken ill he bought the ground on which he was to build a palace, that she was with him when he died, and that the same week of his funeral she entered a convent, and registered as Margherita, the widow of Raphael, painter. There she remained until death ended the life which had known such a brilliant fellowship. His remains rest in the most fitting place in Rome for a great artist—in the Pantheon.

It is as a painter we admire Raphael, though he seems to have attracted to himself, by his disposition and manner as much as by his genius, the friendship of all the chief artists of his time. Angelo! But in Michael Angelo, beyond the artist, we admire the man. His was one of the greatest souls, the most Titanic natures of all time. Power, grandeur of conception, and nobility of nature are the marks of the work of Michael Angelo Buonarotti (1475-1564). He was born at Caprese, in the Florentine territory, and brought up in Florence itself. When he was two years old his mother died. At thirteen years of age he was apprenticed to Ghirlandajo. Under the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici he began the study of sculpture in 1489. In this circle of Lorenzo and his friends he became a Christian Platonist and a student of Dante. Here he made the aquaint-ance which influenced all his after life, that of Savonarola. At Bologna, in 1494, he executed his first independent work, two figures of saints and an angel, for churches. In 1496, Angelo went to Rome, and remained there until 1501. He then returned to Flor

8₄

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ence at his father’s request and for his help. There he executed his colossal marble statue of David, the finest representation of triumph and youthful vigor ever carved in stone. At this time he painted the Holy Family, now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and in competition with Leonardo da Vinci, a cartoon, never finished, of Florentine soldiers surprised by the enemy while bathing. In 1505 he returned to Rome, and Pope Julius II commissioned him to build his tomb. At this he wrought until, being ill-treated by the Pope, he fled to Florence, in April, 1506. Julius called him to Bologna, and, arranging a reconciliation, the artist was employed for a year and a quarter on a colossal figure of the Pope in bronze, which was unveiled February 21, 1508. Three years later the Bolognese rose in rebellion against Pope Julius, and destroyed this statue. In 1508, Michael Angelo returned to Rome and began the greatest work ever designed by a painter,—the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican. After four and a half years of work it was completed in the autumn of 1512. This, in its entirety, is the grandest work of the imagination which has ever come forth from the hand of man. Blackened as it is by age and the smoke of candles and incense, it owes very little to color, but its figures can teach the soul of man and the hand of the artist for all time. Well did the pupil of Ghir-landajo show himself the greatest master of his art.

The next three years (1513-1516) Michael Angelo wrought on the tomb of Pope Julius, finishing the two slaves in the Louvre, and the Moses of S. Pietro in Vincolis, at Rome. The Moses might well typify the spirit of the prophet of Florence, and of the artist,

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indignant at the iniquities of the people and the corruption of the Renaissance. It is one of those works of imagination and of genius which enlarge the thought and soul of all who study it. In 1518, Michael Angelo went to Florence at the request of the Pope to complete a monument to his father, and there he remained until 1534. In these sixteen years he wrought the Christ in the Church of S. Maria Sopra Minerva at Rome, and the colossal memorial groups for the Medici family at Florence, representing Night and Dawn.

In 1534 he began his work for the immense fresco of The Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel, which was finished seven years later. This, which has been celebrated as the most famous single picture in the world, leaves a painful impression on the beholder. The representation of Christ is heathen rather than Christian, yet it may be justified by the teaching of the Mediaeval Church. How far this conception is from the teaching of the early Church is shown most impressively by the typical and familiar representation of Christ in the Catacombs as the Good Shepherd.

From 1535 until her death in 1547 he enjoyed the devoted friendship of Vittoria Colonna, then a widow. She inspired his poetry, which is a further self-revelation of this great, stern, tempest-tossed soul, that longed for, but never found, peace.

The years that remained to Michael Angelo (15471564) were given to architecture. He built the Far-nese palace for Pope Paul III; he became the chief architect of St. Peter’s Church and built its great dome, and designed the construction of the Church of St. Maria degli Angeli out of the Baths of Diocletian.

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Most touching is the narration that in his last years, when blind, he would go to the Vatican Gallery and delight in passing his hands over the marvelous Torso, a trunk without head or limbs, a noble specimen of Greek sculpture. There is not a finer illustration of the enduring charm of art, or the lofty passion she inspired in the most richly endowed of those who have made her beauty the endless possession of the race. This great, moody, and uneven-tempered man, as sculptor, painter, architect, and poet, was supreme. Before him there were none like him, and there have been none after him. Grandeur and sublimity, sometimes verging to violence, have never found such expression as in the work of Michael Angelo Buonarroti.

Next to, but at a distance from, these masters, comes Antonio Allegri, of Correggio (1494-1534). Allegri

„    was born of a well-to-do family of Correg-

Correggio. .    .    jo

gio, a town 111 Modena, and, as his uncle was a painter, seems to have had good opportunity to study. When twenty years of age he painted a Virgin Enthroned as an altar-piece for a convent of the Franciscans at Carpi, which is now at Dresden. I11 1520 he began the fresco of The Ascension of Christ for the cupola of the Church of St. John, at Parma. This was finished four years later. Then he began the vaster fresco of The Assumption of the Virgin for the cupola of the cathedral at Parma. He was the first artist who undertook such a design. Titian said, “Reverse the cupola and fill it with gold, and that will not be its money’s worth.” On this fresco he wrought from 1524 to 1530. During this time he

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painted the superb oil-painting of the Nativity, called “ La Notte,” or The Night, now at Dresden. Also that of St. Jerome, called “ II Giorno,” or The Day, now at Parma.

In 1520 the artist married Girolomea Merlino, a young girl of good fortune from Mantua. She is said to have been the model of his La Zingarella. They had four children, and were very happy until her death in 1529. The artist husband followed five years later. Correggio has sweetness, charm, and richness of color, but no great gifts of intellect or of the imagination.

A painter of much less original gifts, but with great skill as a colorist, is Andrea del Sarto (14871531). Andrea was born at Gualfonda,

Florence, and his father was a tailor; hence ^A"sart₀^del his nickname. He spent his early years with a goldsmith, and then with a wood-carver and painter. From 1509 to 1514 he was employed to decorate the porch of the Church of the Annunziata at Florence. In fresco work he was surpassed in technique only by Raphael. He married Lucrezia, the widow of a hatter, a very beautiful woman, who was the model for some of his most famous pictures. In 1518 he went to France on the invitation of Francis I. He soon returned to Florence, and used the king’s money to build a house for himself. Fine examples of his works are found in the galleries of Florence, where he spent the remaining years of his life, dying of the plague soon after the siege which delivered his city over to the rule of the Medici.

Giorgione (1477-1511), an illegitimate son, born in

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the Venetian noble family of the Barbarella of Castel-franca, wrought a revolution in painting at Venice.

. He probably studied with Bellini, but soon surpassed him in freedom of composition and richness of color. But few of his paintings have come down to us. In the Uffizi are two small paintings, an Ordeal of Moses and a Judgment of Solomon. By far the best example known is his “ Concert,” in the Pitti gallery at Florence.

Tiziano Vecellio (1477-1576), the greatest of Venetian painters, and one of the greatest of the world,

_    was fifty years old at the close of this

Titian.    . ^{J J}

period. Born at Cadore, one of the conquests of Venice, and the son of a Venetian distinguished in the service of the State in council and in arms, to Titian was granted length of days for active life as to no other artist. He studied under Bellini, but learned most from Giorgione. He painted frescoes at Venice and at Padua, and in 1516 became painter to the Council of State. In 1518 he painted his celebrated Assumption of the Madonna, now in the Academia de Belle Arte at Venice. From this date his fame was assured; but, except a St. Sebastian, he did little worthy of it until after the close of this period.

There were many artists of this age who would attract attention at any other than a time when so many masters of the highest genius crowd the scene. Such, in the Northern Italian school, were Luini and Lorenzo Lotto, and, in Rome, Sodoma, and Guilo Romano, fellow-workers with Raphael. In sculpture there were none to approach Leonardo and Michael

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Angelo, though we have good work from the brothers Sansovino. On the other hand, architecture claimed the highest talent for the erection of St. Peter’s and for the palaces of the papal relatives and cardinals, as well as the churches at Rome.

The ablest of the architects drawn to Rome by the great designs of the pontiffs and cardinals was L,az-zari Bramante (1444-1514). He was born _Archj_tects. at Casteldurante in Urbino, and as a youth * *

1 i    Bramante.

studied painting and architecture. Bramante was at Milan several years before 1500, and is said to have wrought on the great cathedral. At the beginning of the new century he came to Rome. There he rebuilt the cloister of the Convent of della Pace, and built for Pope Alexander VI the palace of the Cancellaria. For Julius II he united the Belvi-dere with the Vatican palace by two long galleries inclosing a court; he also built the round temple for S. Pietro a Montorio. Then, at Julius’s command, he began the new St. Peter’s, the largest church in Christendom. The four great piers and arches, with cornice and vaulting, were completed before his death.

Baldassare Peruzzi (1481-1536) was a worthy successor of Bramante. Peruzzi was born at Acajano, in the diocese of Volterra, and brought up in _Peruz, Sienna at his father’s house. His first celebrated work was the Farnesina Villa at Rome. He built also palaces for the Massimi and Vidoni families in the papal capital. He was a more than ordinary painter, a scientific engineer, and skilled in the minor arts. From 1520 for sixteen years he was the architect of St. Peter’s.

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Giuliano de’ Sangallo (1443-1517) was born in Florence, and wrought in Florence and Naples before coming to Rome. In the city of the Popes ^angaHo⁶' designed the fine ceiling of the Church of St. Maria Maggiore, and was joint architect of St. Peter’s in 1514-1515. Antonio, his nephew

(-1546), built the Church of S. Maria di Loreto,

near Trajan’s column, and built for himself the Sac-chetti palace in Via Giulia.

Jacopo Sansovino (1477-1570) was a second-rate sculptor, but is celebrated as the architect of some of the most famous buildings at Venice, among Sansovino. which were the Scuola di San Rocco, the Mint, the Library of St. Mark’s, and the Cornari and Delfino palaces.

Such were the great masters and a few of the chief works of the culmination of the Renaissance. To all who love the beautiful, to all to whom art is of interest and value, they are the ageless teachers; the waiting centuries sit at their feet. They took freely from each other and from their predecessors, but harmonized and ennobled all with their supreme artistic genius. It is their misfortune, not their fault, that they have been followed by a crowd of copyists, instead of by those who, learning from them, have gone forth to give fitting expression to their individual genius in the yet unconquered realms of art. Nevertheless, the Renaissance yet remains the great art-age of Christendom, and its masterpieces are the consummate flower of an art life and spirit the most intense, varied, and beautiful the Christian ages have known.

The vigor of the new life and the artistic impulse of the Renaissance crossed the Alps, and made itself

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felt to the leading States of Western Europe. In Germany its influence was most evident in the revival of classical learning and in the emancipation _TheRenais of education from monkish control. Two sance in German professors, Peter Luders and Sam-^other Lands, uel Karoch, brought the spirit and methods of " the new learning from Italy to their native land about 1440. But the great names in German humanism, as the movement came to be called, are John Reuchlin, his nephew Philip Melanchthon, and Ulrich von Hut-ten. Reuchlin was not only a noted Greek and Latin scholar, but published the first Hebrew grammar in Europe. His celebrated contest with PfFerkorn, the Dominican, who wished him to burn all the Jewish books except the Holy Scripture, and which cost him much anxiety and loss, finally overwhelmed his monkish adversaries with such ridicule that they never recovered from its effects. Ulrich von Hutten was chief among the circle of scholars and literary men who brought this to pass through the “Epistolae Obscu-rorum Virorum,” or Letters of Obscure Men.

At this time Nuremberg was the center of the noblest development German art has found before the later years of the nineteenth century. Here wrought as sculptors Adam KrafFt, Viet Stoss, and Peter Vis-scher, whose works are still the proud possession of Nuremberg. Here painted Michael Wohlgemuth, and his scholar, Albrecht Diirer, the most splendid artistic genius Germany has known. Diirer excelled as a painter, an engraver, and in the lesser arts. His portraits have a value which the years increase. Hans Holbein, of Augsburg, and his more famous son, Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543), are among the most

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celebrated portrait painters, and at a distance from these is Lucas Cranach, the friend of Luther.

The influence of the Italian Renaissance came early to the French nation through the Italian wars, and through that Princess Catherine, of

France.    . .    .

the house of Medici, who was the wife of Henry II and the mother of the last kings of the house of Valois, Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III. Its chief influence was in the revival of learning and the minor arts. Meanwhile there was developed in architecture the style of the French Renaissance as seen in the princely and royal palaces of Chenonceaux and Chambord, Fontainebleau, and the Louvre. This style is also marked in the work of the sculptors, Jean Goujon, Cousin, and Pilon.

The reformers, Calvin and Marot, breathed the spirit of the Renaissance as did the printers Stephens and Dolet; but its chief representative in its wit and genius and grossness was Rabelais. Society, even more than literature and art, felt the influence of the Italian Renaissance, and the religious wars showed its corruption and cruelty.

In the Low Countries there was a splendid development of architecture, as shown in the city and guild Flanders halls Brussels, Ghent, Bruges, and Lou-and vain. In painting the Van Eycks, the in-Hoiiand. _vent_{ors Q}f ₀[\ painting, were followed by Memling, Matsys, and others of inferior note. But the most notable example of the life of the Renaissance was seen in the career of the foremost literary man of the age, Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536). Erasmus was born at Rotterdam, Holland. He was of illegitimate birth, and his father died while he was a child.

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He fell to the guardianship of three uncles, who placed him at an early age in a convent, and then sought to have him become a monk, that they might receive the property which otherwise would come to him from his father. At the age of nineteen he took the irrevocable vows of an Augustinian friar, the same order to which Luther afterward belonged. Afterward he was ordained priest. Erasmus had no vocation for the clerical calling or the monastic life. His eager thirst for learning and keen wit needed another field and other surroundings. To such a man it was an immense favor when the Archbishop of Cambray took the young monk to be his secretary, and he left forever the convent. He never ceased to have the bitterest enmity toward the monks, their coarseness and ignorance, and toward the convent life where he had suffered so much. Going to Paris, he attended the university, and from there went to England, where he remained, from 1497 to 1499, under the patronage of Lord Mountjoy, and found in Archbishop Warham a liberal and influential friend. For the next seven years he was in France and Holland, alternating between Paris and Louvain. In 1506 he returned to England, and the same year, through English friends, he went to Italy, where he remained for the next three years. In 1513 he returned again to England, where he remained for the next four years, spending perhaps the happiest years of his life in the circle of Warham, More, and their friends. In 1514 he went to Basel, but was again in England in 1517. His home was permanently at Basel, 1520-1529, on account largely of his relations with Froben the printer. In the latter year he went to Freiburg, and remained

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there for the next six years. In 1535 he returned to Basel, where he died the following year. Besides innumerable letters, introductions, etc., his chiet works were “Adagia,” a collection of proverbs from the Greek and Latin authors; “Encomium Moriae,” or Praise of Folly; his celebrated “ Colloquies;” his work against Luther on the Freedom of the Will; editions of the Fathers; but, most important of all, the first printed edition of the Greek New Testament, published in 1516, a year before Luther’s Theses.

Erasmus was a man with a nervous, sensitive organization, and always delicate in health. He could not endure even the smell of fish, and used to say that “ his heart was Catholic, but his stomach was Lutheran.” These physical traits made him prize his popularity and seek gifts from wealthy friends while preserving his independence, and yet he was often timid and cowardly. A wit and a rationalist, he had no intention to quarrel with the wealthy and the powerful. Quick and impressionable, and saying ever what he thought, he was the most famous and the most unrestrained man of letters of the century. As a faithful picture of the times and for their literary merit his letters have abiding interest. While Rome sought to make him a cardinal in the last years of his life, Roman Catholic writers to this day never cease to revile him as preparing the way for Luther in the rejection of the dogmas of the Church. Those of his own time said, “Erasmus laid the egg, and Luther hatched it.”

The world owes a great debt to this first of modern literary men, to this true son of the Renaissance, for his common sense and hatred of ignorance and su-

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perstition, and for the wit which made them forever ridiculous. All who are grateful for the Reformation owe him thanks for the first Greek New Testament, and for his fearless comments on the text. But Erasmus had neither capacity nor taste for the work of a reformer. He was a child of another age. We may not expect too much even of great men. It is significant that, though he never broke with the Roman Catholic Church, he left no money in his will for masses for his soul, and that he desired no priest at his dying bed to prepare him for the last great change.

In Spain the impulse of the Renaissance was felt chiefly in a splendid and exuberant style of architecture. The Roman Catholic reaction and the censorship of the press repressed the    *

literary and artistic life of the century.

The effect of the English Renaissance was confined in the main to classical learning and improved methods of education. It awakened thought, contributed largely to the Reformation, and will be considered in treating of the Reformation in England.

November n, 1500, Ferdinand of Spain and Louis XII of France signed the Treaty of Granada, by which was compassed the overthrow of the last _{PoHtlcaI ReIa}_ descendant of King Ferrante, and the king- tions of Italy, dom of Naples was to be divided between 's⁰⁰"¹^* France and Spain. The domestic policy of Louis XII was wise and beneficent, but his foreign policy, directed by the Cardinal of Amboise, who had visions of the papal tiara floating before him, was unfortunate in the extreme. The French took Naples, for the second time in ten years, in 1501, and took with them King Ferdinand. Then the Spanish, under the redoubta

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ble Captain Gonsalvo, defeated the French and drove them out of the kingdom, May, 1503. From that time until 1860 the Neapolitan kingdom remained in Spanish hands, except in the time of Napoleon. At the Peace of Blois, October, 1505, Spain was confirmed in the possession of what she had seized.

In 1500, France captured Ludovico of Milan, and carried him a prisoner to France, and such he remained until his death. Milan remained in the possession of the French, and was governed by them, until 1512.

Meanwhile Pope Julius II was beginning his am-The consoii- bitious career as a military pontiff. In dationofthe September, 1506, he took possession of Pe-Papai states. _rUgi_{a> an(}j entered Bologna as its master in the same year.

In December, 1508, was signed the League of Cambray against Venice, France, Spain, and the Emperor Maximilian, and with them leagued ^TH venfce^ ^t^^ie P°P^e against the only independent Italian power. In his zeal the Pope banned Venice in April, 1509. At the battle of Agnadello, May 14, 1509, the Venetians were defeated, and their power was broken on the mainland of Italy. The only State that, in^- conjuction with the Pope, could have made resistance to the conquest and servitude of Italy by France and Spain was forever crippled by the Pope, who had only strengthened his enemies. Julius II saw this when it was too late, and was reconciled to Venice, February 10, 1510.

The Pope then turned against Alphonso of Este, Duke of Ferrara, and excommunicated him, August 9, 1510, but absolved him without gaining his purpose

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two years later. Bologna revolted against Julius, May 21,1511, but was reduced to submission, June 10,1512. In the meantime the Pope captured Mirandola, January 21, 1511.

Julius made a league with Spain against France, October 5, 1511. France secured the calling of a council to depose Julius at Pisa, November 5, 1511; but it was a failure from the ^Thprance?"^d start. France also sent a well-appointed army under her ablest general to curb the power of the ambitious pontiff. April 11,1512, was fought the bloody battle of Ravenna, where the French were victorious, but lost the fruits of victory through the the death of their gallant commander, Gaston de Foix.

Spain, the Pope, the Emperor, England, and Venice now leagued against France. Cardova, with Spanish troops, August 30, 1512, sacked Prato, a city in Florentine territory, with terrible slaughter, and so frightened the Florentines that the Republic was overthrown which had lasted eighteen years, and the Medici were restored September 14, 1512. The 25th of November the same year they made a treaty with Emperor Maximilian against Venice. Maximilian, the son of Gian Galeazzo and Bona of Naples, was made Duke of Milan, December 15, 1512. February 20, 1513, Julius II, mighty as a warrior, and able as a politician to consolidate and .enlarge the States of the Church, but who had helped to ruin Italy in two invasions, was dead. Duke Maximilian held Milan by the help of the Swiss; but when they were defeated by the French, he resigned his duchy for a fixed revenue in France.

7

98    The Christian Church.

Leo X was elected March n, 1513. France and Venice leagued the same month against the Emperor,

Italian Pont- ®P^a^ⁿ» ^an^ England. The next month the

icai ReiatkmsOpponents of France were joined by the

under Leo x. p_Gpe. In June of the same year the French > 513-1521.    , _r

were defeated by the Swiss. In December

peace was made between France and Spain, and the next August, after the defeat of the Scotch at Flodden, between France and England. Louis XII died January 1, 1515; but the Pope, Spain, and the Emperor joined in a league against his successor, Francis I (^I5^I5^-I547)- 1° September of the same year came the terrible defeat of the Swiss by the French at Marignano, which ended the superiority which the Swiss had enjoyed since the battle of Nancy in 1477. Milan now fell to the French, and remained in their power until the new emperor came to Italy in 1522. His forces took Milan, and Francesco Sforza, son of Ludovico II Moro, was proclaimed duke. He died in 1538, when the house of Sforza became extinct. Then Milan was ruled by the Spanish for almost two hundred years, when it fell to Austria, who governed it, with the interregnum of the Napoleonic conquest, until 1859.

By this conflict of the first decades of the sixteenth century Venice was weakened and her progress on ^    the mainland checked. Florence lost for-

Results.    .

ever her independent life, and became a part of the Duchy of Tuscany. The Papal States were enlarged and strengthened, and became a bulwark and mine of treasure for the papacy in its struggle with the oncoming Reformation. But these States of the Church were utterly powerless to resist the Spanish

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supremacy, which was secured by the possession of Naples and Sicily in the south and of Milan in the north. This supremacy in the north was exchanged for that of Austria in 1714 at the Peace of Utrecht; it was broken by Napoleon (1796-1815), but endured until Magenta and Solferino,in 1859, led to the founding of the Kingdom of Italy.

In the year in which Grenada was taken and America discovered, on the 10th of August, Roderigo Borgia was elected Pope. For the next eleven years the licentiousness and violence, the fraud and cruelty, the secret assassinations and poisonings of which the Papal Court and rule were the scene, through the unbridled lust and greed of the Pope and his family, especially his son Caesar, has made the name Borgia stand next to that of Nero in the history of Rome, a synonym of infamy and corruption unparalleled in modern history.

Alexander VI was born at Valencia in Spain, January 1, 1431, and was a nephew of Calixtus III. Handsome in person, he had fine presence

^r    . ^r    . Alexander VI.

and agreeable manners. His greed, his wealth, and his licentiousness were well known to the cardinals who had elected him, and they never seemed to think them unseemly in the supreme head of Christendom. By his uncle Roderigo he was made cardinal at the age of twenty-five. Fourteen years later began his relations with Vanozza Cataneis, who was eleven years his junior. His family by her were Caesar, born in 1473; Juan, 1474; Lucretia, 1480; and Jofre, 1481 or 1482. In the meanwhile she was married to one husband in 1474, and, on his death, to

ioo    The Christian Church.

another in 1480. She married a third husband in i486, and died in the odor of sanctity in 1518. Another mistress of Alexander was the beautiful Giulia Farnese. Through her influence her brother was made cardinal; he became Pope on the death of Clement VII, and ruled for fifteen years as Paul III.

Alexander, after his accession, was chiefly concerned to marry his children and increase their wealth and power. His daughter Giroloma he married to a brother of Cardinal Caesarini. The daughter Lucretia had a more varied experience. At thirteen years of age she married Giovanni Sforza di Pesaro, and was divorced in 1497. She then married Prince Alfonso di Birsiglia, the bastard son of King Alfonso of Naples. He was killed in 1500 by her brother Caesar two years after her marriage. The next year she married Alfonso of Este, afterwards Duke of Ferrara, and left Rome in January, 1502, when she was only twenty-one years of age. Though she had borne an illegitimate child, she was never a monster of depravity, and her life at Ferrara seems to have been commendable until her death in 1519.

The terrible member of this family was Caesar Borgia, his father’s favorite and afterward master.

Caesar Borgia was made cardinal, Septem-

Cajsar Borgia.

ber 20, 1493, when twenty years of age. His brother Juan, Duke of Gandia, was murdered June 14, 1497. Though probably wrong, his father believed that Caesar was guilty of the murder, for he knew he was capable of it. August 13, 1498, Caesar renounced the cardinalate that he might marry and be the founder of a princely house. His bride was

The Renaissance.

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Charlotte d’Albert, of the royal house of Navarre. They were married in May, 1499. He then began his career of blood and violence in order to found his dominion. He took Forli in January, 1500, and the next month made a triumphal entry into Rome. Faenza was captured in 1501, and in June of the same year he was made Duke of Romagna, and took a ransom from Florence of 36,000 ducats. By treason he became Lord of Urbino and Camerino in 1502. He had killed his brother-in-law, Prince Birsiglia, in 1500. In 1502, Astorre Manfredi, Lord of Faenza, was killed by his orders in the castle of St. Angelo. The last day of that year at Sinigaglia he killed the captains of the mercenaries who had surrendered to him trusting his word. Cardinal Orsini was poisoned in St. Angelo, February 22, 1503. It seemed as if this monster was to carry everything before him, when his father, Alexander VI died August 18, 1503. Caesar left Rome the second of the next month, and returned the third of October. Pius III had been elected Pope September 22d, and died October 18, 1503. The second conclave of that year resulted, November 1st, in the choice of the bitterest enemy of the house of Borgia, Cardinal Rovere, who assumed the title of Julius II (1503-1513). Caesar fled to Ostia, November 19th. He was arrested and taken back to Rome before the end of the month. For the next two months he was confined in the Vatican, but left Rome in February, 1504. In April he was received by Gonsalvo, Viceroy of Naples, to whom he had fled, and the next month he was sent a prisoner to Spain. He escaped from his Spanish prison in December, 1506, and was killed in battle at Viana,

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March 12, 1507. Thus ended the career of Caesar Borgia. He was the prototype of “The Prince” of Machiavelli, the representative work of the heathen Renaissance.

The career of Julius II has already been traced. At his court art and learning found patronage, but there was little to check the increasing

Julius II.    .    , - ,    , r

corruption, not only of the papal family, but of the Roman court. Julius was a man of intelligence and refinement, and not a slave to sensual passion. He was a thoroughly secular prince, a lying politician, and the most warlike of the Roman pontiffs since the fifteenth century. The impression that he made upon that generation may be seen in the biting satire which was played at Paris, and which represents Julius’s astonishment at being refused entrance to Paradise by St. Peter for his evil and worldly life. A good English translation of the play may be found in Froude’s “Erasmus.”

Julius was succeeded by Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, who at the age of thirty-eight, took the title _x of Leo X (1513-1521). Leo X began the evil race of splendid, pleasure-loving, and perfidious princes of the house of Medici. A more tortuous and faithless politician never existed, even in Italy. The pretended conspiracy by which he wrung scores of thousands of ducats from his cardinals was a master-stroke of Italian policy, which excited the admiration of the trained liars of the courts of Europe. For no one can go through the State papers of that evil time, and refuse this title to the diplomatic representatives of the Christian courts accredited to the Holy See of Rome.

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Leo X was a cultivated man, with refined tastes, and in luxury and extravagance he far outshone his predecessors. At garden parties with the prelates, in sport, they would throw costly vessels from the table service into the Tiber, and then with nets seek to regain them. Leo had at his command the treasure and resources of the Papal States and of the Church, and yet such was his prodigality that his death nearly ruined all his friends, as his debts amounted to 1,150,000 gulders. It was Leo who sold the indulgences to carry on the rebuilding of St. Peter’s, begun by Julius II, which aroused the indignation of the Augustinian monk at Wittenberg, and began the Reformation.

What was the life of that court, let the Venetian ambassadors in their dispatches to their government tell us. Of the banquet of Cardinal Andrea Cornaro the ambassador writes: “ The repast was most beautiful. There was an infinite quantity of viands, and no less than sixty-five courses, with three different dishes at each course, which were continually changed with great agility, so that scarcely had one been partaken of than another was brought on. All was served on beautiful silver-plate and in great quantity. The feast being finished, we all arose, stuffed and stunned, both by the abundance of viands, and because at the table of the cardinal there was every kind of musician that could be found at Rome.”

At Cardinal Grimiani’s, a few days later, the ambassadors relate that, it being a feast-day, they dined entirely on fish, like good Catholics, and sat at the table for six hours. They mention among the fishes a sturgeon, the head of which was “larger than that

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of an ox,” and which had cost eighteen golden ducats. These suppers under Hadrian were but the carrying on of those under Leo. The carnival suppers of the Pope were enlivened by the jesting of buffoons, and all sweet instruments and singing, in which the Pope, who was an excellent musician, joined; and whenever any one sang with him so as to please his holiness, he was rewarded with the gift of a hundred scudi and more. After supper he sat down to cards, and often lost at primiera, a game of which he was very fond, enormous sums. Marino Giorgi, the Venetian ambassador, says that his losses at this game, together with his “gifts,” amounted annually to more than 60,000 scudi"; all of which he levied upon beneficiaries which were vacant.

And there was a darker side. Rome was the capital of the Papal States, and its rulers were all ecclesiastics bound by their vows and the laws of the Church to celibacy. The four immediate predecessors of Leo X—Innocent VIII, Alexander VI, Pius III, and Julius II—were fathers of children whom they openly acknowledged. Even worse, besides Alexander VI, Julius II, and Leo X, many of the prominent cardinals of the Papal Court were victims of a shameful disease which only comes to men who are corrupt through their lusts. What holy fathers of Christendom were these!

The latest and best of the Roman Catholic historians of these times, Dr. Ludwig Pastor, in his third volume, a book remarkable alike for its honesty and its learning, estimates the number of public courtesans, or women of evil life, at Rome as eight thousand in a population which, in 1527, amounted to eighty-

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five thousand people. A celebrated courtesan, a favorite of several cardinals, was buried in one of the Roman churches, with an inscription announcing her calling and lauding her beauty. It was not removed until the Counter Reformation brought in an awakening of the moral sense.

In view of these undisputed facts, what shall we think of those who laud the unity and purity of the Church before the Reformation? Of those who think but for the obstinacy and per- formation, verseness of Martin Luther there would have been no Reformation and no division of Western Christendom? Or that history has not justified the existence and work of that Evangelical Reform which was its necessary result ? Above all, what must we think of those who proclaim education, refinement, and culture as the true means of moral regeneration of an age, or of the race ? Where has there been a more splendid field to show the regenerating and elevating influence of art and culture than in the Italy of the Renasssance? Where has there been a more conspicuous failure? As old Rome ripened for destruction, and her wealth and beauty invited the Gothic invaders over the Alps, so the Rome of the Renaissance, polished, artistic, and corrupt through the perfidy of her rulers and the moral degeneration of her society, invited the soldiers of Charles V. The sack of Rome in 1527, the awful destruction of its unbridled lust and anarchy, ended the Renaissance in Italy. The way was then prepared for that necessary development in Christendom known as the Reformation in Teutonic lands and the Counter Reformation in Latin Europe.

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Leo X had opposed the election of Charles V to the empire, but had finally preferred him to Francis I of France. After months of counter-play Chariest ^anc* delay he concluded a league with Charles, May 8, 1521. In November of the same 3^ear Milan surrendered to the arms of this league. Leo was overjoyed with the news. “ That is more,” he said, “ than my Popedom.” A few days after, December 1, 1521, he died. Leo left a crowd of weeping creditors. Only three thousand ducats were in the papal treasury, and his debts were half a million. Leo’s pontificate was the era of the height and splendor of the Renaissance.

Leo’s successor was Adrian Debel, a ship-carpen-ter’s son, of Utrecht, who took the title of Hadrian . VI (1522-1523). He had been the tutor of Hadnan vi. Varies v, and as Bishop of Tortosa had

governed Spain during his absence, and through imperial favor had been made a cardinal. His election was sure to be pleasing to the emperor, and was a sign of good will from the Roman Curia. They never made another such mistake. Hadrian was the last Pope not of Italian birth and training. Earnestly religious, Hadrian *was learned, but with no taste for art. Honest as he was, he acknowledged the vices of the Roman court, but strove in vain to reform them. He drove the favorites of Leo from the Vatican, but could not root out the evil practices on which they throve. There could scarcely be a greater contrast with that extravagant and sumptuous pontiff and his court than Hadrian’s table, who with his own hand gave a shilling to his old German servant, saying to her, “That will do for to-morrow.”

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Elected in January, Hadrian did not reach Rome until late in August, 1522. A year from the following September he was dead. He lived long enough to make himself hated by the Romans because of his futile endeavors to bring to an end the worst of the abuses of the Papal Court. His brief reign showed how an honest man must look upon the papacy of that time, and how vain was the hope that a Pope, even, could cleanse the moral corruption of Rome. As Goths and Vandals cleansed away the heathenism of the imperial city, so Germans and Spaniards were the scourge of God which cleansed the papal capital. Vain had been the work of Councils, and vain the work of an honest Pope. The destroying angel was at hand.

Giulio de* Medici, cousin of Leo X, was the candidate favored by the emperor and the majority of the cardinals. He was elected November 18, 1523, and took the name of Clement VII (1523-1534). The war between Francis I and Charles V seemed to take a turn favorable to the former, as the French in October, 1524, again took possession of Milan. After double dealing which would have done credit to the most skilled adept in Italian policy, Clement, who had been a favorite with the emperor, early in January, 1525, declared for the French. On the 24th of the next month came the overwhelming defeat of the French at Pavia. Francis was taken prisoner and carried to Spain where he remained until the signing of the Treaty of Madrid, February 26, 1526. In April after Pavia, Clement made a league with Charles, but, after the release of Francis, Clement absolved him from his oath, and became the soul of the league of Cognac,

io8    The Christian Church.

May 22, 1526, in which France, Venice, Florence, Milan, and the Pope, with the favor of Henry VIII, leagued against Charles. This perfidy moved Charles to the deepest indignation. In September of the same year Pompeo Colonna, cardinal of the Roman Church and warrior, by a sudden attack seized Rome. Clement fled to the castle of St. Angelo, and the next day, September 21st, again made peace with the emperor. No sooner was Colonna gone than Clement anew broke his word. Henceforth the arms of Charles were turned against the faithless head of the Church.

The Constable of Bourbon, a traitor to his country, had entered the imperial service. His army joined the German mercenaries under Freunds-The March k_er~ _an(} the united forces, under Bourbon’s

on Rome.    ⁰⁷

command, set out from Piacenza for Rome in February, 1527. Clement, with incredible folly, dismissed what few troops he had for the sake of economy, depending on his diplomatic skill and the strength of the walls for the defense of Rome.

On the fifth of May the Constable of Bourbon, at the head of an army of forty thousand men, thirty thousand of whom were Germans with no ^{e S8a} ’ love for the Pope, and strongfy tinctured with Luther’s opinion of the papacy and the Papal Court, stood on the western side of Rome. The next morning, without cannon or scaling ladders or any provision for siege, aided by a mist which rose from the Tiber, they assaulted the walls. They were defended by a few thousand of raw militia, commanded by a general, who, as soon as he saw some of the enemy had scaled the walls, gave up all for lost, and fled to the castle of St. Angelo. Bourbon fell at the first

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onset. This was the last and direst misfortune for the doomed city. The leaderless army, mad with rage, soon took the quarter about St. Peter’s except the castle of St. Angelo, whither had fled the Pope, most of the cardinals, and about three thousand others. Yet a resistance of two days would have saved Rome. The very evening of the first attack a relief party was at the Salarian gate, but it was too late. By four o’clock all Rome west of the Tiber was in the hands of the enemy; by six o’clock the bridge across the Tiber had been forced, and Rome, the capital of Christendom, which had accumulated riches and treasures of every kind since the return from Avignon, was given over to the most prolonged and merciless sack any great city has known in modern times.

The sack of Alaric and Genseric, barbarians though they were, was merciful in comparison. At first all with arms in their hands were ruthlessly slaughtered, and the streets were filled with ^Rome! dead bodies. If a crowd of retainers in a palace made resistance, a mine of gunpowder soon ended it. Then began the systematic pillage. After the murder of men and the ravishing of women, including nuns and women of the nobility, came the ransoming of those who had property, some purchasing their liberty two or three successive times.

Then were emptied the treasures of Rome, public and private, in the lap of the rapacious horde. No churches were spared. German soldiers wore pearls braided in their moustaches; they drank with courtesans costly wine from the most splendid and sacred vessels of the Church. They stabled their horses in St. Peter’s, and used precious manuscripts for their

no

The Christian Church.

bedding. With difficulty was the library of the Vatican saved from destruction. The most costly vestments used in the most solemn and stately ceremonials of the Church and of the court were worn by the soldiers or by their women. Mock processions, with mock Pope and cardinals, but clothed in their proper vestments, were exhibited before the imprisoned spectators in St. Angelo. A cardinal was caught and carried on a bier to his Church at Ara Coeli, and a funeral sermon preached over him, and his grave prepared, when he ransomed himself by giving to his captors all he possessed.

The Spanish soldiers surpassed the Germans in cruelty and tortures. Says a Roman Catholic writer: “ The sacred wafers were scattered abroad by the Catholic Spaniards and trampled in the bloody ooze that filled the ways; the convents were stormed by a rabble in arms, and the nuns were distributed as booty among their fiendish captors; mothers and children were slaughtered in the streets, and drunken Spaniards played dice for the daughters of honorable citizens.”

Think of this hell of murder, lust, pillage, and cruelty lasting, not a day, nor even a week, but without restraint of discipline for a whole month, and there may be some faint conception of that sack of Rome in which perished the Italian Renaissance. The joyous city ceased. Ended were the days of her splendor and her artistic glory. So in blood and shame set the sun of the Italian Renaissance. It perished in that awful doom which was evoked by its corruption and moral baseness. It was little more akin to the Italy of the Catholic Reaction than to the England of Cromwell and his Puritans.

Tart Srccrad.

THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY AND ENGLAND.

Ill

THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY.

The hour does not make the man, nor does the man make the hour. The prophets of hero-worship and the apostles of environment have each but half the truth. It is the conjunction of the hour and the man which makes the eras that mark the ascending history of the race. It is this conjunction which makes the old, the outworn, and the corrupt roll together as a scroll. They are no longer among the vital forces controlling human society, and are of value but as source and reference. It is this conjunction which brings in the new heaven and the new earth.

Such transformations mark the course of modern history. Such are Cromwell and the Puritan Revolution, Washington and the American Revolution, the French Revolution and Napoleon, the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln. Of all these transformations of society and civilization, this, whose history is to pass before us, was the first and most far-reaching in its effects. The causes and events which led up to it have been detailed in the second volume and in the preceding part of this.

To this transformation contributed the great secular movements of the human mind and of society. The inventions like that of gunpowder, the discovery of the art of printing and of the mariner’s compass, led to the revelation of the Old World and of antique 8    i*3

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and intellectually-inspiring civilization, of the New World of the heavens, and the New World beyond the Atlantic. The fall of feudalism and of the aristocratic type of government brought in the reckoning with the masses of the people, if but to form the basis of absolute power in great and centralized monarchies. In the contest between the crown and the people against the nobles, the nobles must give way. Any intelligence of the people in government must await that reform which acknowledged the dignity of each human soul and the direct relation which it is called to sustain to the God and Father of all.

Along with these secular movements tending to a radical change must be reckoned those more subtle but mightier forces which rule the religious nature of man. Most noticeable of these was the ignorance and corruption of the clergy, the monastic orders, and the people, and the absurdity, in the new conditions, of the claims of the mediaeval papacy. These were evident to the eyes of all men. They were as potent to More and Erasmus as to Melanchthon or Calvin. Luther or no Luther, these demanded a new era.

The religious nature of man newly awakened, grieved, bruised, and outraged by the profanation and sale of all that was purest and most sacred, cried out for better things for the sons of God. This cry was answered by not a few prophets of the nobler day, whose dawning they were not to see. The most influential and potent of these was the Englishman, John Wiclif. From the seed he sowed sprang John Huss, than whom no purer soul went from the flames to God. Inspired by revolt against the

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corruption of the time, and especially of the papacy of Alexander VI, was the work and martyrdom of Savonarola. With these wrought men of a different type, character, and mode of thought, the German Mystics, the Brethren of the Common Life, and the new theologians. Such were Tauler and Thomas a Kempis, such were John Colet and Johann Wessel. These men taught the direct dependence upon, and communion of the human spirit with, God, and they taught the independence of priestly mediation. These hastened the dawning, but did not bring the day. That was reserved for the most courageous son of that troubled time, the most courageous of all times— Martin Luther. Luther, like Lincoln, was a child of the people. It was fitting that these two great emancipators were not born in kings’ houses. It was meet that the man who was to make the gospel known to the common people, and make real to them the Peasant of Galilee who was the Son of God, should be one of themselves, touched with all that touched them, in vibrant sympathy with their joys and aspirations, their sorrows and their pains. He smote their being as Moses smote the rock, and their whole natures burst into confident and joyous song in the presence of the new-found Christ, the Redeemer of the world and of their souls. The religious life of the people found its first expression in song.

The hour was ready, and the man had come. The old forever passed, the new was at hand. God, who directs the coming of men in the fullness of times, and who controls the forces which mold environments, had spoken. At his “ Let there be light,” light came

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to our modern world. The hand of destiny had moved forward on the dial-plate, recording the ascent of man.

Martin Luther was born at Eisleben in Electoral Saxony, November 10, 1483. Hans Luther, his father, and Margaretha, his wife, came from Mohra, which is the ancestral seat of the Luther family, only a short time before the birth of their first born, the greatest man who ever spoke the German tongue.

Hans Luther was a miner, a typical German peasant, with a face wrinkled and hardened by toil and exposure. From his portrait he looks out upon us a grim, hard-working, strenuous man, with very little sentiment about him. He must have been a man who made things bend by sheer force of will and arm. At Eisleben he lived in a comfortable house on a prominent street, and here the Reformer first saw the light. Poor and struggling Hans Luther soon moved to Mansfeld, where he afterward became a member of the City Council. Dying forty-seven years after Martin’s birth, at the age of seventy, he left a fortune worth at present values, between $5,000 and $6,000 of our money.    -

Luther’s mother was far from being a beauty; the life of hardship and toil left even deeper traces upon her features than on the stern visage of her husband. But Margaretha Luther had beauty of soul a princess might envy. From her, Luther derived that poetic instinct, that gift of music and love of beauty, which distinguishes him among the great reformers of his century.

The house in which Martin Luther was born surprises the visitor 011 account of its size and solidity,

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and, though restored, it must at that time have been a substantial building. Standing in the room in which he first looked out upon the world, we conclude that he was better born in more senses than one than the average peasant’s son of his time.

Upon one thing the heart of Hans Luther was set, and for that he made every sacrifice,—his eldest son should have an education. So, very early, young Martin trudged off to school at Mansfeld, whither his parents removed soon after his birth. The master was stern and even brutal, and the discipline of his father’s house was not kind. He records that his mother, who was more kind than his schoolmaster or his father, for taking a single nut, punished him until the blood came.

Coarse and stern was the training of this strong yet sensitive soul in early childhood in the home. His father had all a miner’s belief in the supernatural and diabolical agencies at work in nature. The things strange or misunderstood, especially if harmful in their effect upon man, were of Satanic agency. Luther’s belief in the power and proximity of the devil and his angels and their power over nature, imbibed in childhood, and strengthened by the Church, never left him, but colored his entire life. Thank God for the liberty brought us by that knowledge of his works we call science!

At the age of fourteen Luther was sent for a year to school at Magdeburg, then a great city, and for five hundred years the ecclesiastical capital ^Atburg.^de" Central Germany. Of all that Luther looked upon in that city, only the vast cathedral is left, a massive structure of the early Middle

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Ages, where lie the remains of the Emperor Otho the Great and of his English wife, Edith. The murderous sack and disastrous pillage of Tilly’s Roman Catholic troopers in the Thirty Years’ War, eighty-five years after Luther’s death, left this only of the great city of Magdeburg. Of his year there at school, Luther only records the impression made upon him by the devout life of a scion of the princely house of Anhalt, who became a monk.

For some family reasons Luther was then transferred to a school at Eisenach in Thuringia; as, with Luther at iⁿcreasing family, Hans Luther’s circum-schooi at stances became straitened, his son Martin Eisenach. k_eg_an ^a,t residence which revealed to him another life than that seen in his father’s peasant home. While at Eisenach, Luther sang for a scholar’s alms, as was then, and still is, the custom in German lands. The clear, sweet voice of young Luther attracted the notice of Ursula Cotta, the wife of a wealthy burgher who lived in a corner house fronting the side of the great market church at Eisenach. In that square stands the statue of the great composer Bach, for here was his birthplace, as if Luther’s spirit of song had come upon the “Father and Founder of German music.” Ursula Cotta invited him into her house, conversed with him, and offered him a home. The house stands still well preserved, and we are glad to say not restored. On the eastern side fronts the room once occupied by Martin Luther. Here, for the first time, he knew the comforts and refinements of life, and here he remained until he left the town to begin his university career at Erfurth. The whole story reads like an idyl, an oasis in the desert of the

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coarseness of those times. Ursula Cotta died in 1511, long before the world heard of Luther’s fame. Only once is her name recorded to have fallen from his lips, but then as showing that the impression she made was deep and lasting. He quotes her once as saying, “ There is nothing better than a woman’s love if it be honestly won,” a saying which he confirmed as against the exaltation of celibacy by the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1501, when seventeen years oi age, Luther entered the University or Erfurth, then a center of humanistic learning in Germany. Here _Univer8ity he proved himself a good student, strong Life at rather than brilliant. He took his Bach- ^Erfurth* elor’s degree in 1503, standing thirtieth in a class of fifty-seven; but when he took his Master’s degree in Philosophy in 1505 he stood second in a class of seventeen. Hans Luther had designed his son for the law, and had made great sacrifices for his education ; he had presented him with a costly copy of the Corpus Juris, expecting that in time he would come to wealth and honor and be a support for his old age.

But the oldest son of Hans Luther was his mother’s child. Amid all his zeal in scholastic studies he could not still the questionings of his _{The Change} soul. He felt those projections of the great in Luther’s problems of our life which arrest the atten- ^Life‘ tion of every thoughtful mind, and make the deepest impression upon the largest natures. The sudden death of a school friend, the fright from a thunderbolt striking near him, made him vow to become a monk. He had graduated from the university in the course of liberal arts, and was intending to pursue the

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study of law, and was twenty-one years of age when he made this vow. He made a supper for all his student friends, and had the usual wassail of a student’s feast, and the next day, in July, 1505, he entered the Augustinian monastery at Erfurth.

There could be no disappointment greater than that of Hans Luther. His son, whom he had expected to make his mark, and justify his expectation*.* ti°^ns by ^a brilliant career in law and at the courts of princes, had, without even consulting him, become that despised thing a monk, and was henceforth dead to him as to the world. The year of Luther’s novitiate was one of great conflicts. In his self-discipline and mortifications he exceeded the sternest requirements of one of the most strict of the monastic orders. The conflict continuing, in the year following he found his only comfort in Staupitz, the vicar-general of the order, who gave him wise counsel and evangelical instruction. From the study of the Bible and the Fathers, especially Augustine, he found inward peace. In 1507 he was ordained to the priesthood. His father was present, but showed himself wholly unreconciled to his son’s choice. Shrewd old Hans Luther had not been blind to the vices of the clergy of his age, and had no pride in seeing his son counted among them.

Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, the greatest prince of his house, had founded a university at Wittenberg, where he held his court. In 1508, Professor. Luther ^was called to the infant university as Professor of Theology. The next year Luther took his Bachelor’s degree in Theology, and his Doctor’s degree three years later, when he was

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twenty-nine years of age. He was then thoroughly schooled in philosophy and theology, and, after ten years’ training, the equal in ability and learning of any antagonist whom he might afterward meet.

In 1511, in the interests of his order, Luther made a journey to Rome. He lodged in the Augustinian convent which was a part of the Church of S. Maria del Popolo, by the northern gate of the city. In this church are fine specimens of the artistic achievements of the fifteenth century, and here is a chapel designed by Raphael, and here are frescoes by Pinturicchio, but no associations are fraught with such interest as those connected with the young German monk, who saw with his own eyes the court and cardinals and city of Julius II, the restorer of the papal dominion in Italy, the patron of Michael Angelo and Raphael. Luther’s son Paul relates that he heard his father say that, going up the Scala Santa, or Pilate’s Staircase, on his knees, he recalled the text, “The just shall live by faith.” Afterward he expressed his gratitude that he had been permitted to see Rome for himself, for otherwise he could never have believed what he saw of her corruptions.

For the next five years after his return to Germany, Luther lived the life of a hard-working Professor of Biblical Theology, and a self-deny- _{Luther at} ing monk. His home was in the Augus- Wittenberg tinian cloister at Wittenberg. Then, and ^{e ore l5}'⁷‘ for years after, as at his appearance before the Emperor at Worms, he wore the frock of an Augustinian friar. He was greatly esteemed by his order, and in 1515 was made its vicar-general for the Province of

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Saxony. In one of his letters he complains of the work which his visitations of the monasteries and their general oversight imposed upon him in addition to his work as professor in the university. In October, 1517, when Tetzel began his preaching of indulgences at Juterborg, north of Wittenberg, Martin Luther was nearly thirty-four years of age. He had been trained with the best teaching of his time. True he had no Hebrew and little Greek; but he knew scholastic philosophy and theology, and was a thorough, though not an elegant, Latin scholar, using that tongue as easily as his native German. Better than this, he had long studied the Bible and the writings of Augustine, while familiar with the writings of Ambrose and Jerome.

Better than all these had been the training of his soul. In the cloister he had learned the strength and

_His bitterness of sin. If salvation had been by Religious the works of the law, Luther, like Paul,

^Llfe‘ would have found it. His bitterest enemies could not deny that he had striven to fulfill the monkish ideal, and, according to their rules, he had been blameless. His solitude and discipline gave him time for self-examination, to become acquainted with himself and his sins. This, however, brought him no relief ; but in the agony of the struggle he read in the Pauline Epistles, as had Augustine a thousand years before, the words which set his heart at liberty, “The just shall live by faith.”

Luther from the Mystics, chiefly Tauler, learned to regard God as the Being of beings, in whom all existence rests, and who alone has eternal value. The soul stands in the most inward original relation to God,

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and finds its rest only in him. It must divest itself of all that is of the creature in order to be united with God the Creator. Man must, before all, feel himself nothing, and deny that anything he is or does can be of merit before God. Then will God, with his love, bring us to union with him.

From Augustine, Luther learned the teaching of the utter natural depravity of man, the servitude of his will, and the election or predestination of grace as the sole ground of salvation. But before 1517 Luther had gone beyond these teachers. Man must despair of himself not once, but always. There can never be merit in his good works. By faith alone is he made just. This faith not only makes him right with God, but through our Lord Jesus Christ gives us joyful assurance of salvation without other mediation. Luther’s primal article of justification by faith grew out of his experience. For him faith was “ the heart’s experience of the omnipotence of the love which is revealed to us in Christ.”

Martin Luther had found peace for his soul. He was no more conscious than was Augustine that he was out of harmony with the Church and the creed of Christendom. He taught that p“^on* we are justified by faith alone as a fact of experience; but he held to all the teachings of Rome, being a zealous monk and defender of the doctrines of the Mediaeval Church. Strong, disciplined, and profound in intellect, with a passionate and exuberant nature, a gift of popular eloquence and song that has not been surpassed in the Christian Church, and a soul of undaunted courage, Martin Luther

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counted himself a thoroughly orthodox Roman Catholic when he nailed his ninety-five Theses on the church-door at Wittenberg.

Let us now view the deed which changed the face of the world. It is the eve of All-Saints, October 31,

1517. A monk comes from his home in the * old Augustinian monastery, walks down the street past the houses afterwards occupied by Melanchthon and Lucas Cranach. Less than half a mile brings him to the castle church, so called because it is part of the residence of his Electoral Highness Frederick of Saxony. This walk was the most momentous in its consequences of any steps trodden by men in these five hundred years. Arriving at the church-door, there, in the usual place for posting Theses for academic disputation, the monk nailed up ninety-five Theses respecting indulgences and their abuse. There you may see them to-day, cast in bronze, and filling ample space on the two leaves of the great side door of the castle church. Since that hour there has been a divided Christendom. It may well be asked, What was the value of that unity, since so highly lauded, which died before the asking of a few questions? It is to be noted that the challenge made that night was never answered. No opponents came to Wittenberg to disprove these Theses so boldly given to the world.

What were these Theses ? They were propositions clothed in the pedantic dialectic of the Middle Ages. Some of them were purposely obscure for the sharpening of the wits of the disputants, and not all were regarded by the author himself as certainly true, but as fit for discussion. Yet there was in them a moral

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earnestness, an unquestioned truth, and a bold attack which made them words that neither Germany nor Europe would let die.

Here are a few of these:

“ 5. The Pope is unable and desires not to remit any other penalty than that which he has imposed by his own good pleasure, or in conformity to the canons; i. e., the papal ordinances.

“6. The Pope can not remit any condemnation, but only declare and confirm the remission of God, except in cases that appertain to himself. If he does otherwise the condemnation remains entirely the same.”

“ 8. The laws of ecclesiastical penance ought to be imposed solely on the living, and have no regard to the dead.”

“21. The papal commissioners of indulgences are in error when they say that by the papal indulgence a man is delivered from every punishment and is saved.”

“62. The true and the precious treasure of the Church is the Holy Gospel of the glory and the grace of God.”

It is a solemn comment on these Theses that, at the opening of the twentieth century, on the facade of almost every great church in Rome are engraved, sometimes in letters reaching across its entire front, in Eatin, these words, “Full indulgence for the living and the dead.”

There is no question that Euther was aroused to this act by perceiving the practically pernicious consequences of the sale of indulgences through the confessional. Indulgences were unknown in the

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Apostolic and early Christian Church. They were an outgrowth of the papal supremacy, and were entirely _The foreign to the Greek Church. Thomas Doctrine oi Aquinas had formulated the doctrine of inindulgences. dulgences, _an(^ _as    it was taught

in the schools. According to the ancient discipline of the Church, the Church could absolve from the transgression of ecclesiastical rules. This was made by Aquinas to coverall temporal penalties for sin, and then to extend to all punishments in purgatory. According to this teaching it could afford benefit to no one in mortal sin without contrition, or to one dying in mortal sin, and so in hell. But the unlearned made little distinction between ten thousand and ten million j^ears in purgatory and Gehenna itself. This power of granting indulgences, the Church taught, came from the treasure of the supererogatory merits of the saints; that is, what the saints did more than it was needful for them to do to keep the Divine law and inherit eternal life. This treasure was at the disposal of the Church, and therefore of her head, the Pope, in an eminent degree.

The occasion of the breaking forth of this particular part of the whole abominable business, which had The Present ^tra^^ed its slimy length through all the sale of Middle Ages after 1100, was that Leo X indulgences. _wj_s|_ie(j carry on the rebuilding of St.

Peter’s, which had been begun by Julius II. This indulgence was farmed out in Germany by Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, the brother of the Margrave of Brandenburg, the ancestor of the present Emperor of Germany. Albrecht had to pay

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to Rome the great price of 50,000 gold gulders for his office, or, as it is politely termed, his pallium. He confided the sale, of which he received half the profits, to a coarse and loud-voiced Dominican named Tetzel, of not the best character or repute, who proceeded with great pomp and display to dispose of his wares. In his letter to Albrecht of the same date as his posting the Theses, Luther says it was reported by the people that Tetzel preached that indulgences absolved the soul without contrition, and that as soon as the money dropped into the chest, the soul for whom it was paid was released from purgatory, and that there was no crime for which the indulgences did not afford a full pardon, even the most heinous.

In Luther these reports raised a storm of indignation. The same night the Theses were posted he sent a letter to Albrecht of Mainz, giving the reasons for his action. In fourteen days the Theses had spread throughout Germany, and soon throughout all Europe. It could not be expected that men like Tetzel would see the hope of their gains escape them without an endeavor to put down the disturber of their peace and the destroyer of their calling and reputation. On the other hand, the Theses had made such a profound impression, they had become so widely known, and the abuses at which they were leveled were so evident and revolting to common sense and to piety, that none came forward to dispute them, or were in haste to write against them.

Let us glance at the condition of that German land

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in which this daring deed was done. During the fifteenth century Germany had a succession of incapable The Condi- ^rul^ers- Sigismund, who in mature life tion of came to the throne and ruled for twenty-Germany. _seven y_{ears> was} extravagant, unsteady, poor, and faithless. His violation of the safe conduct given to John Huss can never be forgotten. His son-in-law, Albrecht of Austria, succeeded him, and gave promise of being a ruler worthy of a great nation; but in two short years he was dead. His successor, Frederick III, was a weak, cowardly, incapable, and impecunious prince, whose reign of fifty-three years was one long, ignoble failure. This failure was the more disastrous to Christendom because just then the Turks were establishing themselves in the fairest lands of Europe, and were beginning the more than two centuries warfare against the empire. His son, the courtly and chivalrous Maximilian, was a man of different mold. He was intelligent, a lover of learning and the arts, the friend of the greatest artist Germany has ever produced, Albrecht Diirer. Maximilian, a brave man, was an irresolute, shifty, and unsuccessful statesman, yet he laid the foundation for the greatness of the house of Hapsburg. He married Marie, the daughter and only child of Charles the Bold, and thus brought the great Burgundian inheritance to the German Empire. This included far more than modern Belgium and Holland. Afterward he married two of his grandchildren with the children of the kings of Hungary and Bohemia, so that these kingdoms became in time a part of the domains of his house. His great achievement, however, was the marriage of his son Philip to the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella,

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so that Spain and all her possessions in Italy, in the New World, and in the East Indies, came under the rule of his descendants. Marriages, not arms, brought greatness to the house of Austria. Maximilian was the ruler of the Holy Roman German Empire. He represented the great traditions of Charlemagne and the Othos, and was, in title at least, the secular head of Christendom. Like most of his predecessors he had many a brush with that other, the spiritual, head of Christendom, his Holiness the Pope. Hence he thought it advisable to keep Luther safe from Rome, as he might be needed to play against the papal policy.

Germany was then considered a prosperous and powerful country. Her government, however, was not strong because of the predominance of the aristocratic element: that is, the rulers of ^TheGo^“

¹    ernment.

its multitude of little States. The crown had no hereditary domain, and the empire no system of taxation, except what depended on the good will of the princes. The treasury was always in a state of exhaustion. The feudal levies of the States were poor substitutes for a standing army, such as those of France and Spain, and a poorer defense against the Turk.

The cities enjoyed phenomenal prosperity; the profits on merchandise were enormous. The rich burghers of its scores of free cities were

,    .    ,    The Cities.

the most prosperous, intelligent, and progressive element in the life of the nation. Giant monopolies prevailed, and the great banking houses, like the Fuggers at Augsburg, loaned money to both the emperor and the Pope, and were renowned as have been the Rothschilds in our time.

9

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This was also the era of the revival of learning in Germany. Its fruits were shown in the work of Erasmus and his literary friends, in the Learnfng! founding of new universities, in the labors of Reuchlin, and in the work of the artists of Cologne and Nuremberg.

Germany was most heavily taxed by the Pope and Roman Curia. This created ill-will among the princes and discontent among the people. German manners and the religious life were crude and coarse. Ignorance, superstition, and fraud abounded. There were symptoms of a brighter day in the educational efforts and attempts at Bible translation in the Rhine country and in the keen intellectual life of centers like Augsburg and Nuremberg.

There were other shadows to the picture. The lower class of nobles, the former fighting force of the empire, were each year becoming more and more impoverished. The peasants groaned under a feudal servitude which was galling and cruel. There was a steady increase of sturdy beggars, and a decrease of independent landed proprietors. Worse than all, the discovery of America and the Cape of Good Hope changed all the routes of European trade; that of the Eastern Mediterranean and India, which had come, on the one hand, to Venice, and over the Brenner Pass to Augsburg and Nuremberg, and down the Rhine to Cologne and the Netherlands; or, on the other hand, over the Western Alps to make rich the cities of Flanders—Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent, Louvain, and Liege—as the great marts for the exchange of English staples and the sale of Italian and Flemish manufactures. Both of these trade routes were alike out-

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classed in the new competition. Commercial supremacy passed from Italy and Germany to the nations of Western Europe, to England, France, Spain, and Holland. These shaied and wonderfully increased the trade which had been the source of Germany’s prosperity. This decline coincided with the rise and progress of the Reformation, but was as independent of it as the rising sun of the devastation of the Chicago fire.

It was in such a country that Luther was to fight single-handed against the hitherto unbroken power of Rome. Tetzel, through Conrad Wimpina, began the controversy by issuing some ^Lujjj,me^nd counter-theses, in which he extravagantly exalted the power of the Pope. In July, 1518, Emser of Leipzig wrote against Luther, and Luther replied. More important was the work of Sylvester Prierias. a Dominican and Master of the Sacred Palace, published in June of the same year. Luther showed himself more than his equal in his reply. When complaints against Luther reached Rome they were referred to this Prierias. At first Leo X was inclined to look upon the whole affair as a monks’ quarrel; but he soon became aware of the awakening of the German people, and used every means to get Luther to Rome.

The Elector Frederick of Saxony refused either to deliver him to them, or to let him go without a safe conduct. The Pope’s citation to appear at Rome reached Luther, August 7, 1518. At ^Ijetan^ the same time the provincial of his order was commanded to imprison him. Finally the Elector Frederick arranged that he should meet the papal legate, Cardinal Cajetan, at Augsburg, in October,

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1518. Luther went thither on foot, being entertained by the monasteries. He himself says that if Cajetan had treated him mildly he would have done anything to make peace with Rome. At their first meeting Luther fell at the legate’s feet, and in all humility professed his devotion to the Roman See. But what was his surprise to find that, instead of discussing the matter at issue, he was commanded at once to retract. In a discussion following this demand, Cajetan found more than his match. The next day Luther handed him a Protestation which he had drawn up, but the legate demanded an unconditional retraction. The day following the cardinal again demanded a retraction, and threatened the ban, or excommunication. Luther went to his lodgings, and that evening, with a notary, in due form appealed to the Pope, “better informed.” He then passsed through a small gate in the wall, and in his monk’s frock rode all night a distance of thirty-two miles. When he dismounted he was so stiff and worn that he could not stand. Well had he need to ride; for, on the 23d of August preceding, orders had gone out from Rome that he should be arrested as a heretic and taken to that city. But Luther escaped the devices of his enemies, and was soon again at the elector’s court. Cajetan never forgot the deep-set, fiery eyes of the Saxon monk.

When violence of this sort could make no impression on the elector, and Luther in November appealed to a General Council, Karl Miltitz, a papal ^LMUtitz^{nd c}h^amberlain ^an(i Saxon nobleman, was sent to try a different course. Miltitz at once called Tetzel before him, and gave him such a rebuke that he soon after died. Luther was invited to meet

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the papal agent at Altenburg. He went, and was very pleasantly received. Luther consented to refer his case to the Archbishop of Treves, and to keep silent as long as his adversaries should. In these proceedings Luther showed himself a consummate diplomatist, always securing the real advantage in the controversy, which was to keep the case from Rome.

In the meantime a former friend of Luther’s, and a man who had gained renown as a public disputant— John Eck, of Ingolstadt—saw in this condition of affairs an opportunity to win fame ^LutJ^k^and and favor. He had written against Luther, and Luther had replied. He now sought to arrange a public disputation at Leipzig with Carlstadt, and in the presentation of his Theses attacked Luther. The Reformer felt that the truce agreed with Miltitz was broken, and went with Carlstadt to meet Eck. Eck was a man of large physique, and with a loud voice, but of evil reputation in his relations with women. The disputation lasted from June 27 to July 14, 1519. Both sides, as usual, claimed the victory. Eck claimed it as he made Luther say, unwillingly, in the defense of Huss, that a General Council could err. Three results came from this disputation: Duke George of Saxony became Luther’s determined enemy; Luther himself was driven to see the lack of historic foundation for the papal claims, and to a clear limitation of the papal supremacy; and, lastly, to accept the Holy Scriptures as the only rule of faith. This made Luther conscious of his breach with the old order of things, and united the humanistic circles in his behalf.

i34    The Christian Church.

In January, 1520, Eck went to Rome to procure Luther’s condematiou. The Papal Bull of Excommu-The Bull ⁿication was issued June 15, 1520. Without against any regard to the decencies of the case, Eck Luther. _wag j_nsj-_ruct_ed to take the Bull to Germany and to secure its execution. A greater mistake could not have been made. It was felt to be an outrage upon the public opinion of Germany and an insult to the Elector Frederick. The elector took the position that Luther could not be condemned unheard, and that he should have a safe conduct to and from any such place of audience. On his part, Luther, November 15, 1520, amid a crowd of rejoicing students, under an oak outside of Wittenburg, burned the Pope’s Bull, saying, as he cast it into the fire, “ Because thou hast troubled the saints of the Lord, so consume thee eternal fire.”

The whole course of the controversy had shocked the moral sense of the Augustinian monk. Instead The Effect discussion, instead of any attempt at the of the reformation of acknowledged abuses, the Controversy. _SQ|_{e en(}j_eavor been to silence him at

any cost by death, imprisonment, or cajolery. For the truth of the Gospel, or ordinary morality or decency, none of the Church rulers seemed to care. His embittered antagonist obtained the Bull of Excommunication, and was authorized to return to Germany and secure the punishment of Luther and his friends. Not only was he condemned unheard, but his enemy became his judge and executioner. Luther had become aware of the fraud and forgery on which was based so much of the claims of the papacy. The work of Laurentius Valla exposing the fraudulent donation

♦ The Reformation in Germany. 135

of Constantine, the forged decretals, and other fraudulent supports of papal claims, were a revelation to the truth-loving monk. No wonder the wrath of Luther flamed up, and he thenceforth regarded the Church of Rome as the Scriptural Antichrist. To him it seemed irreformable, and seeking only the destruction of such as preached Christ’s gospel. It was a brave deed to break with Rome, to defy the power which had been supreme in Christendom for a thousand years: but it was necessary to separate from Rome, if spiritual feeedom and Christ’s gospel were to come to men, or if even Rome herself were to be reformed from her worst abuses.

Meanwhile this controversial strife was but a small part of Luther’s work. According to the judgment of his adversaries, and of men religiously indifferent and conservative, like Erasmus, ^Lwork* he was more than equal to those who had appeared against him. The educated and influential circles were on his side. Yet the work of Luther in these years was not alone negative and defensive. He laid down the great foundations on which Evangelical Christianity has since stood. At the same time he provided for the religious instruction and education of the people as only a man could who felt the responsibility for the care of souls. During Lent, in 1517, he preached, twice each day, besides daily lecturing in the university. Of immense influence were his popular, practical expositions of the Magnificat, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostles’ Creed. These were the works which gave him so much influence over the mind and heart of the German people. To this must be added

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gifts as a popular preacher such as have been rarely given to man. Besides this work, he won increasing fame as a university lecturer. This was augmented in 1518 by the coming to Wittenberg of the nephew of Reuchlin, the first Greek scholar in Germany, Philip Melanchthon. The attendance of students rose from 232 in 1517, to 458 in 1519, and 579 in 1520. In the prosecution of these duties, Luther became an earnest and thorough student of the Holy Scriptures. In 1519 he published a commentary on Galatians and an exposition of the Psalms.

The year 1520 is the most memorable in Luther’s life for its influence upon after generations. This year he published five works, any one of which would have given to the author a European reputation as a reformer. There were: (1) His “Sermon on Good Works,” in which he laid down his position in regard to the merit of good works in direct opposition to the teaching of the Roman Church, and which struck at all compulsory vows; (2) His work on the Papacy at Rome; (3) His “Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation ;” (4) His “ Babylonish Captivity of the Church,” in which he declared the Church and the sacraments had been taken captive by the papacy; (5) “The Freedom of a Christian Man.”

From these works we can best understand Luther’s position, and see from his standpoint the corruption of the Roman Church, and the reforms which were imperatively demanded. From these works we can understand his popularity with the German people, and the immense mistake made at Rome in trying to extinguish the reformer instead of the abuses.

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A short sketch of the most popular of these works, the “Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation,” will show how straight and hard Luther struck, and how undeniable were theChril-his charges. Luther treats first of the pa- tianNobmty per walls of papal authority. They are three: (1) The division between the spiritual and temporal estates. There is only one priesthood, that of believers. All the baptized are a royal generation, a priestly kingdom. Christ has made us, through his blood, priests and kings. The distinction between clergy and laity is a difference of office and function, not a divine difference dividing men into spiritual and temporal orders of men. A congregation may choose a priest and he may be fitted for all spiritual offices without the ordination of bishops. So Augustine, Ambrose, and Cyprian were chosen bishops. The clergy are ordained only to an office; hence there is no indelible character to an ordination. It is the office of the clergyman to preach the Word and to administer the sacraments, as it is that of rulers to maintain order among the people. There should be 110 benefit of clergy before the law, there should be no papal exemptions of the clergy from the temporal jurisdiction. (2) That the interpretation of the Scripture belongs to the Pope alone, and that he is infallible in matters of faith. On the contrary, all Christians may read and profit by the Scriptures. There have been, as all men know, wicked Popes. (3) That the Pope can not be judged, and is above all law. On the contrary, the Scriptures judge the Pope, and he should be made to live conformably to them. Hence the Church

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has power to call a Council, and the Council has power to judge the Pope. Then follow twelve chief complaints and twenty-five remedies. These will never cease to be worth the reading of those who would understand the necessity and the causes of the Reformation of the sixteenth century. In one complaint he says a Romish courtesan holds twenty-two parishes, seven priorships, and forty-three prebends; that is, the revenue from them. Among the remedies, he calls for the marriage of the clergy, according to the Pastoral Epistles. This was five years before he himself took that step.

The political situation was peculiar, and led to the most dramatic situation of Luther’s life,—his appear-

E nts Pr ^ance ^^e^^{0re em}P^{eror at} Worms. Maxi-ceding the milian died January 12, 1519; his grand-Diet of _son^ Charles V, was elected to the crown of

Worms. „    . . _

the German Empire, June 28, 1519. He spent five hundred thousand gold florins in bribes and presents to the six electors. Frederick of Saxony would not himself take, nor allow one of his retainers to touch, a piece of the gold of this corruption fund. Nevertheless, Charles owed his imperial crown to the Elector Frederick, the most influential prince in Germany, and to Franz von Sickengen, who lay near with ten thousand men under arms to make it uncomfortable for any elector who should vote for the King of France, who was the chief competitor with Charles for the crown. Now, both Frederick of Saxony and Franz von Sickengen were friends of Luther. Hence the newly-elected emperor could not refuse that Luther, if he should be summoned to the next Reichstag or Diet, in 1521, should be furnished with

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an imperial safe conduct, although on January 3, 1521, a new Papal Bull had been issued, demanding the punishment of Luther by the secular arm. The papal legates were urgent that Luther should be seized and punished, the elector that he should be heard, and that he should go and come in safety from the Reichstag. In the Reichstag which opened in 1521 the legate declared that, if Luther were not given up, the German nation should be exterminated. “We shall excite the one to fight against the other, that all may perish in their own blood”—a threat that found frightful fulfillment in the Thirty Years’ War a century later.

But the princes had their own quarrels with Rome, and decided that Luther should have a hearing. The resolution to cite Luther to appear at .

ttt    ,    Luther

Worms was approved March 6th, but the Cited to citation was not sent until March 15, 1521. ^Worma-Luther arrived at Worms, April 16th, amid the plaudits of the multitude, which accompanied him to his lodgings. He had preached and received a popular ovation during the whole route. Franz von Sickengen, who camped near with his men at arms, sent Luther an invitation to join him, and so escape the fate his enemies were preparing for him at Worms. Luther replied, “ I will go to Worms though there were as many devils as tiles upon the housetops.”

Worms is a town of about twenty thousand inhabitants, on the upper Rhine. It was an old Roman colony, and of greater relative importance three hundred years ago than now. The site of the bishop’s palace, where the Reichstag held its sessions, is now occupied by a large modern dwelling. The fine cathe

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dral is one of the best specimens of the Romanesque style, with its four towers, and is well preserved.

At the bishop’s palace were assembled the electors, the bishops, the reigning princes, and the deputies of the free cities of the German Empire. At lembiy! their head was the young Emperor Charles

V, who was twenty-one years of age the previous February. He was of medium height, fair complexion, with aquiline nose and blue eyes. His pallid face was marked with the underhanging jaw of the Hapsburgs, and his teeth were small and irregular; but all was under the control of as determined and as persistent a will as that of any ruler of the great sixteenth century.

On that day, April 17, 1521, by the side of the emperor was the papal legate, Aleander. The candles were lighted when the monk of Wittenberg, who had made such confusion in the Church and in the world, came in.

Martin Luther was now thirty-seven years old. He stood upright, leaning more backward than for-

Luther ward, with his countenance raised toward Before the heaven, with deep black eyes and brows, Reichstag. _ey_es twinkling and sparkling like a star not clearly discerned. Melanchthon said he had the warlike glance of a lion, and described his eyes as brown, with a yellow ring around the pupil. His voice was a fine clear tenor; in both stature and bearing he was of imposing aspect, though all contemporaries mark the depth and passion of his nature, which found expression in his voice.

When Luther appeared, John Eck, instructed by the papal legate, placed his books before him, and

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asked him if he would retract them. Luther answered in a low voice, somewhat as if frightened, that he desired time to consider. Aleander and all his enemies triumphed; they thought the splendor of the assembly had terrified the peasant’s son. Never was there a greater mistake; never did Luther show better judgment. A smaller man would have at once rushed to the conflict. Luther used his legal privilege, and came again before an assembly with which his first appearance had made him somewhat acquainted, and now, caring naught for surroundiugs and fully master of his theme and of himself, he felt the victory won. When the same demand was renewed the following day, Luther answered with a brave and unshaken voice. He said his writings were divided into three classes—the books for popular edification, which even his enemies prized; his writings against the Pope and the papists, which he could not recall if he would; and controversial writings with private persons, in which he had been somewhat too vehement, but as to substance he could not recall. When pressed further, he replied: “ Well, then, if your imperial majesty and your graces require a plain answer, I will give you one of that kind without horns or teeth. It is this: I must be convinced, either by the witness of the Scripture or by clear arguments; for I do not trust either Pope or Councils by themselves, since it is manifest they have often erred and contradicted themselves ; for I am bound by the Holy Scriptures, which I have quoted, and my conscience is held by the Word of God. I can not and will not retract anything; for to act against conscience is unsafe and unholy.” They had promised the papal legate that

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they would not dispute with Luther. That would be dangerous business, especially before a German Reichstag. So Eck told him that his error had been rejected by the General Councils. Luther replied that they had erred, and that the Council of Constance in particular had erred. This wearied the emperor, who made a sign to end the matter, when Luther said : “ Ich kann nicht anders, hier steh’ ich, Gott helfe mir;” or, “I can not do otherwise; here I stand, God help me.”

There had appeared a man who could stand by his own thought and his own conscience in the face of all the world. Was not this the beginning of a freer, brighter, better age? How much poorer would be the w^rorld to-day if in the face of power he had retracted as did Galileo? Frederick the Wise was highly pleased with Luther’s defense, as were all his friends. The Spaniards and Italians wished the emperor to break his word and seize the daring monk, but the Germans would have defended him to a man. Luther remained eight days longer while some German prelates, notably the Elector of Treves, tried to arrange some compromise, but all in vain. April 26th, Luther left Worms.

Some of the Reformers had hoped that the young emperor would show some sympathy with the new opinions which were transforming the Charles⁶v! ^world. No man was farther from it. On the same day, after Luther had concluded his defense, Charles made a speech to the Reichstag, in which, contrary to all custom, he himself, instead of the assembly, pronounced against Luther. In this speech, which was translated into German, as Charles

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spoke French, he said : “Yon all know that I descend from the most Christian emperors of the German nation, the Catholic kings of Spain, the Austrian archdukes, and the Burgundian dukes, who all, unto their death, have ever been the truest sons of the Catholic Church, and defenders and propagators of the Catholic faith to the honor of God, the increase of the faith, and to the salvation of their souls. Since it is now manifest that a single monk, deceived by his particular opinion, has fallen into error, and has set himself in contradiction to the faith of entire Christendom, not only that which is to-day living, but that which has prevailed for more than a thousand years, and arrogates to himself that all Christians until now have been in error, hence we have determined in this cause to hazard all our kingdoms and lands, our friends, our own body, blood, life, and soul. The monk, according to the purport of his safe conduct which we shall keep, shall return back, but be forbidden to preach and with his evil teachings deceive the people and excite rebellion. We have determined to proceed against him as a true and convicted heretic, and so exhort you, in this cause, as you have promised as good Christians, to make known your opinions.” It seems scarcely possible that the ruler who spoke these words should be responsible for the sack of Rome.

On May 25th, after the most eminent of the princes had departed, including the Electors of Saxony and the Rhine, the edict of condemna-

, ’    , , , ,    The Ban.

tion was passed, but was dated back seventeen days to the 8th of May, to give it the appearance of greater authority. The edict recounted the heresies of Luther, it designated him as the arch-fiend in hu

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man form, who assembled a multitude of other errors in a stinking pool and added newly-invented ones; as a man who incited to murder and arson, who overthrew the laws, who taught to live a beastly life. His writings were condemned to the flames; in order that all printing presses should be forbidden a wider dissemination of the plague, they should submit to a censorship, his adherents should be seized, and their goods confiscated. But Luther himself was declared as fallen under the ban of the empire; no man should give him lodging or shelter, or food or drink; every man was authorized to lay hold on his person and to deliver him to the imperial officers.

Luther was now a proscribed man, excommunicated by the Pope, banned by the emperor and the Reichstag; yet more influential than they all. This excommunication and ban were never dissolved, and yet for more than twenty-five years until his death, in spite of the utmost efforts of Pope and emperor, the reigning powers of this world, Martin Luther, under God’s protection, was as safe as a babe in its mother’s arms, around whom are encamped the legions of God’s angels.

Frederick, Elector of Saxony, did not think himself able to defy the ban of the empire so solemnly proclaimed. He told Luther his scheme, and

Lutheratthe ^ ,    ,7 , „    ,

wartburg, Luther consented, though he did not know

May 4,1521— to which of the elector’s strongholds he

March 6,1522.    __    , ...

was to be taken. He could hardly be displeased, therefore, when on the night of May 4th he was taken from his company, who fled in affright, and brought to the Wartburg. This was the strongest of all the elector’s castles, the ancient home of St.

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Elizabeth of Hungary, and commands a most beautiful view of Tannhauser’s Venusberg and of the Thu-ringian forest. It must have been all the more agreeable to Luther because just below lay the beautiful Eisenach of his school-days.

Here is shown the great banqueting hall, its walls covered with scenes recounting Tannhauser’s Saengerfest, and the hall decorated with scenes from the life of St. Elizabeth, and the chapel where Luther preached. Of far greater interest is the little room in which Luther lived for ten months, clad as a soldier, and called Junker George. It was here that he performed his greatest service for the German people and the world; for here he translated the New Testament into his mother tongue. Other translations had been made; but this was the first which spoke the language of the people. This was printed and so widely spread that it became their treasure and heritage. In this work others have followed, but none have surpassed him. Here he wrought also on the Old Testament, the translation of which was not fully completed until 1530. This is the cradle of the Reformation; here were laid the foundations of Evangelical Christianity; for from this place, first in modern times, went forth the Gospel in the language of the people.

In this year Charles V went to Spain. He was not again in Germany for nine years. In Luther’s absence the fanatics threatened to undo all his _Lutherg_0e8 work. The elector formally forbade Lu- towuten-ther to return to Wittenberg where he was ^bere‘ sorely needed, saying he could not protect him there. Luther replied to this mandate, and few words from

zo

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human lips have shown a braver soul or nobler spirit. He wrote from the Wartburg: “ I wish your Electoral Grace to know that I come to Wittenberg under a far higher protection than that of the elector. Yea, I hold that I shall protect your Electoral Grace more than you can protect me. This cause shall yet no sword be able to counsel or help; God must work here alone, apart from all human care and co-operation. Therefore he who most believes will here afford the greatest protection. As I therefore perceive that your Electoral Grace is yet weak in the faith, I can in no way regard your Electoral Grace as the man who can protect or shall save me.”

Luther returned to Wittenberg and to the leadership of the Reformation, and to the rule of those unruly spirits it had called forth. In Decem-^abors.⁸ ^^er» *5²¹ >Melanchthon published his “ Loci Communes,” the first text-book of Evangelical theology. In the next year, Henry VIII of England wrote against Luther and in defense of the Seven Sacraments. For this book the Pope conferred upon him the title of Defender of the Faith, which is still borne by those who wear the English crown. Luther replied in a book full pf scorn and ridicule. Luther was busied in arranging a new order of Divine service, purging it from Romish leaven, introducing the German tongue, and adding German hymns; in caring for escaped monks and nuns ; in arranging for the carrying on of the gospel ministry; and in prosecuting the translation of the entire Bible into German, which was completed in 1530.

Meanwhile Luther’s cause continued to gain new adherents. In the fall of 1522 the emperor’s brother

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Ferdinand, who succeeded him on the imperial throne, wrote, “ The cause of Luther is so rooted in the whole empire that, among a thousand persons to-day, not one is free from it.” In these years (1522-1525) the Lutheran teaching was accepted by Albert, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, who transformed his dominions into a hereditary grand duchy, the beginning of the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Bishops of Samland and Livonia accepted the same faith. The Evangelical cause made progress in Dantzic, Livonia, Sweden, Denmark, and through the free cities of the empire. The year 1523 saw the first of the Evangelical martyrs, when Henry Boes, John Van Essen, and Lambert Thorn were burned at the stake, July 1st, at Brussels. Luther wrote one of his finest hymns in memory of their death.

In the meantime the progress of the affairs of Germany favored the Reformation. By an arrangement made at the election of Charles V, it was p₀i_itica, provided that an Imperial Chamber should Affairs in govern in his absence. This was really a ^Germany‘ Committee of the Estates. It was a privilege which had long been desired, and from which great things were expected. It drew up a project for a general tax, which would have greatly strengthened the government, and perhaps in a measure prevented the three hundred years of anarchy which followed. But the free cities feared they would be injured by this tax, and sent a committee to the emperor in Spain, which, by the offer of liberal subsidies, caused him to veto the project. For the first two years after the Reichstag at Worms the rule of the Chamber was in full vigor. The most influential member was Fred

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erick, Elector of Saxony, and the result was that Luther was protected and his opinions rapidly spread. When the new Pope, the emperor’s old tutor, Hadrian

VI, sent a nuncio to secure the enforcement of the Edict of Worms, he was met at the Reichstag of Nuremberg, January 13, 1523, with the most startling legal indictment which had ever been presented of the abuses of the Roman court—“The One Hundred Gravamina [or complaints] of the German Nation.” These are a most memorable proof of the impossibility of retaining the hold of the Church upon Germany^ without a thorough reform of the papal system. Luther did not make these abuses; it is his imperishable glory that he made possible their reform. Thus protected by the regency of that government which had condemned him as an obstinate heretic, Luther and his work prospered. The battle of Pavia and the capture of Francis I in 1525 made a turn in the empire’s fortunes. While this made the emperor superior to all his enemies, it kept him occupied in Spain and Italy.

In the meantime the evangelical ideas proclaimed by Luther had a different and, in many respects, independent development in Switzerland. A ZwingH ^^{ew wee}^^s after the birth of Luther, on the first of the following January, Ulrich, or Huldreich, Zwingli was born at Wildhaus in the Canton of St. Gall, Switzerland. His father was a well-to-do peasant proprietor and village magistrate; his uncle was parish priest, and afterward canon of Wesen. Zwingli had a joyous childhood and a liberal education. He studied five years at Basel, three at Bern,

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and two at Vienna. From his teacher, Wyttenbach at Basel, he learned that the sacrifice of Christ, and not the masses or pilgrimages, secures the pardon of sin, and that the Holy Scriptures, not the Church tradition, is the rule of faith.

At twenty-two he was ordained priest, and was pastor of Glarus for ten years. Twice during this time he accompanied the troops of his canton to the Italian wars as chaplain. He imbibed a bitter hatred to the whole system of selling his countrymen as mercenaries to fight in the quarrels of foreign rulers. For two years he served as pastor at Einsiedln, a place of pilgrimage, and while there he denounced the superstitious practice of the place. In 1518 he was called to Zurich, and at once began to fight against a vendor of indulgences named Samson, when the Council sent him out of the country. Zwingli was a better classical scholar than Luther, with a wider experience of men and a more courteous bearing. Like most of the priests of the day, for a time he sustained an immoral relation with women. But at length the scales fell off. In 1519 he preached a series of sermons which brought the city to his side. The Reformation in Zurich then began, and in 1523 was legally established. By 1525 the service was in the language of the people, convents and monasteries were suppressed, their inmates freed from vows, and their revenues applied to education. The celibacy of the clergy was abolished, and the mass and images done away, while the communion was given in both kinds to the laity. Instead of pursuing him as they did Luther, the papal agents sought to bind Zwingli

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to Rome, and he remained in receipt of a papal pension until 1520. Appenzell, Miihlhausen, and Basel joined Zurich in the reception of the Evangelical doctrine.

Erasmus enjoyed the reputation of being the first literary man of his time and the ablest representative Erasmus    humanistic learning. Through his

and edition of the Greek Testament, and his Luther. £_ree    concerning monasticism and

the abuses of the Church, he was supposed to be in sympathy with the Reformation. He had been urged by the friends of reform, and more and more by the Roman Catholic party, to throw the weight of his great name upon their side. He had delayed and denied; but early in 1524 he had written to Pope Clement VII apologizing for the freedom of some of his former writings. The Pope gave him a rich reward, and silenced the monkish opponents of Erasmus. Luther wrote him a friendly letter in April, but it only wounded his self-love. Finally, in the fall of 1524, Erasmus wrote his “Essay on the Freedom of the Will” against Luther. A year after, Luther replied in “ The Enslaved Will,” taking the most extreme deterministic position. Erasmus replied by his “ Hyperaspestes,” and the breach of the Reformer with the humanistic circles was complete.

Meantime came the great turning point in the German Reformation, the Peasants’ Revolt, and its bloody suppression. Luther had not in-ants^ Revolt. ^v°l^ved his cause in the revolution of Franz von Sickengen, which came to an end at his death, May 7, 1523. He had separated his cause from the mystic revolutionaries at Wittenberg, led by

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Carlstadt and Thomas Miinzer. He had broken with the humanists in his controversy with Erasmus; but hitherto he had represented the nation and voiced the aspirations of the German people. He, as no other German before and none since, was their tribune and leader. He had but to look into his own heart to know what was most potent in the hearts of his people. The Peasants’ War changed all that.

The peasants had been cruelly oppressed. Their economic condition had been growing worse for more than a century. There had been not infre- _C0ndlt|_0n quent revolts. Their burdens had been in- of the creased through the restriction or abolition ^Peasants* of their former rights of free firewood and free emigration ; through the reception of the Roman law, which struck at their right to common tillage and pasturage; through the destruction brought upon them by private wars; and, most of all, by the abuse of the rights of the chase. Their unrest had nothing to do with the Reformation, nor did Luther’s teaching in any way occasion it. But, on the other hand, as he taught truth and justice, and referred to the New Testament for his authority, no wonder that the peasants saw in the new religious order the coming remedy for their ancient wrongs.

The first isolated movements were in the latter part of 1524. It is said to have first broken out among the peasants of the Abbey of Stullingen. The countess to whom the abbey was subject ^T{J®_eg£*’ commanded them, besides their other forced labors, to go out and gather snail-shells upon which the nuns could wind their yarn. They refused. The revolt gathered head in January, 1525; it started in the

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territories under the rule of the Austrian archduke, but no effort was made to repress it. By February it had extended through the Black Forest and Saxony and Thuringia. In March their demands were summed up in a moderate and reasonable program known as the “Twelve Articles.” Well would it have been with the peasants if they had adhered to these, and repulsed the fanatics led by Thomas Miinzer.

Well, too, would it have been for Germany if Luther could have seized the occasion and led to equitable and lasting peace. This would have been difficult for any one. Luther had the

Attitude.    *'    ...

opportunity, but not the qualities, to improve it. He had become the representative of the German people, but he had none of the gifts of the politician or of the statesman. Politically he lived in the Middle Ages, and had but one maxim—the unlimited submission to authority, to that of the emperor and of the princes. His strong moral sense rebelled against their oppression, but he never counseled resistance.

Too late to be of any avail, Luther struck in the fray. In April, 1525, he wrote an “Exhortation to Peace on the Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasantry.” He told the lords that some of the articles were so just as to dishonor them before God and the world. He said, “Your exactions are intolerable; you take away from the peasant the fruit of his labor in order to spend his labor upon your finery and luxury.” Luther exhorted the peasants to refrain from violence, and told them they would put themselves in the wrong by rebellion. The Elector Frederick then lay dying; he could see in the rebellion nothing but

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the judgment of God upon the princes for their oppression. Perhaps had he been in the fullness of his strength he might have brought peace. He had more weight of character than any other German prince of his time, and, loving justice, he might have commanded the confidence of both parties enough to have secured enduring relations of amity. But he drew nigh to death, and none other could stand between the two parties or make Luther the leader of the nation in this crisis.

In the meantime the peasants in their success proceeded to violence. They were enraged at the resistance of Count Helfenstein at Weinsberg. _Progresg Upon the capture of the castle, unheeding and issue of the prayers and entreaties of his wife, the ^{the Rev0,t}* natural daughter of the Emperor Maximilian, who held her babe in her arms, they compelled the count to run the gauntlet, and, stabbed by the peasants’ spears, he fell dead before her eyes. Thomas Miin-zer, the Zwickau prophets, and other fanatics, joined this movement. All this stirred up Luther’s wrath, and his wrath was cruel and unmeasured. The first of May he published his tract, “Against the Murdering, Robbing Rabble of Peasants.” He exhorted the authorities “to stab, kill, and strangle.” The princes defeated and scattered the peasants at Frankhausen, May 15, 1525. Their leaders and fifty thousand of their followers were put to death. It is estimated that one hundred thousand peasants lost their lives. The burdens of the peasants were made heavier than ever, and they sank into three hundred years of miserable bondage. The sword of Napoleon, in requital, devoured the manhood of one generation before the

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power of the oppressor was broken, and Germany could begin again to be a nation. Luther cried out too late, “The spirit of these tyrants is powerless, cowardly, estranged from every honest thought. They deserve to be the slaves of the people.”

Luther’s friends could not defend his violence, which in no small measure contributed to such disastrous results. From being the great popular leader he became the most unpopular man in Germany. The blood of one hundred thousand of his countr)'-men was between him and the hearts of the people he had loved and cheered.

At this time, June 13, 1525, Luther took a step which dismayed his friends and rejoiced his enemies.

He married Katherine von Bora, an es-Marriage ^caP^ec^ ^nun °f g°°d family. She was twenty-six and he forty-one years of age. Few men in middle life are graceful in their courtship, and the life of the cloister is a poor preparation to appreciate what is best in men and women.

Luther never came to a clear perception of the nature and beauty of a soul-union cemented by marriage. He looked upon it as a physical necessity for the continuance of the race. His literalism in interpreting the Old Testament did not allow him to forbid either slavery or polygamy. In the haste in which he celebrated this marriage, though the invitations were issued two weeks before the event; in entering into this relation while the nation was mourning for the calamities and massacres of the Peasants’ War; and in his wonder afterwards if he had not made a mistake, Luther showed lack of judgment. But Luther did few nobler things for his country, for Chris-

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tianity, and for the world. It was, of course, but the following out of his own principles and the advice he gave his friends; but many a man is frightened by the consequence of such personal adhesion to principles which he considers right and commends to others, as Erasmus showed. Never did Luther do a happier thing for himself and for his cause. In spite of the scandal of the marriage of a monk and a nun, nevertheless time showed none of the fearful curses denounced upon such a union, but justified Luther’s views upon the obligation of vows.

Those who condemn Luther’s act little know the history of the Church or the nature of the German people. Luther was adapted to domestic life. His strong affections and unselfish nature made him an admirable head of a household. There is no spot more memorable in the history of those troubled years than the house, a part of the old Augustinian monastery, where Luther dwelt the next twenty-one years, and where Katherine, his Ketha, proved a careful house-mother, and where were born his three sons and three daughters. None of these children ever brought reproach upon the Reformer’s memory or name. Magdalena died when thirteen years old, and her death revealed the tenderness and Christian faith of Luther’s soul. The other children seem to have been like other people, and to have lived an ordinary life, except the youngest daughter, Margaretha, who married a Prussian nobleman, and the youngest son, Paul, who was court physician at Gotha, Berlin, and Dresden.

Luther’s life was richer and nobler for these ties, as all must acknowledge who have read his familiar

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letters. It may be doubted if he could so long have survived in the fierce conflict which wears out men’s spirits but for the joyous and happy life of which he was the center. It is not the least of Luther’s great services that he founded the Evangelical parsonage, a source of unceasing blessing for nearly four centuries to the clergy, the Church, the people, to the State, and to civilization.

No doubt Luther’s marriage repelled the learned and moderate men of influence in the old Church who had hitherto followed him, and embittered his enemies. This, if nothing else, would have made vain his efforts which he then put forth toward a reconciliation with Duke George of Saxony and with Henry VIII of England, to whom he showed himself too complaisant, but at least not so much as the English Reformers.

Those who date from Luther’s marriage a deterioration in his character and work base their opinion upon their theory that the marriage of a monk must result in moral degeneration. His complete correspondence is a sufficient refutation of the groundless assumption.

Meanwhile arose another agitation which separated many from the Reformers as well as from the ^ _A Church of Rome, and caused more anxiety

The Ana=    ’    _#

baptist and developed more hatred in Evangelical Movement. _ci_rcj_es than anything which has yet occurred since Luther’s rejection of the authority of the Pope. The Anabaptist movement seemed, to the opponents of Luther and Zwingli, to be but the logical application of their principles, while the teachings and practices of the Anabaptists were as abhorrent to them as to the Roman Church itself. “ Look at the Peasants’

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War and the vagaries and the revolutionary claims of the Anabaptists, and see to what the free use of the Scriptures in the mother tongue and the right of private judgment lead. They lead to the total overthrow of Church and State. These are object lessons for you,” cried out the Roman Catholic opponents of the Reformation. And yet from these despised sectaries came forth some of the best and noblest truths for which Evangelical Christendom stands to-day.

When Luther returned from the Wartburg he found that fanatical prophets from Zwickau, professing inspiration and a literal interpretation of i_t8 origin, the Scriptures, were bringing in anarchy Thomas Mun-to Church and State. The leader among these was Thomas Miinzer, a man of learning, ability, and eloquence, but ambitious and fanatical to the point of madness. Communistic and revolutionary views were uppermost in his mind. He preached violence, and, when opportunity came, was bloodthirsty and cruel. Carlstadt, a professor at Wittenberg and a friend of Luther, was won to his socialistic views, and bitterly attacked Luther, but was compelled to go into exile. After various wanderings, Carlstadt became reconciled with the Swiss Reformers in 1530, and died at Basel, where he had been for the past six years professor, in 1541.

A different fate awaited Thomas Miinzer. Driven from Saxony he went to upper Germany through Miihlhausen and Nuremberg to Switzerland, where he met and influenced Balthazar Hubmaier. Returning to Miihlhausen he turned his revolutionary preaching to practice, and encouraged and led the rebellious peasants in the Peasants’ War. After the

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battle of Frankenhausen, Miinzer was taken and executed, June, 1525.

This tragic end put a stop for a while to the violent revolutionary propaganda. All the more grew the peaceful Anabaptist movement, begin-Propagamia! ^llinS ⁱⁿ Zurich ^and under the lead of Balthazar Hubmaier and John Denk. The centers of the movement were Strasburg, Augsburg, and Nuremberg, and there were soon fifteen thousand recognized adherents.

Balthazar Hubmaier was a scholar of Eck’s, and a priest in the cathedral at Regensburg. In 1522 he became pastor at Waldshut and entered into Hubmaier. ^rel^ati°^ns with Zwingli. Two years later he met Thomas Miinzer, and was greatly influenced by him. He was rebaptized in Easter, 1525, and defended the practice against Zwingli. The same year the monk Blaurock was rebaptized in St. Gall, raising a storm which was not soon ended. Hubmaier was arrested and tortured in Zurich, but the next year was released and was more zealous than ever in proclaiming his views. The overthrow of the peasants and the hatred against Luther gave a wide acceptance to these new opinions among the lower classes, both in Roman Catholic and Evangelical Germany. Hubmaier went to Augsburg, and thence to Nickolsberg in Bohemia, where he was arrested by order of King Ferdinand. With heroic constancy he suffered a martyr’s death in the flames at Vienna, in 1528.

More significant was the work of John Denk, a friend of (Ecolompadius and of Pirkheimer, and rector of the St. Sebaldus school at Nuremberg. Excluded from the city for his Mystic and Anabaptist views in

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January, 1525, he developed great activity in advancing them in South Germany and Switzerland, in the midst of persecution, until his death from

t 1    •    -r, i -r • ,, JohnDenk.

the plague in 1527 at Basel. In intellectual ability and literary activity he was the most influential of the German Anabaptists.

Ludwig Hetzer was a priest in the canton of Zurich, a friend of Zwingli and of CEcolompadius. In 1524 he went to Augsburg, and there maintained Anabaptist views. For these driven out, {je^erf Hetzer came again to Zurich, and was for a time reconciled with Zwingli. Soon recurring to his former views, he wandered to Strasburg, where, as an able Hebrew scholar, in connection with Denk, he published a German translation of the books of the Old Testament, which had a wide sale. He was executed as an adulterer in 1529, at Constance.

Melchoir Hoffmann began a stormy career as a lay preacher, rejecting all the ordinances of the old Church, in 1523,^1 Livonia. For the next two years he was a zealous adherent of ^f^nn. Luther. Then going to Sweden, he was driven out as a fanatic. In Holstein he labored from 1525 to 1529, accepting Zwingli’s views as to the Lord’s Supper. Banished from Holstein, he journeyed through East Friesland to Strasburg, where his claims to prophetic gifts made him unwelcome. He then returned to East Friesland, where, in 1530, he founded the Embden Church, which was the beginning of all the later Anabaptist and Mennonite Churches through which the Baptists of England and America trace their descent. Carried away in his fanatical prophecy, Hoffmann thought Strasbug to be

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the New Jerusalem. He joyfully went to prison there, expecting the second advent to bring his release within six months. More than ten years he languished in prison until death brought him forth in ^543-

In all Roman Catholic countries the persecution against the Anabaptists was cruel. An imperial mandate denounced upon them the punishment Persecution. ^{of death}> ⁱⁿ February, 1528. In Bavaria those who recanted were beheaded, those who did not were burned. Thousands fell in this bloody persecution. A further imperial mandate, the next year, ordered capital punishment only for the teachers of the doctrine.

In Evangelical Germany the question was most perplexing. In the popular opinion these views were connected with the Peasants’ Rebellion. Luther’s enemies held him and his teachings responsible for both. Zurich drowned an Anabaptist in 1527; Stras-burg banished them the same year; in Augsburg many were put to death. Melanchthon counseled severe measures, which the Saxon elector put in practice. But Luther advised to punish only those who would not acknowledge or be obedient to the secular authority. “For the rest, they should allow every one to believe what he would. It is not right, and indeed pains me, that such wretched people should be so miserably murdered, burned, and so cruelly put to death.” Philip of Hesse was for milder measures, and even protected them.

What was the teaching of these Anabaptists which caused so much commotion, anxiety, and bitter perse

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cution ? Amid much that was peculiar, and often false and injurious, they held in common some great truths which Evangelical Christendom will not _Xeachings let die. Under the rule of the Mediaeval of the Church every child must be baptized. Bap- ^AnabaP^tists* tism made every child, and hence every individual in the community, Christian. In name all were Christian; in fact the great mass were not. Of course, there is no connection between this view of infant baptism and that which holds that baptized infants, as others, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and the reception of the Holy Spirit alone, become Christians.

The leaders of the Anabaptist movement believed in a kingdom of God, a Church composed of regenerated believers—composed, at least, of such as claimed a spiritual renewal of faith, and not by infant baptism, and gave proof of it in their lives. They did not then, nor for many years after, practice immersion. They also claimed to exist as a body of Christian believers without any religious connection with the State or with a State Church. They cut loose from the whole historic movement and development of Christianity, and claimed to be guided only by the New Testament, which they interpreted in the most literal manner. The right and duty of religious toleration were consistently advocated by them. They were the first among the Reformers who advocated a free Church independent of the State. Such views at that time would have made trouble anywhere in Christendom. Accompanied as they often were with visionary, enthusiastic, and fanatical individual opinions or interpretations of the Scriptures, it may be ii

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seen that the task of dealing justly and sympathetically with them was not an easy one, nor is it surprising that in this the Reformers failed.

Meanwhile, in spite of all these confusions and divisions, the work of the Reformation went on. In political J^uly> ^T5²4> the Roman Catholic princes of Relations. Bavaria and Austria, with some of the 1524=1529. bishops, met at Regensburg with the Roman legate, and made the first religious party division in the German nation. The National Assembly which was to meet at Speyer was forbidden by the emperor. The Imperial Chamber had fallen into disrepute. The next Reichstag had a majority favoring the new opinions, or at least which recognized the impossibility of executing the Edict of Worms. This was formally acknowledged at the Reichstag at Speyer in 1526, which decided that every estate in the empire “should so act and proceed as he trusted to be acceptable toward God, his imperial majesty, and the empire.” This decree was signed by King Ferdinand. The practical toleration involved in this was of immense advantage to the advance of the Reformation. In the same year, February 27th, at Gotha, the Elector of Saxony and Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, made an alliance against the execution of the Edict of Worms. This alliance was afterward joined by Albrecht of Prussia, and the kings of Sweden and Denmark, and the chief cities of Southern Germany.

But there came a great change in the emperor’s fortunes. After his troops had sacked Rome in 1527, and had retaken Naples from the French in 1528, the Roman Catholic princes of Germany were in the majority in 1529 at the Reichstag at Speyer. This

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majority now demanded the enforcement of the Edict of Worms. The Evangelical Estates, including five princes; the Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, the Margrave of Brandenburg, the Duke of Luneburg, and the Duke of Anhalt, and fourteen free cities of upper Germany, led by Strasburg, Nuremberg, and Ulm, signed a Protest against this act. From this Protest of April 19, 1529, the signatories and their party were called Protestants.

In the meanwhile the Evangelical State Church had been founded. The bishops, who had charge of the ordination and settlement of the clergy . and of the moral and ecclesiastical disci- the Evangei-pline of the clergy and of the people, except ^{icaI 5tflte} in Prussia, adhered to Rome. What should    *

take their place? Luther, led by the ideas of the Middle Ages and by the Roman law, decided that this work should be undertaken by the prince; or the executive authority in any State, as the Council in a free city, should undertake this work, as a bishop, from the necessity of the case. At Luther’s request, the Elector of Saxony appointed, in 1526, as those who should conduct the visitation of the parishes, for the reform of abuses and the restraint of license and for the arrangement of a proper support of the clergy when proved fit and of good character, a mixed commission of jurists and theologians. A form of instructions was drawn up for them by Melanchthon in 1528. Thus the duties of episcopal supervision, and the entire control of the clergy and the Church, came to the State. In general this control came to the German princes, who were, as a class, as worthless and contemptible as any in Christedom. In Luther’s later

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years his unmeasured wrath and scorn was poured out upon this nobility and their officials, whose greed, selfishness, and lax morality had done so much to weaken and dishonor the Reformation. No wonder that Melanchthon wished that the episcopal constitution could have been preferred. In default of that, Francis Lambert’s scheme to adopt the Presbyterial organization of the Swiss Churches would have been an immense blessing. Luther, with all his gifts of popular address and leadership, had no talent for organization. How different would have been the fate of Germany if he had shared by a little that power which makes memorable the names of Calvin, of Loyola, and of Wesley! No other decision of Luther so weakened his work in this and in succeeding generations.

In 1526, Luther published the German Mass, and henceforth the ritual, enriched by his splendid hymns, was in the language of the people. This, with regular preaching, made it the Church of the people. In 1528, Luther published his “Greater and Smaller Catechisms,” which, with a book of instructions for the baptized, provided means for the religious instruction of the children and youth.

The Landgrave Philip of Hesse, who was by far the best political leader among the Evangelical princes, The Confer- desired ^a closer union for defense and alli-ference at ance with the Swiss and the Reformed Marburg. _{Churclles of South} Germany. For this purpose there was held a conference at Marburg in regard to the nature of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper between Luther and Zwingli, assisted by the

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ablest of their followers, notably by Melanchthon and (Ecolampadius.

To this conference came Zwingli in the fullness of his strength, and with the consciousness of great things done. He was the ablest humanist, the most at home with Greek and Latin authors, of any of the Reformers. He had derived his views from a close study of the Greek New Testament. St. Paul’s Epistles in Greek he had copied out in his own hand and committed to memory. He believed that everything should be excluded from the Church and from the faith of Christians which could not be justified from Scripture, even organs, with vestments and images. Luther would retain all that was not contradicted by Scripture. Luther would have nothing to do with any political alliance or any resistance to the civil power. Trained as a Swiss burgher, this course was hardly open to Zwingli. He saw that the religious differences must lead to political alliances, and was both broad and far-seeing in his plans. Nor did he, true Christian and patriot as he was, make the Church the slave of the State, but founded his thoroughgoing reformation upon the supreme power of the congregation. Under this leadership the Reformation had triumphed in Zurich, Bern, Basel, Schaffhausen, Appenzell, Glarus, and the Grisons,and the five Roman Catholic forest cantons had been compelled to accept the peace of Cappel in the preceding June. Zwingli had shown himself a true lover of the Fatherland. His influence had stopped the sale of Swiss soldiers. He said, referring to the Roman clergy: “ How appropriate are their red hats and cloaks ! If you shake them, out fall ducats;

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if you wring them, out flows the blood of your sons, brothers, and friends.” In his political plans for the Swiss Confederation he was three hundred years in advance of his time; they were realized in the middle of the nineteenth century.

In the discussion which ensued upon the meeting of the great Reformers at Marburg, Luther held that in, with, and under bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper there was a real presence of the body and blood of Christ. Zwingli held that the bread and wine were but symbols of the body and blood of the risen Lord. The conference lasted five days, October 1-4, 1529. Zwingli showed himself a courteous Christian gentleman. Luther was obstinate and utterly unwilling to make any concession in the matter of the Lord’s Supper. In fourteen Articles of Faith they found agreement; but on this only, the difference was so pronounced that Luther refused even to be in fellowship with his fellow Reformers. Melanchthon, fearing that it might prejudice them in the minds of the emperor and his brother Ferdinand, with incredible cowardice and bigotry hastened the breaking up of the conference. Never did Luther appear to poorer advantage, and seldom did he harm more the cause he was set to defend. It was soon to be seen that the Reformers needed all that union could do for them.

In this same year the emperor made peace with the King of France at Barcelona. The Turks had TheAugs- i^nvaded Hungary in 1526, and had killed burg Con= its king, Louis, husband of the emperor’s

fession. _sj_{sterj at} the battle of Mohacz. In 1529 they made a desperate attempt to take Vienna with

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an army of three hundred thousand men. They were repulsed October 14-18, and retreated, losing seventy thousand soldiers. The emperor also concluded a treaty with Pope Clement VII, and was crowned at Bologna, December 24, 1529, the last German emperor who received his crown from a Pope. In June, ¹53°, victorious over his enemies on every side, Charles V returned to Germany, determined to secure the long-delayed obedience to the Edict of Worms, and to restore the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. He entered Augsburg, the seat of the Reichstag, with a display of extraordinary splendor. Hoping to have overawed the Evangelical princes, he declared that Lutheran preaching and worship must cease. They unitedly and firmly refused. The emperor called them into his presence and commanded obedience. The aged Margrave of Brandenburg, who had grown gray in the emperor’s service, threw himself on his knees before him and exclaimed, “ I would sooner lose my head than God’s Word.” The emperor was deeply moved, and answered, “Dear prince, no heads off.” The Lutheran worship did not cease. Melanchthon came to draw up the Profession of Faith for his fellow believers. Luther, being under the ban, was compelled to remain at Coburg. Melanchthon was in great discouragement when Luther wrote from Coburg to him a letter which, as few other things from his pen, reveals the true greatness of the German Reformer: “ I hate, from my heart, the great cares b5^T which you are consumed. They rule your heart, not on account of the greatness of the danger, but on account of the greatness of our unbelief. . . . And let the danger be

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great, so is He much greater who has begun the work; it is his, not ours. ... As if you, with your foolish cares, could create something. What more can the devil do than to kill us? What besides? But the truth—thinkest thou that, in God’s wrath, that will perish? So let us perish with it, and not through our own guilt. It displeases me that in your letter you write, you would in this matter follow my leading. I here would neither be your leader nor be called such. . . . You torment yourself because you can not with your hand grasp the issue and the end. Yea, couldst thou understand, I would have nothing to do with it all, or in any sense be a leader. God has provided for it a place which thou, in spite of all thine art and wisdom, knowest not: it is called faith. . . . For the Lord hath said he would dwell in clouds and make darkness his tabernacle. . . . I pray for thee, I have prayed for thee, I will pray for thee. And I doubt not that I am heard; for I feel the Amen in my heart. If that which we choose does not come to pass, then will that which is better. For we await a future kingdom, if all shall have deceived us in this world.”

So went on the negotiations during the summer at Augsburg. The Augsburg Confession, which had _The been in preparation since March, was read Augaburg in the emperor’s presence in the chapel of Confession. Bishop’s Palace, on June 25, 1530. It consists of twenty-one articles confessing the common faith and seven against Romish abuses. These last enjoin communion in both kinds, and forbid the procession of the sacrament, condemn the celibacy of the priests, condemn private masses, and the necessity of

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auricular confession, and monastic vows. All the points of difference with Rome had been minimized, so that Luther said he “ could not tread so soft and easy.” While the Zwinglians and Anabaptists were unsparingly condemned, Charles’s aim was to secure the submission of the Evangelical party to the authority of the Roman Church, or thoroughly to divide them among themselves. Melanchtlion seemed to work to the same end. His spirit, that always not only deferred to, but cowered in the presence of authority, showed its lack of constancy in these summer days. Says the latest historian of Charles V, “ No one at the Reichstag did more than he to injure the the Gospel.” Spengler exhorted Luther to “ strike in with power,” and to warn the pious princes against him. On July nth the four cities of Strasburg, Constance, Meiningen, and Lindau presented the Con-fessio Tetrapolitana, drawn up by Bucer. This the emperor refused to receive; but it was of importance as preparing the cities of South Germany to accept the Augsburg Confession and join the League of Smalkald. The emperor ordered the Roman Catholic theologians, under the lead of the legate, Cam-peggio, to draw up an answer to the Augsburg Confession; it was presented to the emperor; but he rejected it, and ordered another drawn. This “ Confutation ” was presented August 3d. The emperor declared the Evangelicals were overcome in the argument, and, though no copy was given to them, that they should at once submit to it. Melanchthon submitted a reply to the Confutation called “An Apology for the Augsburg Confession,” September 22d, which the emperor would not receive. After obtaining a

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copy of the Confutation, Melanchthon published a new edition of the Apology in the following spring. On November 19th the emperor published the “Recess” of the Reichstag of Augsburg, which declared that those who protested should have until the 15th of the next April to decide whether they would submit. Its provisions were, that all further innovations were strictly forbidden, that the Evangelicals should unite with him against the Anabaptist and the followers of Zwingli, and that the Imperial Chamber of Justice should take up every case of the violation of this “ Recess.” The emperor and Pope had failed in their object, and how great that failure was, soon became apparent.

The threat of the Augsburg Reichstag caused the princes of the Evangelical party to meet at Smalkald, _The December 25, 1530, and in the same place League of to form an alliance, February 27, 1531. smaikaid.    i_ea(j_er j,_n ^jg movement was the only

statesman among the Protestant princes, and the best general among those of the empire—Philip, Landgrave of Hesse. Philip had gained a reputation for enterprise and military skill in the campaign which led to the overthrow of Franz von Sickengen in 1522. He had commanded with distinction against the Turks. He was a convinced Evangelical, and the personal friend of both Luther and Zwingli. He was in intimate relations with such skillful politicians as Jacob Sturm and Martin Bucer, the latter being his spiritual adviser. Had his religious convictions subdued his soul and controlled his moral life, he would have been the greatest prince of his time, as he was certainly the ablest, the most tolerant, and the most

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far-sighted. From this time for the next fifteen years he, rather than Charles V, ruled Germany. With him were now allied the Elector of Saxony, five minor German princes, and the great free cities of Strasburg, Ulm, Constance, Magdeburg, Liibeck, and Bremen, and five smaller cities. This organization was strengthened in 1532, and the Augsburg Confession, though not to the exclusion of others, was adopted as the rule of faith. The League entered into relations with France, England, Denmark, and Hungary. From October 3, 1531, it had the strong support of Roman Catholic Bavaria through the jealousy of its dukes of the house of Austria. Charles saw that the force of the League was too strong to be broken, and as war with the Turks demanded all his resources, he made, with the heads of the Evangelical party, the so-called Peace, or Truce, of Nuremberg, July 23, 1532, in which all further processes of the Imperial Chamber were forbidden, and toleration was granted to those who now or in the future should join with the confederates of Smalkald.

Meanwhile a great disaster had befallen the Reformation in Switzerland. The five forest cantons of Luzern, Schwyz, Zug, Uri, and Unter- _The walden were strongly Roman Catholic and Death of aristocratic in their government.' They had ^Zwlng,i* but ill observed the first Peace of Cappel, and Zurich, to punish them, adopted, against Zwingli’s protest, the cruel and half-hearted measure of cutting off their provisions. Enraged and fighting for self-preservation, they marched in overwhelming force against Zurich. On the nth of October, i53i,Zwingli accompanied the men of Zurich, as he had done before on

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Italian plains, to battle. The Zurich soldiery were defeated, and Zwingli was wounded, and then suffered a mortal blow. His remains were burned by the executioner. Thus fell one of the brightest and most variously gifted of the Reformers, true Swiss and patriot to the last. The second Peace of Cappel, which soon followed, stopped forever the further progress of the Reformation in the forest cantons. The Roman Catholic princes and the imperial court were greatly rejoiced. The emperor’s brother Ferdinand and the papal legate sought to move Charles to take the same steps in Germany, but in vain. The result the rather brought greater union among the Evangelicals, and immensely increased the strength and influence of the League of Smalkald.

After the Peace of Nuremberg, Charles went into Spain, and for the next nine years was kept too busy Effects of with wars against the Turks and Francis I the League of France to set foot on German soil. The of smaikaid. £_rst g_{reat resu}it of this union of the Evangelical forces was the restoration of Ulrich, Duke of Wiirtemberg. For his wild excesses, cruelty, and tyranny, Ulrich had been driven out of his land in 1520, and since then it had been in the possession of the emperor’s brother, Ferdinand. The people soon found the yoke of the foreign soldiery heavier than the tyranny of the native ruler. Ulrich’s son, Christopher, had now grown up, and proved himself an admirable man and an earnest adherent of the Reformation. In

1534, Philip of Hesse, supported by French gold, drove the Austrians out of the duchy and restored Ulrich, who soon brought the land to the Evangelical cause. This result was confirmed by the Peace of Kadan,

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June 29, 1534. In 1535-1536 the great free cities of Augsburg, Frankfort-on-the-Main, and Hamburg, with Hanover, the territories of Anhalt-Kothen, the Dessau princes, and the Dukes of Luneburg became Evangelical.

Another transaction which greatly increased the power of the Smalkald League and the influence of the Reformation was the Concord or Union _{Tho Wit}, of Wittenberg. Melanchthon and Bucer tenberg met on Christmas, 1534, at Cassel, and ^Concordframed a declaration in regard to the Lord’s Supper which was acceptable to the Evangelical party in South Germany, and satisfied Luther. In 1536 a second conference was held between the representatives of the South German cities and the chief Lutheran theologians at Wittenburg in the presence of Luther himself. The agreement then reached was of immense importance to the common cause. In 1537 the Swiss took a mediating position in the Helvetian Confession. Thus the old bitterness was largely done away.

Still greater was the progress of the League in 1539. Duke George of Saxony, Luther’s old enemy and earnest opponent for twenty years, _Advanclng died childless the 17th of April in this year. Power of the His brother Henry adhered to the Refor- ^Lea?^ue-mation as did the great majority of the people. Within two weeks of the duke’s death the new doctrines were supreme in his land.

Joachim I, Elector of Brandenburg, had been the strongest and most influential opposer of the Lutheran reform. For receiving the communion in both kinds he imprisoned his wife, Elizabeth, in 1527. In 1528

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she escaped, and lived afterward among the Evangelicals in Saxony. His son, Joachim II, succeeded him upon his death in June, 1535. After long wavering, Joachim II declared for the Reformation, November 1, 1539. The next day his capital, Berlin, followed his example, as did also the Bishops of Brandenburg, Havelberg, and Lebus. Soon followed the Archbishopric of Magdeburg and the Bishopric of Halberstadt. At the same time the Reformation was carried through in Mecklenburg, though not formally acknowledged until 1547. Finally, in 1539, the Archbishopric of Riga went over to the Reformation.

This victorious advance of the Evangelical party, which seemed to leave the Roman Catholics in Germany only Austria, Bavaria, and the eccle-Anabaptism. siastical electorates of the Rhine, met with two great reverses. The first of these was the rise and fall of the Anabaptist kingdom at Munster. The Swiss and German Anabaptist Articles of Schat-ten, formulated in February, 1527, rejected the oath and the use of the sword except by the civil ruler. They separated from “all abominations,” by which they understood the worship of the papists and the Reformers, both of which were to them service of the flesh. They rejected infant baptism, and held that the Lord’s Supper in remembrance of the death of Christ represented the union of brotherhood in the body of Christ, which took place at baptism. The Churches were to choose their own pastors, and they were to exercise admonition and excommunication according to the eighteenth of Matthew. These ideas are related to the conceptions of the Mystics and Ascetics of the Middle Ages. They have little fellow-

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ship with the Reformation, whose primal conception of faith they rejected; but Luther’s giving the Bible in the tongue of the people greatly aided their propaganda. These peaceful ideas were soon to give way to scenes of apocalyptic violence which made the name Anabaptist a reproach to the Reformation and an offense to the German people.

Followers of Melchoir Hoffmann, who had been left behind in East Friesland, spread over Friesland and Holland, and in 1533 Jan Mattys, a baker of Haarlem, proclaimed himself the apocalyptic second witness and the prophet Enoch. He sent out his apostles two and two, and soon had a network of Anabaptist Churches. These made their center in the episcopal city of Munster, in Westphalia. By a treaty, February 14, 1533, all the churches except the cathedral were given to the Protestants. In July, 1534, Berent Rottman, the leading preacher among them, was baptized by two disciples of Jan Mattys. Soon after, there came among them John Bockleson or (Bock-hold), a tailor of Leyden,hence called John of Leyden, and in a short time Mattys himself. A new gospel was now proclaimed. For its unbelief Strasburg had been rejected, and Munster was chosen as the New Jerusalem. Rottman appeared as the teacher, through his book, of vengeance upon the ungodly, and of polygamy for the faithful. The clothmaker, Bernard Knipperdol-ling, joined them, and by a bold stroke obtained control of the government, being chosen first burgomaster of the city. He then proclaimed the community of goods. The bishop, Franz von Waldeck, began the siege of the city in April, 1534. Mattys made a sally with only thirty followers, in imitation of Gideon,

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and they were cut off to a man. John of Leyden now came to the front as king, with twelve apostles under him, and Knipperdolling as governor and executioner. Polygamy was no mere theory. John had four wives, one of whom he killed in a moment of frenzy. No woman could remain unmarried. Two attacks of the episcopal army were repelled, and October 28, 1534, apostles were sent out to proclaim the new kingdom ; but they soon came to an untimely end. Hunger finally besieged the city, and through treason the New Jerusalem fell, June 24, 1535, after more than a year of fanatical and licentious excesses. Rottman fell in the fight; but John of Leyden and Knipperdolling were fearfully tortured and put to death, while their followers were nearly exterminated. The city lost its independence, and the Roman Catholic worship was restored. Anabaptism perished even as a name among men.

John David Joris, a glassmaker from Delft, took up the role of leader from 1536. Many of his followers, including his mother, suffered martyrdom.

Fortunes    disappeared, and is next found in

of the Basel from 1544 to 1556, where he was ^MOjoris^ent known as an orthodox follower of Zwingli.

But from writings published after his death he is revealed as the Messiah of an Antinomian kingdom with no marriage laws.

Joris had striven to unite the remains of the Anabaptist peaceful program at Becholt in 1536. But the true leader and reorganizer of the move-Menno _ment _was Menno Simons, who was born in

bimons.

1492 at Wilmarsum, in Friesland, and became a Roman Catholic priest. Aroused to an exam-

The Reformation in Germany. 177

ination of the doctrines they taught through the courageous death of an Anabaptist martyr, Simons joined the followers of Melchoir Hoffmann in 1532. January 12, 1536, he laid down his priestly office and was chosen elder in the Anabaptist Church. He sought to gather a community of the saints who should follow the simple, practical precepts of Christianity. He rejected all fanatical, revolutionary, and Antinomian elements. He insisted upon separation from the world, the use of the sentence of excommunication, and the prohibition of marriage outside the community of believers. In 1542 he was compelled to leave West Friesland, but found ample scope for his organizing activity in East Friesland, Zealand, about Cologne, and in Holstein. He succeeded in keeping his communion free from Unitarian ideas, and when he died, in 1559, he left a thoroughly-organized Church. These Churches held to adult baptism, to Churches formed of believers separated from the world, as witnessed by their clothing, their mode of life, and the free use of excommunication.

The excesses of the Anabaptists greatly damaged the cause of the Reformers because it was pointed to as the legitimate result of their teachings. _Bj_ganiyof Time showed the fallacy of this argument, Philip of and as the movement passed largely from ^Hesse-German soil to the Netherlands the reproach ceased to damage the cause. Of far more disastrous consequences and more permanent harm was the bigamy of Philip, Landgrave of Hesse. More than anything else it led to the overthrow of the Smalkald League, of which he was the soul.

Philip of Hesse deserves his reputation as the

12

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founder and leader of the League of Smalkald, and the wisest and most tolerant prince of his time. But never was there a more striking instance of the value of moral character and the fatal defect of the lack of it in a statesman. Philip married without love, but for political reasons, as was then customary, Christiana, the daughter of Duke George of Saxony. She had been a faithful wife, and had borne him seven children. Through intemperance and other causes, she had not retained his affection. In 1540 he confessed that for fifteen years he had lived in adultery, and for that reason had not ventured to partake of the Lord’s Supper. His conscience troubled him. His faults were those of a majority of the German princes. Joachim I of Brandenburg, the strong support of the Roman Catholic party, led about with him a beautiful mistress in male attire. Duke Henry of Brunswick, the fanatical opponent of the Reformation, kept in the castles in the Harz Mountains a mistress who bore him child after child. But Philip knew that his station did not make right his wrong doing. He often thought, he said, as he drew his sword for the Evangelical Church and the Word of God, that if a ball should hit him he would go “ straight to the devil.” What a position for the leader of the great Evangelical League! Yet the remedy he proposed was worse than the disease. He thought that if he had another wife he would be true to her, and the shame of his life would cease. It never occurred to him that his chief duty was self-control, and that his personal obedience to the precepts of the gospel, like that of every religious leader, is the first and chiefest contribution he

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could make to its success. More unfortunately still, it never occurred to his religious advisers to urge this upon him. Philip searched the Scriptures, as many another has done, not to know the mind of God, but to find some pretext for the allowance of his desire. He found polygamy allowed in the Old Testament, and not expressly prohibited in the New. Reformers like Luther and Melanchthon, with that lack of historic sense and perception of ethical development which is the bane of literal interpretation, would not deny the lawfulness, though they did the expediency, of polygamy. Philip became perfectly convinced of its rightfulness, and thought his a case where it was expedient. In 1539 he had met Margaretha of Sala, a maid of honor to his sister Elizabeth, the Duchess of Roch-litz, and procured the consent of her mother to her marriage with him while his first wife was yet living. The example of Henry VIII of England also encouraged him. Philip took Martin Bucer, his chaplain, into his confidence. Bucer was too much given to compromise to have a strong backbone in the presence of a man so powerful and so necessary to the Evangelical cause as Philip of Hesse. Well would it have been for Philip and for the Reformation if Bucer had cared more for God and his law than for any German -prince. How foolish the cunning and compromises of men in the work of God! Had the Reformers resisted Philip’s will, they might have made him the real leader he should have been; but by compromising, they rendered him as powerless as Samson shorn of his locks. Philip sought to get the Reformers on his side, and then he thought he could defy the emperor.

i So    The Christian Church.

It only involved them and their cause in his fall. Luther and Melanchthon were consulted and sent their views in a letter dated December 10, 1539. They upheld monogamy as the law from the creation, and confirmed by Christ, and declared that bigamy could never be publicly defended. But they allowed that, in cases of conscience, there might be dispensation bn account of need as the lesser evil. They dissuaded from this step; but if it were done, it should be kept an absolute secret from the world. What miserable sophistry! Luther seems to have thought he would allow a species of concubinage common enough among the princes of that time; but Margaretha von Sala, like Anne Boleyn, had no notion of being the land-^, grave’s concubine. Very soon the whole story came out. Luther and Melanchthon saw the full extent of the disastrous consequences. Melanchthon sickened nigh unto death. The entire defenselessness of his position was clear to Luther. Plain and blunt as he was, he saw no way out. It had been against his judgment from the beginning. His fatal theoretical position in regard to polygamy blinded him; he did not use his sturdy common sense, and reject the whole thing, as he was inclined to do at the first. —> He and his cause, with its foremost political leader, were in a false position. In his despair he could give no counsel after the marriage had taken place but denial, “a good stout lie.” Better far was the landgrave’s answer: “I will not lie; for to lie has an evil sound, and no apostle ever taught it to any Christian ; yea, Christ has in the strongest manner forbidden it.” The consequences came swift and sure. The

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self-executing power of the law of God is one of the grandest and most terrible things in human history. Philip’s bigamy had made him a _Consequence8 criminal and subject to capital penalty. It of Philip’s placed him at the mercy of the emperor, ^Bigamy* whose authority he had resisted and lessened more than any man then living. The public opinion of Christendom, Roman Catholic and Reformed, was against him. To secure himself, he, the great leader of the Smalkald League, concluded a separate treaty with the emperor at Regensburg, June 13, 1541, which cut him off from any further agressive leadership of the League, and made him a factor and then the dupe of the imperial policy, ending his political career in a disaster which overthrew alike the liberties of the German nation and the right to exist of the followers of the Reformation.

The years after 1540 showed the steady increase of the emperor’s power in Germany and the undermining of the influence of the League p_ositJono| of Smalkald, owing to the bigamy of Evangelical Philip of Hesse and his alliance with the ^Party* emperor.

Charles had returned to Germany with the fixed determination to bring to an end the existing differences in religion. He had two conferences _{The Confer}. between the leaders of the old Church and ence at those of the Reformation, held at Hagenau ^Re^^ensbur^-the year preceding, and at Worms in January, 1540, without result. He ordered one to be opened in his presence at Regensburg in the spring. Groffer, Pflug, and Eck represented the Roman Catholic party under

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the lead of the Roman legate. Melanchthon, Bucer, and Pistorius stood for the principles of the Reformation. No nobler man than the Legate Contarini had represented Rome in Germany for the past one hundred years. This was the most favorable opportunity ever given for reuniting Christendom in one form of belief and Church order. The parties to the negotiations sincerely desired to succeed. They began their work April 27, 1541. They finished a project of agreement of twenty-one articles the last week of May. But their work was in vain. The Pope and the Consistory rejected at once the Article on Justification. Luther was not satisfied with some of the other articles, and declared the whole endeavor impracticable. Thus closed the most hopeful effort to reconcile the Churches made in this age. But its failure was inevitable. Any submission to the claims of the papacy means doing away with an open Bible and with the right of private judgment. That the Evangelical Church never will, never can do. No possible advantage could compensate for it.

The Evangelical opinions steadily gained ground. Regensburg went over to the Reformation in Septem-The change k^er> ^T54²> ^anc* ^at same time the Elec-intheSmai- toral Pfalzgraf of the Rhine. The impe-kaid League, _ag_{ent> a}ft_er traveling through Austria, wrote in 1541 that he had everywhere found the people infected with uncatholic opinions; but the nobility were worse than the people: they were from their hearts Lutheran. Almost all schoolmasters and pastors whom he met had come from Melanchthonian schools. Yet with these victories the League, which should have grown strong, grew weak. The Elector

The Reformation in Germany. 183

Joachim II of Brandenburg would not join it, nor would the newly-converted Elector of the Rhine. The same position was taken by Duke George’s successor, Maurice of Saxony. Most significant of all, Philip, the leader of the whole League, became, through his bigamy, the tool of the emperor’s policy.

The Duchy of Gueldres had, with the consent of the Estates, been united with that of Cleves, whose Duke William adhered to the Reformation.

The emperor claimed Gueldres as a lapsed J^eidres. fief. The Duke of Cleves should have had the support of the Smalkald League, as he had of the public opinion of the empire, and that support would have been sufficient. That support was not given, and in September, 1543, the humiliated duke, after five years of possession, delivered the Duchy of Gueldres to the emperor, and agreed to support his interests, political and religious.

The immense significance of the transfer of the weight of Cleves in the scales of power became soon apparent. Hermann von Wied, an aged _Hermano and honorable man without much learning, Archbishop was Archbishop of Cologne. After long ^ofCo,°s^ne* wavering, he and his estates came out decidedly for the Reformation in 1543. How great would have been the value of the support of Cleves to Hermann and to Franz von Waldeck, Bishop of Munster, who contemplated the same step! The new Archbishop of Mainz, the successor of Albert of Brandenburg, was inclined to the same opinions. The Bishoprics of Hildesheim, Naumburg, Meissen, and Merseburg had already become Evangelical. But for Philip’s crime and intolerable position, the majority of the electors

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The Christian Church.

and the whole Rhine country would have been Evangelical, and the course of German history changed for the next four hundred years.

One thing Philip did for the League, but showed so much eagerness for personal advantage in it that it hindered as much as helped the common Brunswick. ^cause- Henry of Brunswick was the most violent of the Roman Catholic princes, and almost the only one left in Northern Germany. The town of Goslar had destroyed some monasteries, and had been placed under the ban of the empire; but this had been expressly made void by the Reichstag of Regensburg. Yet Henry undertook to execute the sentence. Philip advanced with the forces of the League in the summer of 1542, when the duke fled and the Reformation was established in Brunswick. In September, 1545, Henry appeared again in Brunswick at the head of a considerable body of troops. Philip and Maurice of Saxony went to meet him. Henry’s troops mutinied, and he delivered himself to Philip, who kept him and his oldest son in close imprisonment until after the battle of Miihlberg.

In these circumstances the emperor made, in the Reichstag of Speyer, the farthest concession he had The Reichs- ^ma(^^{e to} Evangelical Estates. He tag at Speyer, desired their aid in the war both with ■544. France and the Turks, upon which he must now enter. The Edicts of Worms and the Augsburg Recess were rescinded. The State Churches of the Reformation were given an imperial confirmation. The prospect was given that, both in the legal processes of the empire and in the judges, they should find proper representation. Philip thought they were

The Reformation in Germany. 185

on the high road to secure that legal recognition for which they had striven for nearly twenty years. The Evangelical estates granted freely men and money; but Charles was only the more determined on their ruin.

The emperor was victorious in his campaign in

France, and pressed on near to Paris. September 14,

1544, was signed the Peace of Crespy, in ^

which Charles gave favorable terms to his campaigns

old antagonist, Francis I, and bound him ^and Treaties

_# , OI 1544*

to aid rather than to hinder the subjection of his old allies, the German Protestants, who, in this war, had so vigorously aided the emperor. Charles then concluded a peace with the Turks. How different would have ended his reign, and how different would have been the feeling of the German people toward him, if he had granted toleration and justice to the adherents of the Reformation, and led the forces of a united Germany against the Turks! Nothing would have better pleased the Evangelical estates; nothing was farther from the thought of the emperor.

Charles concluded negotiations with the Pope for the calling of an Ecumenical Council at Trent. It was opened December 13, 1545. At its _CharlesV second session, January 7, 1546, there were and the but twenty-five archbishops and bishops ^ope* present. The Pope adjourned the Council to Bologna on a false plea of sickness, March n, 1547. It was recalled to Trent, May 1, 1551, and suspended April 28, 1552, as it proved, for ten years. Its proceedings were displeasing to the emperor, and when he became too powerful by the battle of Miihlberg, it was hastily adjourned to Bologna. Pope Julius III, being a great

i86

The Christian Church.

friend of the emperor, recalled the Council, and a show was made of acceding to his wishes so as to give a hearing to the Evangelical party; but all plans were frustrated by the attack of Maurice of Saxony on the emperor, which broke up the Council. Pope Paul III also gave 300,000 ducats and sent troops to support Charles in his war against the German Reformation.

The two great aims of the life of Charles V, aside from those which were merely personal and dynastic, were: (1) To defend Christendom from the Turk and to enlarge its borders; and (2) for the To unite Christendom under the restored ^SlWar^aId authority and purified administration of the Church of Rome. For the accomplishment of this latter end he now had free hand, and to it he devoted all his experience, skill, and craft. For nine years he lived in Germany, and for five of them he ruled more absolutely than any German emperor before in four hundred years or than any that has succeeded him. He used every energy of his being and rule to ruin the Evangelical cause. For a time he appeared to win great success, but in the end no failure could be more complete than that which closed his career.

In the meantime, before these evil days came, had ended the life and work of the founder of the Refor-Luther’s ^mation. The last fifteen years of Luther’s Last Years life were not marked by so much or so inland Death. p_0rtant literary work as the years preceding. His was also the disillusion which comes to all reformers who see their work at too close range to

The Reformation in Germany. 187

rightly estimate its power. He sometimes doubted whether the Reformation would permanently benefit the world, or whether for the evils of the time there could be any remedy but the speedy end of all things temporal—the end of the world.

The pains of a suffering body, the increasing bitterness of a wrathful and often overbearing temper, are noticeable in his later years. Thus we see him break out violently against the Zwinglians in 1544, and with even more than his usual bitterness against the Pope in 1545. But these are the exceptions. Luther’s position brought him into much of Church business and to a wide intercourse with men. He was a happy father of a numerous household, and at his table sat visitors and scholars from all countries. From these years have come down to us his “Table Talk” and those expressions of domestic tenderness, as at the death of his daughter, that make him beloved in all German lands. Luther was pleasant, pungent, and witty in conversation, and enjoyed greatly the social converse which so enlivened these later years. He had become somewhat of a pope as the arbiter of feuds. One such between the Counts of Mansfeld, to whom his house had owed allegiance, called him in the midst of winter to Eisleben. He was not well, and had taken cold, but had accomplished his mission, when the unusual severity of an attack of heart disease, to which he was subject, made him know his end was near. He said, “ In Eisleben I was born, in Eisleben I was baptized, and in Eisleben I shall die ! ” There, in sight of the Andreas Church to which he was borne as an infant, and where he had often preached, Feb

188    The Christian Church.

ruary 18, 1546, calmly, in the assurance of the great faith he had received and preached, he yielded up his soul to God.

Martin Luther lived his life open and known to all as few among the sons of men. He said that he character thought without concealment or restraint, of Martin In spite of his desperate advice to Philip of

Luther, jjesse, there was neither cunning nor craft in his dealing. The note of sincerity is ever in his speech. With few historical personages can we feel so well acquainted as with Martin Luther. He had his faults, and all the world knows them. The passionate nature of the man made the giving way to wrath his most easily-besetting sin. In his attacks upon his foes he was without restraint, and the violence of his language is unmistakable and often astounding. But, on the other hand, his adversaries would not reason with him, but sought always to put upon his mouth the clamp of authority. No wonder that his fiery soul made that mouth feared in every court in Europe. It ill befits our ideas of a religious teacher to have him speak of “a good drunk to the honor of God;” but in this he did not rise above his age, he was simply of it. It is true, however, that his violence in controversy had lasting effects for evil upon Protestant theology for two hundred years, and that the influence of his drinking practices have been of immeasurable damage to the German people.

Martin Luther had great qualities, which were needed to make a new world. He had force—the force of a large nature, with vast depths of feeling and of tenderness, and an intensity of personal conviction seldom seen among men. He seems, amid the

The Reformation in Germany. 189

best of those of his day and the ages preceding, like Michael Angelo’s youthful and colossal David beside the exquisitely-molded and finished Hermes and Apollo Belvidere of the antique world—the revelation of the strength and beauty of the new world of truth. He seemed the embodiment of individual force, force of intellect, force of conscience, force of will.

Yet this force was not so individual as to separate him from his fellow-men. He spoke to men as if, gathering in himself the passions and spirit of the time, he felt and expressed all that most moved their minds and hearts. His force was the soul-compelling force of the magnet.

He had courage. No man in his whole public career could accuse him of cowardice. To the lot of few of the race has it fallen to show such high and sustained courage under so great a variety of circumstances. He stands conspicuous in human history as the example of supreme courage.

Martin Luther built on the truth and feared no man. Convinced of the truth, like Columbus, he fearlessly sailed into unknown seas. He did as much to expand the intellectual as Columbus the terrene horizon. He did not fear to trust the truth; he knew it must prevail. He gave it a value which before it had not had in European Christendom. For him no lie was of the truth, and he never feared to expose one.

Dealing truly with others, he dealt truly with himself. Few men have had so great self-knowledge, and fewer still have so freely expressed it. His conscientious scruples were perfectly natural to one who, as a Reformer, had broken the old order and saw often the dregs of revolution instead of the dawn of the mil

190    The Christian Church.

lennium. Those who saw the Puritan, American, or French Revolution, or the American Civil War, can well understand his feelings. We, reading his sorest temptations, must feel that if he could look back upon them as we do now, he would smile at them.

Courageous and truthful, Luther was generous. Often he gave to needy students his last pfennig; and when there were no more pfennigs, then his silver cup. He little knew how to make or keep money for himself.

Yet he was a good husband and father, and his tenderness was as profound as his piety. His love of music and poetry, of friendship and fellowship, of his native tongue and of those who spoke it, both as a patriot and a religious teacher, distinguishes him among the Reformers. Luther was as unshaken in his faith as in his courage. He says of prayer: “ Let happen what will, so we set all right through prayer, which is the almighty empress. Through prayer we accomplish what is purposed, what has erred we set right, bear what can not be bettered, overcome all misfortune, and receive all good.”

No man ever spoke of God and the religious life to the heart of the people as did Martin Luther. His understanding and sympathy with them made the truth plain to them. To-day none of the Reformers appeal to that which is universal in the heart of man as do the sermons and popular religious writings of Martin Luther. He had the qualities which make a man, a man of no ordinary mold. When all deductions are made for errors and faults, he remains the heroic figure of the century. As true German, Christian, and Reformer, his fame was never more widespread and enduring than now.

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Charles V set about the task of reducing Germany to religious union and to the imperial authority with all the caution and care of a wily and experienced politician. First, he detached War" the Bavarian dukes from the support of the Evangelical interest by disarming their hostility against the house of Austria. Then he made ready an army of Spaniards and Italians, such as had not since the Roman times passed through the Tyrolean Alps. Then came the master-stroke, without which all else would have been in vain. Maurice, Duke of Saxony, cared less for religion than any other German prince of his time. He sought only his own advantage. His cousin, John Frederick, the Saxon Elector, was hard and narrow-minded, but firm as a rock in the defense of the Evangelical faith. Charles V tempted Maurice with the electoral dignity belonging to John Frederick, and Maurice yielded. For the coveted honor he betrayed his Fatherland and his religion.

On July 20, 1546, Charles pronounced the ban of the empire against the Elector John Frederick and Philip of Hesse, with whom for the last five years he had been in such close relations. Philip, like the good soldier that he was, had already an army in the field. He could have struck with effect either Buren’s force coming up the Rhine from the Netherlands, or Charles himself before he had gathered his force on the Danube. Was it his crime that made him hesitate? For whatever cause, he hesitated until too late. Then, for want of money, he disbanded his force in Southern Germany, and, withdrawing to Hesse for the winter, was henceforth out of the campaign. Thus John Frederick was not only left alone, but Maurice

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was advancing into his territory. His treason had now become evident. With incredible folly, John Frederick now divided his forces, sending part of them into Bohemia, and with the remnant, less than one-fourtli the number of the imperialists, he met the troops of Charles at Miihlberg, April 24, 1547. There was only one issue possible to the short fight. John Frederick was taken prisoner in the midst of his troops. It was at first proposed to burn the elector as a heretic. John Frederick was playing chess when notified that a capital sentence was about to be pronounced upon him. The elector never ceased in his play. All subsequent efforts to move him were in vain. Philip of Hesse, who might have retreated west and found support from England or France, with a folly as childish as his former trust in the emperor, drew near to that monarch by whom he was more hated than by any man then living. Trusting the explicit assurance and suretyship of Joachim II, Elector of Brandenburg, and of Maurice of Saxony, his own son-in-law, which assurances were known to the emperor, he came to the imperial court at Halle. He fell at the emperor’s feet for pardon, June 19, 1547. That night he supped with his friends at court, and after the meal was ended he was taken prisoner by the Duke of Alva. It was the intention of Charles that from that imprisonment he should never come out alive. In that age of change and sorrow few memorials are more pathetic than the letter which the poor, wronged first wife of Philip of Hesse wrote to the emperor after her husband had been two years a prisoner, asking as a dying woman for his release.

The Reformation in Germany. 193

Hard indeed must have been the heart which denied her prayer.

Charles now called the Reichstag to meet at Regensburg. Maurice received the price of his treachery; he was made Klector of Saxony.

The emperor caused the Roman Catholic ^^30^548. theologians, Groffer and Pflug, with the Berlin preacher, Agricola, to meet and draw up articles of agreement. This agreement allowed the communion in both kinds to the laity, and the marriage of priests, but on all disputed points leaned strongly to the Roman Catholic view. This was first proposed to the Evangelical princes, with the assurance that it was to prevail in the Roman Catholic as well as in the Evangelical part of Germany until the decision of these points by a General Council; hence the name for this agreement, Interim. The Evangelical princes accepted it one by one. There was scarcely any other alternative. Joachim II of Brandenburg assented, but, finding his clergy unanimously opposed to it, let the matter rest. The South German free cities had their constitutions overthrown, were forced to pay large fines, and their Evangelical preachers were hunted out of their midst. Hundreds of pastors left their flocks rather than obey the hated Interim. The people would not attend their churches, but left them empty where the old rites were restored.

Maurice of Saxony declined assenting to the Interim until he had consulted with his Estates. Afterward, under the leadership of Melanchthon and other Wittenberg theologians, was framed the Leipzig Interim. It was much more Evangelical than that of

13

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Regensburg, but was felt as a surrender of the faith of

the Reformation by those who should have been its

Lei z' in f°^remost defenders. Melanchthon, with a

terim. littleness of mind and spirit for which it

December 24, j_s hard to find an excuse, thus struck the 1648.

hardest blow the Reformation had yet received. The University of Wittenberg never recovered the authority lost in these days. Mathias Fla-cius, once a pupil of Melanchthon—a narrow and hard man, but a notable scholar—led in the fight against the Interim. The center of the rebellion was at Magdeburg.

Maurice of Saxony received command of the forces besieging the city. Thus he was able to keep an army in hand. Maurice was deeply in* censed at the emperor’s refusal to release his father-in-law, Philip of Hesse, for whom he had pledged himself as surety. Nor was Maurice insensible to the hatred he had centered upon himself for his betrayal of the Reformation. Charles had brought upon himself, by his arbitrary government and by keeping Spanish soldiers in Germany, the hatred of the Estates, including Bavaria. Maurice made a treaty with France by which her king was to support him with money and take for his pay Metz, Toul, and Verdun, which he was to seize at the right moment. Charles, past master as he was in political duplicity, lay unsuspecting at Innspruck to be near and control the decisions of the reassembled Council of Trent. Suddenly Maurice appeared on the scene with an overwhelming force. Only the outbreak of an easily-quelled mutiny among the troops of Maurice, which gave Charles a few hours’ time, saved the emperor

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from capture, May 19, 1552. Complete as had been the overthrow at Miihlberg, this was equally decisive. Charles could raise neither soldiers nor money. His dream of absolute power was at an end. Negotiations, begun between Ferdinand in the emperor’s name and Maurice at Linz, were transferred to Passau, May 26, 1552, where was gathered an assemblage of the German princes of both the Roman Catholic and Evangelical faith. The articles of peace ended the Interim and provided for an equal recognition and tolerance of both parties until the meeting of a future Reichstag, and promised the release from captivity of John Frederick and Philip of Hesse. Maurice accepted these articles July 29th. They were signed August 2d; but the emperor delayed his ratification until August 20th, saying that he did it only to save his brother’s crown.

Charles V now entered upon a war with Francis to recover Metz (1552-1553), but in this he was wholly unsuccessful. Broken with disease, his dream of empire and of religious unity forever shattered, Charles would fain lay down the crown.

John Frederick and Maurice made a treaty whereby the electoral dignity remained with Maurice, but compensation was made to his cousin’s sons.

Maurice was now in full pay and alliance ^T^®^_e°^f with the King of France, and intended to go to the Netherlands to fight against the emperor. In the midst of these plans he met the troops of that freebooting warrior, Albert of Brandenburg, at Sei-vershausen, July 9, 1553. Albert was defeated, but Maurice was fatally wounded. At the museum at Dresden they show you the bloody shirt and the coat of

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mail pierced by the ball which brought to this doubledyed traitor his death.

After the negotiations at Passau and the unfortunate issue of the war with France, it became evident that there must be accorded to the Evangel-^Thpeace^f^>US P^arty the same rights in the empire Augsburg, as to the adherents of the old faith. This ciose of Charles V declared to be against his con-^t charieTv!* science, and would not appear at the Reichstag at Regensburg, but left the whole matter to the discretion of his brother Ferdinand, who was to succeed him in the empire. Charles proved an irreconcilable enemy and cruel persecutor of the Reformation to the last. If Philip II of Spain goes down into history laden with the infamy of more Christian blood shed by him in martyrdom than any other monarch of that persecuting age, it may be recalled, in palliation, that he was exhorted to this cause by the last commands of his father, the greatest sovereign of his time and house. Against the Reformation, Charles, in the maturity of his powers, summoned all his strength. At first he was amazingly successful; nevertheless the Reformation shattered all his plans, turned the glory of his latter years to shame, and made him weary of his crown. He was not the last absolute monarch that Evangelical Protestanism has made weary of rule.

The affairs touching a lasting religious peace, preserving the equality of the parties in the Imperial Provisions Chamber of Justice and their equal tolera-ofthe tion, were transacted between the College Peace. j£i_ec|-_{ors an(}j King Ferdinand. This college consisted of the Archbishops of Mainz, Cologne,

The Reformation in Germany. 197

and Treves, representing the Roman Catholic party, and the lay electors of Brandenburg, the Rhine, and Saxony, where August had taken the place of his brother Maurice. The conditions of the peace, thus considered and assented to by Ferdinand, and entered into the constitution of the empire, provided that the princes, estates, and free cities of both religions should, under the law, have equal rights and participation in the empire. There was fixed also equal representation in the College of Electors and in the Imperial Chamber of Justice. Those adhering to the Confession of Augsburg had equal recognition for rights and honors with those of the Roman Catholic faith. This treaty was signed September 24, 1555.

Pope Paul IV was almost beside himself with rage when he heard of this peace. He declared that if Ferdinand were already emperor he must _Consequences be deposed, and that “ Satan divides the em- of the Augs-pire of Germany equally with Christ.” On ^bur£^Peace* the other hand, the clause respecting the ecclesiastical reservations, which provided that whenever a prelate espoused the Evangelical cause he should lay down his ecclesiastical offices and temporal power, was a sensible bar to the further advancement of the Reformation. The provision that the inhabitants of each State should be of the same religion as their prince, and those not conforming should go into exile without the loss of honor or goods, was in the crudest contradiction to the fundamental principles of the Reformation. These principles maintained that all should read the Scriptures, which contained all things necessary to salvation, and that every man should be free to exercise the right of private judgment. What hu

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man law has right to make the religion of the prince that of his people ?

Neither the Evangelical nor the Roman Catholic parties cared to provide for the protection of that rising Calvinistic party which was to be the aggressive factor in the war against the Church of Rome.

The Peace of Augsburg secured much to the Reformation. It made sure its legal recognition and the rights for which it had contended since 1529. It kept the peace amid all the efforts of Jesuits, Popes, and Philip of Spain for the next three and sixty years. But this peace was so contradictory to liberty and right that it contained in itself the seeds and certainty of the most terrible calamity which could come to the German nation and people short of their enslavement —the Thirty Years’ War.

The Evangelical principles had made sure of their footing in the life of the people and in the public law Results of    empire. Intelligence, thrift, and

the German at length power, came to the followers and Reformation. g_{tates Q}f Reformation. That Germany is the land of learning and the teacher of the world; that she is an able contestant for the trade and commerce of the globe; that she is the strongest power on the Continent of Europe, she owes to many things, but to none more than to the work and influence of that Reformation begun within her borders by the greatest of her sons, but whose blessings have crossed all seas and compassed the world.

THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.

The Reformation began in Germany; but what gave the movement its historical importance and, with the passing centuries, its increasing influence, was the accession to it of England. That the English nation and race did not remain Roman Catholic, but became Evangelical, is the turning-point in the history of the Reformation. English rule and English speech passed from the dominion of Rome to be the strongest bulwark and the most aggressive factor in that new civilization, doctrine, and worship which are based upon the principles of the Reformation.

In this chapter we shall endeavor to make clear how the Reformation came to be a reform from the king and Parliament and not from the people, and to trace its fortunes in the work of three reigns until the death of Mary showed that England could never again be Roman Catholic. The reign of Elizabeth and the rise of the Puritans will make evident how the Evangelical teachings became the religion of the English people.

We shall first show how the growth of the royal power, the new learning, or the work of the Renaissance in England, the Cambridge Reformers, and the king’s divorce, working together, began the Reformation in England.

The kings of England from the days of William the Conqueror to those of the house of Tudor were a remarkable race. There had not been _Qrowthof among them one man of genius or a world the Royal character like St. Louis of France and the ^Power* Emperor Frederick II of Germany. But the average of ability had been higher than that of surrounding

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nations. There had been but two cowards among them, John and Edward II, and few weaklings like Henry III and Henry VI. On the other hand, Edward III and Henry V had been conquerors like the first Norman king, and Henry II and Edward I had been the wisest legislators of the kings of Europe.

The Wars of the Roses during the fifteenth century had destroyed the greatness of the English aristocracy, and, when after the victory of

Henry VII. ^    - r , ,

Bosworth Field, the founder of the house of Tudor, Henry VII, came to the throne, the power of the king was greater, his authority less restrained, than that of any former English king. Henry VII laid the foundations of the greatness of his son, Henry VIII, and of his grandchildren, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth. The Tudor reigns were the culmination of the power of the English monarchy.

The sovereigns of the house of Tudor had well-defined characteristics. They were brave. Even Mary, during Wyatt’s Rebellion, rode boldly sovereigns. ^to    Guildhall, and, “with a man’s

voice,” called to the citizens to defend their legitimate sovereign. After Henry VII they were thoroughly trained in the learning of the time. Henry VIII was the most accomplished prince of his age. Mary was a good Latin scholar, and Edward was trained well in the classics. Elizabeth read fluently Greek and Latin, and conversed in French and Italian. In temper they were imperious and in government despotic. They were passionate and heartless; with a heartlessness which, in Henry, became brutality, in Mary cruelty, and in Elizabeth a hardness which sent Essex to the block and left Walsingham

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to die in poverty. They all loved magnificence and display, though Elizabeth, like her grandfather, was often economical to a parsimony which injured her policy, or carried it through at the expense of those whom she should have rewarded. All were impatient of contradiction and made their personal policy prevail.

Yet the Tudors possessed what the Stuarts lacked, to their doom, the instincts of a governing race. No Tudor was ever controlled by a favorite. Shifty as was their policy, they dealt frankly with their people. They identified their greatness with the greatness and power of the English nation. Mary grieved to her death over the loss of Calais to the English crown. Elizabeth put herself at the head of her trainbands to resist the Spanish Armada, and she knew herself how to set limits to the exactions of the crown, and to grant the just demands of the people for reform, while preserving the utmost of her own authority. This governing instinct was never shown more conspicuously than in the choice of ministers. The noblest Englishmen of their time, the ablest statesmen of Europe, were glad to serve with the most unswerving loyalty, and for long years, the most self-willed and exacting sovereigns that ever ever sat upon the English throne.

Henry VIII was the most perfect representative of the new monarchy of the Tudor reigns. In his policy of absolutism he was not alone. Laws availed

Henry VIII

little to check the kings of France, and and Abso-the last constitutional liberties of Spain tute Power.

1509-1547.

died at the opening of the reign of Charles V. Henry and his ministers have been accused of

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following the precepts of Machiavelli. But we must not forget that Machiavelli merely condensed into principles and maxims the papal policy of his time— a policy of fraud and violence exemplified in Caesar Borgia and in the Medicean Popes, Leo X and Clement VII. It was the century of absolutism, and nothing but the revolt of the Reformation delayed the process one hundred years in France, and prevented that triumph of the unrestrained power of the sovereign in Germany, the Netherlands, and England, which so signally prevailed in Italy and Spain.

Henry VIII came to the throne in his twentieth year. Ten years later the Venetian ambassador describes him as “ much handsomer than any Appearance sovereign in Christendom, very fair and of Henry _weu proportioned. His beard is of a bright gold color. He is very accomplished, a good musician, composes well, and is a capital horseman. He is fond of hunting, and he tires eight or ten horses; when he gets home they are all exhausted. He is extremely fond of tennis, at which game it is the prettiest thing in the world to see him play, his fair skin glowing through silk of the finest texture. He is the best dressed sovereign in the world; his robes are the richest and most superb that can be imagined. He speaks French, Latin, and Spanish. He hears three masses a day when he hunts, and sometimes five on other days. He reads the daily office in the queen’s chambers, consisting of Vespers and Compline.” How changed this picture in twenty years to that grossness of person and sensuality of feature which even the brush of Holbein can not make regal.

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The judgment of Henry was shown in his choice of ministers throughout his reign. At his accession the instruments of his father’s tyranny _xhomas and extortion were sent to the scaffold. Woisey.

He carried out his father’s policy and mar- ^,474”^,S3° ried Catherine, the widow of his deceased brother Arthur, and daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. His chief adviser was the same who served his father until after the battle of Flodden—Fox, Bishop of Winchester. From 1513 for the next sixteen years the chief minister of Henry’s Council, the real governor of his kingdom and minister of foreign affairs, w^ras a most remarkable man and able statesman, Thomas Woisey. Woisey had been one of the king’s chaplains, and was promoted to the office of Bishop of Lincoln, Archbishop of York, Cardinal and Legate of the Roman See, and Lord High Chancellor of England. To these great offices and their emoluments were added the revenues of the See of Winchester and the abbey of St. Albans.

The king simply left the government in the hands of this great statesman. Yet Henry determined all policies, and at any time could make his will prevail. Woisey ruled England by ruling her king, and this was the more easy as Henry was intelligent enough to value the services of an able minister.

Woisey had a settled policy, which he steadily pursued. It was the policy of a balance of power between France and Spain in their contest for supremacy on the Continent. The ^J^y.⁸ wealth and resources of England were to be developed by peace at home and decisive influence abroad. It may well be claimed that he raised Eng- J

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land from a third to a first class power in the councils of Europe. At the same time no policy could be more tortuous or resort more freely to bribery, treachery, and corruption. If the Reformation brought to an end the old diplomacy which centered so largely at the court of Rome, it was not the least of its benefits.

The Venetian ambassador in 1519 thus describes Wolsey: “ He is seventeen years older than the king, woisey’s ^verY handsome, learned, extremely elo-Personai quent, of vast ability, and indefatigable in Appearance. _ag-_a}_rSi ^ ^ ^ jje j_s pensive, and has the

reputation of being extremely just. He favors the people exceedingly, and especially the poor, hearing their suits and seeking to dispatch them instantly. He also makes the lawyers plead gratis for all poor suitors. He is in very great repute, seven times more than if he were Pope. He has a very fine palace, where one traverses eight rooms before, reaching his audience chamber, and they are all hung with tapestry, which is changed every week.”

In proportion as Wolsey raised the power of the king abroad he increased the authority of the king at Wolsey’s home. He had no love for Parliaments, Domestic and called them only upon compulsion, ^Pol,cy* when their sessions were as short as possible. He accustomed the nation to personal government. The use of artillery and the increasing wealth of England made rebellions little feared. At Wol-sey’s fall, all this edifice of personal and absolute rule which had been built up for nearly twenty years fell to the king, and the most imperious sovereign that ever sat upon the English throne became the most powerful. Wolsey, on his death-bed, years before

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Henry had thrown off the papal authority, thus described the character of the king: “ He is a prince of most royal courage; but sooner than miss any part of his will, he will endanger one-half of his kingdom. I have often kneeled before him, sometimes for three hours together, to persuade him from his appetite, and could not prevail. Had I but served God as diligently as I have served the king, he would not have given me over in my gray hairs; but this is my due reward for my pains and study, not regarding my service to God, but only my duty to my prince.”

Sir Thomas More had well perceived the utter ruthlessness of Henry seven years before, when he said to his son-in-law, “If my head would win for him a castle in France, it should not fail to go.” The above sketch shows how and why the king was the prime factor in the reformation of religion in England. For many years all affairs, ecclesiastical and civil, were in the hands of the great cardinal. When the change came, it was not strange that they should be in the hands of the king.

Another most influential factor in preparing the way for the Reformation was the work of the Renaissance in England, where it took the form of a revival of classical studies, or the New Learning, as it was called.

Its most conspicuous representative was John Colet, Dean of St. Paul’s. Erasmus tells us that they were about the same age; that “Colet was born of wealthy parents in London, of ,₄₆£,*₅'_I9. which his father was twice lord mayor.

His mother, who survived him, had eleven sons and eleven daughters, of whom Colet was the eldest, and

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outlived them all. He was tall and handsome in person. He studied Greek, Latin, and mathematics in Florence; and traveled in France and Italy. He studied the fathers, especially Augustine, and was a diligent reader of law and of English poetry. Returning from Italy, he lectured on St. Paul’s Epistles at Oxford. He studied theology, but took no degree. He was invited to London by Henry VII, and made Dean of St. Paul’s. He became a great preacher, and distinguished himself by his frugality and abstinence. After grace was said at his table, a boy used to read a passage from the Pauline Epistles or the Proverbs, and this led the conversation. He was extremely neat in his personal apparel and choice in his language. He always wore black, while people of his rank wore purple.” “ Colet was fond of young children, and praised the life of married men as superior to celibacy. He was inclined to favor those who hated the adoration of saints and images in the churches. He condemned the colleges in England as injurious to study, and the public schools for the absence of good discipline. He said mass only on Sundays and festivals.”

John Colet was made Dean of St. Paul’s in 1505, in his fortieth year, and established a divinity lecture three days in the week in St. Paul’s Church. In 1508 he began the foundation of St. Paul’s School, which he completed, and endowed four years later. St. Paul’s was the forerunner of those grammar schools of the sixteenth century which “ changed the very face of England.” He gave the first impulse to Church reform in a sermon at the opening of convocation of

The Reformation in England. 207

the clergy long before Luther, and his words help us to see why the Reformation must come.

“ Would that for once you would remember your name and profession, and take thought for the reformation of the Church! Never was it more necessary, and never did the state of the Church need more rigorous endeavors. No heresy of the heretics is so fatal to us and to the people at large as the vicious and depraved lives of the clergy.” The reform of the clergy would lead to a general revival of religion among the people. The luxury and worldliness of the priesthood must be abandoned. Pluralities should be abolished, residence enforced, and the low standard of clerical morality advanced.

On Colet’s side were ranged Fox, Bishop of Winchester; Langton, Bishop of Worcester; Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury ; the great Cardinal Wol-sey, and the king himself. When Colet founded St. Paul’s School he placed over the gate an image of the child Jesus, and underneath the words, “ Hear ye Him.” To the scholars there he wrote, “ Lift up your little white hands for me, which prayeth for you to God.” In 1519, Colet went from the gathering storm, which was to revolutionize England and the Church, to be with God in the City of Peace.

Even more influential for the new learning, at least at the court of the king, was Erasmus’s special friend, More. Sir Thomas More was the greatest _{Sir Thomas} genius, the most renowned wit, and as pure More, a Christian and noble a martyr as that cen- ^,478='⁵³⁵* tury saw in distracted England. Erasmus shall paint us his picture. “ More is somewhat below the middle

208    The Christian Church.

height, but perfectly symmetrical in all his limbs. He has a fair complexion, with very little red except a slight bloom. His hair inclines to black or dark brown; he has a thin beard; gray eyes covered with specks, which indicate a generous nature. He has a pleasant, smiling look, and is more inclined to pleasantry than to gravity, though entirely free from buffoonery. He has always been careless of his dress, and wears no silk, purple, or gold chains, except when he can not avoid it. He is indifferent in the choice of his food, and generally drinks water out of a tin cup. His voice is penetrating and clear, but not musical, although he is fond of music. His speech is plain and distinct. He is friendly, accessible, and fond of conversation, and much given to jesting.^,>    „ From another hand we learn that “ More rose at two in the morning, and was at prayer and study until seven. He heard mass daily; and daily, Habits after private prayer with his children, said the Litany of the Saints and the seven Penitential Psalms. It was his custom nightly before he went to bed, with his wife, children, and household, to go to his chapel, and there on his knees to say certain Psalms and Collects with them. He spent much time in his oratory in devotion, using this employment the whole of Friday. He went to confession and communion before undertaking any business of importance. He wore a hair shirt by way of penance, and constantly scourged himself. He made pilgrimages and was abundant in charities.”

Erasmus again says, “ In his devotions he prays extempore, and talks with his friends on a future life

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with perfect sincerity and assured hope.” To all his observances More attached no sense of merit; for he says, “You can fast of yourself, watch of yourself, and pray of yourself; nay, you may pray ex diabolo; but true Christian faith, by which a man, despairing of his own merits, is led to trust exclusively in the merits of God; true Christian charity which is not puffed up, is not provoked, seeketh not its own,—these are gifts which fall to no man’s lot except by the mere grace and gratuitous favor of God.”

Sir Thomas More was born in London, February 7, 1478. His father was a judge, and he was trained in the household of Cardinal Morton, Arch-

t i    ^    1    -r-r    -i    •. His Career.

bishop of Canterbury. He was educated at Oxford, where he studied Greek with Linacre; but his father, fearing Greek would lead him to heresy, took him away before he took his degree, and threatened to disinherit him. He was admitted to the bar in 1496. He was in Parliament in 1504 when but twenty-six years old. He resisted successfully the king’s application for a grant of money, and so angered Henry VII that he retired to private life. He wrote the famous “Utopia” in 1516, which remains the fairest monument of his genius. Henry VIII called him to his affairs, which so engrossed his time that he resigned his lucrative practice at the bar in 1519. For the next thirteen years, More was in office until he resigned the chancellorship in 1532.

Genial and witty, pure and noble, Sir Thomas More seemed to represent all that was best in the new learning and in the Mediaeval Church. But he never

14

2io    The Christian Church.

escaped from the bondage of the Church into the freedom of the Scriptures. When Lord High Chancellor of England he sought permission of Archbishop Warham to read heretical—i. e., Evangelical—books, for the purpose of refuting them. John Colet was of a broader, nobler mind. He said he “ read carefully heretical books, and often got more profit from them than from those employed in endless definitions and servile adulation of certain Doctors.”

More, who represented clearly the right and necessity of religious toleration in his “ Utopia,” it is to be regretted, in practice, did not rise above his age, and must go down in history as the persecutor, though not to death, of those who held the new opinions.

Of even wider influence than the character and lives of these men of the English Renaissance was Erasmus’s Erasmus's Greek New Testament, pub-GreekNew lished in 1516, one year before Luther’s Testament. theses at Wittenberg. Of the Gospels Erasmus said, “Were we to have seen him with our own eyes, we should not have so intimate a knowledge as they give us of Christ, speaking, healing, dying, rising again, as it were, in our very presence.” No wonder that he longed for the day “when the husbandman shall sing portions of them (the Scriptures) as he follows the plow; when the weaver shall hum them to the time of the shuttle; when the traveler shall while away with their stories the weariness of his journey.” Erasmus, wishing the Bible in the language of the common people, and making the Greek text accessible to the learned, was the true forerunner of Luther and Tyndale. In the study of the Christian

The Reformation in England. 211

Scriptures the men of the Renaissance and of the Reformation joined hands.

The movement which wrought the Reformation in England came not from Oxford, where Wolsey had bestowed his vast wealth in founding Christ

1 1    11    t* 1    11    The Oxford

Church, the noblest of her colleges; nor andCam-from the Oxford Reformers, though they bridge Re-were favored by the king and the chief    ‘

prelates of the realm. It came, rather, from Cambridge, from a few students there, who became acquainted with Luther’s writings, and following his example, desired to see the English Bible in the hands of the people.    .

Nearly a century and a half before, John Wyclif, of Oxford, had denied transubstantiation and the papal primacy, he had caused the Scriptures to be _InfIuence translated from the Latin Vulgate into the of John English tongue. Wyclif had done all that ^wy^clif* could be done before the invention of printing; for his Bible was not printed until after the Reformation. He formed a band of itinerant preachers, or, as he called them, poor priests, for making known the gospel to the people. They and their followers were called Lollards, and were cruelly persecuted for a century before the Reformation. Many of them were burned, but their teaching had pervaded the counties of Eastern and Middle England. These counties eagerly accepted the doctrines of the Reformers. From them came the martyrs of Mary’s reign, and the pikemen who followed Oliver Cromwell at Marston Moor.

At Cambridge rallied the men who were to be the

2i2    The Christian Church.

leaders of popular reform in the sixteenth century in England; for the Oxford reform was essentially academic, learned, and aristocratic. Colet was an educational reformer. More and his friends among the bishops would never have thought of a religious movement among the people for the reform of the crying abuses of the Church. The Greek Testament of Erasmus was the symbol of the work they wished to do—to win the higher classes to a reform in morals and a reasonable apprehension of religion.

The Cambridge Reformers sought the people. They were a remarkable group of men. We have no The cam- Brasmus to draw loving portraits of them, bridge Re- We know them from their deeds. William formers. tyndale _and Miles Coverdale were translators of the Bible. Thomas Bilney, Robert Barnes, John Lambert, John Fryth, and John Rogers were martyrs, sealing the new opinions with their blood. Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer were prelates of the Church, who, in the flames, glorified the gospel of the risen Lord. Of these men all but one sealed their teaching with their blood. These men made Protestant England, and the English nation a people knowing and loving God’s Word, so that its music, its color, and its thought is reflected in its whole literature from Milton to Tennyson.

Chief among these were William Tyndale and Hugh Latimer. Tyndale was a year younger than Luther. He studied at Oxford, and then at

William    ,    .

Tyndale. Cambridge, where he was ordained 111 1521 1484-1536. _{at a}g_{e 0}£ thirty-seven. The next two years he spent as chaplain of Sir John Walsh and in studying the Scriptures. In 1523 he had fully com-

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213

mitted himself to his life work—the translation of the Bible into English. For this purpose he came to London in that year, and sought, but in vain, the patronage of Bishop Tunstall, an adherent of the new learning. He worked at this translation, but became convinced that there was no chance in England to print it. So he became an exile for the gospel’s sake. In 1524 the man who was to influence the English tongue more than any other born on English soil, left England forever. He sailed to Hamburg, and then visited Luther at Wittenberg, settling in Cologne; but he finished the English translation of the New Testament at Worms in 1526. In that year .and place it was printed and sent to England. In 1527 he published the parable of the “Wicked Mammon,” and in 1528 “The Obedience of a Christian Man.” These Sir Thomas More tried to answer in his “Dialogue ” and “ Confutation,” to which Tyndale replied in an “Answer.” The genial and learned leader of the defenders of the Roman Catholic Church was far from being the equal in controversy to this poor scholar and exile, who, like Apollos, was mighty in the Scriptures. William Tyndale was arrested at Brussels in

1535, kept in prison for a year, then strangled and burned October 6, 1536. His last prayer was, “O Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.”

This exile and martyr has the noblest monument to the memory of any Englishman ; it is the English Bible. Well may we remember that “ the great mass of the English Bible as we now have it, both in the Authorized Version and in the Revision of 1881, is, in all essential respects, Tyndale’s work.”

The other man most influential in bringing in a

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Reformation in England, both popular and doctrinal, was Hugh Latimer, the great preacher of the English Hugh Reformation. He was born, probably, in Latimer. 1491, a yeoman’s son, and educated at i49i-»555. Cambridge. He was ordained before 1514, when not more than twenty-three years of age. He became Bachelor of Divinity, and was, as he says, “as obstinate a papist as any in England,” until 1523, when, through the influence of Bilney, he became an Evangelical. His preaching at Cambridge stirred up the friars and Doctors so that the Bishop of Ely forbade his preaching in the churches of the university ; but he preached in the church of the Augustine friars, which was exempt from episcopal jurisdiction. He was afterward summoned before Cardinal Wolsey, who gently admonished him, and gave him license to preach throughout England. Hugh Latimer spoke to the heart and conscience of the people of England, high and low, as no other man in that generation. His earnestness, humor, satire, unselfishness, and fearlessness made him the most powerful instrument in turning the people from the corruption and fables of the popular superstitions to the English New Testament and the faith founded thereon.

These, then, were the forces in England working toward a reformation before the thought of a divorce entered the mind of Henry VIII. The old ^Iparing^Ifor" Wyclifite leaven; the new leaven of the the Reforma=Lutheran opinions and the books from Ger-the Divorce ^manyi the men of the New Learning, like Cardinal Wolsey and Archbishop Warham, who were convinced of the necessity of the reformation of the Church; the publication of the Greek New

The Reformation in England. 215

Testament by Erasmus, and of the New Testament in English by Tyndale; the fearless, outspoken, and popular preaching of Latimer,—all these were effectively at work before Henry ever broached the matter of the divorce.

Three things determined the character which this movement should take : (a) The exercise of the power and government of the kingdom, ecclesiastical as well as secular, by one man, Cardi- Demined nal Wolsey, in the name of the king; (b) the Direction The passion of the king for Anne Boleyn, ^rma^ionf and the two unusual incidents that she would not allow herself to become the king’s mistress, and that the Pope dared not grant a divorce through fear of Charles V; (c) The character of Henry VIII, who brooked contradiction from the head of Western Christendom no more than from one of his councilors.

Henry VIII, though no saint, was a most devoted son of the Roman Church. Though he had a natural son by Elizabeth Blount, this did not pre- _{Henry ag a} vent him from writing, in 1521, a book Roman against Luther entitled, “An Assertion of ^Catho,,c* the Seven Sacraments.” Such as he was then, he remained in doctrine until his death. For this book he received from the Pope the title of “ Defender of the Faith.”

In 1527, the year of the sack of Rome, the subject of the divorce of Henry VIII from his wife, Catherine of. Aragon, was first opened to Wolsey. _TheDivorce The cardinal was most disagreeably surprised that, instead of making way for an alliance with a foreign court, Henry had set his heart upon

216    The Christian Church.

Anne Boleyn, the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, former ambassador to France, and related to the Duke of Norfolk. This question of a divorce ran counter to all of Wolsey’s plans, and he could not conceal from himself the difficulties in the way of its realization. No doubt it was contrary to his judgment; but he knew Henry too well to act contrary to his will, and hence addressed himself with zeal to the task of carrying it through. Henry, as a loyal and devoted son of the Church, applied to the Pope, not only for a divorce, but a dispensation from any canonical impediment from marrying Anne Boleyn. There is now no doubt in the minds of historical inquirers that this impediment was the fact that Anne Boleyn’s sister, Mary, had been a mistress of the king. If Anne had consented to the same fate as her sister, there would have been no question of divorce, and Henry would have remained a loyal son of the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope made no protest against the divorce on moral grounds, and would have granted it at once, but for the fact that he was in the power of Catherine’s nephew, Charles V. Every effort was made by bribery and lying to gain a favorable decision from Clement VII. He simply procrastinated the case, and hoped to wear out the king.

While the question lay thus in abeyance, and a plague at Cambridge drove Cranmer from his work to Waltham in Essex, he met there two of the agents of the king who had been prominent in the business of the divorce—Fox, Bishop of Winchester, and Stephen Gardiner. Gardiner had been a fellow student of Cranmer’s at Cambridge, was now secretary to Cardinal Wolsey, and was later to become the leader of

The Reformation in England. 217

the Roman Catholic reaction in the last years of Henry VIII, and under Queen Mary.

The matter of the king’s divorce came up in a conversation, and of the delays and risks at Rome. Cranmer expressed the opinion that the preferable way would be to have the question passed upon by the Doctors skilled in the canon law in the great universities of Europe, whose opinion would weigh more than that of the Pope, and would be sufficient in case of his refusal. This was reported to the king, who was greatly pleased. Cranmer was ordered to take the case into consideration, and he prepared within the next year a treatise in support of the position that the marriage of Henry and Catherine was invalid. While so engaged he lived in the household of Sir Thomas Boleyn. Meanwhile, by dint of some very stout lying, Gardiner had gotten the Pope to refer the case to his legate, Cardinal Campeggio, sent direct from Rome.

But the Cardinal was equal to the occasion. After beginning the hearing of the case, May 31, 1529, in July he suspended the sitting of his court _IntheCourt until October, and in the meantime the of the Pope revoked the case to Rome. Henry, ^Les^ate-seeing that he was both defeated and mocked, let the full weight of his displeasure fall upon Woisey, who, whatever his faults of pomp and pride, of luxurious living and courtly lying, had ever been a most devoted servant of the king. In October, 1529, he was deprived of all his offices except the Archbishopric of York, and banished to Esher. Making himself popular in his archdiocese, and his enemies fearing him, he was arrested and brought toward London by the

218    The Christian Church.

Lieutenant of the Tower. Wolsey, seeing before him nothing but a traitor’s death from the malice of his enemies, broken in spirit, and sick in body, came to the monastery of Leicester. “ I am come,” he said to the brethren, “to lay my bones among you,” and there he died, November 29, 1530, the ablest and most powerful of the counselors of Henry VIII.

Thomas Cranmer, the shy Cambridge scholar, who so unexpectedly attracted the king’s notice, and Thomas ^came to be employed in the king’s busi-Cranmer. ness, was born of a good family at Aslac-1489=1556. _tonj Nottinghamshire, July 2, 1489. He was „thus six years younger than Luther, and two years older than Henry VIII. In childhood he was trained, as a gentleman’s son, to ride and hunt. At the age of fourteen he entered Cambridge. He seems to have studied canon law rather than divinity, for he married. His wife dying within a year, he was reinstated in his fellowship in Jesus College. He was not ordained until 1523, when he was thirty-four years old. Soon after he took his degree of Doctor of Divinity and was made lecturer and examiner in divinity in the university. He was made one of the king’s chaplains, and in 1530 was sent to Rome to further the king’s divorce. He spent some months there, and was very honorably received, the Pope making him grand penitentiary for England. From Rome he went to Germany and visited the Elector of Saxony and the other Protestant princes. In 1531 he was made ambassador to the Emperor Charles V, and became acquainted with German theologians, especially Osiander, pastor at Nuremberg. Early in 1532 he married Margaret, the niece of the Nurem-

The Reformation in England. 219

berg pastor. In August of that year, Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, died. The king designed to make Cranmer the highest ecclesiastic in his realm, but Cranmer sincerely sought to avoid the honor. He returned slowly to England, having sent his wife on in advance. The king would hear of no refusal, and the appointment having been confirmed by eleven Papal Bulls, on March 30, 1533, being then in the forty-fourth year of his age, Thomas Cranmer was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury.

No doubt it shocks us, and should, that Cranmer came into his high office through being an advocate in a divorce suit, and an advocate on the _TheDivorce wrong side. The moral guilt of seeking to and set aside a marriage, which has stood for ^Mora,lt>^r* eighteen years, of a husband with a blameless wife, who had borne him several children, and one of whom, a daughter eleven years of age at the beginning of the suit, was then living, can not but awaken the protest of every unprejudiced mind. This, all the more, as the marriage had every appearance of legality the law could give, and had been acquiesced in by the king for nearly twenty years. Yet, curiously enough, at the time this aspect of the case never seemed to impress any one but Catherine herself. At first the effort was made to obtain the divorce through the Pope. When that failed, the question was raised whether the Pope could by dispensation make that valid which was forbidden by the Old Testament— marriage with a brother’s widow. To the Protestant divines it was simply a question of law. To the Roman Catholic statesmen and divines, to More and Pole, and to the chief agent in the whole business,

220    The Christian Church.

Stephen Gardiner, there seemed no moral compunction about the divorce until the Pope’s authority was touched. Then More and Pole sided with the Pope, while Gardiner and Norfolk, the nobility and the nation, including, with few exceptions, the clergy, sided with the king.

Whatever may be the judgment upon the motives and action of the persons principally concerned in

Clement vii ^{case t}^^{iere can} be no defense for the and the conduct of Clement VII. A recent Roman Divorce. Catholic writer has said : “For nearly six years he dallied with the king, and protracted the suit by every possible device that was not criminal. He encouraged hopes that he knew were fallacious. He appeared to entertain propositions that he knew were absurd, and allowed them to be discussed by the theologians.” No wonder the king was angered by the delay. He secretly married Anne Boleyn in January, 1533, before Cranmer’s return.

Cranmer pronounced the marriage with Catherine void, May 23, 1533. March 23, 1534, Clement VII finally pronounced the same marriage Cwe^nded? ^val^- Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, afterward Queen Elizabeth, was born September 4, 1533.

Cranmer has been blamed as knowingly pronouncing an unjust sentence in declaring invalid the king’s marriage, and, in consequence, ‘cranmer⁰* Henry free to marry Anne Boleyn. But from Cranmer’s standpoint no other sentence was possible. He did not believe the Pope could dispense with what he believed to be a plain prohibition in the Scriptures.

The Reformation in England. 221

Cranmer, on taking the oath of office as Archbishop of Canterbury, made a solemn protestation that he held his office solely from the king, and so far as his oath to the Pope contravened this, it was null and void. This made honest at least one of his oaths; before, neither was such, as they were contradictory to each other.

While Cranmer can hardly be blamed for putting himself right on the start, and making an end of an ancient fraud, nevertheless the weak point in his thinking and his conduct was his view of the royal supremacy. Like Luther, when the Pope was taken away he looked to the temporal power to guide and govern the Church. That the Church could be self-governing without the State or the Pope, never entered into their minds. But Luther never submitted articles of faith or directions of worship to the temporal power, while Cranmer held that not only the temporal possessions of the Church, but its doctrines and worship also, were subject to the king’s will.

Meanwhile the king’s reformation of the Church went on apace. By a monstrous perversion of all law and justice the clergy were condemned to have laid themselves liable to the penalties ”0"^™.*" of the Statute of Praemunire because they had submitted to the exercise of Wolsey’s authority as papal legate, which he had only exercised with the king’s full sanction. This broke the power of resistance of the elegy, and they submitted to the king, May 13,

1531, and secured a remission of their sentence by the payment of an enormous fine. In 1532 the payment of Annates, or the first fruits of a benefice by a

222

The Christian Church.

new incumbent to the Pope, was forbidden by act of Parliament. ' A severer blow was struck the next year when an act was passed appointing bishops without the intervention of the Pope. Thus far the Reformation had gone without Cranmer’s participation. From that time he had a hand in the ecclesiastical legislation, which, under the new minister, Thomas Cromwell, formerly Wolsey’s secretary, separated the nation further and further from Rome. In 1534 an act was passed forbidding all appeals to the Pope, and another the same year forbidding the payment of Peter’s Pence, and denying all jurisdiction of the Pope in the Church of England, more than any other foreign bishop. Finally was passed, in 1534, the Act of Royal Supremacy, wherein the king was made Supreme Head of the Church, and declaring the succession to the throne was through the daughter of Anne Boleyn, and not of Catherine of Aragon.

Sir Thomas More and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, were arrested in 1534 and committed to the Tower for refusing the oath to sustain

Sir Thomas    . ..

More and the royal supremacy. More had resigned

Bishop    office as lord high chancellor, May,

Fisher.

1532. They offered to swear to the act, but not to the preamble, which, they said, was against their consciences. Cranmer, to his honor be it said, wrote a letter pleading for them, and giving cogent reasons why the king should be satisfied with the oath to the act, without inclusion of the preamble; but the intercession was in vain. When More was in the Tower the Duke of Norfolk said to him: “By the mass, Master More, it is perilous striving with princes;

The Reformation in England. 223

therefore I would wish you somewhat to incline to the king’s pleasure; for, by God’s body, Master More, in-dignatio principis mors est” More replied : “ Is that all, my lord? Then, in good faith, the difference between your grace and me is but this: I shall die today, and you to-morrow.” To his daughter More wrote: “I am the king’s true and faithful subject and daily bedesman, and pray for His Highness and all his, and all the realm. I do nobody harm, I say none harm, I think none harm, but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, I long not to live.” There speaks a true Englishman and a true Christian. Pity the man who honors the Reformation, and yet does not honor Sir Thomas More’s dauntless courage and nobility of soul, who, in an age of timeserving, would not take oath against his conscience. July 3, 1535, after More had been more than a year in prison, Sir Thomas Pope, his friend, came to tell him that he must die at nine o’clock that morning. More answered him: “Master Pope, for your good tidings I heartily thank you. I have always been much bounden to the king’s Highness for the benefits and honors which he hath still, from time to time, most bountifully heaped upon me. . . . And so help me God, most of all, Master Pope, I am bounden to His Highness that it hath pleased him so shortly to rid me out of the miseries of this wretched world; and therefore will I not fail earnestly to pray for His Grace, both here and also in the world to come.” That morning there fell on the block the head of the Englishman best known and most loved in Europe.

224    The Christian Church.

Before Fisher and More perished, three priors and three monks of the Charterhouse, the most aristocratic, ascetic, and pious of the monasteries °cutions*" England, who were executed for refusing the oath to the Act of Supremacy. These executions sufficed, and the oath was taken without further resistance.

Cromwell, by these executions, and those of the north in the year following the rebellion known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, and in the west of Croat we n ^^orc^ Essex and of the brother of Reginald, later Cardinal Pole, had carried out the first part of his program. The clergy and the nobility lay prone before the absolute power of the king. A most infamous statute of treasons, and royal proclamations, given the force of statutes of the realm, crowned the whole. None resisted. Parliaments passed acts of attainder, and juries convicted at the wish of the king. None escaped, and at the execution none protested, not even Fisher or Sir Thomas More; for those who suffered had families or relatives on whom the king’s displeasure might fall. All that can be said is, that though the injustice was most atrocious, and though no holiness of life or innocence of act could shield one marked for destruction, yet the number of executions was not great, and the people in the middle and lower walks of life were unmolested amid the changes of the reign, except in a few cases for heresy.

Another part of Cornwell’s plan was the suppression of the religious houses of England. The monastic institute was in a state of decay in England. War-ham’s visitation, long before Cromwell’s days, and Wolsey’s suppressions in favor of his Oxford College,

The Reformation in England. 225

as well as tlie report of Cromwell’s commission, prove this. The same reasons which have led to the suppression of the monasteries in every Roman

_ .    • -r-v    • 1 • The Disso-

Catholic country m Europe in the nine- i_utionof teenth century, led to the suppression of the ^theMonas-English monasteries in 1536-1540. They    *

were rich, their inmates idle and ignorant, and oftentimes morally corrupt. I11 1536 the smaller monasteries—those whose income was under $1,000 a year —were dissolved; the same fate, in 1538 to 1540, overtook all the rest. By the first act, 376; by the second, 660—or 1,036 monasteries in all—fell to the king, and with them the best tilled and the larger part of the real estate of England. Whatever may be thought of the wisdom and justice of dissolving the monasteries, none can defend the method and results. The pious foundations of the ages, instead of being given, in good part at least, to the use of education and religion, were squandered by the king’s extravagance, or were seized or granted to the rapacious followers of his court. Three consequences came from this disinheriting of the poor and endowment of the rich and powerful. First, the impoverishment of the Church of England, where the need of her ministry was greatest. Bishop Burnet, writing one hundred and fifty years later, says that in his day there were hundreds of parishes that did not pay the incumbent $50 a year, and thousands that did not pay $250. This grievous evil has been only partially remedied in this century. Secondly, the people who found the abbots and priors landlords were lenient and kindly, and whose houses ministered abundant hospitality, found a great change when the lands fell to

15

226    The Christian Church.

the courtiers of Henry, who ministered no hospitality, and who aggravated economic evils by turning large tracts of arable lands into sheep pastures and inclosing the common lands for the same purpose, so that there was at once less for the people to do and less to sustain life left to them. This last process began before the Reformation, and was independent of it. The third result was, that Henry’s lavish distribution of the monastic lands attached to him the powerful class of the new nobility and the members of Parliament, and made the restoration of anything like the former state of things impossible, even under Mary.

Another part of Cromwell’s plan was to secure what had already been accomplished by furthering the progress of the Evangelical Reforma-ioiwPo^". ti°ⁿ* This was carried on under Cranmer’s leadership by the translation, circulation, and use of the English Bible, and the putting into the English tongue the chief truths of the Christian religion. Tyndale translated the whole New Testament in 1526, and a large part of the Old Testament later. Miles Coverdale completed and printed the first English Bible in 1535. The next year Cromwell ordered the whole Bible in Latin and English to be placed in the choir of every parish church. In 1538, two years after Tyndale’s death, at the king’s command, Cranmer ordered the Bible in largest volume to be set up in every parish church in England under penalty for non-compliance. These commands were not revoked in the Roman Catholic reaction of the last years of the king’s reign. In 1537 was published the “ Institution of a Christian Man,” for which, in

The Reformation in England. 227

large part, Cranmer was responsible. It consisted of the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ave Maria, with a short exposition, a setting forth of the Seven Sacraments, an affirmation of justification by faith, and a denial of purgatory.

It must not be thought that this work of Cranmer’s proceeded without opposition of the strongest kind. Cranmer sought to have the bishops prepare a translation of the New Testament, which could be used instead of Tyndale’s, which was declared heretical. The Acts of the Apostles were assigned to Stokesley, Bishop of London, and a patron of the New Learning. He refused to do this, and his answer well expresses the thought of those opposed to Evangelical Reform in the Church. He said: “I marvel what my Lord of Canterbury meaneth, that thus abuseth the people in giving them liberty to read the Scriptures, which doth nothing else but infect them with heresy. I have bestowed never an hour upon my portion, nor never will.” Nor would the Roman Catholic party of the men of the New Learning have ever given the Scriptures to the people. For this the people of every land are indebted to the men of the Reformation and to them alone.

While Cromwell was thus carrying through his policy to make absolute the king, Henry was passing through such scenes in his domestic life as would bring anguish and shame to the ^"stic L?fe" meanest of his subjects, and which have left an indelible stain upon his rule and his name.

Henry was grievously disappointed that Anne’s

228    The Christian Church.

child, Elizabeth, had not been a son. In January, 1536, a son was born to her, but dead. The king had wearied of his queen and been attracted Anne Boieyn. ^ ^ ^ ^_{er CQur}^ j_ane Seymour, when

rumors, occasioned perhaps by Anne’s free and not always prudent conduct, reached him. She was arrested May 2, 1536, five gentlemen were executed for participation in her guilt, and she was brought to the block, May 19, 1536. The next day he was betrothed to Jane Seymour, and ten days later he married her.

Anne Boieyn was no saint, but nothing can lighten the brutality of Henry’s conduct. Anne had no right to receive the advances of a married king, but few can blame her for refusing the fate of her sister. That she was guilty of the crime charged against her is certainly not proven. The most prominent person charged with guilt with her was her own brother, Lord Roche-ford. But he was denounced by his infamous wife, who was put to death a few years later for promoting the crime of Catherine Howard. The only one of the accused who confessed was Smeaton, a low fellow, who was hanged before the others were tried, so as not to be confronted with them. It has been taken as a proof of guilt that none of the four gentlemen, nor Anne, protested their innocence on the scaffold. But what noble victims of Henry’s wrath ever did? Did More, or Fisher, or Cromwell? On the other hand, Anne’s letter to Henry shows ability and proof of innocence that can not be gainsaid. So does also the report of Kingston, the lieutenant of the Tower. It is to his lasting credit that Cranmer, in a pathetic letter, interceded for Anne. But he, no more than the peers of

The Reformation in England. 229

the realm or the judges of the king’s courts, presumed to question the king’s will.

Anne had confessed to Cranmer an impediment to her marriage with Henry, hoping to save her life. What that impediment was Cranmer did not feel at liberty to reveal. In all probability it was the relation Henry had sustained to her sister. If the marriage were invalid, she could not be guilty of the crime for which she was sentenced; but that made no difference to Henry; he cut off her head and divorced her afterwards. Cranmer has been blamed for having married Anne, and then pronouncing the marriage invalid. But if the impediment existed which Anne confessed, according to the canon law the marriage was invalid. Cranmer could only give sentence according to the law, and there is no reason to think that Cranmer knew of the impediment at the time of the marriage. Anne was not only a Evangelical in religion, but generous to the poor, giving, the last year of her life, some $75,000 in alms.

Jane Seymour brought to Henry a son, the future King Edward VI. He was born October 12, 1536, and fortunately for his mother, she died j_ane twelve days later.    Seymour.

Henry remained unmarried until January 6, 1540. His first wife Catherine died in January, 1536. The king now married a Protestant princess,

Anne of Cleves, whom Cromwell had se- cieves.¹ lected for him. This was a most unfortunate choice for Cromwell. Henry took an intense dis. like to her, and divorced her in July, 1540. The same month Cromwell died on the block. Cranmer inter

230    The Christian Church.

ceded to his peril, and in vain, for Cromwell. For any share Cranmer had in the divorce of Anne of Cleves there is no excuse. She lived in England until her death in 1557.

Anne of Cleves was divorced in July; in August Henry married Catherine Howard, the niece of the Duke of Norfolk, the head of the Roman toward? Catholic party, to which Henry now inclined. Fifteen months later the new queen was arrested for adultery, which she confessed, and was beheaded, February 13,1542. More months were given her than weeks to Anne Boleyn between the arrest and the execution.

July 12, 1543, Henry married Catherine Parr, who Catherine survived his decease, though in the last ^parr. y_{ear G}f king’s life, she narrowly escaped death as a heretic through the plots of the Roman Catholic party.

These domestic affairs of the king are important to the history of the Reformation, as the king’s disfavor toward Anne of Cleves brought ruin to Cromwell, as his disfavor toward Catherine of Aragon was the cause of Wolsey’s fall. The fall of Cromwell arrested the course of the Reformation, and brought in the Roman Catholic reaction of 1540-1547.

The Statute of Six Articles was passed in 1539 against the strenuous and unyielding opposition of The statute Cranmer. It required belief in transubstan-of Six tiation, communion in one kind, the celib-Articies.    ^ clergy, the validity of monastic

vows, private masses, and auricular confession. Henry was heartily in favor of the act, as in doctrine he lived and died a Roman Catholic as distinguished from the

The Reformation in England. 231

Evangelical faith. His religion has been happily called “Popery without a Pope.”

Cranmer at this time believed in transubstantiation, and disputed before the king with John Lambert, who, for denying it, was burned at Smithfield in 1538. Cranmer gave his voice against him, but confessed later that Lambert’s arguments never left him, until he came himself to see the falsity of this doctrine. On the fall of Cromwell, Cranmer retired from the court, and Latimer resigned the See of Worcester. Cranmer had before sent his wife back to Germany, where she remained during the life of the king. The Act of Six Articles was never used as an instrument of general persecution, and was somewhat mitigated by the Act of 1543. Only about twenty persons suffered death during the seven years it was in operation. One of these was Anne Askew, a gentlewoman of more than average ability, who was cruelly tortured for denying transubstantiation, the lord high chancellor himself turning the rack, and was burned at Smithfield in 1546.

The main agent in the king’s government in these years, which was more personal than ever, was Stephen Gardiner, since 1531 Bishop of Winchester. He had been formerly secretary Q^dhier. to Woisey, who had employed him in the foreign affairs of the king at Rome and Paris and in Germany. He was especially active in promoting the divorce, and sat with Cranmer when sentence was given against Catherine of Aragon. Gardiner drew the Act of Six Articles, and in 1543 revised the “ Institution of a Christian Man ” in a Roman Catholic sense, and called it the “ Erudition of a Christian

232    The Christian Church.

Man.” Stephen Gardiner was of the same age as Luther, and one of the ablest and most unscrupulous Englishmen of his time. He was the head of the Roman Catholic party in the English Church from 1539 until his death in 1555. He was Cranmer’s bitter enemy, and in these last years of Henry’s reign more than once sought his ruin, but without success owing to the steady friendship of the king.

Henry died January 28, 1547. His suspicions had been aroused against the Earl of Surrey, the son of his old friend and faithful servitor, the HenryViii ^uke °f Norfolk. Henry, in his jealous rage, decided to destroy the whole family. As in 1541 he had brought to the scaffold the aged Countess of Salisbury, the mother of Reginald Pole, and a direct descendant of Edward IV, so now the Earl of Surrey was executed nine days before the king’s death, and his father was attainted by Parliament but the day before that event, the death of Henry saved his life, though he remained in prison for nearly seven years through the entire reign of Edward VI.

A large part of the funds raised by the sale of the church lands had been spent by Henry in strengthening the fortifications and in giving that thePeople⁰* predominance to the English navy which the Clergy, it has since maintained. Amid all the Refigion. changes of his reign the nation had presented a united front, and, as the changes had the sanction of Parliament, the English nation increased rather than diminished in influence and power. That this was done amidst the fulminations of the Pope and leagues of the powers, was the serv-

The Reformation in England. 233

ice of Henry VIII. Henry’s extravagance and prodigality left an empty treasury, and the economic changes among the people were producing more than the usual amount of distress with less than the usual means of alleviation. The Evangelical faith had struck deep roots in Eastern and Southern England, including the capital. The clergy were, as a rule, the greatest hindrance to the Reform. The conservative element would naturally be strong in such a body as the English clergy of that day, to whose number had been added many former inmates of the monasteries. The new holders of monastic lands were charged with the support of the former owners. Many of these were gotten rid of, and had permanent provision made for them by giving them ecclesiastical livings which were in the patronage of the proprietors. Thus for no clergy did the Reformation do so little, either in intelligence or piety, as for that of England, and none showed itself more timeserving.

The name of Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, stood at the head of those to whom Henry committed the government of the kingdom during the

. . - , .    „ . , .    ,    Political

minority of his son, then m his tenth year, changes The name of Gardiner, Bishop of Win- ^of Edward’s Chester, was omitted from the list. With    *

Norfolk in the Tower and Gardiner absent from the council, the whole tendency was toward a Further Reformation. Edward Seymour, the uncle of the king, was made Duke of Somerset and Protector of the Realm. His brother, Thomas Seymour, was made Admiral of England. The year of the king’s death he married his widow, Catherine Parr. She died in childbirth in September, 1548, at the age of thirty-

234    The Christian Church.

seven. Her husband, entering into treasonable designs and continuing therein, was executed March 20, 1549, and left upon the Protector the stain of a brother’s blood. Meanwhile, the Protector’s extravagance, the rapacity of his courtiers, the general ill success of his government, the poverty of the people intensified by debasing the coinage, the ill-will of the nobles because Somerset was a thorough Evangelical and would defend the people against their exactions, brought on his fall. Robert Dudley, son of one of the agents of the tyranny of Henry VII, who atoned for his offenses on the scaffold, now seized the reins of government. Dudley was the most unprincipled and selfish a ruler Englan d knew in that century. Somerset was sent to the Tower, October 14, 1549, after a rule of two years and nine months. The next February he was released, but arrested again in October, 1551, and executed January 22, 1552.

At the beginning of Edward’s reign the atrocious statutes of treason had been repealed, the Statute of

Six Articles, and the proclamation of the Repression* king had no longer the force of statutes.

By act of Council, Gardiner was sent to the Fleet prison in September, 1547. The next January he was released. On June 29th he was ordered to preach a sermon, the heads of which were given to him. He refused to discourse on the obedience due the king during his minority, and enlarged on the bodily presence of Christ in the sacrament. The next day he was imprisoned in the Tower, from which he did not emerge until the reign of Mary. In July, 1550, articles were submitted to him to sign. Like a true Englishman he refused to sign, and demanded to

The Reformation in England. 235

be tried or to be set at liberty. He showed great ability, and his behavior in prison was an honor to him. He was deprived of his See, February 14, 1551. Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, was deprived October, 1549, and Nicholas Ridley, the ablest scholar and theologian of the Reformation in England, was consecrated in his place the next April.

These acts show Cranmer as a politician^ and it can not be denied that he dealt hard measure to Gardiner and Bonner. They were not only deprived of their Sees, but were kept in prison without trial or opportunity of defense, by orders of Council, upon refusing to sign certain articles. But at no time were their lives in danger. There were but two persons who suffered for their religion in this reign—a Dutchman, George van Pare, for denying the Divinity of Christ; and Joan Bocher, of Kent, for denying his human body.

In the meantime Cranmer carried on the Reformation in the English Church. In 1544 he had prepared an English Litany. In 1547, after

1 1 • 1 111    1 •. r Reformation

the king s death, he published a book of _Qf the homilies, or sermons, to be read in the Church of

1 1    atv.    1    •    England.

churches. The pastors were also required to have a copy of Erasmus's Paraphrase of the New Testament. In 1548, Cranmer published a Catechism, mainly a translation from Justus Jonas. The Convocation held in December, 1547, resolved that the communion should be in both kinds, and that all canons and laws against the marriage of priests and others who had taken the vows of celibacy should be repealed. In the same month Parliament passed an act ordering that the communion should be in both kinds,

236    The Christian Church.

and forbidding private masses. Images were ordered taken away by act of Council in 1548. Preaching was forbidden to all except those licensed by Cranmer, in May, 1548, and still further restrained in September. The pulpits were kept well “tuned” in the reign of Edward, as they had been in the reign of Henry and were again in the reign of Mary.

The act allowing the validity of the marriage of priests already in wedlock passed February 19, 1549, but the act allowing the clergy to marry PrtoC. ^not P^ass three years later. There was a strong prejudice against the marriage of priests. Henry VIII would not sanction it, and Elizabeth disliked it; yet the history of the English Church showed its necessity. Cardinal Wolsey left children, one of whom became a priest and another a nun, and Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, was a priest’s son. Cranmer himself said that within his memory, which reached back thirty years, and from information of others whose memory went back fifty years, he could never learn that any priest had been punished for adultery. The frequency of such English surnames as Bishop, Bennett, Prior, Parsons, Abbott, Monk, etc., testify to the children of the clergy when the clergy were forbidden to marry.

The great effort of Cranmer during this reign, and the noblest work of his life, was to place Service to* worship of the Church and the truths the Eng- of the Christian faith for the first time in Md^hch?rch. England in the language of the people. In 1548 was printed for the first time the communion service in English.

A commission was appointed to prepare a revised

The Reformation in England. 237

order of service for the Church. Cranmer presided. There is no record as to the share taken by the members of the commission in the revision, but Mr. Froude is not far from the truth when ^The|^okf^er" he says, “While the Church of England remains, the image of Cranmer will be ever reflected on the calm surface of the Liturgy.” Its diction has his grace and rhythmic melody. The first Prayer-book was ordered to be used by the first Act of Uniformity, passed July, 1549, an act of compulsion which bore bitter fruit in England for centuries after, yet which was in harmony with the thought and practice of the times. Cranmer then called to his aid learned foreigners, as Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr, fleeing from the Interim in Germany, to revise the Prayer-book and to prepare Articles of Religion. The use of this revised Prayer-book was enforced by the second Act of Uniformity, April 6, 1552. The third Act of Uniformity, with few changes in the book, was passed April, 1559, and the fourth, since which there has been little change, in 1662.

Cranmer published the forty-two Articles of Religion of the Church of England in 1553. They were revised to thirty-eight in 1562, and made the famous Thirty-nine Articles in 1571.

From these are taken the Twenty-five Articles of Religion of the Methodist Episcopal Churches. Thus in a generation the English Church ceased to be Latin in government, in ritual, and in formularies of faith, and in all these became English. This was due to Thomas Cranmer more than to any man who has ever lived.

July 6, 1553, the life and reign of Edward VI came

238    The Christian Church.

to an end—a reign that has had severe judgment rendered for its obvious faults, and little praise for great achievement. The reign of no minor and Edward vi. government of no regency has dignity, or increases the influence of the nation. It is always a scene of contention between aspirants for power without the check of a supreme authority. The selfishness and extravagance of the rulers are scourged in scathing terms by Latimer. Undoubtedly the employment of German mercenaries was a crime against the nation, but they were few in number and not long retained. Much has been said of the rapacity of the court. It must be remembered that the reign began with an empty treasury, and that at least there were founded sixteen grammar schools, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and the Bridewell. Where do you look for like memorials from the vast spoil of Henry’s reign? It may be that the prestige of England under Henry was not maintained, but at least there was no such disaster as the loss of Calais under Mary. But the greatness of Edward’s reign is that then was laid the foundation and reared the superstructure of the Evangelical faith, which has not since been destroyed. The floods came and the winds beat upon that house, but it fell not; it was founded upon the rock. In Edward’s reign were trained the men who knew how to die in the reign of Mary.

Cranmer had reluctantly yielded to the pressure of the dying king, and had signed the act which changed the succession from Mary to Lady Jane ^Mary” Grey. Ridley had preached in her favor at St. Paul’s Cross. When the reign of the ten days’ queen was ended a complete revolution had

The Reformation in England. 239

begun. In August, Dudley, Earl of Northumberland, was beheaded; Norfolk, Bonner, and Gardiner came forth from prison, the latter to be Lord High Chancellor of England until his death. This rapid succession of events seemed to have paralyzed the friends of the Reformation. The mass was everywhere restored. It was said in Cranmer’s cathedral of Canterbury. It was reported that this was done with his consent, and that he had offered to say mass before the queen. This roused Cranmer to write a declaration. This was a denial of the reports, and a most vigorous contradiction of the leading tenets of the Roman Catholic Church. It was a trumpet-blast which aroused and cheered the friends of the Reformation and brought everlasting honor to Cranmer's name. Latimer, the noblest figure of the time, was sent to the Tower, September 14th, and Cranmer followed the next day. November 3, 1553, Cranmer was attainted for treason, and the same month Parliament repealed all the acts of Edward’s reign in regard to religion. The futile rebellion at the beginning of 1554 caused the death of Lady Jane Grey, her husband, and her father, as well as its gallant leader, Sir Thomas Wyatt. The Princess Elizabeth, afterward queen, was sent to the Tower, from whence she was released at the intercession of Emperor Charles V, May 20, 1554. The Evangelical bishops were deprived March 20th. The queen, in a letter dated March 4, 1554, ordered all married clergy to be deprived.

But of more importance was the fact that the suppression of this rising made possible the marriage of the queen with her cousin, Philip of Spain, eleven years her junior, July 25, 1554. The result was seen

240    The Christian Church.

in the revival of the statutes against heretics in December, 1554. In March, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were taken to Oxford. There, in April, a disputation was held, after which they were condemned as heretics.

Cardinal Pole arrived in England as papal legate, November 21, 1554. The 30th of the same month England, by means of the legate and through Cardinal ^ _Q£ p_arii_ament _was reconciled to the

■ OlCi

Roman See. The life of Reginald Pole was one of the most tragic of the Reformation period. A favorite for his birth, his manners, and his ability, he was employed by Henry at Paris to obtain the verdict of the Sorbonne in favor of the divorce. Afterward, in 1530, he espoused the cause of the Roman See, and made Rome his headquarters. He wrote a violent book against Henry, and visited the courts of France and Spain to stir up enemies against his country and its king. The Pope made him Cardinal of the Roman Church. For some years he was papal legate at Viterbo, where he lived in learned and elegant leisure. He was in full sympathy with the reforming element in the Roman Church. He believed in justification by faith, and gave special commendation to the Catechism of Archbishop Carranza, which, with its author, and another friend of Pole’s, Cardinal Morone, later were condemned by the Inquisition. Pole was offered the papacy by the Conclave of 1549 which elected Julius III; his hesitation lost it. He was papal legate at the first session of the Council of Trent. He was regarded as a man of affairs, of erudition and piety, and of the highest personal character.

Pole was a devoted servant of the Roman See, and

The Reformation in England. 24.1

no living Englishman had suffered more for his adhesion to it. His elder brother and his mother had paid with their lives for their friendship for him. After twenty-five years of exile he returned as papal legate, and as the man best loved and trusted by the new Roman Catholic queen. Pole was a thoroughly honest man, committed to the most intolerant principles of Rome. He was a rhetorician, writing a clear, fluent, though somewhat verbose Latin style. Unfortunately he lived with words and things as he fancied them, not with facts. He had only to be intrusted with a great place and to be given great powers to show his unfitness for either. Mary was profoundly religious and superstitious, bitter from her own sufferings and those of her mother, and thoroughly Spanish in her conceptions, ideals, and tastes.

She, and she alone, was the first inciter and the most persistent promoter of that fearful persecution which has given to the first English queen who ruled the land the name of “ Bloody _PerSecution. Maty.” Stephen Gardiner, now old and broken, entered at once into her plans of persecution, hoping that, as in Henry’s days, a few examples would speedily bring the nation to submission to the religious preferences of the queen. But Henry’s days were gone, and Edward’s reign had made a different England. Yet, to make the test, some of the best and noblest were marked for sacrifice. In February, 1555, John Rogers was burned at the stake at Smithfield, Rowland Taylor at Hadleigh, Laurence Saunders at Coventry, and Bishop Hooper at Gloucester. None of these flinched or recanted. In their deaths they showed the true nobility of the faith they professed.

16

242

The Christian Church.

Bishop Gardiner saw his mistake. Men like these could not be cowed, and for one burned a score rose up to take his place. The English temper differs from the Spanish. Spaniards could look on with delight at a bull-fight, a delight surpassed only when they saw heretics burn in public at an auto-da-fe. But Englishmen felt compassion when they saw venerable men, renowned for their learning and piety, go to their death joyfully as did the martyrs of the early Christian Church. The crowd prayed for them, and cheered and encouraged them in their agony, and the blood of these martyrs was fruitful seed.

From April, 1554, until October, 1555, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer remained in Oxford jail. Although they knew of the fearful burnings

The Oxford _    ^J    ,    . ...

Martyrs, from the previous February, m which per-

Ridiey and jghed some of their noblest friends and ' fellow-laborers, and though cut off from communication with each other, nothing daunted their spirits or made them inclined to submit to Rome. In September, 1555, Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London, and Hugh Latimer, whose unsparing and pithy sermons for righteousness and truth had wrought the English Scriptures into the national mind, were tried and condemned. The 16th of October they were led out to die. It is said Cranmer saw them at the stake from the roof of his prison. When the fiery trial came, Latimer bathed his hands in the flames and called to Ridley, “ Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as, I trust, shall never be put out.” Latimer died soon with little

The Reformation in England. 243

pain; but Ridley’s torture was protracted through a slow fire, until he, too, rendered his soul to God.

When Ridley and Latimer were condemned, Cranmer was cited to appear at Rome within eighty days. Of course such appearance was impossible, and not expected. The Roman Catholic    *

cotroversialists were much with him. They admired his gravity, his gentleness, and his learning. Until nearly the time of his degradation during two years and a half of imprisonment, his conduct had been admirable. There had been much in the delay, the suspense while so many others had been sacrificed, to try Cranmer’s soul; but he stood the test. “ His examinations, pleas, letters, writings, were models of controversy; they were firm, adroit, and learned. His calmness in disputation touched antagonists and drew tears from bystanders.” The archbishop seems to have thought that if he were degraded from his high office, he might be suffered to live as a simple layman. No doubt the Spanish controversialists who dealt with him, and in good faith, suggested or encouraged this opinion. He was degraded February 14, 1556. About this time he signed his first and second recantations. These were very brief. In the first he submitted to acts of Parliament restoring the Pope’s authority, and took “the Pope for chief head of the Church of England, so far as God’s laws and the customs of the realm will permit.” The second was only six lines in length, but was a complete submission without reservation. The third added a promise to use his influence to cause his friends to conform. A fourth declared that he “ believed all articles and all points of

244

The Christian Church.

the Christian religion as the Catholic Church doth believe.” These last two were taken to London and shown to Bonner. On February 24th the court replied that he should be publicly burned, though the letter was not sent until March 7, 1556. Meanwhile Cranmer was taken to the lodgings of Marshall, Dean of Christ Church College, and, amid congenial surroundings, plied with every motive to make a further recantation. To this we probably owe the third and fourth.

Then in prison, about March nth, when it was known that he must die, the fifth, an explicit recantation of all points in which he had rejected the Roman teaching, particularly in regard to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, written by the Spanish friar, John Garcina, was submitted to him. Cranmer signed it. There was no limit to the degradation the court proposed to inflict, or Cranmer had made possible, by his previous submissions.

A long recantation written by Cardinal Pole, from all internal evidence, whose malignity and shame causes the reader to blush and be indignant that any man could so humiliate another, and that one given to a cruel death, was presented to Cranmer and signed March 18th. No martyrdoms of the Inquisition make such an impression of deliberate inhumanity as this recantation. To kill the body is a little thing compared with the death of everything noble in the soul.

On March 21, 1556, Cranmer was taken from his prison and ignominy to the Church of St. Mary’s, Oxford, to hear his funeral sermon, and then to die. Dr. Cole had been in Oxford for some weeks preparing it at the command of the court. It was a cruel

The Reformation in England.

accusation; it showed why no mercy should be shown though the archbishop had recanted, and concluded with commending his soul to God, and saying the priests would sing mass for its repose. A Roman Catholic spectator describes Cranmer’s demeanor as “an image of sorrow, retaining ever a quiet and grave behavior, which increased the pity in men’s hearts.” Then, after the sermon, he desired the people to pray for him, and, after repeating the Lord’s Prayer, read a prayer which he had written, as beautiful and appropriate as any which ever came from his pen. Then he began an address to the people. First, he warned against loving the world; second, he exhorted to obedience to the queen and her husband; third, he exhorted to brotherly love; fourth, to the rich to be liberal in showing mercy. Then, having carried his audience with him in this most Christian discourse from one about to die, after repeating the Apostles’ Creed, he said: “And now I come to the great thing that troubleth my conscience more than any other thing that ever I said or did in my life, and that is the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth, which here now I renounce and refuse as things written with my hand contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and writ for fear of death, and to save my life if it might be; and that is all such bills as I have written or signed with mine own hand since my degradation ; wherein I have written many things untrue. And forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished; for if I may come to the fire, it shall be first burned. And as for the Pope, I refuse him, as Christ’s enemy and Antichrist, with all his

246

The Christian Church.

false doctrine.” Being here admonished of his recantation and dissembling, he said, “Alas, my Lord, I have been a man that all my life loved plainness, and never dissembled until now against the truth, which I am most sorry for.” He was not suffered to speak longer, but was hurried away to the place of execution.

A Roman Catholic spectator shall describe his death: “ Coming to the stake with a cheerful countenance and willing mind, he put off his gar-Execotion^{8 ments} with haste, and stood upright in his shirt; a Bachelor of Divinity named Eleye, with two Spanish Friars, labored to convert him to his former recantation. But when the friars saw his constancy, they said in Latin one to another, ‘ Let us go from him, for the devil is in him.’ But the Bachelor of Divinity was more earnest with him; unto whom he answered, that as concerning his recantation, he repented it right sore; because he knew it was against the truth, with other words more, whereupon the Lord Williams cried, ‘Make short, make short!’ . . . Fire being now put to him, he stretched out his right hand, and thrust it into the flame, and held it there in good space before the fire came to any other part of the body, when his hand was seen of every man sensibly burning, crying with a loud voice, ‘ This hand hath offended.’ As soon as the fire got up he was very soon dead, never stirring or crying all the while.”

So died Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, who wrought more for the Evangelical faith, in spite of his weakness (for had he been pardoned, he would not have recalled his recantations, and hence

The Reformation in England. 247

was no true martyr) than Thomas a Becket for the Church of Rome. Like Samson, dying, he pulled down all his adversaries built up in Mary’s reign.

Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, soon wearied of the persecution, and left it thenceforth to Bonner. He was old and sick, and died four days before Latimer and Ridley were burned at Oxford. Rdgn! Queen Mary sent “rattling letters” to the bishops and gentlemen to stir up the persecution. Bonner ontdid all the rest in his zeal to fulfill these orders, though probably he had little liking for the work. In all this business Pole played a shameful part. Cranmer had interceded with Henry VIII for More and Fisher. Pole, who had far more influence with Mary than Cranmer with the king, and who, if any man, might have stopped the executions, never once spoke of mercy. As Archbishop of Canterbury in Cranmer’s place, he did not personally assist at the burnings, but his officers at Canterbury and in his diocese kept up the fearful holocausts until the last, hoping thus to earn his favor, when one word from him would have stopped the proceedings. In London itself Bonner burned only forty-eight, while in little Canterbury forty-one suffered death at the stake. At Canterbury, November 10, 1558, three men and two women were burned to death. Pole had fallen into disgrace with the Pope for whom he had risked all.

The Spanish marriage on which Mary set her heart resulted in war against France and the Pope, and in the loss of Calais, which for two hundred years had been regarded as the brightest jewel in the English crown. Weary, disappointed, sick unto death, with life and work from which so much had been expected

248    The Christian Church.

turning to utter failure, lay both Mary and her kinsman, Cardinal Pole, while the last fires of martyrdom were lighted at Canterbury. Seven days after the queen was dead, and the next day the cardinal, and Roman Catholic England was forever a thing of the past.

There has seldom been a meaner, a crueler, or a more futile persecution. Men, women, and children Character ^{were n}°t o^ly burned to death, but others

of the were “beaten; they were starved; they Persecution. _were fl_ung j_nto dark, fetid dens, where^rot-

tin'g straw was their bed; their feet were fastened in the stocks, and their clothes were their only covering, while the wretches who died in their misery were flung out into the fields, where none might bury them.”

Thus was lengthened the splendid roll of England’s martyrs. Among them were five bishops, twenty-one clergymen, eight gentlemen, eighty-four artisans, one hundred farmers or laborers, fifty-five women, two boys, and two infants. We may not say that this persecution was due to the times. Contrast it with the treatment of the Roman Catholic clergy when Elizabeth came to the throne. In all England there lost their places for refusal to conform to the Reformed Church of England fourteen bishops, six abbots, eighty-nine of the collegiate clergy, and eighty parish priests. But one of these suffered any bodily harm; Bonner, the man of blood, remained in prison.

November 17, 1558, Queen Mary was dead, and her sister Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, was Queen of England. From that date England has been Evangelical. The religion of Henry’s reign died with

The Reformation in England. 249

him. The efforts to revive it in the last half of the nineteenth century have been as futile as they are sad. There have been few more striking contradictions in modern Church history than that of the greatest - of the Churches of the Reformation claiming to be the historic Church, yet seeking to create a tradition as unhistoric as any of the claims of Rome. The leaders of this movement have been conspicuous for their ignorance of history and their lack of the historic spirit. The facts of the origin of the Church of England have been most persistently and curiously perverted to show that the Reformation changed nothing but obedience to Rome; but the effort has been in vain. England, free, Evangelical, and Christian, remains the mightiest monument of the Reformation.

%ri Third.

THE COUNTER REFORMATION

AND

THE GENEVAN REFORM.

1540-1588.

THE COUNTER REFORMATION.

THE REFORMATION IN LATIN LANDS—OBSTACLES TO ITS TRIUMPH.

To the thoughtful reader the question often recurs, Why did not the Reformation have greater success in Latin lands; that is, in lands where the language of the people was derived from the Latin tongue? Or, to put it differently, Why did the Roman Catholic Church maintain its hold unshaken upon France, Italy, and Spain? The object of this chapter is to make plain the answer to this question. There were many contributing causes, but we trust the principle ones may be so clearly set forth as to leave no doubt as to the nature of the reply.

It must be remembered that at first all title of possession and authority of prescriptive right, all national resources and rule, all institutions of the Church, of charity, and of learning, were in the power and under the control of the Roman Catholics, and so they continued to be in Latin lands. With the Reformers all had to be created anew from a theology based on the Bible, to every form of polity and institution of the Church. It is not strange that, amid so much to make new and to fit to the needs of the new time, mistakes were made; the wonder is that they were so few. If we bear in mind that only in England, Scotland, and the Scandinavian countries was the Reformation carried out without rending the nation, and that the most powerful sovereigns, armies, and

253

254    The: Christian Church.

the most unlimited resources were on the side of the Pope and the Roman Catholic party, it will be seen that the wonder is not that the Reformation did not universally triumph in Western Christendom; on the contrary, the miracle and promise of modern history is that it was not crushed out at its birth.

A few general considerations will show why the teachings of the Reformers did not meet in these lands with that popular support which made them dominant in Northern Europe.

The attitude of these countries toward the papacy and the confessed abuses of the Papal Court was very different from that of the lands won by the

Attitude ^    ^    ,

Toward the Reformation. Upon Germany had come

Papacy and j-he heaviest of the fiscal oppressions of the

Its Abuses.    ,    .

Curia. - There was no head of the nation to resist its most extortionate demands. Germany, then a rich country, felt its wealth drained to Rome. All the patriotism of the people revolted at the abuses of the Papal See. How different all this seemed to an Italian! The Pope was always an Italian, the College of Cardinals always filled with a large majority of Italians. The officials of the Papal Court and household, of the Papal Administration, domestic and foreign, were Italians. The one Italian institution and sovereignty which commanded the respect of the world was the papacy. What if the abuses of the Papal Court drained to Rome, and squandered there the wealth of nations, who profited by it? Italians, of course. If Tetzel sold indulgences in Germany, for what purpose was it done? To build on Italian soil the most splendid Church in Christendom, and to make Rome more than ever a place of pilgrimage for

The Counter Reformation. 255

all nations. On patriotic grounds what Italian could feel about the papacy and the abuses of the Papal Court as did men of all creeds and opinions in the lands of the Reformation? It must also be borne in mind that France and Spain were strong centralized monarchies; that the Pope dealt directly with the king; and that ecclesiastical affairs were as much in the royal power in these countries as in Wolsey’s England. Hence, whatever abuse or oppression existed it could not be laid directly upon the Pope, but first upon the Royal Administration. The task of the papacy was simply to keep on good terms with the rulers; not always an easy one, all must admit. But there was in France and Spain no such popular indignation against the papacy as in Germany and England.

It would not be exact to say that the mind of the Latin peoples is not open to the influence of ideas. But it must be confessed that the dominant motive of their intellectual life is form.    ’ With them, ideas must be carried to their logical consequence, and to be effective must take form in a person or an institution. Institutions appeal to their imagination, especially if they reach back to the great days of Roman rule. The mightiest institution that they knew in its appeal to the past, to present influence, to future destiny, and to the daily usage of life, was the Mediaeval Church. In its direction and care it included every hour and change of life from the cradle to the grave. I11 its appeal to the veneration for the greatness of the past, to the imagination, and to the influence of those daily habits of life which become almost a part of man’s being, it was supreme.

256

The Christian Church.

That taken away, what was left? An awful void! They could conceive of nothing but itself to take its place. For them, if the Church is taken away, the Church of Rome, no Christianity is left. So it is today with races of the Latin tongue.

The same ideas were carried into the realm of the State. They had no room for liberty as a principle,

for liberty as a condition of life and action, The State. _ ...    ^ . _r    ,

for liberty as an effective force remodeling institutions and civilization. The dominant political idea in these countries has been, until the latter half of the nineteenth century, political absolutism like the Roman Caesardom, and to this tended more and more their political institutions. Liberty as known among the Northern peoples has not yet taken permanent shape among those of the Latin race. Hence the State had power over the thought and action of the individual unknown to the nations of Teutonic stock. Among them the sense of individual liberty and responsibility made the life of the State serve the needs of the individual, rather than the life of the individual serve the ends of the State. So the coercive efforts of the State in matters of religion were much more thorough and effective among those of the Latin race.

So in regard to the people. The common man had value in Germany; he belonged to the nation. The

House of Commons, supposed to represent

The People. ,    ,    \ ,

the people of England as contrasted with the king and nobility, w^as the strongest popular assembly in Europe. For these, and other reasons, the people counted far more in Northern Europe than in lands which derived their speech from Rome. In

The Counter Reformation.    257

those lands the class divisions were those of learning and spirit as well as rank. In all these lands, in this fateful century, there arose on either side of the great debate no son of the people who roused the nation as did Luther in Germany, Latimer in England, or John Knox in Scotland. There seemed scarcely the possibility of such solidarity of interest, belief, or influence pervading all classes of the people.

So in regard to the tradition which the Church claimed as its authority where reasonable and visible proof failed. This claim seemed very dif-

r    i -r •    • Tradition.

ierent to the Latin and to the Teutonic peoples. To the former the very tongue they spoke had been handed down to them through centuries. They used forms of speech, however modified, which were current as expressing the life and thought of a mighty and a ruling race centuries before the advent of our Lord. That impalpable something which institutions transmit as their authority and spirit seemed very real to them, while to the clearer-visioned sons of the North it seemed like the result of the life of the institutions, not the source of their being. In other words, the power and mystery of historic institutions and of the greatest of these institutions, the Church, had an influence unknown to men beyond the Alps.

So to them the world of art had an influence and meaning unknown to men in the lands of the Reformation. How great was that influence, and ^ how splendid were the creations of that spirit in the generation before the nailing of the Theses at Wittenberg, the chapter on the Renaissance makes evident. Was all this to be destroyed? The

17

258    The Christian Church.

Evangelical faith, for a century after the death of Luther, did little in architecture, painting, or sculpture. Its great artistic achievement has been in the poetry of the English and German tongues, the greatest in the modern world; and in music where Bach, Handel, and Mendelssohn have never been surpassed. But in Latin lands the Church had ever been the most constant and munificent patron of art, especially painting. Was all this to be discarded? The Reformers, except Luther, said, Yes. Zwingli tore the organs, as well as the images, out of the churches. The Scotch Reformers followed his example. The barrenness of the Dutch cathedrals makes one shudder, and the places of Puritan worship were monumental in their ugliness only.

Not that the extreme Evangelical opinion would banish art from the world. Milton is a striking proof to the contrary. It should also be remembered that the two men who have read best and deepest the human heart and life, and who have given to it the most powerful expression in their art, were of Protestant birth and training—Shakespeare in England, and Rembrandt in Holland.

These considerations will help us to understand why the Bible had no such hold on the people of

France, Italy, and Spain as in Northern

The Bible.    ^    . , , ,    ,

Europe. There was in these lands no such reading public, and the Roman Church took care that there should not be. The Reformers built upon the intelligence of the people, the Church of Rome on their ignorance. The centuries show infallibly which was the wiser. Imagine the value of the prohibition of the Council of Trent that the Bible should be read

The Counter Reformation.    259

only by those who had a license from the bishop in Scotland or Holland, or among the Puritans in Old or New England.

Then, for the Roman Catholics of the Latin speech, with their training and mode of thought, it was very difficult to test the Church and its sacraments, ordinances, and institutions, especially the papacy, by the Bible. A glance will show that it will be more difficult for them than for their Teutonic neighbors. Then, also, it was possible for them to accept false miracles and legends if they had beauty of sentiment or artistic form, if wholly void of truth, or rather without question of their truth.

The difference comes in sharp relief when we speak of that cardinal teaching of the Reformers, the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith. As it destroyed the foundation of Judaistical legalism then, so now it cut away the whole foundation of the Mediaeval Church. But if that should fall, what would be left? The Evangelical Christian said, Christ and his Gospel. This seemed poor and bare to men who lived in their senses rather than dealt with principles, and so had no unshaken belief in the prevailing might of truth.

As they could not believe that the principle of liberty could reform the State and society, so they could not believe that the principle of direct access to Almighty God, Creator of earth and heaven, without human mediator or guidance except the Word of his Son, could reform the Church and Christian civilization. This is but another proof that the future belongs to men and races who see and live for the invisible.

But these considerations do not prove that the

260    The Christian Church.

triumph of the Evangelical faith was impossible in Latin lands. They do show the difficulties it must overcome, and some modifications it must undergo. While critical of historic claims, it must have historic sense, both for the Bible and the Church. If it accents the one, it must also accent the other; and it must, like the early Church of the Catacombs, make room for art. So will art be ennobled, and so will be enriched Christian life and civilization. Nevertheless, with all these advantages, the Church of Rome must have lost its dominion in Southern as in Northern Europe, but for two instruments which it now used— the Inquisition and the Jesuits.

THE PAPACY, 1534-1559.

The pontificate of Clement VII, the most disastrous the Roman Church had known, closed in Sep-Paui hi tember, 1534. Two days later the dean of 1468. the College of Cardinals, Alessandro Far-i534=«549. _{nese> was} elected Pope, and took the title of Paul III. He owed his elevation to the cardinalate to his sister Giulia, the mistress of Pope Alexander VI. He was the father of an illegitimate son and daughter, whom he acknowledged. He was now sixty-six years of age, and experienced in politics and administration. He had the tastes of a scholar, the disposition of a prince, and was a man of the Renaissance. He is distinguished by certain liberality of view and elevation of character, as well as lack of profound religious feeling. This largeness of mind was shown in the beginning of his reign, when, like Abraham Lincoln in the choice of his Cabinet, the Pope chose into the College of Cardinals and for his

The Counter Reformation. 261

counselors the most distinguished men of the Church of his time, whether they were personally agreeable to him or not. This made him respected as the Med-icean Popes had never been. Paul III was successful in the main ends of his policy of maintaining a balance between France and Spain in such way as to guarantee the independence of the Papal States, and to secure to his son, Pietro Luigi Farnese, the principality of Parma. He was the last Pope thus to carve out a principality for his house. He made some grave mistakes, as when by the gift of a cardinal’s hat to Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, he hastened his execution. He failed in any efforts toward a reconciliation with Henry VIII, and his excommunication of the English king was without effect. He furnished Charles V with means to effect the overthrow of the Protestant princes in the Smalkald War; but, alarmed at the emperor s success, he withdrew his aid and adjourned the Council of Trent. He failed to support Contarini in his efforts toward a reunion at Regensburg. His brief against slavery is to his lasting honor.

Against his tastes and will, his reign is remarkable as the beginning of the Counter Reformation. He made Caraffa cardinal; he confirmed the order of the Jesuits; he sanctioned the renewed life and activity of the Inquisition; he called, if he suspended, the Council of Trent. Paul III had gifts of administration which made him beloved in the Papal States as few Popes have been. The stain upon his reign and character was his dominating affection for his most unworthy son, Pietro Luigi. The ingratitude of his grandsons brought on a fit of anger which caused his death, November 10, 1549.

262

The Christian Church.

Gian Maria del Monte was made cardinal by Paul III in 1536. He employed him as papal legate on important missions. He was elected Pope January, 1550. He had ever been a friend of the Emperor Charles V. He entered into a league against the emperor’s enemies, and, at his request, reconvened the Council of Trent. The overthrow of Charles V by Maurice of Saxony changed all his plans. Julius adjourned the Council, made peace with his enemies, and henceforth devoted himself to enjoying his position as head of papal Christendom. His beautiful villa, Papa Giulia, is not only an index of his character, but the best memorial of his reign. Of course he confirmed the Jesuits, who were his most earnest supporters. He died in his sixty-eighth year, in 1555.

Julius was succeeded by Marcello Cervini, who took the title of Marcellus II. He had in his blameless life been the example of that reform ^Mar|^C®”“^{s I!}* he would see prevail in the Church. In twenty-two days his pontificate was ended

by death.

The new Conclave ended May 23, 1555, in the election of Giovanni Pietro Caraffa, who took the title of Paul IV. Caraffa was of a noble Neapoli^tan family, the nephew of a cardinal, and

*555 *55y*

had been a page in the court of Alexander VI. He had been nuncio in England and Spain, and held both a bishopric and the Archbishopric of Brindisi. In 1524 he renounced all his offices and lived on the Pincian Hill, near the present Villa de Medici, as a member and real founder of the order of Theatines, named from Gaetano Thene. It was an aristocratic

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order, without particular dress, and which did not beg for alms, but was given to a life of discipline and contemplation. It sought to reform the Church byausterity of life in the priesthood, enforcement of discipline among the people, and a strict conservation of the doctrine of the Church and the claims of the Papal See. It became a nursery for bishops. After twelve years of monastic seclusion he was called to the Councils of Paul III as cardinal, in 1536. The chief aim of his life now was to carry out his disciplinary reform without change of doctrine. He contributed to this end in the first sessions of the Council of Trent in securing by his fiery and impetuous eloquence the adoption of doctrinal definitions which precluded any accommodations with the German Reformers.

The chief field of his activity, however, was the Inquisition. The Bull establishing the Roman Inquisition under a congregation of cardinals was granted in 1542. Cardinal Caraffa had suggested it, and to him was intrusted the carrying on of the work, into which he threw all the ardor and energies of his being. His nature, austere, vehement, and pitiless, fitted him for the task.

Thus in his eightieth year this reformer became Pope. In a long lifetime he had never learned moderation. He hated more than he loved, as befitted an inquisitor. He hated supremely, with the accumulated hatred of a long lifetime, the Evangelical Reformation and all its works, and the Spanish dominion in his native Italy.

At first Paul appointed a congregation for the reformation of the Church, consisting of three classes, in each of which were eight cardinals, fifteen prelates,

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and fifty men of learning. But the second impulse of hatred now became dominant. Paul entered into a confederacy with all the enemies of Spain and the emperor. A French army again crossed the Alps, reached Rome, and sought the conquest of Naples. But they were unsuccessful. The battle of San Quentin made necessary their recall to France, and the Pope was left alone to his enemies. The Duke of Alva, Philip’s general, was considerate, or Rome would have seen a second sack. All the Pope’s plans failed, and he had to resign himself to a peace with Spain, in September, 1557.

To carry on the war against Spain the Pope not only aided powerfully the Evangelical powers, but raised up his worthless nephews to power as his confidants and rulers in the Papal States. Carlo was made cardinal, and had charge of all the details of his administration. Their personal charcter and rule were detestable. By January 1, 1559, the Pope became aware of their acts and the shame they had brought upon him. In a Consistory held January 27, 1559, he banished all from Rome, except one grandnephew, whom he kept by his side, and forbade ever to mention the name of his family.

Paul now resumed his plans for reform with even more than his old impetuosity and vigor. He ruled without nephews or favorites, the first Pope so to rule in many ages. All secular offices were changed, begging was forbidden, and alms for masses also. Many of the profitable abuses of the Curia were abolished, and immodest pictures were banished from the churches. Paul sought to restore the splendor of worship and the strictness of clerical discipline, but,

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above all, to make effective the Inquisition. Some of the most prominent cardinals were thrown into prison.

Yet few people have more advanced the cause of Evangelical Reform. His insistence on the extreme claims of the mediaeval papacy, and the denial of the right of Charles V to abdicate the throne, or of Ferdinand to occupy it without his consent, alienated the Austrian imperial house. The quarrel with Cardinal Pole and the withdrawal of the legatine dignity, and war with Spain and England, did all that it was possible for him to undertake against the Roman Catholic restoration of Queen Mary. His abrupt requirement of submission from Elizabeth, in reply to a courteous letter from her on her accession, made it evident that upon the Evangelicals, and upon the Protestants alone, could she rely. At his death, August 18, 1559, few persons had been so hated by the nobility and the people of Rome, and few had made in their polity and reign such a glaring failure as this reforming Pope.

THE PAPACY, 1559-1590.

Of very different character was the new Pope elected December 28, 1559, who took the name of Pius IV. This Pope, Giovanni Angelo Medici, was born in Milan of a poor family, not related to the Medici of Florence, in the last year of the fifteenth century. His elder brother, Giangiacomo took to arms. He was hired to kill a member of the Visconti family by the authorities of Milan. They then wished to be rid of the assassin, and sent him with a letter to the commandant of the castle of Mus, on Lake Como. The soldier

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was suspicious, and opened and read the letter. He found that it commanded his instant death. At once he decided on his course. Gathering a band about him, with the letter he procured admission into the castle, which he at once made his own, and where he established his headquarters as an independent and freebooting prince. Later he entered the imperial service, was chief of artillery in the Smalkaldic War, and became Lord of Sienna. Brave, shrewd, and ever successful, he was unscrupulous and pitiless. He was said to have caused the death of five thousand peasants.

The rise of the elder brother advanced Angelo, who acquired reputation as a jurist. He came in favor with Paul III, and when his brother married a sister to the wife of the Pope’s son, the younger brother was made a cardinal. Cardinal Medici was easy, affable, and gracious in his manners, and no favorite with Paul IV. A man of the world, he understood that give and take, moderation and concession, are the necessity of modern social and political intercourse.

One of the first acts of his reign was to put to trial and execute the Caraffas, nephews of Paul IV. Pius had no liking for the Inquisition, but allowed it to go on its course. He sought peace, and did not wish war, even with the Evangelical States. Far from seeking, like Paul IV, to bow the temporal powers to the Roman See, he frankly said that the Papal See could stand only with their support.

After visiting so fearful punishment on the nephews of his predecessor, he could hardly, as had long been papal custom, favor his own. But few Popes owed so much to a nephew as did Pius IV, for that nephew

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was Charles Borromeo. He was not only saintly in character and earnest in life, but most accessible and assiduous in the business of the Papal Administration. The greatest achievement of his rule was due to the Pope’s diplomatic ability. The Council of Trent he brought to conclusion in such a manner that, despite all the confessed abuses of the papacy and the Papal Court, none of these w⁷ere touched; but the power and prerogative of the Pope, instead of being diminished, were sensibly increased. This new conception of the papal office culminated in the dogma of Infallibility in 1870. The limitations of the papal power have been real, and have increased with each century, but they have come from the prevalence of Evangelical opinions pervading the civilization of the world, and from no effort at reform from w^Tithin. Pius was regarded as too easy in his manner for the strict Roman Catholic party, and a monkish fanatic attempted his life in 1565. The 9th of December of that year he died, having done more than any Pope of that century to settle the contention and fix the faith of the Roman Catholic w^Torld.

Papal history abounds in contrasts. The safety of the papacy lies in the fact that the new Pope is generally, in character and policy, the opposite of his predecessor. Thus the necessary adjustments to the life of the world can be best realized, or the internal forces of the organization find best expression. But there can hardly be conceived a greater contrast than between the easy, courteous man of the w^orld, who seldom attended a sitting of a congregation of the Inquisition, and w⁷ho said he was no theologian, and his successor, Michele Ghisleri,

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who took the name of Pius V on his election, January 7, 1565. The new occupant of the papal chair was born in 1504, near Milan, of a poor family, and at fourteen entered the Dominican order. He studied the scholastic theology, and taught at Pavia for sixteen years; also he proved himself a good administrator of monasteries which came under his care. But he chiefly distinguished himself for his austere and saintly mode of life and for his inflexible rigor as an inquisitor. This work he began at Como before 1550. The Conte della Trinita having threatened to throw him into a well, the undaunted Dominican replied, “As to that, it shall be as God pleases.” He was called to Rome to direct the work of the Inquisition. He attracted the notice of Cardinal Caraffa, and when the latter became Pope he made Ghisleri cardinal and supreme inquisitor, a position he held under Pius IV.

As Pope he lived like a monk, in all the rigor of fasting and coarse clothing. In his religious life he was sincere and fervent, and felt the papacy to be a hindrance to his spiritual advancement. Strictly truthful himself, he never forgave a lie in another.

In Pius V was incarnated the Roman Catholic reaction against the Reformation. Strict in his own life, by discipline he reformed the Curia, and reduced its expenses. An entire change was caused by him in the outward manners and demeanor of the Papal Court and household, and even of the city of Rome. All alienations of Church property in the Papal States was forbidden. Bishops were required to reside in their sees, and priests in their parishes. His energies were given to the Inquisition. Every physician was required to give notice if a patient had been sick three

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days and had not confessed. The Inquisition was extended over Florence and Venice, and intensified in Spain and Portugal. Carnesschi was brought to Rome by the Inquisition and burned. In April, 1570, he excommunicated Queen Elizabeth, but it did not lessen her authority or shorten her days. Pius approved of Alva’s terrible slaughter in the Netherlands, and sent to Count Santafiore in France the ferocious command to “ take no Huguenots prisoners, but instantly to kill every one who fell into his hands.”

Pius labored unceasingly to form a league against the Turks, who were then dominating the waters of the Mediterranean. His efforts were crowned with success, and the battle of Lepanto, 1571, was the most disastrous check yet received by the Ottoman arms, and the cause of exultant rejoicing at Rome. Less than a year later, May 1, 1572, his work and reign were ended.

When, in the Sistine Chapel of Sta. Maria Mag-giore, at Rome, we look upon the narrow countenance and inflexible feature of this terrible inquisitor, who never mitigated a punishment, but ever wished it might be greater, and recollect that he is the only saint among the modern Popes, we feel an immense compassion for a Christian Church bound to such ideals, and whose history is stained with attempts to realize them.

Ugo Buoncompagni was born at Bologna and trained as a jurist. He was elected Pope in the seventy-first year of his age, and took the title of Gregory XIII. Under Paul III he came ^Gregory_R^x,n‘

_#    *57²“’^|5oS.

to Rome, and was m administrative offices

until Pius IV made him cardinal. He had an illegiti

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mate son whom he sought to advance. Naturally lax rather than devout, he could not resist the pressure of the time, and became a fanatical persecutor and advocate of extreme papal claims. The civil year having affected the holding of the Church feasts in their proper time, Gregory instituted a commission to reform the calendar, and proclaimed the results of their work in March, 1582. For this, civilization owes him a debt. Gregory was conscious of his personal importance and of the value of the aims he sought, but had no clear conception of the means required to realize them. He quarreled with the neighboring States. Then he sought to fill the papal treasury by confiscations based upon flaws in ancient titles to estates. This raised against him the landed nobility. Bands of successful banditti sprang up, who thoroughly disorganized the government and reduced to anarchy the rule of the Papal States. History can never forget that it was Gregory XIII who struck a commemorative medal rejoicing in the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s. Overborne and wearied with his task, Gregory died April 10, 1585.

The period closes with the most remarkable Pope since Leo X. Felix Peretti was born of poor parents in the March of Ancona, at Grottomarina, is8^-^U|5oo D^ecetnber, 1521, In boyhood he was put to watching fruit-trees and tending swine. Fortunately for him, an uncle was a Franciscan friar. He was at length persuaded to pay the petty fee for the boy’s tuition. At twelve years of age Felix entered the Franciscan order. Trained with the strictest discipline, he went through the universities of Ferrara

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and Bologna. He became noted for his skill in dialectics and famous as a preacher. In 1552, whiie Lenten preacher at Rome, he attracted the attention of Ghis-leri, afterward Pius V, who steadily favored him. Pope Pius made him vicar-general of the Franciscans, and cardinal in 1570. In 1574 a contemporary described him as learned and prudent, but also as crafty and malignant.

He was elected Pope, April 24, 1585, and assumed the title of Sixtus V. With this Franciscan came to the papal throne a man of the most original genius joined with great qualities as an administrator and ruler, which made him the equal of the great sovereigns of a great century. He was no humanist, like Julius II; but in the largeness of his plans and in his successful execution of them he reminds us more of Julius than of any predecessor. Imperious by nature and inflexible of purpose, he had the moderation yet strength of character which made him a great ruler. In his opponents, even, he admired great qualities. He did not repress his admiration for Queen Elizabeth; he sought, against the influence of Spain, reconciliation with Henry IV of France. First he devoted himself to the extirpation of the banditti, which had made government impossible in the Papal States. This he did with inflexible rigor, and not a little cruelty, but with a knowledge of Italian character which secured him complete success.

Even more important were the works which he undertook for the city of Rome. An abundant supply of water was brought, through an aqueduct twenty-two miles long, to the long uninhabited but now finest

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and healthiest part of Rome. He completed the cupola of St. Peter’s, and caused the obelisk to be raised in the piazza in front of the basilica.

In the brief years of his reign he succeeded in amassing an immense treasure for those times, which undoubtedly increased materially respect for the Papal See and its power in the struggle with the now organized and militant forces of the Reformation. But this was done both at the expense of a heavily-burdened population, and the creation and confirmation of abuses which permanently weakened the Papal Government. The reign of this Pope, great even in defects, ended August 27,1590.

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.

Three agencies especially contributed to the success of the Counter Reformation—the Council of Trent, the Inquisition, and the order of the Jesuits. We will consider them consecutively.

The convening of a General Council of the Church was an object of desire to Luther and to the German princes and Estates of the Evangelical party before 1530. To such a Council Luther had appealed, and for such a Council the members of the Reichstag who favored his opinions had petitioned the emperor. It is true that they added a free General Council on German soil, and hence not under papal dictation. On the other hand, no Pope was anxious for a repetition of the experience of the papacy connected with the Councils of Constance and Basel. The Italian prelates dreaded a Council as much as the Pope, as they feared that it might put an end to their predominance in the Roman Catholic Church, and was

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sure to cut off abuses by which they profited. A Council had been a shape of terror to Clement VII. He had striven to avert it by all the resources of his tortuous diplomacy. Paul III had no greater affection for such a gathering of Christian bishops and theologians. He had only consented to it on the promise of Charles to subject Germany to the authority of the Pope. Paul called the Council to meet at Trent, March 15, 1545. Its first session, however, was not held until January 7, 1546. As the French, German, and Spanish bishops and ambassadors formed a coalition which the Italians feared they could not manage, and as the Pope was alarmed at the increasing power of the emperor through the progress of the Smalkald War, the Council was adjourned from Trent, March 11, 1547.

In these sessions, instead of proceeding to the reform of notorious abuses, the Council took up the definition of doctrines. They then so treated of the main points of dispute as to shut out the cardinal doctrines of the Reformation, the use of the Scriptures, and justification by faith. They decided that the tradition of the Church is to be received and venerated equally with the Scriptures; also that the books of the Apocrypha are part of the Scriptural canon. They declared that the Latin translation, or the Vulgate, should be the sole standard in discussions of doctrine, thus excluding the Greek and Hebrew originals. The Council forbade the interpretation of the Scriptures contrary to the sense received by the Church, or even contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers. The Council forbade any one to read any edition of the Bible without a license from the bishop. This, of 18

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course, ended any use of the Scriptures in the tongue of the people and all exercise of private judgment based thereon.

The doctrine of justification was also taken up and defined. The Jesuists, Salmeron and Lainez, with the Theatine Cardinal Caraffa, vigorously opposed the cardinal doctrine of the Reformers, justification by faith, which had been favored by More, Pole, and Contarini. The Council distinguished between a previous justification dependent upon the merits of Christ, and a subsequent justification worked out by our own righteousness, dependent on the grace imputed to and indwelling in us, so that “man goes forward from virtue to virtue, and becomes renewed from day to day ; whilst he walks by the commandment of God and the Church, he grows by the help of faith through good works, in the righteousness obtained through grace of Christ, and becomes more and more justified.” This is, of course, to give up the certain present acceptance with God on account of faith in Christ our Lord, and to make all depend on the Church and our good works as a condition to justification. The Evangelical faith is that good works are not a condition, but the fruit, of justification.

After the suspension of Paul III, the Council was not resumed at Trent until May i, 1551, and again suspended April 28, 1552. At these sessions of the Council the seven sacraments w^ere asserted and transubstantiation was affirmed. The giving of the cup to the laity was declared unnecessary, not prohibited, and the teachings of Luther and Zwingli in regard to the Eucharist were pointedly condemned.

The Council was then suspended for ten years.

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The success of the Protestants in forming a consolidated body in the League of Smalkald, and afterward in securing legal recognition in the empire, had cooled any desire they had earlier entertained for a Council. The papal legates presiding, and alone having power to present any matter to the Council, and the Italian majority always at their command, made it impossible to hope for anything from its deliberations. The definitions it had already made shut out all hope of an accommodation or of any concessions. Hence to the reformed theologians and rulers the fate of the Council was a matter of indifference.

It was not so with Roman Catholic Christendom. In all controversies the Roman Catholic party had suffered, because whatever doctrines they had to defend or proofs to advance were so diffused in the decrees of many Councils, writings of the fathers and schoolmen, and decretals of the Popes, that they were at a great disadvantage compared with the leaders of Reform, whose main doctrines of the sufficiency of the Scriptures, justification by faith, and predestination, could be presented briefly and cogently, and must be specifically met. The Roman Catholics needed some statement of belief, full, concise, and authoritative, so as to be both understood and fitted for aggressive use. Hence Pius IV was sincere in seeking a reunion of the Council and the conclusion of its labors. With great difficulty this was accomplished and the last stage of its sessions was from January 18, 1562, to December 4, 1563.

Though there was no longer any thought of a reconciliation with the adherents of the Reformation, there were still the Roman Catholic rulers to satisfy, and

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their terms were far from acceptable. The Emperor Ferdinand said: “ The Pope, following the example of Christ, should humble himself, and submit to a reform in his own person, his state, and his Curia. The Council must reform the appointment of cardinals as well as the Conclave.” He proposed no less limitation of the papal power than the revival of the resolution of the Council of Constance. He also demanded the cup for the laity, marriage for the priests, and remission of fasts; also the reform of the monasteries “ that their great wealth might no longer be expended in so profligate a manner.” Guise, the Cardinal of Lorraine, presented the demands of the French nation. The cup should be given to the laity, the sacraments should be administered in the mother tongue, the mass should be accompanied with preaching and instruction, and Psalms should be sung in the congregation in French. It was also demanded that the Conciliar decrees of Basel should be reaffirmed, that the Pope is subordinate to the Council.

In these demands the Germans and the French were opposed by the Spaniards and Italians, the latter outnumbering all others combined. The papal legates presided, and nothing could be proposed to the Council but by them. Yet even thus the dissension was so great that there was no hope of agreement among the prelates, and the failure of the Council was imminent. In this dilemma the Pope sent to preside at Trent a most accomplished diplomatist. By diplomacy Cardinal Morone accomplished what was impossible to the Council itself. He left the Council and went to Innspruck, and won over the Emperor Ferdinand. He made concessions in regard to nonessentials.

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The legate showed the danger of granting Conciliar action on some of his requests, and promised a thorough reform by the Pope according to a scheme which he presented. Thus he saved the entire hierarchy, including the Pope and liis court, from any limitations or reform by the action of the Council. The same measures were taken with the courts of France and Spain. In this manner the course and conclusion of the Council were determined by these representatives of the Pope and three Roman Catholic sovereigns, and not by the Council itself.

As a Council to reform the Church, the Council of Trent was an utter failure. Twenty years of labor had produced a ridiculously small result. The abuses of the papacy and the Papal Court, which were an abomination in Roman Catholic as well as Kvangelical lands, were untouched. Doctrine had been sharpened to exclude and anathematize the faith of the Reformation and its followers. The sale of indulgences by licensed vendors was abolished; indulgences were not. Residence was required of bishops and priests in their dioceses and parishes. Episcopal seminaries were required to be established for the training of the clergy. On the other hand, the worship was to be ever in the Latin tongue; the Bible was forbidden to the people. The celibacy of the clergy and the exclusion of the cup from the laity were insisted upon. These were the net results of the Council of Trent. There is no doubt the Council greatly aided the Counter Reformation by giving them a definite body of doctrine to assert and defend. It supplied the needed weapon for the revived and aggressive spirit of the Roman Catholic reaction.

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But the Council of Trent did more. Any one visiting the church at Trent in which its sessions were Trent a ^eld can not but be impressed with the Council of small dimensions of the place. It brings Churchand f°^rcibly to mind the fact that it opened with not Ecu- an attendance of twenty-six bishops, that menicai.    _averag_e attendance was less than one

hundred, and the largest number at any time was two hundred and seventy. This is called by Rome an Ecumenical Council. It is a contradiction in terms. Among all the assembled legates, archbishops, bishops, and generals of orders, are counted a single Englishman—or, counting Cardinal Pole, two—as many Germans, and half a dozen from Sclavonic lands. Nothing can more vividly show that this was a Latin Council for the Church in Latin lands. The future belongs to the Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic, Scandinavian, and Sclavonic races. In the Church of the future they will have the representation due to their importance in a world embracing Christian civilization. They were practically unrepresented at Trent, where the Church of Western Christendom was made the Church of the Latin peoples. To them, for political reasons, have been added the Celts of Ireland, the Sclavs of Poland and Austria, and a fraction of the German race; but the government of the Church has since been what it was made at Trent. Such as it was then made—a Latin Church, with a Latin Bible, and worship in the Latin tongue, for people of the Latin race, and governed always by them—such it has been since, and such it must be, until, when truly reformed, it may be again Ecumenical and Catholic.

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THE INQUISITION.

The rise and work of the Inquisition and the inquisitorial process have been clearly stated in the second volume of this work. At the opening of the Reformation this bloody and inhuman tribunal had lost most of its vigor, except in Spain. Here it showed its malignant might in beginning a course of three hundred years of infamy under Torquemada, who died in 1498. The motive was, first, the filling of the royal coffers with the riches of the Jews who had professed Christianity; second, the confirmation of the royal authority; and, third, the satisfaction of the populace against a rich and hated class in the nation. Eight hundred thousand Jews who would not make the change of religion were banished in 1492, most of whom miserably perished. Before the death of Torquemada he had caused eight thousand to be burned to death. In the city of Seville, from 1480 to 1520, over four thousand victims of the Inquisition were burned, and over thirty thousand were punished with prison, galleys, or public infamy. In a single auto da fe in Toledo, in 1501, sixty-seven women were burned to death. The fate of the Moriscos, or converted Moors, was not less pitiable.

One day, when Paul III asked Cardinal Caraffa, afterward Paul IV, the remedy for the evils affecting the Church, Caraffa answered that a thoroughly searching Inquisition was the only effective one. This view was confirmed by a Spanish cardinal who was present. The Dominican Caraffa revived the old processes of torment, torture, and flame in Italy. He refounded

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the Inquisition in the Roman Catholic Church. By a Bull published July 21, 1542, six cardinals were appointed inquisitors general. They could delegate their authority to whom they chose, and in such places as they chose, and were not subject to any other courts. All of every rank were under their authority. The suspected were at once imprisoned, and those condemned lost life and property. They could sentence whom they would, but only the Pope could pardon. Cardinal Caraffa was the first president of this congregation of the Inquisition, and he was its soul. These are some rules which he laid down for his guidance: (1) When the faith is in question, there must be no delay, but at the slightest suspicion, rigorous measures must be resorted to with all speed; (2) No consideration is to be shown to any prince or prelate, however high his station; (3) Extreme severity is rather to be exercised against those who attempt to shield themselves under the protection of any potentate; only he who makes plenary confession shall be treated with gentleness and fatherly compassion; (4) No man must debase himself by showing toleration toward heretics of any kind, above all toward Calvinists.

There is, of course, no mercy except to those who confess and submit. All books were under the censure of the Inquisition; none could be printed without its permission. The civil power gave effect to the sentence of the Inquisition. The Roman Inquisition did not favor public execution as a rule, though, February 18, 1582, seventeen were burned in a slow fire. They rather preferred imprisonment, and few came out of the prisons .of the Inquisition alive.

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One devilish peculiarity of the Roman Inquisition, not seldom used, was the walling up of the prisoner. Placing him in a narrow cell, with only a small opening through which bread and water could be brought to him, he was left there until insanity and death came to his release.

In Rome died Archbishop Carranza, the highest ecclesiastic in Spain, after eighteen years of imprisonment. In Rome were martyred Aonio Paleario, Pietro Carnesecchi, and Giordano Bruno. The Inquisition struck sudden, certain, and everywhere. Cardinal Mo-rone, who afterward brought to a successful conclusion the Council of Trent, was thrown into its dungeons. The Evangelical Renata, Duchess of Ferrara, the sister of the king of France, bowed under its terror, the charges being brought by her own husband. “Almost the whole of the order of Franciscans were compelled to a recantation.” The literary circles and academies which had been the ornaments of Italian society were broken up.

Most inhuman of all was the teaching of Pius V that every one was under moral and legal obligation to report the slightest word or act which might savor of heresy. That is, every good Roman Catholic must be an agent of the Holy Office. Just before his death, Pius V thought the city of Faenza was infected with Evangelical opinions. He planned to destroy it utterly and carry off its inhabitants, and only his decease preserved the city.

No wonder that, in this eager zeal for persecution, the Spanish Inquisition, with all its atrocities, commanded the warmest praises of the Popes and the highest encomiums of the Jesuits. By the people the

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Inquisition was feared and hated, as was shown when, on the death of Paul IV, its prisons in Rome were destroyed and seventy inmates were set free. Lands where the Reformation triumphed have had their peculiar troubles. They have known the work of fanatical zealots and their excesses in Church and State. They have overcome these, and their peoples have grown stronger and wiser in the struggle. But from one abominable curse they have been free. The Inquisition has never been established among them. Its inhuman processes, dungeons, tortures, and acts of faith have never defiled the soil of a Protestant land.

Its censure, which destroyed the literary life and scientific zeal of Italy and Spain, never paralyzed the literature of England or Scotland, of Germany or America.

This peculiarly Latin product of the Latin Church found scope for itself only in Latin lands. With the overthrow of Spain it died in the Netherlands. Its stay in France was of short duration. For two hundred years it was dominant in Italy, and there its policy of terror was successful. It wrought its wicked work in Spain and Spanish America; so in the Indies, East and West alike, under Portugal and Spain. Many causes contributed to that decline in material power and civilization in the Spanish and Italian lands which marked the two and a half centuries after 1700; but nothing perhaps so weakened the character, and destroyed at once the intelligence and virility of the people, as the Inquisition of the Church of Rome. A nation or a people which would submit to its rule is unfit to rule itself or others. It has written its abdication from any leading place in the rule or civilization of the world.

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THE JESUITS.

More than any other agency the Jesuits furthered the Counter Reformation, and gave the Roman Catholic Church the shape it has borne the last three centuries. The Jesuits caused the Council of Trent to pronounce so definitely and decidedly against the Evangelical Reformation. They promoted and rejoiced in the Inquisition and its cruelest works. They brought under their control the educational training and confessional confidence and discipline of the sovereigns, nobility, and higher classes of Roman Catholic Europe. They mixed in all diplomatic affairs, and were the strongest influence at the Papal Court. Their missionaries went to the ends of the earth, and their confidential “Relations” and secret espionage gave them the control of the head of the Church of Rome, and made them the most feared and hated of the enemies of the Reformation.

The founder of this order was Don Inigo Recalde de Loyola, who was born at the ancestral castle of Loyola, one mile from Azpeitia, in the province of Guipuzcoa, Spain, in 1491. His Loyola⁵ father was of the chiefest nobility, and had the right to be summoned, by personal writ only, to the court of the king. He was the youngest of a family of thirteen children, five daughters and eight sons. His parents, Beltran and Mariana de Loyola, were pious, and his older brothers took military service with the king.

From early boyhood Ignatius served as a page at the court of Ferdinand the Catholic, the husband of Queen Isabella, the patroness of Columbus. He was

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trained in all the knightly exercises of his time, and afterward became an officer in the army of the king of Spain. As such he served in the defense of Pampe-luna when besieged by the French in 1521. While in the discharge of his duties he was seriously wounded and made lame for life. All the possibilities and ambitions of a high career in the army and at court faded from his vision. In his sickness he read the romances of chivalry and the lives of the saints. He determined, upon his recovery, to renounce the world and serve as a chevalier of the Lord Jesus Christ. In this calling he would subdue himself through mortification of the flesh, and, if possible, would make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. When sufficiently recovered to travel, revealing his intentions to none of his family, he left his parental home. Ignatius Loyola was now thirty years old. His former course of life was closed to him, and he was to find his life work in another.

Ignatius, filled with these new resolves, now sought the famous shrine of the Virgin at Monteserrat, not far from Barcelona. While on his way thither he met a Moorish Christian; that is, one of Moorish descent who had been forced to profess Christianity. The newly-converted Christian, in conversation with the cavalier, spoke contemptuously of the Virgin Mary. This aroused the deepest hate in Ignatius. He tells us that, with characteristic self-control, he heard him quietly, and then considered whether he should ride after him and kill him for his blasphemy. Finally he left it to the mule on which he was riding to decide. The mule turned the other way, and thus decided against murder, and kept St. Ignatius from assassina-

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tion in honor of the Holy Virgin. What a picture of the man and of his time! What cool deliberation, what sincere and unscrupulous zeal!

Ignatius came to Monteserrat, and on the altar of the Virgin hung up his weapons. Here he kept vigil, standing or kneeling the whole night through, March 25, 1522. The next day he gave away his knightly attire to the first beggar he met, and took up his residence in the Dominican monastery of Manresa, nine miles away.

At Manresa began to be formed the new Ignatius. He gave himself to the strictest ascetic exercises, and passed through the severest spiritual struggles. He lived on bread and water, slept on the ground, and neglected his hair and beard. In his narrow cell he prayed seven hours each day, and scourged himself three times each night. Emaciated and weakened by his mortifications, finding no peace, he came to such desperation that he often started to kill himself by leaping from the window.

He confessed his sins to the very utmost, and each detailed confession raised new doubts. Finally he woke as from a sleep. He made the resolution at one stroke to erase all remembrance of his former life, and never again to mention in his confession aught that had occurred previous to this time. From that moment he was free from remorse, and lived in the conviction that the Lord had pardoned his sins according to his tender mercy. He closes his account of his experience with these words: “Thus God dealt with me as a teacher with scholars; for that it was God, of that I will not doubt.”

Loyola, like Luther fifteen years earlier, found that

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mortifying the flesh did not bring peace to his soul. To both the wounded conscience found rest only in the free grace and tender mercy of Almighty God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Would that at Man-resa some Staupitz might have directed the ignorant but sincere and devoted Spanish penitent to the gospel of the glory and the grace of God ! How different might have been the history of the world!

Ignatius never sought the Scriptures as the source of truth or of spiritual illumination. He was fully possessed of the mediaeval ideal and teaching of the Church as containing in herself the full supply for all needs of the Christian soul or of the Christian people. To him the Pope summed up and was the representative of all the power and blessing of the Church which alone ministered salvation to men.

Instead of searching the written Word, Ignatius drank deeply of the Spanish Mysticism of his time. He had visions and ecstasies; visions not only of our Lord, but of the arch-fiend. These confirmed his faith, but he ruled them with a conscious self-determination. From henceforth it was a maxim with him that all emotions must be subject to the will. Thus he led Mysticism forth to an active life.

At Manresa, in 1522, he determined to form a military company under the leadership of our Lord for the defense and to promote the advantage of the Roman Catholic Church. It was fourteen years before the clearly-conceived idea found realization. But Ignatius was one who well knew how to labor and to wait. Here, also, he began those “Spiritual Exercises” which were practically completed at Paris, and which became the foundation as well as the portal

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of his order. They received the papal confirmation in 1548.

The long-continued austerities of Ignatius brought on illness. After his recovery he started on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He was at Rome on Palm Sunday, 1523. The Pope was Hadrian VI. It is needless to say Rome made upon him a different impression than upon Luther. From Rome he journeyed to Venice. He slept in the piazza of San Marco, and found favor with a ship captain, who gave him a free passage. Leaving Venice in July, he arrived at Joppa the last day of August, and five days later he was in Jerusalem. He spent a few months in Palestine, but was forbidden by the Church authorities to stay longer.

In January, 1524, he was again at Venice, begging his way after his return as upon the voyage. Ignatius was now thirty-three years of age, and made up his mind that he must have an education for his work. The life and influence of a beggar saint were not to his taste. This was the turning point in his career; and few among the sons of men ever set themselves with equal resolution and fortitude to such a task.

Ignatius returned to Barcelona, and there for two years (1524-1526) devoted himself to acquiring the rudiments of Latin. Here, also his old _TheEduca_ enemy dyspepsia tormented him, and here tionof he first read Thomas a Kempis. Thence ^!2^natlU8* he went to the University of Alcala, where he begged his bread from door to door. At Alcala he was arrested on suspicion of heresy, and spent four months in the episcopal prison of Toledo. Afterward he was imprisoned at Alcala for two months on the same charge, but was not only released, but insisted on re

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ceiving a paper at each place attesting that he was sound in the faith. At Alcala he made the acquaintance of influential women, one of whom was Leonora Mascaregna, a lady of the imperial court and governess to the motherless Philip II. These aided him in his plans. Leaving Alcala, he went to the University of Salamanca, where he spent the next two years (1527, 1528). He found that he had been so badly taught that he could never acquire a mastery of the Latin language—which was the language of the Church and of all learned, diplomatic, or polite intercourse—without beginning again at the very rudiments. This he did, though he was now thirty-six years of age. With all the indomitable resolution and thoroughness of his nature he finished this task, and having been forbidden to speak on theological themes until he had spent four years at the University of Paris, he determined to complete his education at the most famous university in the world. In February, 1528, he arrived at Paris and sought to sustain himself as before by begging. This he found took so much of the time that should have been given to study that he could make little progress. Then making the acquaintance of Spanish merchants trading in Flanders, they supported him for two years. The third year he went to England and secured abundant support from London merchants. From that time the Flemish merchants supplied his needs. In 1530, Ignatius met Francisco Xavier, a son of a counselor of the court of Navarre and of an heiress of two noble families. As the youngest son, he took his mother’s name of Xavier. His brothers all followed the profession of arms; his only sister entered and became abbess of one of the

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most rigid monastic houses in Spain, where she had the reputation of a saint, and died of lingering gangrene in 1532. Francisco was ambitious to make a reputation as a man of learning. Refined and courteous, he was proficient beyond his years, and, after studying four years at Paris he was appointed lecturer in philosophy in 1528, when but twenty-two years of age. Ignatius met him, and recognized his ruling passion for distinction as a man of learning, and never left him without saying, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” Peter Faber, or Lefevre, was room-mate of Xavier’s. Finally he won Francisco’s consent to take Ignatius as a third companion in their chambers. One day months after, Ignatius repeated his favorite text when Xavier replied: “ I will not wait until to-morrow. I own myself conquered, but I am not able to sacrifice all as you understand it. It is impossible.” Ignatius replied: “I understand that you will find it impossible this evening; but such a nature as yours can not recognize the truth without loving it, and without yielding to it with the most complete devotion.” Loyola had read the man, and before the interview closed the high-born and brilliant scholar and professor at the age of twenty-four was a follower of the founder of the Company of Jesus. Of the new order he was the first saint and the greatest man.

During these years of study, Ignatius visited constantly the hospitals, and ministered to the sick and poor, and suffered constantly and cruelly from his old enemy, dyspepsia. He finished his Latin course in October, 1529, and immediately began his course in philosophy, taking his Master’s degree, March 25,

19

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1534. Then, with his chosen companions, he studied theology for two years, completing the course at the age of forty-five. Ffteen years he had been preparing for his new career. Twelve years he had been at school, ten years he had spent at universities, eight at Paris. No one could call him an ignorant or an untrained man. He never became an independent thinker; of criticism and investigation he understood neither the use nor need. But his sufferings had taught him much which was incorporated in the reforms of the Jesuit education.

The work of preparation was now complete. Few men have ever read their fellows better than Ignatius Founding of ^°y°l^a- Iⁿ his eight years he had selected the company the men for his work. Over these he exer-of jesus. _ci_se(j the influence of a much older man, experienced in the world and with a will as disciplined and resolute as Church history has known. On the 25th of March, 1536, in the Church of St. Mary, in Montmartre, in Paris, Ignatius and his pupils met and formed the Society of Jesus. Francisco Xavier, Giacomo Lainez, Alfonso Salmeron, Nicholas Boab-dilla, as well as Ignatius Loyola, were Spaniards; Simon Rodriguez was a Portuguese; Peter Faber and Claude Jay were natives of Savoy; and Giovanni Cordurio and Paschal Brouet were Frenchmen, the one from Province and the other from Picardy. These ten men were the original founders of the order of the Jesuits; five of them were Spaniards, and the other members represented Latin nations adjoining Spain.

Let us look now at the leader and the aims of the new society. Ignatius Loyola was now forty-five years of age. He had been trained in the court, the camp,

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in monastery and on pilgrimage, and in the universities, as no other religious leader of his time. At the court he had learned ease and grace of man- _{The Pounder} ner and the art of winning the favor of men. and Aims of In the camp he had learned discipline, en- ^{the 0rder}* durance, and self-control. In the university he had mastered the current teaching of his time, and had thought long and fruitfully on the enormous waste in education—a problem which presses on thinking men in each generation. Whatever discipline could do for natural ability had been done for him. Discipline had trained, but not enlarged, his mind. Few men have ever been so clear-sighted as to methods and means whereby ends are to be attained. The larger vision of the true and sufficient aim and end of life was never his. He assumed it. For him, truth and salvation for men and for nations were found only in the Roman Catholic Church, of which the Pope was the infallible guardian and defender. Hence the aim of his life and his order was to defend and extend the Roman Catholic Church, under the direct command and in the strictest obedience to that institution of the Roman Church which was most fiercely and successfully attacked, the papacy. Ignatius did not deny, he recognized the corruption of the clergy and the Church, and the moral failure of mediaeval Christendom, as clearly as any of the Evangelical Reformers. He sought to renew, to regenerate Roman Catholic Christendom, so that the worst possible enemy, heresy, should be subdued. This he would do, not by reforms in head and members, not by changes in doctrines or ecclesiastical constitution, but by a new application of old remedies, of Church discipline, including the In

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quisition, religious teaching, and moral reform. The means to that end were: (1) Preaching. The Jesuits have ever been a preaching order. This much they learned from the Reformers. The preaching was to inculcate Roman Catholic doctrine, and especially to attack popular vices and lead to a virtuous life. (2) To teach the children and the unlearned Roman Catholic doctrine, and to lead to frequent use of confession and the sacrament of Holy Communion. (3) To minister to the poor, the sick, and the dying; to console the needy and the miserable. These were the immediate aims of the order. They wore no particular dress or habit; they dressed like the priests of the country, suitably and modestly. They were bound to no canonical hours. Preaching was their main business, and they were not to leave it for works of charity. Two things distinguished them; they took no pay for hearing confessions or for saying mass, for teaching or preaching, and they did not use harshness nor corporal punishment in education.

In January, 1537, they were all in Venice, seeking transportation to the Holy Land. While awaiting this, they lodged at the hospital and begged ^he^gOrder.^f fr°^m door to door; they taught the children Christian doctrine, and preached on Sundays and feast-days. After taking the vows of charity and poverty, they were ordained by the Pope’s legate in Venice, June 24, 1537. On account of the outbreak of the war between Venice and the Turks, they left the Republic and journeyed toward Rome. Ignatius went in advance to receive the Pope’s blessing. The others, poorly clad, went on foot, begging from day to day for their sustenance. They taught, they preached,

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they ministered to the sick and poor. Remember, these were men of learning and refinement. They all arrived in Rome in Lent, 1538- To their vows of charity and poverty they now added that of perpetual obedience, and chose Ignatius as their head. They suffered much opposition, not a little persecution, and finally, at the Pope’s command, they were dispersed throughout Italy in the work they had chosen, except Ignatius, who remained at Rome. They were abundantly successful in their mission.

Finally Loyola reached the goal of his labors. Paul III confirmed the Society of Jesus, September 27, 1540, and the career of the order of the Jesuits had begun. The founder now had the fulcrum for which for eighteen years he had been preparing since the days of Manresa. Now, indeed, he should move the world. What zeal, what care, what deliberation, what fixed determination, had given him the mastery of himself, of his order, and of the Roman Catholic Church!

Ignatius immediately began his world-wide activity. He determined to send Francis Xavier and Simon Rodriguez to the Portuguese East Indies. This was the first great departure in Christian mission work as distinguished from that of the Middle Ages. Xavier sailed for India, April 7, 1541. The same year, Salme-ron and Brouet were sent to Ireland to stir up rebellion against Henry VIII, where they met with little success; and in the same year died the first of the original members of the society, Giovanni Cordurio. In the Church of St. Paul, without the walls, at Rome, April 22, 1541, Ignatius Loyola was elected general of the order. For the remainder of his life every detail

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of its multiplied activity went through his hands; for as the chief of the order he founded he died.

The society increased in power and in favor with the Pope. The limitations placed upon it at its founding were removed in 1543. The “ Spiritual Exercises ” were confirmed in 1548. By Papal Bulls of 1547 and

1548 the members of the society were ordered to have no spiritual charge of nuns or of other women given to a religious life, and never to accept any ecclesiastical preferment or dignity in the Church. In 1547, Francis Borgia, Duke of Grandia, and of the highest nobility in Spain, became a member of the order, of which afterward he was to become the head. In 1548 the Jesuits began their work in Sicily, and in the two years following in Portuguese Africa and in South America.

Dearer even than the progress of missions to the heart of Ignatius was the work of the order in education and in preparation for the combat with ^EdWork"^al heresy. In February, 1551, he founded the Collegium Romanum as the center of the activity of the order and the model for its educational work. In the year following he founded the Collegium Germanicum, for the training of the youths of exceptional ability or of noble blood, who should seek to undo the work of Luther in their native land.

The work first began in Germany at the time of Morone’s legation (1546-7), and the three chief promoters were Faber, the Mystic; Boabdilla, Germany*. ^{tlie rest}less intriguant; and Jay, the accomplished diplomatist. About the same time there was received into the order the man who was to do the most in Germany for the Jesuit propa-

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ganda and the Counter Reformation. Peter Canisius was the son of a patrician house at Nymwegen, and master of the University of Cologne. He became the leader of the Jesuit education in Germany, and the author of the Catechism upon which was based the work of Jesuit conversion among the German people. The Jesuits began their work at Ingolstadt in 1547, but did not have the university statutes revised to their liking until 1561. The Jesuit college at Vienna was founded in 1552, and like institutions were soon planted in the Rhineland and in Flanders.

Meanwhile Ignatius’s early companions were passing away. Faber died at Rome in 1546, and Jay at Vienna in 1552, and, greater than all, Xavier died on the coast of China,

December 2, 1552.

The career of the great founder was near its close, Less than four years later, in his chamber at Rome, alone and unattended, like a soldier on the field of battle, July 31, 1556, the fiery and resolute soul which had conceived, established, inspired, and directed the Society of Jesus, the controlling mind of the Counter Reformation, the man who founded the modern Roman Catholic spirit and rule, Ignatius Loyola, went from his labors into that eternity of which his conceptions were so crude and materialistic.

Thus, in his sixty-fifth year, ended the career of Ignatius Loyola. Those who study that career with the least prejudice in favor of his work must admit that he was a remarkable man. ^Ch*^ract«^r

of Loyola.

None can deny that he was sincere in his

faith and honest in his convictions. He believed that

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the supreme motive should be a glowing love which should give power to every form of activity for the good of our neighbor. His life, as to external morality and religious observance, was spotless. He enjoyed a religious experience as emotional as that of the early Methodists. For years he ministered to the sick in hospitals. The temporal need and moral degradation of the poor touched him. He sought the reformation of the courtesans at Rome, the abolition of the duel, the establishment of Monte di Pieta, or pawnshops without extortion, and the Christianization of capital. But, before all else, Ignatius Loyola was a disciplinarian. He disciplined himself, he disciplined each member of his order, and by discipline he sought that reform of the Roman Catholic Church, without which it must have ceased to be. Hence he and his order ever stood for good morals, especially in the external life of the community. They stood against licentiousness and for a pure sexual life. They stood against the prevalent drunkenness, gambling, and profanity of the time, and how great was the need must be apparent to all who have read the earlier portion of this volume. It may be doubted if a Christian morality relying on external means and authority, and without vital touch with the Holy Scriptures as the rule of faith and life, can go much higher than the system of Loyola.

Yet with all this careful discipline there were serious deficiencies. Loyola was a man of the camp, Defects ^anc^ though in his early struggles he owed much to women, yet he could never get along with them. He said they brought him nothing but fire and torment, and in his later years he would

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have nothing to do with them. His world had no need for women and children.

His more than military obedience, his putting to death of all family affections, his annihilation of the individual will, his avoidance of offense and scandal at all costs, his emphasis upon appearance rather than reality, his pitiless encouragement of the Inquisition, of the persecution and massacre of heretics, seem to be the very opposite of all we know of the religion of Christ and of his apostles.

Two things mark the measureless lack of Ignatius Loyola. He never seemed to have stood alone in the presence of the living God or of the truth. His religion was of this world, and of this world were his methods and his aims. The Founder of Christianity brought into this world and made effective the standards and ideas of another world and of the eternal order and government of God. The founder of the Society of Jesus sought to make the ideals and standards of this world prevail and govern in the world to come. The first lifts up the individual soul to direct communion with God, and society to become the Divine Kingdom, a task impossible to the other.

The defect of Ignatius is clearly seen in that manual of devotion, that discipline for the subjection of the will, which Ignatius made the founda- _The tion and inspiration of the Society of Jesus “ spiritual —the “Spiritual Exercises,” which bear ^Exerc,ses* his name. The world-wide difference between these “ Exercises ” and books like Thomas a Kempis’s “ Imitation of Christ” or Bunyan’s “ Pilgrim’s Progress ” is, that these are of value under the most diverse circumstances and in hours of the greatest need or

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trial to the individual Christian when alone, while the “ Exercises ” require a set time and the guidance of a spiritual director. These, like the Holy Scriptures, bring man alone into the presence of God; the “ Exercises” seek to frame God and eternity into human and temporal surroundings, and thus make them apprehensible, through the imagination and a pseudo use of the senses.

Much in the manual is common to all such works. Few Roman Catholics would dispute the “ Foundation ” with which it opens: “ Man was created for this end, that he might praise and reverence the Lord his God, and, serving him, at length be saved.” (Evangelical Christians would reverse the order and say, Being saved, serve him.) “ But the other things which are placed upon the earth were created for man’s sake, that they might assist him in pursuing the true end of his creation; whence it follows that they are to be used or abstained from in proportion as they profit or hinder pursuing that end.” Here all turns on the definition of what is “to the praise and reverence” or glory of God. Again, the prayer before each exercise, “To ask grace of the Lord that all our powers and operations may tend sincerely to his glory and worship,” is one in which we can all join. But the peculiarity of the “ Exercises ” of Loyola is their presupposition, their method, and their end.

The presupposition is well stated in the rules which conclude the “Exercises:” “That the spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the spirit of the ^TpL^tion.^P" orthodox Church his Spouse, by which spirit we are governed and directed to salvation, is the same;” and that “The God who of

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old delivered the precepts of the Decalogue is the same who now instructs and governs the Hierarchical Church;” “And this we must undoubtedly believe.” Hence follows the monstrous conclusion, “ We ought ever to hold it (as a fixed principle) that what I see white I believe black, if the Hierarchical Church so define it (to be).” This is to shut out truth, and to sacrifice what truth we hold to authority. From this, thank God, Luther at Worms delivered the modern world.

The method of the Exercises is to take possession of the whole man. The shortest term is for a week; a full month is required to complete

, ’ .    _Ai1 ⁿ    , The Method.

the Exercises. All except that to which the attention is directed and held is excluded. The time of the Exercises is to be so distributed that the first may be performed at midnight, the second on arising in the morning, the third before or after mass but before taking food, the fourth about vespers, and the fifth before supper. An hour is usually to be taken for each Exercise.

A general confession to the priest, detailed and circumstantial, is required; also minute personal selfexamination each day as to the overcoming of particular sins, with a record of failures to be compared day by day and week by week, and at the pauses the contrary virtues are dwelt upon and sought to be established. The reading is prescribed, as are the kinds and measure of food, the methods and postures of prayer. Thus the director is assured of the control of the whole life of the penitent during the time of the Exercises.

Again the method is to present the whole drama of

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the world from the Creation and Fall to the dissolution of all things, with emphasis upon the tragic central point of redemption in a series of carefully-divided meditations. These meditations are arranged so as to make a progress to a culmination. They are not long individually, but are so often repeated, and with such accessories from the director, that the impression sought will be inevitably made.

Then the imagination is used, not only to picture forth, or to represent, but to make persons and scenes present to sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch! By such treatment of eternity, of heaven and hell, it is sought to save, or to terrify to the limits of despair.

Never for a moment is the goal out of sight. It is to totally subdue the will, and by this means to eradicate evil passions and habits. The process

The Goal.    ,

in detail will make this evident. In the first week the theme of the meditation is “Sin.” The penitent is to consider first the fall of angels and men. Then follows a conversation with the crucified Christ; and then, in order, the following comparisons: “What am I compared with all mankind? What is all mankind compared with saints and angels ? What are all saints and angels compared with the whole creation? What is the whole creation compared with the Creator? Consider, then, the destruction and miserable condition of the individual sinner; then consider the attributes of God.” The next two Exercises are repetitions of this. But before all is the intercession of the Virgin. This contrast between the utmost limits of the Divine Majesty and human worthlessness comes at the end of the week to the Vision of Hell— a vision coarse, crass, and materialistic almost beyond

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belief. These conceptions are to overcome the soul with terror.

The subject of the second week is the Kingdom of Christ; the Incarnation and life of Christ until the Passion. Thus are considered the birth at Bethlehem, the flight into Egypt, our Lord at Nazareth and in the Temple, the baptism, the temptation, the calling of the apostles, the Sermon on the Mount, the walking on the sea, the teaching in the Temple, raising of Lazarus, and Palm Sunday.

The subject of contemplation the third week is the Passion. On the last week the contemplation is directed to the resurrection, the thirteen appearances of our Lord, and the ascension. Two of these appearances, the first and the twelfth, to the mother of our Lord and to Joseph of Arimathea, find no basis in the New Testament record.

The result of the goal attained, the entire subjection of the will, prepared for the fruits following: First, from these penitents come those who are expected to become valuable members of the order. Every novice must first go through these Exercises, and Ignatius recommended that every member of the order should repeat them once a year. They were the most efficient means of subduing soul and will. From the penitents at these Exercises flowed in profusion the gifts of the wealthy for the purposes of the order. Finally, from those who were neither desired for the order, nor wealthy, came the external conversion to the obedience to the Roman Catholic Church, as the “ Exercises ” conclude with eighteen rules to be observed as the mark of a good Roman Catholic. These begin with the statement that, “ Removing all judgment of

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one’s own, one must always keep one’s mind prepared and ready to obey the true Spouse of Christ and our Holy Mother, which is the orthodox, Catholic, and Hierarchical Church.” Then follows a detailed commendation of every abuse of the Mediaeval Church against which was directed the Evangelical Reformation. The list goes from auricular confession, clerical celibacy, religious vows, to intercession of saints, veneration of images, relics, pilgrimages, penances, jubilees, and indulgences.

Certainly no one can doubt the aim of the “ Spiritual Exercises,” nor wonder at the efficiency of this instrument of the Jesuit propaganda, nor also at the comparative disfavor into which they have fallen. These “ Exercises ” do not bring the soul to God. They do not bring to the penitent the reception of salvation or of the Spirit of God. Least of all do they lead to the communion of the forgiven soul with its Lord. There is nothing more significant or more pathetic than the substitutes offered in these “Exercises” for true Christian prayer, the free communion of the human spirit with its Maker and Lord. This is so evident in the three kinds of prayer there commanded, that nothing but a quotation can do it justice. The first method is to be drawn from the consideration of the Ten Commandments, of the seven mortal sins, of the three powers of the mind (memory, reason, will), and of the five senses.

The second method is “ to kneel or sit, and, with the eyes either closed or fixed down to one place, and not move to and fro, to say the Lord’s Prayer from the beginning, and on the first word—that is, Pater - to fix the meditation so long as various significations,

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likenesses, spiritual tastes, and other devout notions concerning that word shall present themselves; and in like manner we shall do successively with each word of the same or of another prayer.” An hour must be thus spent, and then repeat Ave Maria, Credo, Anima Christi, or Salve Regina.

The third method is, “ Between several times of drawing breath I pronounce the several words of the Lord’s or of some other prayer, considering, in the meantime, either the signification of the word uttered, or the dignity of the Person to whom the prayer is directed, or my own vileness, or, lastly, the difference between the two. In the same way the other words must be proceeded with.” Then conclude with the Ave Maria, Credo, etc.    *

Think of any child talking thus with any father. Could Buddhism be much more mechanical? We who are born free, let us remember at what cost this freedom was won, and let us, as a precious heritage, preserve it to the ages to come.

The society founded upon the basis of the “ Spiritual Exercises” differed from any of the existing orders of the Church of Rome. A chief _Character. difference was, that it did not seek as its isticsofthe end so much the perfection of its own ^0rder* members as the weal and salvation of others. Hence the Jesuits did not withdraw from men, but mixed and lived with them. They were not distinguished by dress or habit, by manners or dwelling, from the clergy of the country where they labored. Neither were they given to prolonged fastings or to severe mortifications; these were used only in such measure as would strengthen, and not weaken, the individual

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members. The society was, by education and selection, a picked body of exceptionally-disciplined men, supposed to possess more than ordinary ability; a select officers’ corps, who were to lead everywhere in the work of the Roman Catholic Church, especially in missions, education, diplomacy, and in posts of peculiar danger. The society was international in character. Its members were fitted by gifts and training for their work in any country. Their only Fatherland was the Church of Rome, and their only patriotism was the service of its interests. It was a thoroughly itinerant body; its members could be sent anywhere, to any quarter where their services would be of the greatest value. This body of thoroughly-trained men was put at the disposal of one head. The general of the order was supreme dictator, and commanded every member with absolute authority. As willed the head at Rome, so every member moved.

The great field of the activity of the Jesuits was in education. Ignatius saw that if he won the youth he had won the field. At this time the Education i^nstructors trained under Melanchthon and in the Evangelical universities were the best teachers in Europe. Philip Melanchthon well deserved the inscription placed on his statue in Nuremberg, “ The Preceptor of Germany.” Ignatius, however, had new ideas of education born of a hard experience. In regard to Jesuit schools two essentials were laid down : the tuition should be free, the schools should be endowed. Beyond this we have scarcely yet advanced. The freedom from costs was one great source of the rapid spread and the great favor enjoyed by the Jesuit education.

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Again, in his s3^rstem, good morals and sound faith went hand in hand with intellectual development. This has been the essential characteristic from the beginning to this day. The influence of the Jesuits has been quite as much through their care for the morals of their pupils as through their intellectual development.

We may differ from the Jesuits as to what is the highest type of the Christian faith or of morals, but certainly both are essential to the best, or even a sound, education.

We recognize the danger of a onesided intellectual development, and so are giving needed attention to athletics. Some day it will appear that a vigorous religious life and high moral standards, effectively maintained, are quite as essential constituent elements of a great university.

In the carrying out of this conception the method chosen was for the teachers to live in close personal contact with the pupils. The true educational influence was that of a highly-trained sympathetic gentleman, over boys at their most susceptible age, whose affection as well as attention he set himself to win. The result was a permanent benefit to education everywhere. Cruel and brutal punishments were unknown. Indeed, a Jesuit was forbidden ever to strike a pupil. When Ignatius was showing visitors through the Collegium Romanum, as they finished their inspection one of the visitors asked where the prison was. Ignatius took him to the open door. He showed how to conduct schools so that the sorest punishment would be dismission.

The method of instruction was oral in the strictest

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sense; a method which brings the pupil in closest contact with the teacher. A monitor in each class kept a strict account of the deportment and the character of the recitations. This daily marking system is supposed to be peculiarly the invention of Ignatius. This tutorial system was carried out through repetitions many, and through, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly disputations, which excited to the utmost the emulation of the scholars, and gave them readiness of speech and exactness of statement, as well as the instant command of all they knew.

The material of their studies was mainly belles lettres, a training through the entire course in the Latin language, and dialectics. To this all else was subordinate, though mathematics and geography were taught, and but little or no history. Things taught were given and received on authority. Thomas Aquinas was the theologian with whom all opinions must be reconciled. Aristotle and the schoolmen ruled in philosophy. It is evident that in such a course there is no room for criticism, and investigation is not so much as named. There is doubtless a stage in education where such training is in place. The student at least carried away some exact knowledge, and had the benefit of some definite scheme of intellectual development. This seems to contrast advantageously, in many cases, with an elective system that has no limits in extent, and no dimensions in depth. The Jesuit tutorial system at least aimed at something and obtained something. Even though it was a very secondary best, yet second best is better than nothing at all. The insuperable defect of the Jesuit training was that it could not go beyond this

The Counter Reformation.    307

elementary stage. The Jesuits never trained their pupils to think. The thought, the material was accepted ; all attention was given to the interpretation and the expression. To appear well or superior was the great aim. The knowledge was superficial, and often most ill assimilated. It is no answer to this to say that Descartes and Voltaire were pupils of the Jesuits. An institution or a society which has the monopoly of the best education of the time will have under its care the men of the most ability and originality. It only proves that the system was not so bad that it destroyed what it could not develop.

This defect in training the intellect was even more conspicuous when the system of espionage and denunciation, of external religious observance and morality, formed as poor a foundation for a self-governing morality as the training in letters for an independent intellectual life.

The defects of this system for any training for modern life seem evident from an examination of the curriculum of Jesuit schools in this country at the present time. The literary course of seven years for boys of thirteen to nineteen years of age, the proportionate time for course given to the different subjects, is as follows : Classics, 54 ; mathematics, 28; English and accessories, probably preliminary academic, 60; philosophy, 10; natural science, 3; history, o.

In the philosophic course of seven years to boys from eleven to eighteen years of age, the proportion is as follows : Classics, 125 ; mathematics, 59y₂ ; English, 42; philosophy, a two-years’ course; natural science, 9-18; history and geography, 12. There is no evidence that the classics include Greek.

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In the superior or university instruction, a philosophical course of three years gives the following proportion : Philosophy, logic, and ethics, 34; mathematics, 9; mechanics, 3; natural science, 10; history, o.

In the six-years’ theological course the following proportions obtain: Scholastic philosophy, 52; moral philosophy, 12 ; and to these two subjects, besides this, all of the last two years are devoted; Sacred Scriptures, 8; canon law, 4; ecclesiastical history, 4; Syriac, Arabic, and Chaldee, 3 ; Hebrew, 2 ; Greek, o.

From the above it will be seen that the Jesuit education loves history about as the devil does holy water; that is, he uses only what is unavoidable. Why should the Jesuits so shun the teaching of history ? Because history is the ample refutation of their claims, and the record of their failure to make the Pope “ the lord and teacher of nations.”

The most important of the privileges which the Papal Bulls conferred upon the Society of Jesus was Jesuits    h^eariⁿg confessions everywhere, and

and the especially of imparting absolution in cases Confessional._reg_erye^ ^ Pope. This latter privilege was of immense value in reclaiming heretics, as it allowed the Jesuits to make an easy way over all difficulties for their return to the Church of Rome. While Ignatius himself was far removed from any easy morality, and also in his dealings with others, yet his characteristic qualities and principles made easy morality in the confessional a natural consequence. As one has said, “This mixture of recklessness and caution, of scrupulosity, glowing emotion, and passionate humanity, of cool and reasoned moderation and disciplined fanaticism, with a spice of cynicism, worked

The Counter Reformation. 309

not as medicine, but as poison.” From this easy morality, and for other reasons, the Jesuits became the favorite confessors of the princes and rulers of the Roman Catholic Christendom. In this way the general, to whom all secrets came, and the society became mixed up with the politics of their time, especially where and it was everywhere the case in that cen-tury—the current politics affected the interests of the Church of Rome. This became more and more the case when their pupils sat on the thrones of Roman Catholic Europe. The German emperors, Rudolph, Matthias, and Ferdinand II, with his cousin Maximilian of Bavaria, were their pupils. The confessors of Henry IV of France, and of his son and grandson were sons of Loyola.

It can not be said that their entrance into politics was either advantageous to the princes they counseled, the cause they had at heart, or hon- „ orable to themselves. They shrank from no treason or rebellion, and the war of the ^{the Je8Uit8}« League against Henry IV, and the measureless disaster of the Thirty Years’ War, were alike of their fomenting,

But that was not the worst. Any assassin of a Protestant ruler could obtain their blessing in the confessional in anticipation of their bloody deed. So twice did Balthasar Gerard, the assassiii of William of Orange. So did more than once the assassins who attempted the life of Queen Elizabeth. So did Guy

Fawkes, who sought to blow king, lords, and commons m the air.

Few scenes in those troubled years are more pathetic than that in the trial of Babington and his fel

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low-conspirators who were to assassinate Elizabeth. They were being tried before Sir Christopher Hatton, and he, seeing the ruin of so many young men of high hearts, noble birth, and courtly accomplishments, could not restain his emotion, but, turning to the Jesuit who had brought them to their fate, he exclaimed: “ O Ballard, Ballard! what has thou done ! A company of brave youths, otherwise endued with good gifts, by thy inducement hast thou brought them to their destruction.” Babington then said: “Yea, I protest before I met wdth this Ballard, I never meant nor intended to kill the queen; but by his persuasion I was induced to believe that she was excommunicate, and therefore lawful to murder her.” The Jesuit, touched by these words, replied: “Yea, Mr. Babington, lay all the blame upon me. But I w^rish the shedding of my blood might be the saving of your life. Howbeit, say what you will, I will say no more.” There could scarcely be a more vivid instance of the result of Jesuit teaching and working, or a more evident reason for the detestation in which the very name of Jesuit has been held in Evangelical Christendom.

THE GENEVAN REFORM.

Ignatius Loyola, the protagonist of the Counter Reformation, had collected together the forces, marshaled the hosts, and planned the campaign _Historica, for the re-establishment of the Roman significance Catholic Church in Christendom. Who ®^f,^Jo.^hn

Calvin.

was to resist him ? The papacy, the Coun- _{LoyoIa and} cil of Trent, the Inquisition, and, least of all, Calvin, the Society of Jesus wrought with a merely defensive aim. Not simply the limitation, but the extirpation, of the Evangelical faith was their program. From the outset the Jesuits were aggressive, and such they never ceased to be.

The power of this world seemed at their command. At the opening of this period Philip II, King of Spain, began his rule. For forty years he was the mightiest monarch among the kings of the earth. Both of the Indies emptied their treasures into his coffers. His arms were invincible, and the Peace of Cateau-Cam-bresis marked the deepest humiliation of France, the ancient rival of his house. Two aims controlled the policy of Philip : the preservation and increase of his rule and despotic authority, and the restoration of the Roman Catholic Church. The full assent of Henry II of France was accorded to the last of these designs, and, after his death, the violence of the Guises and the perfidy of Catherine de’ Medeci were true to the same end.

In Germany the princes of the Augsburg Confession sought only the enjoyment of the peace they had gained with such a disastrous concession as Cujus regio cujus religio. Philip of Spain knew well how

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to keep even an Evangelical emperor true to the interests of the Church of Rome through family alliances. In Italy already, all reformatory movements were as completely crushed out as in Spain. In England, it is true, Elizabeth reigned instead of her sister Mary, the wife of Philip II. But Mary, Queen of Scotland, a daughter of the house of Guise, trained in the French court, and for a brief year Queen of France, a devoted Roman Catholic, was the next heir to the English crown. The Scandinavian kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway were both neutral from position and insignificant in such a scale; but every effort was made to win them.

Philip and the Jesuits determined on the re-establishment of the Church of Rome in all its former dominion and power as the task to which they consecrated all their resources and might, and to this purpose both parties were ever true. The war with Evangelical Christendom was to the death.

What could resist the execution of this purpose? The Lutheran Church had conquered toleration in the empire, and undisturbed possession under the princes and cities of its confession. Its position was almost purely defensive. It busied itself much about the exclusion of divergent elements from its communion, and had but little sympathy for those outside its borders. Wittenberg never became the headquarters where a generous welcome was extended to the exiles from the persecutions of Queen Mary in England. Lutheranism cared chiefly for the saving of its own life, and, as a consequence, well-nigh lost it. Certainly here was no power able to resist the onset of the Counter Reformation. The issue proved that it

The Genevan Reform.    313

could not hold its own in Germany. What could it do for other lauds ? Queen Elizabeth and the statesmen who surrounded her council board had all they could do to secure England at this time against Spain, Scotland, and the Pope.

If the cause of the Reformation were to be saved, there must appear a man with gifts of leadership and organization, and with purpose and discipline as inflexible as that of Loyola himself. The bulwark against the Counter Reformation, the aggressive leader of Evangelical Christendom in her hour of need, was John Calvin. He was the antagonist who set bounds to the achievements of the sons of Loyola. In no Calvinistic land have they ever made conquests. They could drive the Reformed Church of France to exile and the desert, but they could not extinguish it.

The Council of Trent furnished the Roman Catholic Church with an authoritative statement of doctrine which was of immense value in controversy. Calvin’s “ Institutes of the Christian Religion ” performed the same service for the Reformed faith, but with more logical coherence and with greater power and grace of expression.

Loyola and the Counter Reformation brought in a moral discipline which renewed the face of Roman Catholic Christendom. Neither Luther nor his successors performed the like service in the lands of the Reformation. John Calvin brought in a moral discipline before which Loyola’s seemed feeble and elementary indeed. The one was the master of pupils in schools or in his order; the other the master of peoples who were to become mighty nations. The one founded an order to serve and to control the Roman

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Catholic Church and Christendom; the other disciplined a city in Church and State, so that its imitation became the birth of the civil and religious liberty of the modern world. Loyola made submission to the Church of Rome and the Pope, her head, the highest religious ideal. Calvin brought man face to face with Almighty God, and made him feel that the only value his life held was that in him which unfolded in that awful Presence and by his sovereign grace. Loyola consecrated all his energies and those of his order to uphold the authority of the Church of Rome; Calvin cut its tap-root.

Whatever else may be true of these systems they are certainly diametrically opposed and forever ir-Caivin reconcilable, and yet there was much of and likeness in the life and character of their Loyola. _authors. Calvin and Loyola both were of the Latin race, and true to race characteristics; Loyola from Northern Spain, and Calvin from Northern France. Though Calvin’s training was that of a scholar, yet, like Loyola’s, it made him at home in the most aristocratic circles and with royalty itself. Both broke their health in early life and lived with chronic dyspepsia; Loyola through ascetic mortifications, and Calvin through application to his books. Both were personally brave and unstained by the vices of their time. Both experienced a sudden conversion from a worldly to a religious life, though the difference in this change and its results marks the fundamental difference of their careers. Both had great talents of organization, great esteem for discipline, were endowed with indomitable resolution and unusual powers of endurance, and both were pitiless

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toward opponents. Both were equally convinced and equally intolerant. A Genevan sermon might as well have been preached in the Collegium Romanum as mass said in Geneva. Though Loyola was the elder, the life span of both was the same. The immense difference was that Loyola did everything to avoid offense and scandal—his plans were secret, and the work of his order behind a never-lifted veil. A mixture of motives, and a cunning that was both ambiguous and insincere, marked Loyola. John Calvin’s life and work were in the open day. In him and his teachings were no mental reservations. If he persecuted or punished, he did it in the face of the sun. Unfaithful or immoral Church members or clergy were tried and condemned in public. In those years ot hatred no accusation of untruth stood against him. No man can read the history of the Counter Reformation and be blind to the historical influence of Ignatius Loyola. Whether we admire John Calvin or detest him, we can not fail to recognize the historical significance of the Genevan Reformer.

It was more than a mere coincidence that the same year which witnessed the founding of the Society of Jesus at St. Mary of the Martyrs saw the publication of the “ Institutes of the Christian Religion.” Interest and attention are well bestowed in the consideration of the training and career of a man so signally set apart for the defense of Christ’s Evangel.

John Calvin was born at Noyon, a cathedral city of Picardy, sixty-seven miles northeast of Paris, July

10, 1509. His father, Gerard Calvin, was a notary in the Ecclesiastical Court and secretary to the bishop. John was educated with the children of the Mommor

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family, the most honorable in the vicinity, at his father’s cost, and went with the sons of that family to the University of Paris when fourteen years

Life of Calvin. , ,    • i 1,

old. He studied in the colleges Marche and Montague for four years. His leading studies were Latin, dialectics, and the scholastic philosophy, in which he became remarkably proficient. Gerard Calvin’s sons were provided for from the patronage of the Church. Charles Calvin, John’s elder brother, became a priest and chaplain of the Church of St. Mary, Noyon, and lived a dissolute life, and died an unbeliever’s death in 1535, the same year in which Calvin’s “Institutes” were published.

John Calvin himself was appointed to a chapel at Noyon in his twelfth year. When eighteen years of age he received the living of Monteville, Conversion. which ^was exchanged two years later for that of Pont-l’Eveque. These appointments were sinecures, as Calvin was never ordained, though he preached occasionally at Pont-l’Eveque. In his twentieth year, Gerard Calvin believed that fortune for his son lay rather in the law than through the Church. Perhaps Charles’s evil courses helped to this conclusion. John studied law for the next three years at the universities of Orleans and Bourges. There he met learned men who had received the Lutheran doctrine, and he studied not only law, but Greek, and, most wonderful of all, the Bible. God spoke to the brilliant but undecided student of the law. He says: “I was so obstinately fixed in popish superstition that it seemed difficult indeed to free me from such a quagmire, when God overcame me by a sudden conversion, and subjected me to his will.” This was in 1^1 or 1532, when Calvin was in

The Gene van Reform.    317

his twenty-third year. He immediately left the law, resigned his positions in the Roman Catholic Church, went to Noyon, his native place, sold the little property which came to him from his father, and entered upon his perilous career as an Evangelical Reformer.

John Calvin at this time was a man of no ordinary acquirements. Like Luther and Wesley, he was fully trained in the learning of his time. All his life he had been a student, and he profited by his opportunities. Beza says of those student years: “ It was his custom, after a moderate supper, to pass half the night in study, and the next morning, as soon as he awoke, to think over again, and complete what he had learned over night. By these night watchings he acquired his vast and exact learning; but by the same means he prepared for himself bodily suffering and an early death.” We can see how from this discipline he acquired that power of clear and exact statement which always distinguished him.

From his studies he went to Paris, and wrote and published a translation from the Latin, with a commentary of two books of Seneca’s treatise “ De dementia.” He dedicated this work to his former patron, the Bishop of Noyon, of the Mommor family, with whom he had been educated. He doubtless hoped thus to influence men in authority to have pity, and to put ♦an end to the cruel persecution then raging in France. The most he could do was to address little bands of persecuted believers, and write letters of encouragement and consolation to those who were in prison. The very merchant with whom he lodged was afterward burned to death. After about a year of this life of study and exhortation the crisis came which

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made John Calvin a fugitive and an exile from the land of his birth to the end of his days. Calvin was a great friend of Nicholas Cop, the rector of the University of Paris. Cop was to preach a university sermon on All-Saints’ Day, November i, 1533. It is said Calvin wrote the sermon and Cop delivered it. The sermon “spoke of religious matters with great freedom and in a liberal tone.” The Sorbonne and Parliament of Paris took action. Cop fled to Basel, his father’s native place. Calvin was warned. He escaped by a window, and was a fugitive and a wanderer in France for over a year. In his places of refuge he met some of the foremost men of France. He was protected for some time at the court of Margaret, Queen of Navarre and sister of Francis I, King of France. The persecution waxed hotter and hotter. Twenty-four Protestants were burned alive at Paris between November, 1534, and May, 1535. Calvin went secretly to Poitiers, and then to Paris, and finally, in the beginning of 1535, at the age of twenty-six, he left France and went to Strasburg, and from thence to Basel. He had already, in 1534, published a small treatise against the sleep of the soul. He remained over a year at Basel studying Hebrew and writing out and publishing the first edition of his renowned “ Institutes of the Christian Religion,” being now twenty-seven years of age.

He left Basel in March, 1536, spending April,, May, and June in Italy, mainly at the court of

Renee, Duchess of Ferrara. Her court Qe'nlv^ ^{was one tbe most} brilliant in Italy.

She was a Protestant, and became an adherent, friend, and correspondent of Calvin’s until his death. From Italy, a fugitive, Calvin went

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to France, revisiting his native place, Noyon. He preached the Reformation there, and made converts, among them his sister Mary and his only brother, Anthony, whom he persuaded to accompany him in his exile. He intended to go to Basel, but war turned him aside. He went by way of Geneva, expecting to stop there only over night. There he met the great preacher of the Swiss Reformation, William Farel. The year before, moved by Farel’s vehement eloquence, the city of Geneva had declared for the Reformation. Farel had gained a renewed declaration of adhesion to the gospel in May, 1536, but now he felt how necessary it was that the work should be strengthened. Hearing that Calvin, the author of the “Institutes,” and renowned as a teacher and preacher of the Reformed religion, was in Geneva, he hastened to him. Farel urged him to stay and labor with him and see the complete triumph of the Reformed faith. Calvin refused, and pleaded his studies as forbidding, and his dislike to a public life. Farel urged the case, but Calvin persisted in his refusal. “When he saw,” says Calvin, “that he could gain nothing by prayer, he tried imprecation, demanding that it might please God to curse my retirement and tranquillity which I was seeking for my studies, if I held back and refused to give succor and aid in a time of such urgent need. And these words terrified me and shook me as if God from on high had stretched out his hand upon me to stop me, so that I renounced my journey, which I had undertaken; but conscious of my diffidence and timidity, I refused to bind myself to undertake any definite office.” He began the work of lecturing and preaching, September 1, 1536. He was elected pastor of St. Peter’s Church, and installed in October, 1536.

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The Council of the Republic adopted Calvin’s Confession of Faith, January 16, 1537. The practical point of this Confession was, that all immoral and vicious persons, “after having been duly admonished, shall be cutoff from communion with believers until after they have given satisfactory proof of repentance.” The State enforced the measures of discipline. “ Gambling houses were closed; gamblers were seized with loaded dice; one of them was condemned to sit for an hour at St. Gervais, with his cards suspended around his neck; a convicted adulterer was led through the streets with his accomplice, and then expelled from town; and all masquerades and immodest dances were prohibited.” Geneva had been noted as one of the gayest and most licentious cities in Europe. The people began to complain of this unaccustomed rigor, especially as no exceptions were made, and high and low, rich and poor fared alike. They declared that they had thrown off the yoke of the Pope, only to put on the yoke of the preachers. The crisis came on Easter Sunday, 1538, when Calvin and Farel preached and declared the whole Church unworthy to receive the Lord’s Supper. On the 23d of April, 1538, they were by public decree expelled from the city.

Calvin spent four months in the Swiss cities of Bern, Zurich, Lausanne, and Basel, reaching Stras-burg in September, 1538. There he was hom2rf<m ^made Professor of Theology, giving pub-lie theological lectures, and placed in charge of the French Church. He remained in Stras-burg nearly three years, writing and publishing his famous letter to Bishop Sadolet, his treatise upon the Lord’s Supper, and his commentary upon the

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Epistle to the Romans. Here he was in fellowship with some of the most learned and ablest of the Reformers, Martin Bucer, Capito, and Strum. He was chosen a delegate to represent the city of Strasburg at conferences of the Protestant princes and theologians at Frankfort and Hagenau, and at the Imperial Diets of Worms and Ratisbon. There he met the Emperor Charles V and his chief nobility, and the Protestant princes of Germany, and was intimately associated with the ablest and most learned men of the Evangelical and Roman Catholic communions. Here, doubtless, he learned much that enabled him to become that able politician that he was.

It is not given any man to be great in all things, and the details of Calvin’s courtships make one sympathize with Captain Miles Standish. _Ca|_Vin.₃ Our shy, reserved, and painfully diffident Courtship and student and scholar is now thirty-three ^Marriage* years of age. His good friends at Strasburg have unanimously agreed that it is time he married, and he is more than half of that mind himself. He says: “Remember, I pray you, what I look for in a wife. I am not one of those idiotic lovers who can even adore defects when once they are captivated by beauty. The only beauty I care for in a woman is that she shall be modest, gentle, unobtrusive, economical, patient, and that I may expect her to look after my health.” Evidently he did not think such a woman worth looking for personally, so he deputes the task to his friends. He writes to Farel that, “A young girl of noble birth and good fortune—far beyond my position—has been proposed to me.” His reasons against the match were that she did not un-

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derstand French, and might think too much of her birth and education. He told her brother he would do nothing unless the young lady would promise at once to devote herself to the study of French. She asked time to consider, when Calvin immediately sent his brother to look up another lady for his wife. “ She is not wealthy, but all who know her speak of her with admiration.” He is writing the 6th of February, and he hopes, if the thing succeeds, to be married not later than the ioth of March. No bother of long courtships for him.

Three weeks later he writes to Farel: “I am afraid, if you wait for my wedding, it will be a long time before you come. My wife is not yet found, and I am afraid I will have to look again for her. Three days after my brother’s return, I received certain information about the young lady in question which compelled me to send him back at once in order to break off the engagement.” His friend Bucer now came to his aid, and, sparing him further search, found a wife for him, the widow of John Stroder, whom Calvin had converted from his Anabaptist errors, and who had died of the plague leaving his wife, Idelette von Buren, and three children. Calvin was married to her with much solemnity and ceremony in September, 1540. He lived with her for nine years. Three children were born to them, two dying at birth, and one a son in infancy. She died in April, 1549. Calvin mourned her sincerely, and never again married. How near she came to his ideal we learn from a letter he wrote Viret after her death: “I am separated from the best of companions, who, if anything harder could have happened to me, would have willingly been my companion, not only in exile and in want, but in

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death itself. She was a true help to me in her life in the duties of my office. She never opposed me in the slightest matter.” Wonderful power of command, or wonderful and long-continued self-abnegation !

Meanwhile things were not going well at Geneva. The misrule and license which followed the expulsion of Calvin had brought about a reaction. In October, 1540, the Council voted to request his return. Between that time and April, 1541, they sent four successive messengers to entreat him to come back. He finally yielded to their persuasions and returned to Geneva, September 12, 1541, after an absence of three years and four months. From that time until his death, nearly twenty-three years after, he was not only the first citizen, but the real ruler of the Republic of Geneva.

In the next January after Calvin’s return to Geneva the Councils of the Republic adopted the celebrated ecclesiastical ordinances of the Church of ^ ,

Calvin s

Geneva. The struggle to enforce them Rule at lasted for thirteen years, until May, 1555, ^Gedeva-when the battle was completely won. They remained in force until the French Revolution, nearly two hundred and fifty years. To carry on the work of Christian teaching and of ecclesiastical discipline, two tribunals or supreme courts were formed. The first was styled the “Venerable Company,” and consisted of the five pastors of the city parishes, the pastors of the rural districts, and the teachers of theology. They were to preach, to teach, to administer the sacraments, and act as members of the Consistory. The second tribunal was called the “ Consistory.” It was composed of the five pastors of the city Churches and tw^Telve elders, elected from the members of the Coim-

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cils of State by the Councils and the Venerable Company united. This Court of the Consistory was the working element of the whole system. It was a main point with Calvin that the lay members should always outnumber the clerical. The Consistory met every Tuesday for the transaction of business. “ The control given to this body was so searching and direct that, to be at all tolerable, it should be lodged- in the hands of the congregation itself, exercised by the people themselves upon themselves. To the Consistory belonged an absolute and irresponsible authority of censure, enforced by the power of excommunication, to which the civil arm was obliged to give effect.”

The following extracts from the “Ecclesiastical Ordinances” of Geneva will show what Calvinistic discipline was: “All citizens are forbidden the use of gold or silver embroidery, lace or bands, or other such ornaments of dress. All chains, pins, buttons of gold attached to the dress, ribbons of gold and silver, and girdles of gold, and in general all use of gold and jewels is forbidden. . . . Men are forbidden from wearing long hair or rings in their ears. Women and girls are forbidden all curling, puffing, or braiding of the hair. No girls of quality shall wear rings before they are betrothed, under penalty of sixty sous and the forfeiting of said rings. Grooms and brides are forbidden to make any gift or presents to others than themselves, not even to servants and children, and those they make to each other shall be of moderate cost.” The number of courses and fare at banquets was regulated. A regular penalty of some sous was inflicted on all who neglected to attend Church. If a man not

The Genetajv Reform.    325

forbidden to partake of the Lord’s Supper neglected to receive it, he was condemned to banishment for a year.

That these ordinances were not a dead letter is shown by the penalties inflicted. A young girl who had insulted her mother was kept confined, fed on bread and water, and obliged to express her repentance publicly in church. A peasant boy who had called his mother a devil, and flung a stone at her, was publicly whipped and suspended by his arms from a gallows. A child having struck its parents was beheaded. A man who heard an ass bray, and said jestingly, “ He sings a good psalm,” was sentenced to temporary banishment from the city. Some men who laughed while Calvin was preaching were put in prison three days, and compelled to ask pardon before the Consistory. Gamblers were set in the pillory with their cards about their necks. Drunkenness and debauchery were severely punished. Adultery was more than once repaid with death. Rope-dancers and conjurers were forbidden to exhibit. Cards and the theater were prohibited. On charge of a conspiracy to scatter the plague, thirty-one persons were burned, one died of torture, and a physician and two assistants were quartered. In sixty years, out of a population never more than twenty thousand, one hundred and fifty persons were burned to death on accusation of witchcraft in Geneva. In two years (1558-1559) there were four hundred and fourteen trials for ecclesiastical offenses.

Such a code, so enforced, could not but meet with strenuous resistance. A brief outline will show the progress of the struggle. In April, 1546, the captain

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general, Amy Perrin, the syndic, Corna, and several other persons, having, contrary to the prohibitions, The struggle danced in a private house, “ It is ordained,” for the say the Registers, “that they all be im-Discipiine. p_ri_sone(j_{? an(}j the wife of Amy Perrin, who

spoke insolently to the Consistory, that she also be imprisoned, and be required to find security.” Madam Perrin belonged to one of the most influential families of Geneva, but one noted for its license. She raged furiously; but Calvin informed her that no distinction would be made between offenders. From that time her husband, who had been one of the strongest of Calvin’s friends, became his avowed and persistent enemy.

Perrin’s wife was released from prison, and meeting a minister named Abel, she shamelessly abused him. The next day a paper was found in the pulpit threatening Calvin with death if any further notice was taken of the affair. A former monk, Jacques Gruet, of dissolute life, was arrested as the author of the paper. In searching his lodgings, writings were found, not only ridiculing and defaming Calvin, but also the Holy Scriptures, the Lord Jesus, and the immortality of the soul. He was charged with sedition, blasphemy, and atheism. Under torture he confessed his guilt, and was beheaded, July 26, 1547. Three years later a small book of twenty-six pages was found in Gruet’s handwriting, reviling and blaspheming the Savior, the prophets and apostles, and declaring the Gospel to be an imposition and a fraud. This throws a baneful light upon the materialistic and pantheistic doctrines and immorality of the Libertine party who opposed Calvin.

Amy Perrin had been for ten years Calvin’s stead-

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fast friend. He was the most influential layman in the city. He was the captain general of the Republic, and had been sent, in 1547, as ambassador to the court of France. He was not a man of earnest religious convictions or of strict moral life. In his absence the trial and condemnation of Gruet had taken place. Perrin’s father-in-law, Favre, and his wife, who had been for some time away from the city, returned. The Council of Twenty-five resolved, September 20th, that both should be arrested for obstinate resistance to the ordinances. This made Perrin beside himself with rage, and he did not spare to threaten the Council. The same day Perrin himself was arrested. To his surprise he found himself accused of high treason in entering into negotiations with the King of France, while at the French court, to the injury of the independence of the Genevan Republic. The accuser was one Maigret. The Canton of Bern procured the full text of the letters to Maigret on passages of which the accusation was founded. These proved that Maigret had been for years a spy in the pay of France, and that the accuser of Perrin was guilty of greater treason than had ever been charged against Perrin. That such a tool should be used to make such an accusation injured greatly Calvin’s popularity and respect. The conviction of Perrin was impossible. A compromise was arranged; Maigret was allowed to go free, and Perrin was restored to all his honors and offices. He was publicly reconciled with Calvin, but never forgave him the indignity and harshness of his imprisonment. The tide of popular favor turned in Perrin’s favor. The elections of 1548 were in favor of Perrin’s friends and he himself was chosen first syndic

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for 1549. The influence of the Consistory and the strict execution of the “ordinances” was greatly diminished for these years until 1551, when the trial of Bolsec still more injured the authority of the Reformer in Geneva.

Hieronymus Bolsec had been a Carmelite monk. Born in Paris, he became a physician and secured extraordinary success in his profession. In 1551 he settled near Geneva. He was a close student of theology, and came to have serious objections to Calvin’s teaching concerning predestination, the central doctrine of his system. October 16, 1551, he heard a preacher in Geneva expound the usual doctrine. Bolsec arose and with great decision declared the teaching erroneous and false. Calvin came in while Bolsec was speaking. His whole being was stirred. The teaching dearest to him was attacked openly in the citadel of his power. He spoke a full hour in reply to Bolsec. He spoke with the fullness of knowledge which years of study gave, with a vehement eloquence which was all his own. In the very church Bolsec was arrested, and then put on trial. The prosecution was pushed with a zeal which betokened a capital sentence, and the rigor of his imprisonment was no slight punishment. The Lord of Falais, a Burgundian nobleman and an intimate friend of Calvin’s, at whose intercession he came to reside at Geneva, twice petitioned the Council for a speedy and impartial sentence, which would free the physician, to whom, next to God, he said, he owed his life, but with no direct result. However, November 21, 1551, the Council resolved to ask the Councils of the cities of Zurich, Basel, and Bern in regard to the contested

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doctrine. Contrary to Calvin’s expectation, the reply was e.ther m favor of Bolsec’s views, or dse represented the subject of such difficulty that divergent views were not strange, and recommended a recon-cd.at.on. The Lord of Falais made the same recommendation, and, because of Calvin’s relentless hostility broke his friendship with him. December 21st the sentence was given. Calvin’s stern determination p vai e . A death sentence was escaped, but Bolsec

was s_e„_{t d t0    al ban}._shmeP _a’_nd bolsec

ent of the costs. The trial threw the public sentiment on the side of the accused, and, mo're than any other occurrence of his rule, diminished Calvin’s au 1 y and his respect as a theological teacher. This was shown in the elections of i_{552 aad I553}. _{In the}

^‘^er_Hf^ear’ ^{Amy Perria was} again chosen first syndic, and the majority of the councilors were determined opponents of Calvin. Yet this fateful year witnessed

nnnfn    ^{g P}°‘^nt '^{U the strife}> while it brought

time ha ^{6 reputatlon of the} Reformer a stain which time has deepened and can not efface.

fron^th ^right °^f -^{he C}°^{nsist0ry t0} excommunicate from the communion of the Lord’s Supper Calvin

always maintained. The Council claimed that the

entence should go forth from them. Berthelier, one

of the most violent of the partisans of the Libertines

presented himself at the Lord’s Supper and was ex-

commumcated by the Consistory. He complained to

the Council; th_ey would not ratify the sentence, and

declared, that ,f Berthelier had no impediment in his

r;r^cv^er T^hi^^{hindered him from} willing

the table of the Lord, the Council authorized him to do so. ■ Gentlemen,’ said Calvin, < as for me, I would

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rather suffer death than allow the table of my Lord to be profaned in such a manner.’ ”

The magistrates knew him well enough to feel that these were not mere words. They were intimidated, and sent a private message to Berthelier, saying, “If you can stay away for the present you will do well.” On Sunday, September 3, 1553, St. Peter’s Church was filled by a large and excited crowd. Calvin mounted the pulpit, and preached with great calmness upon the state of mind and heart necessary for those who would approach the table of the Lord. He ended his sermon by saying: “ As for me, so long as it shall please God to keep me here, since he has given me resolution and I have derived it from him, I shall not fail to exercise it when there is need; and I will rule my life in accordance with the rule of my Master, which is quite clear and well known to me. . . . We are now about to receive the Holy Sacrament; and if any one who has been excommunicated by the Consistory tries to approach that table, at the risk of my life I am prepared to do my duty.” He descended from the pulpit and approached and blessed the Lord’s Supper. Then Calvin spread his hands over the sacred elements and cried out: “You may break these limbs, you may cut off my arms, you may take my life; shed my blood if you will, it is yours; but never shall any one compel me to give the things that are sacred to the profane and to dishonor the table of God.” The sacrament was then administered in silence to the excited and agitated believers. The people sided with Calvin. October 25, 1554, the Council induced Berthelier to make peace with the pastors; and on the 24th of January, 1555, the assembled Councils agreed

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that it was the Consistory which ought to pronounce sentence of excommunication. Calvin’s battle of nearly twenty years was won.

The violent and bloody persecutions of the Protestants in France had driven many refugees to Geneva, among them men of position, of fortune, and of learning. Through them, as well as the industry and good morals of its own citizens, Geneva grew rich and prosperous. Many of them became naturalized. From

1549 to 1564 thirteen hundred and seventy-six persons became citizens. Moved as they were by religious zeal, they naturally took Calvin’s part against his opponents. Early in 1555, sixty new burgesses were received. Amy Perrin, as the leader of the Anti-Calvinists, appeared twice before the Council and demanded their exclusion. On the 18th of May, 1555, three days after the Council had rejected their last demands, two brothers Comparet attacked a Frenchman in the street, whereupon a riot ensued. “To arms! to arms!” they cried, “all good citizens of Geneva! The French are going to sack the city. To the Rhone with the Frenchmen ! Down with every French rascal that shows his head! ” One of the bands attacked the Hotel de Ville; another passed before the house of the syndic, Aubert. The magistrate, hearing a great noise, went down into the street in his dressing-gown, with his baton of office in one hand and a lighted candle in the other. He was knocked down and trampled under foot; but he got up again, and friends came to his aid. Another of the syndics rapidly called together two or three companies of militia, and they hastened to the defense of the Hotel de Ville. The struggle then commenced; many persons were killed, but the insurgents were

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everywhere attacked, defeated, and pursued. Their resistance was short, as their attack had been sudden and violent. Many were taken prisoners; but their leaders, Perrin amongst others, escaped and left the Genevese territory. The insurrection was quickly suppressed, and the rioters severely punished. Four were condemned to death and executed, and one hundred and fifty were perpetually banished, including Amy Perrin. Thus ended the struggle against Calvin and the Calvinistic discipline in Geneva.

Calvin, like any renowned theologian of those troublous times, had a controversy on hand most of the time. As he was a man fully persuaded ^rvetus.^d ^e ^truth °f ^own opinions, never changing them, but, with every examination of them and the objections against them, being more and more confirmed in their belief, and being admirably equipped for such contests, we may assume that he enjoyed them. Though they were about points of Christian doctrine, they were carried on in anything but a Christian spirit. The mildest term he has for a theological opponent is “ hound.” One of his earliest adversaries was Caroli, with whom he disputed on the use of the Apostles’ Creed. Caroli afterward went back to Rome. He disputed with Pighius about election, and so ably that he converted him to his views. He combated the Lutheran doctrine of the sacrament with Westphal and Osiander with no results but to leave the Lutheran and Reformed further apart than ever. He disputed with Jerome Bolsec with great bitterness upon predestination and election, and the controversy cost him one of his most valued friends, and a rebuke from the ministers of

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Bern. But the most noted of all these, and the one that has left an ineffaceable stain upon the name of Calvin, was with Servetus.

Michael Servetus was the same age as Calvin, being born in 1509 at Villanova, in Spain. He studied law at Toulouse, and when about twenty years of age became secretary to the confessor of the Emperor Charles V. He traveled with him in Italy and Spain. In about a year he settled in Basel, and in 1531 he published a book entitled “Errors of the Trinity,” which compelled him to flee from Switzerland and Germany. He went to Paris, and, changing his name, studied medicine. There he challenged Calvin, who was in hiding, to a public disputation. Calvin accepted, but Servetus did not appear. Calvin held him in contempt from that time. Servetus’s marvelous power of acquisition gave him high rank and large practice as a physician and astrologer until a quarrel with the Paris Faculty drove him from the city. He then went to Lyons, where he corrected for the press and edited Ptolemy’s Geography and Paganini’s Bible. He practiced for a little while at Charlieu, twelve miles from Lyons, until 1540, when he accepted an invitation of Pamier, Archbishop of Vienna, to reside as physician at his court. He accepted, and for twelve years lived quietly and happily as M. Michael Villeneuve, physician to the archbishop. During six years of this time he sought to carry on a controversial correspondence with Calvin. The latter seemed to treat his many letters (over thirty are preserved) with consideration, from 1542 to 1546, when he declined further consideration of the subject, and in 1548 declined to have anything further to do with him. Calvin had sent to him

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a copy of his “ Institutes,” to aid him, doubtless, to come to a right understanding of the faith. Stung by Calvin’s refusal to hold intercourse with him, he sent this book back with marginal notes, in which he expressed his dissent and his own heterodox opinions. “Not a page,” says Calvin, “but is covered with his vomit.” In 1552, Servetus printed secretly at Vienna one thousand copies of what he would have as his great life work, under the title of “ Christianity Restored.” Previous to printing, he sent the book in manuscript to Calvin, who never returned it. It was Servetus’s intention to send the books out of the country, and have them on sale at Frankfort and Basel, and no one suspected that the archbishop’s physician, M. Villeneuve, was the author. A friend of Servetus’s, a bookseller at Lyons, was a correspondent of Calvin’s. He sent him a copy. Shortly after, a Genevan refugee, corresponding with a Roman Catholic friend and fellow-countryman, writes to him that he accuses the Evangelicals of heresy while they have in Vienna, in their midst, one so abominable that the Reformers would not endure him for a moment; that Michael Servetus, alias Villeneuve, residing at Vienna, had published a book which was full of blasphemies. In response to demands for proof, he sent twice documents from John Calvin, which he had received under the seal of private correspondence. Cal\in denied that he set this matter on foot, and Calvin is never a liar or a hypocrite; as he says, “ If he had done it he would own it.” But he perhaps, incidentally and unintentionally at first, gave William Trie the information which he wrote to his cousin. For no one besides John Calvin and the

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author knew that Servetus and M. de Villeneuve, the author of this heretical book, were the same. This is the information sent in Trie’s first letter. With each of the other letters are sent intentionally by Calvin papers to cause the arrest and condemnation of Servetus. They accomplished their end. The Inquisitor was called. Servetus, not dreaming of the officiousness of his former correspondent, made a poor defense and entangled himself in the most absurd falsehoods in trying to conceal the identity of M. de Villeneuve with Servetus. He was condemned and sentenced to be burned alive. Some influential person had pity on him, and made it easy for him to escape, which he did by climbing the wall of the prison garden, April 7, 1553- He wandered in different places in France, and finally arrived at Geneva, July 17, 1553. Why he came to Geneva will always remain a mystery. It is supposed that he intended to pass through the place in disguise and go on to Zurich, but that some political enemies of Calvin thought to use him for their purposes and persuaded him to remain. He had been nearly a month in Geneva when Calvin heard of his presence, and at once called on the syndic for his arrest. Some one had to appear as his accuser and go to jail with him. Calvin obtained his cook, Nicholas Fontaine, for this purpose. Servetus was arrested August 13th, and the next day put on trial, which lasted with recesses until October 26th.

Michael Servetus was a man of genius, with large gifts of acquisition and intuition. He was the first to discover the pulmonary circulation of the blood. Among the learned men of that age he was no mean scholar. He was a man of moral life and pious dispo

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sition. But his morality did not keep him from falsehood, which indeed was almost a necessity if he would preserve his life in Christendom after writing his first book at the age of twenty-two. He was now forty-four. He was rash, vain, arrogant, and abusive in his language to his opponents. He seems to have entertained such an estimate of his abilities as to believe himself able easily to vanquish all adversaries. In his theological views he vehemently denied the doctrine of the Trinity and the validity of infant baptism. Outwardly in profession and life a Christian, his philosophy and theology were pantheistic. God is all, and everything is God.

On his trial, in which he was allowed no counsel, according to the custom of the time, and in which Calvin was the real prosecutor, appearing in court to refute Servetus's theological opinions, and which, with frequent intermissions, lasted ten weeks, he does not seem to have dreamed that his life was in serious danger. At some sessions he manifested a degree of prudence, but in general it was very easy to put him and his opinions in an unfavorable light. This Calvin was able and eager to do. While the trial was going on he denounced Servetus from the pulpit of the cathedral church. At the request of Servetus and the Council, the four Swiss cities of Bern, Zurich, Schaff-hausen, and Basel, through their ministry, were requested to give their judgment on the case before sentence was pronounced. Their replies came on October 18th. While guarded, they found the accused guilty, and did not scruple to hint that he was worthy of death. On October 26th the Genevan court met, and sentenced him to be burned alive the next day.

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Servetus had not anticipated such a fate. He was not told of it until the morning of the fatal day. His surprise and anguish were extreme; but he rallied. Farel appeared as his spiritual adviser. He asked him to have an interview with Calvin, to which Servetus assented. When Calvin asked him what he wanted, Servetus begged for pardon; for he felt that he had shown animosity during his trial. Calvin replied that he had no personal ill-will toward him, but exhorted him to recant his theological errors. Calvin used his influence in vain to have Servetus suffer a civil death; i. e., be beheaded and then burnt. An hour before noon, October 27, 1553, Farel accompanied Servetus and his executioners out of the town to Champel, w^here he was tied to a stake, surrounded with green wood, and a wreath smeared with brimstone was put about his head. When the fire was first lighted it ran quickly to the brimstone when the pain caused the victim to give a horrible cry. He then began praying. For a full half hour his body slowly roasted before the spirit left the flesh. Saying, “ Jesu, thou Son of the Eternal God, have compassion on me,” he expired, and Michael Servetus, condemned by both Romanists and Reformed as a pestilent heretic, no more in bodily presence troubled the peace of Christendom.

But a nobler victim than Servetus stood condemned by that pyre at Champel. In ability and weight of character, in labors, in services, John Calvin was surpassed by no man then living, has been surpassed by few that ever lived. He had the defect of his great qualities. This most upright, most conscientious man, so stern with himself, and having so poor opinion of

22

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our humanity, fell into grievous sin, and the fire of Champel lights up the dark and pitiless side of the nature of the man. Calvin began his public life by publishing Seneca’s treatise “ On Clemency.” In the preface to his great work addressed to Francis I he uses this language: “Nor, indeed, are such as these [i. e., excommunicated Christians] only to be so entreated, but Turks, Saracens, and others, positive enemies of the true religion; also drowning, beheading, and burning are far from being proper means of bringing them and their like to proper views.”

Twelve years later his opinions appear to have undergone a change. Writing in October, 1548, to the Lord Protector Somerset, who governed England during the minority of Edward VI, he says of Romanists and Anabaptists, “ Both alike deserve to be repressed by the sword which is committed to you, since they not only attack the king, but .strive with God.” More than two years before this (February, 1546) he had written, if Servetus came to Geneva, “ I shall never permit him to depart alive, provided my authority be of any avail.” While Servetus is on trial the same week of his arrest, Calvin writes to Farel, “ I hope that sentence of death will at least be passed upon him; but I desire that the severity of the punishment may be mitigated.” After the execution of Servetus he writes: “ He, however, who contends it is unjust to punish heretics and blasphemers, I say, becomes their deliberate associate. You tell me of the authority of man; but we have the Word of God and his eternal laws for the government of his Church. Not in vain has he commanded us to suppress every human affection for the sake of religion. And where

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fore such severity, if it be not for this, that we are to prefer God’s honor to mere human reason.” Any persecution, however cruel, can be justified by this reasoning if only the persecutor be sincere.

No one who compares the different treatment Calvin gave to Socinus and to Servetus can doubt that there was a personal element of hostility that entered into the prosecution of Servetus. Four things darken Calvin’s relations with Servetus, which no reference to the age in which he lived can explain away. First, the relentless and pitiless desire for his violent death expressed more than seven years before he came to Geneva, and which, his letters to Farel show, never changed. Second, that he, the leader of the Reformed, should stoop to become an agent of the Inquisition to secure the condemnation of Servetus at Vienna. Third, his personal apprehension and prosecution of the victim to the death at Geneva. Fourth, his justification of a deed so contrary to the teachings of the New Testament and to his own principles at the opening of his career. These show the limitations of the man and of his system.

To this system we must now give our attention. The sources of Calvin’s theology are the Old and New Testaments and the writings of Augustine, whose doctrines he systematizes and carries to a further logical consequence. Indeed,

Augustine is the author of all the distinctively Cal-vinistic tenets. He taught the sovereignty of God as the great fact in the universe of his creation. That sovereignty is a present, vital fact—a persistent, eternal fact. By no system of pretenses can a sinner through the Church circumvent the Almighty.

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He taught also the exceeding sinfulness of sin. Calvin dwells upon our individual responsibility to the Sovereign Judge of the universe. We men in our sins stand face to face with a holy God. The title of one of the chapters is, “A Consideration of the Divine Tribunal Necessary to a Serious Conviction of Gratuitous Justification.”

These things in Calvin’s system,—the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures, a Sovereign God residing in his universe, the nature of sin as forever meriting punishment, the direct and sole responsibility of man to his Maker, the necessity of a personal experience of regenerating grace,—these, Evangelical theology will ever prize as chief corner-stones. In the doctrine of faith and justification he went along Lutheran lines. His teaching concerning the sacraments was acceptable to such a Lutheran as Melanchthon. What he says about angels, the work of the Holy Ghost, the spiritual union of believers with their Lord, wakes a responsive echo in the breast of every Evangelical Christian.

In addition to these things of substance there are matters of form which greatly contributed to the reputation of this work. First, its scope. It dealt not only with Divinity proper, but with all the controverted points between Evangelicals and Roman Catholics, and between Calvinists and Evangelical opponents. It was not only a manual of theology, but an encyclopedia of polemics. It was also a hand-book of religious experience, and the peculiar type of religious thought and feeling found in Mrs. Stowe’s New England tales springs directly from Calvin’s chapters on experimental religion. In addition to this it gave a

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complete form of ecclesiastical order and discipline. To this comprehensive range must be added the method of its treatment. Calvin never evaded the issue. On every theme, however high or holy, he had his conviction to propound. The great unsolved problems of human life are vigorously confronted, and their solutions given. O11 fate and free-will, foreknowledge or predestination, human sin and suffering in origin and end, Calvin has something to offer clear and definite, and conclusive to himself and to those who agree with him. To the papal infallibility succeeded, in a good part of Christendom, the necessary infallibility of the Calvinistic system; for the style is adapted to convince. The system within the limits which Calvin imposed forms a thoroughly-digested and consistent whole. Admitting the premises of his central doctrine of Divine election, it would be hard to deny any distinctively Calvinistic tenet of the entire system. Finally, the style in which it is written is so clear, the definitions so exact, the deductions so conclusive, that no man, learned or unlearned, could be in doubt of Calvin’s meaning. Any passage from his works shines transparent in its own light.

This is high praise to give a theologian, and it is deserved; and yet all progress in religious thought or in philanthropic enterprise has been possible only through the overthrow and destruction of the essential elements of Calvin’s system.

Calvin erred by defect. He left out of the account, or denied the existence of, essential elements in the nature of God and of man. This defect vitiated and made void his central doctrine of election. The system, if carried beyond the bounds he arbitrarily set,

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was illogical, and its parts mutually destructive. The practical effect of Calvin’s Calvinism, carried to its logical extent, is to make God an arbitrary tyrant, and man born not human, but devilish. To substantiate this position it is only necessary to present the fundamental doctrines of the system in Calvin’s own words. How he lowers the nature both of God and man and the relation existing between them appears from these extracts. He quotes and makes his own these words of Augustine: “God could convert to good the will of the wicked, because he is omnipotent. Why, then, does he not? Because he would not.” (Institutes, Vol. II, p. 192.) Again, “Nor should it be thought absurd to affirm, that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and the ruin of his posterity in him, but also arranged all by the determination of his own will.” (Vol. II, p. 180.) Calvin himself says: “It would have been unreasonable that God should have been confined to this condition to make man so as to be altogether incapable either of choosing or of committing any sin. It is true that such a nature would have been more excellent.” (Vol. I, p. 182.) Quoting Augustine: “Assuming as a principle that nothing could be more absurd than for anything to happen independently of the ordination of God: because it would happen at random. By this reasoning also he excludes any contingency dependent on the human will; and immediately after more expressly that we ought not to inquire for any cause of the will of God.” (Vol. I, p. 192.) To our experience, apparently men are free, and evil is determined by evil agencies. To this Calvin replies, there are a secret will and secret

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councils of God, which we may not inquire after or expect to understand.

Calvin’s conception of the character of God comes out more clearly in his definition of predestination and the doctrine of election. “Predestina- „ . .

Predestination we call the eternal decree of God, by tion and

which he has determined within himself ^EIect,on* what he would have become of every individual of mankind. For they are not all created with a similar destiny; but eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal damnation for others. Every man, therefore, being created for one or the other of these ends, we say he is predestinated either to life or death.” (Vol. '

II, p. 145.) “ By an eternal and immutable counsel, God has once for all determined, both whom he would admit to salvation and whom he would condemn to destruction. . . . To those he devotes to condemnation, the gate of life is closed by a just and irrepre-hensible but incomprehensible judgment.” (Vol. II, p. 149.) “ God knows what he has determined to do with us. If he has decreed our salvation, he will bring us to it in his own good time; if he has destined us to death, it will be in vain for us to strive against it.” (Vol. II, p. 174.)

“ Because we do not know who belongs or who does not belong to the number of the predestinated, it becomes us affectionately to desire the _Evang_eIlsm salvation of all.” (Vol. II, p. 168.) This and is the greatest encouragement Calvin can ^Mlss,ons* give to the work of revivals and missions. No wonder a second reformation was necessary before they could be born.

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Calvin declares that “election could not exist without reprobation. If any one inquires the cause of

it, the sufficient answer is, because God

Reprobation.

would.” (Vol. I, chap. xxiii, sec. 2.) “I inquire, again, how it came to pass that the fall of Adam, independent of any remedy, should involve so many nations with their infant children in eternal death, but because such was the will of God. It is an awful decree, I confess; but 110 one can deny that God foreknew the future final fate of man before he created him, and that he did foreknow it because it was appointed by his own decree.” (Vol. II, p. 170.) “The rest [the non-elect], whom he passed by in his righteous judgment, putrefy in their own corruption until they are entirely consumed.” (Vol. I, p. 237.)

Calvin’s capital mistake is his conception of God. A careful reading of the two volumes of the “Institutes ” fails to show a reference to the great fact of all theology, that God is love. The conception that God’s love for man is anything different from goodness, benevolence, or favor, that it is “the communication of the Divine life to personality,” is alien to his thought. His conception of the relation between God and man is so mechanical that there is no possibility of the existence of that relation of fellowship which is the theme of John’s first Epistle and of the prayers of Paul. Calvin views this relation always from the Old Testament standpoint; indeed his whole theology is Hebraic rather than Christian. A curious instance of this is his chapter on Prayer. Sixty-five pages are given to the subject, yet all the illustrative examples are from the Old Testament. Almost the only reference to the New is the Lord’s Prayer, of which an

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exposition is given. Think of a Christian treatise on prayer with the prayers of our Lord and his apostles left out!

It would be untrue to deny that the very defects of Calvin’s system gave it strength and influence in the time of its first publication. The dark Augustinian theology was born in the throes of the dying Roman world. Recalled to more abundant life by Calvin, it presided over the darkened birth of the modern religious world. The Evangelical Reformers were as the sifted wheat of God. They stood forth as God’s elect to resist unto blood the leagued armies of the Catholic powers, the ravening wolves of the Inquisition, the wily, corrupting, serpentine policy of the Jesuits. They needed to feel the Almighty was their sufficient defense, and that they were indeed the chosen of God, the leaven whose undecaying might is prevailingly felt in all this newer modern world. But with the light of this modern day shining upon the broad and universal commands of our Lord to evangelize every creature, the particularism of Calvin became impossible. As surely as the narrow-zeal Judaizers of the Apostolic Church gave way before the broad, evangelical comprehension of St. Paul, so sure over the fall of Calvinistic barriers came the message of free grace to the unsaved at home in revivals, and to the ungospeled millions of heathenism in modern missions.

John Calvin was a small man. Beza says: “He was of middle stature, somewhat pale; his skin was rather brown, and his clear, sparkling eyes gave token of his keen and lively spirit.” _Appe*r"nce. Calvin had thirty years to live after he began his career as a Reformer. In these years he never

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saw a well day. We find him at the age of twenty-one speaking of constitutional weakness and infirmity. In his correspondence there are seventeen references made to attacks of different diseases, never to complain, but to excuse delay in work which would otherwise have been accomplished, and these all before he was forty-two years of age. Toward the close of his life, when he consulted the physicians of Montpelier, they find seven different diseases combining their strength to crush him, among them fever, asthma, stone, and the gout. Beza tells us: “He took so little nourishment, such being the weakness of his stomach, that for many years he contented himself with one meal a day. Of sleep he had almost none.”

And yet what was the work of this chronic invalid? “ Besides preaching every day in each alternative week, he taught theology three days in

Daily Work. „    ’    *    . -    .    _ri.

the week, attended weekly meetings 01 his Consistory, read the Scripture once a week in the congregation, carried on an extensive correspondence on a multiplicity of subjects, prepared commentaries on the books of Scripture, and was engaged repeatedly in controversy with the opponents of his opinions.” Calvin wrote to a friend: “ I have not time to look out of my house at the blessed sun, and, if things continue thus, I shall forget what sort of an appearance it has. When I have settled my usual business, I have so many letters to write, so many questions to answer, that many a night is spent without any offering of sleep being brought to nature.” Annually he preached two hundred and eighty-six sermons and delivered one hundred and eighty-six lectures.

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If work was Calvin’s food, his works are his monument. No stone marks his grave, which is as unknown as that of Moses; but his writings

, .    . , ’ ,    ,    Works.

are a lasting memorial. There they stand, in sixty-three volumes. His “ Institutes” have had a wider and more enduring influence than any other treatise of Systematic Theology. Other theologians have gained more universal assent to their teachings in regard to particular doctrines, but none have been more influential in the whole field. By the side of the “Institutes” stand commentaries on most of the Old and New Testaments, the most popular of their time, and still in demand. Beside these are ranged volumes of controversial literature, and with them many more of letters to the kings and queens, the chief nobility, and to almost all the leading theologians of his time.

Work like this could not fail to command influence, and the circle of Calvin in influence was wide indeed. Richard Hooker says: “His de- ^ ^ pendents, both abroad and at home; his intelligence from foreign Churches; his correspondence everywhere with the chiefest; . . . his writing but of three lines, but in disgrace of any man, as forcible as any proscription throughout the Reformed Churches ; his rescripts and answers of as great authority as Decretal Epistles; his grace in preaching, the meanest of all other gifts in him, yet even that way so had in honor and estimation that a hearer of his, being asked why he came not sometimes to other men’s sermons as well as Calvin’s, answered, that if Calvin and St. Paul himself should preach both at one hour, he would leave St. Paul to hear Calvin.”

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As a Christian, Calvin feared the Almighty God, yet feared him so that he feared nothing else. As a public man he was absolutely honest. He could be great without desiring riches. He died worth only $225. He was of a quick, impetuous disposition, and did not always restrain his wrath. He was aristocratic in his sympathies, and aristocratic in manner. With all his unwearied labors, his uprightness, and his great abilities, there is a harsh and pitiless side to his character, so that we can not love him.

But who can fail to admire that “ majesty of character” of which the Council of Geneva spoke, which was the most potent personal factor of his time. Spotless integrity, courage, faith,—these win. Character is more than intellect, but character and intellect control. With all his defects, we shall have to scan closely and long the records of the world to find, in great abilities wisely used, in resources in his own spirit, in grandeur of achievement and enduring influence, both for blessing and for bane, the peer of John Calvin.

REFORMERS, SAINTS, AND SCHOLARS.

It would be a mistake to suppose that the corruptions of the Mediaeval Church and of the papacy of the Renaissance called forth no evangelical Aiphonso as well as humanistic protest from the lauds

Valdes, south of the Alps. Two brothers, the twin 1500 153a.    ^ -p_ernan(j₀ y_aid_eS) hereditary regidor

of Cuenca, in Castile, born about 1500, were the earliest to give expression to this tendency. Aiphonso Valdes became Latin secretary of Charles V, from 1524-1532. Shortly after the sack of Rome he published a dia

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logue, in which he defended the action of the emperor. He scourged the vices of the Roman Curia, and set over against them the teachings of Christ, and declared that only in following them could the wounds of the Church be healed. Alphonso died at Vienna in 1532.

Juan Valdes was much more pronounced, and more devoted to the study of the Scriptures. He wrote a very plain spoken dialogue on the corruption of the Roman Church, about 1528. To escape annoyance from the Inquisition, he came to Naples in 1530. The next two years, from 1531, he spent in Rome. In 1533 he was at Bologna in the train of Clement VII. The same year he returned to Naples, where he lived until his death in May, 1541. Here Juan Valdes was a diligent student of the Scriptures. He wrote a Comment on the Psalms and also on the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John and the Epistle to the Romans and First Corinthians, and tracts and letters.

But the literary activity of Valdes was not the chief source of his influence. He had a rare grace and charm of manner. He gathered about him a circle of the finest intellects and noblest spirits in Italy, men and women who felt the impress of his personality until their lives’ end. Such were Bernardino Ochino, Peter Martyr, Carnesecchi, Marc Antonio Flaminio, the widowed Giulia Gonzaga, and her celebrated sister-in-law, Vittoria Colonna. The circle numbered three thousand adherents, and from it went forth Benedetto di Mantova, an Augustinian monk, the author of the best-known and most influential Evangelical writing in Italian, “The Benefizio, or

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Grace, of Christ.” Fortunately for Valdes, he died before the Inquisition began its baleful work in Italy.

Such was not the fate of his most distinguished associates. Bernardino Ochino w^ras born at Sienna, and having been an Observant Franciscan, joined 1487-156*4 ^^{ie uew an(}^ stricter order of the Capuchins in 1534. In 1538 he became vicar-general of the order. He was now celebrated as the most renowned pulpit orator in Italy. In 1539 he was invited to preach in Venice, where he had a great following, and where his sermons leaned decidedly to the doctrine of justification by faith. In 1541 he was again elected general of his order. In 1542 the Inquisition was finally established, and one of the first to be cited before the Holy Office was the most famous Italian preacher, renowned for his holy life as much as for his eloquence. He set out for Rome; but at Bologna he met the dying Contarini, dying from poison, as he believed, administered by his enemies. Cardinal Contarini advised him to flee, and from Florence Ochino fled to Geneva. He served Italian congregations in Switzerland until 1545, when he became similarly employed at Augsburg. In 1547 he left Augsburg for England, where he remained as pastor of an Italian congregation until the accession of Mary, in 1553. He then returned to Switzerland, remaining there until 1563. Ochino had an acute intellect and a fertile mind. He wrote sermons and controversial tracts, and when in England a work entitled “ Tragedy,” which is highly dramatic, and in conception anticipates “Paradise Lost.” He did not like the high predestinarian doctrines of Geneva, and published against them a work called the “ Labyrinth.”

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In 1563 his “ Thirty Dialogues,” in which he indulges in speculation, yet only as speculations, 011 the Trinity and on polygamy, caused his exile from Switzerland. He retired to Poland, at that time a refuge for dissidents from other European States. Hardly had he arrived there than all foreign dissenters were banished. Again fleeing, at the age of seventy-seven, and in the twenty-second year of his exile, the plague overtook him. Three of his four children died before his eyes, and ere the year's end he followed them.

Pietro Martire Vermigli, called Peter Martyr, was the most learned and widely known of the Italians who professed the Evangelical faith. He _Peter was born of a noble family in Florence. Martyr.

In 1516 he entered the Augustine Convent 's⁰⁰’¹^⁶²* at Fiesole. In 1519 he went to study at Padua. He acquired ability to read both Old and New Testaments in the original. In 1526 he was sent to preach in different towns in Italy. He became prior of St. Peter’s at Aram, in Naples, and thus entered the circle of Valdes. In 1539 he became a convinced adherent of the Reformed doctrines. In 1541 he was elected visitor of his order. He was then, on account of his strictness, transferred as prior to San Frediano, at Lucca. There he studied and taught the doctrines of the Reformers until the Inquisition set upon him. In 1542 he fled to Switzerland. Stopping at Zurich and Basel, he came to Strasburg, where he taught Old Testament exegesis until 1547, when Cranmer invited him to England. He was, from 1547 to 1553, the most notable theologian in England. The impress of his thought is upon the doctrine of the English Church. In 1553 he returned to Strasburg, and in 1555 he be

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gan teaching in Zurich, where he remained until his death in 1562. He represented the Reformed faith at the Colloquy of Poissy in 1561, and, after Calvin, was, in that generation, the most influential teacher of its doctrines.

A harder fate befell Pietro. Carnesecchi, like Ver-migli, a Florentine of good family. He became secretary to Clement VII, and had great influ-

Carnesecchi.    _A

ence at the Papal Court. At Naples he was one of the circle of Valdes. In 1546 he was cited to Rome as a heretic. He escaped to France, where he remained until 1552. In that year he returned and lived in Padua. In 1557 he was summoned to Rome, and, not appearing, he was excommunicated as a heretic, April 6, 1559. The same year, without recantation, Pius IV removed the excommunication. In 1566, Carnesecchi became councilor to the Grand Duke Cosimo, of Tuscany. Pius V required that the grand duke should deliver him to the Inquisition, in a letter written in his own hand. Cosimo basely complied, and Carnesecchi was beheaded and his body burned at Rome, October 3, 1567.

A like fate befell Aonio Paleario, like Carnesecchi a humanist and a Reformer. Born in the Roman Cam-pagna, he was one of the brilliant circle 1500^570. about Leo X. The sack of Rome drove him from that city to Perugia and Sienna, where, in 1534, he married. In 1542 he published an Italian tract entitled “ The Sufficiency and Satisfaction of the Death of Christ.” He defended himself successfully against the Inquisition. He was professor at Lucca, 1546-1555, and he lectured on Greek and Latin literature at Milan, 1555-1566. He was

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accused of heresy in 1567, and removed to Rome. There he lingered in prison three years until he suffered a martyr’s death, in July, 1570.

More fortunate was the Marchesi Galeazzo Carac-cioli, a nephew of Paul IV. Influenced by Valdes and

Peter Martyr, he left his splendid position

1    •    ah* 1    r Caracciolt.

at the court m 1551. All the endeavors of

his uncle, his family, and his wife, who refused to share his exile, were in vain. He retained an influential position in the Italian congregation at Geneva until his death in 1586.

The humanist, Coelius Secundus Curio, escaped from the Inquisition at Turin, and took refuge at Ferrara at the court of Renata of Este.

Here he won the wonderfully-gifted clas- ,503-^569. sical scholar, Olympia Morata, to the gospel.

In 1548 she retired from the court, and in 1551, with her husband, found refuge in Germany. In 1542, Curio was obliged to flee to Switzerland, and taught in Lausanne and Basel. His Pasquilli are yet remembered.

Renata herself was arrested by the Inquisition in 1554. She submitted, and, after the death Renata of her husband, returned to France in 1560, a*Este. where she sheltered the Reformed until her death in 1575-

Pietro Paolo Vergerio was educated for and practiced law. Pope Clement VII in 1533, and again Pope Paul III in 1535, sent him as papal nuncio into Germany. On the last of these mis- ,^3^565. sions he met Luther. In 1536 he was made bishop of his native place, Capo d’Istria. In 1540-1 he was at Worms, and took part in the disputation

23

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there. Returning home, he, with his brother, began the study of the writings of Luther in order to refute them. They both came to share in the Reformer’s opinions, and began to labor earnestly for Christ among the people. A papal commission began to investigate his case. He appealed to the Council of Trent, then in its first period, but was refused a hearing. In 1548 he went to Basel. For five years he preached and taught in the Grisons; but in 1553 he became councilor to Christopher, Duke of Wiirtem-berg, and removed to Tubingen, and such he remained until his death, developing a diplomatic activity which embraced Poland, Bohemia, and the Grisons. His personal conference, 1558, with Maximilian II, confirmed the later emperor in his Evangelical views. The Bible had meantime been translated into Italian in 1571.

In Spain, the Fatherland of Valdes, the Reformation ran a much shorter course. Juan Gil and Ponce de la Fuente became teachers of Evangel-Refonmers. doctrines. In 1552, Gil was compelled to recant, but Fuente returned to his position as preacher in the cathedral in Seville. Juan Perez fled from Seville to Geneva, where, in 1556, he published the New Testament in Spanish; also a Catechism and translation of the Psalms. Francis Enzinas, in exile 1543-1562, published also a translation of the New Testament in Spanish. When Philip II came to the throne the scattered bands of Evangelical believers were ruthlessly rooted out. The terrible autos da of 1559 and 1560 completed the work.

The fate of the Dominican, Bartholomew Carranza, will show how thoroughly this work was done. He

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had been the envoy of Charles V to the Council of Trent; he accompanied Philip II to England at the time of his marriage, and was confessor to his wife, Queen Mary. He published a com- ,503^576*. ment 011 the Catechism which was highly commended by Cardinal Pole and a commission of the Council of Trent. Philip made him Archbishop of Toledo, the head of the Spanish Church, in 1557. The next year he was accused of heresy in teaching justification by faith in his Catechism. He was imprisoned eight years until 1566, when his case was called to Rome. In Rome he remained in prison ten years longer, and finally, in 1576, he was sentenced to abjure, to be suspended for five years, and to remain in the Dominican Convent of St. Mary sopra Minerva at Rome. Seven days later he died. Carranza’s scholar, the former confessor of Charles V, Augustin Cazalla, with his sister, and the body of his dead mother, were burned together in 1559. A like fate befell Constantine Firente in Seville, in 1560.

The religious earnestness and desire for the imitation of Christ could no longer take the direction of doctrinal reform in Italy and Spain. If

i -r -    , • , ,    . 1    The Saints.

the Jesuit teaching had not triumphed at the first session of the Council of Trent, Morone and Pole and Sadolet would have stood with Peter Martyr and Ochino, and to them would have been gathered the men animated with the new faith and power and deeper impulse toward Christian service born of the Reformation. The Inquisition and the Jesuits decreed that these should be shown only in doctrinal agreement with the old Church or in exile, if the dissenter were so happy as to escape the dungeon or the stake.

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The Christian Church.

The strength of the new Christian feeling manifest in the Counter Reformation is shown in a group of elect spirits whom the Roman Catholic Church has called the saints of this age. They had their failings. They did not value or love truth as we do. They did not investigate; they accepted what was appointed to be believed. They all had the persecuting spirit which the new Catholicism had taken over from the Mediaeval Church. But with all these drawbacks, we who study the life they lived and the work they wrought confess that they had the spirit of Christ, and sought, according to their vision and opportunity, to do his work among men.

This new spirit showed itself in the greatest freedom from the accustomed forms and with the most liberty for the new life to take other forms iⁿ Filippo Neri. Filippo’s parents were devout Florentines, his father a lawyer and his mother of high rank. He was educated at Savonarola’s convent of San Marco. In 1531 he was sent to a childless uncle near Monte Cassino that he might, in this way, repair the family fortune. Filippo won the uncle, but did not remain for the inheritance. In 1533 he went to Rome, becoming the tutor for a wealthy Florentine. In this position he remained for several years, pursuing his own studies, practicing austerities, making nightly vigils for prayer in the Basilican Churches. In the meantime he began that ministry to the sick and poor which gained for him later the title of Apostle of Rome. Filippo Neri had a fund of playful humor and of shrewd mother-wit leading him to ludicrous acts, which attracted attention and made him popular. In 1538 he entered upon a

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kind of home-mission work after the manner of Socrates, with question, irony, and counsels. Ten years later he founded the Society of Most Holy Trinity of Pilgrims and Convalescents, to minister to the needs of the poor pilgrims who flocked to Rome and to convalescents from the hospitals. In 1551 he was ordained priest. In 1556 he began the work which resulted in the Congregation of the Oratory. It consisted at first of meetings in his own house for prayer, the singing of hymns, and instrumental music, the reading of the Scriptures and from the Fathers and the Martyrologies. The members did home missionary work at Rome, and, as a great novelty, preached in the different churches. He lived at the Hospital of San Giralamo most of the time from 1551 to 1583. In that year he removed to the Church of St. Maria in Vallicella, which had been built for the use of the brethren of the Oratory in 1577. The congregation was authorized by the Pope, July 15, 1575. Filippo was chosen superior for life in 1587. The chief work of the brethren was that of an active pastorate, practical and unconventional. They worked only with the consent of the parish priest, and all fees went to him. The Oratory which he founded was a clerical club. They lived in common, each with his own private means and paying his own expenses. The society provided only the lodging and paid a physician. There were no vows, and any member could leave when he chose and take his property with him. Each house was independent, and the inner organization was democratic. It was in such a society that Cardinal Newman spent his life after joining the Roman Catholic Church. The most celebrated member of

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the order in the first generation was the Church historian, Baronius. Filippo Neri was troubled with no intellectual doubts, and was a strong advocate of the papal sovereignty. Yet he could discern the signs of the times, and in 1593 he told Baronius, who was the confessor of Pope Clement VIII, to refuse the Pope absolution unless he would withdraw his excommunication of Henry IV of France. No reader of his biography but is thankful that such extravagant supernaturalism as is attributed to him has been made impossible by the advance of scientific thought.

Next to the vice and dissoluteness of the Papal Court, no abuses contributed more to the advance of carlo    Reformation than the ignorance, the

Borromeo. worldly spirit, and the immoral life of the 1538-1584. ki_s]_ic)p_{s 0}f the Church of Rome. Carlo Borromeo showed how, in the most exalted episcopal station, the lowliest Christian virtues could thrive. His parents were Ghilberto Borromeo, Count of Arona, and Mary Medici. When twelve years of age he was given an abbey, but he applied its revenues for the poor. He studied civil and canon law at Pavia. When he was sixteen years of age his father died, and he was asked to take the management of the family affairs. He resumed his studies, and took his degree of Doctor of Laws in 1559. In the same year his mother’s brother was chosen Pope as Pius IV. In January of that year, at the age of twenty-one, he was made pro-thonotary apostolic and referendary in both signatures and cardinal deacon. In February he was made Archbishop of Milan. In the papal government there fell to his charge the administration of the Papal States, the oversight of affairs in Portugal, Switzer-

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land, and Northern Germany, and the care of the Franciscans, Knights of Malta, and other orders. He lived in great splendor at the Pope’s request, but it showed only more plainly his humility of spirit and sobriety of life. His unblemished walk and stainless character were of immense value in the support of the plans and policy of the Pope. He was the papal representative at Trent. He had taste for learning, founding an academy of learned men at Rome, and published their proceedings as “ Noctes Vaticanae.” He began the edifice of the University of Bologna, founded the College of Borromeo at Pavia, and invited the Jesuits to Milan. In January, 1566, the Pope died. Borromeo was self-effacing and influential in the Conclave which chose Pius V. He could have remained in exalted position and influence; but he felt that his duty was to live and labor in his diocese, and at twenty-eight his career at Rome was ended. He returned to Milan, and, first of all, restored the worship of the cathedral. He cleared the cathedral of its tombs, banners, and arms of the aristocracy, not sparing his own family. He founded in his archdiocese fifteen bishoprics, twelve hundred and twenty churches, seventy monasteries, and one hundred convents. The clergy were as dissolute as was everywhere the rule in this century. “ They were drunken; they lived in concubinage; they carried arms, and carried on private feuds. The common people said, To be made a priest is to make sure of hell.” Borromeo reformed the archi-episcopal chancellory, and then began a visitation to the churches, and the reformation of the monasteries. In the main he had great success; but the brothers of the rich and dissolute convent of the Umilitati con

360    The Christian Church.

spired against his life, and in 1569 a shot was fired against him in his chapel. This led to the suppression of the order, and its goods were applied for the benefit of the city and diocese. To make permanent a better state of things the archbishop not only held eleven Synodal and seven Provincial Councils in twenty-four years, but he founded seminaries for the training of the candidates for the priesthood, opening the first in 1564. He labored earnestly that the common people should be instructed in Christian doctrine, and as earnestly for the rooting out of the Evangelical teaching. While a friend of the Inquisition, he withdrew his former favor toward the Jesuits. The archbishop brought in great moral reformation, and in himself he showed the example of the virtues which he taught. This was especially the case in the famine of 1570 and the great plague of 1576. But his labors and austerities shortened his days. He died, November 4, 1584, at the age of forty-six. The luster of his saintly life is the chiefest ornament of the great cathedral at Milan.

Francisco Xavier became the founder of Christian missions in the new era. There had been most suc-Francisco ^cess^ mediaeval missions in Europe, and Xavier. Raymond de Lull had wrought with many •506-1552. others among the Mohammedans, while Bartholomew Las Casas had shown the true spirit of Christ in his labors among the Indians of the New World; but Xavier went beyond all these, and claimed the whole world for his Lord. He broke the way in Malaysia, in Japan, and toward China. To him all men were brethren, and all might, and should, come to Christ. Francisco Xavier was born of parents de

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scended from two noble families of Navarre, at the castle of Xavier, April 7, 1506. His education and his connection with the Society of Jesus have already been recounted. The King of Portugal desired two of the Jesuit fathers to be sent to the East Indies. Two were chosen; one on account of illness could never go, and the other could not go now. One at least was desired immediately. Loyola called upon Xavier. He was ready, and the next day set out for Lisbon. Though he passed near his home, he would not turn aside to bid the mother that bore him adieu. He sailed from Lisbon in April, 1541. Thirteen months later he arrived at Goa, in Hindoostan. There were a thousand people on board the ship. He adapted himself to all: the officers, soldiers, sailors, men of business, and men of science. He won them all by the grace of his spirit, his personal distinction, and the charm of his manner. First he attacked gambling, and sought to substitute for it innocent games. Though, as papal legate, he was welcome at the captain’s table, he lived throughout the entire voyage on the simplest fare. He knew no distinction among those on board, and labored earnestly in catechising the sailors. When the scurvy broke out he nursed the sick, and carried the worst of them to his own room because it was more airy than the others. He gave them his mattress and slept on a floor of plank. He wrote: “I have made a vow of poverty. I wish to live and die among the poor.”

For five months he labored among the pearl-fishers of Cape Comorin. His food was that of the poor among whom he labored—rice and water, nothing else. He sheltered himself in a miserable cabin, and

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slept upon the bare ground. When the viceroy almost forced him to accept a mattress and a coverlet, he saw a poor sick man lying on dry leaves, and at once gave him his bedding. He slept so little that he did not think it mattered how hard his bed was.

He gathered the people; he taught them, especially the children, in their own tongue, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, Ave Maria, and the Ten Commandments, and then he baptized them. He labored in Travancore and Cejdon until 1545, when he sailed for Malacca, arriving September 25th. He made a missionary tour after four months’ residence at Malacca, to Amboyna and the Moluccas, returning July, 1547. He went among the people, ringing a bell and crying out, “ Pray for the poor souls in mortal sin! ” A great revival followed. An incident will show the man more than pages of description. At Meliapore lived Don Jacinto, a rich Portuguese, the disorders of whose life were the scandal of the city. Though knowing Xavier personally, he avoided him as much as possible. One day at dinner-time Xavier presented himself. “ My father,” said Don Jacinto, “ I have wished to see you, but have been unable.” Xavier replied, “ I have but little time and am unable to make visits, but I have come to ask to dine with you.” “My father, certainly; a great honor,” faltered Don Jacinto. Xavier talked with him during dinner with all the gayety of his natural disposition, relating stories and making himself very agreeable, and left him without saying a word concerning the scandals of his life. Then the soul of the sinner began to be troubled. He was struck with the thought

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that the saint and apostle believed it useless to speak to him of his salvation, because he was beyond all hope of mercy. So he sought Xavier. “ 0,” said he, “you said nothing of my sins.” “Alas!” replied the missionary, “you would not have listened. I thought I ought to keep silence.” “Ah! it is your silence that has troubled me,” replied the man so at ease for years in his sin. He repented, found peace, reformed his life, and became a fervent Christian.

Xavier sailed for Japan in 1549, and labored there with success until 1551, when he returned to Goa and Malacca. His soul was bent to open mission work in China. He sailed from Malacca, July 16, 1552, and was near Canton at San Chang the next month. Here he awaited an opportunity to enter that great empire, but sickened and died December 2, 1552, leaving a name that even yet is as ointment poured forth in those lands.

An altogether different spirit was Theresa de Ahu-mada, one of the two women whose statues are found in St. Peter’s at Rome. She was born March 28, 1515, at Avila in Spain. She was the third of nine children born to Don Alonzo Sanchez Cepeda. At the age of twelve her mother died; at fifteen she spent a year in the convent of the Carmelite nuns at Avila, but left on account of illness. She returned to begin her novitiate, November 3,1533. The next year she was received into the order. For the next twenty years she lived a semi-religious life; religious externally, but with 110 surrender of soul or acceptance with God. During this time she was often severely ill. For eight months she was paralyzed, and

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suffered cruelly for three years. At one time she was in paroxysms for four days and thought to be dead. In 1555, at the age of forty, she gave herself wholly to God, and then went through part of Loyola’s spiritual exercises. She was assiduous in prayer, and had visions in the five years succeeding her conversion. She resolved to found an order of nuns of far stricter rule than she had known, who should combat the Lutheran heresy, adhere to the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas, defend the Roman Catholic Church, and seek for the salvation of souls. They were to vow charity, poverty, and obedience. They were to live in close confinement, never leaving the convent. They were to give themselves to meditation and to endure rigid fasts. They ate no meat from September 14th to Easter. In a climate as hot as Spain it is safe to say they would not desire much in the summer-time. The Pope approved of the rule and order, July 17, 1565. Three years before she had founded convents at Avila, Mala-gon, and Alcala. Within the next ten years she instituted houses of the order at Medina del Campo, Malaga, Valladolid, Toledo, Pastrana, Salamanca, Alba, Segovia, Veas, Seville, and Caravaca. Now arose a strife with the older order of Carmelites. This was settled by the barefooted Carmelites of St. Theresa becoming a separate order, November 20, 1580. Then followed new houses at Xara, Palenza, Strada, Soria, Granada, and Burgos. October 4, 1582, St. Theresa finished her work and went to join that company of which she had had so often ecstatic visions. St. Teresa, or Theresa, was a woman of no ordinary mold, and, with all her relations with the other world, shrewd

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and diplomatic and skilled in practical affairs, as witness her success in founding twenty convents. She wrote three devotional works, which are named respectively: “The Way of Perfection,” “The Book of Foundations,” and “The Interior Castle” or “Mansions.” The greatest of Theresa’s gifts was prayer. She analyzed her exercises and the degrees of prayer after this manner: (1) The certain presence of God; (2) Interior recollection; (3) Union; (4) Suspension; (5) Rapture; (6) The will of the Spirit; (7) Impetus; (8) The wounds of love. In this, with much of value, there is much that is fantastic. St. Theresa lived in her emotions. Well would it have been with her and her order if she had lived more in God’s Word. But this she refused. At one time, having made all her arrangements to receive a lady of means who had disposed of her wealth to suit the saint, the applicant asked if she might bring her Bible with her. “ We want neither you nor your Bible,” replied the foundress of the barefooted Carmelite order; “we are only a company of poor women seeking to know how to obey.”

Both the defenders of the Reformation and of the Roman Catholic Church realized that their efforts to be permanent must rest upon a solid basis of historic fact and upon arguments ad- _Sc^*_r8 dressed to reason. There is no question but that the average scholarship of the clergy of the Evangelical Churches was much above that of the clergy of the Church of Rome. The Evangelical professors in the universities were in the van of scholarship until the rise both of the new peda

₃66

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gogics of the Jesuits and the Lutheran and Calvin-istic scholasticism.

A notable scholar on the side of the Reformation was Matthias Flacius Illyricus. Born in Illyria, poor and unaided, he became one of the most 1530-1575 l^earned men of the age. He was educated at Wittenberg, and in 1544 became Professor of Old Testament Literature there. In 1547 he opposed both the Augsburg and the Leipzig Interims, and became an avowed enemy of Melanchthon. He resigned his professorship and went to Magdeburg. There he began his great work, the “ Magdeburg Centuries,” which marks a new era in Church history (1559-1574). It included the first thirteen centuries. Though polemical in spirit, it was a work of solid learning, and one with which the advocates of the Church of Rome were forced to reckon. He has been also called the founder of the science of hermeneutics. In 1557 he was called from Magdeburg to become professor at Jena. This position he held until 1562, when, expressing Manichaean views in regard to original sin, he was compelled to resign his professorship. Until 1567 he lived in retirement at Regensburg. From thence he went to Antwerp, but, on account of persecution, to Strasburg. Driven from Strasburg to Frankfort-on-the-Main, he died there in the hospital in 1575. His spirit was proud and obstinate. His disposition was so intolerant, quarrelsome, and unyielding that he alienated his former friends, and his last years were spent in poverty and exile.

Martin Chenmitz, the most profound Lutheran theologian of this period, one of the authors of the Formula of Concord, and the ablest doctrinal op

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ponent of the Council of Trent, was born of noble parents in the Mark of Brandenburg. His education was at Magdeburg, Frankfort, and Wittenberg. From 1547-1553 he was at Konigs-berg, where he began the study of theology.

He taught with great success (1553-1554) at Wittenberg, but in the latter year removed to Brunswick, where, as pastor and superintendent, he wrought for the next thirty years. A scholar of Melanchthon’s and an adherent to the stricter Lutheranism, he is noted for his earnest spirit, the solidity of his learning, and the moderation of his judgment. He wrote against the Crypto Calvinists in 1560, the Jesuits in

1562, and his most celebrated work, “Examination of the Council of Trent,” 1565-1573—a work yet unsurpassed in penetration and thoroughness. That an active Lutheran pastor could achieve such a result is an everlasting honor to his Church and to the Reformation.

To meet the attack of Flacius on the origin and usurpation of the papacy, the Church of Rome greatly needed a learned defender. Such a man appeared in Caesar Baronius. Baronius was born an only son of noble parents in Soria near Naples, and there received his education. In ^I557> ^at the age of nineteen, he accompanied his father to Rome. There he was attracted by the character and work of Filippo Neri. He joined the congregation of the Oratory, of which, amid the crowd of learned men enrolled in its ranks, he remains the chief ornament. In 1577 he began the study of Church history in order to answer the Magdeburg Centuries. His great work, “Ecclesiastical Annals” (12 vols.,

₃68

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1588-1607), includes the first twelve centuries. Written in a polemic spirit, this great work of thirty years seeks the truth, and brings stores of historical material to light from the Vatican archives, which make it still invaluable to the scholar, and the great historical work of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1596, Baronius was made cardinal, and later librarian of the Vatican. In character and disposition Baronius ranked as high as in scholarship. The villa at Frascati, where he dwelt while occupied in these labors, seems an ideal scholar’s retreat, and contentment of spirit and peace of mind seem everywhere without other care in such surroundings.

To answer the attacks of the Reformers upon the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church the Jesuits needed a champion. He came from their *542™'”** ^ran^^s the person of Robert Bellarmine.

Bellarmine was born in Tuscany, and designed by his father for the law. At the age of eighteen he entered the Jesuit order. He was appointed to lecture at the College of Louvain, and remained there seven years. Returning to Italy in 1565, he was appointed Lecturer on Controversial Theology in the Collegium Romanum of the order. Out of these lectures grew his chief work, “ Disputations Concerning the Controversies of the Christian Faith against the Heretics of This Time” (3 vols., 1581-^I593)- This is yet the most noted polemical work of the Roman Catholic Church. He was sent as legate to France in 1590. In 1599 he was made cardinal.

Bellarmine pushed the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church to its extreme consequences. He taught that to allow one who, through baptism, had entered

The Genevan Reform.    369

into the Church, the freedom to withdraw from the faith, contradicted the Holy Scriptures and ecclesiastical tradition. The irreconcilable heretic could and should be rejected (excommunicated) by the Church, and punished by the secular authorities, even with death itself. The Pope should direct the State in all affairs respecting religion. He can prescribe the laws or measures to destroy those disturbing the harmony of the Church. If the State opposes these measures he may depose the sovereign and rouse the people to rebellion. He declared the Pope’s sovereignty in secular affairs supreme over all rulers of the State. Yet this Jesuit controversialist, teaching these doctrines abhorred by all adherents of the Reformation, and which are held to-day by no rulers of any Roman Catholic State or nation, was in his personal life an earnest, self-denying, and exemplary Christian.

THE GENEVAN REFORM IN FRANCE.

The movement in France for the reform of the Mediaeval Church began in the circle of the men and women of the humanistic learning of the

TA •    ✓-x ^ 1 • •    ^    Character-

Renaissance. Of this circle, Margaret, isticsofthe Queen of Navarre, sister of Francis I, Reformation

_ _ _    , in France.

was the leader. Margaret of Navarre; her daughter, Jeanne d’Albert; Renata of Este, sister of Louis XII; and Louise Montmorency, sister of the Constable and mother of Admiral Coligni, were four remarkable women of the best blood of France, and were ardent friends of the Reformers; and at the outset Francis I was favorable to them.

A circle of able men devoted to the study of the Scriptures and to Church reform gathered about Bri-

24

370    The Christian Church.

gonnet, Bishop of Meaux. There seemed to open the prospect of an early, effective, and successful movement for the reform of the Church of France. But Brigonnet had the weakness of the scholars of the Renaissance. He had no greater desire for martyrdom than had Erasmus. Soon his circle of reforming teachers and clergy were forced to submission or to flight.

The persecutions at once began, and they continued for forty years. The court was not inclined to The influ- ^severe measures at first; but the captivity

enceof of Francis I after Pavia brought on the

Geneva. _{most crue}l burnings and torture, which seemed to increase in rigor until 1561. In the midst of these fiery trials the Reformed Church of France continued to grow in numbers, in influence, and in power. On the suppression of the Renaissance Reformers, the books of Luther were more and more read, and his opinions prevailed. But Calvin was a son of France; he wrote the best French prose the language had known. In the long years of persecution, in the depth of the great tribulation, John Calvin spoke and wrought with an unfailing sympathy, unwearied endeavor, heroic faith, and inflexible resolution, which won the heart of the Reformed in France. For thirty years the Reformation in France was under the religious leadership of the ablest of her sons, and could take on no other type than the Genevan Reform, with which it has ever since been identified.

This leadership gave a certain character to the movement in that kingdom. The French Reformers never lacked in heroism, in resolution, or in endurance. In the fires of persecution the iron of their

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37i

theology was tempered into steel in their character. They stood for truth, for honesty, for pure morals, for free use of the Scriptures, and for inde-

ArAn    1 ^The Failure

pendent Church government. They stood _to Reform face to face with Almighty God, and dared ^{the Chur}«h

r    1    11 - 1 r    r 1 and Nation.

to face earth and hell in defense of what they believed to be the counsels of his will. But with these heroic traits there was a lack of those qualities which win the devotion of a great people. Too often harshness and rigor obscured love in the heart of man or the character of God. This came out clearly in the long thirty years of the religious wars. In the Massacre of St. Bartholomew the Reformed suffered the most overwhelming disaster which ever came upon a religious party in Europe. The loss of their leader was more than the loss of the tens of thousands of their murdered adherents. The end brought them peace and toleration, but made it evident that the Roman Catholic, not the Reformed, faith was to rule in France.

This result was partly the consequence of the very advantages w^rhich the Reformed possessed. Mention has been made of the adhesion of women _{The Leader}_ of the royal house. This was followed by ship of the that of two princes of the blood—Antoine ^Ar,stocracy* de Bourbon, King of Navarre, husband of Jeanne d’Al-bret, and his brother, Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Conde. On the death of Henry II, Antoine de Bourbon was the prince of blood of adult age nearest of kin to the new king, Francis II.

The great houses of the French nobility stood in the following rank: The royal family of Valois, the Bourbons, the Guises of Lorraine, the Montmorencys,

372    The Christian Church.

the Rohans, the Lavals, and the Chatillons, of whom Coligni became the head. These great families all intermarried. Coligni’s mother was a Montmorency, his wife a Laval, and his niece married Louis, Prince of Conde. The daughter of Renata of Este, a Valois, married Francis, Duke of Guise, while the fatal nuptials of the night of St. Bartholomew were those of Henry, son of Antoine de Bourbon and Margaret of Valois, daughter of Henry II. Later Henry III, of Valois, married a daughter of Guise, while a son of that house married a daughter of Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henry II; and a son of Montmorency married a Valois, a bastard daughter of Henry II and the same Diane. There was a strong inclination toward the Reformed faith in all these families except the house of Guise. The heads of the Bourbons and the Chatillons were the leaders of the Reformed.

This access and leadership of the highest aristocracy, which finally brought an Evangelical king to the throne of France, was a most serious hindrance to the Reformation in that land. The essence of the Genevan Reform was its discipline quite as much as its theology. Where that discipline prevailed among the aristocracy it formed men and women of high character and great influence, like Coligni, Jeanne d’Albret, and young Henry de Conde. But it did not universally prevail. Antoine de Bourbon and Louis de Conde were noted for their licentious amours. Catherine de* Medici kept her “flying squadron” of frail beauties at their behest. Henry, son of Antoine de Bourbon, afterward Henry IV, surpassed the license of his father; yet these men were the leaders of the Reformed in camp and court, and the protectors of

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their Churches. The effect of such leadership upon a Church governed by the principles of Geneva was painfully evident. It was even more disastrous in checking the aggressive work of that Church among the Roman Catholic party and population.

To this must be added the fact that the pastors sent from Geneva, though intelligent, of pure morals, and devoted to their work, preached a the- _Effectof ology which appealed mainly to the intel- the Genevan lect, and often spoke of the Church of Rome ^Teaching:-and all connected with the faith of their fathers with a bitterness and vindictiveness which, however pleasing to their followers, did not attract the mass of the people. The great body of the people could not read, and had no desire to learn. The translation of the Bible into the language of the people had no such effect in France as in Germany and in England, in part, of course, because in such a centralized monarchy it was more easily suppressed, and never reached the mass of the lower clergy or the more intelligent citizens of the middle class.

Again, the scholars, the teachers, the higher clergy of the old Church who agreed with the teachings of the Reformers had none of the daring and    _f

sacrifice of men of the same class and con- the French victions in England, Scotland, and Ger- Scholars

-ta    ,. . ,    1 , .    .. and Clergy.

many. For political reasons the king and the court held fast to the Church of Rome. There arose no man of the people who spoke to the nation’s heart as did Luther in Germany, Latimer in England, and Knox in Scotland. As a consequence the Reformation never took hold on the middle classes of the great centers like Paris, Bordeaux, Lyons, and Rouen.

374    The Christian Church.

This controlling element of the new Europe, in France, remained Roman Catholic, and so decided the fate of the nation.

A contributing factor to this end was the religious wars. War may defend the existence of the Evangelical faith. It can never be an effective means for its propagation ; that would be to contradict its princi. pies; it must win by other methods.

The state of the Church of France was not greatly different from that of other sections of the Mediaeval Church. The same abuses were every-'church'at^{1 w}^^ere- The clergy, the most wealthy and the Opening most intelligent class in the State, were Reformation notoriously immoral, and were flagrantly ignorant of the knowledge of religion and derelict in the discharge of their duties. If there were religious life, it seemed often in spite of, instead of through, them. Contemporary testimony will make these points clear. In the reign of Francis I there were thirteen French cardinals and twelve in the next reign. They had great wealth and many pluralities, some of them enjoying the revenues of as many as ten bishoprics and abbeys, of which they were the incumbents. The Venetian ambassador, as late as 1561, estimated the revenues of the kingdom at 15,000,000 gold crowns; the clergy received 6,000,000, and the king 1,500,000. In regard to their ignorance, Robert Etienne says: “ Not long since a member of their college (the Sorbonne) used daily to say, ‘ I am amazed that these young people keep bringing up the New Testament to us. I was more than fifty years old before I knew anything about the New Testament.’ ”

Of the French clergy before the Concordat of 1516,

The Genevan Reform.    ₃₇₅

Brantome says: “On their abbeys or bishoprics they were as debauched as those who followed arms for their profession. The bishops bought their places with money or with promises which were to be fulfilled after preferment; and when they had attained these high dignities, God knows what lives they led. Assuredly they were more devoted to their dioceses than they have since been; for they never left them. But it was to lead a most dissolute life with their dogs and their birds, with their feasts, banquets, marriage entertainments, and courtesans, of whom they gathered seraglios. ... All this was permitted, and none dared to remonstrate or to censure.” The same author says of the monks: “Generally the monks elected (as the head of their house) the most jovial companion, him who was the most fond of women, dogs, and birds, and the deepest drinker—in short,’ the most dissipated—and this in order that, when they had made him abbot or prior, they might be permitted to indulge in similar debauch and pleasure. Indeed, they bound him beforehand by strong oaths, to which he was forced to conform, either voluntarily or by constraint. The worst was that, when they failed to agree m their elections, they usually came to blows with fist and sword, and inflicted wounds and even death. In a word, there was more tumult, more faction and intrigue, than there is at the election of the rector of the University of Paris.”

It is a French cur6, Claude Haton, writing about 1550, who shows that the morals of the clergy had not greatly improved since the Concordat: “The more rapidly the number of heretics increased, the more indifferent to the discharge of their duty in

376    The Christian Church.

their charges were the prelates and pastors of the Church, from cardinal and archbishop down to the most insignificant curate. They cared lit-

The French    .

ciergy tie or nothing how anything went, if they

after the _COuld but draw the income of their bene-Concordat.    .

fices at whatever place of residence they had selected. They let their benefices out at the highest rate they could get, little solicitous as to the hands they might fall into, provided only that they were well paid according to the terms of the agreement. The archbishops, bishops, and cardinals of France were almost all at the court of the king and princes. The abbots, priors, and curates resided in the large cities and in other places, wherein they took more delight than in the limits of their charges and preaching the true Word of God to their subjects and parishioners. From their indifference the Lutheran heretics took occasion to slander the Church of Jesus Christ and to seduce Christians from it.”

No one can claim the picture drawn above to be from the hand of one unfriendly to the Roman Catholic Church. The Vatican ambassador, Correro, writing in 1569, does not make the tints brighter. He says: “ The new pastors placed in charge of the Churches men who had taken it into their heads to be clergymen, only to avoid the toils of some other occupation; men who, by their avarice and dissoluteness of life, confused the innocent people and removed their previous great devotion. This was the door, this was the spacious gateway, by which heresies entered into France; for the ministers sent from Geneva were easily able to create in the people a hatred of the

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377

priest and friars, by simply weighing in the balance the life led by the latter.”

Such a condition could but lead to efforts at reform. Such an endeavor was made at Meaux by men who felt toward the abuses of the Church _TheReform as did Colet and More in England. Jacques at Meaux. Lefevre, of Estaples in Picardy, was the Jacques forerunner of the Reformation in France. ^Lefevre* He was a man of such eminent learning and influence as to be called the restorer of letters in France. He was distinguished for his attainments in mathematics and astronomy, in Biblical criticism and literature. Lefevre wrote in Latin a commentary on the Psalms. In 1512 he completed one on the Pauline Epistles, in which he distinctly sets forth the doctrine of justification by faith. This was five years before Luther’s Theses. In 1518 he published a treatise on the three Marys of the Gospels, in which he applied to the Scriptures the principles of literary criticism. In 1521 the book was declared heretical by the Sor-bonne. Francis I interfered in his behalf, and Lefevre escaped punishment. Lefevre translated the Gospels from the Vulgate into French, and published them in 1523. The translation of the New Testament was completed before the end of that year, and that of the Old Testament in 1528. He went to Strasburg in 1525, and returned to the court of Margaret of Navarre in 1527 to spend the remainder of his days at Nerac.

Guillaume Brigonnet was the son of the Cardinal of St. Malo, who was also Archbishop of Rheims and Abbot of St. Germain-des-Pres. The son of a father so successful in achieving preferment in the Church,

378    The Christian Church.

early became Archdeacon of Rheims, and was made Bishop of Meaux in 1516. Five years later he had

gathered around him a circle of dis-

Brlconnet.    .    .

tmguished men,—Lefevre, his brilliant scholar, afterward the fiery Reformer; William, or Guillaume, Farel, whom we have met at Geneva; Michael d’Arande; and Gerard Roussel. Lefevre, who had said to Farel, “ Guillaume, the world is going to be renewed, and you will behold it,” and who had given up the worship of saints and images two years before, was made, in 1521, the vicar-general of the diocese. Gerard Roussel was made canon of the cathedral and treasurer of its funds. Brigonnet meanwhile took up his part. He read the Scripture lessons in the churches in the French language, and, like the German and Swiss Reformers, preached to the people. All seemed to go well until the disaster to the French arms at Pavia left the king a captive in the hands of his enemy, Charles V. The queen mother, Louise of Savoy, though hating the monks and detesting the abuses of the Church, felt it absolutely necessary to have the support of the See of Rome in this hour of the nation’s calamity. The result was the outbreak of a fierce persecution against the Reformers. Brigonnet was cited before the Parliament of Paris in October, 1525. He had in him none of the stuff of which successful Reformers are made. He betrayed the Reformation instead of leading it. Brigonnet made an unconditional surrender. His work was given up and the circle of Reformers scattered. Farel went to Switzerland, and Lefevre and Roussel to Strasburg, and afterward to Nerac.

The Genevan Reform.

379

Gerard Roussel was made Bishop of Oleron, but the taint of his Reform opinions still clung to him. Some fanatics of the opposite party so cut the post on which was fixed the pulpit of his cathedral that, when he entered it, the pulpit fell and killed him. To Bri-Sonnet was reserved the sadder fate of persecuting those whose opinions he shared. Thus ended the Reform at Meaux.

Now began the seven and thirty years when the Reformed Church of France passed through blood and fire to recognition as a religious body _{The Epoch of} whose rights were acknowledged by the the Martyrs. State, and who, when that acknowledgment 's²⁵'¹®⁶²* was sought to be withdrawn, were able to defend their rights by force of arms.

In March, 1525, Jean Le Clerc was whipped, branded, and banished. As the cruel punishment was inflicted, his aged mother cried out,

m •    it-    ii-i ThePersecu-

Live Jesus Christ and his standard-bear- tion Under ers! ” The same year he was burned at ^Francis *• Metz for breaking images. In this year '⁵²⁵ '⁵⁴⁷’ Jacques Pauvan recanted; but, retracting the recantation, he was burned at Paris in August, 1526. Jean Chatellain, an Augustinian monk, was burned at Vic in January, 1525, and Wolfgang Schuch, a German priest, suffered the same fate in August of that year at Nancy.

Under Louise of Savoy an inquisitorial commission of two lay and two clerical members was formed to try Lutheran heretics, March 29, 1525, and confirmed by the Pope in the same year.

One of the most notable victims of this reign was Louis de Berguin a nobleman of Artois, and a friend

380

The Christian Church.

of the king. He was commended by Erasmus for his extraordinary learning and purity of life. His commanding appearance and elegant dress gave distinction to his bearing. Through reading Luther and Lefevre he came to share their opinions. His house was searched, and he was imprisoned in 1523, but he was released by order of the king the same year. Three years later he was arrested the second time; but the second time, by order of the king, sent from Madrid, he was released. But in 1528 he was again arrested, and burned to death, April 17, 1529. In the previous year the Provincial Councils of Sens, Bourges, and Lyons pronounced in favor of severe persecution.

Some fanatics of the Reformed party, moved by the increased cruelty of the persecutions, October 18, ^x534> posted on the walls of Paris, and even Placards. ^on doors °f the king’s bedchamber at Amboise, placards which in the most severe invective denounced the Church of Rome. Francis was astounded and indignant at the audacity of the outrage. From this time he was a determined enemy of the new faith. Punishments quickly followed, and they were inhuman in their cruelty. The tongues of the victims were either cut out or pierced with hot iron. Then they were suspended in chains over a fire, and alternately lifted up and let down into the flames, and thus slowly roasted to death. This was called the estrapade.

At first Francis was so enraged that by decree he abolished the art of printing, but recalled the decree six weeks later. By edict, in January, 1540, the officers of all royal courts were ordered to begin proceedings

The Genevan Reform.

33 i

against all tainted with heresy. In 1542 royal letters incited the Parliaments to increased activity in persecution, and the existing decrees were sharpened by a royal ordinance, July 23, 1543. In 1545 the Arret de Merindol was carried into execution. It commanded all houses to be razed and all trees to be cut down within two hundred feet on every side. Twenty-two towns and villages were utterly destroyed, and thousands perished. In October, 1546, the pastor, Le Clerc, and fourteen of his flock were burned to death at Meaux. The aid Francis I gave the Protestants in Germany did not lessen the sufferings of his own subjects of the Reformed faith.

Henry II had little of his father’s alertness of mind, but had great bodily vigor, and was called the fleetest runner and the most graceful rider in France. He was averse to business, and

■ 547“ * 559*

the Constable, Montmorency, the Cardinal of Guise, and the king’s mistress, Diane de Poitiers, rather than the king, governed France. Henry won Metz, Toul, and Verdun from the Emperor Charles V, and Calais from England, by the valor and skill of Francis, Duke of Guise. In 1556 the Peace of Vau-celles was signed, which was broken by Francis of Guise. The defeats of San Quentin and Gravelines followed, and the disgraceful Peace of Cateau-Cam-bresis was signed, April 2, 1559.

Henry II was the husband of Catherine de’ Medici, by whom he had four sous, three of whom succeeded to his throne. Catherine was an unloved wife and a neglected queen. Diane de Poitiers, who was nineteen years older than the king, a widow, a woman who had captivated the king’s father, and who had a

382    The Christian Church.

daughter grown, while the king was yet but twenty-eight years of age, ruled the monarch of France. He adopted her device, the Crescent, and her colors. Her avarice was enormous, and she was a bitter enemy of the Reformers. The Chamber of Parliament to which was committed cases of heresy was called the Chamber of Fire.

The royal edict of 1551 took these cases from the ecclesiastical courts, and gave them to the royal judges. No appeals were allowed, and a speedy trial was sought.

The first Reformed Church in Paris was organized in September, 1555. The Edict of Compiegne, July, ^I557> forbade any other sentence to one of the Reformed faith than the flames or the gallows. In September, 1557, one hundred were arrested at St. Jacques, Paris, for celebrating the communion after the manner of Geneva. The first National Synod of the Reformed Church of France was held in Paris, May 26, 1559. That Church had greatly increased in spite of persecutions in these twelve years.

Anne de Bourg, of the Parliament of Paris, nephew of the Chancellor of France, a jurist of the highest reputation, dared, with signal ability, to ad-de Bourg vocate toleration in the royal presence, in June, 1559. Henry II declared that he would see him burned, but his eye was pierced by a splinter from the lance of a Scotch knight, Montgomery, in a tournament, June 30, 1559. Ten days later he was dead. De Bourg, however, did not escape, but was martyred, December 23, 1559.

Francis II was the young husband of Mary, Queen of Scotland. Claude, the first Duke of Guise, came to

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383

France in the early years of the sixteenth century. He was the fifth son of the Duke of Lorraine. His brother, John, was a cardinal, and held at the _{FrancIs n>} same time the Archbishoprics of Rheims, July, 1559— Lyons, and Narbonne, and seven French ^“‘s⁶⁰* bishoprics, and four rich and famous abbeys. Claude’s oldest daughter, Mary of Guise, married James V of Scotland. She was the mother of Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary was regent of Scotland from the death of her husband in 1542 to her own decease in June, 1560. Her daughter Mary was Queen of Scotland in her own right, and had been brought as a child to the French court, and reared where Catherine de’ Medici presided as queen. At fifteen she married the dauphin, but little her senior, and now, when not yet seventeen, she was Queen of France. Francis of Guise was the best French general of that age, and his brother Claude, made cardinal in 1547, and after the death of his uncle, in 1550, called Cardinal of Lorraine, was the able director of the policy of his house and often of France. The Cardinal of Lorraine was deceitful and vindictive and beyond measure covetous. He allied himself with Diane de Poitiers. In the new reign, therefore, Catherine de’ Medici was more neglected than ever. The Guises, uncles of the queen, ruled the kingdom. These were evil days for the Reformed.

They were made more so by the plot or tumult of Amboise. This conspiracy was entered into certainly without the knowledge of Coligni, and perhaps without that of any of the leaders of o^mboise* the Reformed. The object of the plot was to gain possession of the king. He was to be taken from the influence of the Guises, and Antoine de Bour

384    The Christian Church.

bon, nearest in blood, was to become chief in the government of the kingdom. The plot failed, the leader was killed in the attack, and the failure was followed by bloody executions. Twelve hundred thus perished.

After dinner, as a rare and pleasant sight, gentlemen were brought forth and hanged. Still may be seen the balcony overlooking the river where the king; his mother, Catherine de’ Medici; his wife, Mary Queen of Scots; and the Guises, thus witnessed the death agonies of their victims.

The Edict of May, 1560, gave cases of heresy again to the ecclesiastical judges, but with no abatement of rigor.

At the Assembly of the Notables in August, 1560, a plea was made for the Huguenots by Admiral Co-ligni as he presented their petition for toleration. Montluc, Bishop of Valence, seconded the plea. All was in vain. The Guises now entered into a plot to destroy their enemies; a plot that did not cease in its influence until the heads of the house of Guise for two generations lay dead by the hand of assassins, and the power and influence of the family were broken.

With all the perfidy of the age, in the most friendly and courteous manner, the leaders of the Reformed, Antoine de Bourbon and Louis de Conde, were invited to the court of Orleans. Navarre and Conde were in the hands of their enemies the last day of October, 1560. An attempt to assassinate Navarre miscarried. Conde was arrested, and on November 13th sentenced to be beheaded. While these measures were being put through, news came of the illness of the king. It soon became evident that the court could

The Genevan Reform.    385

look only for a fatal termination. December 5, 1560, Francis II was dead, Mary of Scots was a widow, the plot had failed, and the lives of the Bourbon leaders of the Reformed w^rere saved. It seemed that little less than a miracle had preserved them from the consequences of their folly. No revolution could be more unexpected or more completely change the face of affairs.

The States-General met the week after the death of the king, and Coligni again presented the petition of the Huguenots. Conde was acquitted,

June 13, 1561, and reconciled to Francis of Deat^of Guise the following August. In April a Francis 11 to triumvirate was formed of the Constable Montmorency, Francis, Duke of Guise, and Marshal St. Andre, to conduct the affairs of the kingdom. The court fool said he used to put up at the sign of the Crescent (the device of Diane de Poitiers), but now he put up at the sign of the Three Kings.

The Edict of July 11, 1561, was an act against the religious assemblies of the Reformed. The queen mother, Catherine de’ Medici, finally agreed to a colloquy or conference between the Roman Catholics and the Reformed at Poissy,

September 9-27, 1561. Beza and Peter Martyr appeared for the Reformed, and the Jesuit Lainez and the Cardinal of Lorraine for their opponents. The Reformed had great hopes of the result of this conference. They were doomed to disappointment. The Church of Rome never allows a free and full discussion when she can prevent it. The colloquy at Poissy proved no exception. It also showed Catherine de’ Medici that two-thirds of France was Roman Catho-

25

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lie. Allied with them was the Pope, the emperor, and the King of Spain, with all the wealth and influence of the clergy. Catherine, who was before all things a coward, never forgot the lesson. She would use the Huguenots while they would serve her ends, but only as a balance to the feared and hated power of the Guises.

But Catherine longed for peace, and finally, January 17, 1562, was issued a royal edict which gave the Reformed a legal standing, and secured un-Toieration ^m°l^este(l worship outside of towns. The years of unresisting slaughter were over. The Reformed Church of France had secured the acknowledgment of its right to exist. In 1561 there were two thousand one hundred and fifty Huguenot churches in France. The Reformed congregations were so thronged that it seemed to impartial Roman Catholic observers that the whole kingdom would soon become Huguenot. This result had come from the constancy and devotion of the martyrs of the Reformed faith. Two contemporaries, enemies of the Reformed, shall show us the process and result of this age of persecution.

Florimond de Raemond says: “ Meanwhile funeral piles were kindled in all directions. But as, on the one hand, the severity of justice and of the laws restrained the people in their duty, so the incredible obstinacy of those who were led to execution, and who suffered their lives to be taken from them rather than their opinions, amazed many. For who can abstain from wonder when simple women willingly undergo tortures in order to give a proof of their faith, and, when led to death, call upon Jesus their Savior,

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and sing psalms; when maidens hasten to the most excruciating torments with greater alacrity than to their nuptials; when men leap for joy at the terrible sight of the preparations for execution, and half burned from the funeral pyre mock the authors of their sufferings; when, with indomitable strength of courage and joyful countenance, they endure the lacerating of their bodies by means of hot pincers; when, in short, like an immovable rock, they receive and break all the billows of the most bitter sufferings at the hands of the executioners, and, like those who have eaten the Sardinian herb, die laughing?

“The lamentable sight of such incredible constancy as this created no little doubt in the minds, not only of the simple, but of men of authority; for they could not believe that cause to be bad for which death was so willingly undergone. Others pitied the miserable. and burned with indignation against their persecutors. Whenever they beheld the blackened stakes with chains attached—memorials of executions—they could not restrain their tears. The desire consequently seized upon many to read their books, and to become acquainted with the foundations of the faith from which it seemed impossible to tear them by the most refined tortures. . . . The greater the number of those consigned to the flames, the greater the number of those who seemed to spring from their ashes.”

To the same import is the testimony of Marshal Tavannes, who says: “ Never was malady of the brain worse treated than Calvinism. The patients ought not to have been burned and treated with such extraordinary remedies, because the more a thing is prohibited, the more it is desired. Cruelty supported

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with constancy confirmed them in their obstinacy. It was enough to deprive them of places and benefices, to condemn them to fines, and to amend the lives of our own ecclesiastics. We have angered God by the cruelty of their punishments, and there was no reason for making them pretend to be martyrs. Many of these perverted persons believed that they were dying for Jesus Christ. Religion lies in belief, which can be influenced by reason, but not by flames.”

THE RELIGIOUS WARS.

In the awful tragedy of the religious wars in France a few personalities dominate the scene. The house of House of Guise was the head of the extreme Roman

Guise. Catholic party, which was intent on noth-1562=1589. -_ng |_ess th_an destroying the Reformed root and branch, and determined to make all “pacifications” with them nugatory. Its leader in action was Francis, Duke of Guise, the most famous French general of his time, but its aim and methods were determined by the Cardinal of Lorraine. Ambitious, false, and vindictive, the cardinal was the chief cause of the continuance of the civil wars.

Gaspard de Coligni, one of the famous Chatillon brothers, was the soul of the Reformed party. His mother was Louise Montmorency, sister of deSugni. Constable. She belonged to the humanistic circle of the aristocracy. She was chosen to be the governess of Jeanne d’Albert as she had been of her mother, Margaret of Navarre. Louise de Chatillon was a woman of high intelligence and rare force of character. She believed that “religion was a matter of authority for the common herd and

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of private opinion for the well-born.” Her own she showed on her death-bed by refusing to see a priest.

The tutor of the Chatillons was Nicholas Berault, a man greatly praised by Erasmus, who, like the men of his class, showed the way out of the Church of Rome, but did not follow it. His two sons, however, joined the Reformed.

Thus were trained the three most famous brothers of their time: Odet, Cardinal Chatillon (1515-1571), of whom Brantome says: “It seems to me that the king never had a more courteous, discreet, and generous man. . . . His very enemies could not choose but love him, so frank was his face, so open his heart, so gentle his manner.” Of Francois d’Andelot (15211569) we shall hear in the words of Coligni himself. Gaspard de Coligni was in age between the two brothers (1517-1572). He, with his mother and his brother Francois, came to the court of Francis I, in 1539. Here he formed a warm friendship with Francis, Duke of Guise, as they were about the same age. This continued for the next eighteen years, and Coligni was part of the most brilliant circle at the court. His father had been Marshal of France, and held some of the chief governorships of the kingdom. In 1522 he died at the age of thirty-seven, leaving four sons, the eldest of whom was but seven years of age.

With such antecedents it was not strange that young Coligni rose rapidly in the royal favor. He took part in the campaign of 1541, in which he was slightly wounded. In 1543 he fought side by side with Guise, and was severely wounded at the assault of Binche. The next year he showed distinguished valor at the battle of Ceresole, and was knighted on

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the field. A year later he commanded a regiment at the siege of Boulogne. At the age of thirty, in 1547, he married Charlotte de Laval, a woman nobly worthy of him. In 1551 his brother D’Andelot was taken prisoner in Italy, and confined for four years in the castle of Milan. In this prison he became a convinced adherent of the Reformed faith. Coligni, in 1550, assisted in the negotiations of the treaty between England and France which gave to the latter Boulogne. The next year he was made Governor of Paris and the Isle of France. His great honors came, however, in 1552, when he was made colonel and captain-general of French infantry and Admiral of France. It is by the latter title he is known in the history of his times. Two years later his friendship with Francis of Guise was broken at the battle of Rentz. Coligni negotiated the treaty of Vaucelles between France and Spain, which was signed in February, 1556. His former friendship with Francis of Guise was turned into bitter enmity by the success of the latter in breaking the Peace of Vaucelles.

He began in 1555 the support of a French colony under Villegagnon, at Rio Janeiro, which ended in total failure in 1559. Coligni commanded, in 1557, the infantry in the campaign of Lorraine, and took part in the capture of Metz, Toul, and Verdun. In Picardy he had a share in the successful assaults upon Hesdin and Terouanne; but the battle of San Quentin turned the campaign into a disastrous failure. Coligni was taken prisoner in the town of San Quentin, which he defended to the last. He remained a prisoner until the Peace of Cateau-Cambresis, April, 1559, when he purchased his ransom for 50,000 crowns. These years

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of imprisonment were more noted in the life of Co-ligni than all the honors he had gained, for in prison, like his brother D’Andelot, he became a convinced and earnest Huguenot.

Upon his release he returned to his estates at Cha-tillon, where he remained from July, 1559, to May, 1560. At this time he made public profession of the Reformed faith, in which he had been preceded by his wife, as well as by his brother. Immediately he began to organize the Reformed, and, as we have seen, assumed the real leadership of the party, presenting the petition of the Huguenots at the Assembly of Notables in August, 1560, and at the States-General in December of the same year. In 1561-62 he organized the French settlement on St. John’s River, Florida, under Jean Ribaut, which was extirpated by Melendez in 1565, and the Spanish victors were visited with a bloody requital by Gourges in 1568.

The nominal heads of the Reformed were the Bourbon princes. But Antoine left his wife, the noble Jeanne d’Albert, and apostatized from the _Leadership Reformed faith, won by the blandishments of the of Catherine de’ Medici and her flying ^Re,ormed* squadron. His life of folly ended November 17, 1562. Conde now became the military leader of the Reformed. He was a man of dashing courage, but as unstable and as open to the wiles of Catherine and her bevy of beauties as Antoine, except that he did not deny his faith. He ended his life in the heroic but fatal charge of Jarnac in 1569. In these circumstances it could not be but that Gaspard de Coligni should control the mind and heart of the Huguenot party.

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Catherine de’ Medici, a niece of Clement VII, was born in 1519, and married to Henry, Duke of Orleans, second son of Francis I, when she was but de^Medtei. f°^urteen years of age. Her position was not a brilliant one in France, and yet it was thought to be above her birth. The death of the dauphin changed all that, and on the death of Francis I she became Queen of France. Here she found that high station brought neither love nor influence, as she was supplanted in both by her husband’s mistress. When her eldest son became king she was still more overshadowed by the beautiful young queen, Mary of Scots, and her uncles, the Guises. But now, when her second son, Charles IX, came to the throne, December, 1560, her opportunity had come. Her lifelong ambition, her passion to rule, could now find satisfaction; to it she sacrificed everything honorable among men or acceptable to God. Catherine de’ Medici was now forty-one years old. She had never been beautiful, and had no extraordinary powers of mind except a genius for intrigue, and an ambition and selfishness utterly unscrupulous. If Catherine ever loved any one it was her sons, yet she corrupted these fundamentally and irrevocably, that through them she might rule France. The aim of her policy, utterly without scruple, was to balance between the parties, and thus secure her supremacy. The record will show how her cowardice and treachery made her the author of the most abominable crime of the century. We can have little idea of the period of the religious wars unless we bear in mind that France was ruled during a whole generation by a

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woman the most corrupt, in the sense of corrupting others, of French history, and the wickedest known to the times of the Reformation.

How she regarded herself she shall tell us in her address or letter to her son, Henry III, in 1577, five years after St. Bartholomew: “My son, you know that I was among the first to advise you to permit but one religion in your realm, and that I told you that you must make use of the States-General which are here met. You know, moreover, what practices, what dealings I have had with the deputies of the three orders; especially with the Archbishop of Lyons, who at first was opposed to action. So, too, with many others of the Church, the nobles, and the Third Estate, to whom, by your command, I spoke, and whom I brought to this resolution. And, to tell the truth, they could never have gone so far but for your command, since most of them alleged that they had no such powers conferred upon them by their instructions. Thereby it may be seen that my intention has always been that there should be but one Catholic and Roman religion in your kingdom. Accordingly, the maintenance of that religion has been my aim ever since your brother’s accession to the throne sixteen years ago. This will enable me to speak with the greater boldness.

“ I am a Catholic, and have as good a conscience as any one else can have. Many a time, during the reign of the late king, have I exposed my life against the Huguenots. That is not what I fear. I am ready to die; for I am fifty-eight years old, and I hope to go to paradise. What I do not desire is to outlive

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my children, which would give me a cruel death indeed.”

Such were the leaders in the wars about to open. The Edict of January, 1562, had secured, as far as the The First *^{aw cou}^ secure, the right of the Hugue-Reiigious nots to hold their religious worship. It was

^War* a spring morning, a Sunday, the first of March, not two months from the Edict of Toleration. Francis of Guise was riding at the head of his men-at-arms, nearing the town of Vassy, in Eastern France. Suddenly from a barn broke forth the notes of Huguenot psalms, making clear that here was assembled a congregation for worship according to the form of Geneva. In his dying moments Guise asserted that he did not premeditate the attack. It may be that, at the time, he did not give the order. But it is certain that he did nothing to prevent the slaughter or to restrain his men, who would have obeyed the slightest word of the greatest general of France, and who supposed, and had a right to suppose, that they were doing his pleasure. Upon Francis of Guise must rest the guilt of the blood, outrage, and pillage which followed so swiftly upon the nearly forty years of persecution, and which almost effaced France in the Councils of Europe. The armed men poured in upon the worshiping congregation, and, like a band of heathen savages, began to slay men and women right and left. When their murderous work was done, fifty or sixty were dead, and more than a hundred dangerously wounded. Here was the head of the Roman Catholic party showing utter contempt for the law, violating every guarantee given to the Huguenots, and seemingly bent on renewing the era of persecu

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tion; for the Huguenots believed the whole affair was premeditated, and was but the opening act in the tragedy which was to end in their extinction. The question now arose whether men, with arms in their hands and trained to war, should allow fraud and violence to bring about their annihilation. Calvin had always counseled against resistance. Coligni, who well knew war, strove to prevent its outbreak. Nothing can better show the feeling which dominated the Huguenot party than the conversation between Coligni and his wife, Charlotte de Laval.

She said to him when he hesitated to begin the civil war: “To be prudent in men’s esteem is not to be wise in that of God, who has given you the science of a general that you might use it for the good of his children.” When he rehearsed all the horrors of an unsuccessful civil war, and gave her three weeks to make her decision, she replied: “ The three weeks are already past; you will never be conquered by the strength of your enemies. Make use of your resources, and bring not upon your head the blood of those who may die within three weeks. I summon you in God’s name not to defraud us any more, or I shall be a witness against you at his judgment.” Thus was Coligni brought to decision.

The die was cast. We, with our better knowledge, can see that this decision was a mistake. The opening of the Civil War, in the language of the Venetian ambassador, prevented France from becoming Huguenot. One-third of the population was reckoned as their adherents, and they seemed to have the best of prospects of winning another third. They never saw the day again when they were relatively as strong in

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numbers. But it is hard to blame men who, in such a crisis and under such provocation, thought they had reached the limits of endurance.

The war thus begun lasted until the Edict of Am-boise, March 12, 1563. Orleans was taken by Conde, Bourges and Rouen by Guise. The battle of Dreux was fought December 19, 1562, in which Guise was the victor, but Marshal St. Andre was killed, Conde was taken prisoner by the Roman Catholics, while his uncle Montmorency fell into the hands of the Huguenots. Guise then turned to attack Orleans, the headquarters of his adversary. The war was brought to a sudden end by the assassination of Francis of Guise by a weak-headed fanatic, Jean Poltrot, February 18,

1563. There is now no doubt that the Huguenot leaders were innocent of participation or knowledge of the crime; but the contrary was believed by the Roman Catholics, and it greatly added to the bitterness of the strife. Coligni having been slow to take up arms, would have been slow to lay them down. He was greatly disappointed in the peace concluded by Conde.

By the peace the higher nobility were allowed to have Reformed worship on their lands with their families and retainers, the lower nobility with o^the Peace. ^^ei^r families only. In every baliwick, on petition, the Huguenots could have one city in whose suburbs they could worship. In every city then in possession of the Huguenots they could have one or two churches inside the walls. The Huguenots were to restore all churches and church property, and were not permitted to worship in Paris or in its neighborhood. Foreign troops were to be dis-

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missed, and all the Reformed nobility were to be reinstated in their offices and honors.

These provisions are given at length because they formed the basis of all succeeding pacifications until the Edict of Nantes, in 1598. The selfishness of the aristocratic leaders shows why the Huguenots did not win the masses to their support. The terms were less favorable, except for the nobility, than the Edict of January, 1562. Well might Coligni write to Conde: “You have ruined more churches by one stroke of the pen than the enemy could have done in ten years of war. What of the poor who have fought as bravely as the nobles? They must walk many miles—women, children, the feeble, and the aged—or have no public worship at all.”

The peace lasted for four years. Odet Chatillon had been made cardinal in 1531. He had participated in the elections of Paul III and Julius III. _{The Second} He sympathized with the Reformed opin- Religious ions of his brothers. In April, 1563, the ^War* Pope declared his office vacant. In the same year the Reformation was established in Bearn. In June, 1565, Catherine de’ Medici and Charles IX on one side, and Isabella of Spain and Alva on the other, held a conference at Bayonne. The stipulations of the peace in favor of the Huguenots were violated continually. Coligni counseled to maintain the peace, but D’Andelot urged that they could not longer endure, and Coligni again, against his judgment, yielded. Having made up their minds to resist, they took their measures with such secrecy as to surprise completely the enemy, September 29, 1567. The war of six months closed with the Peace of Longjumeau, March

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23, 1568. The attempt, at the outset, of the Huguenots to seize the king at Meaux failed by a narrow chance. The effect was to make Charles IX their enemy. The battle of St. Denis was fought November 10, 1567. Montmorency commanded on one side, and Conde on the other. It was a drawn battle, but Montmorency was killed. Conde formed a junction with John Casimir of the Palatinate, who came with ten thousand men in January, 1568. In February the Huguenots seized La Rochelle. The peace ensued, Coligni again opposing the peace which Conde favored. The terms as to religion were a little more favorable than the Edict of Amboise; but the Huguenots agreed to lay down their arms, renounce foreign aid, and deliver up their strongholds. After the peace, there was murder and outrage throughout France against the returning Huguenots. Seven of the chief Huguenot cities refused to receive royal garrisons. Marshal Tavannes now formed a plot to seize the Huguenot leaders; but Coligni and Conde were apprised of it, and fled to La Rochelle, henceforth the headquarters of the Huguenot party.

The Third Religious War began August 23, 1568, and ended with the Peace of St. Germain, August 8, The Third ^I57°- ^he battle of Jarnac was fought Religious March 13, 1569. Conde commanded be-

^War* tween twenty and twenty-five thousand men, but, with a small advance guard, he was surprised by the whole force of the enemy. Conde charged at the head of three hundred knights. He was taken prisoner, but was shot through the back and killed after his surrender. The Huguenots lost their leader, but only a few hundred men. Jeanne

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d’Albret galloped into the camp with her fifteen-year-old soil, Henry of Navarre, afterward Henry IV. Her son rode on her right, and the son of the dead Conde on her left. She addressed the soldiers and aroused their enthusiasm. She offered them her dominions, her treasures, her life, and her son. Coligni and all the host swore allegiance to Henry of Navarre. The Huguenots rallied, but wasted their strength on the disastrous siege of Poitiers, July 27—September 9, 1569. The enemy gathered his forces, and, attacking at Moncontour, October 3, 1569, won a complete victory. The Huguenot loss was six thousand to a little over five hundred on the part of Anjou. Again the heroic Jeanne d’Albret rode into camp. She brought with her the proceeds of the sale of all her jewels. Again she addressed the soldiers, and again she brought them in fealty and devotion around the Huguenot standards. A crushing defeat had been sustained, but the army remained. Anjou repeated the folly of the Huguenots, and besieged St.-Jean-d’An-gely, October 12—December 2, 1569. In the siege the Roman Catholics lost as many men as had fallen on the Huguenot side at Moncontour. In December the siege of Vezelay was repulsed by the Huguenots, while they had already taken Saintes and Nismes. Coligni now formed the most daring plan of campaign of the entire war, and carried it to a successful conclusion. Taking a division of the army broken at Moncontour, with the greatest secrecy and celerity he marched across France to the Rhone. Then, gathering his forces, now increased by five thousand men, he marched straight on Paris. He repelled the enemy’s attack with twice his numbers at Arnay-le-Duc,

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June 25, 1570, and compelled the Peace of St. Germain. The terms were like those of Amboise, but more favorable. The Huguenots retained La Rochelle, Montauban, Cognac, and La Charite for two years.

Like all pacifications, this peace was ill observed where the Roman Catholics were in the majority. At The Peace ^Rouen> ⁱⁿ March, 1571, while the Hugue-and st. Bar- nots were returning from worship, they thoiomew. _{were set U}p_{0tlj an(}j from one hundred to one hundred and twenty were killed and wounded. The one tower of strength in these two years was the influence and reputation of Admiral Coligni, at that time by all odds the ablest Frenchman and the best French general living. Such was his unquestioned honor and unblemished fidelity that even Catherine de* Medici herself turned to him as the one man who could be trusted. At the negotiations before the Peace of St. Germain the royal plenipotentiaries said to those of the Huguenots, “ As if you did not know that the admiral’s name goes farther in giving you consideration than had you another army equal in size to that you have at present.” Charles IX respected him, and from March to May, 1571, wished to come to an agreement with him. Coligni was at the court at Blois for a month in September, 1571. In October he returned to Chatillon, where he remained until March, 1572, when he came to Paris. At Chatillon he showed the Huguenots how Roman Catholics should be tolerated by restoring their church to the priests. It was said there was no place in France where priests could live in greater safety than at Chatillon. He would have

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those of both religions protected by the safeguard of obedience to the law. His domestic policy was that of Henry IV.

Charlotte de Laval, the heroic wife of Coligni, died in 1568 while he was absent in the war. I11 March, 1571, he married Jacqueline d’Entremont, a woman of noble mind and heart, but who, after his death, atoned for her marriage by a lifelong imprisonment. In May his daughter Louise married Teligny, a young man greatly esteemed by her father.

Coligni was now bent on enlisting the French court in the behalf of the revolted Netherlands, where Alva’s policy of blood and terror had met with a complete failure. Coligni wished France to attack and weaken Spain, and give her protection to the revolted provinces. His foreign policy was that of Richelieu and that carried into effect by arms in Flanders by Louis XIV. He would make France great and strong, and the most influential power on the Continent as the protector of the freedom of religion.

Catherine de’ Medici saw that the probity and character of the admiral would give him a hold upon her son, and make vain her attempt to gov-

^    ,    i.    1 The Plot.

ern France according to her whim or the turn of her policy. She feared him; therefore she hated him, and determined to destroy him. The queen, her son Henry, afterward Henry III, the Chancellor Birague, Due de Nevers, Marshal Tavannes, and De Retz set themselves to turn Charles IX from the admiral. At last they caused him to say: “Since we thought it good that the admiral should be killed, he would have it so; but that with him all the Hugue-

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nots of France must be killed, in order tliat not one might remain to reproach him hereafter; and that we should promptly see to it.”

Jeanne d’Albret, the noblest woman in France, had died June 9, 1572. Her son, Henry of Navarre, was to be married to Margaret of Valois, daughter of Catherine de’ Medici in August. All the Huguenot nobility had been invited to the nuptials. The plan was now formed, only a few days before its execution, to include all in a common destruction.

Coligni was shot and wounded in the arm, August 22d, by an assassin in the employ of Guise. The same day the king and the queen mother came to his chamber to see him. The night of the next day their assassins were to enter where they stood to murder him.

The bell sounded on the night of August 23, 1572. Besme, who for this act was afterward rewarded with the hand of the natural daughter of the Massacre ^uke Guise, forced his way into the chamber of the admiral. He had just said to his surgeon: “ For a long time I have kept myself in readiness for death. ... I commend my soul to the mercy of God.” When Besme broke in, he found the admiral in his dressing-gown and as calm as in cabinet or camp. He told Besme that he should respect his age, but that he could not shorten his life; meaning that it was in God’s hands. Besme, with an oath, struck him in the breast and on the head, and killed him. He then threw[the body out into the court below, where awaited his fellow-murderer, Henry of Guise. He took his handkerchief and wiped the countenance, making sure it was the admiral, and

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then kicked the body in the face. In the same way the body of Henry of Guise was to be treated sixteen years later by his fellow-assassin of this night of death, Henry of Valois.

The boy king, Charles IX, viewed the slaughter from a window in the Louvre, and, taking an arquebus, fired upon the helpless victims. Before the end of the following St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24th, five thousand Huguenots had perished in Paris. Henry of Navarre and Conde were prisoners. In the days following, three or four times as many perished in cold-blooded massacre throughout France as were slain in Paris.

The head of Coligni was cut off, and sent to Rome as a great treasure. In Rome the Pope ordered Te Deums to be sung, and a medal to be struck in honor of the most perfidious and cruel massacre ever known in Christendom.

The hands were cut off from the body of the murdered admiral. For three days boys dragged the mutilated corpse about the streets of Paris. Then the body was hung up by the feet on the gallows at Mont-faucon. Some days later Marshal Montmorency took down the remains and buried them.

If there were lower depths of shame, they were reached when Catherine de’ Medici and the ladies of her court, on the evening of that awful day, “ tripped down the palace stairs to feast their eyes upon the uncovered dead. Indeed, the king, the queen mother, and their intimate friends seemed to be in an ecstasy of joy.”

Four days after that day of blood, Catherine wrote

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to Philip II her thanks for the slaughter. She said: “ I entertain no doubt that you will appreciate as we Catherine ^^ie happiness that God has conferred de* Medici upon us in giving the king, my son, the to Philip ii. _{means Q}f ridding himself of his subjects, rebels against God and himself, and rejoice that it has pleased God graciously to preserve him and us all from the cruelty of their hands. For this we are assured that you will praise God with us, as well on our own account as for the advantage that will accrue to all Christendom, and to the service and honor and glory of God! ”

The world, on the other hand, has not failed to indorse the words of the Council of Queen Elizabeth to the English ambassador in Paris on the 9th Prfvycoun- of September: “Doubtless the most hein-cii on the _{ous ac}t _which has occurred in the world

* since the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, is that which has recently been committed by the French; an act which the Italians and the Spaniards, ardent as they are, are far from applauding in their heart, since it is a deed too full of blood, for the greater part innocent, and that too much suspected of fraud, which had violated the pledged security of a great king, and disturbed the serenity of the royal nuptials of his sister, insupportable to be heard by the ears of princes, and abominable to all classes of subjects, perpetrated contrary to all law, Divine or human, and without a parallel among all acts ever undertaken in the presence of any prince, and which has rather involved the King of France in danger than rescued him from it.” Thus fell Gaspard de Coligni, than whom a nobler Frenchman has not met the gaze of the world. What

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he was is evident from the record of his deeds. Of his appearance, his servant says: “ He was of medium height, with well-proportioned limbs; of a calm and serene countenance. He had a voice soft and pleasing, yet rather slow and hesitating. His complexion was clear; his demeanor was grave, yet full of grace and kindness.” He loved his home, and that home was no abode of Puritanic austerity. He made it the home of a man of letters and a man of taste, caring for books, statues, paintings, arms, armor, painted glass, and bric-a-brac.” Gaspard de Coligni was the best disciplinarian in France. He may be said to have founded the military discipline of modern times. There was no allowance of lust or rapine or oaths in his army. Brantome says: “More than a million of lives were saved by the admiral’s rules.”

The order of his household forms an admirable pendant to that of Sir Thomas More. His contemporary biographer says:

“As soon as he had risen from the bed, which was always at an early hour, putting on his morning gown and kneeling, as did those who were with him, he himself prayed in the form which is customary with the Churches in France. After this, while waiting for the commencement of the sermon, which was delivered on alternate days, accompanied with psalmody, he gave audience to the deputies of the Churches who were sent to him, or devoted the time to public business. This he resumed for a while after the service was over, until the hour for dinner. When that was come, such of his domestic servants as were not prevented by necessary engagements elsewhere, met in

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the large hall where the table was spread, standing by which, with his wife at his side, if there had been no preaching service, he engaged with them in singing a psalm, and then the ordinary blessing was said.

“On the removal of the cloth, rising and standing with his wife and the rest of the company, he either returned thanks himself or called on his minister to do so. Such also was his practice at supper, and, finding the members of his household could not, without much discomfort, attend prayers so late as at bedtime—an hour, beside which the diversity of his occupations prevented from being regularly fixed— his orders were that, so soon as supper was over, a psalm should be sung and prayer offered. It can not be told how many of the French nobility began to establish this religious order in their own families, after the example of the admiral, who used often to exhort them to the practice of true piety, and to warn them that it was not enough for the father of a family to live a holy and religious life, if he did not, by his example, bring all his people to the same rule.

“ On the approach of the time for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, calling together all the members of his household, he told them that he had to render an account to God, not only for his own life, but also for their behavior, and reconciled such of them as might have had difference's.”

The letters to his sons and nephews on the death of his brother, D’Andelot, and to his wife on the death of his son, let us see the mind and heart of

* the man. Of D’Andelot he writes: “A man

D Andelot.    _#

who, I dare affirm, was the very faithful servant of God, as well as a most excellent and re-

The Genevan Reform.    407

nowned captain. These are virtues whose memory and example should be always before your eyes, so that you may imitate them as much as possible. And I can say with truth that no one has surpassed him in the profession of arms, not doubting that foreigners will render the same testimony, especially those who have proved his valor. Now, so great a reputation was not acquired by indolence and sloth, but by severe toils and hardships endured for his country. And certainly I have never met with a man more just, or a greater lover of piety. ... I impart these praises in order to excite and stimulate you to the imitation of such great virtue, which I propose to myself for my own example, beseeching God that I may depart from this life as piously and as humbly as I have seen him die.”

And to his wife on the death of her son: “ Remember, ma bie?i amie, that he is happy in dying at an age when he is free from crime. . . . God has willed it. I offer him all the rest, if it ^{Tohls Wife}* be his will. Do thou the same, if thou wishest for his blessing; for in him alone is all our hope.”

The second period of the Civil Wars in France extends from the day of St. Bartholomew to the organization of the Holy League at Paris, which sought either to incorporate France oTthe into the domains of Philip II, or to divide ^{c,vU Wars}* the kingdom. The fourth religious war ^,572"⁵⁸⁴‘ was begun by Marshal Biron undertaking the siege of La Rochelle, January to July, 1573. The siege failed, and the royal army lost twenty-two thousand men. In the next year La Rochelle again took up arms, but the conflict was brought to a sudden close

408    The Christian Church.

by the death of Charles IX, May 30, 1574. For a few months the Huguenots had rest. An alliance was also formed between the Huguenots and Marshal Damville, of the house of Montmorency, representing the liberal Roman Catholic party, or the Politiques. Henry III returned from Poland, and on the advice of his mother began war on the Huguenots. This war endured from September 10, 1574, until the Peace of Beaulieu, or Peace of Monsieur, May, 1576. This peace was the most favorable to the Huguenots of any yet made in its provisions, but it was without any guarantee for their fulfillment.

Another war ran its course in the year 1577, from January to September, ending in the Peace of Bergerac. Then the land had rest until Henry of Navarre started a war on his own account, which extended from April 15, 1580, until the Peace of Fleix, November 26th of the same year. Following this peace were four years of armed peace until the organization of the Holy League at Paris, in 1584.

This period is remarkable for the exhaustion of both the parties to these wars and the utter ruin they characterise brought upon France. St. Bartholomew tics of these had grievously weakened the Huguenots.

^Wars* Henry of Navarre did not escape from his semi-captivity until February, 1576. On the other hand the king and the queen mother, even in the weakened condition of the Huguenots, were not strong enough to crush them. All the same this diminished strength marked the increasing misery of France.

In 1577, as the ambassador of Henry III was passing through Poitou and Guyenne, “the peasants by hundreds flocked to the roadside. They threw them-

The Genevan Reform.    409

selves on their knees or prostrated themselves in the dust before him. ‘ If the king intends to continue the war,’ they cried, ‘we very humbly beg him to be pleased to cut our throats at once, and put us out of our misery.’ ” So in Normandy, in 1578. The Estates draw a vivid picture of the “ villagers bareheaded and prostrate, half famished, without a shirt for the back or shoes for the feet, looking more like corpses dragged from their graves than like living men, and in their desperation raising their hands and voices to ask what must be the term of patient submission to the intolerable load.”    '

The third period extended from the organization of the Holy League at Paris to the death of Henry III. In this period greater strength comes to the combatants. Henry of Navarre is pJhoVohL now twenty-six, and approving himself a ^{Clvil Wa}™. general who can win victories at the head ^ls84'^I589‘ of Huguenot troops, and a leader who can obtain foreign aid. Henry III now finds the League, subsidizedby Philip II and the Pope, too strong for him. So he is forced to make common cause with it, until the murder of Henry of Guise makes way at once for both his own deliverance and downfall. The Holy League for the defense of the Roman Catholic Church was formed at Paris under the leadership of the Guises, the direction of Philip of Spain and the Jesuits, and with the active co-operation of the priests and the populace. At first, Henry III issued an edict against the League; but at the Conference of Joinville, in December, 1584, a full alliance was formed between Philip and the Guises. A new royal edict was issued against the League in March, 1585, but the League

4io    The Christian Church.

was too strong for a king as weak as Henry of Valois. Henry III came to terms with the League, and issued, July 18, 1585, the bloody Edict of Nemours, proscribing all exercise of the Reformed religion on pain of death. On hearing it, Henry of Navarre said, “The king has certainly given us enough to do for the rest of our lives.”

This was indeed a stunning blow after so many years of sacrifice and suffering. Many Huguenots fled, and not a few apostatized; there seemed no hope. Finally, October 20, 1587, Henry of Navarre won the battle of Coutras. The commander of the enemy, the Duke of Joyeuse, was slain, with between two and three thousand men and four hundred noblemen. Henry of Navarre carried the tokens of his triumph to his mistress, and lost the fruits of the campaign. The same year the army of Germans for the relief of the Huguenots returned to their country, having shown nothing but their own folly. The last of the Huguenot martyrs, the sisters Foucaud, were burned in Paris, June 28, 1588.

Finally, Henry III and Henry of Guise together entered Paris. Barricades were placed in every street, July 12, 1588, and Henry III found another was master in his capital. The League ruled Paris for the next six years. Aided by his mother, Henry III escaped from Paris, May 13, 1588. The Edict of Union between Henry III and the League, renewing the Edict of Nemours, was signed in July, 1588. Meanwhile the Huguenots demanded the Edict of January, 1562, and Henry of Navarre continued to make progress in the west. The States-General were convened at Blois, October 15, 1588. The Edict of

The Genevan Reform.    411

Union was again sworn two days later. Henry III saw that he was helpless in the hands of the League. He determined at all costs to free himself. With a treachery equal to that of St. Bartholomew he invited Guise to an interview. The idol of the Parisian populace, strong in his sense of popular support and of personal superiority, though warned not to do so, answered the summons. Entering the antechamber of the king, he saw guards with drawn swords before him; turning to look behind him, he saw the same sight. Caught like a rat in a trap, in a moment his body was pierced with many wounds. Henry III came out, and, viewing the body, brutally kicked it. This was December 23, 1588. Within a few days, the 5th of the next January, ended the baleful life of Catherine de’ Medici. A Huguenot army was now the sole support of the royal murderer. He met and made terms with Henry of Navarre the last of April, 1589. Nothing could exceed the rage of the League. In their madness they counseled only folly. A dissolute Dominican monk, named Jacques Clement, was prevailed upon by the League, and encouraged by Madame Montpensier, to assassinate the king. While pretending to hand him a communication, Clement struck him with his dagger. The wound seemed slight, but the weapon was poisoned, and the third day, August 2, 1589, Henry III, the last of the Valois, was dead. After the defeat of the Armada in 1588, what greater miracle? A Huguenot king of France ! Of the ability of the new king there could be no doubt. Few kings have had such an opportunity or such difficulties. If Henry of Navarre, Henry IV of France, had had the faith and virtues of his mother,

4i2    The Christian Church.

instead of the vices of his father, how different would have been the fate of France, the future of Europe, and his own fame !

THE GENEVAN REFORM IN THE NETHERLANDS.

The Netherlands, as the seat of the most active commercial intercourse in Europe, soon became ac-The Refor- quainted with the opinions of the Reform-mation in the ers. The first martyrs for the new faith suf-Netheriands. f_ere(j _aj. Brussels in 1524. Charles V rigorously enforced the policy of suppression announced in his “ Placards! ” William Tyndale suffered death near Brussels in 1536, and many others met a like fate before the emperor’s abdication in 1555. Those who, for the purpose of trade, came from Germany were largely Lutherans, but by far the larger influx was from France on account of the constant persecutions. This, with the greater aggressiveness of their adherents, soon gave the predominance among those who rejected the Church of Rome to the adherents of the Genevan Reform. From that time until this day the Netherlands have been the stronghold of the followers of John Calvin.

Thus far in the progress of the Reformation the movement, except in the case of the Anabaptists, had carefully abstained from political innova-

ThenewPo- .    . ^r

nticai issue tions. Luther and his followers were only in the _too complaisant to the ruling power in Ger-

Netherlands.    f.    °^r

many. The War of Smalkald was so purely defensive as to lose its one chance of success. In France no one proposed to change the monarchy or the person of the sovereign; in England there was no attempt at rebellion against Mary Tudor • and in

The Genevan Reform.

4*3

Geneva Calvin’s system and supremacy was carried through by means entirely constitutional. In the Netherlands we meet entirely new conditions. The resistance to Philip’s demand for the establishment of the Inquisition led to the birth of a new nation. This movement forms the center of the history of the Reformation in the Netherlands, and the history of the movement centers in the life and work of William the Silent, Prince of Orange.

William, Prince of Orange, was born at Dillenburg, in Nassau, Germany, April 25, 1533. He was the oldest son of William, Count of Nassau, who _Wi„_lam went over to the Reformation in 1533, of Orange, joined the League of Smalkald, and, though ^,533_,s84' a zealous Lutheran all his life, yet accepted the Interim, dying October 5, 1559. The mother of William of Orange was Juliana, daughter of the Count of Stol-berg. She was a woman of remarkable energy and character. She survived her husband twenty years, dying in 1580. She was the mother of five sons, and few mothers have ever borne such a group of noble brothers. These Nassau brothers form a worthy counterpart to the Chatillon brothers, the sons of Louise Montmorency. As Pierre, the eldest of the Chatillon brothers, died before reaching manhood, so Henry, the youngest of the Nassaus, died on the battlefield before reaching his twentieth year. There was no Churchman among the Nassaus Tike Odet, Cardinal Chatillon; but Louis of Nassau was as able and brilliant a commander, and a more versatile and accomplished diplomatist than D’Andelot. The eldest of these groups of brothers were the two ablest men of their time in the political life of Europe, whether tested by

The Christian Church.

their works or the influence of their character and ideals. Yet both of them fell by the hands ol assassins. They were only the noblest victims of Catherine de’ Medici and Philip II of Spain. Admiral Coligni survived all his brothers. William of Orange saw Adolph die at Heiliger Lee, and Louis and Henry on the fatal day of Mook Heath. Of the five brothers, four poured out their blood for their country. The fifth, John, the head of the house of Nassau, with true German loyalty to his family, and to the cause in which his house embarked, cared for the family of Orange in his exile—no easy task—mortgaged his credit and his lands, pawned his jewels and his plate, and devoted all his qualities of administration, and they were not small, to the land for which his brothers died. As late as 1594 the States-General owed him

1,400,000 florins, and it was many long years before his estates were clear of incumbrance. Never was there given to an older brother more loyal sacrifice or more devoted service.

By the death of a cousin, William of Nassau became Prince of Orange in July, 1544. The Emperor Charles V allowed his entrance upon the

The splendid inheritance upon the condition that the Prince and    ¹

Favorite of young heir, now but eleven years of age,

Fortune. _sh_ouid be reared at his court. To this the 1544-1500.

Protestant father of Orange did not object, and he was sent to Brussels, where he was under the care of the emperor’s sister, Mary, Queen of Hungary. While there, of course, he conformed to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church. Jerome Granvelle, the younger brother of the cardinal, was his tutor. Orange

The Gene va n Reform.    415

was an apt pupil; he spoke fluently five languages, and wrote two others.

At the age of nineteen he married Anna of Eg-mont, by whom he had a son, Philip, named after the heir of Charles V, and a daughter, Marie, named after the emperor’s sister. After not quite seven years of wedded life, Anna died, in March, 1558.

Meanwhile Orange was the favorite of the emperor, and rose rapidly in offices and honors. Two months after his marriage he was made captain of horse, and the next year colonel of infantry ^{Rlse In}

try    „ , ,    _    ^J Fortune.

I wo years later he was made general of division. In 1554 and 1555 he was general in command of all the troops about Givet, and built forts in the face of the enemy.

On October 25, 1555, when Charles V abdicated at Brussels, he leaned on the arm of William, Prince of Orange. Orange for eleven years had been regarded by him with peculiar favor. The prince had shown qualities of foresight, constancy, and industry. He was the most powerful, wealthy, and splendid of the nobles at court in the Flemish capital. At the same time he had qualities of intellect that well befitted the council of a king.

_e In November, 1555, the new king, Philip, made him councilor of state, and in the January following he was made knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Orange bore the formal notification of the abdication of Charles V to the Reichstag at Frankfort in February, 1558, and was one of the negotiators of the Peace of Cateau-Cambresis, in 1559. He was sent to Paris as a hostage from the King of Spain for the execu

4i6    The Christian Church.

tion of the treaty. An event occurred during his stay at the French court which, he said, changed his whole life. His silence at that hour gave him his surname.

Riding home from a hunting party with the King of France, Orange and Henry II were separated from the rest of the company. As they rode slowly along, Henry entered into the details of a private treaty he had made with Alva to exterminate heresy from France and from the Spanish dominions. Orange says he was touched with compassion for the people thus condemned to extinction. “Seeing, I say, these things, I confess that from that moment I determined in earnest to chase the Spanish vermin from the land, and I never repented my resolution.” (“Apology,” 1580.)

The English wife of Philip II was dead, and he desired to return to Spain. He wished a subsidy from the Estates of the Netherlands. They promised compliance on condition that he should withdraw his foreign soldiers. A protest in the name of the States-General, and signed by Orange, Egmont, and the leading nobles, depicted the ravages of the troops. Philip refused to withdraw them, and the subsidy was not granted. As Philip embarked, August 26, 1559, he bitterly reproached Orange for this failure. Orange replied that it was not his decision, but that of the Estates. In anger Philip seized Orange by the wrist and exclaimed, “Not the Estates, but you, you, you!” Thus parted these men in lifelong enmity. Philip came to have on his hands the blood of Orange as well as of Egmont and Horn; but Orange made the lifework of Philip end in failure.

Orange, as the representative of Spain, was present

The Genevan Reform.    ^

at the coronation of Francis II at Rheims, in Septem-

^er’ '^⁵⁹' ^{But the da}y^s court favor were now over, his career as chosen of the king was at an end Knowing well the character of Philip, Orange had chosen his part. After the revelation of Henry II there was but one thing to do: he cast his lot with his

leT¹^ ^MCef°^{rth f}°^{r the n6Xt S6Ven}    was

eader of the constitutional opposition, formed for the

preservation of the liberties of his country.

Margaret of Parma was the oldest child of the

Emperor Charles V, _a„ able woman, and the mother

Of a famous son, Alexander of Parma

l^a_n^rf7lJ^Vt_Tⁱⁿ_t.^{trUSted Wkh the} foment of the Netherlands, as had been her ^Noble “^nd

aunt Mary of Hungary. Orange and Eg-‘C££ mont were of her council. The leading ‘560-1577. “r¹"⁰' ^{her adm}i«stration was Cardinal Gran-

If he frehT ^ ^P°^Pe’^{S BUU f}°^{r the division} of the Archdiocese of Utrecht into three new ones

and he himself was made Archbishop of Mechlin, May,’

K-iv r , ^{at 0nce aroused} the opposition of the nobility of the Netherlands.

.•?^raii"^e’    that he would need support in his

that "of th° ¹⁽?’ °°^{Uld tWnk} °^{f n}°^{ne so} efficient as that of the Evangelical princes of Germany. The Elector of Saxony was at their ^0rans^e’^s head He, therefore, proposed marriage to

Si An" ^nieC6’ ^AMa’ ^d3Ughter °^{f MaUrfce}’ ^the

eager for th^{a a}°^{W    eighteenth} ^ and

thfl I . ^marnage. To obtain the consent of those whom it was necessary to have ratify the nuptials Orange represented himself to Philip II _as a good Roman Catholic, and wrote as such to the

4i8    The Christian Church.

Pope m regard to the suppression of heresy m Orange. At the same time to Philip of Hesse, the grandfather of the bride, and to the Elector Augustus, he promised that she should be permitted the free exercise of her religion. No man can call this frank dealing. Yet it must be remembered that at this time, and for seven years later, Orange professed the Roman Catholic religion, in which he had been reared. On the other hand, his father and mother and the entire family professed the Evangelical faith. It might not seem so strange for him to believe that the two religions could abide together in his own house.

Orange went to the Saxon court with a splendid train of his friends, accompanied by a thousand horsemen, and the marriage took place, August 24, 1561.

The household of the prince was on a splendid scale. The ordinary service of his household was The House- done by twenty-four nobles, while there keeping of waited on him not less than eighteen pages, orange.    _{a measure Q}f economy, twenty-eight

cooks were discharged. “ The reputation of the prince’s cuisine was so high that nearly all the German princes sent their cooks to be perfected in their art. In all corners of the palace, from early morning until noon, lunch-tables stood ready, laden with choice wines and edibles. For dinner and supper the courses were numerous, delicate, and elaborate; but all was surpassed by the generosity of the host himself, so that many say that the prince’s table had much to do with the overthrow of the king’s power in the Netherlands.” Philip II himself wrote from Madrid in 1564, asking Orange to send him his head cook, to take the

The Genevan Reform.

419

place of his, who had died, and saying, “ He shall be treated so that he shall be satisfied.” No wonder that with the increase of the prince’s influence came the increase of debt also.

In March, 1563, Orange, Egmout, and Horn wrote a joint letter to Philip, protesting against the arrogance of Cardinal Granvelle, and asking for their dismission from the Council of State if Granvelle remained. About the same time the cardinal expressed to Philip II his opinion of Orange. “The Prince of Orange is a dangerous man, sly, full of ruses, pretending to support the people and to consider their interests even against your edicts, seeking only the favor of the populace, appearing sometimes Catholic, sometimes Calvinist, and sometimes Lutheran. He is capable of any underhand deed that might be inspired by ambition.” This is a picture of Orange drawn by his enemy to secure the removal of the man who had made his own necessary; for Cardinal Granvelle left Brussels forever, March 13, 1564.

In this opposition, Orange had clear and well-defined aims. He sought the reunion of the States-General, the increase of the power of the Council of State, and the moderation of the Placards against those of the Evangelical faith. The cardinal was gone, but the victory bore only bitter fruit at Madrid. In August, 1565, Philip wrote to Margaret ordering the proclamation of the Decrees of the Council of Trent and the establishment of the Inquisition. As a reply, the nobles drew up a paper which they called “The Compromise,” in which they protested against all inquisitorial measures, which, in a land accustomed to liberty, could only result in horrible confusion; and

420    The Christian Church.

they promised mutual aid in resisting these measures. It was first signed by Brederode and Louis of Nassau. Within three months it had two thousand signatures. In the Council, March 27, 1566, Orange said to the regent, Margaret: “ To see a man burn for his opinions does harm to the people. The judges will not execute the Placards, and the rigorous decrees do nothing to maintain religion.”

A petition was presented to the regent by the signers of the Compromise, Louis of Nassau and three hundred gentlemen, April 5, 1566. As the gentlemen passed out, the Councilor Berlaymont said to the regent, “ How, madam! can it be that Your Highness is afraid of these beggars?” Three days later, at a banquet at the Culemburg palace, as the speech of Berlaymont had become known, the toast was given, “ Long live the beggars!” and this became the war-cry of the party of resistance.

Meanwhile the adherents to the religious Reform rapidly increased. In June, 1566, four or five thousand people assembled to hear Evangelical preaching at Berchem, near Antwerp. There were large congregations of Lutherans and Anabaptists living in Antwerp, but the larger gathering was of the Reformed. Orange was hereditary Burgrave of Antwerp. He thought it best not to prohibit the preaching, but to see that all was done in quietness and order.

While he was doing all he could to calm the excited spirits of the people, suddenly there broke out that fury which prevailed everywhere

Inconoclasm. .    , _    ,

where the followers of Calvin gamed even a momentary ascendency. They stormed the churches and cathedrals, and proceeded to demolish every im

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421

age and shrine which had been erected by the devotion of ages. In the wildest spirit of fanaticism the work was carried out. It is doubtful if anything more prejudiced the cause of the Reformed among the Roman Catholic people and their rulers than this inconsiderate fury. It began in Antwerp, August 19, 1566, and before the month ended had run its course of riot and destruction in Tournay, Valenciennes, Ghent, and Mechlin. Finally, August 25, 1566, the regent signed an “Accord ” with the confederates, in which she permitted preaching and suspended the Inquisition. Orange did all that he could to sustain the royal authority, and showed that laws should not be made that could not be enforced, that some license should be given to the religion of the people; but he hanged three image-breakers in his presence at Antwerp. On the 6th of September, Orange wrote to Egmont, “ It would be a very good thing to assemble the States-General; but it would be better for us three [Orange, Egmont, and Horn], with our friends, not to let the grass grow under our feet until it is too late for action.” But Egmont and Horn refused to go with him. In January, 1567, Orange entered into an agreement with Amsterdam in which was granted Reform preaching, and religious excesses were checked.

In March a new oath of allegiance was demanded of Orange and the troops under him. Orange at once refused it as implying that he had not been faithful to the oath already taken, and re- ^Toath^W signed at once all his offices. Orange now retired to his estate at Breda, and from there wrote farewell letters to Egmont and Horn. He recalled his daughter Marie from Margaret’s court, where she

422

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had been for the last two years, but left his son Philip at Louvain. April 22, 1567, Orange set out for Germany, and for the next five years he was a homeless exile.

Orange now wrote, “We must trust in God and in time for a remedy.” He went to Dillenburg and

Years studied Melanchthon, and renounced the of Exile. Roman Catholic religion in which he had 1567-1572. been reared. The change at this time, no doubt, was chiefly political. He now subordinated everything to raising a force which should free the Netherlands. He sold his jewels, plate, and tapestry, and gave 50,000 florins to the cause. Orange planned three attacks in the spring of 1568. Louis of Nassau, at Heiliger Lee, May 24, 1568, won an important victory, but Alva defeated him and almost annihilated his army at Reyden, June 21, 1568. The other attacks were failures also. The 5th of October, Orange entered the Netherlands at the head of thirty thousand men. Alva avoided an engagement, and Orange saw his army melt away without striking a blow. His resources had been drained, and his attack was an utter failure. He crossed into France, November 17, 1568. Orange sold his last plate to pay his troops, and gave a lien on his principality and other possessions for the amount due them. In January, 1569, he dismissed them and went to Strasburg. His utmost exertions had only brought ruin. With his brothers, Louis and Henry, he then took service with the Huguenots. Louis remained with them until the Peace of St. Germain, in which the property of Orange in France was restored to him. In November, 1569, Orange was back in Dillenburg.

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423

Fernando de Toledo, Duke of Alva (1508-1583), entered the Netherlands in August 1567. The 22d of that month he arrested Orange’s son Philip, then at school, and sent him to Spain. ^A,₀^ jerror*" • From thence he did not return until 1596.

At once Alva began his work of blood. Egmont and Horn were arrested in September. They were brought to the block, June 6, 1568. Eight hundred of the nobility were marked for slaughter. The signers of the “ Compromise ” were especially sought for, to pay the penalty for their audacity. The Council of Blood wrought with vigor. In the seven years of Alva’s rule eighteen thousand persons were publicly executed by burning, drowning, the sword, or the rope. It was expected that the confiscations would enable Alva to send treasure to Spain. Alva and his master had to learn that the destruction of a people can not increase the wealth of their rulers. Alva had insisted upon a tax of ten per cent upon all sales. This had been commuted for 2,000,000 florins annually for two years. Now Alva found the need of money pressing, and in 1572 demanded the payment of the tax. Alva was hated and detested for his cruelty, but this was to destroy the means of existence as well as the prosperity of the great cities of the Netherlands. The resistance, though not open, was universal. During the years 1570-1571, Orange was doing his best to enlist Charles IX or Elizabeth of England in the cause of his country.

In dark days like these nothing could have comforted the exile more than the devotion of a true-hearted wife. That Orange did not have. Anne’s pride, envy, and fits of rage made her anything but

424    The Christian Church.

easy to live with at Breda. But when her husband was an exile and she dependent on his family, the case was harder still. In his trials she had never a Saxony! ^word of sympathy for him or for his cause.

At last her correspondence showed, without doubt, an adulterous intrigue between herself and John Rubens, the father of Rubens the great painter, 1570-1571. Anne was at Beilsheim 1571-1574, and in the next year she was removed to Dresden. Having never been well-balanced in mind, she now became a raving maniac. She was the mother of the famous Maurice of Orange, born in 1567. This shameful sequel to a brilliant wedding alienated still further the Elector Augustus from the Reformed.

In virtue of his sovereign rights as Prince of Orange, William had issued letters of marque and appointed an admiral in 1570. These bands ^ca^^e(^ themselves the Beggars of the Sea. April 1, 1572, they took the port of Brill and laid the first stone in the foundation of the Dutch Republic. Alva’s taxes and his cruelty had prepared the people to embrace the first opportunity to throw off his iron yoke. Flushing, Enkhuyzen, Leyden, and nearly all the important towns in the provinces of Holland, Zealand, Friesland, Overyssel, Gelder-land, and Utrecht renounced their allegiance to Alva, and swore fealty to Orange as in the oath of 1559. In the spring of 1572, Charles IX sent to Orange

200.000    crowns, due doubtless to the efforts of Coligni. Louis of Nassau took Mons, May 24, 1572. In June the Sea Beggars captured the fleet of forty vessels of the Duke Medina Coeli, with jewels, spices, and

500.000    crowns. Orange now gave his counsel, “Do

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425

everything to win the hearts of the Catholics as well as of the Reformed; above all protect both religions.” It was time for the exile to return.

Orange met the Estates at Dort, July, 1572. On the 18th he was elected Stadtholder. The principle of toleration was the foundation of the new policy. The public exercise of relig- _Qf the united ion was permitted to all alike. The Duke Prince*, of Alva was an experienced soldier. He *⁵⁷² '⁵⁸⁴* took Mons, September 21, 1572, and then Zutphen and Naarden. All the excesses of lust and rapine known to the Spanish soldiery were visited upon Mons and Naarden. The siege of Haar- _Alva._s lem was begun December 10, 1572, with Measures, thirty thousand men. It continued until ^,572~¹⁵⁷³* the surrender of the city July 12, 1573. After the surrender, 1,735 persons, including the Reformed clergy, were hanged, beheaded, or drowned. Don Frederick, son of Alva, then proceeded to the siege of Alkmaar, July 16-October 8, 1572; but the siege ended in failure, and the arms of Alva met their first defeat.

The next year the Spanish fleet was defeated and its admiral taken. The city of Gertruydenberg was wrenched from the grasp of the Spaniards. This ended the operations under Alva’s rule. He left Brussels pursued by universal execration, November, 1573.

The same year, in October, Orange publicly joined the Reformed Church at Dordrecht. There is no doubt but that his attachment to the principles _0range joins of the Evangelical faith was sincere, though the Re-probably he would have made little of the ^formed* differences between Lutherans and Calvinists. His adhesion to the Reformed Church was quite as much

426    The Christian Church.

political as religious. He would need to be zealous indeed if the lukewarmness of the Lutheran princes and theologians to the cause of religious freedom did not chill his ardor.

The new governor in Philip’s name was Don Luis de Requescens. The great disaster to the cause of the patriots and victory for Spain under his rule was the battle of Mook Heath, April 14,1574, where Louis and Henry of Nassau lost their lives. Requescens could not press his victory because of the mutiny of the Spanish troops in the same month. In that month, also, a fleet of Spanish ships was taken before Antwerp. In May, Requescens began the siege of Leyden, which was continued until it was raised by the forces of Orange, aided by piercing the dikes, October 3, 1574. This was the greatest blow the Spanish power had yet received. A couple of small places were taken by the Spaniards in 1575, but Requescens died in March of the next year. This left the land open to William of Orange, who was not slow to seize the opportunity.

Orange now determined upon another matrimonial venture. Charlotte de Bourbon, niece of the Duke de Montpensier, had been made abbess of the

Marriage off _A    1

Orange to Abbey of Jouarre. She fled from the abbey

Charlotte of Heidelberg in 1572, and w^Tas under the Bourbon.    . _r ^    ^ ^    ~

protection of the Elector Palatine. Orange divorced his wife, Anne of Saxony, in June, 1575, and the next day, June 12th, married Charlotte de Bourbon. All his friends were against it, and prophesied dire political and personal consequences. The inclination of the parties seemed to be all that favored the marriage, but it proved a most fortunate one. In

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the seven years following Charlotte proved a happy and helpful wife, and bore him six daughters. This was the pleasantest period in the home life of William of Orange.

The first of the unions between the provinces which had cast off their allegiance to Alva was that of Holland and Zealand; the union of Delft _{The Union of} was formed April 24, 1576. The Pacifica- theProv-tion, or Union, of Ghent included all the ^,nces* seventeen provinces and was signed in November, 1576.

About this time arrived Don John of Austria as Governor of the Netherlands. He was the illegitimate brother of Philip II, and was the victor of

-r    ^r_ . ,    , _r . Don John of

Lepanto. The Spanish Fury, or Mutiny, Austria, No-

at Antwerp, which cost the lives of eight^vember »57<*-

,    , . .    , •    *    , October 1578.

thousand citizens, gave him enough to do at first. In February, 1577, he issued the Perpetual Edict, which provided for the removal of the Spanish troops, the maintenance of the Pacification of Ghent, general amnesty, and the convocation of the States-General. On these conditions the States agreed to pay the arrears of the troops.

But on June 9, 1577, there had been formed the Union of Brussels, which provided for the expulsion of the Spaniards, the maintenance of the Pacification of Ghent, and of the Roman Catholic religion and the constitution of the country. All the provinces acceded to this union. Don John now sought to win Orange. In May, 1577, his emissary Schultz said to Orange, “ You will not submit to the Estates’ decision in regard to the exercise of religion?” Orange replied, “No, indeed; for, to tell you the truth, we see that you mean to extirpate us, and we do not want to

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be extirpated.” Don John threw off the mask of peaceable measures, and seized Namur, July 24, 1577. This threw open the provinces to Orange. Again he came to Breda after ten years of absence, and, in September, 1577, to Brussels and Antwerp. Antwerp remained the chief city of the confederates until after the death of Orange. The prince was made Ruward of Brabant, October 15, 1577. The States-General declared against Don John, December 8, 1577. Elizabeth now loaned the States £100,000. In the battle of Gembloux, February 1, 1578, Don John and Alexander of Parma cut to pieces and almost annihilated the army of the confederates. This ended the union of the seventeen provinces. On January 6, 1579, there was formed the Union of Arras, seven of the Flemish provinces promising to maintain the Roman Catholic religion and obedience to Philip II. This was the death-blow to the commercial supremacy and even prosperity of Flanders. On the 23d of January, ^I579> ^was formed the Union of Utrecht, the final basis of the confederation of the United Netherlands. It rejected the Union of Brussels and the Perpetual Edict. This was signed by Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, Friesland, Gelderland with Zutphen, and Overyssel. Groningen did not join until later. Brabant and Flanders joined neither union.

From the death of Don John of Austria, October

1, 1578, until his own decease, Alexander, son of Mar-Aiexander garet of Parma, represented Philip II in the Duke of Netherlands. From March to July, 1579, Parma, he sought to win Orange. If Orange had 1378-1592. been for sale he could have named his own price. He who resisted the mightiest king in

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Christendom could not be won for honors or gold. At this time Languet wrote to Sir Henry Sidney: “ I can not sufficiently admire his prudence and equanimity in bearing such a weight of business and such insults. I think there is 110 more distinguished man in the Christian world. I think there is no living man possessed of greater prudence than the Prince of Orange.” In July, 1579, Orange writes: “I confess that I have not at all approved the fashion of some zealots, but in what touches the true advance of religion I yield to no one. Then, too, consider that those who blame me so boldly have only the liberty to speak which I have won for them by the blood of my family, by my labors, and by the expenditure of my money. They are indebted to me alone for the very privilege of speaking of me so freely.” And in 1584 he says, “ Is there any one who can claim to have worked more, suffered more, lost more than I have in my endeavors to plant, advance, and maintain the Churches?”

In June, 1580, a ban of outlawry was published against Orange, and a price of 25,000 gold crowns set upon his head. In the last of the year, Orange replied with his famous “Apolog}^r,” which was read to the States-General at Delft, December 13, 1580. The States-General solemnly abjured their allegiance to Philip II, July 26, 1581, and swore a new oath of allegiance three days later. This rendered ineffectual the calling of the Archduke Matthias, who came to the Netherlands in October, 1577, and had been wishing to make a sure election both from the States and Philip II. This plan having failed, he left for Germany in October, 1581. Orange could not think of

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the States being without the protection of some great power in their tremendous struggle with Spain. He inclined to France in spite of the terrible stain of St. Bartholomew upon the house of Valois. So the Duke of Alenpon, who had taken his brother’s title of Anjou, arrived at Flushing, February 10, 1582. Eight days later he was made Duke of Brabant. January 17, 1583, he attempted to seize the city of Antwerp, and failed. He died unlamented six months later.

Meanwhile Alexander of Parma was proving, as he did through the fourteen years of his administration, by far the ablest governor that Philip had ever sent to the Netherlands, though he could not prevent Philip’s policy from bringing utter ruin to the obedient provinces—a ruin from which they never recovered. Parma, in 1581, took Tournay and Breda; in 1583, Dunkirk and Nieuport; and 1584, Ypres and Bruges. To offset this, there was only the consolidation of the United Provinces under Orange and Gerard Truchses’ attempt to retain as a Protestant the Electorate of Cologne.

On leaving Breda, Orange bought the Seigniory of Flushing and the Margravate of Veer. There was given him the Abbey of Afflinghen, County Orange!* Alost, Marquisate of Berghes, and finally the Monastery of St. Agatha; later the Prinzenhof at Delft, where he died. A little less than a year after the death of Charlotte of Bourbon, Orange married the daughter of Admiral Coligni. Louise de Coligni lost both her father and husband at St. Bartholomew, and had since lived a widow, Madame Teligny. She was to be the wife of Orange for but a

The Genevan Reform.    431

year and a few months, when, for the second time, she was to lose her husband at the hand of an assassin. She made an admirable wife, and bore a son, through whom the line of Orange has Marriage been continued to Queen Wilhelmina of ^{with Lo}“ⁱ⁸e Holland. A sharp thrust came to Orange ^CoIl&ⁿⁱ* when the treason of his brother-in-law, De Berghes, was discovered, in November, 1583. Orange’s position was now assured. He was offered the Countship of Holland. Yet he could not accept any sovereignty, but was preparing still to secure France or England to stand in the place once held by Philip II.

March 18, 1582, Jaureguy shot the prince as he was coming from dinner, the object being to get the price Philip II had set upon his head. The wound happily was not mortal, though against the Charlotte de Bourbon never recovered from ^{uie of} the strain of those days. After his recov- ^0range* ery an attempt was made to poison the prince, instigated by Parma, and in which young Egmont was implicated. In the same year Peter Ordono, after a personal interview with Philip II, undertook the same task, but was found out and beheaded. In 1583 four Spanish officers undertook a plot to the same end. Parma also employed a French captain named Get to accomplish the same purpose, but he betrayed the plot to Orange.

What money and craft could not do, fanaticism accomplished, and Balthazar Gerard did the deed of shame, suffered the penalty, and procured thus from the grateful Spanish monarch a patent of nobility for his family.

Balthazar Gerard was the son of a castellan and

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judge of Villafranca, in Burgundy. From his twelfth year he was a religious fanatic. He was now twenty-seven, and for two years he had sought to take the life of the Prince of Orange as an act most pleasing to heaven. He was small and ill-favored, and, though Parma knew of the plan, he did not believe Gerard had ability for the task. He received much greater encouragement from the Jesuits and Franciscans, to whom he confessed his design. He came to Delft in May with forged passports and a lie in his right hand, representing himself as the son of Huguenot parents who had been executed for their religion. For two months he hung around the Prinzenhof, waiting for some opportunity for the accomplishment of his purpose. On Sunday, July 8th, Orange gave him a dozen crowns to buy shoes and relieve his necessities. With this money he bought the pistols with one of which he killed the prince. July 10, 1584, as Orange, his wife and daughter, were coming out from dinner at the Prinzenhof, Gerard, who had been waiting just outside of the door by the stairs, pressed forward and fired a pistol loaded with three balls full at the breast of the prince. Orange cried, “My God, have pity on my soul! I am sore wounded. My God, have pity on my soul, and this poor people! ” His sister asked him in German if he trusted his soul to Jesus Christ, and in the same language he answered, “Yes,” his last word. In a few minutes the Liberator was gone. Thus died a great man, who greatly dared, and suffered, and accomplished. A free people and a great nation is his enduring monument. He curbed the power of Spain, and rendered futile the plans of Philip II.

The Genevan Reform.    433

In person, Orange was of medium height, and spare but well-proportioned. His head was large; his face thin; his nose long, with wide nostrils; _Personai his complexion dark; his eyes brown, with Appearance a pleasant expression. His auburn beard ^of0ran8:e-was slightly pointed. His auburn hair, once thick and flowing, became thin, and at forty-four he called himself a bald Calvinist.

In manner he was genial and charming, especially in conversation at the table. In intellect he was surpassed by no statesman of his time. His judgment, his tenacity of purpose, his unwearied industry, his unwavering faith, and his abundance of resource in the worst of times, are the marked traits of the man. He used the tools of his trade, and, by bribing Philip’s servants for years, read his inmost thoughts. Orange was not a general. It seems as if a better one could have prevented the disasters of Mook Heath and Gembloux. But to posterity the one trait of his character, in which he surpassed all his contemporaries, and which he made a corner-stone of a new nation, was his religious toleration. In this he was a man of the new time, whose fullness was as yet far distant.

The death of William, Prince of Orange, was the signal for disaster after disaster to fall upon the revolted provinces; but out of these days of trial arose the Republic of the United Netherlands. The year of the death of the great founder of the independence of his country, from March to August, Brussels, Ghent, Mechlin, and Antwerp, were captured by Parma. The Dutch envoys sought the protectorate of France, but were contemptuously dismissed from

28

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Paris in March, 1585. They then turned to Queen Elizabeth; she refused any sovereignty over them, but agreed to send them four thousand English troops and a sum of money, for which she received some towns, among them Flushing, until the loan should be repaid. The Earl of Leicester, the queen’s favorite, was to represent the queen, but was forbidden to take the title of governor-general. He arrived in December, and found his position so anomalous that, in January, he took the forbidden title, and in such a way as deeply to offend the woman and the queen. This brought a stinging rebuke from Elizabeth in April. In 1586, Parma took Grave and Neuss. These losses were but ill repaid by the capture of Axel by the Dutch and English. At the battle of Wamsfield, Sir Philip Sidney was wounded, and died October 7, 1586. The important city of Derventer was taken by the English, October 20, 1586. It was betrayed to the Spaniards by its English Roman Catholic commander, Sir William Stanley, January 29, 1587. To this succeeded the treason of Roland York, who betrayed Fort Zutphen the same day, and in agreement with Stanley. A Scotchman,betrayed Guelder in July of the same year. In August, Parma took Sluys. In October a plot was discovered to seize Leyden. Leicester had been nearly a year in Holland before returning to England; in 1587 he was there from July to December; but the small result for so much outlay and the repeated treachery of English commanders made all parties glad for his final return, December, 1587. But the two years of the English intervention had given a breathing space to the States, and enabled them to perfect their internal organization and begin

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to roll back the tide of foreign conquest. While Elizabeth lived, English soldiers served in Holland against Spain and garrisoned the cautionary towns. The credit of securing these great results belongs to Jan van Olden Barneveldt, who guided the policy of the infant nation.

Meanwhile, Parma did his best to entice the English cabinet into negotiations which should lull them into security, and leave England defenseless before the Armada. Philip’s preparation crippled Parma, so he could not undertake any offensive move. The negotiations were carried on through the spring and summer of 1588, until the sails of the Armada had been three days in the English Channel. But for the courage and resource and personal expenditure of Wal-singham, who took the negotiations at their true value, but could not convince his fellow-councilors, England would have been almost without defense against the foe. The overwhelming defeat of the Armada, August, 1588, was a great victory for the Netherlands as well as for England, and the Dutch had gained credit and renown. The following November, Parma was forced to raise the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, and the last and worst of English treasons delivered Gertruydenberg to Parma, in April, 1589.

The crisis was now passed. The great Prince of Orange was dead, but the States did not fall again into the power of Philip of Spain. He had reached and passed the height of his power. Parma had won his last victory and taken his last stronghold in the Netherlands. That which Europe had not seen since the revolt of the Swiss against Austria was now to mark the history of this wonderful century, the birth

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of a new, powerful, and prosperous Confederate Republic. It was of immense significance for human liberty, civil and religious.

THE GENEVAN REFORM IN SCOTLAND.

Scotland long looked upon England as her hereditary enemy, and although the sister of Henry III was Birth and *ke ^m°ther of James V, yet that monarch Relatives married for his first wife Magdalen, daugh-Queenof ^ter Francis I of France, and on her early Scots. death, Mary, widow of the Duke of Eongue-1542-1587. _v^_e    daughter of Francis, Duke of

Guise. The Scots were utterly defeated by the English at the battle of Solway Moss, November 25, 1542. King James never recovered his spirits after that day. His wife bore to him a daughter, December 7, 1542. This was Mary, Queen of Scots, a woman more celebrated for her beauty, her wit, her fascination, the vicissitudes of her life, and her tragic death, than any other of her house or nation. She, with her cousin, Queen Elizabeth, and her relative by her first husband, Henry IV of France, formed a trio of rulers, who, for force of character, for genius, wit and personal distinction, have seldom been seen in the same generation. The disinclination toward England was not lessened by the wars of Henry VIII, or the harrying of the Protector Somerset. Hence, as an infant, Mary was taken to France to be reared and educated, while her French mother remained to rule Scotland as regent until her daughter should return to rule the lands of which, since seven days from her birth, she had been queen. For her birth, instead of the son he de

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sired, did not rouse her father from his melancholy. He said of the kingdom’s relation to his house, “It came with a lass, and it will go with a lass.” How little did he see that the son of this lass was to be the first of a line of sovereigns ruling the whole island of Great Britain!

With Mary’s career in France as queen and widow we are already acquainted. This French connection prevented the Reformation in England from affecting Scotland as early or with as great effect as it would be natural to suppose.

Yet when Henry VIII was first moving in the question of his divorce, Patrick Hamilton had received Lutheran opinions and was advocating them. He was invited to St. Andrews, preached, was arrested, tried, and burned at the stake February 29, 1528. For nearly twenty years he did not seem to have imitators or successors.

In 1545, George Wishart, a stern and zealous adherent of the Reformed faith, preached in Southern Scotland, but was seized at Haddington, taken to St. Andrews, the residence of wiThart. Cardinal Beaton, who was the virtual ruler of the kingdom, and burned at the stake in 1546. The enemies of the cardinal among the nobility, who by his pride and profligacy had deeply offended them, planned his death. He was assassinated May 29, 1546. The conspirators then took possession of the town, and were joined by those who wished to throw off allegiance to the Church of Rome, including John Knox. The French assisted the Queen Regent in reducing the town, and took it in August, 1547. In

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violation of the terms of the surrender, John Knox was condemned to the French galleys.

The new opinions spread, not only through the zeal of those who professed them, but through the patent abuses of the Church of Rome and

The Roman 7    _    .    ...

Catholic its hierarchy. The higher ecclesiastics

Church in _were educated abroad. They were the

Scotland.

most wealthy and powerful class among the aristocracy. They were often the most proud and profligate of the nobility, while they were alien from the land and people in taste and feeling.

A leading historian of Scotland vividly states the situation: “The result in the social condition of the country was, that the rule of celibacy,

Morals! though observed in law, was abrogated in practice among those of the clergy who were rich enough to support households. This was so much of an acknowledged system that, when there was moderation and constancy, the union was deemed respectable. The concubines of the dignified clergy and their illegitimate children had a fixed place in society. Such connections and parentage, instead of being huddled into obscurity, were expressly and definitely set forth in public documents and in title-deeds of estates. But nothing could remove a certain degree of stigma from the class of persons thus marked off. It was felt that what they had got from society was bought by sheer wealth, not given by gratuitous social respect. The worshipful houses which had to submit to such alliances felt the humiliation of them, and were led to ponder on the problem whether the wealth of the clergy could not be got at in some more direct and less unpleasant way.”

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The standard of morality among the regular clergy, those living in monasteries, was worse rather than better than in the rest of Europe at that

•    a    1    ta    i Monks.

time. As early as 1424 the Estates addressed, in the king’s name, “a solemn admonition to the heads of the Benedictine and Austin houses, lamenting their irregularities, and sternly calling them to better order if they would save their establishments from ruin.”

The Archbishop of St. Andrews, in 1554, in a letter to the Pope, said that such was the cousinship among the Scotch families it was almost _TheChurch impossible to find a match for one of good and Mar-birth that should not come within the pro- ^r,as®’ hibited degrees, cousins not more than eight times removed. The archbishop says, “ The evil of this is, that men marry on promise or hope of a dispensation to be procured afterwards, but, tiring of the connection, either divorce their wives, or at once put them away, under pretext of a want of dispensation and their inability to afford the expense of procuring one.” What stronger argument to show the necessity of a law of civil marriage which takes this foundation of society and civilization from the control of the Church of Rome, a necessity found imperative in every Roman Catholic country in Europe in the nineteenth century?

With this license superstition went hand in hand. To prevent the spread of Reformed opinions, and to provide popular religious instruction, a _MiracIeg Breviary was printed at Aberdeen in 1550.

It recounted the story of St. Nathalan, who, when the famine had caused all the seed to be eaten, com

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manded the peasants to sow the furrows with sand. They were obedient to the saint, and from this sowing an abundant crop was ready to be harvested. While reaping, a fierce storm came on; the saint entreated, not without anger, and the storm passed over. But for his wrath the saint ow^red a penance. This he paid by fixing his right arm to his leg with an iron bar, and, when he had locked it, he threw the key into the river Dee. Then he traveled to the shrines of SS. Peter and Paul at Rome. When he had there finished his pilgrimage, a boy sold him a fish, in which he found a key and so released himself from his vow.

Another veracious tale recounts how, St. Baldred dying, three parishes claimed his body. Prayer brought the solution: the body was triplicated so that each parish had the perfect and actual body of the saint. If sometimes John Knox appears harsh, think from what Scotland was to be rescued.

These abuses, with the persecutions of Queen Mary in England, and the devotion of the Queen Regent to the Roman Catholic Church, led iMnt,^557* -^^or(^^s ^e Congregation into their earliest Covenant, December 3, 1557. Thus the Reformed Church of Scotland became a Covenanting Church. The instrument was signed by Argyle, Glencairn, Morton, Lorne, Erskine of Dun, and others, showing that the new faith had a strong following among the nobility. The Roman Catholics sought to check the movement by the old argument of fear. Walter Mills, an aged man, was burned at the stake

^at St. Andrews, August 28, 1558. Before Walter Mills.    »

he suffered he said: “As for me, I am fourscore and two years old, and can not live long by the

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course of nature; but a hundred better shall arise out of the ashes of my bones. I trust in God I shall be the last to suffer death in Scotland in this cause.” And such he was. But the deep indignation aroused by his death was no small factor in the overthrow of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland.

John Knox landed at Leitli after a twelve years’ exile, May 2, 1559. Eight days later the Queen Regent outlawed Knox and other Reformed preachers. In the same month broke out ^nfnox™ a storm of iconoclasm at Perth. The Archbishop of St. Andrews sent word to Knox: “ In case John Knox presented himself at the preaching place in his town and principal church, he should make him to be saluted with a dozen culverins, whereof the most part would light upon his nose.” The fearless Reformer replied: “As for the fear of danger that may come to me, let no man be solicitous, for my life is in the custody of Him whose glory I seek; and therefore I can not so fear this boast of tyranny that I will cease from doing my duty, when of His mercy He offereth me occasion. I desire the hand or weapon of no man to defend me. I only crave audience which, if it be denied me here, I must seek further if I may have it.”

Knox came and preached, June 9-13, 1559. The churches were stripped of their images, the monasteries pulled down, and the Reformed wor- _Knox ship was established at St. Andrews. Early Preaching in July, Knox came to Edinburgh and be- ^,559'⁶°-gan preaching in St. Giles. His family arrived from Geneva in September. Knox spent the remainder of this year and the next until April in preaching tours.

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The Queen Regent died at Edinburgh, June 10, 1560, and, the 7th of July, Leith surrendered to the English. The next day was signed the matiorfes- P^eace °f Edinburgh between England and tabiished in Scotland, which provided that the French ^s<^“^nd’ should leave Scotland. Thus the power came into the hands of the Lords of the Congregation who adhered to the Covenant, but who had the support, not only of Knox’s preaching, but of the English crown, now on the head of Elizabeth. The Reformed Confession of Faith was adopted by the Parliament of Scotland, August 17, 1560. The jurisdiction of the Pope, and all statutes favoring the Roman Catholics, were abolished by the same body in the week following. John Knox was the regularly-installed preacher at St. Giles, with house and salary at ^200, since the latter part of 1560. The Reformation was supreme in Scotland. The ruin of the famous abbeys at Melrose, Roxburgh, and Jedburgh was not the work of the Reformers, but of the English army years before.

The young and beautiful Scotch queen was now coming to take possession of her kingdom. Mary, Queen of Scots, was a most zealous Roman ^Return” ⁸ Catholic, as befitted a daughter of the house of Guise, and a daughter-in-law of Catherine de’ Medici. John Knox and his queen were the leaders of the two religious parties in Scotland. It was no ordinary contest that they waged, and as Queen Mary of Scots was no ordinary woman, so John Knox, to whom Scotland owes her birth as a Protestant nation, was no ordinary man.

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John Knox was born at Gifford Gate, a suburb of Haddington, about 1505. In 1522 he entered Glasgow University, but did not take his degree.

He was ordained a priest, but his work ^JohnKnox'

1 , , , -    1505-157^.

seemed to be that of a tutor to the sons of the lower nobility. He was converted under the fiery preaching of George Wishart in 1546, and was with him when he preached his last sermon before his arrest at Haddington. Knox entered the castle of St. Andrews, April 10, 1547, as tutor of his former pupils. While there, the Reformed pastor, John Rough, and the congregation called upon Knox, with an authority which he acknowledged, to enter upon the work of the Christian ministry. On the taking of the castle, August, 1547, he was sent to France as a galley slave. There he discouraged violence and counseled submission, at the same time believing in God’s deliverance. During his captivity the galley coasted Scotland and passed familiar spots. They were in the Bay of St. Andrews, and Knox was so reduced by sickness that few hoped for his life, when his companion turned to him and “willed him to look at the land, and asked him if he knew it.” Knox answered, “ Yes, I know it well, for I see the steeple of that place where God first in public opened my mouth to his glory; and I am fully persuaded, how weak that ever I now appear, that I shall not depart this life until that my tongue shall glorify his godly name in the same place.”

Knox was released in January, 1549, and came to England in the reign of Edward VI. In April, 1549, he was appointed one of the king’s preachers. He served for two years nearly at Berwick-on-Tweed, and

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at Newcastle-on-Tyne from early in 1551 to October, 1552. From that time he was in London and in Buckinghamshire until the death of Edward VI. He sailed from Berwick in January, 1554. During his English ministry he developed his fundamental tenet that the mass is idolatry. This he preached in a sermon before Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, April 4, 1550. The argument is, “All worshiping, honoring, or service, invented by the brain of man, in the religion of God, without his express commandment, is idolatry: the mass is invented by the brain of man without any commandment of God; therefore the mass is idolatry.” This argument goes very far, and required a knowledge of Christian antiquity such as no man or Church then possessed. It, of course, shut out the use of organs and the singing of hymns as much as the mass itself. Knox taught that the Papal Church is the Babylonian harlot of the Book of Revelation, also that kneeling at the reception of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is unscriptural and idolatrous.

His positive teaching appears in his Confession of Faith at Berwick in 1552, in the following heads to which he prefixed the accustomed anathema:

1.    If any man teach any other cause moving God to elect and chose us than his own infinite goodness and mere mercy;

2.    Any other name in heaven or under heaven wherein salvation stands, but only the name of Jesus;

3.    Any other means whereby we are justified and absolved from wrath and damnation our sins deserve, than by faith only;

4.    Any other cause or end of good works than that first we are made good trees, and thereafter bring

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forth fruits accordingly, to witness that we are lively members of Christ’s holy and sanctified body, prepared vessels to the honor and praise of our Father’s glory;

5.    If any teach prayers to be made to any other than God above;

6.    If any mediator betwixt God and man but only our Lord Jesus ;

7.    If more or other sacraments be affirmed or required to be used than Christ Jesus left ordinary in his Church, to wit, Baptism and the Lord’s Table, or Mystical Supper;

8.    If any deny remission of sins, resurrection of the flesh and life everlasting to appertain to us in Christ’s blood, which sprinkled in our hearts by faith, doth purge us from all sin; so that we need no more or other sacrifice than that oblation once offered for all, by the which God’s elect be fully sanctified and made perfect.”

Knox went through France to Switzerland, arriving January 28, 1554, and remaining until May. From May until the last of July he was at Dieppe,    ^

and in Frankfort-on-the-Main from Septem- Exile on the ber, 1554, to March 25, 1555. While there continent, he had his encounter with Dr. Cox, in which the conduct of the latter did not appear to advantage. From Frankfort he went to Geneva, serving as pastor of the English Church there from March, 1555, to January, 1559. Within this time he preached and taught in Scotland the last of 1555, and the following year until July. At this time he married his first wife, Margerie Bowes. He was in France also from October, 1557, until the spring of 1558. Unfortu

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nately, in 1558, Knox published his “First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.” It was directed against Mary Tudor, but, like some other artillery, its recoil was its greatest effect. It brought upon him the disfavor of Queen Elizabeth, which no after efforts were able to repair. This had been the stern discipline of slavery and experience in years of exile in England and France, but most of all in Geneva, where he found “the perfectest school of Christ since the days of the apostles.” In this discipline was formed Scotland’s great Reformer.

John Knox is described as of small stature, with a constitution which never recovered from the effects of his life in the French galleys, and so not Appearance.    f°^r hardship and fatigue. He had a

true Scotch face,—sharp, wedgelike in its contour, surmounted by a bald, dome-shaped head, fringed with scanty hair; the beard short and not very profuse; the lips firmly set, with the slightest curve of scorn in their expression ; and the eyes small, clear, penetrating, and quick.

Of his preaching, which was the source of his power and his instrument for reform and government, James Melville thus speaks of the impres-Preaching. ^s*^on Knox made in the last year of his life: “ In the opening up of his text he was moderate for the space of half an hour; but when he entered on application, he made me so to shudder and tremble, that I could not hold my pen to write. He was very weak. I saw him every day of his teaching, go slowly and wearily, with a fur of martens about his neck, a staff in the one hand, and goodly, godly Richard Ballantyne, his servant, holding up the other armpit,

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from the abbey to the parish kirk, and by the same Robert and another servant lifted up to the pulpit where he behoved to lean at his first entrance; but before he had done with his sermon, he was so active and vigorous that it seened as if he would beat the pulpit in pieces and fly out of it.”

Mary, Queen of Scots, arrived from France in Scotland in August, 1561, and on the 21st of that month had her first interview with the Scotch Reformer. After it, Knox wrote to *“7 Cecil: “ The queen neither is, neither shall ^Kn01-be, of our opinion, and in the very deed her whole proceedings do declare that the cardinal’s [Lorraine] lessons are so deeply printed in her heart that the substance and the quality are like to perish together. I would be glad to be deceived, but I fear I shall not. In communication with her I espied such craft as I have not found in such age.” Knox had not misread the character of the queen.

As Knox came from a second interview at Loch-leven, some of the bystanders said, " He is not afraid ” Knox replied: “Why should the pleasing face of a gentlewoman affray me ? I have looked on the faces of many angry men, and yet have not been afraid above measure.” Knox having spoken freely from the pulpit concerning the queen’s marriage, he was summoned to a third interview with her at Edinburgh, in May, 1563. The following account is derived from Knox’s “ Historie : ”

“ Her majesty received him in a very different manner from what she had done at Lochleven. Never had prince been handled (she passionately exclaimed) as she was; she had borne with him in all his rigor-

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ous speeches against herself and her uncles; she had offered unto him audience whenever he pleased to admonish her. ‘And yet,’ said she, ‘ I can not be quit of you. I vow to God I shall be once revenged.’ On pronouncing these words with great violence, she burst into a flood of tears, which interrupted her speech. When the queen composed herself, he proceeded calmly to make his defense. Her Grace and he had (he said) at different times been engaged in controversy, and he never before perceived her offended with him. When it should please God to deliver her from the bondage of error in which she had been trained, through want of instruction in the truth, he trusted that Her Majesty would not find the liberty of his tongue offensive. Out of the pulpit, he thought, few had occasion to be offended with him; but there he was not master of himself, but bound to obey Him who commanded him to speak plainly, and to flatter no flesh on the face of the earth. ‘But what have you to do with my marriage?’ said the queen. He was proceeding to state the extent of his commission as a preacher, and the reasons which led him to touch on that delicate subject; but she interrupted him by repeating her question, ‘ What have you to do with my marriage ? or what are you in this commonwealth ? ’ ‘A subject born within the same, Madame,’ replied the Reformer, piqued by the last question, and the contemptuous tone in which it was proposed. ‘And albeit I be neither earl, lord, nor baron in it, yet has God made me (how abject that ever I be in your eyes) a profitable member within the same. Yea, Madame, to me it appertains no less to forewarn of such things as may hurt, if I foresee them, than it doth to any of the

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nobility; for both my vocation and conscience requires plainness of me. And therefore, Madame, to yourself I say that (what) I spake in public place: whensoever the nobility of this realm shall consent that ye be subject to an unfaithful husband, they do as much as in them lieth to renounce Christ, to banish his truth from them, to betray the freedom of this realm, and perchance shall in the end do small comfort to yourself.’ At these words the queen began to weep and sob with great bitterness. The superintendent, Erskine of Dun (who was present), who was a man of mild and gentle spirit, tried to mitigate her grief and resentment. He praised her beauty and accomplishments, and told her there was not a prince in Europe who would not reckon himself happy in gaining her hand. During this scene the severe and inflexible mind of the Reformer displayed itself. He continued silent, and with unaltered countenance, until the queen had given vent to her feelings. He then protested that he never took delight in the distress of any creature. It was with great difficulty that he could see his own boys weep when he corrected them for their faults; far less could he rejoice in Her Majesty’s tears; but seeing he had given her no just reason of offense, and had only discharged his duty, he was constrained, though unwillingly, to sustain her tears rather than hurt his conscience and betray the commonwealth through his silence.

“ This apology inflamed the queen still more; she ordered him immediately to leave her presence, and wait the significance of her pleasure in the adjoining room. There he stood as one whom men had never seen; all his friends (Lord Ochiltree excepted) being afraid to show him the smallest countenance. In this

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situation he addressed himself to the court ladies, who sat in their richest dress in the chamber. ‘O, fair ladies, how pleasing were this life of yours, if it should ever abide, and then, in the end, that we might pass to heaven with all this gay gear ! But fie upon that knave Death, that will come whether we will or not! ’ Having engaged them in a conversation he passed the time till Erskine came and informed him that he was allowed to go home until Her Majesty had taken further advice. ‘And so that storm quieted in appearance, but never in heart.’ ”

That the Reformer was right in the sentence last quoted was apparent when Knox was cited before the Privy Council to answer a charge of treason in December of this year. “When Queen Mary entered the chamber, and took her seat, and perceived Knox standing uncovered at the foot of the table, she burst into a loud fit of laughter. ‘ That man,’ she said, ‘ had made me weep, and shed never a tear himself; I will now see if I can make him weep.’ After his letter had been read, and he was defending himself, she cried: ‘What is this? Methinks you trifle with him. Who gave him authority to make convocation of my lieges? Is not that treason?’ ‘ No, Madame,’ replied Ruthven, displeased at the active keenness which the queen showed in the cause; ‘ for he makes convocation of the people to hear prayer and sermon almost daily; and whatever Your Grace or others will think thereof, we think it no treason.’ ” So ably did Knox conduct his defense that, though a second vote was taken in the presence of the queen, he was acquitted, and thus escaped her snare.

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Mary came from France to Scotland in the height of her youth and beauty. She was not nineteen when she set foot upon her native soil. She showed herself a strong, self-willed, and determined leader of her party. But though gay and devoted to her own faith and her friends, especially those from France, there is no proof of any charge that would affect her honor. It is true that Chastelard, who had accompanied her from France, and was, no doubt, her devoted lover, was found for the second time in her private apartments, and tried and executed; but though he was the first, he was not the last man to die for the charms of the Scottish queen without imputing this guilt to her. She thus held her court for nearly four years, when all her sagacity and wit failed her in the choice of her husband just as it had failed many another able woman.

Mary married Darnley, son of the Earl of Lenox. He was her cousin, as his mother was the daughter of the sister of Henry VIII. Among: all

1    1 •    . , _r    Darnley.

the speculations concerning Mary, Queen of Scots, none is more fascinating than to ask, What might have been her fate if she had married a husband in any way worthy of her? To expect her to remain single, as did her cousin Elizabeth, was, of course, utterly out of the question; she had too much fascination and too little self-denial.

Of all the pity excited by her tragic fate, none is more deep than that at twenty-two a foolish marriage so blighted her life. Of the twenty-three years of life that yet remained to her before her death on the scaffold, twenty were spent in prison. Darnley, though

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the queen’s choice, was a vain, vicious, presumptuous fool.

They were married July 29, 1565. Darnley was profligate with the lowest and meanest of her sex in a way which could only rouse the lasting resentment of the woman and the queen. She was more and more by herself, as her confinement was but three months in the future. David Rizzio, an Italian, her foreign secretary, and skilled on the harp, aroused the jealousy of her worthless husband. There is no evidence that there was anything unseeming in the relations between Rizzio and the queen. Her husband formed a plot with some of the nobility who detested the foreigner. They forced their way into the queen’s apartments. Rizzio was in the drawing-room, but fled to the queen, and in her presence was brutally butchered. A woman less vindictive than Mary of Scots would have found it difficult to forgive the murderer. Her son, James I of England, was born June 19, 1566. The illusions of Mary’s life were ended; her marriage was an utter failure, and her husband thoroughly detested by her.

James Hepburn, Earl of Both well, had fallen heir to large estates. He was noted for his licentiousness and violence. He had been outlawed for 1526-1578. conspiracy to seize the queen in 1562, and for three years was in exile in France. In 1565 he returned, and, though a brutal ruffian, his courage, promptitude, and resource won him the favor of the queen. In 1561 he had been made Lord High Admiral of Scotland. She now endowed him with church property, and gave him the three wardenships of the English border, making him the most influen-

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tial subject in the realm. Daruley, after the murder of Rizzio, had sought reconciliation with his wife, and had betrayed those who helped him in that crime, so that he was utterly friendless and without a man to protect him among the nobility, and many sought his death.

Bothwell, in holding court to judge malefactors on the border, was attacked and wounded by an outlaw. To see him when wounded, and to learn of his chances of recovery, Mary rode through a rough and dangerous country on horseback for forty miles, October 15, 1566, and, as a result, had a severe attack of fever. From this time his favor with Mary increased.

Darnley and Mary did not live together. One of the most damaging pieces of evidence against Mary is a conversation between the queen and her husband in the presence of Thomas Crawford, of Jordanhill, whose sworn account has come down to us. This interview was held January 22, 1567. Her object was to persuade him to come to Edinburgh or its vicinity, while he expressed fears for his life. Darnlej' suffered himself to be persuaded, and came to the house called Kirk of Fields, in a squalid quarter of Edinburgh, just inside the city wall. On Sunday, February 9th, the queen attended the marriage of two of her servants, and ate with them the marriage dinner. At four o’clock she supped with Bothwell at the Duchess of Argyle’s. About ten o’clock at night she went to stay with the king, her husband. She was to sleep, as she recently did, in a room beneath his chamber. She did not, however, enter it; it was filled with gunpowder. She had some general conversation with her husband, when she said sud

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denly that she recollected that she had promised to attend the masked ball to be held in the palace in honor of the wedding of the morning. She bade her husband a very affectionate farewell, and went away. That night, between one and two o’clock, the house in Kirk of Fields was blown to pieces; the king was found strangled outside, and Mary of Scots was left a widow. Between three and four o’clock Bothwell and Huntley sought her, and told her of the explosion. They were commanded to investigate and report. Four or five hours later Bothwell went to the queen’s bedchamber and told her of the king’s death.

Bothwell and Mary were soon much together, and her evident favor to him was noticed and reported.

Mary’s Finally, on April 21st, Bothwell seized Marriage to Mary, and carried her to Dunbar. Both_ Bothwell.    _aj. _{once arran}g_e(i f_or his divorce from

his wife, Jane Gordon, which was carried through May 3-7, 1567. To a Roman Catholic this divorce was utterly invalid, yet a week later, May 15, 1567, Mary, Queen of Scots, became the wife of the Earl of Bothwell, who had murdered her husband but three months and six days before. There are those who see in this only the mastery of a strong, violent nature over a weaker one. Such persons can not apply to Mary’s conduct the ordinary standards of evidence. They assign to one of the most sagacious and fearless women of her time a folly which only a guilty passion could in the least explain. One month from her wedding-day, after having proved her devotion to Bothwell by disguising herself as a page to join him, and having proved his innate worthlessness by the ill-treat

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ment he had given her, Mary’s married life was over. On June 15th the skirmish on Carberry Hill decided that Mary was to be a prisoner and Bothwell a fugitive and exile until the day of his death. A little over four months, and Darnley’s murder is so far avenged.

On June 17th Mary was taken to L,ochleven Castle, a stronghold of the house of Douglas, where she remained until her escape, May 2, 1568. June

.    Mary at

20,, 1567, a casket of letters being sent to Lochieven. Bothwell were captured by the govern- The casket

Arv,    • • 1 /• , -    Letters.

ment. The originals of these letters disappeared in the reign of Mary’s son, James, who naturally was in no wise anxious for their preservation. Transcripts were made of them at the time, and are in existence and have been published. These letters reveal a depth of infatuation and passion for Bothwell and a knowledge of his plans which put her complicity in her husband’s murder, her treachery, and her revenge beyond doubt. The advocates of Mary’s innocence claim that these letters are a forgery, but they never named a man who was likely to have the intimate knowledge of her affairs that these prove, who had either the ability or the motive for such a feat. Her half-brother, the Regent Murray, believed them genuine, as did Elizabeth’s counselors, who saw them, and the public men of Scotland generally. So bad was the affair on its face that neither her relatives in France nor the Pope at the time held her innocent. To believe Mary innocent we must suppose her weak, ductile, and possessed with a motiveless folly, which contradicts all that we know of her before and after those fatal months of 1567.

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Through her power to charm, Mary gained the aid of young George Douglas, of Lochleven Castle. She escaped, and rallied all who would adhere Escape. ^to k^{er cause} > but little battle of Lang-side, eleven days after, ended her hopes and her days in Scotland. There was no refuge for her in her native land, where almost universally she was believed to be guilty of her husband’s murder. Her only chance for safety seemed to gain English soil. From Langside she rode, heedless of friend or foe, for sixty miles the first day. The fourth from the battle she sailed from Scotland in an open fishing-boat and landed at Walkington in Cumberland. May 28th she came to Carlisle and removed to Bolton Castle, July 14, 1568. She had merely exchanged a Scottish for an English prison.

Things now moved rapidly in the public life of Scotland. Mary resigned the Scottish crown in favor of her son, July 24, 1567, and he was Murray"^{1 cr}°wned, but thirteen months old, the 29th of July. James Stuart, Earl of Murray, half-brother to the queen, who had been abroad in the crisis of the drama of his sister’s life, returned to Edinburgh, August 11, 1567, and was chosen regent of the kingdom. Murray was an earnest adherent of the Reformation. He seems to have been the best governor and the ablest and most upright man of any who bore rule in Scotland from the death of his father to the majority of his nephew. In November, 1568, he went to London; the casket letters were shown to the English Privy Council, and Mary was accused of the murder of her husband. The charge was not

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pressed; for it was felt that if it were established there would be no alternative before the English Government but her death, which in the posture of affairs, both foreign and domestic, would excite party feeling they were anxious to allay. Bothwell had been arrested, and taken to Copenhagen before January, 1568. He was ten years a Danish prisoner until his death at Draxholm, April 14, 1578.

Mary was removed from Bolton to Tutbury for a few months, and then to Chatsworth, but before the end of 1570 to Sheffield Castle, where she remained a prisoner for fourteen years. Her half-brother, the Regent Murray, was shot and killed by an assassin, James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, at Linlithgow,* February 23, 1570.

Nothing shows the true character of Mary, Queen of Scots, more than the words she wrote when she received the news of this murder. She says: “What Bothwellhaugh has done has been without my command; but I am as well pleased with it and better than if I had known of it. I await the means which should be sent from my dowry to arrange my affairs, in which I will not forget the pension of said Bothwellhaugh. Her gratitude will not allow her to forget to pension the murderer of her brother.

Lenox, the father of Darnley, was chosen regent in Murray’s stead. Thomas Crawford, of Jordanhill, captured Dunbarton Castle, April 1, 1571, and so put an end to any hopes of aid from ^Lenox* France. September 4, 1571, Lenox was shot ⁵⁷ and killed at Sterling. The Earl of Mar succeeded him, and died a natural death, October 28, 1572.

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The Regent Morton took office, November 24,

1572, and held it for eight years, but died on the block for complicity in Darnley’s murder, June 157^1580. ²> ^I5^Sl* The raid of Ruthven, August 22, 1582, and the punishment of its perpetrators were the main incidents in the few years before was proclaimed the king’s majority. The last act in the connection of Mary with Scotland was the taking of Edinburgh Castle. Maitland had secured the service of Kirkaldy of Grange, the Governor of Edinburgh Castle, for Mary. The English assisted in the siege, and after three years’ resistance Kirkaldy surrendered, May 29, 1573. Maitland was found dead in the castle, having poisoned himself. Kirkaldy was hanged the August following. Thenceforth Mary’s history ceases to affect Scottish affairs, and it is linked with that of England until her death in 1587.

The overthrow, 1567, of Queen Mary brought Parliament to confirm the Reformation, and to adopt TheEstab- ^^ie Presbyterian Book of Common Order lishment of of Worship, in 1567. So, amid the tumult ^thKU-k°^{tCh an}^ vi°l^ence °f time, the work of John Labors of Knox went on. He preached twice every Knox. g_un(i_ay_{) an(}j thrice besides, during the week, on other days. He met regularly twice a week with his elders for the oversight of his flock; he attended weekly the assembly of the ministers for what was called the exercise on the Scriptures. These were stated and constant labors; besides was the addition of frequent journeying by appointment of the General Assembly to perform, in distant parts of the country, the duty of a superintendent, and his varied correspondence.

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The first wife of John Knox died in December, 1560, leaving two sons, who were educated in England. One died at college; the other became _Knox,_{s Mar=} an English vicar, but died childless. In nageand March, 1564, Knox married Margaret Stu- ^Fam,,y* art, the daughter of Lord Ochiltree, by whom he had three daughters, all of whom married and left an honorable name.

The health of Knox became feeble. In October, 1570, he was stricken with apoplexy. Fifteen months he was at St. Andrews, returning to Edin-

1 1 a    mi    1    Last Days.

burgh, August 23, 1572. The terrible news of the Massacre of St. Batholomew aroused him. He thundered forth the vengeance of Heaven from the pulpit against “that cruel muderer, the King of France;” and turning to Le Croc, the French ambassador, he said, “Go, tell your master that sentence is pronounced against him; that the Divine vengeance shall never depart from him, or from his house, except they repent; but his name shall remain an execration of posterity, and none proceeding from his loins shall enjoy his kingdom in peace.”

On his death-bed, like the true, faithful, and heroic soul that he was, he could say: “I profess before God and his holy angels that I never made merchandise of the sacred Word of God; never studied to please men ; never indulged my own private passions, or those of others, but faithfully distributed the talents intrusted to me for the edification of the Church over which I watched. Whatever obloquy wicked men may cast upon me respecting this point, I rejoice in the testimony of a good conscience.” Then he prayed: “ Come, Lord Jesus,

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be merciful to thy Church which thou hast redeemed. Give peace to this afflicted commonwealth. Raise up faithful pastors, who will take charge of that Church. Grant us, Lord, the perfect hatred of sin, both by the evidence of thy wrath and thy mercy.” His servant, seeing that he was unable to speak, said to him: “Now, sir, the time you have long called to God for, the end of your battle, has come; and seeing all natural power now fails you, remember the comforting promise of our Savior, Jesus Christ, which oft-times you have shown us. And that we may understand and know that you hear us, give us some sign. And so he lifted up one of his hands, and he immediately thereafter rendered up his spirit, apparently without pain or movement, so that he seemed rather to fall asleep than to die.” Thus passed from earth John Knox. His life was so open and his works so manifest that all who know them, know the character of the man. As Knox taught, so there was no religious service at the funeral. But when the body was lowered in its place, the Regent Morton said, “ Here lieth a man who in his life never feared the face of man; who hath been often threatened with dagger, but yet hath ended his days in peace and honor.” John Knox left his impress as no other man upon the Church and people of Scotland. He did not believe in any ceremony of ordination, not Chijrch ^even the apostolic laying on of hands.

The elders of the Church were to assist the minister in its oversight and discipline. The deacons superintended the revenues and took care of the poor. Elders and deacons were chosen by the people annually, from the list selected by the minister,

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but were eligible for re-election. The Lord’s Supper was observed the first Sunday in March, June, September, and December, so as to skip Easter. Baptism was always in the Church as were marriages, and there was 110 religious service at a funeral.

John Knox founded popular religion upon popular education, that is the glory of his name, his Church, and his nation. The Book of Discipline adopted by the General Assembly provided for the erection of a school in every parish for the instruction of the young in the grammar of their own language, in the Latin tongue, and in the principles of religion; the setting up in every notable town of a “college” for the teaching of “ the arts, at least logic and rhetoric, and the tongues,” and finally the establishment of the Aberdeen, St. Andrews, and Glasgow Universities with full equipment.

Knox had no such word as tolerance in his vocabulary. The Parliament of Scotland ordained, August 24, 1560, “ That all who said mass, or heard

Intolerance.

mass, should for the first offense be punished with the confiscation of goods; for the second, with banishment; and for the third, with death.” In all these things Knox followed the extreme model of Geneva. And this example influenced the followers of Calvin in England and America.

But in nothing was Knox’s influence of greater moment than in his teaching on the relation of the civil ruler to the people. Knox “ held

,    ,    „    .    Civil Rulers.

that rulers, supreme as well as subordinate, were invested with authority for the public good; that obedience was not due to them in anything contrary to the Divine law, natural or revealed; that in every free

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and well-constituted government the law of the land was superior to the will of the prince; that 110 class of men have an original, inherent, and indefeasible right to rule over a people independent of their will and consent; . . . that there was a mutual contract, tacit and implied, if not formal and explicit, between rulers and their subjects. If rulers violated this by habitual tyranny and oppression, the people are absolved from their allegiance, and may resist or depose them and elect others.” This was the teaching that, in the next century, overthrew the plans of Strafford and Laud.

The Second Book of Discipline was adopted in 1581. The Confession of Faith as a National Covenant was signed by the king and enjoined on all ^TReign^{W su}^jects the same year; it condemned the Roman Catholic Church and the Episcopacy. A great religious revival followed the turbulence and violence of the past ten years. In 1589, James married a Protestant princess, Anne of Denmark. In 1592, Episcopacy was abolished in Scotland. Three years later the Earl of Huntley, the head of the Roman Catholic party, became an adherent of the Reformed faith. The Scotch Church of Knox’s founding was supreme. In all changes it has molded the people and led the nation until this day. It is the parent of the Presbyterian polity and Church in the New World. Knox, more than any other man, made Scotland intelligent, religious, and free. Queen Mary is a tragic memory; Knox is yet a living power.

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THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH.

Mary, Queen of England, was dead, and her successor was her sister Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth was the most thor- _EIizabeth oughly-educated and the most cultured Tudor. 1534-sovereign of her time. She conversed '558->6o3. readily in Latin, French, and Italian, making addresses without preparation in Latin and French to foreign ministers, full of reason and passion. She had the gift of rule, which was the Tudor inheritance. With all her vanity, her caprice, her fits of rage, and her cruel parsimony, she had such a royal spirit, such discernment of men and politics, such understanding of affairs, and such true aim for England’s greatness, that England’s noblest sons delighted to serve her, and she had the love and veneration of the people. She sought to rule in the Church like her father, Henry VIII. There she would exercise all the Tudor despotism. She was no friend to popular religious exercises, for she feared from them an increased desire for political liberty. Her ideal of religious life among her people did not rise higher than that of the Roman Catholic Church, though she would divorce it from the superstitions formerly allowed and favored. She was not pious herself, but selfishly true to her ideal, which was a great one,—that of increasing her power through the increasing might of the kingdom which she ruled. She swore good round oaths when in a rage; she did not believe in married priests; and in death she had no anchor from a life spent in communion with and obedience to Almighty God. Yet

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she resisted great temptations; she lived for great ideals; she had a genuine reverence and fear of God. Her devotion to the cause of Evangelical religion and to the welfare of the commonest of her people will ever make her name memorable.

Compared with the rulers of her time she shows to advantage when matched with the ablest of them, Henry IV of France. Her prudence and self-restraint did for England more than Henry’s gold for France. She was chaste where he was defiled, his life through, with licentiousness. She had the confidence of her counselors, the ablest men of their time, who spent their lives in her service and died in office. No man or woman could safely trust Henry IV unless his interests coincided with their safety or advantage. The letter of Elizabeth to him at his abjuration of the Evangelical faith shows the fundamental difference in their characters.

So when contrasted with her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, Mary had more of beauty and personal charm; but the whole horizon of Mary’s life and government centered in the gratification of her desires, the advantage, real or supposed, of her person. Elizabeth had an ideal higher or greater than herself; the power, prosperity, and greatness of the land she loved and ruled. For this ideal she made great sacrifices, and to it was uniformly true, serving it with a man’s devotion.

In the line of English rulers, from her accession to that of Victoria, but two can for a moment be compared with her—Oliver Cromwell and William III, of the house of Orange. It may be said that the greatness of her reign is due far more to the ability of

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the men who sat at her council-table than her own. Granted, yet it is true of her, as of William I of Germany, that ability to choose, keep, and work with able counselors is one of the greatest gifts which sovereigns can possess. Never was this more true than in that reign in which Protestant England came to crystallize into a homogeneous people, and to take her place among the nations of the earth.

To Elizabeth’s Council, as the chief director of her policy from the beginning of her reign, was called William Cecil, afterward ‘Lord Burleigh, the ancestor of the present Lord Salisbury. On    ⁸

taking office, Cecil was thirty-eight years of age, and led in England’s affairs for forty years until his death. He was a convinced adherent of the Reformed faith, and rather inclined to the Puritan party than otherwise; but he had often to submit to his strong-willed mistress when otherwise counseled by his judgment. He was slow, careful, pondering both sides of every question, the very personification of prudence, without a spark of genius; but time and the tide of affairs wrought for him as he had long wrought with them, yet always in the pursuit of fixed aims of public policy. Full of years and of honors, he went to his grave in 1598, the founder of one of the great houses among the English aristocracy.

Nicholas Bacon, then forty-nine years of age, was appointed lord keeper, and retained his office until his death, twenty-one years later. Huge in body, he had more alertness of mind than Cecil, with equal solidity of judgment. These men were felt to be safe men, yet capable of risking everything for the honor of the sovereign or the nation. The lord keeper

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is celebrated as the father of one of the greatest of Englishmen, Francis Bacon, the philosopher, afterward Lord High Chancellor of England.

With these two men sat, as secretary of State, from ^J573 f°^r seventeen years, a man of different mold. Sir Francis Walsingham was tall and thin in person. He had a clearness and acuteness of mind and astuteness of policy and a consummate address not known among the English statesmen of his day. He had been trained abroad, and knew how to read the most secret dispatches of Philip II or of Guise, even in their Council chambers. That the plots against the life of Elizabeth failed, and that England had some, but all too little, preparation to meet the Spanish Armada, was due to the foresight and ceaseless energy of Walsingham.

To guide ecclesiastical affairs, Matthew Parker was chosen Archbishop of Canterbury in the place of Car-Matthew dinal Pole, deceased. He was then fifty-Parker. four years of age. Parker was educated at *504-1575. c_ambridge, where he was a friend of Bilney and Latimer. He was chaplain to Anne Boieyn, and for ten years (1535-1545) the head of Bennet’s College, Suffolk. From 1546 to 1552 he was Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University. While in this position, in 1547, he married. He was a friend of Bucer, and during Mary’s reign he resided on the Continent. He was elected archbishop August 1, 1559, and consecrated in the following December. It was his aim to repress innovation and to restore that “ holy and godly form of discipline” which he believed obtained in the primitive Church. Archbishop Parker lived in state,

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accumulated great wealth, and was a munificent patron of the library and University of Cambridge.

The task of the archbishop was no small one. The first ecclesiastical legislation of the first Parliament of Elizabeth was the passage of the Act of Supremacy. It was entitled, “An Jupremtcy Act restoring to the Crown the ancient jurisdiction over the State, ecclesiastical or spiritual, and abolishing all foreign power repugnant to the same.” Elizabeth in it was styled Supreme Governor of the Church. She was empowed to nominate all bishops, as did her father, by congi d'elire, to control the ecclesiastical state and persons by judicial visitation ; to reform, order, and correct all manner of heresies, schisms, offenses, contempts, and enormities of the Church. She could delegate these powers of vis. itation and correction to such commissioners as she might select. This was the origin of the Court of High Commission, abolished by the Long Parliament. All persons holding benefice or office under the crown, and all who should receive orders or take any benefice or office in the future, were to take the oath of supremacy, in which they acknowledged “the queen to be the only supreme governor within the realm, as well in spiritual and ecclesiastical causes and things as temporal,” and renouncing all jurisdiction and any foreign prince or prelate. Any one affirming such jurisdiction to belong to a foreign power, for the first offense forfeited all his goods, real and personal; for the second offense he incurred the penalties of praemunire, and for the third of high treason. This statute was to guard the independence of England in

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Church and State against Rome. It applied only to persons taking orders or holding benefice in the Church or accepting office in the State, and dreadful were the penalties for its infraction.

The second act governing the Church of England was to secure the observance of a common order of worship, and was the legal foundation of illiformity. English Church. It was entitled “An Act for the Uniformity of Common Prayer and Divine Service in the Church, and the Administration of the Sacraments.” The Book of Common Prayer, now made the law of the land for public worship, was the second Prayer-book of King Edward VI, with some “alterations and additions.” The act provided that, “Any person or minister who should refuse to use it, or who should in any religious service, others being present, use any other than the rites and forms therein set down, or who should preach, declare, or speak anything in derogation of the Book or of any part thereof, should, for the first offense, forfeit the profit of all his spiritual benefices or promotions for a year, and be imprisoned for six months without bail or mainprize; for the second offense he should be imprisoned a year and be deprived of all his spiritual (Church) promotions; for the third offense he should be deprived and imprisoned during life. Ministers without benefice were imprisoned a year for the first offense, and for the second, for life. Any person not in orders who would defame the Book of Common Prayer, or procure any minister to minister any sacrament, or to say any public prayer in any other than the prescribed form, for the first offense he should forfeit one hundred marks, for the second four hundred,

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and for the third all his goods and chattels, and be imprisoned for life.”

Persons neglecting, without lawful or reasonable excuse, to come to their parish church on Sundays and other days ordained to be kept as holy days, were to forfeit for each offense, twelve pence. The ornaments of the church and the ministers thereof were to be as by Act of Parliament in the second year of Edward VI. The queen, moreover, might, with the advice of her commissioners, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, ordain further ceremonies or rites indefinitely.

Thus the Church of England struck out the middle way between the Church of Rome and that of Geneva, a way hedged on both sides with fearful penalties. The conformity required was only external, it is true, and there was no inquisition as to the belief; but it required over a century of struggle to overthrow this system so that Englishmen might hold a prayer-meeting without breaking the law or going to prison. The interest of English Church history in this reign, and under the princes of the house of Stuart, centers in this struggle. In theory, every subject of the realm was a member of this Church, and was compelled to worship God in public in this manner and no other. To offend or neglect was a crime against the State, and the punishment was not slow.

This legislation affected, by the Oath of Supremacy, a large class of the population and of the clergy, the adherents of the Roman Catholic Church. The Act of Uniformity, as we must know from our consideration of the Church of Scotland, offended a small minority, but one of increasing numbers and influence

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trained in the teachings of Geneva. Indeed, though slow in making itself known, Puritanism was born when the Act of Uniformity was passed.

What, then, was the state of the English Church at the accession of Elizabeth? Of nine thousand four The state of hundred English clergy, only one hundred the English and seventy-seven refused the Oath of Church. Supremacy. None of the Marian clergy were ambitious to be martyred. Yet the result was that most of the inferior clergy who kept their benefices were Roman Catholics, and lived and ministered much as in the old Church. This was the crying evil of Elizabeth’s reign.

In 1561 it is recorded that in London, where the standard was above the average, some ministers held three, four, and five benefices at once. One was Vicar of St. Dunstan’s West, and had Winston and Bun-castle in Yorkshire, Rugby in Warwickshire, and Barnet in Middlesex. Few or none of the curates were university graduates; not over one third of them preached; and their learning often consisted in understanding a few words in Latin. In 1586, twenty-five years later, it was reported that, in the one hundred and sixty parishes of Cornwall, there were but twenty-nine preachers; in the two hundred and ten of Buckinghamshire, but thirty; in the three hundred and thirty-five of Essex, but twelve; and in the ten thousand parish churches of England, but two thousand.

Archbishop Parker busied himself in establishing the ecclesiastical foundation of the English Church. The Articles of Religion were revised and reduced from forty-two to thirty-nine in 1571. He superintended the publication of the Bishops’ Bible, 1563-1568.

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Yet the party for farther reforms was strong among the leading clergy. Many of them had come in contact with the Genevan Reform when in exile, and believed it to be the form of ^Th®^p“^rltan

’    Party.

Church constitution and government sanctioned by the Holy Scriptures. So strong was this party that in the convocation in January, 1563, a resolution to dispense with Episcopal vestments, the sign of the cross in baptism, kneeling at the communion, and other so-called popish rites, was lost by one vote—fifty-eight to fifty-nine. It would have been carried but for the influence of the court. The Puritans objected to these vestments because they savored of Rome, because they might lead the young and untrained Romeward, and because they did not believe that the prince had any right to command how God should be worshiped. Two years later came the first open conflict.

Queen Elizabeth addressed a letter, January 28, 1565, to Archbishop Parker. She said, “ Ceremonial diversities in the Church must needs pro- .._TheAdver, voke the displeasure of Almighty God, and tisement” bring down ruin to the people and coun- ^of|s⁶5-try.” It had therefore been her earnest care to prevent diversities of opinion and novelties of rites. She straitly charged him that none should be admitted or allowed in any position in the Church, but such as would use the common order and observe all external rites and ceremonies. “ We intend to have no dissension or variety grow, by suffering the persons which maintain the same to remain in authority.” As a result the archbishop drew a Book of Articles, or “Advertisement,” the next February, which required

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the clergy to use the vestments; that is, cope, surplice, and square cap. In consequence of refusal to obey, thirty of the London clergy were deprived. A year later, in March, 1566, all the London clergy were convened before the commissioners of Lambeth, and asked whether they would conform to the ecclesiastical orders. Sixty-one promised, but thirty-seven refused ; they were suspended and sequestrated. These, of course, included the most intelligent, conscientious, and devoted of the clergy.

In June, 1567, a meeting of those gathered to worship with ministers who had been deprived, in Plumbers Hall, was broken up. Four deposed clergymen were present. Twenty-four men and seven women were taken to prison. After being in prison more than ten months, they were all released, May 3, 1568. Clergy who could not conform to the ecclesiastical orders were forbidden to preach or to administer the sacrament in England. If they did, they were fined and imprisoned.

The Puritans again came in conflict with the royal power, and this time in the House of Commons. Mr.

Strickland, “a grave and ancient man of

The Puritan    , ,,    ,,,    •

in the House great zeal, touched the sore spot m the of commons, situation when he said: “Known papists, if so be that they only make show of conformity to the rites and ceremonies laid down in the Liturgy, are admitted to have ecclesiastical government and great livings. At the same time Protestant ministers—honest, learned, and godly—have little or nothing of preferments.” It was at this time that Archbishop Parker said to Sir Peter Wentworth, a sturdy Puritan, “What surely ye mistake the matter

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ye will refer yourselves to us bishops therein?’* “No,” said Sir Peter, “by the faith I bear to God, we will pass nothing before we understand what it is; for that were to make you popes. Make you popes who list, for we will not.”

Six bills passed the House to give expression to the Puritan sentiment of that body. Three of them failed because of the queen’s jealousy of the royal supremacy, and three, one of them very severe in its pains and penalties, against the Roman Catholics, became laws. Parliament was dissolved May 29th, and August 2d the queen, in a sharp letter, called upon the archbishop to proceed against all who “attempt to deform the uniformity prescribed by our laws and injunction.”

The Puritan opposition now found its leaders among the clergy. Thomas Cartwright was twenty-three years old when the queen began her reign. Two years later he was made Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Under Thomas the stress of Archbishop Parker’s “Advertisements ” he became a Puritan. He spent the next two years in Ireland, and was made, in 1569, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, but was deprived of this position in December, 1570. He was in Geneva for thirteen months after October, 1571.

Cartwright was a man of unusual learning and ability. His leading positions were that:

(1)    The names and functions of archbishops and archdeacons ought to be abolished.

(2)    That the offices of the lawful ministers of the Church—viz., bishops and deacons—ought to be re

474    The Christian Church.

duced to their apostolic institution; bishops to preach the Word of God and to pray, and deacons to be employed in taking care of the poor.

(3)    That the government of the Church ought not to be intrusted to bishop’s chancellors, or to the officials of archdeacons, but every Church ought to be governed by its own ministers and presbyters.

(4)    That ministers ought not to be at large, but every one should have charge of a particular congregation.

(5)    That no man ought to solicit or stand as a candidate for the ministry.

(6)    That ministers ought not to be created by the sole authority of the bishop, but be openly and fairly chosen by the people.

In 1572, Field and Wilcox published an “Admonition to Parliament for the Reformation of Church Discipline.” The authors were arrested and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment in Newgate. Field’s position was that, “ In matters of government arid discipline the Word of God is our only warrant; but rites and ceremonies not mentioned in the Scriptures are to be used or refused, as shall best appear to the edification of the Church.”

About this time Cartwright returned and published “A Second Admonition, with a Humble Peti-Cartwright ^^{on to} Both Houses of Parliament for Re-

and lief against Subscription.” Whitgift, later whitgift. Ajxlikishop of Canterbury, published an “Answer” to Cartwright, and Cartwright followed with a “Reply to Whitgift’s Answer.”

Cartwright’s position was, that the Bible is the

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only standard of doctrine, discipline, and government of the Church. Whitgift held that the Bible is not a standard of Church discipline and government; that these are not immutable, but may be accommodated to the civil government; that the apostolic government was for the Church in its infancy and under persecution, and therefore the Fathers of the first four centuries should be embraced in the standard of discipline and government. Cartwright went to Heidelberg in 1573, and was English pastor at Antwerp and Middleburg until 1588.

The principles of Presbyterian polity were set forth by Walter Travers, who stood second only to Cartwright in reputation for learning, abil- _WttIter ity, and high character. The book was Travers, entitled “Ecclesiastical Discipline,” and ^,548='⁶³⁴* was published in 1574. Travers was a Fellow of Trinity, Cambridge, in 1567. He had been at Geneva, and was chaplain to Lord Burleigh. The first Presbytery in England had already been formed at Wandsworth by Field, Wilcox, Travers, and others, September 20, 1572.

A proclamation of the queen in October, 1573, and a charge of her commissioners the next month, stirred up renewed and illegal persecutions, from which the bishops gained little honor. Ed- ^utions. ward Deering, Lady Margaret Lecturer in Divinity, was brought before the Privy Council in

1573. He was suspended until July, and the suspension renewed the next month, but at length set at liberty. He died in 1576. Robert Johnson, Fellow of King’s College in Cambridge, was suspended for

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refusing subscription in 1571, when chaplain to Lord Keeper Bacon. He was restored, but sent to prison in 1574, and died there the same year.

The work of Matthew Parker was done. His wife had died in 1570, and in May, 1575, he passed from his great charge to the realities of the

Parker! ^eternal world. Of one stain on the Church history of England neither Archbishop Parker nor his successor bore the guilt. Eleven Dutch Anabaptists were arrested in London, and were sentenced to death. One recanted, eight were banished, and two were burned at the stake, July 22, 1575-

Before the death of Archbishop Parker the English Church had lost its foremost defender. John Jewel was born in Devonshire, May 24, ^J*3M-*57i!* ^T5²²- ^{was an} Oxford man, where he was greatly influenced by Peter Martyr. In 1552 he was Vicar of Summerwell, but was deprived of his fellowship at the beginning of Mary’s reign. He was notary to Cranmer and Ridley in their trial in 1554, but signed popish articles in the fall of that year. He fled to Frankfort, where he arrived in March, 1555. He was with Peter Martyr at Strasburg and Zurich, 1555-1559. In this time he visited Padua. Jewel returned to England in March, 1559, and was made Bishop of Salisbury, January 21,1560. In 1562 he published his “Apology for the Church of England,” the best literary statement of the position of the English Church. In 1567 he published a “Defense of the Apology.” At his own expense he sent Richard Hooker to Oxford. He was a laborious and thorough student and an earnest and faithful preacher.

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Hooker called him “the worthiest divine that Christendom hath bred for some hundreds of years.” He died September 23, 1571.

The successor of Matthew Parker in the See of Canterbury was Edmund Grindal. The new archbishop was now fifty-seven years of age, _Edmund and had never married. He had been edu- Grindai. cated at Cambridge, where he was chosen ^,5'⁸“^,s83-Fellow, and was made successively chaplain to Bishop Ridley and to the king. In 1552 he was prebendary of Westminster, but at Mary’s accession he went to the Continent, residing at Strasburg and Frankfort. In 1559 he returned, and, July 26th, was made Bishop of London. He took part in the revision of the Liturgy and of the Thirty-nine Articles. He became Archbishop of York, April 11, 1570, where he was active against the Roman Catholics. He was made Archbishop of Canterbury, January 10, 1576.

Parliament assembled February 8, 1576. In a question between the Lords and the Commons the Lower House used words which will never be for- _{The Answer} gotten by lovers of English liberty, and of the com-which were a foregleam of the constitu- ^mons’^,576* tional government of the later day. They said: “And we do protest that we will continue unto your lordships all dutiful reverence, so far as the same be not prejudicial to the liberties of our house, which it be-hooveth us to leave to our posterities in the same freedom we have received them.”

Soon there came the conflict of the pious archbishop with the queen. She reproved him in sharpness and anger for the meetings for prayer and the exposition of the Scriptures called prophesyings.

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She said the pulpit had grown to be too common; that there were too many preachers; that she was offended with their numbers; that three or

The Arch-    .

bishop and four to a county were sufficient; and that the Queen, ^he reading of homilies was all the people 157 *577. _nee(^_e(j f_QY their religious instruction. She required the archbishop to issue special orders to his clergy to put down the prophesyings, to lessen the number of preachers, and to have homilies read instead of sermons. Here was shown the abhorrence of a despotic sovereign to popular assemblies and discussion, even for religious purposes. Grindal replied in a letter to the queen, dated December 8, 1576—a letter which is such a monument as guards the memory of no other Archbishop of Canterbury. In it he deals faithfully with his sovereign, and pleads for her people. No more manly letter was written in Elizabeth’s reign.

Among other things, he said in regard to the number of preachers: “Alas, madam! is the Scripture _The more plain than in any one thing, than that Archbishop’s the gospel of Christ should be plentifully ^Letter* preached; and that plenty of laborers should be sent into the Lord’s harvest, which, being great and large, standeth in need, not of a few, but of many workmen? . . . If the Holy Ghost prescribed expressly that preachers should be placed in every town and city, how can it be thought that three or four preachers may suffice for a shire? Public and continual preaching is the ordinary means for the salvation of mankind. ... By preaching, also, due obedience to Christian princes and magistrates is

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planted in the hearts of subjects; for obedience pro-ceedeth of conscience; conscience is grounded upon the Word of God; and the Word of God has effect bypreaching. So, generally, where preaching wanteth, obedience faileth.”

As to prophesyings, which he calls “the learned exercise and conference amongst the ministers of the Church,” he says, “ I have consulted with divers of my brethren, the bishops, by letters, who think the same as I do; viz, a thing profitable to the Church, and therefore expedient to be continued.” He then proceeds to explain its methods, its Scriptural authority, its advantages and the disadvantages, if it should be taken away. Then he says: “I am forced with all humility, and yet plainly, to profess that I can not, with safe conscience and without the offense of the majesty of God, give my consent to the suppressing of the said exercises. Much less can I send out injunction for the utter and universal subversion of the same. . . . If it be Your Majesty’s pleasure for this, or for any other cause, to remove me out of this place, I will, with all humility, yield thereunto, and render again to Your Majesty that I receive of the same.”

The archbishop persisting in his refusal to issue any such injunctions, she commanded their suppression by royal order, May, 1577. In June the archbishop was suspended from his office for six months. His purpose did not change, and his suspension continued. He was restored to his office in December, 1582, and died July 3, 1583. In those later years he was blind.

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If Edmund Grindal would not bend himself to the will of the queen in the discharge of the duties of his

John high office in the Church, there were others whitgift. who would. Such a man was John Whit-1530-1604. _wj_{10 succee(}j_ed him as Archbishop of Canterbury. Unmarried and inheriting wealth, as archbishop he lived in great state, with a splendid household, and had the best stable and armor among the English noblemen. He ever had the confidence of the queen. She called him her little black husband, and said he must know the secret thoughts of her heart. Whitgift was her devoted servant, and stood by her dying bed. He was a little older than the queen, being at his consecration about fifty-three years of age. For more than twenty years he held the archbishopric, dying the year after the queen.

John Whitgift was from Lincolnshire, and educated at Cambridge. In 1560 he was ordained, and six years later appointed university preacher. For ten years (1567-1577) he was master of Trinity College. It was here that he developed his strong antipathy to Puritanism and to the Puritan leaders. In 1570, under this influence, he revised the constitution of the university of Cambridge, that nursery of Evangelical teachers from the days of Cardinal Wolsey to those of Oliver Cromwell. The same year he deprived Cartwright, the leader of the Puritans, of his professorship, and the next year expelled him from his fellowship. Though a man of wealth, he was a great pluralist, which, of course, drew upon him the censure of the Puritans. From the Mastership of Trinity he went to the See of Worcester in 1577, and to the throne of Canterbury in 1583.

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The most active supporter of the policy of suppressing Puritanism was John Aylmer, who came from an old Norfolk family, and, like most of the leaders of the English Church in this century, was educated at Cambridge. He had been tutor to the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey, and 011 Queen Mary’s accession he fled to the Continent, where he lived at Strasburg and Zurich until the queen’s death. For fourteen years (1562-1576) he was Archdeacon of Lincoln. Aylmer was married, and had seven sons and three daughters. From 1577 until his death in June, 1594, he was Bishop of London. During the term of the sequestration of Archbishop Grindal he practically managed the affairs of the See of Canterbury.

Aylmer was intolerant and violent, abusive and cruel. His abuse of every principle of justice in the treatment of those brought before him for the infraction of the ecclesiastical law was not more offensive to the Puritans than his contempt for their convictions in regard to the observance of the Sabbath and his playing bowls on that holy day. These two men, Whitgift and Aylmer, made it impossible for the Church of England ever to be the Church of the nation, or to take her place at the head of the Christendom which had renounced allegiance to the See of Rome. They made it a homogeneous and powerful body, occupying an isolated position instead of that commanding place of leadership marked out for her by her ecclesiastical founders under Cranmer and Parker. Under the new policy she had been more open to comprehension with Rome than with her fellow believers of the Evangelical faith. The prin-

31

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The Christian Church.

ciple of Wliitgift and Aylmer was that the clergy owed, passive obedience to the bishops in all matters of ritual and discipline, and. that any active divergence from the service by law established made the clergy rebels and traitors. Their intolerance and cruelty made the Puritan party the governing element in Church and State in the first half of the succeeding century.

How ill shepherded was England, by her chief prelates just at the time the policy of repression was The Puritan ^res°l^ve(i upon, appears from the Puritan Petitions of petitions to Parliament in 1581. The Pe-^ls8l‘ tition from Cornwall states: “We are above the number of ninety thousand souls, which, for the want of the Word of God, are in extreme misery and ready to perish, and this for the want neither of maintenance nor place; for besides the inappropriations in our shire, we allow yearly ^9,200 and one hundred and sixty churches. But the greatest part of these are supplied by men who are guilty of the greatest sins. Some are fornicators, some are adulterers, and some felons, bearing the marks on the hands of said offense; some drunkards, gamesters on the Sabbath day, etc. We have many non-residents who preach but once in a quarter, so that between meal and meal the silly sheep are starved. We have some ministers who labor painfully and faithfully in the Lord’s husbandry; but these men are not suffered to attend their callings, because the mouths of papists, infidels, and filthy livers are open against them, and the ears of those who are called lords over them are sooner open to their accusations—though it be for ceremonies— than to the others’ answers.”

The Petition from London asserts: “There are in

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this city a great number of churches, but the one-half of them at least are utterly unfurnished of preaching ministers. ... In the other half, partly by means of non-residents, which are very many, and partly through the poverty of many meanly qualified, there is scarcely the tenth man that makes conscience to wait upon his charge.”

The petitions gained the ear of the Parliament. The bishops were in favor of some redress, but Elizabeth answered the paper of the bishops, “That Her Highness was sufficient of herself to deal with matters ecclesiastical; and that the Parliament house should not meddle therein; neither could Her Majesty yield to any alteration of any ecclesiastical law.” Is it not evident that there had to be a Puritan England?

In the same year Aylmer, writing to the queen, says: “ Was it ever heard of that any of my predecessors did either deprive, imprison, or banish so many as I have done?” He summoned^Pers*_s^c“^tion8' the clergymen of his diocese before him no less than four times in five months, to see that they had observed the prescribed uniformity. The Court of High Commission had been organized anew in 1583-Aylmer and Whitgift extended the sphere of its activity, and made use of its inquisitorial powers.

The Lords of the Council, including Burleigh» Hatton, and Walsingham, could scarcely be charged with Puritan zeal and narrowness, and yet

.    Admonition

they say: “We have sent herewith a cata- of the Privy logue of the names of persons of sundry natures and conditions; one sort reported to be learned and zealous, and good preachers, deprived and suspended; the other sort, a number of

484    The Christian Church.

persons having cures, being far unmeet for any office in the Church for their many defects and imperfections, yet continued without reprehension or other proceeding against them; in a third sort, a number having double livings, with a cure, and not resident upon their cures. Against all these sorts of lewd, evil, unprofitable, and corrupt members we hear of no inquisition, nor any kind of proceedings to the reformation of those horrible offenses in the Church; but yet a great diligence, yea, an extremity used against those that are known diligent preachers. Now, therefore, we, for the discharge of our duties, being by our vocation under Her Majesty bound to be careful that the universal realm may be well governed, do most earnestly desire your lordships to take some charitable consideration of these courses; that the people of the realm may not be deprived of their pastors, being diligent, learned, and zealous, though in some points of ceremonial they may seem doubtful, only in conscience and not of willfulness; nor that their cures be suffered to be vacant without good pastors; nor that such as be placed in the rooms of cures be insufficient for learning, or unmeet for conversation.”

The strength of the Puritan element was such that, in 1587, a Bill and Book allowing of such varia-_p    tions and omissions and the use of the

in the Book of Common Prayer as should allow ^PaJ^Iia“^ent of the Puritan clergy in good conscience to

* use the same, was proposed in the House of Commons. March 1, 1587, Sir Peter Wentworth presented some questions in regard to the liberties of the House of Commons. The speaker read them, put them in his pocket, and showed them at court and

The Genevan Reform.    485

council, with the result that Wentworth and four other members were committed to the Tower. In the pressure upon the realm through Roman Catholic plots and invasions, neither party wished to go to extremes. The queen declared that “ The full power, authority, jurisdiction, and supremacy in Church causes, which heretofore the Popes usurped and took to themselves, should be united and annexed to the imperial crown of this realm.” If Elizabeth were not Pope in England, it was not her fault. The Puritan members were discharged from the Tower; but from this time with the Puritan cause were bound up the liberties of the Parliament of England.

The Puritans and their lack of conformity to the ecclesiastical regulations fixed by law were not the only, or chief, concern of the Government.

Elizabeth was a convinced and consistent ^thoucs." upholder of the Reformation. In 1570 she was excommunicated by the Pope, who declared her subjects released from their allegiance. The Jesuits, who in Ireland sought to stir up rebellion against Henry VIII, had no scruple in undertaking the same part in England under Elizabeth. We are told that “ Thomas Heath, a Jesuit, and a brother of the Archbishop of York and High Chancellor of England, who announced to Parliament the death of Mary and the accession of Elizabeth, had itinerated in the kingdom during the last six years as a Puritan minister. He preached his last sermon, however, in the pulpit of the Dean of Rochester, where he accidentally dropped a letter, which was found by the sexton and betrayed him. The bishop of the diocese, Guest, immediately brought the pseudo-Puritan to examination and con

486

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fession; for rosaries, popish books, and papers, a license from the Jesuits, and a Bull from Pius V for preaching whatever doctrines the Society of Jesus might appoint for confounding and dividing the Protestants—all found in his possession, besides the letter, which contained directions from a Spanish Jesuit for the prosecution of his insidious mission—were proofs of his real character and business which it was in vain to gainsay. He was spared from the gallows, but placed in pillory at Rochester, in November, 1568, for three days, his ears cut off, and his nose slit, his forehead branded with the letter R, and condemned to perpetual imprisonment. He died a few days after.”

The same year, William (afterward Cardinal) Allen opened his Roman Catholic college at Douay; but it was driven to Rheims in 1576. Between 1576 and

1580, one hundred of his pupils went on the English mission, and a greater number the next five years.

Balgrave, a Roman Catholic, was executed in 1566. But the plots of the Roman Catholics did not seem specially dangerous nor to call for exceptional measures until after Mary of Scots’ fateful ride from the defeat at Langside and her taking refuge in England. By blood she was the next heir to the throne of Elizabeth, and, according to all Roman Catholic authorities, after the papal excommunication of Elizabeth, she was the legitimate sovereign of England. This claim Mary never renounced. If she had done so, her presence in England would scarcely have called for bolts and bars. It is not true that the English Government could have avoided all danger by simply acknowledging her infant son as the next successor to the throne. What effect would such an act have had against

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487

Mary’s will upon Philip of Spain, the Pope, the house of Guise, or the Roman Catholics of England? It could be of small value while Mary lived. Hence, from the time she set foot on English soil until her death nineteen years later, there were plots against the life of Elizabeth. Five of these came to such head as to bring their leaders to a traitor’s death.

The Ridolfi conspiracy began in 1571. Mary’s agent, the Bishop of Ross, was implicated in it. In the next year, for like conspiracy, the Duke _piotg of Norfolk, won by Mary’s fascinations, and Against Thomas Percy, Duke of Northumberland, ^EIizabeth-went to the block, the former in June, the latter in August. Thus perished the heads of two of the noblest houses of the English aristocrac}'. In the year of the assassination of William of Orange a plot of Guise against Elizabeth was discovered. Francis Throgmorton and seven priests were executed. The year following, in March, the treason and plot of Dr. Parry was discovered, and he met a traitor’s doom. The most celebrated of these was the Babington conspiracy, begun in May, 1586. Two month’s later, Mary Stuart became privy to it. In August the conspirators were arrested; they were tried and executed in the succeeding month. It was for participation in this plot that Mary, Queen of Scots, was tried and sentenced to death. None who think of her captivity for nearly twenty years can blame her for using all legitimate efforts to regain her liberty. Perhaps she thought she might well set her life against that of her royal cousin. In the desperate game she forfeited her own. Those who make Mary a saint and a martyr read into her life what they wish to believe. The

488

The Christian Church.

letter which she wrote to Elizabeth concerning the English Queen and the Countess of Sheffield shows the same bitter and relentless disposition as her penchant for the assassin of her brother.

Mary was a prisoner at Sheffield Castle in charge of the Earl of Sheffield, where she had all the conveniences suitable to her rank, and was

Mary’s Trial.    .    ^    ,

under mild restraint. There she resided for fourteen years, until 1584. In the fall of that year she was removed to Wingfield Manor, and in January, 1585, to Tutbury Castle. December 25th she was taken to the pleasanter quarters of Chartley Castle. The inventory of the wagon-loads of goods which accompanied her shows that she did not lack for the comforts of life in her household. At Chartley, Anthony Babington, who came under Mary’s influence while she was at Sheffield Castle, formed the conspiracy, and communicated it to the Scottish Queen, which brought Mary to her death. She was taken to Tixall on a hunting party, and, her papers being searched, unmistakable proof was found of her complicity. September 25, 1586, she was removed to Fotheringay Castle. Babington and his fellows were executed in September. A commission of noblemen was sent down to Fotheringay to try the queen. The trial took place October 15th and 16th. Mary made a splendid defense, marked by courage, intellect, and resource. She could not deny her connection with Babington, though she claimed to be ignorant of his attempt to kill Elizabeth, but she acknowledged and defended her pensioning and keeping in her household a man who had made an unsuccessful attempt to kill the English Queen. The commission was then

The Genevan Reform.

489

adjourned to London, where, October 25th, the sentence of death was adjudged.

The course of Elizabeth in this crisis was no credit to her. She believed with her councilors, that, while Mary lived, her own life was in constant _EIizabeth peril. But, with her notions of royal dignity, and Mary’s to bring to trial and a felon’s death a woman ^Death-who had reigned as Queen both of France and Scotland, was a blow at the whole doctrine of divine right by which alone, in her eyes, monarchs rule. Then, to take the life of her cousin, and she a woman like herself, and one who had fled to her for refuge,—all this made the signing of the death warrant a thing repugnant to her as a woman and as a queen. She intimated to Sir Amyas Paulet, Mary’s keeper, that she would be greatly obliged to him if he would save her this unwelcome decision by privily putting his prisoner to death. But the stern old Puritan feared God far more than his sovereign, and peremptorily refused. Finally, Elizabeth signed the death warrant, February 1, 1587. Mr, Secretary Davidson and the lords intrusted with its execution hurried to Fotheringay. At eight o’clock in the morning of February 7, 1587, Mary, _Deathof Queen of Scots, was led to her death. She Mary, Queen had made all her preparations the night be- ^{of Scots}* fore. She forgot no friend, she forgave no enemy, but courageous, high-spirited, and as a martyr for her faith, Mary Stuart met the headman’s stroke. It is a long list of men from Chastelard to Babington who, for her sake, had met the same fate. The partner in Bothwell’s crime is hardly a saint; but Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, courageous, able, beautiful, loyal, and faithful to her love or hate, greatly sinning and greatly

490    The Christian Church.

suffering, has attached the fascination of her person to the record of her life and to every memorial of her.

Elizabeth simulated great indignation at the zeal of the unlucky secretary, who gave her no opportunity to change her mind. He was thrown into prison and fined a heavy fine—a severe punishment for as intelligent and devoted a servant as the queen possessed. This will ever be a stain upon Elizabeth; not the act itself, which was inevitable from the time that Mary took the position as the head of the Roman Catholic subjects of Elizabeth in her own realm, but the hypocrisy attending it.

In 1577, Cuthbert Mayne, a Roman Catholic priest, was executed at Launceston. Francis Tregian, a . blameless Roman Catholic gentleman, was of the arrested for harboring Mayne. He lay in Roman prison for twenty-nine years. when he was

Catholics.    .

released and banished. Two years later he died in Lisbon. There were no purer victims of cruel laws under Elizabeth than Mayne and Tregian.

But it was felt that the Jesuits were another matter. Robert Parsons, an Oxford Fellow, who was dismissed from Oxford in 1574, became a Roman Catholic at Louvain the same year, and became a Jesuit at Rome a year later. He planned and carried out a landing of the Jesuits in England in June, 1580. Parsons escaped to France; but Edmund Cainpian, a much nobler man, who was educated at Oxford, became a papist in Ireland in 1569, and a Jesuit in 1573, was arrested. Hallam says: “ The prosecution was as unfairly conducted and supported by as slender evidence as any, perhaps, that can be found in our books.” He was three times terribly racked, and ex-

The Genevan Reform.    491

ecuted in 1581. Campian was a man of ability and learning, a liigh-spirited gentleman. The full tortures of the horrible punishment for treason—the hanging, cutting down alive, the disemboweling and quartering—were carried out in these cases. It must be remembered that these men did not suffer for their religion, but as traitors; and the man who was responsible for their position was the Pope of Rome, who presumed to release the subjects of Elizabeth from their allegiance. Parsons lived for thirty years an unceasing traitor and intriguer in Spain and at Rome. After Mary’s execution no plot seriously threatened the life of Elizabeth, even though Philip of Spain and Alexander of Parma showed their willingness to aid poisoners and assassins to the extent of their ability.

Philip had long been planning an invasion of England. His zeal for the Church of Rome, and his wish to requite Elizabeth for the aid she _The5pan. had given his rebellious subjects in the ish Armada, Netherlands, determined him to do this ^,s88’ long before the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots. But her death supplied a further motive of revenge.

Philip at length, in spite of Sir Francis Drake’s raids and destruction at Cadiz and Lisbon the year before, when he destroyed two hundred and fifty Spanish vessels, assembled his Invincible Armada. It consisted of one hundred and thirty-four vessels, with over three thousand guns and thirty thousand men. Of these, two thousand were volunteers from the noblest houses of Spain, and, to aid the army in the conversion of England to the See of Rome, there were two hundred and ninety monks and priests.

492    The Christian Church.

This great fleet sailed from Lisbon, May 21st, and, after experiencing a great storm, from Corunna, July 22, 1588. The first engagement with the English in the Channel was on July 31st. While the Armada lay in the Calais roads, August 6th and 7th, fireships were sent among them. The battle with the English and Dutch was fought on the 8th, and the next day the Armada was in full flight. The pursuit was kept up for three days. Two days after, there came on a great storm as the Armada sought to sail along the north of Scotland. Twenty thousand men perished; of one hundred and thirty-four vessels, but thirty-four, and those of inferior tonnage, returned to Spain. When the news was broken to Philip, he took it as an ordinary occurrence; but it sealed the fate of his plans for the restoration of the Roman Catholic Church, and made evident that the fortunes of Spain were no longer in the ascendant. From those August days began her visible decline. The joy in England was unbounded. Elizabeth had ridden at the head of her militia, and behaved herself royally, as was her wont. From that day England was a great nation, and Elizabeth such a queen as, at Rome itself, extorted the admiration of Pope Sixtus V.

THE REFORMATION AND COUNTER REFORMATION OF GERMANY, 1555-1588.

The Peace of Augsburghad given the adherents of the Reformation an assured legal recognition in the empire. There were, however, grave causes of

The Advance ^r . ,    ,. ’    . .

of the misunderstanding remaining. The Evan-^EVFami^UCal &^eli^cal^{s c}l^ai^med the free exercise of their religion in the Ecclesiastical Electorates and other bishoprics of the empire for all who had

The Genevan Reform.    493

embraced their doctrines. The Emperor Ferdinand, as King of the Romans, personally guaranteed this; but the Roman Catholic members of the Reichstag rejected it, and it was inserted in the treaty against their protest. The clause on the Ecclesiastical Reservations which declared if any ecclesiastical elector, bishop, or abbot became Evangelical in belief, lie should resign at once his position, and the Chapter should proceed to a new election as if he were dead, was opposed by the Evangelicals in the Reichstag, and, though adopted in the treaty, it was qualified with the declaration that the parties had not come to a final agreement on that point. Evangelicals declared it was no more binding upon them than Ferdinand’s guarantee was upon the Roman Catholics. Finally the most aggressive religious party in Europe and in Germany, the Calvinists, or Reformed, were wholly unrecognized in the Religious Peace. Of course, the main provision of the peace, that the subjects should accept the religion of their prince, contradicted the fundamental principle of the Reformation and of the Gospel on which it was founded.

For the next twenty years the power of the Evangelical party increased in Germany. Soon all the North German Bishoprics came into the hands of Evangelical princes as possessors or administrators. So Schwerin had come in 1550, Magdeburg and Hal-berstadt in 1552, Ratzeburg in 1554. After the Religious Peace the change went on. Brandenburg, Havelberg, and L,ebus, in 1571, followed Magdeburg and Halberstadt into the hands of the house of Ho-henzollern. So Merseburg, Naumburg, and Meissen came to Electoral Saxony in 1581 and 1582. In this change followed the Archbishopric of Bremen and the

The Christian Church.

Bishoprics of Liibeck, Verden, Osnabriick, and Min-den. To this large gain from the Ecclesiastical States was added the Palatine Electorate, which became Evangelical in 1556 under Otto Henry, who built the famous Heidelberg Castle. So the lands of Cleves, Juliers, and Berg had a strong Evangelical population, which pressed upon the territory of the Ecclesiastical Electorate of Cologne. Thus in the north of Germany the Reformation became supreme.

In the West the Reformation made large gains, and was helped by the strenuous efforts in France for the toleration of the Reformed, and by the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain. If the Churches of the Evangelical faith had presented a united front, it seemed probable that the Ecclesiastical Electorates of Mainz and Cologne might have been gained, and that those of the Evangelical faith in Bavaria and Austria, who were a majority of the nobility and in the cities, and a strong minority in the country, might have secured permanent toleration.

Ferdinand I (1555-1564) faithfully kept the provisions of the peace he was so instrumental in forming. He desired the Council of Trent to Emperors concede, as we know, the cup to the laity and marriage to the clergy. Maximilian II (1564-1576) was by personal conviction an adherent to the teachings of the Reformation, and on his deathbed refused to see a priest. The Spanish ambassador wrote, “The unhappy one is dead as he lived.” His position made it necessary to be on good terms with the Pope. He earnestly desired some union between the adherents of the Augsburg Confession and the Church of Rome on the lines of Cassander’s

The Genevan Reform.

495

project; i. e., a union on the ground of the Apostles’ Creed and a consensus of the older Church Fathers, with an abolition of numerous abuses and the concession which Ferdinand desired of the Council of Trent. This was rejected by both parties. When Maximilian saw himself forced to give up this endeavor, he sought as his chief aim the increase of the power of his house. To secure favorable alliance for his children he allowed his two sons, who were to succeed him in the empire, to be educated at the court of Philip II, and under the tuition of the Jesuits, and he closed his ears to the bitter cry of the Netherlands under the bloody rule of Alva. The condition of the adherents of the Reformation was never so favorable again in Germany.

This was not because of the efforts of the enemies of the Reformation alone. The greatest weakness of the Evangelical cause was from within.

Fatal Dlvis-

After the death of Luther, Melanchthon ion among was the greatest theologian among the ^{the Evan}“ German Reformers. While Luther lived ‘ they had been in accord. After Luther’s death, Me-lanchthon’s reputation had suffered a great blow through his subserviency during the Interim. He was in active correspondence with Calvin, and grew more and more inclined to his views of the Lord’s Supper. On the other hand, he grew less and less in favor of the extreme predestinarian views both of Luther and Calvin. With the heart of a lover of peace, which Melanchthon always was, and a clearness of view which could discern not only the desirability but the necessity for a union among those of the Evangelical faith, he strove by holding a middle course

496    The Christian Church.

to keep in union the followers of the German and the Swiss Reformation until his death, April 19, 1560.

Yet Melanchthon’s definition of the Church was the overthrow of all the efforts of his life for union, and turned the German Reformation from a reform of religious life, individual and social, to a school of doctrine. The free spirit which drew the masses of the people to the open Bible and personal allegiance to Christ gave way to a Protestant scholasticism as hard and repellent as that of their adversaries of the Church of Rome. He defined the Church as “ a visible assembly, like an assembly of scholars, whose foundation is the uncorrupt knowledge of all the articles of faith, and the exclusion of all idolatrous worship. Those are members who consent to the true doctrine.” Thus the Church is a school of pure doctrine, and every question of doctrine is a question of existence. This conception of the Church was accepted as the rule of the activity and life of the Lutheran Church everywhere. No voice was raised against it until Spener, a hundred years later, brought to Germany a wider view.

To secure this pure doctrine the Saxon electors as well as the theologians felt themselves pledged.

Melanchthon’s teaching was taken as the Concord!* standard of Lutheran doctrine by the

Elector Augustus (1553-1586). This prevailed until 1574, when, in March, an intercepted letter convinced the elector that the theologians in whom he trusted to preserve the pure doctrine were more inclined to Calvin than to Luther. His anger knew no bounds. His physician, Peucer, son-in-law to Melanchthon, was imprisoned twelve years, and

The Genevan Reform.

497

three other leaders of the party until their death. From that time, for these and other reasons, Augustus was at the service of the divines who seemed to him to have preserved the pure doctrine.

From this endeavor for the immaculate and infallible doctrine came the issue of many differing confessions of faith. The test of the pure Lutheran doctrine was the belief of the natural and real ubiquity of the body of Christ. Of course, for their own content and even existence, these questions must be settled; and at length, after years of effort, Jacob Andrese, Chemnitz, and others, succeeded in framing the Formula of Concord, 1577. It was officially adopted at Dresden in 1580. It secured the signatures of fifty-one princes and thirty-five cities of the empire, and of eight or nine thousand theologians. It formed a fixed body of Lutheran doctrine which excluded all other Evangelical believers. Its chief framer, Andrese, would not take the hand of Beza as a fellow Christian. It was the abdication by the Lutheran Church of the leadership of Evangelical Christendom in Germany. The Lutheran Church became far more inclined to some accommodation with Rome than even toleration of the Reformed. Her standards of doctrine approximate as far as possible toward Rome, and have none of that denunciation of abuses and defiance of the errors of the old Church which marks the Reformed symbols of faith. Their theologians did not scruple to say the Calvinistic heresy shut out at once from eternal blessedness and from the Religious Peace; also that a standing together of Lutherans and Calvinists in causes of faith and of rights grounded upon faith is as godless as it is dangerous. Twenty years

32

498    The Christian Church.

later they said, “The Lutherans and the Romanists are more nearly related in religion than the Lutherans and Calvinists.” The fortunes of other Evangelical believers were no concern of theirs. The bloody executions of Alva excited no compassion in the breast of Andrese. He considered the whole effort for civil and religious liberty but a godless rebellion. This fatal division encouraged the Roman Catholic reaction, and made possible the Thirty Years’ War.

It was the severest blow the Reformation had yet received. The electoral house of Saxony was considered the hereditary leader of the Evangelical cause; yet never was great responsibility committed to more worthless hands. Except in the earlier years of the reign of Augustus and the brief reign of Christian I (1586-1591), the princes of that house, from the treason of Maurice to the apostasy of Augustus the Strong, 1697, injured the cause they should have led more than an enemy could. They ever sought their particular family interests, and to secure these clave more to the imperial policy and to the house of Austria than the Roman Catholic princes themselves. They arrayed themselves generally against the common interests of the Reformation. The Lutheran Church has produced great theologians and scholars, men of deep piety, whose hymns and devotional writings have ministered richly to the devout life, and has been active in works of mercy; but the leadership of the Evangelical cause in Germany fell to other hands.

Those who could not subscribe to the refinements of the strict Lutheran doctrine were driven, while holding to the Augsburg Confession, to the Reformed

The Genevan Reform.

499

Church. This Church came to prevail in the lands of the Rhine, in the Palatinate, Hesse, Nassau, Berg, Juliers, Cleves, and Bremen. Later, in 1614, it gained the electoral house of _Qf the Brandenburg, to which in our time has Reformed come the German Empire.

The head of the estates of the Reformed Church in Germany was Frederick III, Elector Palatine (15591576). He was a man of pure life, mild in _{FredeHck In>} his bearing, with a heart of sympathy and Elector a hand of help for the oppressed of his faith ^PaIat,n0, in France and the Netherlands, and who stood by them unshaken in Germany against the Roman Catholic reaction. In 1563, at Heidelberg, was framed the famous Catechism of that name, which is the standard of doctrine among the German Reformed Churches.

His successor, Louis IV (1576-1583), was a strict Lutheran. As Frederick had driven out the Lutheran preachers, so Louis drove out the Reformed,    ^

banishing five hundred pastors and teach-    *

ers. After Louis’s death, John Casimir, who had served two campaigns in aid of the Huguenots, seized the guardianship of Louis’s son, and held it until his own death in 1592. Frederick IV (1592-1610) proved true to the Reformed faith of his grandfather and of his people.

Christian I (1586-1591) of Saxony was related to John Casimir by marriage, and was inclined to reach over the strict bonds of Lutheranism and extend a hand of fellowship to his fellow Evangelical believers, but his early death made vain his purpose. It was to the ranks of the German Reformation so weakened

500

The Christian Church.

and divided that the Counter Reformation began to present a united and aggressive front.

The cause of the Counter Reformation had been powerfully helped by the Council of Trent and the activity of the Jesuits. The Catechism of

The Advance . .    .    .

of the Camsius was important for this work. But Counter Ref- there seemed no real gain in the empire

ormation.    .    ■^L

until 1566. Bavaria, perhaps, should be excepted, as Duke Albert, from 1558, compelled first the clergy, and then the civil officers, and finally his subjects, to submit to the Roman Catholic faith or to go into exile. At the date above indicated the papal legate Commendone succeeded in forming a union of the Duke of Bavaria, the Duke of Brunswick, and the three Ecclesiastical Electors of Mainz, Cologne, and Treves to act together for the furtherance of the interests of the Roman Catholic Church in the empire.

At the death of Maximilian II the example of Bavaria had been followed by the Abbot of Fulda and the Elector of Mainz. It was now seen that the right of the ruler to compel his subjects to accept his faith could work powerfully to the advantage of the Roman Catholic party.

Rudolph II was a pupil of the Jesuits, and trained at the court of Spain. He was adverse to business, given to his collection of things curious ^576-1*610.* ^anc^ precious, and addicted to coarse excesses. As emperor he loved the absolute power he had not sense to wield, and was fully determined to make the Roman Catholic faith prevail throughout his dominions. If the Jesuit education turned out able as well as zealous rulers in Maximilian of Bavaria and Ferdinand II, they headed a long list

The Genevan Reform.

501

of failures in royal and princely houses with the Emperors Rudolph and Matthias and their relative, Philip III of Spain.

Gebhard Truchses was made Archbishop of Cologne in 1577, and confirmed by the Pope three years later. At Christmas, 1582, he announced

Gebhard

his adhesion to the Evangelical faith. Truchses, Doubtless he was influenced to this step Elector of

Cologne.

by his relations with the Canoness Agnes of Mansfield, whom he married February 2, 1583. The emperor, the Pope, and the King of Spain busied themselves to save the archbishopric from the fate of those in Northern Germany. Finally Gebhard was pronounced deposed, and the Chapter was persuaded to elect Ernest, brother of the Duke of Bavaria. The papal candidate was now twenty-nine years old. At the age of twelve he had been made canon of the cathedrals of Salzburg, Wurzburg, Cologne, and Treves. The year previous, at eleven, he had been made administrator of the Bishopric of Freising. At the age of eighteen he had been made Bishop of Hildesheim and later of Liege; now he was to be chosen and consecrated Archbishop of Cologne. This eminent pluralist had more women than spiritual dignities; but as he was wise enough not to marry any of them, it did not hinder his promotion. The papal nuncio said, “ He is a great sinner, but we must cut the coat to fit the body.”

Gebhard had strong support in the estates of the archbishopric, an active minority everywhere, and was in possession. If he had had the hearty support of the Protestant interest in Germany, the Archbishopric of Cologne would have followed that of Bremen. From

502

The Christian Church.

all accounts, Gebhard was both morally and intellectually better fitted for the office than his successful rival; for Gebhard was driven from his See and forced to take refuge in the Netherlands in 1584.

THE REFORMATION IN POLAND, HUNGARY, AND TRANSYLVANIA.

The German Reformation made itself felt in Poland as early as 1523 ; but it was met with stern prohibitions against reading heretical books or attending

Poland.    . . .    .

Evangelical universities. Yet these prohibitions remained largely a dead letter, and many students found their way to Wittenberg, Strasburg, Zurich, and Geneva. The opinions of Calvin gained the preponderance with the Poles, while the citizens of the towns, largely of German descent, held with Luther. Sigismund I (1506-1548) was a firm Roman Catholic, and did what he could to hinder the Reformation, though it made rapid progress in the latter part of his reign. His successor, Sigismund II (15481572), married a Radziwill, who corresponded with Melanchthon and Calvin. He gave the Reformation free hand, especially in the earlier part of his reign. In 1555 the Diet gave to every noble the right to hold religious service in his own house in the manner he should deem fit, and different cities, as Dantzic, Elb-ing, etc., obtained free exercise of religion. The reign of these princes was the height of the power and prosperity of Poland. In his later years, Sigismund II went over decisively to the Roman Catholic faith, and his successor, Sigismund III (1572-1632), a pupil of the Jesuits, was a strict adherent of the Church of Rome. The Jesuits entered Poland in 1564; they

The Genevan Reform.

503

brought the king to determine to advance no one to any office, ecclesiastical or civil, in the kingdom who did not adhere to the Roman Catholic Church. This caused the apostasy of many of the Protestant nobles. The Consensus of Sendomir, 1570, united the Lutheran and the Reformed until 1645. The country after the Thirty Years’ War became overwhelmingly Roman Catholic.

The new opinions early penetrated to Hungary.

There was persecution, 1523-1525. The

death of Louis II on the fatal field of ^Hung:ary’

Mohacz resulted in a division of the kingdom. Bast

Hungary formed with Transylvania a do. . - _T    , , „    .    Transylvania.

minion for John Zapolya (1526-1540). German Transylvania became preponderantly Evangelical by 1547-

Evangelical preaching and conversion made rapid progress in Hungary, 1531-1549, largely through Mathias Biro DeVay, the chief Reformer among his people. He was first a zealous ^^dJ“g_a*_yⁱⁿ Lutheran, and then an adherent of Calvin.

His friend, John Sylvester, translated the New Testament in the Magyar language, 1574. The division between the Lutherans and the Calvinists prevented the fulfillment of the prospect of the land becoming speedily Evangelical.

In Sweden, on the death of Gustavus Vasa, his son, Eric XIV (1560-1568), succeeded him. This prince was one of the most cultivated of his time, and was personally inclined to the Reformed faith, but his violence and insanity led to his dethronement. John III (1568-1592), through the influence of his wife Catherine, a sister

504    The Christian Church.

of Sigismund II of Poland, did all he could to restore the Roman Catholic religion. In 1576 two Jesuits came into the country. The Catechism of Canisius took the place of Luther’s. The Liturgy enjoined was almost entirely in accord with the Roman Catholic Missal. Invocation of the saints and prayers for the dead were allowed by the primate of the Swedish Church. Upon John’s second marriage, 1585, the influence of the Roman Catholics came to an end, and the Jesuits were banished.

Sigismund III of Poland became King of Sweden (1592-1600). He was, of course, an ardent Roman Catholic, and great were the hopes cherished at Rome on account of his accession. But at the Council ot Upsala, 1593, the Confession of Augsburg was accepted with an Evangelical ritual. The new Archbishop of Upsala, Angermannus, was a prelate of great energy and ability. He made Sweden from that time strongly Lutheran. The king’s Roman Catholic proclivities resulted in his uncle Charles governing Sweden as regent from 1593. In 1598 Sigismund made an attempt to regain his authority, but was utterly defeated at the battle of Stangebro, and in 1600 was declared deposed. The crown of Sweden was given to the former regent, now Charles IX (16001611). Under him the whole country became thoroughly Evangelical.

%rl Frwrilr.

THE FADING WAR AND THE TRUCE.

505

THE FADING WAR AND THE TRUCE.

The generation following the death of Luther had done its work and passed from the scene. The Reformation had found political as well as

Character*    .    _ _

istics of religious leaders. The Counter Reforma-

the Former _tj_on    p_Ut f_orth all its strength. The

Period.    . ^r . , ,    . , . „

opposing parties had met in their first great conflict. The progress of the struggle has been traced in the preceding part. Among its results we mark the banishment of the Evangelical opinions and believers from Italy, Spain, and Bavaria; the emergence of three great nations, England, Scotland, and the Netherlands, devoted to the Evangelical faith; with them we see stand Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. These six nations had stood, and would stand unshaken and unchanged against the banded might of Roman Catholic Europe. In France the Reformed had secured toleration far more complete than that accorded in Germany by the Religious Peace. The most marked feature of the strife was the failure of Philip II and his plans for the conquest of the Netherlands and the subjugation of England. The great Roman Catholic power was weakened beyond recovery. These influences reached over into the new generation, and only in it was there a clear perception of these results. This, therefore, is the period of the Fading War and of the Truce.

507

5°8

The Christian Church.

The salient feature of the new period is the commanding position marked out for France by Henry IV, which his death prevented her assuming:,

Character* , , . ,    .    , . ,

istics of the and which was given to her m the genera-New Period, tj_on following by the policy of Richelieu

IS88-l6l8.    , ,    ,

and the arms of Conde. In England there was the preparation of the Puritans and royalists for the inevitable conflict; for the religious differences were developing into political action. In Germany both parties were slowly drifting into the Thirty Years’ War; the refusal of toleration could lead to no other conclusion. The most striking features in the religious world were the rise of Arminianism in Holland, and the revivification of Roman Catholicism in France by such men as St. Francis de Sales and St. Vincent de Paul.

The Spanish party triumphed in the Conclave which followed the death of Sixtus V; Cardinal Giovanni Battista Castagna was chosen Pope,

The Papacy.    *

and took the title of Urban VII. Unfortunately for his patrons he lived but twelve days. In the succeeding Conclave they were as active as in the first, for they felt that the cause of Spain and of the League in France was in the scale. The choice now fell upon Cardinal Nicola Sfondrato, who assumed the name of Gregory XIV. He zealously furthered the plans of Spain and of the League, raising troops and sending money into France. His pontificate, however, was short, as he survived his elevation but ten months and ten days. Once more the Spanish candidate triumphed in the Conclave. Cardinal Giovanni Antonio Facchinetto was elected and consecrated as

The Fading War and the Truce. 509

Innocent IX; but after two months there was another papal funeral and another Conclave.

Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandino had been rejected by the King of Spain the previous year. In this Conclave it became apparent that none of the five candidates of Philip II could be elected. The King of Spain was under such obligations to Cardinal Montalto, nephew of Sixtus V, that he could not reject his friend and candidate. Thus Cardinal Aldobrandino took the tiara as Clement VIII.

The new Pope, the founder of the great papal house of Aldobrandini, was no ordinary man. His father was a Florentine lawyer exiled for his resistance to the return of the Medici in 1531. Yet in exile he so educated his five sons that every one of them came to distinction. The new Pope was a man of unblemished morals, of exemplary religious life, of large experience and indefatigable assiduity in affairs. A contemporary describes him as “of phlegmatic and sanguine complexion, but withal somewhat choleric; fat and large in person; of grave and retired habits and mild, affable manner; slow in movement, circumspect in action, deliberate in execution, tenacious of secrets, profound in designs, and diligent in carrying them to their end.”

The great contest between Henry IV and the League demanded the attention of the new Pope. Henry’s army was successful, and Parma, _{The A5soIu}. his only superior as a general, was dead, tion of Henry had abjured his Evangelical faith, ^{Henry IV}* July 25, 1593, and was received into the Roman Catb-

5io    The Christian Church.

olic Church subject to the Pope’s approval and absolution. The Pope refused publicly to receive Henry’s ambassadors, and yet secretly received the agents of the French king and allowed him to hope for a different result. Henry had once before professed the Roman Catholic faith after the awful St. Bartholomew night, and then went back to the leadership of the Huguenot army. The Spanish party declared that even the Pope could not forgive a relapsed heretic. But the Pope encouraged Henry’s advances, and, after he had written a most humiliating letter, the Pope pronounced him absolved, December i, 1595.

The second great achievement of his pontificate, and one worthy of the man and his position, was the initiation of the negotiations of the Peace of Vervins between France and Spain. In the commotions in the Jesuit order he held himself as an impartial judge. In the great theological discussion between the Jesuits and the Dominicans on predestination and free-will, he inclined to the Dominicans, who followed Augustine, rather than to the freer views of Molina; but he did not dare to decide. He had the good fortune to see the extinction of the direct line of the house of Este, and to be able to make the Duchy of Ferrara a part of the Papal States. But with this change the prosperity and glory of the birthplace of Savonarola and of the city of the court and prison of Tasso passed away forever.

Henry IV, the founder of the Bourbon line of the kings of France, was now thirty-five years of age, and twenty years of his life had been spent

France. .    ...

Henry iv. m camps. Henry was of medium stature, ««««*, light and sinewy in build. His face was

* bronzed with exposure and his beard prematurely gray. His eyes were small and blue. The

The Fading War and the Truce. 511

expression was mirthful, yet of command. The nose was long like a hawk’s beak, and almost reached the chin; beneath it was a mustache, and above it an arching brow.

Henry IV was the only man among the kings of Europe of his time, and a man of distinction at any time. He had genius for large plans, and knew how to use the means at hand to realize them. As a general he was second to none in experience or courage, and to Parma only in the art of war. As a statesman he was unrivaled among contemporary sovereigns. His was the shrewdest wit among the kings of the sixteenth century. He was ever good-humored and the least vindictive of men. But in this portrait there were shadows. Henry was without principle, either religious or moral. No tie of friendship ever bound him to a man, or of love to a woman. In licentiousness he knew no restraint. To speak of the religion, Reformed or Roman Catholic, of a man who debauched a girl of less than fourteen j^ears, and who allowed another mistress, mother of his child, to die for lack of bread in sight of his palace gates, is a contradiction in terms. No sins bring a harvest more sure and abundant than those of sensuality, and of this Henry IV was a striking example. Without a home and dishonored in his own house, his wife and mistresses plotting against him, isolated and without a friend, this man of genius and of great achievements, to whom France owed the restoration of her prosperity and power, was trusted by none, except where men perceived his interest led him. Just before his death he was about to embark in a war which should make him arbiter of Europe, and which might have brought toleration abroad as at home, and thus saved the

5i2    The Christian Church.

Continent from the Thirty Years’ War, and yet those who most admired him and wished him largest success could not conceal from themselves that one main cause of the war was that the daughter of Philip II and her husband had sheltered from his adulterous intrigues the young and beautiful wife of his kinsman, the mother of the great Prince Conde.

Two days after the death of the last of the Valois, Henry IV issued the carefully-worded and statesman-The Fight ^e Declaration of St. Cloud, in which he with the laid down the lines of his domestic policy. League. j_n succeeding month he met the enemy at Arques, and in a series of conflicts was victorious. March 14, 1590, Henry, at the head of eight thousand foot and two thousand two hundred horse, met at Ivry the forces of the League, twelve thousand foot and four thousand horse, under Mayenne, brother of Henry of Guise. The battle was over in an hour. The League lost twelve thousand killed, wounded, and missing. The king should at once have pushed on and taken Paris, but he was dissuaded from realizing the fruits of his greatest victory. The month of May, 1590, Henry began the siege of Paris; there was neither money nor generalship on the side of the League. Philip of Spain furnished money, and when the fanaticism of the priests and populace could no longer save Paris, he sent Parma to rescue the imperiled League. Henry marched to meet him, August 30, 1590. Parma outgeneraled him, and Paris was relieved. After some successes, Henry issued, in July, 1591, the Declaration of Mantes, abolishing the bloody edicts of 1585 and 1588, and restoring that of Poitiers and the Peace of Bergerac.

The Fading War and the Truce. 513

Meanwhile the government of the League at Paris went from bad to worse. The Council of Sixteen murdered Brisson, the president of the Parliament of Paris, November 14, 1591.

Mayenne at length aroused himself, and,

December 4, 1591, hanged the murderers. From that time the Paris mob no longer ruled. On November 11, 1591, Henry began the siege of Rouen. Again Parma appeared on the scene. In April, Henry raised the siege; he thought he had surrounded Parma, but that unrivaled strategist slipped through his fingers, having saved Rouen. It was Parma’s last victory; in December he was dead. In the same month was killed Marshal Biron, to whose treacherous advice was said to be due the loss of Paris and Rouen, as much as to the skill of Parma.

Henry had been unsuccessful in his sieges; Philip II kept his enemies supplied with the sinews of war. In this emergency Henry judged the time to have arrived when, by the judicious change Henry iv of his religious party, he could win a kingdom without further effusion of blood. Twenty years before, to save his life, for four years he had conformed to the Mass. In the years since, he had always said to the Roman Catholic bishops and the Pope that he was not obstinate and that he was willing to be instructed. Conferences with this end in view were held at Su-resnes, in April and May, 1593. Henry’s instruction ended July 23d, and two days later, in the midst of a great throng in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, he abjured* his ancestral faith and was readmitted to the Church of Rome, subject to the Pope’s absolution, which came two years later. That in all this there

33

514    The Christian Church.

was any intellectual or moral change none believed, least of all Queen Elizabeth, who wrote him a letter which does her honor, and would have made the French King blush if ever he had been capable of blushing. In December, 1594, Jean Chastel attempted the king’s life. He had been a pupil of the Jesuits, who had publicly advocated the assassination of heretic rulers. The consequence was that the Jesuits were banished from France within fourteen days, and did not return until September, 1603.

Previous to this attempt, Henry had, in fact, won France. In January, 1594, Meaux had submitted to his authority, Lyons and Orleans in Febru-

^ELeague^{he anC}* ^{011 t}^^{ie 2} 7**^{1    mont}^ ^waS

crowned at Chatres, Rheims being not yet

in his power. March 22d he entered Paris. The same

year the leaders of the League sold their submission

for large bribes. Mayenne received 3,500,000 livres,

and the total purchase money for the leaders of the

Roman Catholic aristocracy of France was 32,000,000

livres.

Henry declared war against Spain, June 17, 1595. This was his first opportunity to resent Philip’s intrusion into the internal affairs of France, and Nantes* ^is ^e®°^{rt to} absorb or divide his kingdom. Spain took Amiens in March, 1597. It was a terrible blow to the king. He was made to feel that he owed something to his Huguenot friends as well as to his Roman Catholic enemies. He won again their support, and Amiens was retaken in September. The famous Edict of Nantes was signed April 13, 1598. It made the Reformed and the Roman Catholic equal before the law, and equally eligible to honors in the

The Fading War and the Truce. 515

State. In the exercise of its right the Reformed religion was protected with a strong guaranty of fortresses, including La Rochelle. The religious wars in France were ended.

The Peace of Vervins between France and Spain was signed Ma}^r 2, 1598. By this peace, France, after forty years of weakness and war, came back to her possessions, including Calais, of 1559. This was justly regarded as a great victory for Henry IV. By his sagacity and toleration his people were enriched, while by the opposite policy, Spain, absorbing the wealth of the Indies, was steadily impoverished. France now struck for the leadership of Europe.

The war for the overthrow and extermination of all adherents of the Evangelical faith passed its crisis and made certain its issue at the defeat of the Spanish Armada. This was not imme- _NetheJiands. diately clear to either side. Philip, least of all, relaxed his efforts. Opposed to the revolted provinces was the ablest general who had ever served him. For ten years with greater success than any other governor he had held together the Walloon provinces, and checked the power of the United Netherlands and their allies. Philip had now embraced in his plans the neighboring kingdom of France, endeavoring to arrange that its crown should devolve upon a daughter of his house, who should marry a French nobleman, and so form a new royal line. In this effort he spent more to subsidize the League than to aid Parma to add to his conquests.

Thus all of Parma’s plans for campaigns in the Netherlands were broken through, and the last victories of his career were gained on French soil over

The Christian Church.

Henry IV. Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, died at Arras, December 3, 1592. The genius, the persistence, the unfailing skill, and the unswerving loyalty of Parma must ever command our admiration. The dark shade upon his character is, that he was as perfidious and treacherous in negotiation, in intrigue, and assassination as his uncle Philip himself. Fourteen years in the Netherlands showed him to be the ablest descendant of Charles V.

But already a rival was appearing on the scene. Maurice of Orange, at the age of twenty-four, in 1591, began his victorious career. He had been ofOrailze ^a h^ard student of the mathematics of war.

He was the author of the new system of paid and disciplined soldiers, who worked as well with the spade as they fought with the musket. The siege and defense of strong places was decided by as obvious and confident moves as on a chess-board, and without risking a battle. Maurice fought but two battles, and in the two in which he commanded in person he was victorious; but he had won great successes before he won his first battle. In May, 1591, he took Zutphen; in June, Deventer; in September, Hulst; and in October, Nymwegen. The next year he took Steenwyk and the great post of Coevorden. In June, 1593, he took Gertruydenberg, and in July, 1594, Groningen. A glance at the map will show how these investments and captures cleared the Spaniards from the revolted provinces. To this able generalship was joined the sagacious and successful diplomacy of Olden Barneveldt, the best politician and statesman in Europe. These men, who were afterwards parted in deadly enmity, brought fame and prosperity to their country.

The Fading War and the Truce. 517

Fuentes succeeded Parma. The Archduke Ernest, son of Maximilian II, was appointed governor in January, 1594, but in thirteen months he was

, ' Z?    , , . , „ ,    Fuentes.

dead. Fuentes had retained all real power, and proved himself an able coadjutor with Philip in the art of assassination. In this year, 1594, they set on foot one plot to poison Queen Elizabeth and two to kill Maurice. The only result was the execution of their tools.

Finally, Philip made a change in his course. He decided that the Cardinal Archduke Albert, brother of Ernest, should marry his daughter, the

-r r , _T 1 ,,    , , i    , The Cardinal

Infanta Isabella, and rule the Netherlands. Archduke Albert seems to have had more ability than Albert, any other of the six sons of Maximilian II.    *

A simple priest of the Roman Catholic Church may not marry; but here is a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church who does; a papal dispensation made all right. Albert arrived in Brussels in February, 1596; January 24, 1597, Maurice completely defeated him at Turn-hout, but the archduke covered his retreat. He was married in 1598, Philip II having previously made over the Netherlands in right and title to his daughter. Maurice again thoroughly defeated Archduke Albert at Nieuport, July 1, 1600.

Philip II died at the gloomy palace of the Escu-rial, which he had reared, Sunday, September 13, 1598. Philip was narrow, despotic, and cruel. In his designs and their execution he was per-    ®^f

fidious and utterly without scruple. In his personal conduct he was not immoral according to the standard of his time, and was kind to those of his household and punctual in all religious observances. His great delight was an auto-da-fe, or public burning

518    The Christian Church.

of heretics. On his hands was more Christian blood than on those of any other prince who had reigned since Diocletian; yea, that had ever lived. It seems not strange, therefore, that weeks before his death he was eaten of worms. His sole excuse is the worst condemnation of his Church; he was only faithful to her teachings in which he had been reared.

The last of these martyrdoms in the Netherlands was the worst, because the passion which might have excused, or at least rendered less inhuman, de^Hov". ^such ^an outrage was dead, and in its place was deliberate cruelty. Anna van den Hove was the maidservant of two unmarried ladies who lived on the rampart of Antwerp. They had been adherents of the Evangelical faith, and had been thrown into prison. They had renounced their former belief, and now went to mass; but Anna, at this time forty years of age, adhered to the Reformed faith in which she had been reared. The Jesuits denounced her, and claimed her condemnation and execution under the edicts of 1540, which every one supposed were obsolete.

Anna was sentenced and brought to Brussels in 1597, and told that she was to be buried alive, but by turning to the Roman Catholic faith should be freed. But the servant-maid asked her persecutor how they could expect her to abandon her religion for fear of death. She had read her Bible every day, she said, and had found nothing there of the Pope or purgatory, masses, invocation of the saints, or the absolution of sins, except through the blood of the blessed Redeemer. She interfered with no one who thought differently; she quarreled with no one’s religious be

The Fading IVar and the Truce. 519

lief. She had prayed for enlightenment from Him, if she were in error, and the result was that she felt strengthened in her simplicity, and resolved to do nothing against her conscience. So she was led into a hayfield outside of Brussels between two Jesuits, followed by a number of monks, called love-brothers. When they came to the hayfield they found the pit already dug, and the maidservant was ordered into it. She was then covered with earth to the waist, and a last summons was made to have her renounce her faith. She refused; the earth was piled upon her, and the executioner jumped upon the grave until it was flattened and firm. That was the last martyrdom for the Evangelical faith, and, to make it the last, Coligni and Orange, and their noble brothers, and the thousands to fame unknown, had not died in vain. Few fires like those which lighted up the whole course of the sixteenth century will gleam across the path of the one which followed.

ENGLAND FROM THE DEFEAT OF THE ARMADA UNTIL THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH.

Elizabeth, Queen of England, was now at the height of her power and fame. A foreign observer thus describes her at this time : “ Her gar- _Persona, _Ap. ments were of satin and velvet, with fringes pearanceof of pearls as big as berries. A small gold ^E,izabeth* crown was upon her head, and her red hair, through its multiplicity of curls, blazed with diamonds and emeralds. Her forehead was high, her face long, her complexion fair, her nose high and hooked, her lips thin, her teeth black, her bosom white and liberally exposed. Her hand was esteemed a wonder of beauty.”

520

The Christian Church.

Her stature was tall, and her figure slender and erect. In all her movements there was the serene and majestic air of command.

The source of the popularity of Elizabeth was her identifying herself with her people. They seemed in Elizabeth and ^^er thought and love to take the place the English of children, and, with all her vanity and People. caprice, she consistently sought the greatness and weal of her people. This is her enduring title to fame. This trait appears clearly in her charge to her Council and judges given early in her reign, and coming down to us from one who heard it: “ Have a care over my people. You have my place. Do you that which I ought to do. They are my people. Every man oppresseth them and spoileth them without mercy. They can not revenge their quarrel nor help themselves. See unto them, see unto them; for they are my charge. I charge you, even as God hath charged me. I care not for myself; my life is not dear to me; my care is for my people. I pray God whoever succeed me be as careful as I am. They which might know what cares I bear would not think

I took any great joy in wearing the crown.”

How she carried heart and hope to those fighting England’s battles in foreign lands, a clause written in

her own hand will show - a clause in a letter

Her Courage.    .

to Sir Edward Norris, commanding the English troops in the Netherlands in 1594. It will be remembered that England’s name had been tarnished by the treacherous surrender of strong places to the King of Spain—places committed to English officers by the States of the Netherlands. Is not this a royal

The Fading War and the Truce. 521

heart which says: “Ned, though you have some tainted sheep among your flock, let not that serve for excuse for the rest. I trust you are so carefully regarded as nought shall be left for your excuses, but either ye lack heart or ye lack will; for fear we will not make mention, as that our soul abhors, and we assure ourselves you will never discern suspicion of it. Now or never let, for the honor of us and our nation, each man be of so much of bolder heart as their cause is good, and their honor must be according, remembering the old goodness of our God, who never yet made us fail his needful help, who ever bless you, as I, with my prince’s hand, beseech him.”

Bacon had failed from her council board in 1579. Walsingham was to pass away in 1590, and Sir Chris-Changesin topher Hatton the next year. Was it in Her Council. p_{art to} absence of these able men that the bishops ventured upon a severe and disgraceful persecution of the Puritans?

Other causes doubtless gave the incitement to this course. For one thing Puritanism suffered a great change. Cartwright and Travers and their Independents. P^arty believed in a State Church as rigidly as the bishops of Elizabeth’s realm. They abhorred any separation from the Church as by law established; only they sought to make the Church Presbyterian, or, as they said, Scriptural, instead of Episcopalian in its government. There now arose a class of teachers who went much further. The first to propose the opinions upon which rest the Independent, or Congregationalism and later Baptist, Churches was Robert Browne.

522

The Christian Church.

Browne was born in Rutland of a good family, and was related to Lord Burleigh. In 1572 he was grad-Robert ^uate^ ^at Cambridge, and began at once to Browne, preach in that section. He pronounced <550-1633. _ag_a}_nst- _au ecclesiastical government and ministerial ordination or authority. His first Church he founded in St. Edmondsbury in 1581, and in the fall of that year he and his Church emigrated to Mid-dleburg, Holland. There Browne turned his voice and pen against Cartwright, who was pastor of the English congregation. Browne’s books were sold in England; two men were hanged for printing them. After two years, Browne’s Middleburg Church broke up, and he was in Scotland for a year. In 1584 he returned to England, and was in prison for some months. He was at Stamford, 1584-1586. His hand was against every man. He boasted that he had been in thirty-two prisons, in some of which he could not see his hand at noonday.

The bishop, in 1586, formally excommunicated him for contempt. This seemed to have marked a turn in his career. He conformed to the Established Church, and for the next five years was master of the Stamford grammar school. In 1591 he was appointed rector of a Church in Northampton, which he held for forty-two years until his death. In 1633 he struck a constable who asked him for taxes overdue. He was taken to jail and died there. Browne was faithful in his parish duties, and preached frequently and earnestly to the people; but all his life he was fanatical, quarrelsome, stubborn, and passionate.

Though Browne deserted the principles he was the first to proclaim, others arose to share and defend

The Fading War and the Truce. 523

them. The chief of them were these: (a) That every congregation gathered in the name of Christ, worshiping him aright, and covenanting with _{PrincIpIeg of} him and with one another to observe theinde-his commandments, constitutes a distinct ^pendent8-Church, or Christian body politic, (b) That every Church has a right to regulate its own religious affairs, to elect, inaugurate, and depose its own functionaries, to arrange its own mode of public worship and administer the sacraments, to preserve its own peace and purity by discipline and excommunication, and that, in the exercise of these several rights, each member has an equal voice, responsible throughout to the great Head of the Church alone, (c) They believe that the relation of the different Churches is that of sisterhood only; a relation involving the privilege of intercommunion, the obligation to help one another, the right to seek and render counsel, to admonish, and, for disorder or corrupt doctrine, to withdraw fellowship; but not the right in any case to exercise authority or jurisdiction, (d) That no authority is found in Scripture, or in the usage of primitive Churches, for forms of public prayer; that, therefore, it is high presumption to impose them upon the Church; and that, whether enjoined or not enjoined by men, they are unfit for the spiritual temple of God, where the offerings are spiritual, and where God hath given graces unto his servants of the ministry, so that the Church may use them as the mouth of the Lord.

The officers recognized in this Church were pastor, teacher, elder, deacon, and for a little time the widows. The authority of the pastor was from the congrega

524    The Christian Church.

tion, and from them was his ordination, which gave no indelible character. They held tenaciously to these teachings as the only true Scriptural foundation for a Church, and shunned as corrupt the ministry and ordinances of the parish Churches of England. Equal to their zeal was their bitterness toward other Christians.

In October, 1588, appeared the first of the Martin Mar-Prelate Tracts. They abounded in a coarse hu-The Martin ^mor> descending ^at times to ribaldry, and Mar=Preiate in unwelcome truths about the lives and Tracts, persecutions of the bishops. In their treatment of these prelates they were scurrilous in the extreme. A sentence will show their style: “I say that, by your own confession, you are bishops of the devil. I will prove it thus. You confess that your lordly government, . . . your offices were unlawful in our Commonwealth, if Her Majesty, the Parliament, and Council would have them abolished. If you grant this, then you do not hold your offices from God, but as from man; your writers say that you do not hold them from man, therefore, by your own confession, you hold them from the devil.” The press on which these tracts were printed was seized in August, 1589. The violence and scurrility of these tracts were disowned by the leading Puritans, yet it no doubt reacted against the party. The tenet which the Presbyterians and Independents held in common was the unscriptural, and hence unlawful, nature of the office and government of the bishops.

John Penry, the chief author of these tracts, was a Welshman, who took his B. A. from Cambridge in

The Fading War and the Truce. 525

1584, and his M. A. from Oxford two years later. He escaped to Scotland in 1590, but returned to England in 1592. He was earnest, wild, Penry. and fanatical. Penry was arrested at '559-'593. Ratcliff in March, 1593, and was hanged the 29th of the following May.

John Udall was a much abler man. He took his degree from Trinity, Cambridge, in 1584. Before his graduation he had been ordained. He was an eloquent preacher, and published four volumes of sermons within two years of leaving Cambridge. Udall was summoned before the Court of the High Commission in 1586, but was restored to the ministry through the intercession of the Countess of Warwick. In April, 1588, he published a “Dialogue on the State of the Church of England.” He had no connection with the Martin Mar-Prelate Tracts except conversation with Penry. His point of view is seen in the title to a work which he published in November, 1588: “A Demonstration of the Truth of that Discipline which Christ hath prescribed in his Word for the Government of his Church in all Times and Places until the End of the World.” Udall was the author of a Hebrew grammar in English. When James I came to the throne, he inquired for Udall. When told that he was dead he said, “By my soul, then, the greatest scholar in Europe is dead.” In December, 1588, Udall was summoned to London. He was examined before the Council January-July, 1590. He declined the aid of counsel, but was tried, and sentenced to death for seditious libel, February, 1591. The whole proceedings were a thorough perversion of justice. Sir Walter Raleigh, against the bishops, pro

526    The Christian Church.

cured his pardon from the queen in June, 1592; but before the end of the month he died of his cruel and illegal usage.

John Greenwood was a Cambridge man, graduating in 1581, and soon after he was ordained. In 1586 he was illegally arrested and treated with inso-^Gre_i^e^®^od’ lent severity in his examination. In May, 1587, he was released, rearrested in August, and again released. July 20, 1588, he was again arrested, and was in prison over four years, but was released in 1592. In September, 1592, there was organized at the house of one Fox, in Nicholas Lane, London, the first Congregational Church. From that time this form of Church polity traces an unbroken existence. Francis Johnson was chosen minister, and Greenwood teacher. Greenwood and Johnson were arrested December 5, 1592. Greenwood was indicted for the publication of seditious books in March, 1593, and hanged at Tyburn the 6th of April. Francis Johnson was released in June, 1594, but only for perpetual banishment.

Henry Barrow was a Cambridge man, graduating in 1570. He was the ablest of this group of early Independents, or Congregationalists. In Barrow, g k_{e en}t_ere(j Gray’s Inn, and as a bar-

1593*    .

rister led a wild and dissolute life until, in 1584, while listening to a Puritan sermon, he was thoroughly converted. For some years he associated with the Independents, and November 19, 1586, while visiting Greenwood in prison, without warrant or show of cause, he was arrested and thrown into prison. Released on bail in May, 1587, he was again arrested in August, but released only to be recommitted to

The Fading War and the Truce. 527

prison July 20, 1588. From his prison he contrived to publish an account of the bishops’ examination of Penry, Greenwood, and himself. This statement of facts was the severest possible condemnation of the bishops whose injustice and cruelty it revealed. Barrow had been more than four years in jail without trial, but now, on the appearance of this publication, he was tried for seditious libel, and sentenced to death, March, 1593. He and Greenwood prepared for execution March 24th and were taken to Tyburn six days later, only to be reprieved, but April 6, 1593, were hanged. Seldom has there been a more glaring perversion of justice. Fifty years later the Episcopal order in England reaped the harvest of the seed then sown.

While the shepherds suffered, the sheep were not spared. Before 1590 eighty of the Independents had been arrested. In January, 1593, sixty p_erMCU„_{on ol} were in prison, and within two months the Puritan*, seventeen had died of the awful jail fever.

In March fifty-six were added to their number. Nor did the persecution spare the Puritans who refused to separate from the State Church. Daniel Wright and Thomas Cartwright were imprisoned in 1590. Three years later Cartwright was released. From 1585 to 1590 he had been master of Warwick Hospital. On his release he was given the same position, which he held until his death in 1603. Cartwright died wealthy and on friendly terms with his old adversary, Whitgift. In 1593, Peter Wentworth and three other members of the House of Commons were sent to the Tower for insisting upon the right to debate motions before passing them. They remained in the Tower until the dissolution of Parliament. In June of this

528

The Christian Church.

year the queen ordered the release of all prisoners in all ecclesiastical causes, and no more Separatists suffered death during her reign.

But the persecution did not cease. Parliament passed an Act to retain subjects in obedience in 1593. It provided that any subject over sixteen refusing to attend church, to hear divine service, or to receive communion, or who should be present at any unlawful conventicle under color of any exercise of religion, should be imprisoned until he should conform; but if he refused for three months, or refused to depart, or if he should return, he should suffer death as a felon.

The same Parliament exacted that all papists, recusants convict over sixteen years of age, should not depart five miles from their place of residence. These laws were on the statute-books during the remainder of the reign of Elizabeth.

In the literary debate between the Established Church and the Puritans the advantage had rather lain

Richard    ^ latter than with their opponents.

Hooker. This was now changed. Richard Hooker 1553-1600. _{wag a} p_r0|-£g£ ₀f Bishop Jewel’s, taking his M. A. and Fellowship at Oxford in 1577, and being Hebrew lecturer in 1579-1585. At the end of 1584 he married, and was made the rector of Drayton Beauchamp. It is of this place that the familiar story is told of his shrewish wife and his domestic duties. But this continued but a year ; for a former pupil, Sandys, son of the Archbishop of York, arranged that he should be made Master of the Temple, a society of London lawyers, in 1585. This honorable and lucrative position he held until 1591. Walter Travers, a distinguished Puritan and author of the “ Ecclesias

The Fading War and the Truce. 529

tical Discipline,” had been lecturer in the Temple since

1581. Travers and Hooker differed diametrically on the question of Church government. Travers was the better speaker and had the larger audience. Hooker was insignificant in personal appearance and address, but was a profound thinker and such a master of English prose as had not yet been seen and has never been surpassed. The succeeding centuries have not produced his superior in combined weight of reasoning and beauty of expression.

The rivalry was so sharp that Travers was silenced by the Bishop of London in 1586. Travers preached privately, as he would have no Episcopal ordination. From 1595 to 1598 he was provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Returning to England, he lived happily and in comfort, though in obscurity, until his death in 1634.

In 1591 Hooker resigned the mastership of the Temple. This he did that he might devote more time to his great work. For the next four years he was pastor of Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury, and from 1597 until his death rector of Boscombe near Salisbury. In the years 1586-1592 he wrote the first four books of the “ Ecclesiastical Polity; ” Book V directed against the Puritan argument was written in 1597 ; and the last three books were left unfinished at his death. The point of Hooker’s noble and elaborate argument is, that God is in reason and in the nature of things as well as in revelation, and hence what is in accord with these is in accord with his will. For this reason we are not to expect in Scripture the exact prescription for all forms of worship or of Church government.

34

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The Christian Church.

This will be seen to be directly opposed to the position of John Knox, and to that of the Puritans who were followers of Geneva. Modern scholarship has shown that the Scriptures do not teach what the Puritans held in regard to Church government; but Hooker argued if they did, it did not prevent other methods of worship and polity from being acceptable to God. Hooker descended to defend pluralities, and has no word of condemnation for the gross neglect of the religious instruction and care of the people. But in the main his argument is earnest, sober, and convincing. If the practice of the bishops had been equal to Hooker’s argument, the future of the Church of England would have been very different.

The last years of Elizabeth were brilliant with such courtiers as Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh; such poets as Spenser, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, and Elizabeth. *ke ^master °f bards of English speech, William Shakespeare. But the great queen, with her belief in God and in his revealed Word, had no inner assurance of personal salvation, and so of that reality of religion which could give victory over death. Brave and splendid in her courage all her life, she died fearing the last enemy.

GERMANY.

In Germany these years brought little change, except the intensification of the opposition between the Lutherans and the Calvinists and the in-

1588-1600.    .

creasing strength of the Roman Catholic

reaction.

The hatred between the two branches of Evangelical Christendom was intensified by the death of

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Christian I, Elector of Saxony, and the reaction which followed. The regency of the eight-year-old Christian

II (1591-1611) came to his uncle, the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, who determined to restore a strict Lutheranism. Crell, the chancellor and chief agent of the policy of Christian I, was arrested the day of his master’s funeral. He languished in prison nearly three years before the articles of accusation were served upon him. Six years longer he waited in bitter imprisonment while the trial was drawn out, the sentence of death being pronounced in September, 1601, and executed at Dresden the same year. By 1602 the law was carried through that all holding office in Church and State in the Saxon Electorate must take oath to support the Formula of Concord. Thus was Saxony saved from alliance or admixture with Calvinism, and its political interests united more closely than ever with the House of Austria.

The death of John Casimir had other results in the Palatine Electorate. Frederick IV lacked but six weeks of his majorit}' on the death of his uncle. Though narrow in mind and weak in body, and so incapable of governing,

Frederick had fully imbibed the principles of John Casimir, and his Council, strong in able and determined men, made the Electoral Court the center of all plans for resistance to the increasing and systematic aggression of the Roman Catholic reaction.

The work of this reaction began in Germany soon after the accession of Rudolph II, who was a bigoted pupil of the Jesuits and of the Court of Madrid. Bishop Julius of Wurzburg (1573-1617), an able prelate, after 1584, eradicated the Evangelical faith from

532    The Christian Church.

his dominions, giving its adherents the choice of attending mass or of going into exile. One hundred and twenty Lutheran preachers were driven from his territories, and the Jesuits reported sixty-two thousand of the inhabitants converted from the Evangelical to the Roman Catholic Church. The same steps were taken in Paderborn after 1585, and in Munster after 1588; in Salzburg, when the Evangelicals were in the majority, after 1588, by the Archbishop Dietrich Reitenau, and in Bamberg seven years later.

Under Ferdinand, Duke of Styria, afterward Ferdinand II of Germany, this policy was carried through with the utmost rigor, after 1598, in Styria, Carinthia, and Carinola. Maximilian of Bavaria (1595-1651), followed in the footsteps of his father and his cousin. Ferdinand’s policy in Styria was matched by the persecuting policy of Bavaria.

Thus, at the opening of the seventeenth century, Bavaria and the dominions of Ferdinand, the great Archbishopric of Salzburg, with the Bishoprics of Bamberg, Wurzburg, Paderborn, and Munster, had driven out all adherents of the Evangelical faith. Rudolph was eager to do the same in Upper and Lower Austria, in Bohemia and Hungary. But that came only after his death, and after a merciless and exterminating war had humbled Germany for two hundred years.

Clement VIII died March 5, 1605. The next Conclave chose a cardinal named Medici, a near relative The Papacy *ke Q^ueen °f France, to the Papal See.

Paul v Henry IV had spent a large sum to secure 1605-1621. _e]_ectj_{onj an(}j p_U¹_Dlic rejoicings were ordered in France. But the joy was short-lived; the

The Fading War and the Truce. 533

new Pope, who took the name of Leo XI, lived but twenty-six days. The factions of France and Spain, and of the papal nephews and parties of Sixtus V and Clement VIII, strove for mastery in the new Conclave ; but neither could elect a partisan of their own. They, therefore, agreed upon a cardinal who had risen in his calling of papal advocate through all the grades of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. He had given himself entirely to the matters which came before him, and had never meddled in political affairs, and so had made no powerful enemies. Hence all parties could agree on Cardinal Borghese, who was elected, May 16, 1605, and who took the name of Paul V.

As Paul had never sought the tiara, his unexpected election seemed to him the unmistakable choice of the Holy Ghost. His bearing, his countenance, and his tone of voice underwent an immediate and immense change. He at once required the bishops at Rome, even the cardinals, to reside in their dioceses or to resign them. He carried the doctrine of the papal supremacy to its extreme consequences. He declared the duty had been imposed upon him by the Divine Spirit “ of guarding every immunity of the Church and all the prerogatives of God.”

This extreme position and the zeal with which it was held brought Paul V into conflict with Venice. The Pope required the surrender to him of ecclesiastical malefactors and the repeal of two Venetian laws, one of which forbade the alienation of real estate in favor of the clergy, and the other which required the approval of the secular authorities for the erection of a new church. The Venetians refused. April 1, 1606, the Pope excommunicated the doge, the Senate, and

534    The Christian Church.

those concerned in the government of Venice. After a term of twenty-seven days he interdicted all Divine worship in the Venetian territories. To the immense surprise of the Pope, the whole Venetian clergy obeyed the State. The only exception were the Jesuits, the Theatines, and the Capuchins, three new papal orders, who went into exile. This conflict in Venice represented the clash between the two theories of Bellarmine and Paolo Sarpi on the jurisdiction of the papacy, or of the State over the clergy and their property.

Bellarmine claimed that, “ It is for the priest to judge the emperor, not the emperor the priest; it would be absurd for the sheep to pretend to judge the shepherd. Nor must the prince attempt to derive any revenue from ecclesiastical property. The clergyman is exempt from all burdens, whether of person or property; he belongs to the family of Christ.” On the other hand, Paolo Sarpi claimed that the sovereign power is derived immediately from God, and can be subject to no control. “All persons, therefore, both ecclesiastical and secular, are subject to the temporal sovereign by Divine right. Let every soul be subject to the higher powers; and the reason is clear; for as none is exempted from the obedience due to God, so none is exempted from the obedience due to the prince, because, as the apostle says, all power is from God.”

These are irreconcilable principles. Neither party would yield their allegiance to them. An accommodation was patched up in 1607, through the mediation of France and Spain. The two clerical malefactors were delivered to the French ambassador, with

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the express understanding that the right of the Republic to judge her own clergy is not diminished, acknowledged by the ambassador. He delivered them to the papal representative. The obnoxious laws were suspended, and the Venetians received a private absolution, of which they declared there was no need, as they had violated no law. But for their obedience to the Pope the Jesuits were perpetually exiled from Venice. Thus the papacy preserved the appearance, but wholly lost the substance of its pretended power. The papacy received the greatest check to its claims since the days of Luther. Never since has the papacy sought to enforce its claims by means of the interdict. The clerical immunities for which Bellarmine so strenuously contended have been altogether lost in Roman Catholic as well as in Protestant countries.

Into the dispute, which Clement VIII had adjourned, between the Dominicans and the Jesuits on predestination and free-will, Paul entered heartily. He favored the Dominicans, and had held a meeting to decide in what form the Jesuit doctrine should be condemned. But the Pope could not condemn the order banished from Venice for obedience to his commands. August 29,1607, the decision was indefinitely postponed, and has never been resumed in the centuries since. It can hardly be doubted that the teachings of Arminius and the proceedings of the Synod of Dort have had something to do with this result.

The remaining years of his pontificate show that Paul V learned wisdom by two serious checks he received in the early years of his rule. His main efforts were given to the temporal aggrandizement of his

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The Christian Church.

house. They received at least a million of scudi, equal to $1,000,000, which they invested in real estate, and the Borghese became the most wealthy and powerful of the papal families.

The new ruler of Spain, Philip III, had little of the love of business of his predecessor. His favorite,

Spain    Duke of L,erma, ruled the kingdom.

Philip hi. The Spanish Netherlands became the pos-

1598-1621. _sessj_{on 0}f _tk_e house of Austria. The ban-isment in 1609 of the new Christians—that is, the descendants of the Moors and Jews who had professed Christianity under compulsion in the preceding century—was a blow to the wealth and agriculture of the kingdom, from which Spain never recovered. The population fell to five millions, and Spanish decadence became more and more evident. The rule of the Church and absolutism in the State had their perfect work.

Henry IV sought peace at home, the restoration of the prosperity of his people, and the re-establishment of his finances. When the Duke of

France.

Cleves died, 1609, Henry proposed to take effectual steps to check the designs of Austria and Spain. His minister of finance, the Duke of Sully, showed him a reserve fund of 30,000,000 livres ($15,000,000). Henry was overjoyed. He strengthened his alliance with the Netherlands, and placed his army on a war footing. His wife, Marie de’ Medici, whom he married in 1600, he wished to crown as queen before placing himself at the head of the army. It is possible, had his life been spared, he could have so redressed the trembling balance that there would have been no religious war in Germany. He was

The Fading War and the Truce. 537

ready to set out when, the day before leaving for the camp, the fanatic Ravillac sent his knife into the heart of the greatest king France had had since St. Louis, May 14, 1610.

Marie de’ Medici at once assumed power as regent for her eight-year-old son, Louis XIII. She soon reversed the policy of Henry, and made treaty with Spain, cemented by royal marriages. The regent was under the control of an Italian adventurer, Con-cini, whom she made Marshal d’Ancre, and loaded with wealth and favors. She called a session of the States-General, the last before the French Revolution, which sat from October 2, 1614, to March 24, 1615. It accomplished little in the reform of abuses, and resulted in strengthening the royal power. The queen used the treasure accumulated by her husband to safeguard the interests of France, as a corruption fund to secure the obedience of nobility as selfish and grasping as any of the “rings” which have disgraced municipal politics in modern times. Between the death of Henry IV and that of Concini in 1617, the following enormous bribes had been paid: To Concini, 7,000,000 livres; Conde, 3,600,000; Soisson and family, 1,500,000; Conti and wife, 1,400,000; Guise, 1,700,000; Nevers, 1,600,000; Longueville, 1,200,000; Epernon and family, 700,000; Bouillon, 1,000,000; while the pension list had increased 3,000,000 annually. These are the noblest names in France. What is more corrupt than such an aristocracy? In 1617 the young king ordered the assassination of Concini, and his wife suffered death as a sorceress. The queen mother then retired to Blois, while Luines, the royal falconer, became the head of the Administration until his death

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The Christian Church.

in December, 1621. In 1619, Marie de’ Medici escaped, and Richelieu became the prime minister of her wandering court until peace was made with her son, and Richelieu became the real ruler of France.

In the first twenty years of the new century the Roman Catholic Church in France became reformed The Roman *^{n s}P^irlty *ⁿ manners, and in morals. The Catholic Re- full significance of the movement and its

^vival* influence on religious life in Europe will be considered at length in the ensuing volume. Here it will be enough to point out the reforms of the old religious orders and the zeal and success of the new ones. Henry IV recalled the Jesuits, and the Benedictines, Franciscans, and Dominicans were thoroughly reformed in purpose and discipline. The new religious life was marked by the strictness of the new orders of women. Such were the nuns of Calvary, who had ceaseless prayer at the foot of a cross; the barefooted Carmelites of St. Theresa, who were transplanted into France; the Ursuline nuns, who assumed a fourth vow to devote themselves to the instruction of young girls; the order of Visitation, founded by St. Francis de Sales to visit the sick; and the Sisters of Charity, founded by St. Vincent de Paul.

Notable congregations of men were also formed. Such were the order of the Brothers of Christian Doctrine, founded by Jean Baptiste Romillon, a pervert from the Reformed, for elementary instruction in Christianity throughout France. Such were the French Oratorians, founded in imitation of the Oratory of Filippo Neri at Rome, by Pierre Berulle, one of the ablest churchmen of his time.

Men of learning will ever owe a debt of gratitude

• The Fading War and the Truce. 539

to the zeal and erudition of the Benedictine congregation of St. Maur. From Nicholas Hugo Menard they gave themselves to those studies and publications of the sources of Church history from which all succeeding scholars have richly profited. The congregation of Port Royal, distinguished by its extreme devotion and learning, became the most famous in France. John of God, a Portuguese, founded the Brethren of Mercy to attend on the sick in hospitals. But more immediately influential was the Congregation of the Mission, founded by Vincent de Paul as a kind of itinerant evangelists, who worked among the neglected in distant parishes, among the peasantry and the lower classes. Meanwhile this universal movement to win the hearts and minds of all classes to the Roman Catholic Church was made with intelligence, skill, and love. There was no inquisition or dragonnades. The old claims to unquestioning obedience were laid aside. A new spirit was in their teachings. In spite of the record made at Chablais, rarely has the Roman Catholic faith been presented in a more attractive guise than by Francis de Sales and Vincent de Paul. At the same time the harshness and vigor of the Calvinistic teaching, with all its arrogance and intolerance, came out in the crudest relief at the Synod of Dort.

The new spirit of the new time found its chief expression in Francis de Sales and Vincent de Paul. Francis de Sales, titular Bishop of Geneva, _{st Prancls} was the son of parents of noble birth of deSaies. Savoy, named Boissy, and was born at the ^,s67’^,62a* Chateau de Sales, August 21,1567. His father had won reputation both as a soldier and diplomatist, and had high hopes for his eldest son, a child of many prayers.

540

The Christian Church.

Francis studied at Annecy, and afterward at the Jesuit College of Clermont in Paris. The years 1584-1590 were spent in the study of civil and canon law at Padua, and theology with Possevin. He took his degree of Doctor of Laws at the age of twenty-three. His father had a post ready for him in the senate of Savoy; but the choice of Francis was the Church, and, to the great disappointment of his father, he was ordained priest in 1594. Francis was given the place of dean under Garnier, titular Bishop of Geneva. Soon he proved himself a popular preacher of great power. His sermons were simple and brief. He had a poetical imagination and great fertility of illustration; there was rare grace and attractiveness in his manner and his speech. The one end of all his preaching was to diminish wickedness and to increase righteousness.

Such a preacher was thought to be the right man to combat the Calvinism of Chablais and Gex, districts which were devoted to the Reformed faith. Chablais had received it in 1536 while subject to Bern, and when, by the Treaty of Noyon in 1564, it became subject to Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, it was on the condition that there should be no interference with the religion of the inhabitants. This duke kept his pledge; but his son, Charles Emmanuel, who succeeded him in 1580, had other views. Although the Reformed faith had been established there for sixty years, he determined to carry through a thorough conversion to the Roman Catholic Church; if possible, peaceably; if not, by force. The young, richly-endowed, and popular preacher was chosen for this work. His father advised against it, but the devotion of Francis to the Church knew no bounds. For two

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years he was assiduous in the use of all peaceable means to win the people to Rome. At the end of this time he won but nineteen converts. The pupil of the Jesuits had no further scruple. In 1597, in consultation with the duke, the following measures, in direct contradiction to the plighted faith of the ruler and all dictates of natural justice, were resolved upon:

1.    The Reformed clergy were banished.

2.    All Evangelical books were seized and destroyed, and the reading of them was forbidden under heavy penalty.

3.    Roman Catholic clergy were installed in the place of the Reformed ministers.

4.    A Jesuit college was established at Thonon.

5.    Mass was publicly established in the churches belonging to the people. Monkish missionaries were sent among them.

6.    The regiment of Martinengo was quartered upon the recalcitrant, while rich gifts rewarded those who allowed themselves to be converted to the Papal Church.

To crown all, the duke with his retinue came to Thonon, the capital. The inhabitants were cited before him. They were asked to be faithful to their duke and to become Roman Catholics. Those who would comply were told to take their place on his right. There was a dead silence; the priests went around in groups, persuading and offering rewards. A few went over to the right. Those on the left began to murmur, and to speak of broken faith and of their own loyalty. The duke cut all short with_? “Rebels, in three days leave my States.” The same course was pursued in Gex. Thus Francis de Sales

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seems to have originated and to have first applied those measures of forcible conversion which gave such an evil name to the Hapsburg rulers of the Thirty Years’ War and to the dragonnades under L,ouis XIV. Flushed with this success, at a suggestion from Rome, Francis undertook to win over the successor of Calvin at Geneva, the aged and renowned Theodore Beza. Francis offered him 4,000 ducats and twice the value of his books and furniture. Beza showed the tempter how little he had left after dividing his goods with those who were refugees for their faith, and then said, “ Vade retro, Satanasor, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” It is never wise to judge any man by the weakest side of his character, and this is emphatically true of Francis de Sales. Although he raged as a persecutor against Geneva, saying it was the Rome of the Protestants and should be converted or destroyed, yet he was a potent factor in that Roman Catholic revival in France which permanently raised the level of the moral and religious life especially among the higher classes.

In that kingdom he preached before Henry IV. In 1604 he founded the “ Order of the Visitation,” to care for the sick and to instruct the children of the poor, mainly from women of the higher classes. It was confirmed six years later. December 8, 1612, he was made titular Bishop of Geneva, his jurisdiction, of course, being confined to the Savoyard district outside of the city whose name he claimed for his See. Francis in this office showed himself a model prelate, kind toward others, strict with himself, unwearied in preaching and teaching the children, and in doing away with all disorders among the clergy and the monasteries.

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At the beginning of these labors he met Madame de Chantal, a woman of rare gifts of mind and spirit, whose soul had been disciplined by the loss of husband and child. Between Francis and Madame de Chantal there existed a friendship as tender and true as that between Francis of Assisi and St. Clara. With mutual attractiveness of manner there was a certain sweetness in his nature and language which gave Francis great influence over women. He liked to be surrounded with them, and in his letters his language is sometimes beyond the bounds of prudence, and no model for imitation; but Francis de Sales was as far above sensuality as vulgar ambition. He declined the succession to the Archbishopric of Paris and a cardinal’s hat.

It is through his writings that Francis is best known and most influential. In 1608 he published his “ Introduction to the Devout Life,” perhaps the work most widely read of any Roman Catholic author since the Council of Trent. This book, with the “ Spiritual Letters” of Fenelon, stands worthily beside the “Imitation of Christ ” and “ Pilgrim’s Progress.” The aim of the “ Introduction ” made evident the departure from monkish ideals which marked the Roman Catholic Revival in France; it was to show how to live a holy life while in intercourse with the world. In himself he exemplified the teaching of the “ Introduction;” cheerfulness and love were the characteristics of his piety.

Twelve years later he published his teachings in systematic form in a work entitled “ Treatise on the Love of God.” He declares prayer and the Mystic theology to be one. He sets forth three degrees in prayer: that of meditation, of contemplation, and of quietude. The aim is that the individual shall be

544    The Christian Church.

overwhelmed, lost, in the love of God. This teaching had its dangers; but who shall say it was not a vast improvement on the current polemical theology of the time? The piety of Francis de Sales can scarcely be said to be of a vigorous, manly type; but it possessed grace and sweetness, and made those who shared it better men and women in personal and social life. Amid the harsh strife of Calvin and Bellarmine it spoke of peace and the triumph of love and selfdevotion. In the Christian Church there will always be place for such rare spirits as George Fox and John Bunyan, for Francis de Sales and Archbishop Fenelon.

A man of even more immediate and permanent effect upon the religious life of France was the friend st. Vincent Francis de Sales, the founder of the <ie Paul. Sisters of Charity and of that evangelistic 1576=1660. _unj_ori) Confraternity of the Mission, or the Lazarist Fathers. Vincent de Paul was a true Frenchman, but in a wider sense a citizen of the world, a true brother to all suffering human kind. Vincent was born of peasant parents at the village of Raquines, parish of Pouy, near Dax, in Gascony, April 24, 1576. At the age of twelve he began his schooling with the Franciscans at Dax. He afterward studied at Toulouse and Saragossa, taking the degree of Bachelor of Theology at Toulouse in 1604, at the age of twenty-eight. Thus far his life, in birth and training, in intellectual talent and social opportunity, seems the direct contrast to that of Francis de Sales. It was to experience yet more startling vicissitudes.

His disposition and character, however, at this time so distinguished him that, in 1605, he was offered a small bishopric, which he refused, and was the re

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cipient of a bequest. His treatment of the last favor revealed the man more than the declination of the bishopric. Finding that th6se who owed money to the estate were in poor circumstances, and that to pay the debt would distress them, he gave three quarters of the bequest to them, and would accept but one for himself. While returning from this generous settle-tlement of his affairs he was captured near Narbonne by a Barbary pirate and carried into slavery at Tunis. His third master proved to be an Italian renegade Christian. This man’s Mohammedan wife was so touched by the disposition and bearing of Vincent that she told her husband he had done wrong to leave the Christian faith. This so awakened his conscience that he planned with Vincent to make his escape. They had to wait ten months; but finally, after two years’ captivity, Vincent was once more in France, and had the privilege of seeing his late master received into the Christian Church by the papal legate.

Vincent now went to Rome, and from thence to Paris. In 1609 he preached before Henry IV, and became chaplain to his divorced wife, Margaret of Valois. On his return he consecrated himself to the service of the poor, but in unforeseen ways came its accomplishment. At Paris he came in contact with Berulle, later cardinal, and now the renowned founder of the French congregation of the Oratory. Through his influence, Vincent became pastor of the parish of Clichy, near Paris, and two years later, in 1614, chaplain to Philip Emmanuel Count Gondy. The family was of Florentine origin, and the brother of the count was Archbishop of Paris, while he himself had command of the royal galleys. For the next eleven years

35

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the fortunes of Vincent were bound up with this family, and its influence was potent upon his whole life.

In 1617 he accepted the charge of the poor and deserted parish of Chatillon-les-Dombes, in Bresse. Here he converted many Calvinists, and had such an insight into the real needs of his Church and of his time that he now founded the first congregation of the Sisters of Charity to watch with and nurse the sick and to care for the afflicted poor. Here, also, he began his first mission or evangelistic tour among the poor and neglected. At the age of forty-one, Vincent de Paul had found his mission. In 1618, Francis de Sales made him the spiritual director of the nuns of the Visitation. This year he returned again to the household of Count Gondy, and it remained his home until the death of the countess in 1625. This same year Vincent visited prisoners and the slaves in the galleys, and founded a hospital. His life was a daily exhibition of Christian love. In 1619 he was made royal almoner to the galleys. In 1622, Macon was overrun with sturdy beggars or tramps. Vincent went among them. He marked those who should be compelled to work or punished for their evil deeds; he made provision for the crippled, the sick, and the infirm, and in three weeks he brought in quiet and settled order. In 1624, with seven members, he founded the “ Order of Priests of the Mission,” who were to evangelize and do pastoral work among the neglected by preaching, catechising, and especially hearing confessions. The order was approved at Rome, and in 1632 it received the deserted monastery of St. Lazarus, Paris, which became the head of the order, and from which its members have been since known as Lazarist Fathers.

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On the death of the Countess Gondy, Vincent received from her estate, for his work, 45,000 livres; henceforth he became the almoner of the rich. Between 1629 and 1639 he is said to have distributed

1,600,000 livres, besides clothing and other necessaries. He was made private almoner of Louis XIII, and that king died in his arms. In 1648 he fed from his own house of St. Lazarus two thousand poor.

The humility, the disinterestedness, and self-denial of Vincent de Paul were remarkable, but to them he added a breadth and depth of sympathy with human need—and a faculty of organization to meet it and apply remedial measures, unsurpassed in the history of the Christian Church. His zeal for home missions never interfered with his interest and sacrifice for the foreign fields. The scope of his interests and the labors of his devoted followers reached from Madagascar to Sweden, and from Persia to Canada. He obeyed the teaching to go to those who need you most. He sent a mission to rescue by purchase the Christian slaves of the Barbary pirates, of whose miseries he had personal experience, and his interest in the wretched slaves in the galleys never ceased. He caused a hospital to be erected for them when sick and aged, at Marseilles.

In the same year he founded a home for fallen women, and a union to train spiritually men about to be ordained. He founded the Daughters of the Cross to teach poor children, and the Daughters of the Divine Providence to protect the virtue of poor children who lived at home. In Paris he founded a school for boys and one for girls, and took charge of the hospitals for the poor. Vincent delighted in assemblies

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of the clergy to promote the spiritual and intellectual life of the men in regular pastoral work. In all this varied realm of activity no creation has been so widely beneficial as the Sisters of Charity. Of this organization there were three kinds founded by Vincent de Paul:

1.    Were the women of all classes who were bound together to care for the sick of the parish. This was first instituted in 1617.

2.    Growing out of this a congregation of single women who wore a peculiar dress and lived together. These were to serve the sick poor in hospitals and in their own houses. A two years’ novitiate trained them for this service. The rule was free and simple compared with other orders. This order was founded in 1625. Its first head, Louise de Marillac, widow of M. De Gras, was a woman of unusual gifts and tact. Between her and Vincent existed, in a lesser degree, such friendship as bound together Francis de Sales and Madam de Chantal. Although the order of Deaconesses reaches back to apostolic times, the success of the work of Vincent de Paul’s Sisters of Charity had much to do with its revival in the nineteenth century.

3.    The third organization was of women of noble rank to assist in this work.

The great merit of the work of Vincent de Paul in the history of Christian charity is that he made the piety and self-sacrifice of Christian womanhood minister to the alleviation of human suffering and misery; and also that, for the first time, he caused this ministry to become a specially-trained service, and so best fitted to cope with human need and distress. No Christian Church can afford to forget the lesson thus taught.

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Vincent de Paul was a devout Christian and also a devoted son of the Church of Rome. During all his life he slept in a bare room on a couch of straw. He employed the usual means of mortification—hair-cloth, sharp chains, scourgings, and fastings. He was far from coming into the spiritual liberty of Christ and his apostles, or of St. Paul. But he enjoyed the spiritual conferences of the clergy three times each week, as much as John Knox and the Puritans did their “ Prophesyings.” Vincent de Paul hated dueling, and did all he could for its abolition; and he also hated the Calvinists and the Jansenists with equal zeal, and wrought equally for their overthrow.

But men will pardon much to a man whose charity provided means for the husbandman, stripped by war, to resume his labors, and the artisan, ruined by famine, to become independent again, and who bent his energies to give a decent burial to two thousand dead bodies of his country’s enemies slain in battle.

ENGLAND.

No greater contrast in personal appearance or in mental qualities, could be imagined than that between James I and the two famous women of 160^6^5 whom he was the heir,—his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, and her cousin, Elizabeth Tudor. James was a scholar, but never became a man of sense, of resolution, or of enlightened intelligence.

In the strife for the throne of France between the League and Henry IV the Jesuits formulated the doctrine that the assassination of a heretic monarch was allowable, and the far different doctrine that in every nation the sovereignty resided in the people who

The Christian Church.

for sufficient reasons, could convey the royal power to other hands than those of the corrupt or perverse Two Doctrines possessor. So far the latter doctrine of Political does not differ much from that of John Sovereignty. ]£_nox g_ut ^ Jesuits, true to their

chief end, exalted the power of the people only to humble that of their rulers, and to make the Pope supreme over both. The Pope must judge whether the prince had been so unfaithful as to incur deposition, and the Pope was to confirm the deposition made by the people. The Protestant theologians and jurists saw here a rare opportunity to turn the tables on their adversaries. For two generations it had been proclaimed in every court in Europe that a change from the Roman Catholic to the Evangelical faith involved a political revolution. Now, by the new Jesuit teaching, political revolution was to be justified by papal initiation and confirmation, and the sovereignty of the nation was to pass from the hands of the monarch to those of his subjects.

In these circumstances the Protestant writers developed against the Jesuits and the claims of the Roman See the theory that the State is a Divine institution in such sense that all rulers reign by the grace of God, and are responsible alone to him. Hence all peoples owe, under all possible circumstances, the duty of at least passive obedience to the monarch. Rebellion against the prince is rebellion against the Divine order; yea, treason against God. This was the theoretical justification of the absolutism of the Bourbon monarchy in France and Spain and Italy, and of the Hapsburgs in Germany. Paolo Sarpi ad

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55i

vanced it in its extreme form in defense of the Venetian State against Paul V.

Being of Evangelical origin, it was adopted by the Evangelical princes of Germany, and was at the foundation of the Prussian absolutism of the eighteenth century. By no sovereign was the doctrine more eagerly embraced than by James I of England, longing to be forever freed from the Presbyterian discipline and the limitations of royalty of his native land.

This doctrine was accepted by the English court and Church just as its opposite, the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people over the ruler, with no room for the Pope or his interference, like Knox, was deduced by the Puritans from the Scripture and came to prevail among the mass of the English people. The conflict between these two theories formed the long tragedy of the house of Stuart. It issued in the firm establishment of the civil and religious liberties of all English-speaking peoples. Of that struggle the record must be in a succeeding volume. Its origin has been fully traced in the sketch of the reign of Elizabeth.

The new primate of the English Church, Richard Bancroft, graduated at Cambridge in 1567, was made university preacher in 1576. Bancroft became Canon of Westminster in 1587, and Bishop of London ten years later. November 1, 1604, he was made Archbishop of Canterbury, but had had the direction of the affairs of the See for the preceding seven years on account of the age and infirmities of Whitgift. Bancroft was arbitrary and ill-tempered, and determined to carry the theory and

552    The Christian Church.

practice of the Episcopal prerogative to their utmost limits.

Though at the Hampton Court Conference, 1604, James I took sides fully against the Puritans, yet he rebuked the primate for his rudeness to them. The House of Commons gave him a more effective check in throwing out his Book of Canons the same year. He deposed between two and three hundred clergy for not subscribing to the Articles of Religion and the Prayer-book, ex auimo> or with good will.

The parents of Archbishop Abbot were strong adherents of the Reformation under Queen Mary.

George    oldest brother was Bishop of Salisbury.

Abbot. Abbot graduated at Oxford in 1585. For 1611=1633. _tj_{ie next} twenty-four years his work was mainly at Oxford, where he showed himself a powerful preacher and efficient in the lecture-room. He became Bishop of Coventry in 1609, and in the next year of London. March 4, 1611, he was made Archbishop of Canterbury.

Abbot was a man who would have left a high reputation if he had never been primate. For a righteous decision against the divorce of the Countess of Essex he, like Grindal, lost the favor of his sovereign in 1614. He was a convinced and bitter Calvinist, and was represented at the Synod of Dort. Accidentally, in 1621, while hunting, he killed a gamekeeper. He was upright and stern, but melancholy and without sympathy. For the last five years of his life Laud was virtually the primate.

The reign of James was distinguished by two of the greatest names in English thought, Shakespeare and Lord Bacon. Yet it was a reign remarkable

The Fading War and the Truce. 553

for great events rather than for great men. Such were the Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes, 1605, showed the utterly unscrupulous character of many Jesuit agents and plans. Such ^TIJ,^e_a^,ef" °^f was the publication, in 1611, of the Authorized Version of the English Bible, which marks an era in English literature and in English religion. Such, from a dynastic point of view, was the marriage, in 1613, of the king’s daughter, Elizabeth, to Frederick, Elector of the Palatinate. But such especially were three settlements made in this reign on the coast of North America,—that of Jamestown in 1607, that of the Dutch at Manhattan in 1614, and that of the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1620. The ruling idea of the policy of James was to marry his son, afterward Charles I, to a Roman Catholic princess of the royal house of Spain, if possible; and if not, to one of France. In this he laid the foundation of the doom of the house of Stuart, and of their exclusion from the English throne. This so controlled him that, in all that concerned the Evangelical interest, then in deadly peril, he had no thought of active support, much less of leadership. How different would have been the conduct and policy of Elizabeth! Did not the time cry out for Cromwell ?

In Upper and Lower Austria the nobility and cities were predominantly Evangelical. They were protected by the Edict of Maximilian II, in

, . , , , , , , « ,    , The Conflict

1571, which declared that the lords and j_n the knights of those countries “were free to ^Haps*>urg

. ,    . Dominions.

exercise the Protestant religion in all their castles, houses, and estates, for themselves, their followers and adherents, on the land, and also with the

The Christian Church.

Churches which belong to them, together with their subjects.”

How did the lands of the Hapsburg dominions cease to be Evangelical and become Roman Catholic? The solution of this problem, which to some writers has seemed to involve grave racial and even climatic conditions, is very plain. The Hapsburg dominions became Roman Catholic for the same reason that Ulster in Ireland became Evangelical. In both cases those who would not embrace an alien faith were driven out of the country. Those who remained made the country what its rulers wished it to be.

One of the earliest of these persecutors was Wolf Dietreich von Reitenau, Archbishop of Salzburg. This zealous propagandist of the Roman Catholic faith had by his mistress two sons and three daughters. When he began his rule, not one in twenty of the population was a Roman Catholic. After more than a century of repression and loss, when this policy had its perfect work in 1731 there were yet thirty thousand men who went into exile from Salzburg rather than give up their Evangelical faith. In 1563, in Gratz, there were twenty-three Protestant nobles, with two hundred churches. In 1629, after the Edict of Restitution, fifty-four nobles emigrated, and the land never recovered its former prosperity. In Upper Austria there were twenty-one castles and homes of nobility, with five cities and eighty-one market towns, in the hands of the Protestants, while but four noble families were Roman Catholic. In 1624, one hundred and fifteen Lutheran preachers were driven from these lands, whose names have come down to us. The Prot-

The Fading War and the Truce. 555

estant nobility and burghers soon followed, or were forced to conform.

In Lower Austria, in 1580, there were one hundred and fifty-six Protestant noble families and three hundred and twenty-one Protestant villages. In 1609 there were but thirty-two nobles and thirty-two knights who were Roman Catholic. How was this great superiority overcome? By the use of force in the name of the emperor as the head of the house of Hapsburg. It is the same story in Bohemia and Moravia. In Bohemia five hundred estates of Protestant noblemen, worth then thirty millions of guelders, and at present values one hundred and fifty millions, were confiscated. The same process, in relative proportion, was carried on in the smaller country of Moravia. Whatever new intellectual tendencies and renewed ethical ideas inspired the Counter Reformation in Germany, its triumph there was as really due to force as the spread of Islam to the sword. With the triumph of the Counter Reformation the intellectual and economic primacy of the nation passed from Southern to Northern Germany.

This process of forcible conversion was undertaken by Rudolph, and was always an object dear to his heart. But when his brother Matthias came to take part in the rule, he found it necessary to grant religious toleration in Upper and Lower Austria and in Moravia and Hungary. Rudolph was compelled to do the same in Bohemia. These concessions were formal and made under constraint. To secure them, the Protestant nobility of these lands entered into the Union of Sterbohol, June 29, 1608. They relied

556    The Christian Church.

upon the support of the Protestant Union of German Princes, founded in 1608.

This Union came into being largely because the Protestant princes refused to take part in the judicial and legislative institutions of the empire tanMJnion" ^U11^^ess assured of impartial treatment. A further inciting cause was the case of Dan-auworth. Danauworth was a Lutheran imperial city. It tolerated a Roman Catholic abbey. Processions were allowed to its inmates on the express condition that the banners must be lowered while passing through the city streets. In 1606 the abbot disregarded this prohibition, and the procession was insulted by the Protestant population. The Emperor Rudolph declared the town under the ban, and intrusted Maximilian of Bavaria with its execution. He took possession of the city for himself in 1607. Moved by these events, Frederick IV, the Elector Palatine, the Duke of Wiirtemberg, the Landgrave of Hesse, and the Elector of Brandenburg joined in forming the Union in 1608. The Elector of Saxony, as usual, stood aloof.

The Roman Catholic League was formed at Munich in July, 1609. It consisted of Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria; the three Ecclesiastical Electors ’ of Mainz, Cologne, and Treves; the Bishop of Wurzburg, Augsburg, Constance, Regensburg, and Passau, and the Abbots of Kempton and Ellwangen. Maximilian was chosen chief of the League. Though he was the only secular prince in the alliance, the League counted upon the support of Austria, Spain, and the Pope. Now and during the years of the changing life of the League, Maximilian was its soul.

The Fading War and the Truce. 557

In 1609 the poor, mad John William, Duke of Cleves, died, and, as Henry IV said, left all the world his heir. The Elector of Brandenburg _{The Succes}. claimed the inheritance, as his son had sionof married Elenore, the eldest daughter of the ^c,eves-duke. The Count Palatine of Neuburg, son-in-law of the second daughter, was another claimant. The house of Saxony also made its claim with less justification. Meanwhile the emperor claimed to hold the territories until the cause should be decided. The Saxon house was devoted to the emperor to win his support. To prevent the interference of the emperor, Brandenburg and Neuburg joined in the treaty of Dortmund, 1609, and under its provisions took possession of the inheritance. The seizure of Juliers by the Archduke Leopold was thought to be the execution of a Spanish plot. Hence Maurice of Orange marched to Juliers, and after resistance took possession of it in 1610.

In July, 1613, the Neuburg claimant of the Cleves inheritance having proposed to settle the strife by the marriage of the daughter of the Elector of Brandenburg, the elector responded with a box on the ear. The offended claimant went to Munich, and in July, 1613, professed conversion to the Roman Catholic faith, and in the following November married the sister of Maximilian of Bavaria. The last of the following December, John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg, went over from the Lutheran to the Reformed. Thus was the breach made wider than ever. War was only averted by the weakness of the contestants and the efforts of their allies, England, France, and the

558    The Christian Church.

Netherlands on one side, and the Elector of Cologne and Albert of Flanders, son-in-law of Philip II, on the other. Thus was brought about the Treaty of Xanten, November 12, 1614. The land was undivided in name, but the administration of Cleves, Cleve Mark, Ravenstein, and Ravensburg came to the Elector of Brandenburg, while that of Juliers and Berg, with its capital at Diisseldorf, came to the Neuburg claimant, which was nearly the terms of the final arrangement in 1666.

Matthias had been a restless and unsuccessful intriguer, until he became a revolutionary leader Emperor ^ag^ai^nst brother and in alliance with the Matthias. Protestants of the lands of the house of 1610-1619. Austria. Thus he secured Bohemia and Hungary, and probably the succession of the empire to the Hapsburg dynasty. At last, on the death of Rudolph, he came to the imperial throne in his fifty-sixth year. He loved the splendor of the court, its festivities, music, the art collections of Rudolph, and even more the coarse jests of the court fool. Indolent by nature, he had grown more so with years. Hence the business of state came mainly into the hands of Melchoir Klesel, Bishop of Passau. The policy pursued through the reign was to keep the peace between the princes of the Union and the League, and so endeavor to hold together the crumbling empire whose central institutions were already dissolved. Two great results were reached, the coercion of the Bohemian estates in 1617 to recognize the crown of that kingdom as hereditary in the house of Austria; and thus practically was secured the succession of Ferdinand of Styria to the empire.

The Fading War and the Truce. 559

The opening of the seventeenth century found the Netherlands at war with Spain, as they had been for more than thirty years. July 5, 1601, the Archduke Albert, son-in-law of Philip ostend!

II, began the siege of Ostend, an insig-The Nether-nificant port occupied by the Dutch. The siege was carried on with great loss and ill success until an Italian adventurer and general, Francis Spinola, took command, in October, 1603. From that time the place was doomed, and surrendered, after a defense among the most notable in history, September 24, 1604. The siege had cost one hundred thousand lives. Whatever loss Ostend was to the Dutch was more than overbalanced by the taking of Sluys after a four months’ siege by Maurice, August 24, 1604, Spinola had some success in taking a few towns on the Rhine border in 1605 and 1606. He defeated Maurice in a Spanish engagement near Wesel, October 5, 1605. But the States suffered no serious injury, and Maurice was recovering the lost ground when the war closed.

More important than these victories of Spinola were those by which her hardy sailors laid the foundations of the sea power of the Netherlands.

The fleet of Frederick Spinola, seeking to _vSorfes. aid in the siege of Ostend, was destroyed October 3, 1602. Another Spanish fleet, commanded by Sarmiento, sailed into the Dutch waters, and was destroyed, in 1605. Of greater effect was the entire destruction of the Spanish fleet by the Dutch at Gibraltar, April 25, 1607. Of greater, because of more far-reaching influence was the founding of the Dutch Bast India trade, and of Batavia, the capital of Java,

560    The Christian Church.

in 1602. Their naval victory over the Spanish at Malacca, August 1, 1606, confirmed the Dutch in their power.

Soon an armistice ended the war between Spain and the Netherlands, May 4, 1607. The Netherlands signed a treaty with France in January,

The Truce. f    ^J    ^

1608, and the same month one with Great Britain. These strengthened their power. Negotiations for a peace with Spain were carried on from February until August of that year. As Spain would not renounce her sovereignty over the Netherlands, they were broken off. A truce for twelve years was formulated and signed April 24, 1609. Thus came peace after forty years of war.

This civil peace marked the beginning of most The Armiman bitter religious dissensions in the Nether-controversy. lands, as Jacobus Arminius died in the same year that the truce was signed.

Jacobus Hermanns, or Arminius, was born at Oude-water, in Holland, October 10, 1560. He was one of jacobus the most learned and able men of his time, Arminius. and in disposition and character one of the 1560-1609. _most lovable and spotless of any time. A lover of peace and moderate in his opinions and the expression he gave them, it was the irony of fate that made his name both the watchword and the object of opprobrium in the bitterest theological strife of the seventeenth century.

Arminius received his early education at Utrecht and Marburg. In 1575, when the Spanish took Oude-water, all his relatives were murdered. At Leyden he studied for six years, until 1582, when he went to Geneva and Basel. At Geneva he studied three years

The Fading War and the Truce. 561

with Theodore Beza. Afterwards he traveled in Italy as far as Rome. He was called to the Reformed Church in Amsterdam in 1588. Here, for fifteen years, he maintained a successful pastorate. Arminius was an eloquent and practical preacher and a diligent and unselfish pastor, as was shown when the pestilence raged among his flock. He was chosen Professor of Theology at Leyden in 1603, and held this place until his death, October 19, 1609.

His colleague, Gomarus, attacked his theological teachings in 1604. Arminius loved truth, but hated controversy. He defended himself before the Supreme Council in 1608, and before a meeting arranged by the States of Holland from August until the month of his death in 1609. His writings remain a fair and unimpeachable witness of his penetration and learning. He was behind none of his time in knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and of theological literature, ancient and modern. Bertius, in his funeral sermon, said of Arminius, “ There had been a man in Holland whom all that knew him could not esteem enough, and those that did not esteem him had never rightly known him.”

In purity of character, in mildness of temper, in learning and love of truth, few men have surpassed Arminius. How did it come that for two centuries his was the most hated name by a large and justly influential portion of Christendom? This can only be explained by the principles he held and their effect upon the reigning Calvinistic theology. None knew Calvinism better than Arminius, for he had studied long under Beza. He was the first to express his moral revolt at the system. He wrote fully; but his

36

562    The Christian Church.

opinions were first put in a concise form after his death. In July, 1611, his adherents presented to the States of Holland and West Friesland a paper called a “Remonstrance.” From this paper in Holland they were called Remonstrants, and their opponents Contra Remonstrants. In that paper they stated that they rejected the following five points of Calvinistic doctrine:

remonstrants denied.

I.    That God, as some assert (the Supralapsarians), by an eternal and irreversible decree, had ordained some from among men who were not yet created, much less considered as fallen, to everlasting life; and others, by far the greater part, to eternal damnation, without any regard to their obedience or disobedience, and that for the purpose of manifesting his justice and mercy; and for the effecting of this purpose he had so appointed the means, that those whom he had ordained unto salvation, should necessarily and unavoidably be saved, and the others necessarily and unavoidably be damned.

II.    Or, as others taught (the Infralapsarians), that God had considered mankind not only as created, but as fallen in Adam, and consequently liable to the curse; from which fall and condemnation he deter-

remonstrants affirmed.

I. That God from all eternity hath decreed to everlasting life all those who, through his grace, believe in Jesus Christ, and in the same belief and obedience of faith persevere to the end; but the unconverted and unbelieving he had resolved to reject to everlasting damnation.

II. That, in consequence of this decree, Christ, the Savior of the world, died for all and every man, so that by his death he hath ordained reconciliation and pardon of sins for all men; nevertheless in such a

The Fading War and the Truce.

563

mined to redeem some, and, for the display of his mercy, make them partakers of salvation ; and to leave others, even children of the covenant, under the curse for the manifestation of his justice, without any regard to their belief or their unbelief. And for the accomplishment of his will, he hath instituted the means by which the elect should necessarily be saved, and the reprobates necessarily be damned.

III.    That, consequently, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, did not die for all men, but only for those who were elected, as stated in the first or second manner.

IV.    That the Spirit of Christ worked with irresistible force on the elect, in order to beget faith in them that they might be saved ; but from the reprobates necessary and sufficient grace was withheld.

V. That those who had once received true faith, however

manner that none but the faithful really and effectually enjoy the benefit thereof.

III.    That man could not obtain saving faith of himself or by the strength of his own free will, but stood in need of God’s grace, through Christ, to be made the subject of its power.

IV.    Therefore this grace is the cause of the beginning, the progress, and the completion of man’s salvation; in so much that no one could believe or persevere in faith without this operating grace, and, consequently, that all good works must be ascribed to the grace of God in Christ. Nevertheless the manner of the operation of this grace was not irresistible.

V.    That true believers had sufficient strength, through

564    The Christian Church.

they might afterward awfully Divine grace, to resist and oversin, could never wholly or come Satan, sin, the world, and finally lose it.    their own lusts; but whether

they might not through their negligence apostatize, and lose the power of holy, saving truth, the testimony of a well-directed conscience,and forfeit that grace, must first be more fully inquired into under the guidance of the Holy Scripture, before they could, with confidence and unhesitating minds, assert and teach it.

These are the theological opinions of the Armin-ians. Unfortunately with them they held to Luther’s view, that the civil ruler should control and decide disputed questions in the Church. The Calvinists, on the other hand, with their severe theological views, believed in the self-governing power of the Church.

The Calvinism which the Remonstrants rejected is dead in English-speaking lands, while most of the “ New Calvinists ” go far beyond the Remonstrants in what they reject of the Genevan Reformer’s opinions. The significance of Arminius is that of Columbus and of Luther; he broke the way which the modern world was to follow.

The citizen aristocracy, and hence the members of the States-General, were in favor of the opinions of Arminius. On the other hand, the great majority of the clergy and the lower classes were strong Calvinists. Thus it came to pass that when Prince Maurice desired powers which practically made him a sovereign in a Republic which had been free from its birth, he abandoned the party of the Remonstrants and went over

The Fading War and the Truce. 565

to the Calvinists. This caused the theological ques. tion to be mixed up with the most bitter and violent politics, and these helped to give an evil fame to the Synod of Dort.

Jan van Olden Barneveldt was born at Ameersfort in the province of Utrecht in 1547. He studied in the universities of Holland, France, Italy, and _{Jan van 0Jden} Germany, and served as a soldier at the Barneveldt. sieges of Haarlem and Leyden. In 1576 '547-1619. he was made chief pensionary of Rotterdam. After the death of William the Silent he went as an ambassador to England and France. In 1586 he was made Lord Advocate of Holland, which position he held until his imprisonment in the year before his death. From the death of Orange until that time, or for more than thirty years, he directed the policy of the Netherlands. He was unquestionably the first statesman in Europe in the opening decades of the seventeenth century, as he was, after Orange had won its independence, the founder of the Dutch Republic.

In respect to character, ability, experience, and long and varying success, he was the most distinguished man of his time. Olden Barneveldt was a warm friend and supporter of the house of Orange, and to no man did Maurice in his younger years owe more. The first rift in their friendship came when Olden Barneveldt carried through the expedition which resulted in the battle of Nieuport, but which, from a military point of view, ran an enormous risk for a small advantage. In military matters, of course, Maurice’s judgment was better than that of the advocate. Still there was no open rupture. The ambassador from The Hague at Paris, Francis Aerssens, was

566    The Christian Church.

recalled at the beginning of 1614. From that time Olden Barneveldt had a bitter and relentless enemy. About 1617, Maurice fully determined to possess himself of the sovereign power in the Netherlands. He sent Louise de Coligni, the widow of William the Silent, to sound the advocate on that matter. Olden Barneveldt was too much attached to the aristocratic constitution of his country to listen to such proposals, and sought to have Louise dissuade her stepson from that plan. In the meantime Maurice left Uyten-bogaert’s preaching, who was a Remonstrant, and attached himself to the popular Calvinistic party.

In February, 1617, the mob sacked the house of Rem Bischop, the brother of Episcopius, the famous leader of the Remonstrants. In August of that year the party of Olden Barneveldt passed some sharp resolves against the policy of Maurice, and three weeks later the States of Utrecht voted to raise troops. But in raising or handling troops Maurice had no equal in the Netherlands. The States had kept within the 'letter of the law; but for the law Maurice had little care. Early in 1618 he revolutionized Gelderland and Overyssel, and August 4, Utrecht. The 21st of that month the States-General disbanded their troops. It was high time. Their leaders, Olden Barneveldt, Grotius, and Hoogerbeets were arrested and thrown into prison the day before. Their trial was not begun until the next March, and meanwhile the Synod of Dort was summoned to act its part in the tragedy. The Remonstrants had desired a decision of the disputed points of doctrine from the civil magistrates, w^Tho were their friends. They had no desire to be judged by a clerical Synod composed of their open

The Fading War and the Truce. 567

and avowed enemies. Hence they opposed the calling of the Synod. On the other hand, Maurice and his friends saw in the Synod the means of humbling and disabling their adversaries, and of securing for him popular and foreign support. So along with the condemnation of the Remonstrants went that of the greatest statesman ever known in the history of the Netherlands.

May 30, 1618, against the opposition of Holland and Utrecht, the States voted for the calling of the Synod of Dort. The Synod assembled at _Synod Dort, or Dordrecht, November 13, 1618. It ₀f Dort. was composed of thirty-five ministerial ^Nov*^,3* ^^,8"

^r    May 39, 1619.

deputies from the Netherlands, and twenty-seven foreign theologians. England and Scotland and Geneva were represented, but neither France nor Brandenburg. The representatives from the Netherlands were packed as unscrupulously to diminish the number of Remonstrant members as any party caucus. The Remonstrants appeared with Episcopius at their head, December 6, 1618. They were informed that they were not to appear as deputies though regularly chosen, but as those cited to defend their opinions. The president of the Synod, Bogerman, threw all law and justice to the winds in his treatment of the Remonstrants. Notwithstanding, Episcopius, while not acknowledging the authority of the Synod of his confessed enemies, made a most memorable defense. He declared that they were determined to submit themselves to no human power, but to rest upon God’s Word and upon grounds of sound reason. On January 18th the Remonstrants left the Synod, protesting against the injustice of their treatment.

₅68

The Christian Church.

Episcopius, their leader, said, “God will judge between us and this Synod.” On March 7th began the travesty of justice called the trial of Olden Barneveldt. As the Synod was finishing its labors the trial came to an end, and Jan van Olden Barneveldt was sentenced to death, May 12, 1619, and beheaded the next day.

Louise de’ Coligni, widow of Orange, his steadfast friend, and to whom she owed so much, went to the wife of Olden Barneveldt, and besought her to influence her husband to ask pardon of Maurice, and thus to save his life. A family council was held, and the offer was rejected. Maurice inquired of the minister who attended the prisoner if he had expressed a desire for pardon. To have asked pardon would have been to confess his guilt. Olden Barneveldt had no more desire to prolong his life than had Socrates in like condition. His dignity, courage, and composure made an ineffaceable impression. Maurice was successful in his plans, but he never recovered from the odium of the judicial murder of the founder of the Republic. The complicity of the Synod of Dort is shown in the heartless jest of Diodati, an Italian refugee, and a representative of Geneva at the Synod, who said, “The canons of Dort had shot off the head of the Advocate of Holland.”

The Synod of Dort held one hundred and eighty sessions; it cost the States $500,000. By its decrees The synod ^ sentenced all who held clerical or aca-

and its demical positions to the loss of office unless

Effects, they would recant their Remonstrant opinions. Hundreds of clergy were banished, and the Remonstrants were forbidden to assemble for worships

The Fading War and the Truce. 569

Calvinism triumphed in Holland, but at a cost from which it never recovered. The violence and injustice of the assembly alienated the foreign delegates. The Scotch Balanqual could not withhold his censure. The Hessian theologian, Martianus, deplored the day he set foot on the soil of the Netherlands. The ever-memorable John Hales at that famous Synod bid John Calvin “Good-night” when he heard the exposition of John iii, 16, by Episcopius. His example was followed by the great majority of his countrymen. The change is notable from Richard Bancroft and Whitgift drawing up the Calvinistic Articles of Lambeth in 1605 ^t0 Bishop Burnet, eighty years later, giving an Arminian interpretation to articles in the Creed of the Church of England, which at their origin were certainly Calvinistic.

The violence and evident injustice of the Synod came from the impossibility of the acceptance by small men, and imitators of Reformers, of any modification of the system which they had been making more hard and narrow, and, as they thought, more certain, through almost three generations. But how this intolerance and bitterness narrowed the influence of the Reformed Churches and made impossible their leadership in any hearty union in the Evangelical cause just on the brink of the Thirty Years’ War! O woeful Synod! What sorrows didst thou bring!

frnct Fifth:.

THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR.

571

THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR.

The war for a generation in Germany between the Roman Catholic and the Evangelical princes and people was the greatest disaster which ever came upon the nation. It had been a long time in preparation. While France was torn for nearly forty years with religious wars, and for an equal length of time the Netherlands had been in a life-and-death struggle with Spain, war and its horrors had been kept from Germany for more than sixty years through the Religious Peace of Augsburg. Its provisions had been observed by Ferdinand I and Maximilian II. During their reigns the Evangelical party had grown in strength and influence, and had acquired new territories. With the accession of Rudolph, a pupil of the Jesuits came to the throne, and the forces of the Roman Catholic reaction set the limit to further Evangelical conquest. As causes of the outbreak of hostilities may be mentioned the divergent interpretations of the Peace of Augsburg, the decision of the Aulic Council, and the consequent ban against Danauworth, and the persecutions of Ferdinand in Styria, who was the heir to the throne. These led to the breaking down of the fundamental institutions of the empire—the Reichstag and the Reichskammergericht, or the Imperial Judicial Chamber—and to the formation of the Union and the League. To these must be added the fact that the concessions of toleration in Upper and Lower

573

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The Christian Church.

Austria, in Moravia, Hungary, and Bohemia had been extorted by force, and by force only could it be maintained.

Thus matters stood when the Abbot of Brannau ordered the Evangelical church at Brannau to be closed, outbreak of ^anc* ^t^^ie Archbishop of Prague directed the War in that at Klostergrab to be torn down. The Bohemia. Bohemian Estates considered these acts a direct violation of their chartered toleration, and assembled at Prague, March 5, 1618, to petition the Emperor Matthias for redress; they then adjourned to the 21st of May. These acts of aggression may therefore be considered as the beginning of the conflict which ended at the Peace of Westphalia. When the Bohemian Estates reassembled they found that their petition was denied and their assembling forbidden and declared unlawful. The petitioners declared that the imperial answer was drawn up at Prague by two of the Royal Council,—Slawata, the president of the Chamber, and Baron Martinitz, Burgrave of Kalstein. The charge was false; but the councilors were known as bitter persecutors, hunting the Evangelicals to mass with dogs, and counseling extreme measures to the Government. On the 23d of May, 1618, Henry Mathias, Count Thurn, the leader of the Evangelical nobility of the country, at the head of one hundred nobles and six representatives of the cities, fully armed, forced their way into the palace at Prague where sat the royal commissioners. About a dozen of the nobles, with Thurn as leader, had fully determined upon an act which should be a complete defiance of the imperial authorit}^, and which should begin a revolution to wrest the Bohemian crown from the house of Hapsburg.

The Thirty Years' War.

575

In a threatening tone, therefore, they demanded of each of the councilors if they had taken any part in the royal refusal. Steinberg answered with composure, and he and Lobkowitz were led by the arm out of the room. Slawata and Martinitz received them with defiance. They were seized, and with them the secretary Fabricius, and hurled from the window into the moat below, a distance of fifty-eight feet. They fell upon a heap of refuse. Slawata was severely injured, Martinitz slightly, and Fabricius not at all. They could have been easily apprehended; but with that lack of decision which marked all the proceedings ot the Bohemian nobility, they were allowed to escape. Such inconsiderate rashness, such violence, and such half measures never inaugurated a successful revolution.

Thus opened the long tragedy of the Thirty Years’ War. If from the opening scene we turn to the leading characters, the lack of great men, of consistent policy, or of united purpose can but awaken our surprise. The bitterness of the humiliation of Germany was that, in her hour of need, no son of hers was found worthy to help or save. We look in vain for a Coligni or a Henry IV; for statesmen like Orange or Olden Barneveldt, or a soldier like Maurice; for a sovereign like Elizabeth, or councilors like those that sat at her Council board.

On the Roman Catholic side were the two cousins, both trained by the Jesuits, the Emperor Ferdinand

II and Maximilian of Bavaria. Ferdinand ^Fei6^d|9M637' ^{was no mere} bigot; he was pure in life, had honesty of purpose, was personally brave, and was inflexible in his religious convictions. His determination was shown when Count Thurn advanced

57⁶

The Christian Church.

on Vienna in 1619. Sixteen Austrian barons forced their way into his chamber and demanded that he should enter into a confederation with the Bohemians. One of them seized him by the button of his doublet, and said, “Ferdinand, wilt thou sign it?” His lay counselors urged him to flee, the priests to submit. Ferdinand would do neither. Suddenly the sound of the trumpet was heard. Dampierre’s regiment of horse had found an unguarded gate, and arrived in time. The barons slunk away, and Vienna was saved. But Ferdinand was narrow and autocratic. He looked mainly to the greatness of his house and the restoration of the Roman Catholic religion, without considering the means necessary or the things possible or desirable in the new condition of affairs. His excessive claims served the Evangelicals often more than armies.

Maximilian of Bavaria was a much abler and better man. Like his cousin, his morals were pure. He was the best administrator among the Ger-

Maximilian,    .    .

Duke of man princes. His finances and his army Bavaria. _were i_n good order and discipline. With a

* statesman’s eye he provided alliances which strengthened his house. He married the daughter of the Duke of Lorraine, and his sister married Ferdinand II. His brother Ferdinand succeeded Ernest as Elector of Cologne, and the pervert claimant of the Cleves inheritance, Count Neuburg, married his sister. Maximilian was regarded as a man of moderation and of honor, and came out of the contest with a reputation as unsmirched as any prince of his unhappy nation. Unfortunately his desire for the electoral dignity and the territories of his neighbor, the Palatine

The Thirty Years' War.    577

Elector, brought the Bohemian war into Germany, and foreign troops devastated his territories and occupied his capital. Later he broke his pledged word to the French in a vain endeavor to aid a failing cause. With these men were leagued the ecclesiastical electors and the occupants of the larger bishoprics, who were valuable allies only as furnishing the sinews of war, and who easily became a prey to a victorious enemy. The Roman Catholic party counted always on all the aid the Pope of Rome could afford.

Paul V died January 28, 1621. His successor was Alessandro Ludovisio, of Bologna, elected February 9,

1621. He took the name of Gregory XV. _ThePope8. Gregory was already an old man, broken Gregory xv. with years and infirmities, but the cardinal ^,62,-^,623-nephew, Ludovico Ludovisio, was young and brilliant. He had remarkable talent for business and rare powers of discrimination. He was a pupil of the Jesuits, and mainly instrumental in building the church of St. Ignatius at Rome, the head church of the order. In this pontificate were canonized Ignatius Loyola and Francisco Xavier, and the College of the Propaganda was established. At the same time means were not neglected to found one of the most celebrated of the papal families, the Ludovisi. To them was given in the two years a million of dollars, and they acquired the territories of Venosa and Piombino. Every means was used to further the conquests of the Roman Catholic arms and missions until the death of Gregory, July 8, 1623.

Maffeo Barberini of Florence was chosen Gregory’s successor, and took the title of Urban VIII. He was in vigorous health and but fifty-five years of age.

37

578

The Christian Church.

Urban considered himself as a temporal prince, and ruled with unusual splendor. No Pope had a more exalted opinion of his own dignity. “An ^625" 644. objection derived from an ancient papal constitution was once opposed to some design of his; he replied that the spoken word of a living Pope was worth more than the maxims of a hundred dead ones.” The Venetian ambassador said : “ He loves his own opinions and thinks highly of his own genius. . . . He is always earnest about things that promise to enhance the idea entertained of his personal qualities.” He had little use for the advice of his cardinals. For the first half of his pontificate his rule was thoroughly autocratic. He furthered the plans of Ferdinand, and urged the Edict of Restitution. The War of the Mantuan Succession changed his sympathies and his plans. Henceforth he was the ally of Richelieu against the house of Austria. He surpassed all his predecessors in nepotism. He caused the yearly income of his two nephews to amount to $500,000. The statement is made that his gifts to them amounted to the incredible sum of $105,000,000. Thus was laid the foundation of the greatness of the Barberini family. Urban VIII died July 29, 1644.

Cardinal Pamfili was elected Pope, September 16, 1644, and chose to be called Innocent X. Innocent was just, cheerful in disposition, affable in ^644^1655. ^manner> and unwearied in business. He was of mediocre character and ability, as is shown by the great portrait by Velasquez. He was ruled by his unscrupulous and avaricious sister-in-law, Donna Olympia Maidalchina. At the conference

The Thirty Years' War.    579

preceding the Peace of Westphalia he espoused the Roman Catholic claims with vigor, but only to see his nuncios and their representatives entirely without influence on the final result.

THE EVANGELICAL PRINCES.

On the side of the Evangelical cause were ranged the three electors—those of the Palatinate, Saxony, and Brandenburg. Frederick V, Elector

Frederick V

Palatine, was personally pure in life and Elector ’ sincere in his religious convictions. He Palatine.

~ _A    , 1 •, •. 1610-1633.

was a narrow Calvinist, and had neither the knowledge of men and affairs, nor the ability to use that knowledge, which fits to govern. Frederick was the son-in-law of James I; ruling the richest of the Electorates, he was the head of the Calvinistic party in Germany. With wealth, prestige, a high-spirited and able wife, and the best foreign connections of any German prince, he was a fool, and with what great interests did he insure that reputation ?

John George of Saxony was the head of the Lutheran party in Germany. In his early life he showed signs of more sense than his fellow-elector _{John George} of the Rhine, but gluttony and hard drink- of Saxony, ing left its mark on his iron constitution. ^l6l,’^l6s6* He would sit six hours at the table, and rarely went to bed sober. John George left a record unsurpassed among his contemporaries for selfishness and cowardice. His miserable people paid the full penalty of his baseness. He well earned the sentence which characterized him as the most despicable prince of a contemptible line.

580    The Christian Church.

George William of Brandenburg was the brother-in-law of Gustavus Adolphus. He was less drunken than John George, and adhered to the Cal-

George    111    •

William of vimstic faith; but he had no consistent Brandenburg. p₀ii_Cy₎ and was extravagant and tyrannical

* in government and without talent in council or courage in the field.

As were these leaders, such were the crowd of German princes in this unhappy era. William of Hesse and Bernard of Saxe-Weimar are the only ones who showed ability and good faith. Christian of Anhalt, the counselor of Frederick V, was a restless, visionary man, with large experience of men, and personally sincere in religion and brave in conduct; but he lacked the solidity of judgment and the weight of character that command men and the fortunes of nations.

As with their opponents, so on the side of the Roman Catholics. With them the only generals of merit were Tilly, Pappenheim, and Wallenstein. Tilly and Pappenheim were Flemings, and Wallenstein was a Lutheran pervert from Bohemia. In the crisis of her fate and the agony of her shame, Germany looked in vain for sons wise enough, or strong enough, or unselfish enough, to guide or save her.

Ill fares the State where both wealth and men decay;

The destinies of Germany were decided by two foreigners, a French cardinal and a Swedish king. Richelieu and Gustavus Adolphus were men worthy of their time, and rightly ruled it.

The plunge from the window at Prague was the gage of battle between the emperor and his Evangelical subjects, especially those of Bohemia. They

The Thirty Years' War.    581

possessed the greater part of the wealth and intelligence in the hereditary dominions of his house. The Bohemian aristocracy raised an army, but, August 30, 1618, refused to tax themselves for its support. If most of them fell on the field of battle or on the scaffold, and all of them lost their estates, we can only say their folly earned their fate. Count Mansfield, a military adventurer whose troops lived by plunder, came to their aid, as did the Silesians and Moravians. The war began with unpaid troops ravaging the land.

Ferdinand succeeded to the crown on the death of Mathias, March 20, 1619, and was formally elected the 28th of August following. Frederick V was elected king of Bohemia the 26th of the same month, and crowned at Prague, November 4, 1619. Frederick at first had many advantages, but he was neither statesman nor general enough to use them. Meanwhile Ferdinand was not idle. Through the French ambassador there was arranged the Peace of Ulm, June

3, 1620. By this act of folly the Protestant Union left Frederick and Bohemia to their fate. Through the same ambassador. Ferdinand made peace with Bethlen-Gabor, in Hungary. In March he formed an alliance with John George of Saxony, in which he promised not to recover by force the ecclesiastical estates now in the hands of the Evangelical princes, and to give to the Saxon Elector, for his aid against the fellow-believers, the province of Lusatia. In 1629, John George proved how much the emperor’s promise was worth. Maximilian of Bavaria gave his aid to his cousin, in return for which he was to have Frederick’s electoral dignity, and Upper Austria was mort

582    The Christian Church.

gaged to him to reimburse his expenses. While armies were thus preparing to march upon him from the West and North, Frederick’s narrow Calvinism and high notion of his dignity were alienating from him the Bohemian nobility and people.

The Imperialists, under Tilly, pushed on to Prague, and stood before the troops of Frederick, posted on the White Mountain, outside the walls.

The Battle _ .    . _t    , , ,    , , ,

of white The imperial army had been weakened by

Mountain, sickness and hardship. Some of the high

NOV. 8, 1620. „    , , , f    -r , . .

officers counseled delay. In this juncture a Dominican friar stepped forward and said: “ Sons of the Church, why do you hang back? We ought to march straight forward, for the Lord hath delivered the enemy into our hands. We shall overcome them as sure as we live.” If Frederick had been there with equal zeal to animate his troops, the result might have been different. But the princely incompetent was at dinner with his wife and two English ambassadors. In less than an hour he had lost his kingdom and his electorate. His cowardly flight completed what his presumption began, and rendered his cause irretrievable.

Frederick V was placed under the ban of the empire, and his territories and dignities declared forfeited, January 22, 1621. Mansfield and his sixteen thousand freebooters ravaged the Upper and Lower Palatinate and Alsace in 1621 and 1622, under pretense of defending the country. The Margrave of Baden and Christian of Brunswick did the same, to the destruction of the wealth and population of the country. All was in vain. The so-called defenders were beaten by

The Thirty Years’ War.    583

Tilly, or had to evacuate the country, where, like a plague of locusts, they had devoured all but the soil.

Heidelberg surrendered to Tilly, September 16,

1622. The Palatine Electorate was formally transferred to Maximilian, February 13, 1622. Thus Ferdinand paid off the mortgage on Upper Austria. Mansfield and Christian turned to the Netherlands, and forced Spinola to raise the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, September, 1622.

To these victories, by which Bohemia, Hungary, Austrias, and the Palatinate were brought under the dominion of the Roman Catholic Church, _Roman came to be added the gains from missionary Catholic effort, which were never more successful. ^Misslons* At the opening of the seventeenth century there were in South America five archbishoprics, twenty-seven bishoprics, four hundred monasteries, and parish churches innumerable, with universities at Mexico and Lima, in which were taught all the branches of theology.

A Jesuit named Nobili carried on a successful propaganda in Southern India by retaining the Indian castes in the Church. These Malabar rites were sanctioned by Gregory XV, in 1621. In Northern India, in 1610, three princes of the blood under the Emperor Jahangir were baptized by Geronimo Xavier, the nephew of the saint, and a Jesuit college was established at the Mogul capital, at Agra. The Jesuits gained great power and influence at Pekin through the astronomical knowledge and the diplomatic skill of Mathew Ricci and Adam Schrall, 1595-1625. In Japan they were unusually successful until they fell into the power of the opposite political party, and were

584    The Christian Church.

persecuted with the utmost rigor, after 1612. Nevertheless they reported two hundred and thirty-nine thousand converts from 1603 to 1622, and many martyrs. In Abyssinia, in 1622, the emperor became a Roman Catholic. When we recall that France and the Flemish Netherlands had been won back to the Church of Rome, and that Spain and Italy presented an unbroken front, these great gains in the mission fields in the Orient and in America could but augment the pride and confidence of the Roman Catholic Church in the prospect of the final settlement of German affairs at the end of the Bohemian War. In comparison, in a world-wide view, how small seemed the resources and power of the Evangelical cause!

Christian IV of Denmark, a relative both of Mansfield and Frederick V, assumed now the leadership of the forces allied against Ferdinand II. He ^Thwar?^{,8h sou}ght to secure all possible aid, and enlisted the co-operation of Richelieu and of Charles I. Richelieu promised a million livres, Charles ,£30,000 a month. The Huguenots rose against Richelieu on one side, and the Pope on the other. The cardinal had to forego his plans, and the promised million was never paid. Charles could not induce his Parliament to make the necessary grant, and ,£46,000 was all that Christian ever received. Tilly crossed the Weser July 18, 1625, and the Danish War was begun.

Albrecht Wallenstein was of Sclavonic origin, born of Lutheran parents, and educated by the Moravian Brethren. At the age of eighteen he ran

Wallenstein.    _T    „    . .....

away to a Jesuit college, ana professed the Roman Catholic faith. Bold and active, he made him

The Thirty Years’ War.    585

self felt in the midst of Ferdinand’s troubles. He married a rich wife, and acquired immense estates in Bohemia from the confiscations and by purchase for a nominal sum. His title was the Prince of Friedland. When the Danish War broke out, and Ferdinand was hard pressed by Bethlen-Gabor on the east and by Christian IV on the west, Wallenstein offered to raise and pay an army out of his own resources. This offer was accepted. His army at first numbered twenty thousand, but soon one hundred thousand men. The methods he employed were different from those of Mansfield. Strict military discipline was enforced. The punishments were terrible and the rewards extravagant. Wallenstein made his army a well-tempered instrument and thoroughly devoted to himself. The troops were supported from the country, but not by indiscriminate pillage. The authorities of the town, village, or district were compelled to furnish the necessary supplies, though in the process of gathering them the inhabitants often suffered every kind of outrage. Wallenstein did not expose green levies to defeat, but made the victory sure by the positions occupied and the numbers employed before entering upon an engagement. He was more of a tactician than a general, and never fought a battle if otherwise he could gain his ends. Wallenstein met Mansfield at the bridge of Dessau, and defeated him, April 25, 1626. Mansfield retreated to Silesia, and Wallenstein followed him. From thence Mansfield went to Bethlen-Gabor in Hungary, and, on that prince making peace with the emperor, he set out for Venice, but died on the way. The next year Wallenstein conquered all Silesia. Tilly met and defeated Christian IV at Lutter, August

586

The Christian Church.

24, 1626, where ten thousand of his soldiers lay killed or wounded. Christian bitterly said, “ If the King of England had kept his word, the result would have been different.” Fresh from the conquest of Silesia, Wallenstein now broke into Lower Germany, and conquered the dominions of Christian, including Schleswig and Jutland. Then, having taken possession of Mecklenburg, Wallenstein turned himself to the siege of Stralsund, that he might secure his own and the emperor’s power on the shores of the Baltic. At this time the aim of Wallenstein seems to have been to extend the emperor’s authority and make it absolute, while he himself should be the real power in imperial and European politics, Later, doubtless, he contemplated an independent dominion. Wallenstein never met the enemy on anything like equal terms in the field, save at Liitzen, when he was signally defeated, though commanding superior numbers. His genius seemed to fit him to raise, discipline, subsist, and maneuver a large army, and as a strategist he made few mistakes. In character he was visionary and selfish, as in bearing he was reserved and magnificent. He had neither moral nor religious principle, and, even more than Napoleon later, he believed in himself and his star. He was no bigot, and was equally willing to use for his purpose the Evangelicals and the Roman Catholics. Wallenstein met his first reverse when he was compelled to raise the siege of Stralsund, August 3, 1628. In that year he had been made Duke of Mecklenburg, and was formally confirmed in that dignity in 1629.

Ferdinand was now supreme in the empire. He

The Thirty Years’ War.    587

had no foreign foe to fear. The King of Denmark was at his feet, as were the North German territories. From the Alps to the Baltic there was no one to resist his will. There was no I^he^^d!?^of

Restitution.

more famous general than Wallenstein, who stood at his command with one hundred thousand men. The Pope and the Jesuits urged to the utmost the resumption of the ecclesiastical territories that had been in Protestant hands for three-quarters of a century. May 29, 1629, Ferdinand published the Edict of Restitution, which changed two archbishoprics, twelve bishoprics, and one hundred and twenty smaller territories from the hands of the Evangelicals to those of the Roman Catholics. The power of Ferdinand was at its height. Little did he dream that he would die in the midst of the war, which, after twelve years, had not finished one-half its course, a defeated monarch, leaving to his successors but a shadow of the imperial power. The victories of his reign were over, and bitter defeats and bitter humiliations were in store.

July 3, 1630, Ferdinand met the Reichstag at Regensburg. He wished to have his son elected King of the Romans. The agents of Richelieu _TheRelchs. were busy and successful. The complaints tag at of the League against Wallenstein were ^Re»^ensbur»* numerous and effective. Ferdinand dismissed Wallenstein from his command. He gave the Duchy of Mantua to the French heir, the Duke de Nevers, but failed to secure the election of his son. The tide in Germany had turned against the supremacy of Austria and the Church of Rome. Two great men come upon

588    The Christian Church.

the scene, and all is changed. They are not now, but soon will be, in alliance.

Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu was born at Paris, September 9, 1685. His family was an ancient one among the lesser nobility of Poitou.

Cardinal    .    . .

Richelieu. The race was a fighting one, active m wars ^:s8_l^s₆"^^{34a an}d brawls, and making small increase in fortune. The father of the cardinal became a captain in the royal guards of Henry IV, and died in 1590, leaving a wife and five children, with very little for their support. The widow was brave, economical, and persistent. Three years after her husband’s death Henry gave her 20,000 livres, and the next year 15,000 for an old abbey, and a pension of

3,000 livres for her oldest son when old enough to attend court. It was not strange in these circumstances that the youngest son, the future cardinal, should choose the military profession, and study with that in view at the college of Navarre. Richelieu to the end of his life was a soldier rather than a priest, and as such ruled France. He had the tastes, the habit of command, the imperious temper, and the hard and cruel disposition of the soldier of his times. Among the assets of the family was the patronage of the Bishopric of L,ugon. For years the mother of Richelieu used its revenues for the support of her family. Finally, as the buildings were being destroyed for the lack of repair, the chapter sued her for a portion of the revenues of the See. The widow saw no course open but that her son Alphonse should become the bishop. At his coming of age, in 1606, through conscientious scruples, he refused to do this. Then the mother’s choice fell upon Armand, and he

The Thirty Years' War.    589

was elected in 1606 when twenty-one years of age. As he lacked five years of the canonical age for consecration, he went to Rome, where he won the favor of Paul V, received the required dispensation, and was consecrated in 1607. Richelieu applied himself to the study of theology and to the duties of his See. When he began his labors, December 21, 1608, in the dilapidated cathedral, he was the first resident bishop it had known in sixty years. In the next six years he employed his time assiduously in the duties of his position, preaching sermons, and writing books against the Huguenots, and laying the foundation for his future success.

In 1614 he was elected to the States-General, and attracted the attention of the court. In 1615 he became almoner to the queen of Louis XIII. The next year he was made one of the king’s secretaries of state, and seemed on the high road to fortune. The assassination of Marshal d’Ancre in 1617 changed all this. Richelieu left Paris with the queen mother, and his career at court seemed over. He retired to Lu9on; but the king preferred to have him at Avignon, and there he was when Marie de’ Medici escaped from Blois. At the king’s command, Richelieu became part of her court, and, of course, her prime minister. He strengthened himself by the marriage of his niece with the nephew of the Due de Luynes. Thus he was with the queen mother when, at the age of thirty-eight, he was made cardinal, in December, 1622. In April, 1624, he became a member of the king’s ministry, and was the real ruler of France until his death, December 4, 1642. The first obstacle to the carrying out of his foreign policy of humbling the power of Spain

590    The Christian Church.

and making France the first nation in Europe was the independence and the intrigues of the Huguenots. The war against them by Richelieu was not religious, but political. Had they succeeded, France would have been divided as Germany was after the Thirty Years’ War. No one can read the record of that war without his sympathies going out to the hardy seamen and the brave defenders of La Rochelle, who made for fifteen months one of the memorable defenses of history, and showed an endurance unsurpassed. But the Huguenot leaders were bad politicians, and the reliance upon English aid was a broken reed; the incompetence of the English commanders but made more conspicuous the courage of the besieged. Yet when La Rochelle surrendered, October 28, 1628, we can not suppress the conviction that it was best for France and best for the Reformed Church. Their religious liberty was guaranteed. The hands of Richelieu were now free to aid Gustavus Adolphus.

Gustavus Adolphus was the noblest sovereign in Europe, the best general of his time, and a statesman not inferior to Richelieu. The hero and Adoiphug. defender of the Evangelical faith, he was 1594-1611- the grandest figure in Continental Europe.

^,6a3’ The Lion of the North, he saved the Reformation forever in the land of its birth from the proudest and most successful of its foes.

Gustavus Adolphus, of the house of Vasa, was born at Stockholm, December 9, 1594. His father was Charles, Duke of Sundermania, afterward Charles IX, King of Sweden. His mother was Christina of Holstein, a granddaughter of Philip of Hesse. John Skytte, his tutor, had traveled ten years in Europe,

The Thirty Years' War.    591

and was well qualified for his position. In Gustavus he had an apt pupil; for he came to know seven languages, and could converse fluently in four besides his own. His father died in 1611, and Gustavus came to the throne October 30th, at the age of seventeen years. The Duch ambassador, shortly after, thus describes him: “He is of slender figure, well set-up, with rather a pale complexion, a long, sharp face, fair hair, and a pointed beard, which here and there runs into a tawny color; and, according to all reports, he is a man of high courage, though not revengeful, an excellent speaker, and courteous in his intercourse with all men.”

His father had given him advice, of which his son was worthy. Said the dying king: “ Before all things, fear God, honor thy father and mother, be tender to thy sisters, love those who have served me faithfully, reward them according to their deserts, be gracious to thy subjects, punish the evil, trust all men fairly, but only entirely when thou hast learned to know them. Be no respecter of persons before the law; invade no man’s just privileges, provided they clash not with thy law; diminish not thy regal possessions in favor of any man, except thou art sure he will recognize the benefit and do thee good service in return.”

Five years later the king lost his heart to a young lady of the court, Ebba Brahe; but his mother thwarted the king’s desire, and caused her to be married to a Swedish officer. As a _Ma™*_ge> revulsion from this interference, probably, in the same year the king became the father of an illegitimate son, who was with him in the battle in which Gustavus lost his life. This is the only stain

592

The Christian Church.

on the moral character of the Swedish king. Four years later he married Maria Elenora, sister of the Elector of Brandenburg.

The Swedish crown had in it, at Gustavus’s accession, more thorns than roses. Denmark had the

southern provinces of Sweden, and sought

His Wars.    5,    ,    ,

to control the trade of the Baltic through her tolls on the sound. To maintain this power she would resort to any alliance which would limit Sweden. After a year of bloody war between them the Peace of Knarod was signed, January 16, 1613. This gave Sweden Kalmar and Elfsborg. By the Peace of Stolbova between Gustavus and Russia, February 2, 1617, Sweden gained the provinces of Ingria and Karelia, the keys of Finland and Livonia. The soil on which now stands St. Petersburg was Swedish territory. The three years’ war closed by this peace gave Gustavus a European reputation. This reputation was enhanced by the Polish war of 1617-18. Poland sought to recover the Swedish crown for her sovereign, to win back Livonia, and to alienate all possible allies of Sweden, particularly the Elector of Brandenberg. There was a truce, 16181621. When war was renewed, Gustavus took Riga, and Mittau before the end of the first campaign. An armistice was signed with Poland, June, 1622, for three years. This gave Sweden all Livonia and some places in Courland. Gustavus was at war with Poland from the expiration of this armistice until the Treaty of Stuhlmsdorf, August 1, 1629. In the four years’ war the king had shown all the qualities of a great general. He took Courland, defeated the Poles in battle, and overran all West Prussia but Dantzic. By this

The Thirty Years' War.    593

treaty Sweden retained all Livonia with Merael, Pil-lau, Elbing, and two-thirds of the customs of Dantzic. Her other conquests were restored to Poland. An advantageous peace had been made in April, 1628, with Poland’s ally, Denmark.

At the date of the Edict of Restitution, Gustavus had been king eighteen years, and of these more than two-thirds had been spent in war. In this stern school he had become the best soldier, ^G“⁸^J_d^lJ*_r^as in the sense of mastering and perfecting the art of war as well as commanding soldiers in battle, that appeared from the end of mediaeval warfare to Napoleon, with the possible exception of Frederick the Great. He was a thorough engineer, and laid as strong stress on the spade as Maurice of Orange, though only as an auxiliary weapon. He mastered artillery, and gave it a range and mobility it had never possessed. He completely changed infantry tactics, breaking up the heavy masses into two comparatively light lines and interspersing them with cavalry. Thus he gave the line of attack an impetus and mobility, and at the same time a support, which it never before possessed.

The strength of the army of Gustavus was the farmer folk, pious and God-fearing, the primeval peasantry of Sweden. They, no more than Cromwell’s Puritans, knew how to turn their ^_s^pi^f_e^ry backs in battle or to run from the enemy.

To this army Gustavus gave the best discipline then known, such a discipline as no army of the Roman Catholic powers had ever heard of. Like Cromwell’s, it was a religious army. There was morning and evening prayer in each regiment, and a full service 33 '

594    The Christian Church.

and sermon on Sunday. Men could not be flogged for punishment. Dueling was not allowed to the officers, nor plundering to the soldiers. A man might have his own wife with him, but no loose women were allowed in the camps. Some of these regulations anticipate the military reforms of the nineteeth century, and some of them are yet to come. Only one regulation spoke of a harsher age. If a regiment ran away in battle, it should be decimated, every tenth man to lose his head or hand, and the whole regiment to lie outside the quarters, and to clean up the camp until the stain had been wiped out by some signal deed of valor. Little fear that any such punishment would come to any regiment of Sweden. Their religion had taught them how to fight and how to die.

This discipline was strictly enforced during the life of Gustavus. At the outbreak of the war between Sweden and the emperor the army consisted of eighty thousand men. Of these, forty thousand were Swedes and the remainder were foreigners. The revenue of Sweden was a little over 12,000,000 dollars. Of this sum five-sevenths went to pay the army; but two years later only one-sixth was required for this purpose, showing how he made his subsidies and Germany support his army.

In March, 1629, Ferdinand II proclaimed the Edict of Restitution. The impression it made upon the Evangelical princes and powers, and especially upon Gustavus and his motives in entering upon the war, can be best given in his own eloquent words to his Council and Estates at Stockholm, in October, 1629. Thus, without boasting, foreseeing the difficulties, and with devout trust in God, was war decided upon, and

The Thirty Years' War.    595

thus appeared the only man who could save the Reformation on the Continent of Europe:

“ The purpose of the Catholics is everywhere known and manifest. They have long desired nothing else than the extirpation and ruin of the orthodox Protestants. But in former times ^tav^to the religious persecutions were only partial his Council, and affected only single kingdoms, coun-^u^^,a₍^,₆^^t0" tries, and towns, and did not extend over others. But now it has gone so far that the persecution is universal, and not in intention only. In Germany all is put down; in Denmark much is lost; in Poland they scarcely venture to speak of the gospel any more. It fares little better elsewhere. In short, our opponents and enemies flourish; our friends and all opposers of the papacy languish in distress and wretchedness. As many of them as have fled from the sword, a burden to themselves, a mockery to their enemies, wander through the wide world, and must endure that wife and child, either by fair means or foul, be drawn to another faith and worship, so that they end their life in anguish and despair; and those rather may be counted happy whom the sword has slain. Does any one preach or write against the papacy, he is at once imprisoned, accused of treason and disturbance of the State, punished with death or with perpetual confinement; and from this neither age, condition, nor sex protects. There is now no kingdom in Europe more free than Sweden; but the calamity draws nearer and nearer to us, and grows from day to day. The papists have already gained a footing in the Baltic. They have strengthened themselves there; they have taken possession not only of

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Holstein and Jutland, but also of Rostock, Wismar, Stettin, Wolgast, Colberg, Greifswald, and all other smaller harbors in Mecklenburg and Pomerania. They have captured Riigen, they seek to conquer Stralsund; they strain their utmost to establish a Baltic Sea fleet, in order to assail the Swedish commerce and traffic, and, passing over to Sweden, to gain a firm foot here.

“ Sweden is in danger from the power of Hapsburg. That is not all, but it is enough. That power must be met, swiftly and strongly. The times are bad; the danger is great. It is no time to ask whether the cost will not be far beyond what we can bear. The fight will be for parents, for wife and child, for house and home, for Fatherland and Faith.”

After the Council had voted the war, he said: “ I did not call you together because I had any doubt in my mind, but in order that you might enjoy the freedom of opposing me if you wished. That freedom you can no longer enjoy; you have spoken. My view is this: that, for our safety, honor, and final peace, I see nothing but a bold attack upon the enemy. I hope that it will be for the advantage of Sweden; but I also hope that, if the day go hard with us, no blame will be laid upon me, for I have no other end in view but that advantage. I do not underrate the difficulties, such as the want of means or the doubtful issue of battle, in which it is no idle glory that I am seeking— the king of Denmark is sufficient to me against that. Besides, the judgment of posterity generally leaves a man very little glory; and I am satiated with glory, and want no more. Our duty is clear: to exhort all my subjects to continue in their present devoted atti

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tude. I hereby advise you so to bear yourselves, and all over whom you have influence, that either you or our children may see a good end of this matter; which may the Most High grant! For myself, I foresee that I have no more rest to expect but the rest of eternity.”

Gustavus embarked May 30, 1630, and, after long battling with contrary winds, landed in Germany at Ruden, off Usedom, the 24th of June. He _{His First} made a treaty with the Duke of Pomerania, Campaign in July 10th, and took Stettin the 26th of the ^0ermany' month, and Wolgast August 16th. A solemn fast was appointed August 20th, and another September 1st. About this time, in a letter to his brother-in-law, George William of Brandenburg, he said: “Now is the most favorable time for you to occupy and defend your own fortresses. If you will not do that, give me one of them. Give me only Kiistrin. I ’11 defend it. What else can you do? He who makes a sheep of himself will be eaten by the wolf. For I tell you plainly I will not hear a word of neutrality. Your Serenity must be either friend or foe. As soon as I get to your frontier you will have to declare yourself. Here strive God and the devil. If you will hold with God, come over to me. If you prefer the devil, you will have to fight me first. There will be no third choice; of that you may be sure.” It took cannon at the palace gates at Berlin to cause this good advice to be heeded.

Gustavus brought forty thousand men with him, and, August 20th, received a re-enforcement of eight thousand from Livonia. He entered Mecklenburg in September, and appointed another fast. The Elector

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of Brandenburg refused him Kiistrin, so the king turned aside and took Konigsberg and Iyiegnitz, and again entered Mecklenbug. In eight months Gustavus had taken eighty cities and strong places in Pomerania and Mecklenburg. At this time, January 13, 1631, was signed the treaty of Barwalde between France and Sweden. France paid down $120,000 to the Swedish king, and promised $400,000 a year for six years. Sweden promised to maintain thirty thousand foot and six thousand horse in the field. In no crisis did Gustavus show his sagacity and his restraint more than in this campaign. He took no risk until his rear and his communications with Sweden were safe from attack. Then he was an ally worth having, and if Richelieu desired his alliance the treaty was made on equal terms. Whatever advantages were gained by this treaty to Gustavus, they were advantages he had already earned and had shown himself capable of using with effect.

In the midst of these successes he showed no elation, but wrote soberly, as feeling great responsibilities, to Oxenstiern, December 4, 1630: “The issue of battle is doubtful by reason of our sins; doubtful, too, is human life’s span. I beg you, therefore, if it go hard with us, not to lose heart, but to look to my memory and the welfare of those dear to me. Deal with me and mine as I would with you and yours. I have reigned for twenty years with grevious toil, but, God be praised, with honor, too. I have honored my Fatherland, and made light of life, riches, and good days for its sake. I have had no other end in life but to do my duty in my station. But, if I fall, my dear ones will be in a pitiable state. They are women;

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the mother none too wise, the daughter a tiny maiden, too weak to advise themselves in danger, and equally weak if they receive advice. It is natural affection that drives me to write thus to you, and it is a relief to write. Yet them, and my body, and my soul, and all God hath given me, I do commend to his holy keeping.”

Gustavus besieged Frankfort-on-the-Oder, March 25th, and took it by storm, April 2, 1631. Lansberg was taken three days later as Colberg had been taken a month before. Thus Meek-lenburg and Pomerania were cleared from the enemy, and the way was opened to Silesia. Richelieu, meanwhile, had secured the support of the Elector of Treves, and the Netherlands had agreed to pay Gustavus $25,000 a month for the support of his army.

Meanwhile, Tilly, commanding the Imperialists, had not been idle. He took New Brandenburg, March 9th, and invested Magdeburg, April 12th. The siege came to and end in a fearful sack of two days, May 10-11, 1631. The jealousy of George William had prevented Gustavus from relieving the city. Twenty thousand of the inhabitants were killed, and the city burned with fire; only the cathedral and two or three houses were left standing. Gustavus now gave his terms to his brother-in-law, George William, with no uncertain sound, emphasizing them by pointing his cannon toward the palace at Berlin. The elector yielded, and the Treaty of Berlin was signed July

11, 1631, by which the fortresses of Spandau and Kiistrin were given to the custody of the Swedish King.

Gustavus defeated Tilly’s general, Pappenheim,

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near Magdeburg, July ist, and the Swedish general, Baner, took Havelberg eight days later. The same day Gustavus took up his position at the fortified camp of Werben. Here, July ist, he cut to pieces four of the best regiments of Pappenheim, and on the 25th repulsed Tilly. On the 8th of May a new treaty of alliance had been made with France for eight years, and, August 12th, one with the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. The Marquis of Hamilton brought six thousand English and Scotch troops to the aid of Gustavus, July 31st, and two weeks later the Queen of Sweden arrived with a re-enforcement of eight thousand men. Thus strengthened, Gustavus turned toward Saxony, August 30th. The next day a treaty was signed with the Saxon Elector. John George offered all that he was and all his dominions for the support of Gustavus. “ He damned himself soul and body if he ever forsook his Swedish Majesty or his crown, if he would but help him beat the enemy out of his country.” There was dire need. Tilly had been joined by Fiirstenberg with eighteen thousand men. He took Merseburg, August 26th, and Leipzig, September 5th.

The decisive battle of Breitenfeld was fought September 9, 1631. Tilly had thirty-two thousand veterans. The Swedes numbered twenty-seven ^reiteifeid! thousand, of whom seven thousand five hundred were horse. There were twenty thousand Saxons; but, as they ran at the first attack, they were as much use to the enemy as to their ally. The battle resulted in a complete defeat for Tilly, and in undoing all that Ferdinand and the League had

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done outside of the Emperor’s hereditary dominions in the warfare of the last twelve years. There could be no longer mention of the Edict of Restitution, and the Jesuits were lucky if they got out of the country with whole skins.

Gustavus himself shall tell of the victory in a letter dated September ioth : “ How many of the enemy are left dead it is impossible to say (seven thousand to ten thousand). . . . All the artillery, one hundred and six standards, the whole plunder of the camp is ours. We have so many prisoners that we shall not only be able to fill up the gaps in our old regiments, but to even create new ones out of them. . . . Though our loss (two thousand one hundred men and three generals) is profoundly to be regretted, yet this victory, on which the campaign may be said to have turned, is so decisive that we have every reason to thank God, who has mercifully protected us in danger so imminent as we were never in before.” Henceforth Northern Germany belonged to freedom and the Evangelical faith.

The campaign now took another turn. The victorious king took Halle, Merseburg, and Erfurth, crossed the Thuringian Forest, and was at Wurzburg, October 5th. Three days later its fortress, Marienburg, was taken by storm.

Gustavus entered Frankfort-on-the-Main, November 16th, and four days later the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel joined him with ten thousand men. The King of Sweden passed the Rhine, December 7th, and six days later he took Mainz, the ecclesiastical capital of Germany. Speyer and Worms came into his hands

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the last days of December. The year 1631 ended with Gustavus in possession of the chief ecclesiastical territories of Germany.

The Saxon Elector, on the other hand, recaptured Leipzig, and pushed on to Lusatia. He was in Bohemia, October 25th, and November 8th entered Prague. The Saxons beat the Imperialists at Limburg, November 28th. On the 13th of December the elector was back at Dresden. This ended the campaign. The next would be a different one; for Wallenstein was recalled to command the Imperial forces on the same day that Gustavus took Mainz and that John George returned to Dresden.

An incident at Erfurth showed the feeling of Gustavus toward the Jesuits. “When the Jesuits threw themselves at his feet, he raised them from ^the g^round ^and ^sa^> t^ey had much to answer for before God’s tribunal, on account of the commotion they had raised, and the blood they had occasioned to be spilt throughout the world; that for his own part he was so much a Jesuit, as to be able to comprehend that their projects were ill intended, their proceedings oblique, and their maxims dangerous ; that it would become them more to peruse their breviaries and handle their rosaries than to embroil themselves in the intrigues of state, and make the world a sea of blood; exhorting them to continue in repose, and advertise their brethren of this discourse, since if they remained inactive, and in profound submission, strict care should be taken that no person should molest them.”

It is a striking proof of the toleration, the moderation, and the sagacity of Gustavus that, in January,

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1632, he laid down the main conditions of peace which were to prevail at Westphalia. All that the Roman Catholics gained beyond them by sixteen years of war was the retention of the Jesuits in the empire, and the Upper Palatinate for Maximilian of Bavaria.

It has long been a puzzle to students of his campaign why, after Breitenfeld, Gustavus did not at once march on Vienna, and secure terms that would have ended the war. Undoubtedly taTus^dnot this would have been the greatest possible March on advantage to Germany. What hindered it? ^en"^a' The stupidity and treachery of the Saxon Elector and his court. So Gustavus expressly stated to Oxen-stiern. When the latter said to Gustavus, “I should have been much better pleased to have paid my duty to you at Vienna than at Mainz,” Gustavus replied that, for his own part, he had weighed matters with great exactness and that only superficial appearances presented themselves against him. “ I know my men, the Elector of Saxony and his generalissimo. The one is irresolute, and does not love me; the other is insincere, and mortally hates me. They may do very well to keep the Protestant spirit alive in Bohemia and in the incorporated provinces, where all that I can expect from them is that they should produce a sort of revulsion, which may serve to administer force against the imperial troops till Providence allows me to give a second and more decisive stroke in some signal engagement. But change the scene. Suppose the elector on the banks of the Rhine, and I in Austria or Bohemia. The whole state of the question is then entirely altered; for there is not a Protestant prince in all the district where the Elector of Saxony now com

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mands; so that, in case of any infidelity, he can engage no one power to follow his example. But here he would be in the very center of all the princes and States who entered into the confederation at Leipzig; and he and Arnheim—who leads him blindfolded, and is a better Jesuit than a soldier—are both timid enough to submit meanly if they are defeated, and selfinterested enough to sell me and my cause in exchange for some good acquisition, in case the enemy should obtain any eminent success. In either part of which alternative the princes of the Union would naturally copy the conduct of the first Protestant power in Germany; and upon this elector’s defection, I being in Bohemia, Moravia, or Austria, how is a retreat to be conducted from thence to the Baltic—the only resource that would be left me—with Wallenstein in my rear and Arnheim in my front? No, sir, in the game Gustavus is to play, he must be among the Protestant princes himself, and must be the first man among them too.”

Gustavus was in and about Frankfort during January and February, 1632, except four days for the siege of Kreutznach. An incident at Kreutznach*    shows his valor and generalship:

“ Gustavus took a survey of the castle, but approached so near that his brave generals, out of pure respect, gave him the honor of precedence. A huge stone hurled from the wall missed a little of putting a period to his curiosity, and a person who stood next to him was shot through the brain with a musket-ball. Soon afterwards, being dissatisfied with what he saw, he went out privately and called a sergeant to him and said, ‘ Fellow-soldier, clamber up and take a just view

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of yonder work, and here are forty pieces of gold to make you happy afterwards.’ The sergeant performed his business and returned unhurt; yet Gustavus could not rest contented with his relation. First mounting the steep of the hill, he extended himself flat on the ground to take a view of the fortifications, and made the soldier lie by him. Even then he could not command the works as he desired; so dismissing the sergeant, he clambered still higher by himself; then returning to his army, declared with a voice of cheerfulness, ‘ Now will I be master of yonder castle by five o’clock to-morrow morning.’ ”

At Frankfort the King of Sweden held court. To it resorted a crowd of German princes, including Frederick V, of the Palatinate.

Wallenstein had been in correspondence with Gustavus since October, 1630, and the king had agreed to his conditions the Tune following. But

,    _w    , Wallenstein

mutual distress caused Wallenstein to take _at Head of service with his imperial master, by whom ^{the ,m}P^e“ he had been so rudely treated. But he de-    ’

termined never again to be in the hands of the emperor, and henceforth sought an independent position and sovereignty. On the other hand, the claims of Ferdinand in Italy had made Urban VIII earnest in desiring the success of Gustavus.

The King of Sweden left Frankfort, March 4th, and was at Nuremberg the 21st. Six days later he took Danauworth by storm, and carried the _TheCams, war into the dominions of the new Bava- paign of rian Elector. By a masterly maneuver and ^,633‘ attack he crossed the Lech, and carried the intrench-ments of Tilly. The veteran Walloon general was

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wounded. At Tilly’s request, the king sent to him the best surgeon procurable, but in vain; two weeks later he died.

Gustavus took Augsburg, April ioth, and besieged Ingolstadt in vain, April 16th to 24th. Thence he marched to Munich, remaining from May 7th to 20th. He made friends of every one in Munich. All had his protection. The children thronged about him, and he patted them on the head, and threw to them pennies. The Roman Catholic religion was everywhere respected. On Ascension-day he attended Roman Catholic service, and one enthusiastic monk flung himself on his knees before him and besought him to become a Roman Catholic.

Meanwhile Wallenstein had not been idle. He recruited an army of twenty-thousand men. He took Prague in April, 1632, and Eger in Bohemia Nuremberg? *ⁿ May. He bad no love for Maximilian of Bavaria, and was pleased, rather than otherwise, to have the King of Sweden in his capital. Finally the humbled elector came to Wallenstein’s terms, and June 25th he entered Bavaria. On hearing this, Gustavus retired on Nuremberg, though Baner was in Munich, July 12th. Gustavus fortified Nuremberg, and awaited the gathering of his scattered forces under Horn, Baner, and Oxenstiern. By August 21st they were with him. The Saxon general, and director of the elector’s policy, Arnheim, went over to Wallenstein, whose army now rose to forty thousand men, “the worst and wickedest” Europe ever saw. They were paid only in the pillage of the territories, in which they warred and ravaged. With excellent strategic judgment, Wallenstein took up a strong position

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near Nuremberg, called Der Alte Veste. The country, in spite of all of Gustavus’s provident forethought, could not sustain the two armies and the citizens of Nuremberg. Because of the city and its fortifications, Wallenstein could not attack Gustavus with hope of success. On the other hand, without the citizens, he could better stand starvation. It is during this siege that the character of the Swedish king as a disciplinarian shines out in contrast with that of every other general of the Thirty Years’ War.

“ When a poor peasant complained of a common soldier who had stolen the support of his family, a single cow, Gustavus seized the fellow with his own hands, and, calling for the regimental executioner, commanded him that instantly he should perform his office. ‘ Friend,’ said he to the criminal, ‘ every soldier is my child: yet it is better for thee to die than that the wrath of God should descend, on account of this transgression, upon me and thee and the whole army assembled around us.’ When the citizens, during the siege, complained of pillage by his soldiers, he addressed his army and said: ‘ It is rumored that the Swedes are as bad as the Imperialists, but I know better. They are no Swedes that commit these crimes, but you Germans yourselves. Had I known that you were a people so wanting in natural affection for your own country, I would never have saddled a horse for your sakes, much less imperiled my life and my crown and my brave Swedes and Finns. I came but to restore every man to his own, but this most accursed and devilish robbing of yours doth much abate my purpose. I have not enriched myself by so much as by one pair of boots since my coming to Germany,

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though I have had forty tons of gold passing through my hands. By such means as you are now employing victory will never be won.’ ”

Gustavus well knew the advantage his adversary had in the game of starvation ; so, against great odds, he decided to attempt to storm Der Alte Veste. He suffered a bloody repulse, August 24, 1632, the only significant check in his whole career. September 8th the King of Sweden left Nuremberg. Wallenstein followed four days later. Twenty-nine thousand had perished in the city and the two camps in that fearful siege. Wallenstein left Maximilian, September 25th, and in September and October the Swedish general, Horn, took possession of Alsace.

Wallenstein had gone north, while Gustavus awaited his attack in Bavaria. Wallenstein took Leipzig, October 22d, and six days later ^oLutzenf ^was j°i^ne(i by Pappenheim. Gustavus marched swiftly north, and was at Naum-burg November 5th. The inhabitants came out and fell on their knees before him as their deliverer. This angered the king. “Ah,” he said, “now you honor me like a god, and God will surely punish me for receiving such adoration. Yet I hope that He, who knows that I take no delight in such honor, will not suffer my work to fail whatsoever becomes of me, seeing it is for the glory of his holy name.”

O true and loyal-hearted, thy work is nearly ended; but “He who keepeth watch above his own” will see, in spite of all the wickedness of the evil years following—yea, through the centuries—that it is not in vain. On November 4th, Wallenstein sent Pappenheim

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to Halle, and Gustavus, apprised of this through an intercepted letter, resolved on an immediate attack, though, without Pappenlieim, Wallenstein was much his superior in force and posi- _Nov^U6^Z^3₃ tion, as the king had eighteen thousand to Wallenstein’s twenty-five thousand men. Gustavus hoped for a surprise, and beat up the quarters two hours before daylight. But a thick mist covered the field, which did not lift before ten o’clock. This gave time to Wallenstein to send for Pappenheim. Meanwhile in the Swedish army prayers were read at the head of each regiment. Luther’s Psalm, “ Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott,” was sung, and also the battle-hymn of Gustavus Adolphus, “ Fear not them, little flock,” the men standing at their arms. The king then addressed them. To the Swedes he said: “ There you have the enemy in front of you. He is not on a mountain or behind intrenchmeuts this time, but on an open plain. You know well how eagerly he has sought to avoid fighting, and that he is only fighting now because he can not escape us. Fight them, my dear countrymen and friends, for God, your country, and your king. I will reward you all, and bravely; but if you flinch from the fight, you know well that not a man of you will ever see Sweden again.” To the Germans he spoke in like manner. Then he waved his sword over his head, crying: “ Forward, in God’s name! Jesu! Jesu! Jesu! help us to strive to-day to the honor of thy holy name ! ”

When the mist lifted, the artillery fire began, and Wallenstein set fire to Liitzen. After an hour’s firing, the Swedes charged along the whole line. The king

39

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hurled his right wing on the enemy. The Swedish center cleared all before it and captured a battery. Suddenly there was a terrific charge of cavalry. Pap-penheim had returned and sought the king, but fell mortally wounded. The king, seeing his center shaken, ordered the Smaland regiment of cavalry to follow him. Gustavus had not tasted food that morning. He was a little near-sighted; he wore no armor, as his increasing flesh made it uncomfortable. He rode a white charger, and, as his custom was, rode ahead of his command. A veil of mist came between him and the Smalanders. The group around the king came upon a body of the enemy’s cavalry. A pistol-shot struck his horse in the neck; another broke the king’s arm. He turned to one of his suite and said, “Cousin, lead me out of the battle, for I am sore hurt.” As they turned, a shot struck him in the back, and the king fell mortally wounded. The cuirassiers of Wallenstein demanded who he was. He answered, “ I am the King of Sweden, who do seal the religion and liberty of the German nation with my blood.” The swords of the questioners, plunged again and again into his breast, soon ended his life. They took his hat, blackened with powder and pierced with a bullet, and his buff coat from him; they can now be seen at Vienna. The Swedes at once charged and recovered the body, which was borne in an artillery-wagon to the rear.

Bernard of Saxe-Weimar now took command, and rode up to Knifshausen, who said, “ The battle was not so lost but they could make an orderly retreat.” “Retreat!” cried Bernard, “the time for that is past; it is vengeance now.” The Swedes carried everything before them. They took the guns and blew up

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the powder-wagons. At four o’clock the last of Pap-penheim’s cavalry rode fresh into the battle. The Swedish infantry were cut down where they stood and lay in long swaths. The Swedish artillery cut to pieces the victorious cavalry. At last the whole Swedish army charged together and won the field. The army of Wallenstein was practically annihilated; it never fought another battle.

Thus died Gustavus Adolphus, pious, just, and brave, a hero of whom any cause or land might be proud. His single infirmity seems to have been anger, which he knew how to control. Had longer life been his he might have saved the German nation. He did save the German Reformation.

Stahlhanke’s Finlanders sat in full armor on their horses inside the village church, while the Lutheran schoolmaster read the service for the dead.

__    -,11 ^His Funeral.

He was also a carpenter, and made a rude coffin for the body. Nearly a year and a half later, with royal honors, it was laid at rest in Stockholm. His presentiment that he should not return alive to Sweden was fulfilled; but he had done such service for Germany and the Reformation as no other man has wrought from Luther to Bismarck. Germany had at last found a man; but, alas! how brief his days! The people and nation were left to human wolves, and in their fierce strife the old German nation died. What centuries of sorrow before the new nation was born !

Wallenstein was defeated at Liitzen, but was alive; the victor was dead. Wallenstein drew off his troops to Bohemia. His army is said to have suffered as much loss on the retreat as in ^^Lu^en. the battle. This, though an exaggeration, shows something of the demoralization. Wallenstein

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needed time and a safe refuge in which to recruit his army. There was no longer any one to break in upon his plans. How different would all have been if the Swedish king had lived! Bernard of Saxe-Weimar was chief in command, and Oxeustiern guided the policy of the allied forces. The prestige of the Swedish arms had survived the king. April 23, 1633, was formed the League of Heilbronn between the Evangelical princes of Western and Northern Germany and the Swedes. But before this the Saxon Elector practically agreed on terms with Wallenstein. Wallenstein now proposed to Oxenstiern to arrange peace and to compel the emperor to accede to its terms.

At this time he thought to claim the lower Palatinate for himself, with the command of an army sufficient to overwhelm all resistance, to establish a sufficient central power in the empire while guaranteeing the rights of the princes and free cities. This scheme had the merit of making Germany master of herself, and of excluding the foreigner, whether Swede, French, or Spaniard, and establishing some basis of mutual toleration. These plans were acceptable to Saxony, and were proposed at Vienna; but Ferdinand was too bigoted, too narrow and selfish, to accept them. And indeed they had no foundation. Wallenstein alone could carry them out, and no man trusted to Wallenstein. The character, the devotion, the singleness of purpose of the Swedish king were not his, and these qualities alone could give him success.

But Wallenstein still commanded a large and well-equipped army. He turned upon the Swedes, and drove them out of Silesia and stood upon the frontiers

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of Saxony. Meanwhile Bernard of Saxe-Weimar had not been idle. He took Regensburg, and established himself on the borders of Austria. Wallenstein drew back into Bohemia, and barred his further advance, but did not attack him. After December, 1633, Wallenstein planned to play his game with the army against the emperor. He dreamed of making himself King of Bohemia. This state of things could not last. As early as February 7, 1634, the court at Vienna decided to cause his arrest, and, if necessary, to kill him. Wallenstein was in his camp at Eger. Three colonels, foreigners—Butler, a Roman Catholic Irishman; Gordon and Leslie, two Scotch Protestants—arranged to put him to death. The colonels favorable to Wallenstein were slaughtered at a banquet. An Irish captain named Devereaux, with a band, forced Wallenstein’s apartments and killed him. No account of the man or of his fate will ever compare with the greatest of German tragedies, Schiller’s Wallenstein. Few translations in any tongue can equal Coleridge’s rendering. Seldom have two such poets wrought together to make a masterpiece the common inheritance of two great peoples. Wallenstein was assassinated February 25, 1634, and the Imperial army lost the only first-class general it ever possessed in the Thirty Years’ War.

But the Imperial army was left no longer in Bohemia to watch events. Under Gallas and the nominal command of Ferdinand, afterward Ferdinand III, Regensburg was seized. Bernard ^diineln. was unable to relieve it. It fell, Danau-worth was taken, and siege was laid to Nordlingen. Spanish gold and troops had made strong the position

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of the Imperialists. Against the advice of Horn, and in a very disadvantageous position, Bernard decided to attack the Imperialists, September 6, 1634. The result was a most disastrous overthrow. Twelve thousand men lay dead upon the field of battle; eighty cannon, four thousand wagons, and three hundred standards fell to the victors. Only a remnant of the Swedish army remained. The prestige of their arms was gone. The League of Heilbronn was dissolved It was after this that the Elector of Saxony consummated his long meditated treason, and signed the The Treaty Treaty °f Prague with the Emperor Ferdi-of Prague, nand II. Fear of Gustavus and of his army ^,635‘ no longer restrained him. But seldom has a prince set his hand to a more unfortunate document. For the good provisions of the treaty there were no guarantees, and the Edict of Restitution had shown John George how worthless were Ferdinand’s promises without them, and for the bad ones there was no relief. The result was to bring upon Saxony the worst horrors of an awful war.

For a new factor entered into the strife, as France France De= declared war against Spain, May 19, 1635, ciares War. pi_aci_ng an army of one hundred and thirty-two thousand men in the field. This occupied the Spanish and Imperial forces in the West.

Meanwhile the Saxon Elector, by the Treaty of Prague, had taken the contract to drive the Swedes swede ^out Germany; no small task for a man and of the capacity of John George. Baner, ^Saxon* who commanded the Swedes, totally defeated the Saxon troops in 1635, and then, re-enforced

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in 1636, ravaged the whole Saxon Electorate. No mercy was shown, as the Swedes regarded the Saxons as their enemies while in alliance and as traitors when arrayed against them. Finally John George and the Imperial general, Hatzfeld, joined forces to drive out the Swedes.

Baner retreated through Brandenburg, but finally turned at Wittstock, October 4, 1636, and inflicted upon the allies an irreparable defeat. The allies lost five thousand killed and two thou- linstock** sand prisoners, twenty-three cannon, the whole baggage and silver plate of the elector, and one hundred and fifty stands of colors. Nordlingen was avenged. The Swedes regained their superiority. Many of their regiments in this battle returned ten times to the charge. In the nine dreadful years of war which remained between Saxony and the Swedes no Saxon army achieved anything of importance. Baner, after driving the Imperialists into Westphalia, again took up his quarters in Saxony.

In the meantime Bernard of Saxe-Weimar was busy on the side of France in Alsace and Lorraine, in the years that followed Nordlingen, until 1638, when in March he took Rheinfelden, in April Freiburg, and then began tjie siege of Breisach, which was the strongest and most important Imperialist fortress in Western Germany. It capitulated December 19, 1638, and was an irretrievable loss to the empire. Meanwhile Ferdinand II, who, perhaps, alone might have given peace to a land riven and torn for almost twenty years, but who, under Jesuit direction, would not, died February 15, 1637.

616    The Christian Church.

His son, Ferdinand III, less able but more tolerant and more willing to recognize accomplished facts, succeeded him.

Bernard of Saxe-Weimar had great plans of conquest, and did not intend to be a mere tool of Richelieu; but he was carried away by the plague, July 8, 1639.

Baner began the campaign of 1637 by the siege of Leipzig, but the Imperialists and Saxons compelled The Swedes ^{to retreat}> which he did with marvelous under Baner. ability, to Pomerania; but he lost almost 1637=1641. every place the Swedes possessed in Central Germany. The success of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar in 1638 reversed affairs. A new treaty was signed at Hamburg between France and Sweden, and the princes who were parties to the old League of Heil-bronn renewed their alliance with Sweden. Baner took Upper Pomerania and Mecklenburg, now almost a desert, and marched into Saxony, and then into Bohemia. He destroyed everything within his reach in that unfortunate kingdom. Over one thousand castles and villages were burned. Some nights the smoke from a hundred at once blackened the sky. Baner then retired into Silesia. In 1640 the Swedes were driven from their fortified posts in Bohemia and through Saxony. But Baner, being re-enforced, was able to hold his own, and in the winter of 1641 attacked Regensburg while the Reichstag was in session. He terrified the members of that body, but was unable to take the town. The Swedish general then retired to Halberstadt, where he died in May, 1641.

May 11, 1635, war was declared by France against

The Thirty Years' War.    617

Spain. In that campaign the French were unsuccessful, and in 1636 the Spanish army invaded France, - and threw Paris into consternation. Rich- _France elieu rallied the capital and the nation. and The Spaniards, who had advanced as far as ^sP^am-Corbie, retreated. The victory of the Swedes at Witt-stock and the victories of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar had put another face on affairs. Bernard’s campaign in 1637 and 1638 gave Alsace to France, and permanently closed the highway down the Rhine from Spain to Flanders. In 1638, Richelieu secured the naval supremacy, and burned Spanish vessels in the Bay of Biscay, and made communications unsafe between Italy and Spain. In 1639 the last Spanish fleet for Flanders was driven to English protection in the Downs, and there burned by the Dutch in a neutral harbor, only a remnant escaping. In 1640, Catalonia broke out in full rebellion, and in December of the same year Portugal again became independent, after being for sixty years united with the Spanish crown. In 1642, Roussillon was taken by the French. To how low an estate had sunk the Spain of Philip II!

Thus triumphed the policy of Richelieu. Spain was effectually humbled. Alsace was won for France, and Conde was soon to make evident her military supremacy. To secure his power ^heiieu and the absolute authority of the king,

Richelieu had not only overthrown the Huguenots, but had shed upon the scaffold the noblest blood of France, and effectually curbed a mutinous and unprincipled nobility. The disorders of the Fronde could not undo his work. Inflexible and often cruel in the carrying out of his purpose, bending the popu-

618    The Christian Church.

lation under the load of a grievous taxation, incurring bitter hatred, and awakening little love, Cardinal de Richelieu was yet a great man. He founded what is now the Jardin des Plantes, the French Academy, and the Royal printing press. He built the Palais Royal, and rebuilt the Chateau de Richelieu, the ancestral seat of his house, and the Sorbonne at Paris. Most of all, it was his fate for twenty momentous years to rule France and to shape the policy of Europe. The maxims of his policy prevailed in the internal affairs of France until the Revolution, and in those of Europe until 1870.

Torstenson succeeded Baner. He was an invalid, a martyr to the gout, but few generals made their SwedesUnder ^armi^es more ubiquitous. In 1642 he cap-TorBtenson, tured the Imperialist posts in Silesia, 1641-1646. _an(^ _ravag_ej Moravia. Driven from Moravia, he overran Lusatia. Near Breitenfeld the Swedes were victorious, and took Leipzig as a consequence. The Imperialists lost five thousand killed, and as many taken prisoners. In the winter and spring of 1643 Torstenson again took possesssion of Bohemia and Moravia, and foraged almost to the gates of Vienna. At the same time the Electorate of Cologne was taken possession of by the allies of Sweden. In September, 1643, the Swedish commander left Moravia for Silesia, and, to the astonishment of all, turned up suddenly in Holstein. There he found good winter quarters, and ravaged the Danish mainland. He compelled the King of Denmark to sign the Peace of Bremsebor in 1645, and thus made good the claim of Sweden on the Archbishopric of Bremen and the Bishoprics of Minden and Verden in the Peace of

The Thirty Fears' War.    619

Westphalia. After overrunning Denmark, Torstenson again, in 1644, penetrated into Bohemia. The last Imperial army he defeated at Jankow, March 6, 1645. The Austrians left two thousand dead and three thousand prisoners. The Swedes pressed 011 to the gates of Vienna. The Saxon Elector now concluded a truce with the Swedes, yearly renewed until the signing of the Great Peace. The Swedes withdrew into Bohemia and Silesia, and Torstenson laid down his command.

In these years the French had been learning the art of war. In 1643, at Rocroy, the Duke d’Enghien, later Prince Conde, passed the military supremacy of Europe from Spain to France ^prem*! by following the teachings of the great Gustavus; a supremacy which remained with France until 1870, though interrupted by Marlborough, Frederick the Great, and Wellington. On August 4, 1644, in the bloodiest battle of the war, he defeated the Imperialists and Bavarians at Freiburg; August 3, 1645, in the second battle of Nordlingen he inflicted another crushing defeat, in which the best Bavarian general, Mercy, lost his life.

Wrangel had succeeded in the command of the Swedes in 1646. He successfully conducted his retreat until he joined his forces with the F^rench_SwedegUnder marshal, Turenne, a greater soldier than wrangei, Conde. In August they marched straight ^,646~^l648-into the heart of Bavaria, and met with no resistance until they reached Augsburg. They then marched to Munich, and made the surrounding country a desert. In May, 1647, elector signed a separate peace with the Swedes and the French. In September the Bavarian Elector broke the treaty, and the electorate suf-

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The Christian Church.

fered all the horrors which had been visited upon Saxony.

In 1647, France prevented the total ruin of the emperor, lest Sweden should be too strong; and in The Last ^he next year the same course was taken Years of the by Bavaria with Sweden, lest the emperor

^War‘ should be too strong in the final negotiations for peace. In the campaign of 1648, Turenne and Wrangel, again united, drove the Imperialist general, Melander, a Calvinist Hessian deserter, before them, and at Zusmarshausen, May 17, 1648, he was thoroughly defeated and killed. They then crossed the Lech, and again overran Bavaria. Maximilian retired to Salzburg. They tried to cross the Inn into Austria, but the current was too swift. The emperor had neither general nor army left. A Swedish detachment under Konigsmark took the lower town of Prague in October, and ended the Thirty Years’ War where it began. This last blow put an end to the irresolution of Ferdinand III, and the Treaty of Westphalia was signed October 24, 1648.

No pen can describe the horrors of that war in which the German nation sank into misery and political dependence. Bad as the German sol-of the°war⁸ diery themselves were in their rapine, it was a foreign soldiery which devoured her substance and ate out her heart. On the one side were Spaniards and Italians, Poles and Slaves, and, worst of all, the unclean and terrible Croats. On the other, the Swedes, the English, Scotch, Dutch, and French. There were no common ties of country or religion to protect the poor inhabitants, or military discipline after the death of Gustavus. There was

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621

only a warfare unto the death between the peasantry and both armies; for the armies were more like armed tribes than a disciplined soldiery. There was no commissariat, and whatever pay was earned by the soldiers was always in arrears. The soldiery formed only a part of the force that absorbed the substance of the people. An Imperial army of forty thousand had one hundred and forty thousand camp followers, and they were usually the vilest of mankind; human vultures they were, fattening where hungry w^rolves had fought.

Besides the armies, which left nothing after their passage for the use of a possible enemy, there was the network of small garrisons, which were too weak for protection, and strong only to exert a continual oppression. The open country was, of course, the most defenseless. In the tower of the village church a watch would be kept. When a band of soldiers appeared in sight, all the inhabitants fled, carrying with them all they could to the nearest forest, or morass, or mountain. They took refuge in quarries or in caves, and remained in hiding for weeks or months together. Meanwhile all that was usable was consumed, and every device imaginable was used to detect concealed treasures. The earth was probed with iron rods. Water was poured upon it; if it ran into the earth quickly, it betrayed the trust. Walls were tapped with the butt-ends of muskets, and coffins were rifled for treasures concealed with the bones of the dead. This occurred not once, but often. We are told of one village sacked twenty-eight times in two years. So with the towns; there was little to live upon. There was none to bring wood to the inhabitants,

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and so they would burn the timbers of the deserted houses, which even the enemy had spared for a refuge.

There is no enumeration possible of these horrors. A few instances will suffice. In 1637, after the capture of Torgau, twelve thousand wagons came to Dresden filled with fugitives. A plague broke out among them, and when it ceased one-half of the inhabitants of Dresden were dead. In 1644, Wiesbaden was surprised by a troop of five hundred Bavarian cavalry. After they had finished their work of robbery, ravishing, and murder, “ they drove before them the entire population which survived, men, women, and children, stripped absolutely naked.” For a year the place stood without inhabitants.

In these circumstances there could be little cultivation of the land. Cattle and horses are among the

_i property first swept away by an army; wagons find the same fate. If any one dared to begin work in the field, it would be with a musket slung on his back, and some neighbor stationed in a tree to give warning of the approach of Croat or Swede; and one was as bad as the other in the later years of the war. The only result would be dreadful dearth. The details are sickening. Corpses were dug from the graves, or taken down from the gallows. Children were enticed away, and killed for their flesh. Prisoners were killed and eaten. In 1639 the Duke of Mecklenburg wrote to the Imperial general, Gallas, saying that “ in many places parents have eaten their children, and a man is not safe from his fellow, as numerous examples show.”

Hard on the famine followed the pestilence. The population of Wiirtemberg fell in a few years from five

The Thirty Years' War.

623

hundred thousand to less than fifty thousand. Whole armies vanished from the earth without meeting a foe, but struck with the pestilence. The city of

PcStil€I3C€«

Augsburg fell, in fourteen years of war, from eighty thousand to sixteen thousand inhabitants, and the years of horror were not then half finished. In Saxony great tracks were rendered absolutely desolate, and whole villages disappeared from the face of the earth. Wolves increased where men had lived, until 1656, when a law was passed for their extirpation. In eight years the population sank from three to one and a half millions. The whole of Germany lost from one-half to two-thirds of its population.

Amid all the intolerable misery of these years, where they were strong enough, the work of conversion to the Church of Rome went on. _Roman Trench tells us of the method: “ The first Catholic step was taken to deprive the lay people of ^Conversions* their natural guides and leaders, to smite the shepherds that so the sheep might be scattered. When the Lutheran or Reformed pastors were simply expelled, forcibly rent away from their people, and driven, often in their old age, to exile and poverty in some strange land, this was the mildest, most merciful treatment they met. Numbers, above all in Bohemia, if not slain outright on the spot, which was common enough, were so maltreated or tortured that death presently followed. The pastors, in one way or another, got rid of, and the churches closed, it was usual to summon all known or suspected Protestants to bring whatever heretical books they possessed to the market-place, that so the heretical ones—in Bohemia the vernacular versions of the Scriptures were included among these—might be

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destroyed. . . . This done, a searching inquisition was made through the houses, and as many as had kept back any books were punished by fine and imprisonment. How thoroughly this work was done is attested by the root-and-branch destruction of the literature of Bohemia, known to have existed before this date. . . . Soldiers—‘saint makers,’ it was the sport to call them—were quartered in numbers on the Protestants, with the understanding that almost every outrage was permitted to them; that they were there not merely to devour the substance of their obstinate hosts, but that it was their business in all ways to make their presence intolerable to these. One ingenious device was to bind a mother and her sucking child at a little distance from one another, and so prove whether the wailings of the infant would not move the mother to recant before death had stilled these forever. At the same time all this insult, outrage, and wrong could at any moment be brought to an end by a certificate obtained from the Roman Catholic priest that the bearer had attended confession ; as many, meanwhile, as remained constant being plagued, not merely with those originally quartered upon them, but with those withdrawn from their weaker brethren of the faith.”

Of the full consequence of the Thirty Years’ War Droysen saj^s: “Whoever conquered, or whoever was defeated, the old Germany was dead; not merely politically, but also in its well-being, its moral restraint of habit and custom. In every peaceful activity it was fully destroyed; it was but the waste fighting place for the savage soldiery, fearful alike to friends and foes, raging through the exhausted communities in

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terrible bestiality, in devilish outrage, using the right of the sword in insatiable avarice and thirst for blood. So, trodden and ground down in misery, hunger, despair, the victims of every outrage and insolence and shame, men clamored after peace, after peace at any price. He who brought them, to their little piece of German soil, ‘ the dear peace,’ was their savior. What had been emperor and empire, what Fatherland and honor and pride of the German name, that in twenty years of sorrow the old had forgotten, the growing generation no more knew. There was no more a German nation. There remained only the miserable, scattered remnants of a ruined people.”

THE PROVISIONS OF THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA, 1648.

The Peace of Westphalia settled the issues raised by the Thirty Years’ War. The provisions of the peace may be stated under three heads: those relating to the compensations of princes and powers, those relating to the constitution of the empire, and those relating to the Religious Peace.

To the Elector Palatine was restored the Lower Palatinate, with its capital, Heidelberg. An eighth electorate was created and conferred upon him. His four brothers received 400,000 ^PJJ"“ers!^ld crowns, his seven sisters 350,000, and his mother an annual pension of 20,000, from the emperor.

The Duke of Bavaria received the Upper Palatinate and the electoral dignity.

The Elector of Brandenburg received the Bishoprics of Halberstadt, Minden, and Cammin, with the reversion of Magdeburg.

40

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The Christian Church.

The Elector of Saxony had his title confirmed to the Bishoprics of Naumburg, Merseburg, and Meissen.

Austria had confirmed her hereditary title to Bohemia and Hungary.

France received Alsace, Metz, Toul, and Verdun. Sweden received Lower Pomerania, Stettin, Wismar, the Island of Riigen, the Archbishopric of Bremen, the Bishopric of Verden, and five millions of crowns.

The independence of Switzerland was acknowledged, as was also that of the United Netherlands in a separate treaty with Spain. Danauworth was not restored to its rights, but remained in the grasp of Maximilian of Bavaria.

The peace confirmed the territorial independence and sovereignty of the German princes. They were The Consti- ^to ^^ave voice in all legislative and judicial tutionofthe proceedings, and were free to contract alli-Empire. _{ances w}ith each other and with foreign powers. This, of course, reduced the authority of the emperor to a mere name.

The adherents of both Confessions had perfect equality in the Reichstag, in the Judicial Chambers, in the Aulic Council, at the Circles, so far ^Thepeace.^{i0US as} dignities and honors were concerned.

There was established a parity between the Confessions so that, in the Reichstag, no matter touching religion could be decided by a majority vote, but by an equal voice from both Confessions. In all cases for trial among Protestants and between Roman Catholics and Protestants there must be an equal number of judges from both Confessions. The Re

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formed were equally included with the Lutherans in the Religious Peace.

The normal year for all restitutions was 1624. All parties were to be in perpetual possession as they then were. This left Bohemia, Moravia, and the Austrias in the power of the Roman Catholic Church. Protestants in Roman Catholic countries had civil toleration; i. e._} their religion did not affect their civil relations, and they could have religious worship in private after their own manner. If, however, the Roman Catholic ruler resolved to have them conform to his Church, they could claim the right of emigration, and could sell their goods or have them administered by others while they went into exile. By this peace the emperor had little left him but his title. The empire suffered grievously. Alsace and the three bishoprics went to France, and a good slice of Northern Germany to Sweden; worst of all, foreigners at any time could meddle in her internal affairs.

The Roman Catholics won Bohemia, Hungary, the Austrias, and the Upper Palatinate. To the Protestants were assured all other gains they had made in Germany.

ENGLAND DURING THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR.

Charles I succeeded to the throne, March 2, 1625. He was in the twenty-fifth year of his age. Handsome, refined, loving art, and pure in his morals, he was wedded to the doctrine that he ruled by the grace of God, and was responsible alone to him. He did not believe that any faith was to be kept with his subjects who attempted

628    The Christian Church.

to limit his power, whether they sat in Parliament or were victorious in battle. His faithless, shifty policy brought him to the block.

His queen, Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV, was trained in the absolutistic principles of the French court and of the Roman Church. She did as much as any other adviser to hasten his ruin.

Since 1621, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, had predominant influence over Charles. When the new king came to the throne, Buckingham really ruled England until his death by the hand of an assassin, August 23, 1628. The vanity, unreliability, extravagance, and resistance to popular measures of reform of the favorite, as well as his incompetency as shown in the expedition for the relief of La Rochelle, gave an inauspicious opening to the reign of Charles I. How different would have been the fate of his house, of England, and of Europe, if he had put himself at the head of the popular movement, and, strong at home, had interfered decisively on the Continent! The internal dissensions of England deprived her of any right in the contest until its end. This work, which England and Holland ought to have done, fell to Richelieu.

The Parliament called in 1628 forced the king’s assent to the famous Petition of Rights, June 7, 1628. Sir John Eliot, John Pym, and Sir Edward Coke were its leaders.

Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, became influential in the king’s politics after the dissolution of Parliament in 1629. The king resolved to

Strafford.    -r^ «•    1 • i i j-i

govern without a Parliament, which he aid for eleven years. At first Wentworth was privy coun

The Thirty Years' War.    629

cilor and president of the Council of the North, which sat at York. In January, 1632, he was made Lord Deputy of Ireland. He arrived at Dublin in July,

1633, and made it his residence until 1639, when the outbreak in Scotland made him the chief adviser of the king. Wentworth believed a benevolent despotism and a good administration was the ideal government. In character and rule he was arrogant, despotic, and often cruel, but he sought order and efficiency. With Laud, he counseled the breaking down of all opposition to the prerogatives of the crown and the arbitrary power of the king. His favorite watchword in his correspondence with Laud was “ Thorough.” Wentworth was the ablest and most dangerous of the enemies of the English people. He did all he could to rally the royal army, and to re-enforce it from Ireland. Charles made him Earl of Strafford in January, 1640. The Long Parliament met November 3, 1640. Strafford hurried up to impeach his enemies. They were too quick for him. He came to Parliament on Wednesday, and was arrested that night. A bill of attainder against him was passed, May 9th, and he was executed May 12, 1641.

With Strafford, but more in the king’s confidence, was William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, who would carry out the same despotism in the _Wuuam Church that Strafford sought to build up Laud, in the State. Laud was born at Reading, ^,573"'⁶⁴⁴* October 7, 1573. He was educated at St. John’s, Oxford, taking his degree in 1594. His tutor at Oxford, by whom Laud was greatly influenced, was John (afterward Bishop) Buckeridge, who was a strong AntiCalvinist. Laud was ordained in 1601, and made

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president of St. John’s College in 1611, a post which he held for ten years. He was Bishop of St. David’s, 1621-1628. Laud became Bishop of London, July 1, 1628. The year previous he was made Lord of the Privy Council, and from his accession to the See of London he was the controlling factor in all ecclesiastical affairs. In 1633 he became Archbishop of Canterbury.

Laud was a worshiper of uniformity. He hated Puritan principles, and sought to make life miserable for those who held them in England. Many of them emigrated to New England. In October, 1633, was issued the “ Second Book of Sports,” a revision of the First, issued in 1618. It prescribed the sports to be enjoyed on Sundays and holidays. That it was commanded to be read by the clergy from the pulpit gave deep offense to the Puritans. Laud’s tyranny in the Court of the High Commission, and his cruel mutilation of Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, in 1637, angered the Puritan party. But more fundamental was their disgust at his teachings of external observances of ritual, which seemed to point Romeward, and his inculcating clerical celibacy, auricular confession, prayers for the dead, and purgatory. To crown all, he prepared a liturgy, which was to be imposed upon the Scotch Church. The stool which Jennie Geddes hurled at the head of the ministrant in St. Giles Cathedral, Sunday, July 23, 1637, was the signal for an outbreak which marked the limit of his presumption and the end of his power. One of the first acts of the Long Parliament was to arrest and impeach Laud. A Bill of Attainer was passed January 6th, and Laud was executed on Tower Hill, January 10, 1645.

The Thirty Years' War.    631

The tide ran against Charles and his arbitrary government. In spite of the decision by servile judges, June, 1638, that the king could raise the _TheLong ship money in the interior counties, and Parliament, thus dispense with Parliament, the Scotch ^,64°’^|6S3-War and its increased expenditure made necessary the summoning of Parliament. The Short Parliament met in April, 1640, but, as it insisted upon the redress of grievances, in three weeks it was dissolved. Strafford now sought to carry through the king’s policy by force of arms; but the Scotch were victorious at New-burn, and nothing remained but the summoning of the famous Long Parliament. It first arrested Strafford and Laud, the agents of the king’s tyranny, and then did away with those courts which had been the hated instruments of oppression by the Tudor and the Stuart monarchs—the Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission. Finally, November 22, 1641, was passed, by a slender majority, the Grand Remonstrance, which in 206 Articles summed up the abuses and arbitrary acts of the king’s reign. Charles received it, apparently with good will, December 1, 1641, and established a responsible ministry. But the faithlessness of Charles made vain all the support and plans of his friends. January 4, 1642, he went with a guard to the House of Commons to arrest five of its most distinguished members, whom he had ordered to be impeached at the bar of the House of Lords. Henceforth no man could trust his word to rule in accordance with the law. A few months later the royal standard was set up at Nottingham, and the Civil War began, August 22, 1642.

With the opening of the Civil War there appeared

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on the scene the noblest Englishman of the seventeenth century, and the ablest sovereign who ever _r ruled England. Oliver Cromwell was de-Cromweii. scended, in the third generation, from the 1599-1645- _si_ster of that Thomas Cromwell who, a century before, governed England under Henry VIII. This sister’s husband, Morgan Williams, of Wales, took the family name of his wife. Oliver Cromwell, thus coming from the ranks of the country gentlemen, was born, one of ten children, at Huntingdon, April 25, 1599. He attended the public school at Huntingdon, and later entered Sussex Sidney College, at Cambridge, only fifteen miles distant, when seventeen years of age. The next year his father died_? and Oliver, as an only surviving son, probably had to leave the university to care for the family; at least, he did not complete his course. He may have studied at Lincoln’s Inn; he knew only a little Latin. “ For him a single volume comprehended all literature, and that volume was the Bible.” In 1620 he married Elizabeth Bouchier, the daughter of a London merchant, who was also a knight, and related to John Hampden. From 1625 to 1631, Cromwell lived at Huntingdon. In the latter year he sold his property there for a sum equal in value to $30,000 of our money, and rented and stocked lands at St. Ives, and dwelt there until the breaking out of the war. From 1636 to 1647, through the bequest of an uncle, he received the farming of the cathedral tithes at Ely.

Oliver seems to have been a plain, industrious, and prosperous English farmer and gentleman. He was well-esteemed by his neighbors, over whom he had such influence as to be chosen to Parliament in 1628,

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and to the Short and Long Parliaments, which were summoned twelve years later. Cromwell was well connected, and his descendants are found to-day in the most distinguished families in England. In the Long Parliament he had seventeen relatives. In the Parliament of 1628 he spoke but once; at the assembling of the Long Parliament he was already a man of mark and influence. He raised a troop of horse at the beginning of the war. At Marston Moor, in its bloodiest battle, his regiments of the New Model won the day, and they turned the tide in the final victory at Naseby. At the end of the war, Cromwell was in supreme command of the best and most efficient army England had ever seen. In June, 1647, Charles came into Cromwell’s hands. Oliver sincerely desired some accommodation. But Charles’s intercepted letter to his queen convinced Cromwell of his utter faithlessness. Charles is Cromwell’s prisoner when our period ends.

Two contemporaries give us this sketch of the man: “His body was well compact and strong; his stature of the average height; his head so

, ,    . ,    • • , ,    Personal

shaped as you might see m it both a store- Appearance

house and shop of a vast treasury of natural ^{of 0Ilver}

... . _    Cromwell.

parts. His temper was exceedingly fiery; but the flame of it, kept down for the most part, is soon allayed with these moral endowments he had. He was naturally compassionate towards objects in distress, even to an effeminate measure; though God had made him a heart wherein was left little room for any fear but what was due to himself, of which there was a large proportion, yet did he exceed in tenderness towards sufferers.”

“When he delivered his mind in the House it was

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with a strong and masculine excellence, more able to persuade than to be persuaded. His expressions were hardy, opinions resolute, assertions grave and vehement, always intermixed (Andronicus-like) with sentences of Scripture, to give them the greater weight and the better to insinuate into the affections of the people. He expressed himself with some kind of passion, but with such a commanding, wise deportment, till, at his pleasure, he governed and swayed the House, as he had most times the leading voice. Those who find no such wonders in his speeches may find it in the effect of them.”

A fuller sketch of the character of the man and his work is reserved for the chapter on the Puritans in the next volume. Here we may say that the religion of Oliver Cromwell, his courage, patience, persistence, his understanding of the spirit and movement of his times and of the insuperable obstacles in his way, make him the greatest ruler who ever governed England; perhaps the most typical and greatest man of the English race.

CONCLUSION.

Thus ended the work of five generations of men. England and Scotland, the United Netherlands and Lower Germany, the Scandinavian kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, made a solid Evangelical phalanx in Northern Europe, which could not be broken, and whose spears should overweight the scale when the electoral house of Brandenburg should become the German Empire. To these nations the future of colonies and commerce, of wealth and power, was given.

The Roman Catholics preserved Italy, Spain, and

The Thirty Years' War.    635

Portugal, won back securely France and Flanders, Bavaria, and the dominions of the house of Austria. From these nations passed the scepter of power. Spain and Portugal lost their colonies, and the other Roman Catholic powers have never been successful colonizers, or, except France, at all aggressive outside of Europe. Ireland and Poland remained Roman Catholic, though subject to nations who were not. That the great Evangelical movement known as the Reformation was not crushed out but made safe and sure its place among the forces ruling the world, in spite of all faults and defects, we may count for the Christian Church of all confessions and of all lands, and for Christian civilization now coming to the rule of the world, a great and increasing benefit.

The effect of the movement upon the Roman Catholic Church has been second only to that upon the Evangelical communions. Roman Catholic authorities assure us that the reforms of the Council of Trent would never have been carried out but for the Reformation begun by Martin Luther. How great those reforms were can be seen by comparing the court and city of Leo X with that of Pius V or of Sixtus V. It is seen also in the fact that the Roman Catholic Church is at its best always amid strong Evangelical surroundings. This is true of the Roman Catholic Church in England or the United States as compared with that Church in Italy or Spain, or even France. The same is true in comparing Southern with Northern Germany. That it is not good for the Roman Catholic Church to be alone and supreme in any country is shown by the condition of Cuba,-Porto Rico, and the Philippines.

But the principle of Evangelical liberty was bought

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The Christian Church.

at an immense price. We are more familiar with its benefits than with its cost. Into that cost has gone all the anguish of the prisons of the Inquisition, the martyrdoms of Mary and of Alva, and the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s. For these acts no hatred is cherished, and they should not for a moment be charged upon the Roman Catholic Church of our own time, though it has never disowned them. But all the more we are set for the defense, the preservation, and the proclamation of that gospel for which these heroic victims died. The liberty and salvation it brings to the hearts and homes of men is our priceless and inalienable heritage. Christ, his gospel, and his standard-bearers are as dear to us as to our fathers three hundred years ago.

What noble men have passed before us! Where, in the space of a hundred years, are found four such leaders as Coligni, Orange, Gustavus Adolphus, and Oliver Cromwell? Where, in the history of Europe a greater queen than Elizabeth ?

Luther, Calvin, Latimer, and Knox had their faults; but they were strong, true, unselfish, and courageous men. They loved truth as they saw it; and for it, and the right to know and declare it, they fought such a battle as, please God, shall never need to be fought again. It is said that they were intolerant, and that they used the weapons which were used against them. But the difference is immense and evident. No Evangelical State ever made inquisition of conscience or private belief upon the Roman Catholics. If any of them suffered physical punishment, it was as political offenders. The burning or executions of Anabaptists and Unitarians by the Evangelical States would

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amount to but a few scores compared with the scores of thousands sacrificed by the Roman Catholics. But they had a positive power. In might and influence their work for truth and the liberty of the human spirit pervades the thought, the institutions, the government, the civilization of modern times.

Those who wrought against them have not failed to make their contribution to the weal of the Christian Church and to the help of mankind. Who can fail to be instructed by the courage, the persistence, the discipline, the love for men, and the unwearied effort for a pure morality which marked the career of Ignatius Loyola; or by the zeal, the love, and self-sacrifice of Francis Xavier; or the devotion, the sympathy with human need, and the practical knowledge for its remedy, shown in the life of Vincent de Paul? These seem to have their lessons for all times and for all Churches.

It may be said that the principles of gospel liberty, of popular intelligence, of immediate access to one God through the one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, are so diametrically opposed to the claims of the Roman Catholic Church and of her head, the Pope of Rome, that they can not exist together in the same society and under the same government. Our fathers of both Confessions thought so. If history teaches us anything, it teaches us that God did not think so. It seems to be his will that Roman Catholics should be in Evangelical communities and countries, and Evangelical Churches and communicants in Roman Catholic lands in increasing numbers. What his purpose is, none are wise enough to know; but any endeavor to conquer or externally to coerce one or the other must be forever in vain.

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Evidently God has made us to live together; may it be with a mutual respect and regard which will make our common Christian faith helpful to each other! May we have eyes to see good in each other, while being steadfastly loyal to the truth as we see it!

It may be that, from an Evangelical federation and a reformed Roman Catholicism, there may come a higher type of piety, a mightier influence for Christian morality and the prevalence of the reign of Christ, than the world has yet seen. Why should we shrink from saying a reformed Roman Catholic Church? Was not that Church largely and helpfully reformed in many ways after the Council of Trent? If reformed then, why not now? And what better presage than to have the Pope offering indulgences for reading the Scriptures in the mother tongue? Roman Catholics who intelligently and prayerfully read the Christian Scriptures are certainly reformed Roman Catholics as compared with the prevailing type. Is it not evident that Evangelicals and Roman Catholics may learn much from each other, and need much from God that has never come as yet into the history of either, to fit for the new work of the new time? If in that work there come co-operation instead of the old enmity, it will come of God’s perfecting, and not of man’s devising.

This book is given to the world in the hope and with the prayer that it may aid to such an understanding of a world movement as will help us to make its onward course effectually advance that Christendom which will include the world, and that kingdom of God among men which shall be the true Bride of Christ.