his extensive correspondence and numerous writings Calvin’s
influence extended far beyond the limits of Switzerland. Geneva
became the place of refuge for all who were exiled on account
of their faith, and the university founded there by Calvin
furnished almost all Reformed churches with teachers, who
were moulded after a strict Calvinistic pattern. Bern, not
uninfluenced by political jealousies, showed most reluctance
in adopting the Calvinistic doctrine. Zürich was more compliant.
After Zwingli’s death, =Henry Bullinger= stood at the head
of the Zürich clergy. With him Calvin entered into doctrinal
negotiations, and succeeded in at last bringing him over to
his views of the Lord’s Supper. In the _Consensus Tigurinus_
of A.D. 1549, drawn up by Calvin, a union was brought about on
a Calvinistic basis; but Bern, where the Zwinglians contending
with the Lutheranised friends of Calvin had the majority,
refused subscription. The _Consensus pastorum Genevensium_,
of A.D. 1554, called forth by the conflict with Bolsec,
in which the predestination doctrine of Calvin had similar
prominence, not only Bern, but also Zürich refused to accept.
Yet these two confessions gradually rose in repute throughout
German Switzerland. Even Bullinger’s personal objection
to the predestination doctrine was more and more overcome
from A.D. 1556 by the influence of his colleague Peter
Martyr (§ 139, 24), though he never accepted the Calvinistic
system in all its severity and harshness. When even the
Elector-palatine Frederick III. (§ 144, 1) wished to lay
a justificatory confession before the Diet of Augsburg in
A.D. 1566, which threatened to exclude him from the peace
on account of his going over to the Reformed church, Bullinger,
who was entrusted with its composition, sent him, as an appendix
to the testament he had composed, a confession, which came
to be known as the _Confessio Helvetica posterior_ (§ 133, 8).
This confession, not only obtained recognition in all the Swiss
cantons, with the exception of Basel, which likewise after
eighty years adopted it, but also gained great consideration
in the Reformed churches of other lands. Its doctrine of
the sacraments is Calvinistic, with not unimportant leanings
toward the Zwinglian theory. Its doctrine of predestination
is Calvinism, very considerably modified.
§ 138.8. =Calvin’s Successor in Geneva.=--=Theodore Beza= was
from A.D. 1559 Calvin’s most zealous fellow labourer, and after
his death succeeded him in his offices. He soon came to be
regarded at home and abroad with something of the same reverence
which his great master had won. He died in A.D. 1605. Born in
A.D. 1519 of an old noble family at Vezelay in Burgundy, he
was sent for his education in his ninth year to the humanist
Melchior Wolmar of Orleans, and accompanied his teacher when
he accepted a call to the Academy of Bourges, until in A.D. 1534
Wolmar was obliged to return to his Swabian home to escape
persecution as a friend and promoter of the Reformation. Beza
now applied himself to the study of law at the University of
Orleans, and obtained the rank of a licentiate in A.D. 1539.
He then spent several years in Paris as a man of the world,
where he gained the reputation of a poet and wit, and wasted
a considerable patrimony in a loose and reckless life. A secret
marriage with a young woman of the city in humble circumstances,
in A.D. 1544, put an end to his extravagances, and a serious
illness gave a religious direction to his moral change. He had
made the acquaintance of Calvin at Bourges, and in A.D. 1543 he
went to Geneva, was publicly married, and in the following year
received, on Viret’s recommendation, the professorship of Greek
at Lausanne. Thoroughly in sympathy with all Calvin’s views,
he supported his doctrine of predestination against the attacks
of Bolsec, justified the execution of Servetus in his tract _De
hæreticis a civili magistratu puniendis_, zealously befriended
the persecuted Waldensians, along with Farel made court to the
German Protestant princes in order to secure their intercession
for the French Huguenots, and negotiated with the South German
theologians for a union in regard to the doctrine of the
supper. In A.D. 1558 Calvin called him to Geneva as a preacher
and professor of theology in the academy erected there. In
A.D. 1559 he vindicated Calvin’s doctrine of the supper against
Westphal’s attacks (§ 141, 10) in pretty moderate language; but
in A.D. 1560 he thundered forth two violent polemical dialogues
against Hesshus (§ 144, 1). The next two years he spent in
France (§ 139, 14) as theological defender and advocate of
the Huguenots. After Calvin’s death the whole burden of the
government of the Genevan church fell upon his shoulders, and
for forty years the Reformed churches of all lands looked with
confidence to him as their well-tried patriarch. Next to the
church of Geneva, that of his native land lay nearest to his
heart. Repeatedly we find him called to France to direct the
meetings of synod. But scarcely less lively was the interest
which he took in the controversies of the German Reformed
with their Lutheran opponents. At the Religious Conference of
Mömpelgard, which the Lutheran Count Frederick of Württemberg
called in A.D. 1586, to make terms if possible whereby the
Calvinistic refugees might have the communion together with
their Lutheran brethren, Beza himself in person took the field
in defence of the palladium of Calvinistic orthodoxy against
Andreä, whose theory of ubiquity (§ 141, 9, 10) he had already
contested in his writings. Very near the close of his life the
Catholic Church, through its experienced converter of heretics,
Francis de Sales (§ 156, 1), made a vain attempt to win him back
to the Church in which alone is salvation. To a foolish report
that this effort had been successful Beza himself answered in
a satirical poem full of all his youthful fire.[373]
§ 139. THE REFORMATION IN OTHER LANDS.
The need of reform was so great and widespread, that the movement
begun in Germany and Switzerland soon spread to every country in
Europe. The Catholic Church opposed the Reformation everywhere with
fire and sword, and succeeded in some countries in utterly suppressing
it; while in others it was restricted within the limits of a merely
tolerated sect. The German Lutheran Confession found acceptance
generally among the Scandinavians of the north of Europe, the Swiss
Reformed among the Romanic races of the south and west; while in the
east, among the Slavs and Magyars, both confessions were received.
Calvin’s powerful personal influence had done much to drive the
Lutheran Confession out of those Romance countries where it had
before obtained a footing. The presence of many refugees from the
various western lands for a time in Switzerland, as well as the
natural intercourse between it and such countries as Italy and France,
contributed to the same result. But deeper grounds than these are
required to account for this fact. On the one hand, the Romance people
are inclined to extremes, and they found more thorough satisfaction
in the radical reformation of Geneva than in the more moderate
reformation of Wittenberg; and, on the other hand, they have a love
for democratic and republican forms of government which the former,
but not the latter, gratified.--Outside of the limits of the German
empire the Lutheran Reformation first took root, from A.D. 1525,
in Prussia, the seat of the Teutonic Knights (§ 127, 3); then in the
Scandinavian countries. In Sweden it gained ascendency in A.D. 1527,
and in Denmark and Norway in A.D. 1537. Also in the Baltic Provinces
the Reformation had found entrance in A.D. 1520; by A.D. 1539 it had
overcome all opposition in Livonia and Esthonia, but in Courland it
took other ten years before it was thoroughly organized. The Reformed
church got almost exclusive possession of England in A.D. 1562,
of Scotland in A.D. 1560, and of the Netherlands in A.D. 1579. The
Reformed Confession obtained mere toleration in France in A.D. 1598;
the Reformed alongside of the Lutheran gained a footing in Poland
in A.D. 1573, in Bohemia and Moravia in A.D. 1609, in Hungary in
A.D. 1606, and in Transylvania in A.D. 1557. Only in Spain and Italy
did the Catholic Church succeed in utterly crushing the Reformation.
Some attempts to interest the Greek church in the Lutheran Confession
were unsuccessful, but the remnants of the Waldensians were completely
won over to the Reformed Confession.
§ 139.1. =Sweden.=--For fifty years Sweden had been free from
the Danish yoke which had been imposed upon it by the Calmar
union of A.D. 1397. The higher clergy, who possessed two-thirds
of the land, had continuously conspired in favour of Denmark.
The Archbishop of Upsala, Gustavus Trolle, fell out with the
chancellor, Sten Sture, and was deposed. Pope Leo X. pronounced
the ban and interdict against Sweden. Christian II. of Denmark
conquered the country in A.D. 1520, and in the frightful
massacre of Stockholm during the coronation festivities, in
spite of his sworn assurances, 600 of the noblest in the land,
marked out by the archbishop as enemies of Denmark, were slain.
But scarcely had Christian reached home when =Gustavus Vasa=
landed from Lübeck, whither he had fled, drove out the Danes,
and was elected king, A.D. 1523. In his exile he had become
favourably inclined to the Reformation, and now he joined the
Protestants to have their help against the opposing clergy.
=Olaf Peterson=, who had studied from A.D. 1516 in Wittenberg,
soon after his return home, in A.D. 1519, began as deacon
in Strengnæs, along with =Lawrence Anderson=, afterwards
administrator of the diocese of Strengnæs, to spread the
reformed doctrines. Subsequently they were joined by Olaf’s
younger brother, =Laurence Peterson=. During the king’s absence
in A.D. 1524, two Anabaptists visited Stockholm, and even the
calm-minded Olaf was for a time carried away by them. The king
quickly suppressed the disturbances, and entered heartily upon
the work of reformation. Anderson, appointed chancellor by Vasa,
in A.D. 1526 translated the N.T., and Olaf with the help of
his learned brother undertook the O.T. The people, however,
still clung to the old faith, till at the Diet of =Westnæs=,
in A.D. 1527, the king set before them the alternative of
accepting his resignation or the Reformation. The people’s love
for their king overcame all clerical opposition. Church property
was used to supply revenues to kings and nobles, and to provide
salaries for pastors who should preach the gospel in its purity.
The Reformation was peacefully introduced into all parts of
the land, and the diets at Örebro, in A.D. 1529, 1537, and
at Westnæs, in A.D. 1544, carried out the work to completion.
The new organization adopted the episcopal constitution, and
also in worship, by connivance of the people, many Catholic
ceremonies were allowed to remain. Most of the bishops accepted
the inevitable. The Archbishop Magnus of Upsala, papal legate,
went to Poland, and Bishop Brask of Linköping fled with all the
treasures of his church to Danzig. Laurence Peterson was made
in A.D. 1531 first evangelical Archbishop of Upsala, and married
a relative of the royal house. But his brother Olaf fell into
disfavour on account of his protest against the king’s real or
supposed acts of rapacity. He and Anderson, because they had
failed to report a conspiracy which came to their knowledge in
the confessional, were condemned to death, but were pardoned
by the king. Gustavus died in A.D. 1560. Under his son Eric
a Catholic reaction set in, and his brother John III., in
A.D. 1578, made secret confession of Catholicism to the Jesuit
Possevin, urged thereto by his Catholic queen and the prospect
of the Polish throne. John’s son Sigismund, also king of
Poland, openly joined the Romish Church. But his uncle Charles
of Sodermanland, a zealous Protestant, as governor after John’s
death, called together the nobles at Upsala in A.D. 1593, when
the Latin mass-book introduced by John was forbidden, and the
acknowledgment of the Augsburg Confession was renewed. But as
Sigismund continued to favour Catholicism, the peers of the
realm declared, in A.D. 1604, that he had forfeited the throne,
which his uncle now ascended as Charles IX.--The Reformation
had been already carried from Sweden into =Finland=.[374]
§ 139.2. =Denmark and Norway.=--=Christian II.=, nephew of the
Elector of Saxony and brother-in-law of the Emperor Charles V.,
although he had associated himself with the Romish hierarchy in
Sweden for the overthrow of the national party, had in Denmark
taken the side of the Reformation against the clergy, who were
there supreme. In A.D. 1521 he succeeded in getting Carlstadt
to come to his assistance, but he was soon forced to quit the
country. In A.D. 1523 the clergy and nobles formally renounced
their allegiance, and gave the crown to his uncle =Frederick I.=,
Duke of Schleswig and Holstein. Christian fled to Saxony,
was there completely won over to the Reformation by Luther,
converted also his wife, the emperor’s sister, and had the
first Danish N.T., by Hans Michelson, printed at Leipzig and
circulated in Denmark. To secure the emperor’s aid, however,
he abjured the evangelical faith at Augsburg in A.D. 1530.
In the following year he conquered Norway, and bound himself
on his coronation to maintain the Catholic religion. But in
A.D. 1532 he was obliged to surrender to Frederick, and spent
the remaining twenty-seven years of his life in prison, where
he repented his apostasy, and had the opportunity of instructing
himself by the study of the Danish Bible.--Frederick I. had
been previously favourable to the Reformation, yet his hands
were bound by the express terms of his election. His son
Christian III. unreservedly introduced the Reformation into
his duchies. In this he was encouraged by his father. In
A.D. 1526 he openly professed the evangelical faith, and
invited the Danish reformer =Hans Tausen=, a disciple of
Luther, who had preached the gospel amid much persecution
since A.D. 1524, to settle as preacher in Copenhagen. At a
diet at Odensee [Odense] in A.D. 1527 he restricted episcopal
jurisdiction, proclaimed universal religious toleration, gave
priests liberty to marry and to leave their cloisters, and thus
laid the foundations of the Reformation. Tausen in A.D. 1530
submitted to the nobles his own confession, _Confessio Hafinca_,
and the Reformation rapidly advanced. Frederick died in A.D. 1533.
The bishops now rose in a body, and insisted that the estates
should refuse to acknowledge his son =Christian III.= But when
the burgomaster of Lübeck, taking advantage of the anarchy,
plotted to subject Denmark to the proud commercial city, and
in A.D. 1534 actually laid siege to Copenhagen, the Jutland
nobles hastened to swear fealty to Christian. He drove out the
Lübeckers, and by A.D. 1536 had possession of the whole land.
He resolved now to put an end for ever to the machinations of
the clergy. In August, A.D. 1536, he had all bishops imprisoned
in one day, and at a diet at Copenhagen had them formally
deposed. Their property fell into the royal exchequer, all
monasteries were secularized, some presented to the nobles,
some converted into hospitals and schools. In order to complete
the organization of the church Bugenhagen was called in in
A.D. 1537. He crowned the king and queen, sketched a directory
of worship, which was adopted at the =Diet of Odensee [Odense]=
in A.D. 1539, and returned to Wittenberg in A.D. 1542. In place
of bishops Lutheran superintendents were appointed, to whom
subsequently the title of bishop was given, and the Augsburg
Confession accepted as the standard. The Reformation was
contemporaneously introduced into =Norway=, which acknowledged
the king in A.D. 1536. The Archbishop of Drontheim, Olaf
Engelbrechtzen, fled with the church treasures to the Netherlands.
=Iceland= stood out longer, but yielded in A.D. 1551, when the
power of the rebel bishops was broken.[375]
§ 139.3. =Courland, Livonia, and Esthonia.=--Livonia had
seceded from the dominion of the Teutonic knights in A.D. 1521,
and under the grand-master Walter of Plattenburg assumed the
position of an independent principality. In that same year a
Lutheran archdeacon, =Andr. Knöpken=, expelled from Pomerania,
came to Riga, and preached the gospel with moderation. Soon
after Tegetmaier came from Rostock, and so vigorously denounced
image worship that excited mobs entered the churches and tore
down the images; yet he was protected by the council and the
grand-master. The third reformer =Briesmann= was the immediate
scholar of Luther. The able town clerk of Riga, Lohmüller,
heartily wrought with them, and the Reformation spread through
city and country. At Wolmar and Dorpat, in A.D. 1524, the work
was carried on by Melchior Hoffmann, whose Lutheranism was
seriously tinged with Anabaptist extravagances (§ 147, 1).
The diocese of Oesel adopted the reformed doctrines, and at
the same time a Lutheran church was formed in Reval. After
strong opposition had been offered, at last, in A.D. 1538,
Riga accepted the evangelical confession, joined the Schmalcald
League, and in a short time all Livonia and Esthonia accepted
the Augsburg Confession. Political troubles, occasioned
mainly by Russia, obliged the last grand-master, =Kettler=,
in A.D. 1561 to surrender Livonia to Sigismund Augustus of
Poland, but with the formal assurance that the rights of the
evangelicals should be preserved. He himself retained Courland
as an hereditary duchy under the suzerainty of Poland, and
gave himself unweariedly to the evangelical organization of
his country, powerfully assisted by Bülau, first superintendent
of Courland.--The Lutheran church of Livonia had in consequence
to pass through severe trials. Under Polish protection a Jesuit
college was established in Riga in A.D. 1584. Two city churches
had to be given over to the Catholics, and Possevin conducted
an active Catholic propaganda, which was ended only when Livonia,
in A.D. 1629, as also Esthonia somewhat earlier, came under the
rule of Sweden. In consequence of the Norse war both countries
were incorporated into the Russian empire, and by the Peace
of Nystadt, of A.D. 1721, its Lutheran church retained all its
privileges, on condition that it did not interfere in any way
with the Greek Orthodox Church in the province. In A.D. 1795
Courland also came under Russian sway, and all these are now
known as the Baltic Provinces.
§ 139.4. =England.=[376]--=Henry VIII.=, A.D. 1509-1547, after
the literary feud with Luther (§ 125, 3), sought to justify his
title, “Defender of the Faith,” by the use of sword and gibbet.
Luther’s writings were eagerly read in England, where in many
circles Wiclif’s movements were regarded with favour, and two
noble Englishmen, John Fryth and William Tyndal, gave to their
native land a translation of the N.T. in A.D. 1526. Fryth was
rewarded with the stake in A.D. 1533, and Tyndal was beheaded
in the Netherlands in A.D. 1535.[377] But meanwhile the king
quarrelled with the pope. On assuming the government he had
married Catharine of Arragon, daughter of Ferdinand the Catholic
and Isabella, six years older than himself, the widow of his
brother Arthur, who had died in his 16th year, for which he
got a papal dispensation on the ground that the former marriage
had not been consummated. His adulterous love for Anne Boleyn,
the fair maid of honour to his queen, and Cranmer’s biblical
opinion (Lev. xviii. 16; xx. 21) convinced him in A.D. 1527
of the sinfulness of his uncanonical marriage. Clement VII.,
at first not indisposed to grant his request for a divorce,
refused after he had been reconciled to the emperor, Catharine’s
nephew (§ 132, 2). Thoroughly roused, the king now threw off
the authority of the pope. Convocation was forced to recognise
him in A.D. 1531 as head of the English Church, and in 1532
Parliament forbade the paying of annats to the pope. In
the same year Henry married Anne, and had a formal divorce
from Catharine granted by a spiritual court. Parliament in
A.D. 1534 formally abolished papal jurisdiction in the land,
and transferred all ecclesiastical rights and revenues to the
king. The venerable Bishop Fisher of Rochester and the resolute
chancellor, Sir Thomas More (§ 120, 7), in A.D. 1535 paid the
price of their opposition on the scaffold. Now came the long
threatened ban. Under pretext of a highly necessary reform no
less than 376 monasteries were closed during the years 1536-1538,
their occupiers, monks and nuns, expelled, and their rich
property confiscated.[378] Nevertheless in doctrine the king
wished to remain a good Catholic, and for this end passed in
the Parliament of A.D. 1539 the law of the Six Articles, which
made any contradiction of the doctrines of transubstantiation,
the withholding of the cup, celibacy of the clergy, the mass,
and auricular confession, a capital offence. Persecution raged
equally against Lutherans and Papists, sometimes more against
the one, sometimes more against the other, according as he
was moved by his own caprice, or the influence of his wives
and favourites of the day. On the one side, at the head of
the Papists, stood Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and Bonner,
Bishop of London; and on the other, Thomas Cranmer, whom the
king had raised in A.D. 1533 to the see of Canterbury, in order
to carry out his reforms in the ecclesiastical constitution.
But Cranmer, who as the king’s agent in the divorce negotiations
had often treated with foreign Protestant theologians, and at
Nuremberg had secretly married Osiander’s niece, was in heart
a zealous adherent of the Swiss Reformation, and furthered as
far as he could with safety its introduction into England. Among
other things, he secured the introduction in A.D. 1539, into
all the churches of England, of an English translation of the
Bible, revised by himself. He was supported in his efforts by
the king’s second wife, Anne Boleyn; but she, having fallen
under suspicion of unfaithfulness, was executed in A.D. 1536.
The third wife, Jane Seymour, died in A.D. 1537 on the death
of a son. The fourth, Anne of Cleves, was after six months, in
A.D. 1540, cast aside, and the promoter of the marriage, the
chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, was brought to the scaffold. The
king now in the same year married Catharine Howard, with whom
the Catholic party got to the helm again, and had the Act of
the Six Articles rigorously enforced. But she, too, in A.D. 1543,
was charged with repeated adulteries, and fell, together with
her friends and those reputed as guilty with her, under the
executioner’s axe. The sixth wife, Catharine Parr, who again
favoured the Protestants, escaped a like fate by the death of
the tyrant.[379]
§ 139.5. =Edward VI.=, A.D. 1547-1553, son of Henry VIII. and
Jane Seymour, succeeded his father in his tenth year. At the
head of the regency stood his mother’s brother, the Duke of
Somerset. =Cranmer= had now a free hand. Private masses and
image worship were forbidden, the supper was administered in
both kinds, marriage of priests was made legitimate, and a
general church visitation appointed for the introduction of
the Reformation. Gardiner and Bonner, who opposed these changes,
were sent to the Tower. Somerset corresponded with Calvin, and
invited at Cranmer’s request distinguished foreign theologians
to help in the visitation of the churches. Martin Bucer and Paul
Fagius from Strassburg came to Cambridge, and Peter Martyr to
Oxford.[380] Bernardino Ochino was preacher to a congregation
of Italian refugees in London. A commission under Cranmer’s
presidency drew up for reading in the churches a collection
of _Homilies_, for the instruction of the young a _Catechism_,
and for the service a liturgy mediate between the Catholic
and Protestant form, the so-called _Book of Common Prayer_
of A.D. 1549; but from the second edition of which were left
out chrism and exorcism, auricular confession, anointing the
sick, and prayer for the dead. Then followed, in A.D. 1553,
a confession of faith, consisting of forty-two articles,
drawn up by Cranmer and Bishop Ridley of Rochester, which
was distinctly of the reformed type, and set forward the
ecclesiastical supremacy of the king as an article of faith.
The young king, who supported the Reformation with all his heart,
died in A.D. 1553, after nominating as his successor Jane Grey,
the grand-daughter of a sister of his father. Not she, however,
but a fanatical Catholic, =Mary=, A.D. 1553-1558, daughter of
Henry VIII. and Catharine of Spain, actually ascended the throne.
The compliant Parliament now abrogated all the ecclesiastical
laws of Edward VI., which it had itself sanctioned, reverted
to Henry’s law of the Six Articles, and entrusted Gardiner
as chancellor with its execution. The Protestant leaders
were thrown into the Tower, the bones of Bucer and Fagius
were publicly burnt, married priests with wives and children
were driven in thousands from the land. In the following
year, A.D. 1554, Cardinal Reginald Pole, who had fled during
Henry’s reign, returned as papal legate, absolved the repentant
Parliament, and received all England back again into the fold
of the Romish church.[381] The noble and innocent Lady Jane
Grey, only in her sixteenth year, though she had voluntarily
and cheerfully resigned the crown, was put to death with her
husband and father. In the course of the next year, A.D. 1555,
Bishops Ridley, Latimer, Ferrar, and Hooper with noble constancy
endured death at the stake.[382] In prison, Cranmer had renounced
his evangelical faith, but abundantly atoned for this weakness
by the heroic firmness with which he retracted his retractation,
and held the hand which had subscribed it in the flames, that
it might be first consumed. He suffered in A.D. 1556.--The
queen had married in A.D. 1554 Philip II. of Spain, eleven
years her junior, and when in A.D. 1555 he returned to Spain,
she fell into deep melancholy, and under its pressure her
hatred of Protestantism was shown in the most bloody and
cruel deeds. A heretic tribunal, after the fashion of the
Spanish Inquisition, was created, which under the presidency
of the “Bloody Bonner,” consigned to the flames crowds of
confessors of the gospel, clergymen and laymen, men and women,
old and young. After the persecution had raged for five years,
“Bloody Mary” died of heart-break and dropsy.[383]
§ 139.6. =Elizabeth=, A.D. 1558-1603, the daughter of Anne
Boleyn, though previously branded by the Parliament as a bastard,
now ascended the throne unopposed as the last living member
of the family of Henry VIII. Educated under the supervision
of Cranmer in the Protestant faith of her mother, she had been
obliged during the reign of her sister outwardly to conform
to the Romish church. She proceeded with great prudence and
moderation; but when Paul IV. pronounced her illegitimate, and
the Scottish princess Mary Stuart, grand-daughter of Henry’s
sister, assumed the title of queen of England, Elizabeth more
heartily espoused the cause of Protestantism. In A.D. 1559 the
Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity, which reasserted the
royal supremacy over the national church, prescribed a revision
of the _Book of Common Prayer_, which set aside the prayer
for deliverance from the “detestable enormities” of the papacy,
etc., and practically reproduced the earlier, less perfect
of the Prayer Books of Edward VI., while every perversion to
papacy was threatened with confiscation of goods, imprisonment,
banishment, and in cases of repetition with death, as an
act of treason. At the head of the clergy was Matthew Parker,
consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury by some bishops exiled
under Mary. He had formerly been chaplain to Anne Boleyn.
Under his direction Cranmer’s forty-two articles were reduced
to thirty-nine, giving a type of doctrine midway between
Lutheranism and Calvinism; these were confirmed by convocation
in A.D. 1562, and were adopted as a fundamental statute
of England by Act of Parliament in A.D. 1571. This brings
to a close the first stage in the history of the English
Reformation,--the setting up by law of the Anglican State
Church with episcopal constitution, with apostolical succession,
under royal supremacy, as the Established Church.[384] (For the
Puritan opposition to it see § 143, 3.) The somewhat indulgent
manner in which the Act of Uniformity was at first enforced
against the Catholics encouraged them more and more in attempts
to secure a restoration. Even in A.D. 1568 William Allen founded
at Douay a seminary to train Catholic Englishmen for a mission
at home, and Gregory XIII. some years later, for a similar
purpose, founded in Rome the “English College.” His predecessor,
Pius V., had in A.D. 1570 deposed and issued the ban against
the queen, and threatened all with the greater excommunication
who should yield her obedience. Parliament now punished every
withdrawal from the State church as high treason. Day and night
houses were searched, and suspected persons inquisitorially
examined by torture, and if found guilty they were not
infrequently put to death as traitors.[385]--Continuation,
§§ 153, 6; 154, 3.
§ 139.7. =Ireland.=--Hadrian IV., himself an Englishman
(§ 96, 14), on the plea that the donation of Constantine
(§ 87, 4) embraced also the “islands,” gave over Ireland
to King Henry II. as a papal fief in A.D. 1154. Yet the king
only managed to conquer the eastern border, the _Pale_, during
the years 1171-1175. Henry VIII. introduced the Reformation
into this province in A.D. 1535, by the help of his Archbishop
of Dublin, George Brown. The ecclesiastical supremacy of the
Crown was proclaimed, monasteries closed and their property
impropriated, partly divided among Irish and English peers.
But in matters of faith there was little change. More opposition
was shown to the sweeping reformation of faith and worship
of Edward VI. The bishops, Brown included, resisted, and
the inferior clergy, who now were required to read the
Book of Common Prayer in a language to most of them strange,
diligently fostered the popular attachment to the old faith.
The ascension of Queen Mary therefore was welcomed in Ireland,
while Elizabeth’s attempt to reintroduce the Reformation met
with opposition. Repeated outbreaks, in which also the people
of the western districts took part, ended in A.D. 1601 in
the complete subjugation of the whole island. By wholesale
confiscation of estates the entire nobility was impoverished
and the church property was made over to the Anglican clergy;
but the masses of the Irish people continued Catholic, and
willingly supported their priests out of their own scanty
resources.[386]--Continuation, § 153, 6.
§ 139.8. =Scotland.=--Patrick Hamilton, who had studied
in Wittenberg and Marburg, first preached the gospel in
Scotland, and died at the stake in his twenty-fourth year
in A.D. 1528.[387] Amid the political confusions of the regency
during the minority of James V., A.D. 1513-1542, a sister’s son
of Henry VIII. of England, the Reformation obtained firm root
among the nobles, who hated the clergy, and among the oppressed
people, notwithstanding that the bishops, with David Beaton,
Archbishop of St. Andrew’s at their head, sought to crush it
by the most violent persecution. When Henry VIII. called on his
nephew to assist him in his Reformation work, James refused, and
yielding to Beaton’s advice formed an alliance with France and
married Mary of Guise. This occasioned a war in A.D. 1540, the
disastrous issue of which led to the king’s death of a broken
heart. According to the king’s will Beaton was to undertake the
regency, for Mary Stuart was only seven days old. But the nobles
transferred it to the Protestant Earl of Arran, who imprisoned
Beaton and had the royal child affianced to Henry’s son Edward.
Beaton escaped, by connivance of the queen-mother got possession
of the child, and compelled the weak regent, in A.D. 1543, to
abjure the English alliance. The persecution of the Protestants
by fire and sword now began afresh. After many others had fallen
victims to his persecuting rage, Beaton had a famous Protestant
preacher, George Wishart, burnt before his eyes; but was soon
after, in A.D. 1546, surprised in his castle and slain. When
in A.D. 1548 Somerset, the English regent after Henry’s death,
sought to renew negotiations about the marriage of Mary, now
five years old, with Edward VI., her mother had her taken
for safety to France, where she was educated in a convent and
affianced to the dauphin, afterwards Francis II. By hypocritical
acts she contrived to have the regency transferred in A.D. 1554
from Arran to herself. For two years the Reformation progressed
without much opposition. In December, A.D. 1557, its most
devoted promoters made a “covenant,” pledging themselves
in life and death to advance the word of God and uproot the
idolatry of the Romish church. The queen-regent, however, after
the marriage of her daughter with the dauphin in A.D. 1558,
felt herself strong enough to defy the Protestant nobles. The
old strict laws against heretics were renewed, and a tribunal
established for the punishment of apostatizing priests. The last
victim of the persecution was Walter Mill, a priest eighty-two
years old, who died at the stake at Perth (?) in A.D. 1559.[388]
The country now rose in open revolt. The regent was thus
obliged to make proclamation of universal religious toleration.
But instead of keeping her promise to have all French troops
withdrawn, their number was actually increased after Francis II.
ascended the French throne. Elizabeth, too, was indignant at
the assumption by the French king and queen of the English
royal title, so that she aided the insurgents with an army
and a fleet. During the victorious progress of the English
the regent died, in A.D. 1560. The French were obliged to
withdraw, and the victory of the Scotch Protestants was
decisive.
§ 139.9. There was one man, whose unbending opposition to the
constitution, worship, doctrine, and discipline of the Church
of Rome, manifested with a rigid determination that has scarcely
ever been equalled, left its indelible impress upon the Scottish
Reformation. =John Knox=, born in A.D. 1505, was by the study
of Augustine and the Bible led to adopt evangelical views, which
in A.D. 1542 he preached in the south of Scotland. Persecuted
in consequence by Archbishop Beaton, he joined the conspirators
after that prelate’s assassination, in A.D. 1546, was taken
prisoner, and in A.D. 1547 served as slave in the French galleys.
The ill treatment he thus endured developed his naturally
strong and resolute character and that fearlessness which
so characterized all his subsequent life. By English mediation
he was set free in A.D. 1549, and became in A.D. 1551 chaplain
to Edward VI., but took offence at the popish leaven allowed
to remain in the English Reformation, and consequently declined
an offered bishopric. When the Catholic Mary ascended the throne
in A.D. 1553, he fled to Geneva, where he enjoyed the closest
intimacy with Calvin, whose doctrine of predestination, rigid
presbyterianism, and rigorous discipline he thoroughly approved.
After presiding for some time over a congregation of English
refugees at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, he returned in A.D. 1555
to Scotland, but in the following year accepted a call to
the church of English refugees at Geneva that had meanwhile
been formed. The Scottish bishops, who had not ventured to
touch him while present, condemned him to death after his
departure, and burned him in effigy. But Knox kept up a lively
correspondence with his native land by letters, proclamations,
and controversial tracts, and with the help of several
friends translated the Scriptures into English. In A.D. 1558
he published with the title, “The First Blast of the Trumpet
against the Monstrous Regiment of Women,” the most violent
of all his controversial works, directed mainly against the
English Queen Mary, who was now dead. It roused against him
the unconquerable dislike of her successor, and increased
the hatred of the other two Maries against him to the utmost
pitch. Yet he accepted the call of the Protestant lords, and
returned next year to Scotland, and was the heart and soul
of the revolution that soon thereafter broke out. Images and
mass-books were burnt, altars in churches broken in pieces,
and 150 monasteries were destroyed; for said Knox, “If the
nests be pulled down, the crows will not come back.” After
the death of the regent in A.D. 1560, the Parliament proclaimed
the abolition of the papacy, ratified the strictly Calvinistic
_Confessio Scotica_, and forbade celebrating the mass on
pain of death. Then in December, the first _General Assembly_
prescribed, in the “First Book of Discipline,” a strictly
presbyterial constitution under Christ as only head, with
a rigidly puritan order of worship (§ 163, 3).
§ 139.10. In Aug., A.D. 1561, Queen =Mary Stuart=, highly
cultured and high-spirited, returned from France to Scotland,
a young widow in her 19th year. Brought up in a French convent
in fanatical attachment to the Romish Church, and at the French
court, with absolutist ideas as well as easy-going morals, the
severe Calvinism and moral strictness of Scottish Puritanism
were to her as distasteful as its assertion of political
independence. At the instigation of her half-brother James
Stuart, whom she raised to the earldom of Moray, and who was
head of the ministry as one of the leaders of the reformed
party, she promised on her arrival not to interfere with the
ecclesiastical arrangements of the country, but refused to
give royal sanction to the proceedings of A.D. 1560, held
Catholic service in her court chapel, and on all hands favoured
the Romanists. By her marriage, in A.D. 1565, with the young
Catholic Lord Darnley, grandson by a second marriage of her
grandmother Margaret of England, who now assumed the title of
king, Moray was driven from his position, and the restoration
of Catholicism was vigorously and openly prosecuted by
negotiations with Spain, France, and the pope. The director
of all those intrigues was the Italian musician David Rizzio,
who came to the country as papal agent, and had become Mary’s
favourite and private secretary. The rudeness and profligacy
of the young king had soon estranged from him the heart of the
queen. He therefore took part in a conspiracy of the Protestant
lords, promising to go over to their faith. Their first victim
was the hated Rizzio. He was fallen upon and slain on 9th March,
A.D. 1566, while he sat beside the queen, already far advanced
in pregnancy. Darnley soon repented his deed, was reconciled to
the queen, fled with her to the Castle of Dunbar, and an army
gathered by the Protestant Earl of Bothwell soon suppressed
the rising. The rebels and assassins were at Mary’s entreaty
almost all pardoned. Darnley, now living in mortal enmity with
the heads of the Protestant nobility, and again on bad terms
with the queen, fell sick in Dec., A.D. 1566, at Glasgow. On
his sick-bed a reconciliation with his wife was effected, and
apparently in order that she might the better nurse him, he was
brought to a villa near Edinburgh. But on the night of 9th Feb.,
A.D. 1567, while Mary was present at the marriage of a servant,
the house with its inhabitants was blown up by an explosion
of gunpowder. Public opinion charged Bothwell and the queen
with contriving the horrible crime. Bothwell was tried, but
acquitted by the lords. Suspicion increased when soon after
Bothwell carried off the queen to his castle, and married her
on 15th May. In the civil war that now broke out Mary was taken
prisoner, and on 24th July obliged to abdicate in favour of her
one-year old son James VI., for whom Mary undertook the regency.
Bothwell fled to Denmark, where he died in misery and want;
but Mary was allowed to escape from prison by the young George
Douglas. He also raised on her behalf a small army, which,
however, in May, A.D. 1568, was completely destroyed by Moray
at the village of Langside. The unhappy queen could now only
seek protection with her deadly enemy Elizabeth of England,
who, after twenty years’ imprisonment, sent her to the scaffold
in A.D. 1587, on the plea that she was guilty of murdering her
own husband and of high treason in plotting the death of the
English queen.--Mary’s guilt would be conclusively established,
if a correspondence with Bothwell, said to have been found in
her desk, should be accepted as genuine. But all her apologists,
with apparently strong conviction, have sought to prove that
these letters are fabrications of her enemies. The thorough
investigation given to original documents, however, by Bresslau
[Breslau], has resulted in recognising only the second of these
as a forgery, and so proving, not indeed Mary’s complicity in
the murder of her husband, but her adulterous love for Bothwell,
and showing too that her apparent reconciliation with Darnley
on his sick-bed was only hypocritical.[389]
§ 139.11. The young queen had at first sought to win by her
fair speeches the bold and influential reformer =John Knox=,
who was then preacher in Edinburgh. But his heart was cased
in sevenfold armour against all her flatteries, as afterwards
against her threats; even her tears found him as stern and
cold as her wrath. When he called an assembly of nobles to put
a stop to the Catholic worship introduced by her at court, he
was charged with high treason, but acquitted by the lords. The
marriage with Darnley and all that followed from this unhappy
union only increased his boldness. He publicly preached without
reserve against the papacy and the light carriage of the
queen, on the outbreak of the civil war urged her deposition,
and demanded her execution for adultery and the murder of her
husband. The assassination of Regent Moray in A.D. 1570 threw
the country into further confusion, which was only overcome
by his third successor, Morton. The fugitive Knox now returned
to Edinburgh, and soon after died, on 24th Nov., A.D. 1572.
Of his extant writings the most important is his “History
of the Reformation,” reaching down to A.D. 1567. Morton’s
vigorous government completely destroyed Mary’s party, but
also restricted the pretensions of Presbyterianism. After
his overthrow in A.D. 1578, =James VI.=, now in his 12th year,
himself undertook the government at the head of a council
of state. His weakness of character showed itself in his
vacillating between an alliance with Catholic Spain and one
with Protestant England, as well as between secret favouring
of Catholicism and open endeavouring to supersede puritan
Presbyterianism by Anglican-Protestant episcopacy. In A.D. 1584
the parliament, enlarged by the introduction of the lower
orders of the nobility, so defined the royal supremacy as to
deprive the Presbyterian church of several of her rights and
privileges. But in A.D. 1592 the king was obliged absolutely
to restore these. After Elizabeth’s death in A.D. 1603, as the
great-grandson of Henry VII., he united the kingdoms of England
and Scotland under the title of James I.[390]--Continuation,
§ 153, 6.
§ 139.12. =The Netherlands.=--By the marriage of Mary of
Burgundy, the heiress of Charles the Bald, with Maximilian I.,
in A.D. 1478, the Netherlands passed over to the house of
Hapsburg, and after Maximilian’s death, in A.D. 1519, went
to his grandson Charles V. Even in the previous period the
ground was broken in these regions for the introduction of
the Reformation of the 16th century by means of the Brothers
of the Common Life (§ 112, 9) and the Dutch precursors of
the Reformation (§ 119, 10), working as they did among an
intrepid and liberty loving people. The writings of Luther
were introduced at a very early date into Holland, and the
first martyrs from the Lutheran Confession (§ 128, 1) were
led to the stake at Antwerp, in A.D. 1523. The alliance
with France and Switzerland, however, was the occasion of
subsequently securing the triumph of the Reformed Confession
(see § 160, 1). But fanatical Anabaptists soon followed in the
wake of the reform movement, and sent forth their emissaries
into Germany and Switzerland. As the emperor had here an
authority as absolute as his heart could desire, he proceeded
to execute unrelentingly the edict of Worms, and multitudes of
witnesses for the gospel as well as fanatical sectaries were put
to death by the sword and at the stake. Still more dreadful was
the havoc committed by the Inquisition after Charles’ abdication,
in A.D. 1555, under his son and successor =Philip II.= of Spain,
which had for its aim the overthrow alike of ecclesiastical and
political liberty. In order the more successfully to withstand
the Reformation, the four original bishoprics were increased by
the addition of fourteen new bishoprics, and three were raised
into archbishoprics, Utrecht, Mechlin, and Cambray. But even
these measures failed in securing the end desired, because the
Dutch, even those who hitherto had remained faithful to the
Romish Church, saw in them simply an instrument for advancing
Spanish despotism.--In A.D. 1523 Luther’s translation of the N.T.
had already been rendered into Dutch and printed at Amsterdam.
In A.D. 1545 Jacob van Liesfield translated the whole Bible, and
was for this sent to the scaffold in A.D. 1545. A Calvinistic
symbol was set forth in A.D. 1562 in the Belgic Confession. The
league formed by the nobles, in A.D. 1566, to offer resistance
to the tyranny of the Spaniards, to which their oppressors gave
the contemptuous designation of the Beggars--a name which they
themselves adopted as a title of honour--increased in strength
and importance from day to day, and the people, thirsting for
revenge, tore down churches, images, and altars. The prudent
regent, however, =Margaret of Parma=, Philip’s half-sister,
would have been more successful in preventing an outburst of
rebellion by her conciliatory manœuvres, had her brother given
her greater freedom of action. Instead of doing so he sent
to her aid, in A.D. 1587, the terrible =Duke of Alva=, with
a standing army of 10,000 Spaniards. The “Bloody Council”
instituted by him for stamping out the revolt now began its
horrible proceedings, sending thousands upon thousands to
the rack and the scaffold. The regent, protesting against
such acts, demanded her recall, and Alva was put in her place.
The bloody tribunal moved now from city to city; all the
leading throughfares were covered with victims hanging from
gibbets, and when Alva at last, in A.D. 1573, was at his own
request recalled, he could boast of having carried out in six
years 18,600 executions. Meanwhile the great =Prince of Orange,
William the Silent=, formerly royal governor of the Dutch
Provinces, but since A.D. 1568 a fugitive under the ban, had
now openly signified his adhesion to Protestantism, and in 1572
placed himself at the head of the revolt. After gaining several
victories by land and by sea, he succeeded, in the so called
_Pacification of Ghent_, of A.D. 1576, in uniting almost all
the provinces, Protestant and Catholic, under a resolution to
exercise toleration to one another and show resistance to the
common foe. The new governor, Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma,
managed indeed to detach the southern Catholic provinces from
the league, but all the more closely did the seven northern
provinces bind themselves together in the Union of Utrecht of
A.D. 1579, promising to fight to the end for their religious
and political liberty. William’s truest friend, counsellor,
and director of his political actions, since the formation
of the league of A.D. 1566, was =Philip van Marnix=, Count
of St. Aldegonde. He had drawn up the articles of the league,
and was equally celebrated as a statesman and soldier, and as
theologian, satirist, orator, and poet. He was pre-eminently
an ardent patriot, and an enthusiastic adherent of Calvin’s
Reformation. He had been himself a pupil of the great Genevan.
Besides a spirited material version of the Psalter, his chief
satirico-theological work was “The Beehive of the Holy Roman
Church,” written in the Flemish dialect.--After William’s
assassination by the hand of a Catholic, in A.D. 1584, he
was succeeded by his son =Maurice=, who after long years of
bloody conflict succeeded, in A.D. 1609, in completely freeing
his country from the Spanish yoke.[391]
§ 139.13. =France.=--The Reformation in France had its beginning
from Wittenberg, but subsequently the Genevan reformers obtained
a dominating influence. Even in A.D. 1521, the Sorbonne issued
a _Determinatio super doctr. Luth._, pronouncing Luther’s
teaching and writings heretical, which Melanchthon in the
same year answered with unusual vigour in his _Apologia adv.
furiosum Parisiensium theologastrorum decretum_. Everything
depended upon the attitude which the young king =Francis I.=,
A.D. 1515-1547, might assume in reference to the various
religious parties. His love of humanist studies, now flourishing
in France, whose zealous promoter and protector he was against
the attacks of the scholastic Sorbonne (§ 120, 8), as well as
the traditional policy of his family in ecclesiastical matters
since the time of St. Louis (§ 96, 21), seemed to favour the
hope that he would not prove altogether hostile to the ideas
of the Reformation. But even as early as A.D. 1516 he had,
in his concordat with the pope (§ 110, 14), surrendered the
acquisitions of the Basel Council by the revocation of the
Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII., and in this way, by the
right given him to nominate all the bishops and abbots, he
obtained a power over all the clergy of his realm which was
too much in accordance with his dynastic ideas to allow of
his sacrificing it in favour of the Lutheran autonomy in the
management of the church, let alone the yet more radical demands
of the Calvinistic constitution. Even in his antagonism to the
emperor (§§ 126, 5, 6; 133, 7), which led him to befriend in
a very decided manner the German Protestants, his interests
crossed one another, inasmuch as he required to retain the
goodwill of the pope. Suppression of Protestantism in his own
land and the fostering of it in Germany were thus the aims of
his crooked policy. He did indeed for a time entertain the idea
of introducing a moderate Reformation into France after the
Erasmian model, in order to secure closer attachment to and
union with German Protestantism. He entered into negotiations
with Philip the Magnanimous, and had Melanchthon invited in
A.D. 1535 to attend a conference on these matters in France.
Melanchthon was not indisposed to go, but was interdicted
by his prince the elector, who feared lest he might make
too great concessions. And just about this time fanatically
violent pamphlets and placards were published, which were even
thrown into the royal apartments, and thus the anger of the king
was roused to the utmost pitch. The persecutions, which, from
A.D. 1524, had already brought many isolated witnesses to the
scaffold and the stake, now assumed a systematic and general
character. In A.D. 1535, an Inquisition tribunal was set up,
with members nominated by the pope, and as supplementary thereto
there was instituted in the Parliament of Paris the so-called
_chambre ardente_: the former drew up the process against
the heretics, the latter pronounced and executed the sentence.
Thousands of heroic confessors died under torture, on the
gallows, by sword, or by fire. Under =Henry II.=, A.D. 1547-1559,
who continued his father’s crooked policy, the _chambre ardente_
became more and more active, and the cruelty of the persecution
increased. Among the sworn foes of the Reformation, Diana
of Poitiers, an old love of his father’s, had for a time the
greatest influence over the king. He raised her to the rank
of duchess. With diabolic satisfaction she gloated upon the
spectacle of _autos-de-fé_ carried out at her request, and
enriched herself with the confiscated goods of the victims.
Side by side with her, inspired by a like hate of Protestantism,
stood the great marshal and all-powerful minister of state,
the Constable Montmorency. These two were further backed up
by all the influence of the powerful ducal family of the Guises,
a branch of a Lorraine house naturalized in France, consisting
of six brothers, at their head the two eldest, the Cardinal
Charles of Lorraine, Archbishop of Rheims, who died in A.D. 1574,
and Francis, the conqueror of Calais. The least influential in
the league at that time was the queen, Catharine de Medici.
§ 139.14. In spite of all persecutions, the Reformed church
made rapid progress, especially in the southern districts. Its
adherents came to be known by the name of =Huguenots=, meaning
originally Leaguers, Covenanters, on account of their connection
with Geneva. A popular etymology of the word derives it from the
nightly assemblies in a locality haunted by the spirit of King
Hugo. Calvin and Beza, as sons of France, assisted the young
church with counsel and help. But even within the bounds of
the kingdom it had very important political supporters. Certain
members of the house of Bourbon, a powerful branch of the royal
family, Anton, who married the brilliant heiress of Navarre,
Jeanne d’Albret, and his brother Louis de Condé, had attached
themselves to the Protestant cause. Also other distinguished
personages, _e.g._ the noble Admiral Gaspard de Coligny,
a nephew of Montmorency, and several prominent members of
Parliament, were enthusiastically devoted to Protestantism,
and, withdrawing from the frivolous and licentious court,
gave to the profession of the reformed faith a wide reputation
for strict morality and deep piety. The first general synod of
the reformed church was held in Paris from 25th to 28th May,
A.D. 1559. It adopted a Calvinistic symbol, the _Confessio
Gallicana_, and, as a directory for the constitution and
discipline of the church, forty articles, also inspired by
the spirit of Calvin.--Henry II. was followed in succession
by his three sons, Francis, Charles, and Henry, all of whom
died without issue. Under =Francis II.=, A.D. 1559, 1560,
who ascended the throne in his sixteenth year, the two Guises,
the uncles of his queen Mary Stuart, held unlimited sway and
gave abundance of work to the _chambre ardente_. A conspiracy
directed against them in A.D. 1560 led to the execution of
1,200 persons implicated in it. Even the two Bourbons were
cast into prison, and the younger condemned to death. The king’s
early death, however, prevented the execution of the sentence.
The queen-mother, Catharine de Medici, now succeeded in breaking
off the yoke of the Guises and securing to herself the regency
during the minority of her son =Charles IX.=, A.D. 1560-1574.
But the attempts of the Guises to undermine her authority
obliged her to seek supporters meanwhile among the Protestants.
Coligny was able in A.D. 1560 to demand religious toleration
of the imperial Parliament, and succeeded at last so far that
in A.D. 1561 an edict was issued abolishing capital punishment
for heresy. In order to bring about wherever that was possible
an understanding between the two great religious parties, a
five weeks’ religious conference was held in September of that
same year in the Abbey of Poissy, near Paris, to which on the
evangelical side Beza from Geneva and Peter Martyr from Zürich,
besides many other theologians, were invited. On the Catholic
side, the Cardinal of Lorraine represented the doctrine of
his church, and subsequently also the general of the Jesuits,
Lainez. The proceedings, in which Beza’s learning, eloquence,
and praiseworthy courtesy toward his opponents had great weight,
were concentrated on the doctrines of the Church and the Lord’s
Supper, but yielded no result. In order that they might be able
to inflame the Lutherans and the Reformed against one another,
the Catholics endeavoured to bring forward supporters of the
Augsburg Confession into the discussions on those points. Five
German theologians were actually brought forward, among them
Jac. Andreä of Württemberg, but too late to take part in the
conference. On 17th January, A.D. 1562, the regent issued an
edict, by which the Protestants were allowed to hold religious
services outside of the towns, and also to have meetings of
synod under the supervision of royal commissioners.
§ 139.15. The rage of the Guises and their fanatical party
at this edict knew no bounds. Francis of Guise swore to cut
it up with his sword, and on 1st March, A.D. 1562, at Passy
in Champagne, he fell upon the Huguenots assembled there for
worship in a barn, and slew them almost to a man. At Cahors,
a Huguenot place of worship was surrounded by a Catholic mob
and set on fire. None of those gathered together there survived,
for those who escaped the flames were waylaid and murdered. At
Toulouse, the oppressed Protestants, with wives and children,
to the number of 4,000, had betaken themselves to the capitol.
They were promised a free outlet, and were then slaughtered,
because no one, it was said, should keep his word with a heretic
(§ 200, 3). Louis Condé summoned his fellow Protestants to take
up arms in their own defence against such atrocities, entrenched
himself in Orleans, and obtained, by the help of the Landgrave
Philip of Hesse, German auxiliaries. The Guises, on the other
hand, won over to their side the king and his mother. And now
the strict legitimist Coligny placed himself at the head of
the Huguenot movement. The battle of Dreux in Dec., A.D. 1562,
resulted unfavourably to the Protestants, but during the siege
of Orleans Francis of Guise was assassinated by a Huguenot
nobleman. The regent now, in the peace edict of Amboise,
of 19th Nov., A.D. 1563, allowed to the Protestants liberty
of worship except in certain districts and cities, of which
Paris was one. After securing emancipation from the yoke of the
Guises, however, she soon began openly to show her old hatred
of the Protestants. She joined in a league with Spain for the
extirpating of heresy, restricted in A.D. 1564 by the Edict of
Roussillon her previous concessions, and laid incessant plots in
order to effect the capture or murder of the two great leaders
of the Huguenot party. The threatening incursions of the Duke
of Alva upon the neighbouring provinces of the Netherlands, in
A.D. 1567, occasioned the outbreak of the second religious war.
The projected removal of the court to Monceaux fell through
indeed, in consequence of the hasty flight of the king to Paris,
but the overthrow of the royal army in the battle of St. Denys,
in Nov., A.D. 1567, in which Montmorency fell, as well as the
reinforcement of the Huguenot army by an auxiliary corps under
the leadership of John Casimir, the prince of the Palatinate,
led Catharine to conclude the Peace of Longjumeau, of March,
A.D. 1568, which guaranteed anew all previous concessions.
But when the persecution of the Huguenots was continued in
numberless executions, before the year was out they had again,
for the third time, to have recourse to arms. England supported
them with money and ammunition, and Protestant Germany gave
them 11,000 auxiliaries; while Spain helped their opponents.
Louis Condé fell by the hand of an assassin in A.D. 1569, but
the Huguenots had so evidently the best of it, that the king
and his mother found themselves obliged to grant them complete
liberty of conscience and of worship in the peace treaty of
St. Germain-en-Laye, on 8th of Aug., A.D. 1570, excepting in
Paris and in the immediate surroundings of the palace. As a
guarantee for the treaty, four strongholds in southern France
were surrendered to them. It was further stipulated, in order
to confirm for ever the good undertaking, that Henry of Navarre,
son of Jeanne d’Albret, should marry Margaret, the sister of
Charles IX.
§ 139.16. At the marriage, consummated on 18th of August,
A.D. 1572, subsequently known as the =Bloody Marriage=, the
chiefs of the Huguenot party were gathered together at Paris.
Jeanne d’Albret had died at the court, probably by poison, on
9th June, and Coligny had been fatally wounded by a shot on
22nd August. On the night of St. Bartholomew, between the 23rd
and 24th August, the castle bell tolled. This was the concerted
signal for the destruction of all the Huguenots present in Paris.
For four days the carnage was unweariedly carried on by the
city militia appointed for the purpose, the royal Swiss guards,
and crowds of fanatical artisans. Coligny fell praying amid the
blows of his murderers. No Huguenot was spared, neither children,
nor women, nor the aged. Their princely chiefs, Henry of Navarre
and Henry Condé, the son of Louis, were offered the choice
between death and taking part in the celebration of mass. They
decided for the latter. Meanwhile messengers had hasted into the
provinces with the death-warrants, and there the slaughter began
afresh. The whole number of victims is variously estimated at
from 10,000 to 100,000; in Paris alone there fell from 1,000
to 10,000.--The death decree was not indeed so much the result
of long planned and regularly conceived conspiracy, as a sudden
resolve suggested by political circumstances. The queen-mother
was at variance with her son with respect to his anti-Spanish
policy, which had always inclined him favourably to Coligny;
and so, in concert with her favourite son, Henry of Anjou, she
succeeded in dealing a deadly stroke at the great admiral by the
hand of an assassin. The king swore to take fearful vengeance on
the unknown perpetrators of this crime. Catharine now made every
effort to avert the threatened blow. She managed to convince the
king, by means of her fellow conspirators, that the Huguenots
regarded him as an accomplice in the perpetrating of the outrage,
and that so his life was in danger because of them. He now swore
by God’s death that not merely the chiefs, to whom Catharine
and her auxiliaries had directed special attention, but all the
Huguenots in France, should die, in order that not one should
remain to bring this charge against him. On the other hand,
it is all but certain that the thought of such a diabolical
deed had previously suggested itself, if indeed expression
had not been explicitly given to it. To the Spanish and Romish
courts, the French government represented the deed as an _acte
prémédité_, to the German court as an _acte non prémédité_. But
even before this a letter from Rome to the Emperor Maximilian II.
(§ 137, 8) had contained the following: “_At that hour_
(referring to the marriage festivities) _when all the birds
are in the cage, they can seize upon them altogether, and can
have any one that they desire_.” He was profoundly excited about
the villany of the transaction, while Philip II. of Spain on
hearing of it is said to have laughed for the first time in his
life. Pope Gregory XIII. indeed feared the worst consequences,
but soon changed his mind, and had Rome illuminated, all the
bells rung, the cannons fired, a _Te Deum_ performed, processions
made, and a medal struck, with the inscription, _Ugonottorum
strages_. He instructed the French ambassador to inform his king
that this performance was a hundred times more grateful to him
than fifty victories over the Turks.[392]
§ 139.17. The dreadful deed, however, completely failed in
accomplishing the end in view. Even after 100,000 had been
slaughtered there still remained more than ten times that
number of Huguenots, who, in possession of their strongholds,
occupied positions of great strategical importance. After
a brief breathing time of peace, therefore, they were able,
on five occasions, in A.D. 1573, 1576, 1577, 1580, to renew
the religious civil war, when once and again the truce had
been broken by the Catholics. Charles IX. was succeeded by
Catharine’s favourite son, =Henry III.=, A.D. 1574-1589, who,
joining the most shameless immorality to the narrowest bigotry
and asceticism (§ 149, 17), was no way behind his brother in
dissoluteness, and was still more conspicuous for dastardliness
and cowardice. Henry Condé had, just immediately after Charles’s
death, abjured again the Catholic confession, and put himself at
the head of the Huguenot revolt. Henry of Navarre rejoined his
old friends two years later, after having in the meantime vied
with his brother-in-law and his incestuous wife in frivolity
and immorality. He was able to take part successfully in the
fifth religious war, in which the Huguenots, supported once
more by the German auxiliaries under the Count-palatine John
Casimir, secured such advantages, that the court, in the Treaty
of Beaulieu, of A.D. 1576, were obliged to grant them complete
religious freedom and a larger number of strongholds. But now
Henry of Guise, in concert with his brothers Louis, cardinal and
Archbishop of Rheims, and Charles, Duke of Mayenne, formed the
Holy League, which he compelled the king to join, and renewed
the war with increased vigour. In the eighth war since A.D. 1584,
which on the part of the Guises was really as much directed
against the king’s Huguenot policy as against the Huguenots
themselves, Henry was obliged, by the Treaty of Nemours, of
A.D. 1585, to declare that the Protestants were deprived of
all rights and privileges. In the battle of Coutras, however,
in A.D. 1587, Henry of Navarre annihilated the opposing forces.
But as he failed to follow up the advantages then secured, the
Guises again recruited their strength to such a degree that they
were able openly to work for the dethronement of the king. Henry
could save himself only by the murder of both the elder Guises
at the Diet of Blois. There was now no alternative left him
but to cast himself into the arms of the Huguenots, and on this
account, at the siege of the capital, he was murdered by the
Dominican Clement. Henry of Navarre, as the only legitimate heir,
now ascended the throne as =Henry IV.=, A.D. 1589-1610. After a
hard struggle, lasting for four years, in which he was supported
by England and Germany, while his opponents, headed by the Duke
of Mayenne, were aided with money and men by Spain, Savoy, and
the pope, he at last decided, in A.D. 1593, to pass over to
Catholicism, because, as he said, “Paris is well worth a mass.”
He secured, however, for his former co-religionists, by the
=Edict of Nantes=, of 13th April, A.D. 1598, complete liberty
of holding religious services in all the cities where previously
there had been reformed congregations, as well as thorough
equality with the Catholics in all civil rights and privileges,
especially in regard to eligibility for all civil and military
offices. The fortresses and strongholds hitherto held by them
were to be left with them for eight years, and in the Parliament
a special “Chamber of the Edict” was instituted, with eight
Catholic and eight Protestant members. But, on the other hand,
they continued to be under the Catholic marriage laws, were
obliged to cease from work on the Catholic festivals, and to
pay tithes to the Catholic clergy. After a stubborn resistance
on the part of the Parliament of Paris, the university, and
the Sorbonne, as well as on that of the bishops, the king, in
February, A.D. 1599, secured the incorporation of the edict
among the laws of France. On 14th May, A.D. 1610, he was struck
down by the dagger of the Feuillant Ravaillac, a fanatical
Jesuit. Notwithstanding his many moral shortcomings, France
has rightly celebrated him as one of the greatest and best
of her kings. With wisdom, prudence, and humanity he wrought
unweariedly for the advancement of a commonwealth that had
been reduced to the lowest depths. He protected the Protestants
in the enjoyment of privileges guaranteed to them, and though
he did indeed put upon his old Huguenot friends some gentle
pressure to get them to follow his example, he yet honoured
those who steadfastly refused. His minister Sully, although
it is supposed that he had felt obliged to advise the king
to go over to Catholicism, stood himself unhesitatingly true
to his profession of the Huguenot faith, while he retained
the king’s confidence, and proved his most faithful adviser
and administrator during all the negotiations of peace and war.
Philip du Plessis Mornay, on the other hand, distinguished even
more as a statesman, diplomatist, and field marshal than as
a theologian and author,[393] but above all as a Christian and
a man in the noblest sense of the word, who, in the belief that
evangelical truth would, even in the Catholic church, assert
its conquering power, had agreed with the Catholic League to
instruct the king in the Catholic faith, and had thus made
the act of apostasy appear to him less offensive. But just
because the mere presence of a friend of high moral character
and true religious principles acted as too sharp a sting to
the king’s conscience, he had to submit to be relegated to an
honorary post as governor of Saumur, where he became founder
of the famous academy which Louis XIV. suppressed in A.D. 1685.
Theodore Agrippa d’Aubigné, too, distinguished as a brave
warrior in the army of the Huguenots, as well as a historian,
poet, and satirist, stood high in favour with the king, though
Henry, often roused by his unbending pride, repeatedly expelled
him from the court. After Henry’s death D’Aubigné returned to
Geneva, where he died in A.D. 1630.[394]
§ 139.18. =Poland.=--The Reformation had been introduced
into Poland first of all by the exiled Bohemian Brethren,
and Luther’s writings soon after their appearance were eagerly
read in that region. =Sigismund I.=, A.D. 1506-1548, opposed it
with all his might. It met with most success in Prussian Poland.
Dantzig, in A.D. 1525, drove out the Catholic council. Sigismund
went down there himself, had several citizens executed, and
restored the old mode of worship in A.D. 1526. But scarcely had
he left the town when it again went back to the profession of
the Lutheran faith. Elbing and Thorn followed its example. In
Poland proper also the new doctrines made way. In spite of all
prohibitions many young Poles flocked to Wittenberg, and brought
away from it to their native country a glowing enthusiasm for
Luther and his teaching. The Swiss Confession had already found
entrance there, and the persecutions which Ferdinand of Austria
carried on after the Schmalcald war in Bohemia and Moravia
led great numbers of Bohemian Brethren to cross over into the
Polish territories. =Sigismund Augustus=, A.D. 1548-1572, was
personally favourable to the Reformation. He studied Calvin’s
“Institutes,” received letters from him and from Melanchthon,
and, in accordance with the decisions of a national assembly
at Petrican in A.D. 1555 demanded of the pope a national council,
as well as permission for the marriage of priests, the communion
in both kinds, the celebration of mass in the vernacular, and
abolition of annats. The pope naturally refused to yield, but
in A.D. 1556 sent into the country a legate of a despotic and
violent temper, called Aloysius Lippomanus, who was replaced
in A.D. 1563 by the bland and eloquent Commendone. Both were
powerfully supported in their struggle against heresy by the
fanatically Catholic cardinal Stanislaus Hosius, Bishop of
Ermeland. The Protestant nobility then recalled, in A.D. 1556,
their celebrated countryman =John à Lasco=, who twenty years
before had, on account of his evangelical faith, resigned his
office as provost of Gnesen and left his fatherland. He had
meanwhile taken part in the Reformation of East Friesland, and
had acted for several years as preacher at Emden. After that,
he had gone, at the call of Cranmer, in A.D. 1550, to England;
upon the death of Edward VI., along with a part of his London
flock of foreign exiles, had sought refuge in Denmark, which,
however, was refused on account of his attachment to Zwingli’s
doctrine; and at last settled down at Frankfort-on-the-Maine as
pastor to a congregation of French, English, and Dutch exiles.
After his return home he endeavoured to bring about a union of
the Lutherans and Reformed, in concert with several friends made
a translation of the Bible, and died in A.D. 1560. At a =general
synod at Sendomir=, in A.D. 1570, a union was at last effected
between the three dissentient parties, by which the Lutheran
doctrine of the Lord’s Supper was acknowledged, yet in so
indefinite a form that Calvin’s view might also be entertained.
The Lutheran opposition at the synod had been suppressed by
urgent entreaty, but afterwards broke out again in a still more
violent form. At the Synod of Thorn, in A.D. 1595, the Lutheran
pastor Paul Gericke was the leader of it; but one of the nobles
present held a dagger to his heart, and the synod suspended him
from his office as a disturber of the peace. Sigismund Augustus
had meanwhile died, in A.D. 1572. During the interregnum that
followed, the Protestant nobles formed a confederation, which
before the election of a new king succeeded in obtaining
a comprehensive religious peace, the =Pax dissidentium of
A.D. 1573=, by means of which Catholics and Protestants were
for all time to live together in peace and enjoy equal civil
rights. The newly elected king, =Henry of Anjou=, sought to
avoid binding himself by oath to the observance of this peace,
but the imperial marshal addressed him in firm and decided
language, _Si non jurabis, non regnabis_. In the following
year, however, the new king left Poland in order to mount the
French throne as Henry III. =Stephen Bathori=, A.D. 1576-1586,
swore without hesitation to observe the peace, and kept
his oath. Under his successor, Sigismund III., a Swedish
prince, A.D. 1587-1632, the Protestants had to complain of
the infringement of many of their rights, which from this time
down to the overthrow of the Polish kingdom, in A.D. 1772, they
never again enjoyed.[395]--Continuation, § 164, 4.
§ 139.19. =Bohemia and Moravia.=--The numerous Bohemian and
Moravian Brethren (§ 119, 8), at whose head was the elder Luke
of Prague, greeted the appearance of Luther with the most hopeful
joy. By messages and writings, however, which in A.D. 1522-1524
were interchanged between them, some important diversities of
view were discovered. Luke disliked Luther’s realistic theory
of the Lord’s Supper, continued to hold by the seven sacraments,
rejected the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and took
special offence at Luther’s view of Christian freedom, which
seemed to him to want the necessary rigour of the apostolic
discipline of the life and to under-estimate the importance
and worth of celibacy and virginity. Luther, on the other hand,
charged them with a want of grasp of the doctrine and a Novatian
over-estimation of mere outward exercises and discipline. And so
these negotiations ended in mutual recrimination, and only after
Luke’s death, in A.D. 1528, and the glorious Diet of Augsburg,
in A.D. 1530, were they reopened. The Lutheranizing tendency,
for which especially the two elders John Roh and John Augusta
laboured, now gained the upper hand for two decades. In
A.D. 1532 the Brethren presented to the Margrave George of
Brandenburg an apology of the doctrine and customs, which was
printed at Wittenberg, and had a preface by Luther, in which he
expressed himself in very favourable terms about the doctrine
of the “Picards,” and only objected to their spiritualizing
tendency, of which their doctrine of the supper and of baptism
was not altogether free, inasmuch as they, while practising
infant baptism, required that each one should on reaching
maturity take the vows upon himself and have baptism repeated.
Still more favourably did he speak of their confession presented
in A.D. 1535 to King Ferdinand, in which they had left out
the rebaptizing, substituting for it the solemn imposition of
hands as confirmation. When the Brethren at Luther’s request
had modified the two articles at which he took offence,
their unsatisfactory theory of justification, and that of
the wholesomeness, though not necessity, of clerical celibacy,
he declared himself thoroughly satisfied, and at their last
personal conference, in A.D. 1542, he stretched his hand
over the table to Augusta and his companions as the pledge
of indissoluble brotherly fellowship, although not agreed in
regard to various matters of constitution and discipline. The
refusal of the Brethren to fight against their German fellow
Protestants in the Schmalcald war led to their king Ferdinand
upon its close issuing some penal statutes against them. Driven
away into exile in A.D. 1548, many of them went to Poland, the
larger number to Prussia, from whence they returned to their
native land in A.D. 1574. Meantime matters had there in many
respects taken an altogether new turn. In the later years of his
reign Ferdinand had become more favourable to the evangelical
movement in his hereditary dominions, and Maximilian II.,
A.D. 1564-1576, gave it an absolutely free course (§ 137, 8).
Thus the Brethren could not only go on from day to day
increasing in numbers and in influence, but alongside of them
there grew up a genuine Lutheran community and an independent
Calvinist body. The Crypto-calvinism which was also at the
same time gaining the victory in Saxony (§ 141, 10) cast its
shadow upon the Lutheranizing movement among the Brethren. And
this movement told all the more against the Lutheran party there
from the circumstance that at an earlier period there had been
powerful influences at work, inspired by a national Bohemian
spirit, to resist German interference in matters of religion.
Since the death of the elder Luke the national party had
succeeded more and more in working back to the genuine Bohemian
constitution, discipline, and confession of their fathers. At
the head of this movement stood John Blahoslaw, from A.D. 1553
deacon of Jungbunzlau, after Luke of Prague and before
Amos Comenius (§ 167, 2) the most important champion of the
Bohemian-Moravian Confession. To him chiefly are the Brethren
indebted for the high development of literary and scientific
activity which they manifested during the second half of
the century, and his numerous writings, but pre-eminently
his translation of the N.T., proved almost as influential and
epoch-making for the Bohemian language as Luther’s translation
of the Bible did for the written language of Germany. Himself
one of the ablest among the very numerous writers of spiritual
songs in Bohemian, he was the restorer of the simple and
majestic Bohemian chorales. As he had himself, in A.D. 1568,
translated the N.T. from the original Greek text, he also
undertook, with the help of several younger men of noble
gifts, a similar translation of the O.T. and a commentary on
the whole Bible. But he died in A.D. 1571, in his forty-eighth
year, before the issue of his great work, upon the inception
of which he had expended so much thought and care. This great
undertaking was completed and published in six volumes between
A.D. 1579-1593. The strong spiritual affinity between the
society of the Brethren and the Calvinistic church, especially
in its doctrine of the supper and in its zeal for rigid church
discipline, was meanwhile again brought into prominence, and
had led to a more and more decided loosening of attachment
to the Lutheran church, and, in spite of the antagonism of
its episcopalianism to the Calvinistic presbyterianism, to the
formation of closer ties with Calvinism. But now, on the other
hand, the common danger that threatened them from Rudolph II.,
who had been king of Bohemia from A.D. 1575, at the instigation
of Jesuits through the Spanish court, led all non-Catholics,
of whatever special confession, to draw as closely together as
possible. Thus a league came to be formed in the same year in
which the Brethren were far outnumbered by Lutherans, Reformed,
and Calixtines (§ 119, 7), by means of which, in the _Confessio
Bohemica_ of A.D. 1575, a common symbol was drawn up, and all
the four parties were placed under the management of a common
consistory. But when, after Maximilian’s death, Rudolph II.
proceeded more and more rigorously in his efforts to completely
suppress all heresy, the Bohemians rose with one heart, and
at last, in A.D. 1609, extorted from him the rescript which
gave them absolute religious liberty according to the Bohemian
Confession, a common consistory of their own, and an academy
at Prague. Bohemia was now an almost completely evangelical
country, and scarcely a tenth part of its inhabitants
professed attachment to the Catholic faith.[396]--Continuation,
§§ 153, 2; 167, 2.
§ 139.20. =Hungary and Transylvania.=--From A.D. 1524, Martin
Cyriaci, a student of Wittenberg, wrought in =Hungary= for
the spread of the true doctrine. King Louis II. threatened its
adherents with all possible penalties. But in A.D. 1526 he fell
in battle against the Turks at Mohacz. The election of a new
king resulted in two claimants taking possession of the field;
Ferdinand of Austria secured a footing in the western, and
the Woiwode John Zapolya in the eastern provinces. Both sought
to suppress the Reformation, in order to win over the clergy
to support them. But it nevertheless gained the ascendency,
favoured by the political confusions of the time. =Matthias
Devay=, a scholar of Luther, and for a time a resident in
his house, from A.D. 1521 preached the gospel at Ofen, having
been called thither by several of the leading inhabitants on
Melanchthon’s recommendation, and in A.D. 1533 had a Hungarian
translation of the Pauline epistles printed at Cracow. In
A.D. 1541 Erdösy issued the complete New Testament, which was
also the first book printed in Hungary. At a synod at Erdöd, in
A.D. 1545, twenty-nine ministers drew up a confession of faith
in twelve articles, in agreement with the Augsburg Confession.
But also the Swiss doctrine had now found entrance, and won
more and more adherents from day to day. These adopted at a
council at Czengar, in A.D. 1557, a Calvinistic confession,
with decided repudiation of the Zwinglian as well as the
Lutheran theory of the Lord’s Supper, describing the latter
as an _insania sarcophagica_. The government of Maximilian II.
did not interfere with the progress of the Reformation; but when
Rudolph II. attempted to interfere with violent measures, the
Protestants rose in revolt under Stephen Bocskai, and compelled
the king to grant them complete religious liberty by the Vienna
Peace of A.D. 1606. Among the native Hungarians the Reformed
confession prevailed, but the German residents remained true
to Lutheranism. (Continuation § 153, 3.)--As early as A.D. 1521
merchants had brought into =Transylvania= from Hermanstadt
copies of Luther’s writings. King Louis II. of Hungary, however,
carried his persecution of the evangelicals even into this
territory, which was continued after his death by Zapolya.
In A.D. 1529, however, Hermanstadt ventured to expel all
adherents of the Romish church from within its walls. In
Cronstadt, the work of the Reformation was carried on from
A.D. 1533 by =Jac. Honter=, who had studied at Basel. Since
Zapolya through an agreement with Ferdinand, in A.D. 1538,
was assured of possession for his lifetime of Transylvania,
he acted more mildly toward the Protestants. After his death
the monk Martinuzzi, as Bishop of Grosswardein, assumed the helm
of affairs for Zapolya’s son during his minority, oppressing the
Protestants with bloody persecutions, while Isabella, Zapolya’s
widow, was favourable to them. Martinuzzi therefore handed over
the country to Ferdinand, but was assassinated in A.D. 1551.
After some years Isabella returned with her son, and a =national
assembly at Clausenburg=, in A.D. 1557, gave an organization
to the country as an independent principality, and proclaimed
universal religious liberty. The Saxon population continued
attached to the Lutheran confession, and the Czecks and Magyars
preferred to adopt the Reformed.[397]
§ 139.21. =Spain.=--The connection brought about between Spain
and Germany through the election of =Charles V.= as emperor led
to the very early introduction into the Peninsula of Luther’s
doctrine and writings. Indeed many of the theologians and
statesmen who went in Charles’ train into Germany returned
with evangelical convictions in their hearts, as, _e.g._, the
Benedictine Alphonso de Virves, the fiery Ponce de la Fuente,
both court chaplains of the emperor, and his private secretary
Alphonso Valdez. A layman, Roderigo de Valer, by earnest study
of the Bible attained unto a knowledge of the gospel, and became
the instrument of leading many others into the way of salvation.
The Inquisition confiscated his goods and condemned him to
wear the _san benito_ (§ 117, 2). Juan Gil, a friend of Valer,
Bishop of Tortosa, founded a society for the study of the
Bible. The Inquisition deposed him, and only Charles’ favour
protected him from the stake; but subsequently his bones were
dug up and burnt. Many other prelates also, such as Carranza
of Toledo, Guerrero of Granada, Guesta of Leon, Carrubias of
Ciudad Roderigo, Agostino of Lerida, Ayala of Segovia, etc.,
admitted the necessity for a thoroughgoing revision of doctrine,
without detaching themselves from the pope and the Romish church;
and in this direction they laboured with zeal and success amid
the threatenings of the Inquisition. The first Protestant martyr
in Spain was Francisco san Romano, a merchant who had become
acquainted with Luther’s doctrine at Antwerp. He was led to the
stake at Valladolid, in A.D. 1544. Francis Enzina, in A.D. 1543,
translated the New Testament. He was cast into prison, and the
book prohibited. A complete Spanish Bible was printed by Cassiod.
de Reyna at Basel, in A.D. 1569. In Seville and Valladolid first
of all, and at a later period also in many other Spanish cities,
evangelical congregations held secret services. Even so soon as
about A.D. 1550, the Reformation movement threatened to become
so general and widespread, that a Spanish historian of that age,
Ilesca, in his history of the popes, expresses the conviction
that all Spain would have become overrun with heresy if the
Inquisition had delayed for three months longer to put an
end to the pestilence. But it now applied that remedy in the
largest and strongest doses possible. The measures of the
Inquisition were specially prompt and vigorous during the
reign of =Philip II.=, A.D. 1555-1598. Scarcely a year passed
in which there were not at each of the twelve Inquisition courts
one or more great _autos-de-fé_, in which crowds of heretics
were burnt. And the remedy was effectual. After two decades
the evangelical movement was stamped out. How determinedly the
crusade was carried out is shown by the proceedings in the case
of the Archbishop of Toledo, Barthol. Carranza. This prelate had
published a “Commentary on the Catechism,” in which he expressed
a wish to see “the ancient spirit of our forefathers and of
the early church revived in its simplicity and purity.” The
grand-inquisitor discerned therein Lutheran heresy, and though
he bore one of the highest positions in the Spanish church,
Carranza was kept close prisoner for eight years in the dungeons
of the Inquisition, and after he had at last reached the pope
with his appeal, he was kept for nine years in the castle of
St. Angelo at Rome. There at last, upon his abjuring sixteen
heretical propositions, especially about justification, saint
and image worship, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment
in the Dominican cloister at Orvieto, but died some weeks after,
in A.D. 1576, in his seventy-third year. At the Quemadero,
the scene of the _autos-de-fé_ of the Madrid Inquisition court,
there were till quite recently discernible the traces of the
human hecatombs that had there been offered up to the insatiable
Moloch of religious fanaticism. The official newspaper of the
capital of the 12th April, A.D. 1869, reports how on the removal
of the soil for the purpose of lengthening a street, the grim
geological archives of the burnings of the Inquisition were laid
bare, while with horrifying minuteness it proceeds to describe
the maximum reached, and the gradual diminution of these papal
atrocities.[398]
§ 139.22. =Italy.=--The Reformation made progress in Italy
in various directions. A large number of the humanists
(§ 120, 1) had in a self-sufficient paganism lost all interest
in Christianity, and were just as indifferent toward the
Reformation as toward the old church; but another section were
inclined to favour a reformation after the style of Erasmus.
Both remained in outward connection with the old church. But
besides these there were many learned men of a more decided
tendency, some of them attempting reforms at their own hand,
and so not infrequently rejecting fundamental doctrines of
Christianity, such as the various Anti-trinitarians of that age
(§ 148), some who attached themselves to the German, but more
frequently to the Swiss reformers. Both brought the reforming
ideas before the people by preaching and writing. Almost all the
works of the German and Swiss reformers were immediately after
their publication circulated in Italy in translations, and under
the shield of anonymity scattered broadcast through the land,
before the Inquisition laid hold upon them. Among the princely
supporters of the Reformation movement, the most prominent was
Renata of Este, Duchess of Ferrara, and sister-in-law of the
French king Francis, distinguished as much for piety as for
culture and learning. Her court was a place of refuge and a
rallying point for French and Italian exiles. Calvin stayed
some weeks with her in A.D. 1536, and confirmed her in her
evangelical faith by personal conversation, and subsequently
by epistolary correspondence. Her husband, Hercules of Ferrara,
whom she married in A.D. 1534, at first let her do as she liked,
but in A.D. 1536 expelled Calvin from his dominions, and had his
wife confined, in A.D. 1554, as an obstinate Lutheran heretic,
in the old castle of Este. Still she was allowed to return
to her husband after she had brought herself to confess to a
Romish priest. But when after his death, in A.D. 1560, Alphonso,
her son, put before her the alternative of either recanting
her faith or leaving the country, she returned to France, and
there openly made profession of her faith and attached herself
to the Huguenots. Francis of Guise was her son-in-law, and she
was subjected on account of her Protestantism to the incessant
persecutions of the Guises. She died in A.D. 1575.--We have
seen already, in § 135, 3, that the idea had been mooted of
a propaganda of Catholic Christians in Italy. With a strong
and lively conviction of the importance of the doctrine of
justification by faith they made it the central point of
religious life and knowledge, and thus, without directly
opposing it, they inspired new life into the Catholic church.
The first germ of this movement appeared in the so-called
_Oratory of Divine Love_, an association formed in the beginning
of A.D. 1520 at Rome, after the apostolic model, for mutual
religious edification, consisting of fifty or sixty young, eager
men, mostly of the clerical order. One of the original founders
was Jac. Sadolet, who in this spirit expounded the Epistle
to the Romans. To it also belonged such men as the founder
of the Theatine order (§ 149, 7), Cajetan of Thiene, and John
Pet. Caraffa, Bishop of Chieta, and afterwards Pope Paul IV.,
who sought the church’s salvation rather in the practice of
a rigorous inquisitorial discipline. The sack of Rome (§ 132, 2)
broke up this association in A.D. 1527, but spread its efforts
over all Italy. The fugitive English cardinal, Reginald Pole,
attached himself in Venice to the party of Sadolet. In Ferrara
there was Italy’s most famous poetess, Vittoria Colonna; at
Modena the Bishop Morone, who, although as papal legate in
Germany, a zealous defender of the papal claims (§§ 135, 2;
137, 5), yet in his own diocese even subsequently aided the
evangelical tendencies of his companions with much ardour, and
hence under Paul IV. was cast into the Inquisition, to come out
only under Pius V., after undergoing a three years’ imprisonment.
In Naples there was Juan Valdez, Alphonso’s brother, secretary
of the Spanish viceroy of Naples, and author of the “One Hundred
and Ten Divine Considerations,” as well as a book of Christian
doctrine for the young in the Spanish language. In Siena there
was Aonio Paleario, professor of classical literature, famous as
poet and orator. In Rome there was the papal notary Carnesecchi,
formerly the personal friend of Clement VII. In other places
there were many more. The most conspicuous representative of
the party was the Venetian Gasparo Contarini (§ 135, 3), who
died in A.D. 1542.
§ 139.23. The tendency of the thought of these men is most
clearly and fully set forth in the little work, “The Benefit
of Christ’s Death.” At Venice, where it first appeared in
A.D. 1542, within six years 60,000 copies of this tract were
issued, and afterwards innumerable reprints and translations of
it were circulated. Since Aonio Paleario had written, according
to his own statement, a tract of a similar character, he came
to be generally regarded as its author, until Ranke discovered
a notice among the acts of the Inquisition, according to which
the heretical jewel was to be assigned to a monk of San Severino
in Naples, a disciple of Juan Valdez, and afterwards Benrath
succeeded in proving his name to be Don Benedetto of Mantŏva.
The conciliatory spirit of these friends of moderate reform
gave grounds for large expectation, all the more that Paul III.
seemed all through his life to favour the movement. He nominated
Contarini, Sadolet, Pole, and Caraffa cardinals, instituted
in A.D. 1536 a _congregatio præparatoria_, and made Contarini
the representative of the curia at the religious Conference of
Regensburg in A.D. 1541 (§ 135, 3), which sought to bring about
the conciliation of the German Protestants. But just about this
time, probably not without the co-operation of the Jesuit order
founded in A.D. 1540, a split occurred which utterly blasted all
these grand expectations. The zeal of Caraffa set himself at the
head of the opposition, and Paul III., in accordance with his
proposal in his bull _Licet ab initio_ of A.D. 1542, reorganized
the defunct Roman Inquisition after the Spanish model as the
central institution for the uprooting of the Protestant heresy.
This “Holy Office” henceforth pursued its violent career under
the pontificate of Caraffa himself, who mounted the papal
throne in A.D. 1555 as Paul IV. Subsequently, too, under the
obstinate, fanatical, and hence canonized monkish pope Pius V.,
from A.D. 1566 every suspicion of Protestantism was rigorously
and mercilessly punished with imprisonment, torture, the
galleys, the scaffold, and the stake. So energetically was the
persecution carried out against the adherents and the patrons
of the Reformation, that by the end of the century no trace of
its presence was any longer to be found within the bounds of
Italy. One of the last victims of this persecution was Aonio
Paleario. After he had been for three years in the prisons of
the Inquisition, he was strangled and then burnt. A similar
fate had previously befallen Carnesecchi. How thoroughgoing
and successful the Holy Office was in the suppression of
books suspected of a heretical taint appears from the war of
extermination carried on against that _liber perniciosissimus_,
“On the Benefit of Christ’s Death.” In spite of the hundred
thousand copies of the book that had been in circulation, the
Inquisition so carefully and consistently pursued its task
of extirpation, that thirty years after its appearance it was
no longer to be found in the original and after a hundred no
translation even was supposed to exist. In Rome alone a pile
of copies were burnt which reached to the height of a house. In
A.D. 1853 a copy of the original was found in Cambridge, and was
published in London, 1855, with an English translation made by
the Duke of Devonshire in A.D. 1548.[399]
§ 139.24. Among the Italian reformers who shook themselves
entirely free from the papacy, and only by flight into foreign
lands escaped prison, torture, and the stake, the following are
the most important.
1. =Bernardino Ochino=, from A.D. 1538 general of the
Capuchins, became by his glowing eloquence one of the
most popular of Italian preachers. The study of the Bible
had led him to accept the doctrine of justification when,
in A.D. 1536, he was called to Naples as Lenten preacher.
He was there brought into close contact with Juan Valdez,
who confirmed him in his evangelical tendencies, and made
him acquainted with the writings of the German reformers.
In order to escape arrest and the Inquisition, he fled
in A.D. 1542 to Geneva, and wrought successively at Basel,
Augsburg, Strassburg, and London. After the death of
Edward VI. he was obliged to make his escape from England,
went as preacher to Zürich, adopted Socinian views,
and even justified polygamy. He was consequently deposed
from his office, fled to Poland, and died in Moravia in
A.D. 1565.[400]
2. =Peter Martyr Vermilius=, an Augustinian monk and popular
preacher. The study of the writings of Erasmus, Zwingli,
and Bucer led him to quit the Catholic church. He fled to
Zürich, became professor in Strassburg, and on Cranmer’s
invitation came to England, where he was made professor
in Oxford. When Mary came to the throne, he returned to
Strassburg, and died as professor at Zürich in A.D. 1562.
3. =Peter Paul Vergerius= in A.D. 1530 accompanied Campegius
to the Diet of Augsburg as papal legate (§ 132, 6); was
sent again, in A.D. 1535, to Germany by Paul III., in
order to get the German princes to agree to the holding
of the council at Mantua (§ 134, 1), and on this point he
conferred personally but unsuccessfully with Luther. On
his return home, in A.D. 1536 the pope conferred upon him,
in recognition of his faithful service, the bishopric of
his native city, Capo d’Istria. In A.D. 1540 we find him
again present during the religious conference at Worms
(§ 135, 2), where his conciliatory efforts called down on
him the displeasure of the pope and the suspicion of his
enemies as a secret adherent of Luther. In order to clear
himself of suspicion he studied Luther’s writings with the
intention of controverting them, but had his heart opened
to gospel truths, and was obliged to betake himself to
flight. At Padua the dreadful end of the jurist Speira,
who had abjured his evangelical convictions, and feeling
that he had committed the unpardonable sin died amid the
most fearful agonies of conscience, made an indelible
impression upon him. He now, in A.D. 1548, formally joined
the evangelical church, wrought for a long time in the
country of the Grisons, not as a member of the Reformed but
of the Lutheran church, and died as professor at Tübingen
in A.D. 1565.
4. The Piedmontese =Cœlius Secundus Curio= was the youngest
of a family of twenty-three, and was early left an orphan.
He studied at Turin, where an Augustinian monk, Jerome
Niger, made him acquainted with the writings of Luther and
others. Unweariedly devoted to spreading the gospel in the
various cities of Italy, he was repeatedly subjected by
the persecution of the Inquisition to severe imprisonment,
but always managed to escape in almost a miraculous way.
At last he found, in A.D. 1542, on the recommendation of
the Duchess Renata, an asylum in Switzerland, first of all
in Bern; then he taught in Lausanne for four years, and
in Basel for twenty-two. He died at Basel in A.D. 1569.
His latitudinarian theology gave no offence among the
liberal-minded folk of Basel, but he was looked upon
with much displeasure by the theologians of Geneva, whose
prosecutions of heretics he had condemned; and even from
Tübingen, Vergerius, who had been his intimate friend,
brought the charge of Pelagianism against him.
5. =Galeazzo Carraccioli=, Marquis of Vico, on his mother’s
side a nephew of Paul IV., was led by intercourse with
Juan Valdez and the preaching of Peter Martyr to abandon
the gay, worldly life of the Neapolitan court for one of
religious earnestness and devotion, and by means of a visit
to Germany in company with the emperor he was confirmed in
his evangelical convictions. In order to be able to live
in the undisturbed profession of his faith, he fled, in
A.D. 1551, to Geneva. Neither the tears nor the curses of
his aged father, who had hurried after him to that place,
nor the promise of indulgence from his papal uncle, nor
the complaining, the tears, and despair of his tenderly
loved wife and children, whom at great risk he had visited
at Vico in A.D. 1558, were able to shake the steadfastness
of his faith. But equally in vain were his incessant
entreaties and tears to induce his wife and children to
come and join him on some neutral territory, where he might
be allowed to follow the evangelical and they the Catholic
confession. On the ground of this obstinate and persistent
refusal, the Genevan consistory, with Calvin at its head,
at last granted him the divorce that he claimed, and in
A.D. 1560 Carraccioli entered into a second marriage. Down
to his death, in A.D. 1586, by his active and industrious
life he afforded a pattern, and by his successful labours
he proved a powerful support to the Italian congregation
in Geneva, whose pastor, Balbani, raised to him a well
deserved memorial in the history of his life, which he
published in Geneva in A.D. 1587.
6. To the sketch of these noble reformers we may now add the
name of a woman who is well deserving of a place alongside
of them for her singular classical culture, her rich poetic
endowment, and her noble and beautiful life. Fulvia Olympia
Morata, of Ferrara, in her sixteenth year began to deliver
public lectures in her native city, where she enjoyed the
friendship and favour of the Duchess Renata. She married
a German physician, Andrew Grunthler, went with him to
his home at Schweinfurt, and there attached herself to
the Protestant church. When that city was plundered by
the Margrave Albert in A.D. 1553 (§ 137, 4), they lost all
their property. She died in A.D. 1555 at Heidelberg, where
Grunthler had been appointed professor of medicine.[401]
§ 139.25. =The Protestantizing of the Waldensians=
(§ 108, 10).--The news of the Reformation caused great
excitement among the Waldensians. Even as early as A.D. 1520
the Piedmontese _barba_, or minister, Martin of Lucerne,
undertook a journey to Germany, and brought back with him
several works of the reformers. In A.D. 1530 the French
Waldensians sent two delegates, George Morel and Peter Masson,
who conferred verbally and in writing with Œcolampadius at
Basel, and with Bucer and Capito at Strassburg. The result
was, that in A.D. 1532 a synod was held in the Piedmontese
village of Chauvoran, in the valley of Angrogna, at which
the two Genevan theologians Farel and Saunier were present. A
number of narrow-minded prejudices that prevailed among the old
Waldensians were now abandoned, such as the prohibition against
taking oaths, the holding of magisterial offices, the taking of
interest, etc.; and several Catholic notions to which they had
formerly adhered, such as auricular confession, the reckoning
of the sacraments as seven, the injunction of fasts, compulsory
celibacy, the doctrine of merits, etc., were abandoned as
unevangelical, while the Reformed doctrine of predestination
was adopted. On this foundation the complete Protestantizing
of the whole Waldensian community now made rapid progress, but
called down upon them from every side bloody persecutions. In
Provence and Dauphiné there were, in A.D. 1545, four thousand
murdered, and twenty-two districts devastated with fire. Their
remnants got mixed up with the French Reformed. When the
Waldensian colonies in Calabria were told of the Protestantizing
of their Piedmontese brethren, they sent, in A.D. 1559,
a delegate to seek a pastor for them from Geneva. Ludovico
Pascale, by birth a Piedmontese Catholic, who had studied
theology at Geneva, was selected for this mission; but soon
after his arrival he was thrown into prison at Naples, and
from thence carried off to Rome, where in A.D. 1560 he went
with all the martyr’s joy and faith to the stake erected for
him by the Inquisition. In the trials of this man Rome for
the first time came to understand the significance and the
attitude of the Calabrian colonies, and now the grand-inquisitor,
Alexandrini, with some Dominicans, was sent for their conversion
or extermination. The flourishing churches were in A.D. 1561
completely rooted out, amid scenes of almost incredible
atrocity. The men who escaped the stake were made to toil
in the Spanish galleys, while their wives and children were
sold as slaves. In Piedmont, the duke, after vain military
expeditions for their conversion, which the Waldensians, driven
to arms had successfully withstood, was obliged to allow them,
in the Peace of Cavour of A.D. 1561, a restricted measure of
religious liberty. But when the violent attempts to secure
conversions did not cease, they bound themselves together, in
A.D. 1571, in the so-called “Union of the Valleys,” by which
they undertook to defend one another in the exercise of their
evangelical worship.--Continuation, § 153, 5.
§ 139.26. =Attempt at Protestantizing the Eastern Church.=--The
opposition to the Roman papacy, which was common to them and the
eastern church, led the Protestants of the West to long for and
strive after a union with those who were thus far agreed with
them. A young Cretan, =Jacob Basilicus=, whom Heraclides, prince
of Samos and Paros, had adopted, on his travels through Germany,
Denmark, and Sweden had come into friendly relations with
Melanchthon and others of the reformed party, and attempted,
after he entered upon the government of his two islands in
A.D. 1561, to introduce a reformation of the local church
according to evangelical principles. But he was murdered in
A.D. 1563, and with him every trace of his movement passed
away.--In A.D. 1559 a deacon from Constantinople, =Demetrius
Mysos=, spent some months with Melanchthon at Wittenburg
[Wittenberg], and took with him a Greek translation of the
Augsburg Confession, of which, however, no result ever came.
At a later period, in A.D. 1573, the Tübingen theologians,
Andreä, Luc. Osiander, and others, reopened negotiations with
the patriarch Jeremiah II. (§ 73, 4), through a Lutheran pastor,
Stephen Gerbach, who went to Constantinople in the suite of
a zealous Protestant nobleman, David of Ungnad, ambassador
of Maximilian II. The Tübingen divines sent with him a Greek
translation of the Augsburg Confession, composed by Mart.
Crusius, with a request for his judgment upon it. The patriarch,
in his reply in A.D. 1576, expressed himself candidly in regard
to the errors of the book. The doctors of Tübingen wrote in
vindication of their formula, and in a second answer, in
A.D. 1579, the patriarch reiterated the objections stated in
the first. After a third interchange of letters he declined all
further discussion, and allowed a fourth epistle, in A.D. 1581,
to remain unanswered.--Continuation, § 152, 2.