the previous year and had suffered death. He had been
supplanted by Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Duke of
Northumberland, and that minister had persuaded Edward to
bequeath his crown to Lady Jane Grey, grand-daughter of the
younger sister of Henry VIII. But Northumberland was hated by
the people, and few could recognize the right of a boy on the
throne to change the order of regal succession by his will.
Parliament had formally legitimated both Catherine's daughter,
Mary, and Anne Boleyn's daughter, Elizabeth, and had placed
them in the line of inheritance. Mary's legal title to the
crown was clear. She had adhered with her mother to the Roman
Church, and her advent upon the throne would mean the
subjection of the English Church to the Papacy anew; since the
constitution of the Church armed the sovereign with supreme
and indisputable power over it. The Protestants of the kingdom
knew what to expect, and were in great fear; but they submitted.
Lady Jane Grey was recommended to them by her Protestant
belief, and by her beautiful character; but her title was too
defective and her supporters too much distrusted. There were
few to stand by the poor young girl when Northumberland
proclaimed her queen, and she was easily dethroned by the
partisans of Mary. A year later she was sent to the block.
Catholicism was now ascendant again, and England was brought
to share in the great reaction against the Reformation which
prevailed generally through Europe and which we shall
presently consider. Before doing so, let us glance briefly at
the religious state of some other countries not yet touched
upon.
The Reformation in Scotland.
In Scotland, a deep undercurrent of feeling against the
corruptions of the Church had been repressed by resolute
persecutions, until after the middle of the sixteenth century.
Wars with England, and the close connection of the Scottish
Court with the Guises of France, had both tended to retard the
progress of a reform sentiment, or to delay the manifestation
of it. But when the pent-up feeling began to respond to the
voice of the great Calvinistic evangelist and organizer, John
Knox, it swept the nation like a storm. Knox's first
preaching, after his captivity in France and exile to Geneva,
was in 1555. In 1560, the authority of the Pope was renounced,
the mass prohibited, and the Geneva confession of faith
adopted, by the Scottish Estates. After that time the Reformed
Church in Scotland--the Church of Presbyterianism--had only
to resist the futile hostility of Mary Stuart for a few years,
until it came to its great struggle against English
Episcopacy, under Mary's son and grandson, James and Charles.
The Reformation in the North.
In the three Scandinavian nations the ideas of the
Reformation, diffused from Germany, had won early favor, both
from kings and people, and had soon secured an enduring
foothold. They owed their reception quite as much, perhaps, to
the political situation as to the religious feeling of the
northern peoples.
When the ferment of the Reformation movement began, the three
crowns were worn by one king, as they had been since the
"Union of Calmar," in 1397, and the King of Denmark was the
sovereign of the Union. His actual power in Sweden and Norway
was slight; his theoretical authority was sufficient to
irritate both. In Sweden, especially, the nobles chafed under
the yoke of the profitless federation. Christian II., the last
Danish king of the three kingdoms, crushed their disaffection
by a harsh conquest of the country (1520), and by savage
executions, so perfidious and so numerous that they are known
in Swedish history as the Massacre of Stockholm. But this
brutal and faithless king became so hateful in his own proper
kingdom that the Danish nobles rose against him in 1523 and he
was driven from the land. The crown was given to his uncle,
Frederick, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein. In that German Duchy,
Lutheranism had already made its way, and Frederick was in
accord with it. On coming to the throne of Denmark, where
Catholicism still prevailed, he pledged himself to attempt no
interference with it; but he felt no obligation, on the other
hand, to protect it. He demanded and established a toleration
for both doctrines, and gave to the reformers a freedom of
opportunity which speedily undermined the old faith and
overthrew it.
In the meantime, Sweden had undergone the important revolution
of her history, which placed the national hero, Gustavus Vasa,
on the throne. Gustavus was a young noble whose title to the
crown was not derived from his lineage, but from his genius.
After Christian II. had bloodily exterminated the elder
leaders of the Swedish state, this young lord, then a hostage
and prisoner in the tyrant's hands, made his escape and took
upon himself the mission of setting his country free. For
three years Gustavus lived a life like that of Alfred the
Great in England, when he, too, struggled with the Danes. His
heroic adventures were crowned with success, and Sweden, led
to independence by its natural king, bestowed the regal title
upon him (1523) and seated him upon its ancient throne. The
new Danish king, Frederick, acknowledged the revolution, and
the Union of Calmar was dissolved. Sweden under Gustavus Vasa
recovered from the state of great disorder into which it had
fallen, and grew to be a nation of important strength. As a
measure of policy, he encouraged the introduction of
Lutheranism and promoted the spread of it, in order to break
the power of the Catholic clergy, and also, in order, without
doubt, to obtain possession of the property of the Church,
which secured to the Crown the substantial revenues it
required.
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Italy.
In Italy, the reformed doctrines obtained no popular footing
at any time, though many among the cultivated people regarded
them with favor, and would gladly have witnessed, not only a
practical purging of the Church, but a revision of those
Catholic dogmas most offensive to a rational mind. But such
little movement as stirred in that direction was soon stopped
by the success of the Emperor, Charles V., in his Italian wars
with Francis I., and by the Spanish domination in the
peninsula which ensued thereon. The Spain of that age was like
the bloodless octopus which paralyzes the victim in its
clutch, and Italy, gripped in half of its many principalities
by the deadly tentacles thrust out from Madrid, showed no
consciousness for the next two centuries.
The Council of Trent.
The long demanded, long promised General Council, for
considering the alleged abuses in the Church and the alleged
falsities in its doctrine, and generally for discussion and
action upon the questions raised by the Reformation, assembled
at Trent in December, 1545. The Emperor seems to have desired
with sincerity that the Council might be one which the
Protestants would have confidence in, and in which they might
be represented, for a full discussion of their differences
with Rome. But this was made impossible from the beginning.
The Protestants demanded that "final appeal on all debated
points should be made to the sole authority of Holy
Scripture," and this being refused by the Pope (Paul III.),
there remained no ground on which the two parties could meet.
The Italian prelates who composed the majority of the Council
made haste, it would seem, to take action which closed the
doors of conciliation against the Reformers. "First, they
declared that divine revelation was continuous in the Church
of which the Pope was the head; and that the chief written
depository of this revelation--namely, the Scriptures--had no
authority except in the version of the Vulgate. Secondly, they
condemned the doctrine of justification by Faith. ... Thirdly,
they confirmed the efficacy and the binding authority of the
Seven Sacraments." "The Council terminated in December [1563]
with an act of submission, which placed all its decrees at the
pleasure of the Papal sanction. Pius [Pius IV. became Pope in
1560] was wise enough to pass and ratify the decrees of the
Tridentine fathers by a Bull dated on December 26, 1563,
reserving to the Papal sovereign the sole right of
interpreting them in doubtful or disputed cases. This he could
well afford to do; for not an article had been penned without
his concurrence, and not a stipulation had been made without a
previous understanding with the Catholic powers. The very terms,
moreover, by which his ratification was conveyed, secured his
supremacy, and conferred upon his successors and himself the
privileges of a court of ultimate appeal. At no previous
period in the history of the Church had so wide, so undefined,
and so unlimited an authority been accorded to the See of
Rome" (Symonds).
Some practical reforms in the Church were wrought by the
Council of Trent, but its disciplinary decrees were less
important than the dogmatic. From beginning to end of its
sessions, which, broken by many suspensions and adjournments,
dragged through eighteen years, it addressed itself to the
task of solidifying the Church of Rome, as left by the
Protestant schism,--not of healing the schism itself or of
removing the provocations to it. The work which the Council
did in that direction was of vast importance, and profoundly
affected the future of the Papacy and of its spiritual realm.
It gave a firm dogmatic footing to the great reactionary new
forces which now came into play, with aggressive enthusiasm
and zeal, to arrest the advance of the Reformation and roll it
back.
The Catholic reaction.
The extraordinary revival of Catholicism and thrusting back of
Protestantism which occurred in the later half of the
sixteenth century had several causes behind it and within it.
1. The spiritual impulse from which the Reformation started
had considerably spent itself, or had become debased by a
gross admixture of political and mercenary aims. In Germany,
the spoils derived from the suppressing of monastic
establishments and the secularizing of ecclesiastical fiefs
and estates, appeared very early among the potent inducements
by which mercenary princes were drawn to the side of the
Lutheran reform. Later, as the opposing leagues, Protestant
and Catholic, settled into chronic opposition and hostility,
the struggle between them took on more and more the character
of a great political game, and lost more and more the spirit
of a battle for free conscience and a free mind. In France, as
we have noticed, the political entanglements of the Huguenot
party were such, by this time, that it could not fail to be
lowered by them in its religious tone. In England, every
breath of spirituality in the movement had so far (to the
death of Henry VIII.) been stifled, and it showed nothing but
a brazen political front to the world. In the Netherlands, the
struggle for religious freedom was about to merge itself in a
fight of forty years for self-government, and the fortitude
and valor of the citizen were more surely developed in that
long war than the faith and fervor of the Christian. And so,
generally throughout Europe, Protestantism, in its conflict
with the powers of the ancient Church, had descended, ere the
sixteenth century ran far into its second half, to a
distinctly lower plane than it occupied at first. On that
lower plane Rome fronted it more formidably, with stronger
arms, than on the higher.
2. Broadly stating the fact, it may be said that Protestantism
made all its great inroads upon the Church of Rome before
partisanship came to the rescue of the latter, and closed the
open mind with which Luther, and Zwingli, and Farel, and
Calvin were listened to at first. It happens always, when new
ideas, combative of old ones, whether religious or political,
are first put forward in the world, they are listened to for a
time with a certain disinterestedness of attention--a certain
native candor in the mind--which gives them a fair hearing. If
they seem reasonable, they obtain ready acceptance, and spread
rapidly,--until the conservatism of the beliefs assailed
takes serious alarm, and the radicalism of the innovating
beliefs becomes ambitious and rampant; until the for and the
against stiffen themselves in opposing ranks, and the voice of
argument is drowned by the cries of party. That ends all
shifting of masses from the old to the new ground. That ends
conversion as an epidemic and dwindles it to the sporadic
character.
3. Protestantism became bitterly divided within itself at an
early stage of its career by doctrinal differences, first
between Zwinglians and Lutherans, and then between Lutherans
and Calvinists, while Catholicism, under attack, settled into
more unity and solidity than before.
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4. The tremendous power in Europe to which the Spanish
monarchy, with its subject dominions, and its dynastic
relations, had now risen, passed, in 1556, to a dull-brained
and soulless bigot, who saw but one use for it, namely, the
extinction of all dissent from his own beliefs, and all
opposition to his own will. Philip II. differed from his
father, Charles V., not in the enormity of his bigoted
egotism--they were equals, perhaps, in that--but in the
exclusiveness of it. There was something else in Charles,
something sometimes faintly admirable. He did have some
interests in life that were not purely malignant. But his
horrid vampire of a son, the most repulsive creature of his
kind in all history, had nothing in him that was not as deadly
to mankind as the venom secreted behind the fang of a cobra. It
was a frightful day for the world when a despotism which
shadowed Spain, Sicily, Italy and the Low Countries, and which
had begun to drag unbounded treasure from America, fell to the
possession of such a being as this. Nothing substantial was
taken away from the potent malevolence of Philip by his
failure of election in Germany to the Imperial throne. On the
contrary, he was the stronger for it, because all his dominion
was real and all his authority might assume to be absolute.
His father had been more handicapped than helped by his German
responsibilities and embarrassments, which Philip escaped. It
is not strange that his concentration of the vast enginery
under his hands to one limited aim, of exterminating what his
dull and ignorant mind conceived to be irreligion and treason,
had its large measure of success. The stranger thing is, that
there was fortitude and courage to resist such power, in even
one corner of his realm.
5. The Papacy was restored at this time to the purer and
higher character of its best ages, by well-guided elections,
which raised in succession to the throne a number of men, very
different in ability, and quite different, too, in the spirit
of their piety, but generally alike in dignity and decency of
life, and in qualities which command respect. The fiery
Neapolitan zealot, Caraffa, who became Pope in 1555 as Paul
IV.; his cool-tempered diplomatic successor, Pius IV., who
manipulated the closing labors of the Council of Trent; the
austere inquisitor, Pius V.; the more commonplace Gregory
XIII., and the powerful Sixtus V., were pontiffs who gave new
strength to Catholicism, in their different ways, both by what
they did and by what they were.
6. The revival of zeal in the Roman Church, naturally
following the attacks upon it, gave rise to many new religious
organizations within its elastic fold, some reformatory, some
missionary and militant, but all bringing an effectual
reinforcement to it, at the time when its assailants began to
show faltering signs. Among these was one--Loyola's Society of
Jesus--which marched promptly to the front of the battle, and
which contributed more than any other single force in the
field to the rallying of the Church, to the stopping of
retreat, and to the facing of its stubborn columns forward for
a fresh advance. The Jesuits took such a lead and accomplished
such results by virtue of the military precision of discipline
under which they had been placed and to which they were
singularly trained by the rules of the founder; and also by
effect of a certain subtle sophistry that runs through their
ethical maxims and their counsels of piety. They fought for
their faith with a sublime courage, with a devotion almost
unparalleled, with an earnestness of belief that cannot be
questioned; but they used weapons and modes of warfare which
the higher moral feeling of civilized mankind, whether
Christian or Pagan, has always condemned. It is not Protestant
enemies alone who say this. It is the accusation that has been
brought against them again and again in their own Church, and
which has expelled them from Catholic countries, again and
again. In the first century or more of their career, this
plastic conscience, moulded by a passionate zeal, and
surrendered, with every gift of mind and body, to a service of
obedience which tolerated no evasion on one side nor bending
on the other, made the Jesuits the most invincible and
dangerous body of men that was ever organized for defense and
aggression in any cause.
The order was founded in 1540, by a bull of Pope Paul III. At
the time of Loyola's death, in 1556, it numbered about one
thousand members, and under Lainez, the second general of the
order, who succeeded Loyola at the head, it advanced rapidly,
in numbers, in efficiency of organization, and in wide-spread
influence.
Briefly stated, these are the incidents and circumstances
which help to explain--not fully, perhaps, but almost
sufficiently--the check to Protestantism and the restored
energy and aggressiveness of the Catholic Church, in the later
half of the sixteenth century.
The Ruin of Spain.
In his kingdoms of Spain, Philip II. may be said to have
finished the work of death which his father and his father's
grand-parents committed to him. They began it, and appointed
the lines on which it was to be done. The Spain of their day
had the fairest opportunity of any nation in Europe for a
great and noble career. The golden gates of her opportunity
were unlocked and opened by good Queen Isabella; but the pure
hands of the same pious queen threw over the neck of her
country the noose of a strangler, and tightened it
prayerfully. Her grandson, who was neither pious nor good,
flung his vast weight of power upon it. But the strangling
halter of the Spanish Inquisition did not extinguish signs of
life in his kingdom fast enough to satisfy his royal
impatience, and he tightened other cords upon the suffering
body and all its limbs. Philip, when he came to take up the
murderous task, found every equipment for it that he could
desire. He had only to gather the strands of the infernal mesh
into his hands, and bring the strain of his awful sovereignty
to bear upon them: then sit and watch the palsy of death creep
over his dominions.
Of political life, Charles really left nothing for his son to
kill. Of positive religious life, there can have been no
important survival, for he and his Inquisition had been keenly
vigilant; but Philip made much of the little he could
discover. As to the industrial life of Spain, father and son
were alike active in the murdering of it, and alike ingenious.
They paralyzed manufactures, in the first instance, by
persecuting and expelling the thrifty and skilful Moriscoes;
then they made their work complete by heavy duties on raw
materials. To extinguish the agricultural industries of the
kingdom, they had happy inspirations.
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They prohibited the exportation of one commodity after
another--corn, cattle, wool, cloth, leather, and the
like--until they had brought Spain practically to the point of
being dependent on other countries for many products of skill,
and yet of having nothing to offer in exchange, except the
treasure of precious metals which she drew from America. Hence
it happened that the silver and gold of the Peruvian and
Mexican mines ran like quicksand through her fingers, into the
coffers of the merchants of the Low Countries and of England;
and, probably, no other country in Europe saw so little of
them, had so little of benefit from them, as the country they
were supposed to enrich.
If the killing of Spain needed to be made complete by anything
more, Philip supplied the need, in the deadliness of his
taxation. Spending vast sums in his attempt to repeat upon the
Netherlands the work of national murder he had accomplished in
Spain; losing, by the same act, the rich revenues of the
thrifty provinces; launching into new expenditures as he
pursued, by clumsy warfare, his mission of death into fresh
fields, aiming now at the life of France, and now at the life
of England,--he squeezed the cost of his armies and armadas
from a country in which he had strangled production already,
and made poverty the common estate. It was the last draining
of the life-blood of a nation which ought to have been strong
and great, but which suffered murder most foul and unnatural.
We hardly exaggerate even in figure when we say that Spain was
a dead nation whim Philip quitted the scene of his arduous
labors. It is true that his successors still found something
for their hands to do, in the ways that were pleasant to their
race, and burned and bled and crushed the unhappy kingdom with
indefatigable persistency; but it was really the corpse of a
nation which they practised on. The life of Spain, as a
breathing, sentient state, came to an end under the hands of
Philip II., first of the Thugs.
Philip II. and the Netherlands.
The hand of Charles V. had been heavy on the Netherlands; but
resistance to such a power as that of Spain in his day was
hardly dreamed of. It was not easy for Philip to outdo his
father's despotism; less easy to drive the laborious
Hollanders and Flemings to desperation and force them into
rebellious war. But he accomplished it. He filled the country
with Spanish troops. He reorganized and stimulated the
Inquisition. He multiplied bishoprics in the Provinces,
against the wish of even the Catholic population. He scorned
the counsels of the great nobles, and gave foreign advisers to
the Regent, his half-sister, Margaret of Parma, illegitimate
daughter of Charles V., whom he placed at the head of the
government. His oppressions were endured, with increasing
signs of hidden passion, for ten years. Then, in 1566, the
first movement of patriotic combination appeared. It was a
league among certain of the nobles; its objects were peaceful,
its plans were legal; but it was not countenanced by the wiser
of the patriots, who saw that events were not ripe. The
members of the league went in solemn procession to the Regent
with a petition; whereupon one of her councillors denounced
them as "a troop of beggars." They promptly seized the epithet
and appropriated it. A beggar's wallet became their emblem;
the idea was caught up and carried through the country, and a
visible party rose quickly into existence.
The religious feeling now gained boldness. Enormous
field-meetings began to be held, under arms, in every part of
the open country, defying edicts and Inquisition. There
followed a little later some fanatical and riotous outbreaks
in several cities, breaking images and desecrating churches.
Upon these occurrences, Philip despatched to the Netherlands,
in the summer of 1567, a fresh army of Spanish troops,
commanded by a man who was after his own heart--as mean, as
false, as merciless, as little in soul and mind, as
himself,--the Duke of Alva. Alva brought with him authority
which practically superseded that of the Regent, and secret
instructions which doomed every man of worth in the Provinces.
At the head of the nobility of the country; by eminence of
character, no less than by precedence in rank, stood William
of Nassau, Prince of Orange, who derived his higher title from
a petty and remote principality, but whose large family
possessions were in Flanders, Brabant, Holland and Luxemburg.
Associated closely with him, in friendship and in political
action, were Count Egmont, and the Admiral Count Horn, the
latter of a family related to the Montmorencies of France.
These three conspicuous nobles Philip had marked with special
malice for the headsman, though their solitary crime had been
the giving of advice against his tyrannies. William of
Orange-"the Silent," as he came to be known--far-seeing in
his wisdom, and well-advised by trusty agents in Spain,
withdrew into Germany before Alva arrived. He warned his
friends of their danger and implored them to save themselves;
but they were blinded and would not listen. The perfidious
Spaniard lured them with flatteries to Brussels and thrust
them into prison. They were to be the first victims of the
appalling sacrifice required to appease the dull rage of the
king. Within three months they had eighteen hundred
companions, condemned like themselves to the scaffold, by a
council in which Alva presided and which the people called
"the Council of Blood." In June, 1568, they were brought to
the block.