It is impossible to comprehend the character of the great Netherland
revolt in the sixteenth century without taking a rapid retrospective
survey of the religious phenomena exhibited in the provinces. The
introduction of Christianity has been already indicated. From the
earliest times, neither prince, people, nor even prelates were very
dutiful to the pope. As the papal authority made progress, strong
resistance was often made to its decrees. The bishops of Utrecht were
dependent for their wealth and territory upon the good will of the
Emperor. They were the determined opponents of Hildebrand, warm
adherents of the Hohenstaufers-Ghibelline rather than Guelph. Heresy was
a plant of early growth in the Netherlands. As early as the beginning of
the 12th century, the notorious Tanchelyn preached at Antwerp, attacking
the authority of the pope and of all other ecclesiastics; scoffing at the
ceremonies and sacraments of the Church. Unless his character and career
have been grossly misrepresented, he was the most infamous of the many
impostors who have so often disgraced the cause of religious reformation.
By more than four centuries, he anticipated the licentiousness and
greediness manifested by a series of false prophets, and was the first to
turn both the stupidity of a populace and the viciousness of a priesthood
to his own advancement; an ambition which afterwards reached its most
signal expression in the celebrated John of Leyden.
The impudence of Tanchelyn and the superstition of his followers seem
alike incredible. All Antwerp was his harem. He levied, likewise, vast
sums upon his converts, and whenever he appeared in public, his apparel
and pomp were befitting an emperor. Three thousand armed satellites
escorted his steps and put to death all who resisted his commands. So
groveling became the superstition of his followers that they drank of the
water in which, he had washed, and treasured it as a divine elixir.
Advancing still further in his experiments upon human credulity, he
announced his approaching marriage with the Virgin Mary, bade all his
disciples to the wedding, and exhibited himself before an immense crowd
in company with an image of his holy bride. He then ordered the people
to provide for the expenses of the nuptials and the dowry of his wife,
placing a coffer upon each side of the image, to receive the
contributions of either sex. Which is the most wonderful manifestation
in the history of this personage--the audacity of the impostor, or the
bestiality of his victims? His career was so successful in the
Netherlands that he had the effrontery to proceed to Rome, promulgating
what he called his doctrines as he went. He seems to have been
assassinated by a priest in an obscure brawl, about the year 1115.
By the middle of the 12th century, other and purer heresiarchs had
arisen. Many Netherlanders became converts to the doctrines of Waldo.
From that period until the appearance of Luther, a succession of sects--
Waldenses, Albigenses, Perfectists, Lollards, Poplicans, Arnaldists,
Bohemian Brothers--waged perpetual but unequal warfare with the power and
depravity of the Church, fertilizing with their blood the future field of
the Reformation. Nowhere was the persecution of heretics more relentless
than in the Netherlands. Suspected persons were subjected to various
torturing but ridiculous ordeals. After such trial, death by fire was
the usual but, perhaps, not the most severe form of execution. In
Flanders, monastic ingenuity had invented another most painful punishment
for Waldenses and similar malefactors. A criminal whose guilt had been
established by the hot iron, hot ploughshare, boiling kettle, or other
logical proof, was stripped and bound to the stake:--he was then flayed,
from the neck to the navel, while swarms of bees were let loose to fasten
upon his bleeding flesh and torture him to a death of exquisite agony.
Nevertheless heresy increased in the face of oppression The Scriptures,
translated by Waldo into French, were rendered into Netherland rhyme, and
the converts to the Vaudois doctrine increased in numbers and boldness.
At the same time the power and luxury of the clergy was waxing daily.
The bishops of Utrecht, no longer the defenders of the people against
arbitrary power, conducted themselves like little popes. Yielding in
dignity neither to king nor kaiser, they exacted homage from the most
powerful princes of the Netherlands. The clerical order became the most
privileged of all. The accused priest refused to acknowledge the
temporal tribunals. The protection of ecclesiastical edifices was
extended over all criminals and fugitives from justice--a beneficent
result in those sanguinary ages, even if its roots were sacerdotal pride.
To establish an accusation against a bishop, seventy-two witnesses were
necessary; against a deacon, twenty-seven; against an inferior dignitary,
seven; while two were sufficient to convict a layman. The power to read
and write helped the clergy to much wealth. Privileges and charters from
petty princes, gifts and devises from private persons, were documents
which few, save ecclesiastics, could draw or dispute. Not content,
moreover, with their territories and their tithings, the churchmen
perpetually devised new burthens upon the peasantry. Ploughs, sickles,
horses, oxen, all implements of husbandry, were taxed for the benefit of
those who toiled not, but who gathered into barns. In the course of the
twelfth century, many religious houses, richly endowed with lands and
other property, were founded in the Netherlands. Was hand or voice
raised against clerical encroachment--the priests held ever in readiness
a deadly weapon of defence: a blasting anathema was thundered against
their antagonist, and smote him into submission. The disciples of Him
who ordered his followers to bless their persecutors, and to love their
enemies, invented such Christian formulas as these:--"In the name of the
Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, the blessed Virgin Mary, John the
Baptist, Peter and Paul, and all other Saints in Heaven, do we curse and
cut off from our Communion him who has thus rebelled against us. May the
curse strike him in his house, barn, bed, field, path, city, castle. May
he be cursed in battle, accursed in praying, in speaking, in silence, in
eating, in drinking, in sleeping. May he be accursed in his taste,
hearing, smell, and all his senses. May the curse blast his eyes, head,
and his body, from his crown to the soles of his feet. I conjure you,
Devil, and all your imps, that you take no rest till you have brought him
to eternal shame; till he is destroyed by drowning or hanging, till he is
torn to pieces by wild beasts, or consumed by fire. Let his children
become orphans, his wife a widow. I command you, Devil, and all your
imps, that even as I now blow out these torches, you do immediately
extinguish the light from his eyes. So be it--so be it. Amen. Amen."
So speaking, the curser was wont to blow out two waxen torches which he
held in his hands, and, with this practical illustration, the anathema
was complete.
Such insane ravings, even in the mouth of some impotent beldame, were
enough to excite a shudder, but in that dreary epoch, these curses from
the lips of clergymen were deemed sufficient to draw down celestial
lightning upon the head, not of the blasphemer, but of his victim. Men,
who trembled neither at sword nor fire, cowered like slaves before such
horrid imprecations, uttered by tongues gifted, as it seemed, with
superhuman power. Their fellow-men shrank from the wretches thus
blasted, and refused communication with them as unclean and abhorred.
By the end of the thirteenth century, however, the clerical power was
already beginning to decline. It was not the corruption of the Church,
but its enormous wealth which engendered the hatred, with which it was by
many regarded. Temporal princes and haughty barons began to dispute the
right of ecclesiastics to enjoy vast estates, while refusing the burthen
of taxation, and unable to draw a sword for the common defence. At this
period, the Counts of Flanders, of Holland, and other Netherland
sovereigns, issued decrees, forbidding clerical institutions from
acquiring property, by devise, gift, purchase, or any other mode.
The downfall of the rapacious and licentious knights-templar in the
provinces and throughout Europe, was another severe blow administered
at the same time. The attacks upon Church abuses redoubled in boldness,
as its authority declined. Towards the end of the fourteenth century,
the doctrines of Wicklif had made great progress in the land. Early in
the fifteenth, the executions of Huss and Jerome of Prague, produce the
Bohemian rebellion. The Pope proclaims a crusade against the Hussites.
Knights and prelates, esquires and citizens, enlist in the sacred cause,
throughout Holland and its sister provinces; but many Netherlanders, who
had felt the might of Ziska's arm, come back, feeling more sympathy with
the heresy which they had attacked, than with the Church for which they
had battled.
Meantime, the restrictions imposed by Netherland sovereigns upon clerical
rights to hold or acquire property, become more stern and more general.
On the other hand, with the invention of printing, the cause of
Reformation takes a colossal stride in advance. A Bible, which, before,
had cost five hundred crowns, now costs but five. The people acquire the
power of reading God's Word, or of hearing it read, for themselves.
The light of truth dispels the clouds of superstition, as by a new
revelation. The Pope and his monks are found to bear, very often, but
faint resemblance to Jesus and his apostles. Moreover, the instinct of
self-interest sharpens the eye of the public. Many greedy priests, of
lower rank, had turned shop-keepers in the Netherlands, and were growing
rich by selling their wares, exempt from taxation, at a lower rate than
lay hucksters could afford. The benefit of clergy, thus taking the bread
from the mouths of many, excites jealousy; the more so, as, besides their
miscellaneous business, the reverend traders have a most lucrative branch
of commerce from which other merchants are excluded. The sale of
absolutions was the source of large fortunes to the priests. The
enormous impudence of this traffic almost exceeds belief. Throughout
the Netherlands, the price current of the wares thus offered for sale,
was published in every town and village. God's pardon for crimes already
committed, or about to be committed, was advertised according to a
graduated tariff. Thus, poisoning, for example, was absolved for eleven
ducats, six livres tournois. Absolution for incest was afforded at
thirty-six livres, three ducats. Perjury came to seven livres and three
carlines. Pardon for murder, if not by poison, was cheaper. Even a
parricide could buy forgiveness at God's tribunal at one ducat; four
livres, eight carlines. Henry de Montfort, in the year 1448, purchased
absolution for that crime at that price. Was it strange that a century
or so of this kind of work should produce a Luther? Was it unnatural
that plain people, who loved the ancient Church, should rather desire to
see her purged of such blasphemous abuses, than to hear of St. Peter's
dome rising a little nearer to the clouds on these proceeds of commuted
crime?
At the same time, while ecclesiastical abuses are thus augmenting,
ecclesiastical power is diminishing in the Netherlands. The Church is no
longer able to protect itself against the secular aim. The halcyon days
of ban, book and candle, are gone. In 1459, Duke Philip of Burgundy
prohibits the churches from affording protection to fugitives. Charles
the Bold, in whose eyes nothing is sacred save war and the means of
making it, lays a heavy impost upon all clerical property. Upon being
resisted, he enforces collection with the armed hand. The sword and the
pen, strength and intellect, no longer the exclusive servants or
instruments of priestcraft, are both in open revolt. Charles the Bold
storms one fortress, Doctor Grandfort, of Groningen, batters another.
This learned Frisian, called "the light of the world," friend and
compatriot of the great Rudolph Agricola, preaches throughout the
provinces, uttering bold denunciations of ecclesiastical error. He even
disputes the infallibility of the Pope, denies the utility of prayers for
the dead, and inveighs against the whole doctrine of purgatory and
absolution.
With the beginning of the 16th century, the great Reformation was
actually alive. The name of Erasmus of Rotterdam was already celebrated;
the man, who, according to Grotius, "so well showed the road to a
reasonable reformation." But if Erasmus showed the road, he certainly
did not travel far upon it himself. Perpetual type of the quietist, the
moderate man, he censured the errors of the Church with discrimination
and gentleness, as if Borgianism had not been too long rampant at Rome,
as if men's minds throughout Christendom were not too deeply stirred to
be satisfied with mild rebukes against sin, especially when the mild
rebuker was in receipt of livings and salaries from the sinner. Instead
of rebukes, the age wanted reforms. The Sage of Rotterdam was a keen
observer, a shrewd satirist, but a moderate moralist. He loved ease,
good company, the soft repose of princely palaces, better than a life of
martyrdom and a death at the stake. He was not of the stuff of which
martyrs are made, as he handsomely confessed on more than one occasion.
"Let others affect martyrdom," he said, "for myself I am unworthy of the
honor;" and, at another time, "I am not of a mind," he observed
"to venture my life for the truth's sake; all men have not strength to
endure the martyr's death. For myself, if it came to the point, I should
do no better than Simon Peter." Moderate in all things, he would have
liked, he said, to live without eating and drinking, although he never
found it convenient to do so, and he rejoiced when advancing age
diminished his tendency to other carnal pleasures in which he had
moderately indulged. Although awake to the abuses of the Church, he
thought Luther going too fast and too far. He began by applauding ended
by censuring the monk of Wittemberg. The Reformation might have been
delayed for centuries had Erasmus and other moderate men been the only
reformers. He will long be honored for his elegant, Latinity. In the
republic of letters, his efforts to infuse a pure taste, a sound
criticism, a love for the beautiful and the classic, in place of the
owlish pedantry which had so long flapped and hooted through mediveval
cloisters, will always be held in grateful reverence. In the history of
the religious Reformation, his name seems hardly to deserve the
commendations of Grotius.
As the schism yawns, more and more ominously, throughout Christendom, the
Emperor naturally trembles. Anxious to save the state, but being no
antique Roman, he wishes to close the gulf, but with more convenience to
himself: He conceives the highly original plan of combining Church and
Empire under one crown. This is Maximilian's scheme for Church
reformation. An hereditary papacy, a perpetual pope-emperor, the
Charlemagne and Hildebrand systems united and simplified--thus the world
may yet be saved. "Nothing more honorable, nobler, better, could happen
to us," writes Maximilian to Paul Lichtenstein (16th Sept. 1511), "than
to re-annex the said popedom--which properly belongs to us--to our
Empire. Cardinal Adrian approves our reasons and encourages us to
proceed, being of opinion that we should not have much trouble with the
cardinals. It is much to be feared that the Pope may die of his present
sickness. He has lost his appetite, and fills himself with so much drink
that his health is destroyed. As such matters can not be arranged
without money, we have promised the cardinals, whom we expect to bring
over, 300,000 ducats, [Recall that the fine for redemption and pardon for
the sin of murder was at that time one ducat. D.W.] which we shall raise
from the Fuggers, and make payable in Rome upon the appointed day."
These business-like arrangements he communicates, two days afterwards,
in a secret letter to his daughter Margaret, and already exults at his
future eminence, both in this world and the next. "We are sending
Monsieur de Gurce," he says; "to make an agreement with the Pope, that we
may be taken as coadjutor, in order that, upon his death, we may be sure
of the papacy, and, afterwards, of becoming a saint. After my decease,
therefore, you will be constrained to adore me, of which I shall be very
proud. I am beginning to work upon the cardinals, in which affair two or
three hundred thousand ducats will be of great service." The letter was
signed, "From the hand of your good father, Maximilian, future Pope."
These intrigues are not destined, however, to be successful. Pope Julius
lives two years longer; Leo the Tenth succeeds; and, as Medici are not
much prone to Church reformation some other scheme, and perhaps some
other reformer, may be wanted. Meantime, the traffic in bulls of
absolution becomes more horrible than ever. Money must be raised to
supply the magnificent extravagance of Rome. Accordingly, Christians,
throughout Europe, are offered by papal authority, guarantees of
forgiveness for every imaginable sin, "even for the rape of God's mother,
if that were possible," together with a promise of life eternal in
Paradise, all upon payment of the price affixed to each crime. The
Netherlands, like other countries, are districted and farmed for the
collection of this papal revenue. Much of the money thus raised, remains
in the hands of the vile collectors. Sincere Catholics, who love and
honor the ancient religion, shrink with horror at the spectacle offered
on every side. Criminals buying Paradise for money, monks spending the
money thus paid in gaming houses, taverns, and brothels; this seems, to
those who have studied their Testaments, a different scheme of salvation
from the one promulgated by Christ. There has evidently been a departure
from the system of earlier apostles. Innocent conservative souls are
much perplexed; but, at last, all these infamies arouse a giant to do
battle with the giant wrong. Martin Luther enters the lists, all alone,
armed only with a quiver filled with ninety-five propositions, and a bow
which can send them all over Christendom with incredible swiftness.
Within a few weeks the ninety-five propositions have flown through
Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and are found in Jerusalem.
At the beginning, Erasmus encourages the bold friar. So long as the axe
is not laid at the foot of the tree, which bears the poisonous but golden
fruit, the moderate man applauds the blows. "Luther's cause is
considered odious," writes Erasmus to the Elector of Saxony, "because he
has, at the same time, attacked the bellies of the monks and the bulls of
the Pope." He complains that the zealous man had been attacked with
roiling, but not with arguments. He foresees that the work will have a
bloody and turbulent result, but imputes the principal blame to the
clergy. "The priests talk," said he, "of absolution in such terms, that
laymen can not stomach it. Luther has been for nothing more censured
than for making little of Thomas Aquinas; for wishing to diminish the
absolution traffic; for having a low opinion of mendicant orders, and for
respecting scholastic opinions less than the gospels. All this is
considered intolerable heresy."
Erasmus, however, was offending both parties. A swarm of monks were
already buzzing about him for the bold language of his Commentaries and
Dialogues. He was called Erasmus for his errors--Arasmus because he
would plough up sacred things--Erasinus because he had written himself an
ass--Behemoth, Antichrist, and many other names of similar import.
Luther was said to have bought the deadly seed in his barn. The egg had
been laid by Erasmus, hatched by Luther. On the other hand, he was
reviled for not taking side manfully with the reformer. The moderate man
received much denunciation from zealots on either side. He soon clears
himself, however, from all suspicions of Lutheranism. He is appalled at
the fierce conflict which rages far and wide. He becomes querulous as
the mighty besom sweeps away sacred dust and consecrated cobwebs. "Men
should not attempt every thing at once," he writes, "but rather step by
step. That which men can not improve they must look at through the
fingers. If the godlessness of mankind requires such fierce physicians
as Luther, if man can not be healed with soothing ointments and cooling
drinks, let us hope that God will comfort, as repentant, those whom he
has punished as rebellious. If the dove of Christ--not the owl of
Minerva--would only fly to us, some measure might be put to the madness
of mankind."
Meantime the man, whose talk is not of doves and owls, the fierce
physician, who deals not with ointments and cooling draughts, strides
past the crowd of gentle quacks to smite the foul disease. Devils,
thicker than tiles on house-tops, scare him not from his work. Bans and
bulls, excommunications and decrees, are rained upon his head. The
paternal Emperor sends down dire edicts, thicker than hail upon the
earth. The Holy Father blasts and raves from Rome. Louvain doctors
denounce, Louvain hangmen burn, the bitter, blasphemous books. The
immoderate man stands firm in the storm, demanding argument instead of
illogical thunder; shows the hangmen and the people too, outside the
Elster gate at Wittenberg, that papal bulls will blaze as merrily as
heretic scrolls. What need of allusion to events which changed the
world--which every child has learned--to the war of Titans, uprooting of
hoary trees and rock-ribbed hills, to the Worms diet, Peasant wars, the
Patmos of Eisenach, and huge wrestlings with the Devil?
Imperial edicts are soon employed to suppress the Reformation in the
Netherlands by force. The provinces, unfortunately; are the private
property of Charles, his paternal inheritance; and most paternally,
according to his view of the matter, does he deal with them. Germany can
not be treated thus summarily, not being his heritage. "As it appears,"
says the edict of 1521, "that the aforesaid Martin is not a man, but a
devil under the form of a man, and clothed in the dress of a priest, the
better to bring the human race to hell and damnation, therefore all his
disciples and converts are to be punished with death and forfeiture of
all their goods." This was succinct and intelligible. The bloody edict,
issued at Worms, without even a pretence of sanction by the estates, was
carried into immediate effect. The papal inquisition was introduced into
the provinces to assist its operations. The bloody work, for which the
reign of Charles is mainly distinguished in the Netherlands, now began.
In 1523, July 1st, two Augustine monks were burned at Brussels, the first
victims to Lutheranism in the provinces. Erasmus observed, with a sigh,
that "two had been burned at Brussels, and that the city now began
strenuously to favor Lutheranism."
Pope Adrian the Sixth, the Netherland boat-maker's son and the Emperor's
ancient tutor, was sufficiently alive to the sins of churchmen. The
humble scholar of Utrecht was, at least, no Borgia. At the diet of
Nuremberg, summoned to put down Luther, the honest Pope declared roundly,
through the Bishop of Fabriane, that "these disorders had sprung from the
Sins of men, more especially from the sins of priests and prelates. Even
in the holy chair," said he, "many horrible crimes have been committed.
Many abuses have grown up in the ecclesiastical state. The contagious
disease, spreading from the head to the members--from the Pope to lesser
prelates--has spread far and wide, so that scarcely any one is to be
found who does right, and who is free from infection. Nevertheless, the
evils have become so ancient and manifold, that it will be necessary to
go step by step."
In those passionate days, the ardent reformers were as much outraged by
this pregnant confession as the ecclesiastics. It would indeed be a slow
process, they thought, to move step by step in the Reformation, if
between each step, a whole century was to intervene. In vain did the
gentle pontiff call upon Erasmus to assuage the stormy sea with his
smooth rhetoric. The Sage of Rotterdam was old and sickly; his day was
over. Adrian's head; too; languishes beneath the triple crown but twenty
months. He dies 13th Sept., 1523, having arrived at the conviction,
according to his epitaph, that the greatest misfortune of his life was
to have reigned.
Another edict, published in the Netherlands, forbids all private
assemblies for devotion; all reading of the scriptures; all discussions
within one's own doors concerning faith, the sacraments, the papal
authority, or other religious matter, under penalty of death. The edicts
were no dead letter. The fires were kept constantly supplied with human
fuel by monks, who knew the art of burning reformers better than that of
arguing with them. The scaffold was the most conclusive of syllogisms,
and used upon all occasions. Still the people remained unconvinced.
Thousands of burned heretics had not made a single convert.
A fresh edict renewed and sharpened the punishment for reading the
scriptures in private or public. At the same time, the violent personal
altercation between Luther and Erasmus, upon predestination, together
with the bitter dispute between Luther and Zwingli concerning the real
presence, did more to impede the progress of the Reformation than ban or
edict, sword or fire. The spirit of humanity hung her head, finding that
the bold reformer had only a new dogma in place of the old ones, seeing
that dissenters, in their turn, were sometimes as ready as papists, with
age, fagot, and excommunication. In 1526, Felix Mants, the anabaptist,
is drowned at Zurich, in obedience to Zwingli's pithy formula--'Qui
iterum mergit mergatur'. Thus the anabaptists, upon their first
appearance, were exposed to the fires of the Church and the water of the
Zwinglians.
There is no doubt that the anabaptist delusion was so ridiculous and so
loathsome, as to palliate or at least render intelligible the wrath with
which they were regarded by all parties. The turbulence of the sect was
alarming to constituted authorities, its bestiality disgraceful to the
cause of religious reformation. The leaders were among the most depraved
of human creatures, as much distinguished for licentiousness, blasphemy
and cruelty as their followers for grovelling superstition. The evil
spirit, driven out of Luther, seemed, in orthodox eyes, to have taken
possession of a herd of swine. The Germans, Muncer and Hoffmann, had
been succeeded, as chief prophets, by a Dutch baker, named Matthiszoon,
of Harlem; who announced himself as Enoch. Chief of this man's disciples
was the notorious John Boccold, of Leyden. Under the government of this
prophet, the anabaptists mastered the city of Munster. Here they
confiscated property, plundered churches, violated females, murdered men
who refused to join the gang, and, in briefs practised all the enormities
which humanity alone can conceive or perpetrate. The prophet proclaimed
himself King of Sion, and sent out apostles to preach his doctrines in
Germany and the Netherlands. Polygamy being a leading article of the
system, he exemplified the principle by marrying fourteen wives. Of
these, the beautiful widow of Matthiszoon was chief, was called the Queen
of Sion, and wore a golden crown. The prophet made many fruitless
efforts to seize Amsterdam and Leyden. The armed invasion of the
anabaptists was repelled, but their contagious madness spread. The
plague broke forth in Amsterdam. On a cold winter's night, (February,
1535), seven men and five women, inspired by the Holy Ghost, threw off
their clothes and rushed naked and raving through the streets, shrieking
"Wo, wo, wo! the wrath of God, the wrath of God!" When arrested, they
obstinately refused to put on clothing. "We are," they observed, "the
naked truth." In a day or two, these furious lunatics, who certainly
deserved a madhouse rather than the scaffold, were all executed. The
numbers of the sect increased with the martyrdom to which they were
exposed, and the disorder spread to every part of the Netherlands. Many
were put to death in lingering torments, but no perceptible effect was
produced by the chastisement. Meantime the great chief of the sect, the
prophet John, was defeated by the forces of the Bishop of Munster, who
recovered his city and caused the "King of Zion" to be pinched to death
with red-hot tongs.
Unfortunately the severity of government was not wreaked alone upon the
prophet and his mischievous crew. Thousands and ten-thousands of
virtuous, well-disposed men and women, who had as little sympathy with
anabaptistical as with Roman depravity; were butchered in cold blood,
under the sanguinary rule of Charles, in the Netherlands. In 1533, Queen
Dowager Mary of Hungary, sister of the Emperor, Regent of the provinces,
the "Christian widow" admired by Erasmus, wrote to her brother that "in
her opinion all heretics, whether repentant or not, should be prosecuted
with such severity as that error might be, at once, extinguished, care
being only taken that the provinces were not entirely depopulated." With
this humane limitation, the "Christian Widow" cheerfully set herself to
superintend as foul and wholesale a system of murder as was ever
organized. In 1535, an imperial edict was issued at Brussels, condemning
all heretics to death; repentant males to be executed with the sword,
repentant females to be buried alive, the obstinate, of both sexes, to be
burned. This and similar edicts were the law of the land for twenty
years, and rigidly enforced. Imperial and papal persecution continued
its daily deadly work with such diligence as to make it doubtful whether
the limits set by the Regent Mary might not be overstepped. In the midst
of the carnage, the Emperor sent for his son Philip, that he might
receive the fealty of the Netherlands as their future lord and master.
Contemporaneously, a new edict was published at Brussels (29th April,
1549), confirming and reenacting all previous decrees in their most
severe provisions. Thus stood religious matters in the Netherlands at
the epoch of the imperial abdication.