day, when he found the door left open, he came into the chapel to see
how things were getting along. Michelangelo, thereupon, accidentally
dropped some of his tools, and they just barely missed hitting the pope
on the head. The pope was very angry, but he never returned uninvited
again.
People now go from all over the world to see this ceiling, which only
can be viewed comfortably by lying on the floor or by looking at it in
a mirror.
Michelangelo lived to be nearly ninety years old, yet he had very
little to do with people. He could not stand being bored by them. So he
lived apart in the company of the gods and angels that he painted.
Raphael was another famous Italian artist. He lived at the same time as
Michelangelo. Raphael, however, was just the opposite of Michelangelo
in most ways. Michelangelo liked to be by himself. Raphael loved
company. He was very popular and constantly surrounded by his friends
and admirers, for everybody loved him on account of his genius and
kindly nature. Young men swarmed about him, drinking in his words and
humbly copying everything he did. He had fifty or more pupils studying
and painting under him, and they went along with him whenever he went
out even for a walk. They almost worshiped the ground he walked on.
Raphael painted many beautiful pictures of the Virgin Mary with the
infant Jesus. These were called Madonnas. Madonnas were almost the only
kind of pictures that artists painted at that time. Raphael painted
one especially beautiful picture of Mary and the Christ-child called
the “Sistine Madonna.” This is considered one of the twelve greatest
pictures in the world. It was painted for a little church, but it is
now in a great picture-gallery, where it has a whole room to itself. No
other pictures are thought worthy to have a place close by.
Raphael died when he was still a young man, but he worked so hard and
so continuously that he has left a large number of pictures. He painted
only the very important parts of his pictures himself--perhaps only the
faces. The body and hands and clothing he usually left to be painted
by his pupils. They were glad to be allowed to do even a finger of a
painting on which their master had worked.
Michelangelo’s paintings were strong and forcible as a man is supposed
to be. Raphael’s paintings were sweet and lovely and graceful, as a
woman is supposed to be.
Leonardo da Vinci is another great artist who lived at this time. He
was left-handed, yet he could do any number of things exceptionally
well. He would be called a jack of all trades, but unlike most jacks
of all trades, he was good at all. He was an artist, an engineer, a
poet, and a scientist. It is said that he drew the first map of the
New World that had the name of America on it. He made, however, very
few paintings, because he did so many things beside, but these few
pictures are extremely beautiful. One of these is “The Last Supper.” It
is considered, as is the “Sistine Madonna,” one of the twelve greatest
paintings in the world. Unfortunately, it was painted directly on a
plastered wall, and in the course of time much of the plaster with the
paint has peeled off, so that there is little now left of the original
painting.
Leonardo usually painted his women smiling. One of his most famous
paintings is the picture of a woman called “Mona Lisa.” She has a smile
that is called “quizzical.” You can hardly tell whether she is smiling
_at_ you or _with_ you.
63
Christians Quarrel
Some people say young boys and girls can’t understand this chapter.
They say it is too difficult. But I want to see if it is.
Up to this time, as I have told you before, there had been only one
Christian religion--the Catholic. There was no Episcopalian, nor
Methodist, nor Baptist, nor Presbyterian, nor any other denomination.
All were just Christians.
But in the sixteenth century some people began to think that changes
should be made in the Catholic religion.
Others thought changes should not be made.
Some said it was all right as it was.
Others said it wasn’t all right as it was. So a quarrel started.
This is the way the trouble began: The pope was building a great church
called St. Peter’s in Rome. It took the place of the old church that
Constantine had built on the spot where St. Peter was supposed to have
been crucified head down. The pope wanted it to be the largest and
finest church in the world, for Christ had said, “Thou art Peter, and
upon this rock [Peter means rock in Latin] I will build my church....”
So the Church of St. Peter’s was to be the Capitol of the Christian
religion. Both Michelangelo and Raphael had worked on the plans for the
new church. In order to get marble and stone and other materials for
this Church of St. Peter, the pope did as others before him had done;
he tore down other buildings in Rome and used their stone for the new
church.
But besides all this the pope needed an enormous amount of money to
build such a magnificent church as he had planned. So he started to
collect from the people. Now, there was a man in Germany named Martin
Luther who was a monk and a teacher of religion in a college. Martin
Luther thought that not only this but also other things in the Catholic
Church were not right. So he made a list of ninety-five things that
he thought were not right and nailed them up on the church door in
the town where he lived, and he preached against doing these things.
The pope sent Luther an order, but Luther made a bonfire and burned
it publicly. Many took sides with Luther, and before long there was a
great body of people who had left the Catholic Church and no longer
obeyed the pope.
The pope called on the king of Spain to help in this quarrel with
Luther. The reason he called on him was this: The king of Spain was
Charles V, the grandson of the Ferdinand and Isabella who had helped
Columbus. He was not only a good Catholic but the most powerful ruler
in Europe. The Spanish explorers had discovered different parts of
America, and so Charles was owner of a large part of the New World. But
he was emperor not only of these Spanish settlements in America but of
Austria and of Germany as well. So it was quite natural that the pope
should go to Charles for help.
Charles commanded Luther to come to a city named Worms to be tried. He
promised Luther that no harm would be done him, and so Luther went.
When Luther arrived at Worms, Charles ordered him to take back all he
had said. Luther refused to do so. Some of Charles’s nobles said Luther
should be burned at the stake. But Charles, as he had promised, let him
go and did not punish him for his belief. Luther’s friends were afraid,
though, that other Catholics might do him harm. They knew Luther would
take no care of himself, and so they themselves took him prisoner and
kept him shut up for over a year, so that no one could harm him. While
Luther was in prison he translated the Bible into German; it was the
first time that the Bible had been written in that language.
The people who protested against what the pope did were called
Protest-ants, and those Christians who are not Roman Catholics are
still called Protestants to-day. The time when these changes were made
in the Catholic form of worship was called the Re-form-ation, as the
old religion was _re-formed_.
Now, you may be a Catholic and your best friend may not be a Catholic,
but that makes no difference in your friendship. But at that time those
who were Catholics were deadly enemies of those who were not. Each side
was sure it alone was right and the other side was wrong. Each side
fought for the things it thought were right, fought the other side as
furiously and madly and bitterly as if the other side were scoundrels
and devils. Friends and relatives murdered each other because they
thought differently about religion, and yet all were supposed to be
Christians.
Charles was greatly worried and troubled by the religious quarrels
and other difficulties in his vast empire. He became sick and tired
of being emperor and of having to settle all the many problems he had
to solve. He wanted to be free to do other things that he was more
interested in. Being king did not mean being able to do whatever you
wanted, as some people think. So Charles did what few rulers have ever
done voluntarily: he resigned--“abdicated,” as it is called--and gave
up his throne to his son, who was named Philip II.
Then Charles, glad to be rid of all the cares of state, went to live in
a monastery. There he spent his time doing what he liked--what do you
suppose?--making mechanical toys and watches--until he died!
Now, the king of England at this time, when Charles was king of Spain,
was Henry VIII. His last name was Tudor. So many kings had first names
which were alike that such names were numbered to tell which Charles or
Henry was meant and how many of the same name there had been before.
Henry VIII was at first also a strong Catholic, and the pope had called
him Defender of the Faith. But Henry had a wife whom he wanted to get
rid of because she had no son. In order to get rid of her so that he
might marry again, he had to have what was called a divorce, and the
pope was the only one who could give Henry a divorce. Now, the pope at
Rome was head of the Christian Church of the whole world and said what
Christians could do or could not do, no matter whether they were in
Italy or Spain or England. So Henry asked the pope to grant him this
divorce. The pope, however, told him he would not give him a divorce.
Now, Henry thought it was neither right nor proper that a man in
another country, even if he _were_ pope, should say what could be done
in England. He himself was ruler, and he didn’t intend to let any
foreigner meddle in his affairs or give him orders.
[Illustration: Henry VIII and his second wife Anne Boleyn.]
So then Henry said that he himself would be head of all the Christians
in England; then he could do as he wished without the pope’s
permission. So he made himself head, and then he divorced his wife.
All the churches in England were now told by the king what they should
do; the pope no longer had anything to say in the matter; the English
churches obeyed the king, not the pope. This made the second big break
in the Catholic Church.
After this Henry VIII had five other wives, six in all; not of course
all at one time, for Christians could only have one wife at a time. His
first wife he divorced, the second he beheaded, the third died. The
same thing happened to his last three wives: the first he divorced, the
second he beheaded, and the third died--but Henry died before she did.
Is this too difficult for you to understand?
64
King Elizabeth
King Henry VIII had two daughters.
One was named Mary, and one was named Elizabeth.
Their last name was of course Tudor, the same as their father’s,
although we do not usually think of kings and queens as having last
names.
King Henry had a son, also, and he was first to become king after his
father died, for though he was younger than his sisters, a boy was
supposed to be more fit to rule than a girl. But he didn’t live long,
and then Mary was the first of the two sisters to become queen.
“Mary, Mary, quite contrary” did not approve what her father had done
when he turned against the pope and the Catholic Church. Mary herself
was a strong Catholic and ready to fight for the pope and the Catholic
Church. In fact, she wanted to have all who were not Catholics, all
those who were Protestants, put to death. She thought that all those
who did not believe as she did were wicked and should be killed. Like
the queen in “Alice in Wonderland,” she was always saying, “Off with
his head!” This seems to us very unchristian, but in those days their
ideas about such things were peculiar. Mary had the heads of so many
people cut off that she was called Bloody Mary.
Mary married a man who was just as strong a Catholic as she and even
“bloodier.” He was not an Englishman, but a Spaniard, Philip II of
Spain, son of Charles V, who had abdicated.
Philip II was much sterner than his father had been. Philip tried
to make those who were Protestants, or who were supposed to be
Protestants, confess and give up Protestantism. If they did not do so,
they were tortured as the old Christian martyrs had been tortured. This
was called the Inquisition. Those suspected of being Protestants were
tormented in all sorts of horrible ways. Some were tied up in the air
by their hands, like a picture hung on the wall, until they fainted
from the pain or else confessed what they were told to confess. Some
were stretched on a rack, their heads pulled one way and their legs
the opposite way, until their bodies were nearly torn apart. Those who
were found guilty of being Protestants were killed outright, burned to
death, or put slowly to death, so that they would suffer longer.
The people whom Philip chiefly persecuted were the Dutch people in
Holland. Holland then belonged to his empire, and a great many of the
Dutch people had become Protestants.
Now, there was a Dutchman called William the Silent, because he talked
little but did a great deal. William was furious at the way his people
were treated. So he fought against Philip and at last succeeded in
making his country free and setting up the Dutch Republic. But William
the Silent was murdered by order of Philip.
And that’s the kind of man Bloody Mary had for a husband.
After Mary Tudor died, her sister, Elizabeth Tudor, became queen,
though she ruled like a king. Elizabeth had red hair and was very vain
and loved to be flattered. She had many lovers but she never married,
and as a woman who never marries is called a virgin she was known as
the Virgin Queen.
Elizabeth was a Protestant and was just as bitter against the Catholics
as her sister and her sister’s husband had been against the Protestants.
A relative of Elizabeth was queen of Scotland. Scotland was a country
north of England, but at that time it was not a part of England, and
its queen was named Mary Stuart. Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, was
young, beautiful, and fascinating; but she was a Catholic, and so
Elizabeth and she were enemies.
Elizabeth heard that Mary Stuart was trying to become queen of England
as well as Scotland, so she had her, although a relative, put in
prison. In prison Mary Stuart stayed for nearly twenty years and was
then at last put to death by Elizabeth’s orders. It is hard for us to
understand how any one could have his own relatives killed in this
cold-blooded way, especially any one who pretended to be a Christian,
but in those times it was a very common custom, as we see when we
hear of so many murders committed by the rulers of the people. Philip
II, the great champion of the Catholics, made up his mind to punish
Elizabeth, his sister-in-law, for killing such a good Catholic as Mary
Stuart.
So he got together a large navy of very fine ships called the Spanish
Armada. All Spain was very proud of this fleet. It was boastfully
called the Invincible Armada; “invincible” means “unconquerable.”
This Invincible Armada set forth in 1588 to conquer the English navy.
Lined up in the shape of a half-moon, the ships sailed grandly toward
England.
The English fleet was composed only of little boats. But instead of
going out to meet the Armada in regular sea-battle as the Spaniards
expected, the English ships sailed out and attacked the Spanish ships
from behind and fought one ship at a time. The English were better
fighters, and their small boats were quicker and more easily managed.
They could strike a blow and get away before a Spanish ship could turn
around into position to fire. So gradually they sank or destroyed the
big Spanish boats one by one.
Then the English set some old boats afire and started them drifting
toward the Spanish fleet. As all boats at that time were of course
made of wood, the Spaniards became frightened at these burning piles
drifting down upon them, and part of the fleet sailed away. The rest
tried to get back to Spain by sailing the long way round, north of
Scotland. But a terrible storm struck them, and almost all the boats
were shipwrecked, and thousands of dead bodies were washed up on shore.
So the great Spanish Armada was destroyed, and with it ended the power
of Spain at sea. She was no longer the great nation she had been.
At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, the largest and most powerful
country in the world was Spain; at the end of her reign it was England
that was the most powerful. Ever since then her fleet, which King
Alfred started far back, has been the largest, and the saying is,
“Britannia rules the waves.”
People at that time thought it impossible for a woman to rule as well
as a man, but under Elizabeth’s rule England in turn became the leading
country of Europe. Then people said Elizabeth ruled _like_ a man, that
she had a man’s brain, a man’s will. In fact they said she was more man
than woman--that she was a tomboy grown up--that’s why I call her “King
Elizabeth.”
[Illustration]
65
The Age of Elizabeth
This story is about the Age of Elizabeth.
My father always told me that it was impolite to talk about a lady’s
age.
But I’m not going to tell you how old Elizabeth was, though she did
live and reign a great many years.
I’m going to tell you some of the things that happened during her
long life, for the time when she lived is what is called the Age of
Elizabeth.
There was a young man named Raleigh living when Elizabeth became queen.
One day when it was raining and the streets were muddy, Elizabeth
was about to cross the street. Raleigh saw her and, to keep her from
soiling her shoes, ran forward, took off his beautiful velvet cape, and
threw it in the puddle where she was about to step, so that she might
cross upon it as upon a carpet. The queen was greatly pleased with this
thoughtful and gentlemanly act, and she made him a knight, so that he
was then called Sir Walter Raleigh, and ever after that he was one of
her special friends.
Sir Walter Raleigh was much interested in the new country of America.
Cabot had claimed a great part of it for England almost a hundred
years before, but England had done nothing about it. Raleigh thought
something should be done about it; he thought English people should
settle there, so that other countries like Spain, which had made so
many settlements in America, would not get ahead of England. So Raleigh
got together several companies of English people and sent them over to
an island called Roanoke, which was just off the coast of the present
State of North Carolina. At that time, however, almost the whole coast
of the United States as far north as Canada was called Virginia. It had
been named Virginia in honor of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth.
Some of these Roanoke colonists became discouraged with the hardships
they had to suffer and so gave up and sailed back home again. Those
who remained all disappeared. Where? No one knows. We think they must
either have been killed by the Indians or have died of starvation.
At any rate, not one was left to tell the tale. Among these Roanoke
colonists was the first English child born in America--a girl, who had
been named Virginia Dare, for the queen was very popular and a great
many girls were named Virginia after her.
Some tobacco was brought back from Virginia, and Sir Walter Raleigh
learned to smoke. This was such a strange and unknown thing at that
time that one day while he was smoking a pipe a servant who saw smoke
coming out of his mouth thought he was on fire and, running for a
bucket of water, emptied it over his head.
Virginia is still famous for its tobacco. At first tobacco was supposed
to be very healthful, for the Indians seemed to have very good health
and they smoked a great deal. Afterward, however, in the next reign,
King James so hated tobacco that he wrote a book against it and forbade
it to be used.
After Queen Elizabeth had died, Raleigh was put in prison, for it
was said he was plotting against the new king James, who came after
Elizabeth. The prison where he was placed was the Tower of London, the
old castle that William the Conqueror had built. Here Raleigh was kept
for thirteen long years, and to pass the time away he wrote a “History
of the World.” But at last he was put to death as many other great men
were also.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, there lived the great writer of
plays, the greatest writer the world has ever known. This man was
William Shakspere.
Shakspere’s father could not write his name. Shakspere himself spent
only six years at school. As a boy he was rather wild, and he was
arrested for hunting deer in the forest of Sir Thomas Lucy at Stratford.
[Illustration: Shakspere reading to Elizabeth.]
When still a boy Shakspere married a girl older than himself named Anne
Hathaway. After he had been married a few years he left her and their
three children, left the little town of Stratford, and went up to the
great city of London to seek his fortune. There Shakspere got a job
working around a theater, holding the horses of those who came to see
the plays. Then he got a chance to act in the theater, and he became an
actor, but he did not become a very good one.
In those days the theaters had no scenery. A sign was put up to tell
what the scene was supposed to be. For instance, instead of forest
scenery, they would put up a sign saying, “This is a forest,” or
instead of a room scene a sign saying “This is a room in an inn.” There
were no actresses. Men and boys took the parts of both men and women.
Shakspere was asked to change some of the plays that had already been
written, so that they could be better acted. He did this very well;
then he started in to write plays himself. Usually he took old stories
and made them into plays, but he did it so wonderfully well that they
are better than any plays that have ever been written before or since.
Though Shakspere left school when only thirteen years old, he seems to
have had a remarkable knowledge of almost everything under the sun. He
shows in his plays that he knew about history and law and medicine,
and he knew and used more words than almost any writer who has ever
lived. Indeed, some people say that with the little education he had,
he could not possibly have written the plays himself, and so they have
tried to prove that some one else must have written them. Some of the
greatest of Shakspere’s plays are “Hamlet,” “The Merchant of Venice,”
“Romeo and Juliet,” and “Julius Cæsar.”
Shakspere made a good deal of money for those times--almost a fortune.
Then he left London and went back to live in the little town of
Stratford where he was born. Here at last he died and was buried in
the village church. People wanted to move his body to a greater and
handsomer place, to a famous church in London. But some one, perhaps
Shakspere himself, had written a verse which was carved on his
tombstone. The last line of this verse said, “And curst be he who moves
my bones”; so they never were moved, for no one dared to move them.
66
James the Servant
or
What’s In a Name?
What does your name mean?
If it is
Baker or
Miller or
Taylor or
Carpenter or
Fisher or
Cook,
it means that at some time one of your ancestors was a
baker, or
miller, or
tailor, or
carpenter, or
fisher, or
cook.
If your name is Stuart or Steuart or Stewart or Steward, it means that
at some time one of your ancestors was a steward for in olden days
people knew very little about spelling, and they spelled the same name
in different ways. A steward was a chief servant.
There was a family named Stuart in Scotland, and from chief servants
or stewards they had become rulers of the Scots. Mary Stuart, whom
Elizabeth had beheaded, was one of them.
As Queen Elizabeth never married, she had no children to rule after
her. She was the last of the Tudor family. So the English had to look
around for a new king, and they looked to Scotland.
Now, Scotland, as I have told you, was then a separate country and
not a part of England as now. The son of Mary Stuart was then king of
Scotland. His name was James Stuart. As he was related to the Tudors,
the English invited him to come and rule over them. He accepted the
invitation and was called James I. So we speak of his reign and that of
his children as the reign of the Stuarts.
The Stuart family reigned for about a hundred years, that is, from 1600
to 1700, all except about eleven years when England had no king at all.