1. The complete repudiation within the realm and Church of England of

the authority of the Bishop of Rome. All the clergy and everyone holding

office under the Crown had to swear to this repudiation. If they

refused, or were recusants in the language of the day, they lost their

offices and benefices; if they persisted in their refusal, they were

liable to forfeit all their personal property; if they declined to take

the oath for a third time, they could be proclaimed traitors, and were

liable to the hideous punishments which the age inflicted for that

crime. But Elizabeth, with all her sternness, was never cruel, and no

religious revolution was effected with less bloodshed.

2. The sovereign was made the supreme Governor of the Church of England;

and that the title differed in name only from that assumed by Henry

VIII. was made plain in the following ways:

(_a_) Convocation was stript of all independent legislative action, and

its power to make ecclesiastical laws and regulations was placed under

strict royal control.[592]

(_b_) Appeals from all ecclesiastical courts, which were themselves

actually, if not nominally, under the presidency of civil lawyers, could

be made to royal delegates who might be laymen; and these delegates were

given very full powers, and could inflict civil punishments in a way

which had not been permitted to the old mediæval ecclesiastical courts.

These powers raised a grave constitutional question in the following

reigns. The royal delegates became a Court of High Commission, which may

have been modelled on the Consistories of the German Princes, and had

somewhat the same powers.

3. One uniform ritual of public worship was prescribed for all

Englishmen in the Book of Common Prayer with its rubrics, enforced by

the Act of Uniformity. No liberty of worship was permitted. Any

clergyman who deviated from this prescribed form of worship was liable

to be treated as a criminal, and so also were all those who abetted him.

No one could, under penalties, seek to avoid this public worship. Every

subject was bound to attend church on Sunday, and to bide the prayers

and the preaching, or else forfeit the sum of twelvepence to the poor.

Obstinate recusants or nonconformists might be excommunicated, and all

excommunicated persons were liable to imprisonment.

4. Although it was said, and was largely true, that there was freedom of

opinion, still obstinate heretics were liable to be held guilty of a

capital offence. On the other hand, the Bishops had little power to

force heretics to stand a trial, and, unless Parliament or Convocation

ordered it otherwise, only the wilder sectaries were in any danger.[593]

Protestant England grew stronger year by year. The debased copper and

brass coinage was replaced gradually by honest gold and silver.[594]

Manufactures were encouraged. Merchant adventurers, hiring the Queen's

ships, took an increasing share in the world-trade with Elizabeth as a

partner.[595] Persecuted Huguenots and Flemings settled in great numbers

in the country, and brought with them their thrift and knowledge of

mechanical trades to enrich the land of their adoption;[596] and the

oppressed Protestants of France and of the Low Countries learnt that

there was a land beyond the sea ruled by a "wise young Queen" which

might be their city of refuge, and which was ready to aid them, if not

openly, at least stealthily. England, formerly unarmed, became supplied

"more abundantly than any other country with arms, munitions, and

artillery." Sound money, enlarged trade, growing wealth, and an

increasing sense of security, were excellent allies to the cause of the

Protestant Religion.

So long as Mary of Scotland was in Holyrood and able to command the

sympathy, if not the allegiance, of the English Roman Catholics, the

throne of Elizabeth was never perfectly secure; but the danger from

Scotland was minimised by the jealousy between Catherine de' Medici and

her daughter-in-law, and the Scottish Protestant Lords could always be

secretly helped. When Philip II. of Spain, in his slow, hesitating way,

which made him always miss the turn of the tide, at length resolved to

aid Mary to crush her rebels at home and to prosecute her claims on

England, his interference had no further consequences than to afford

Elizabeth an honourable pretext for giving effectual assistance in the

conflict which drove Mary from her throne, and made Scotland completely

and permanently Protestant.[597]

BOOK V.

_ANABAPTISM AND SOCINIANISM_

CHAPTER I.

REVIVAL OF MEDIÆVAL ANTI-ECCLESIASTICAL MOVEMENTS.

The revolt of Luther was the occasion for the appearance--the outbreak,

it might be called--of a large amount of irregular independent thinking

upon religion and theology which had expressed itself sporadically

during the whole course of the Middle Ages. The great difference between

the thinkers and their intellectual ancestors who were at war with the

mediæval Church life and doctrine, did not consist in the expression of

anything essentially new, but in the fact that the Renaissance had

introduced a profound contempt for the intellectual structure of

ecclesiastical dogma, and that the whole of the sixteenth century was

instinct with the feeling of individuality and the pride of personal

existence. The old thoughts were less careful to accommodate themselves

to the recognised modes of theological statement, they took bolder forms

of expression, presented sharper outlines, and appeared in more definite

statements.

Part of this thinking scarcely belongs to ecclesiastical history at all.

It never became the intellectual basis of an institution; it neither

stirred nor moulded the lives of masses of men. The leaders of thought

remained solitary thinkers, surrounded by a loose fringe of followers.

But as there is always something immortal in the forcible expression of

human thought, their opinions have not died altogether, but have

affected powerfully all the various branches of the Christian Church at

different periods and in divers ways. The old conceptions, somewhat

disguised, perhaps, but still the same, reappear in most systems of

speculative theology. It therefore demands a brief notice.

The greater portion of this intellectual effervescence, however, did not

share the same fate. Menno Simons, aided, no doubt, by the winnowing fan

of persecution, was able to introduce order into the wild fermenting

elements of Anabaptism, and to form the Baptist Church which has had

such an honourable history in Europe and America. Fausto Sozzini did the

same for the heterogeneous mass of anti-Trinitarian thinking, and out of

the confusion brought the orderly unity of an institutional life.

This great mass of crude independent thought may be roughly classified

as Mystic, or perhaps Pantheist Mystic, Anabaptist, and

anti-Trinitarian; but the division, so far as the earlier thinkers go,

is very artificial. The groups continually overlap; many of the leaders

of thought might be placed in two or in all three of these divisions.

What characterised them all was that they had little sense of historical

continuity, cared nothing for it, and so broke with the past completely;

that they despaired of seeing any good in the historical Church, and

believed that it must be ended, as it was impossible to mend it; and

that they all possessed a strong sense of individuality, believing the

human soul to be imprisoned when it accepted the confinement of a common

creed, institution, or form of service unless of the very simplest kind.

Pantheistic Mysticism was no new thing in Christianity. As early as the

sixth century at least, schools of thought may be found which

interpreted such doctrines as the Trinity and the Person of Christ in

ways which led to what must be called Pantheism; and if such modes of

dissolving Christian doctrines had not a continuous succession within

the Christian Church, they were always appearing. They were generally

accompanied with a theory of an "inner light" which claimed either to

supersede the Scriptures as the Rule of Faith, or at least to interpret

them. The Scriptures were the husk which might be thrown away when its

kernel, discovered by the "inner light," was once revealed. The

Schwenkfelds, Weigels, Giordano Brunos of the sixteenth century, who

used what they called the "inner light" in somewhat the same way as the

Council of Trent employed dogmatic tradition, had a long line of

ancestry in the mediæval Church, and their appearance at the time of the

Reformation was only the recrudescence of certain phases of mediæval

thought. But, as has been said, such thinkers were never able, nor

perhaps did they wish, to form their followers into a Church; and they

belong much more to the history of philosophy than to an ecclesiastical

narrative. They had no conception whatever of religion in the

Reformation sense of the word. Their idea of faith was purely

intellectual--something to be fed on metaphysics more or less refined.

By far the most numerous of those sixteenth century representatives of

mediæval nonconformists were classed by contemporaries under the common

name of Anabaptists or Katabaptists, because, from 1526 onwards, they

all, or most of them, insisted on _re-_baptism as the sign of belonging

to the brotherhood of believers. They were scattered over the greater

part of Europe, from Sweden in the north to Venice in the south, from

England in the west to Poland in the east. The Netherlands,

Germany,--southern, north-western, and the Rhineland,--Switzerland, the

Tyrol, Moravia, and Livonia were scenes of bloody persecution endured

with heroic constancy. Their leaders flit across the pages of history,

courageous, much-enduring men, to whom the world was nothing, whose eyes

were fixed on the eternal throne of God, and who lived in the calm

consciousness that in a few hours they might be fastened to the stake or

called upon to endure more dreadful and more prolonged tortures,--men of

every varying type of character, from the gentle and pious young

Humanist Hans Denck to Jan Matthys the forerunner of the stern Camisard and

Covenanter. No statement of doctrine can include the beliefs held in all

their innumerable groups. Some maintained the distinctive doctrines of

the mediæval Church (the special conceptions of a priestly hierarchy,

and of the Sacraments being always excluded); others were Lutherans,

Calvinists, or Zwinglians; some were Unitarians, and denied the usual

doctrine of the Person of Christ;[598] a few must be classed among the

Pantheists. All held some doctrine of an "inner light"; but while some

sat very loose to the letter of Scripture, others insisted on the most

literal reading and application of Biblical phraseology. They all united

in maintaining that true Christians ought to live separate from the

world (_i.e._ from those who were not rebaptized), in communities whose

lives were to be modelled on the accounts given in the New Testament of

the primitive Christians, and that the true Church had nothing whatever

to do with the State.

Curiously enough, the leaders in the third group, the anti-Trinitarians,

were almost all Italians.

The most outstanding man among them, distinguished alike by his

learning, his pure moral life, a distinct vein of piety, and the calm

courage with which he faced every danger to secure the propagation of

his opinions, was the Spaniard Miguel Servede (Servetus),[599] who was

burnt at Geneva in 1553. He was very much a man by himself. His whole

line of thought separated him from the rest of the anti-Trinitarian

group associated with the names of the Sozzini. He reached his position

through a mystical Pantheism--a course of thought which one might have

expected from a Spaniard. He made few or no disciples, and did not exert

any permanent influence.

The other anti-Trinitarians of the first rank were all cultured

Italians, whom the spirit of the Renaissance prompted to criticise and

reconstruct theology as they found it. They were all men who had been

driven to reject the Roman Church because of its corruptions and

immoralities, and who had no conception of any other universal Christian

society. Men of pure lives, pious after their own fashion, they never

had any idea of what lay at the root of the Reformation thought of what

real religion was. It never dawned upon them that the sum of

Christianity is the God of Grace, manifest in Christ, accessible to

every believing soul, and unwavering trust on man's part. Their interest

in religion was almost exclusively intellectual. The Reformers had

defined the Church as the fellowship of believers, and they had said

that the marks of that fellowship were the preaching of the Word and

the right use of the sacraments--the means through which God manifests

Himself to men, and men manifest their faith in God. These men never

apprehended this; the only idea which they seemed able to have of the

Church was a school of definite and correct opinions. Compelled to flee

from their native land, they naturally took refuge in Switzerland or in

the Grisons. It is almost pathetic to see how they utterly failed to

understand the men among whom they found themselves. Reformation to them

was a criticism and reconstruction of theology; they were simply

carrying the criticism a little further than their new neighbours. They

never perceived the real gulf fixed between them and the adherents of

the Reformation.

They were all highly educated and cultivated men--individual units from

all parts of Italy. Camillo Renato, who proclaimed himself an

Anabaptist, was a Sicilian. Gentili came from Calabria; Gribaldo from

Padua; Bernardino Occhino, who in his later days joined the band, and

the two Sozzini from Siena. Alciat was a Piedmontese. Blandrata

(Biandrata), the most energetic member of the group save Fausto Sozzini,

belonged to a noble family in Saluzzo which had long been noted for the

protection it had afforded to poor people persecuted by the Church. They

were physicians or lawyers; one, Gentili, was a schoolmaster.

The strong sense of individuality, which seems the birthright of every

Italian, fostered by their life within their small city republics, had

been accentuated by the Renaissance. The historical past of Italy, and

its political and social condition in the sixteenth century, made it

impossible for the impulse towards reform to take any other shape than

that of individual action. The strength and the impetus which comes from

the thought of fellow-man, fellow-believer, and which was so apparent in

the Reformation movements beyond the Alps and in the Jesuit reaction,

was entirely lacking among these Reformers in Italy. In that land the

Empire had never regained its power lost under the great Popes, Gregory

VII. and Innocent III. The Romish Church presented itself to all

Italians as the only possible form under which a wide-spreading

Christian _Society_ could be organised. If men rejected it, personal

Christian life alone remained. The Church dominated the masses

unprepared by any such conception of ecclesiastical reform as influenced

the people in Germany and Switzerland. Only men who had received some

literary education were susceptible to the influences making for

Reformation. They were always prevented by the unbroken power of the

agencies of the Church from organising themselves publicly into

congregations, and could only meet to exchange confidences privately and

on rare occasions.[600] We hear of several such assemblies, which

invariably took the form of conferences, in which the members discussed

and communicated to each other the criticisms of the mediæval theology

which solitary meditation had suggested to them. They were much more

like debating societies than the beginnings of a Church. Thus we hear of

one at Vincenza,[601] in 1546, where about forty friends met, among whom

was Lelio Sozzini, where they debated such doctrines as the Satisfaction

of Christ, the Trinity, etc., and expressed doubts about their truth. It

was inevitable that such men could not hope to create a popular movement

towards Reformation in their native land, and also that they should be

compelled to seek safety beyond the bounds of Italy. They fled, one by

one, across the Alps. In the Grisons and in Reformed Switzerland they

found little communities of their countrymen who had sought shelter

there, and their presence was always followed by dissensions and by

difficulties with the native Protestants.

Their whole habits of life and thought were not of the kind calculated

to produce a lasting Christian fellowship. Their theological opinions,

which were not the outcome of a new and living Christian experience, but

had been the result of an intellectual criticism of the mediæval

theology, had little stability, and did not tend to produce unity. The

execution of Servede and the jealousy which all the Reformed cantons of

Switzerland manifested towards opinions in any way similar to those of

the learned Spaniard, made life in Switzerland as unsafe as it had been

in Italy. They migrated to Poland and Transylvania, attracted by the

freedom of thought existing in both lands.

Poland, besides, had special attractions for refugees from Italy. The

two countries had long been in intimate relationship. Italian architects

had designed the stately buildings in Crakau and other Polish cities,

and the commercial intercourse between the two countries was great. The

independence and the privileges of the Polish nobles secured them from

ecclesiastical interference, and both Calvinism and Lutheranism had

found many adherents among the aristocracy. They, like the Roman

patricians of the early centuries, gave the security of their halls to

their co-religionists, and the heads of the Romanist Church chafed at

their impotence to prevent the spread of opinions and usages which they

deemed heretical. In Transylvania the absence of a strong central

government permitted the same freedom to the expression of every variety

of religious opinion.

The views held by the group of anti-Trinitarians were by no means the

same. They reproduced in Poland the same medley of views we find

existing in the end of the third century. Some were Sabellians, others

Adoptianists, a few were Arians. Perhaps most of them believed in the

miraculous birth of our Lord, and held as a consequence that He ought

to be adored; but a strong minority, under the leadership of Francis

Davidis, repudiated the miraculous birth, and refused to worship Christ

(_non-adorantes_). For a time they seem to have lived in a certain

amount of accord with the members of the Reformed communities. A crisis

came at the Polish Diet of 1564, and the anti-Trinitarians were

recognised then to be a separate religious community, or _ecclesia

minor_. This was the field in which Fausto Sozzini exercised his

commanding intellect, his genius for organisation, and his eminently

strong will. He created out of these jarring elements the Socinian

Church.

The Anabaptist and the Socinian movements require, however, a more

detailed description.

CHAPTER II.

ANABAPTISM.[602]

The old monotonous mode of describing Anabaptism has almost entirely

disappeared with the modern careful examination of sources. It is no

longer possible to sum up the movement in four stages, beginning with

the Zwickau prophets and ending with the catastrophe in Münster, or to

explain its origin by calling it the radical side of the Reformation

movement.[603] It is acknowledged by careful students to have been a

very complicated affair, to have had roots buried in the previous

centuries, and to have had men among its leaders who were distinguished

Humanists. It is now known that it spread over Europe with great

rapidity, and attracted to itself an enormously larger number of

adherents than had been imagined.

It is impossible within the limits of one brief chapter to state and

criticise the various theories of the origin and roots of the movement

which modern investigation has suggested. All that can be done is to

set down succinctly the conclusions reached after a tolerably wide

examination of the sources--admitting at the same time that more

information must be obtained ere the history of the movement advances

beyond the controversial stage.

It is neither safe nor easy to make abrupt general statements about the

causes or character of great popular movements. The elements which

combine to bring them into being and keep them in existence are commonly

as innumerable as the hues which blend in the colour of a mountain side.

Anabaptism was such a complicated movement that it presents peculiar

difficulties. As has been said, it had a distinct relation to two

different streams of mediæval life, the one social and the other

religious--the revolts of peasants and artisans, and the successions of

the _Brethren_.

From the third quarter of the fifteenth century social uprisings had

taken place almost every decade, all of them more or less impregnated

with crude religious beliefs. They were part of the intellectual and

moral atmosphere that the "common man," whether in town or country

district, continuously breathed, and their power over him must not be

lost sight of. The Reformation movement quickened and strengthened these

influences simply because it set all things in motion. It is not

possible, therefore, to draw a rigid line of separation between some

sides of the Anabaptist movement and the social revolt; and hence it is

that there is at least a grain of truth in the conception that the

Anabaptists were the revolutionaries of the times of the Reformation.

On the other hand, there are good reasons for asserting that the

distinctively religious side of Anabaptism had little to do with the

anarchic outbreaks. It comes in direct succession from those communities

of pious Christians who, on the testimony of their enemies, lived quiet

God-fearing lives, and believed all the articles in the Apostles' Creed;

but who were strongly anti-clerical. They lived unobtrusively, and

rarely appear in history save when the chronicle of some town makes

casual mention of their existence, or when an Inquisitor ferreted them

out and records their so-called heresies. Their objections to the

constitution and ceremonies of the mediæval Church were exactly those of

the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century; and if we do not find a

universal repudiation of infant baptism, there are traces that some did

not approve of it. They insisted that the service ought to be in the

vulgar tongue; they objected to all the Church festivals; to all

blessing of buildings, crosses, and candles; they alleged that Christ

did not give His Apostles stoles or chasubles; they scoffed at

excommunications, Indulgences, and dispensations; they declared that

there was no regenerative efficacy in infant baptism; and they were

keenly alive to all the injunctions of Christian charity--it was better,

they said, to clothe the poor than to expend money on costly vestments

or to adorn the walls of Churches, and they kept up schools and

hospitals for lepers. They met in each other's houses for public

worship, which took the form of reading and commenting upon the Holy

Scriptures.[604]

As we are dependent on very casual sources of information, it is not

surprising that we cannot trace their _continuous_ descent down to the

period of the Reformation; but we do find in the earlier decades of the

sixteenth century notices of the existence of small praying communities,

which have all the characteristics of those recorded in the Inquisitors'

reports belonging to the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the

fifteenth centuries. They appeared in Basel in 1514, in Switzerland in

1515, in Mainz in 1518, and in Augsburg somewhat earlier.[605] By the

year 1524 similar "praying circles" were recorded as existing in France,

in the Netherlands, in Italy, in Saxony, in Franconia, at Strassburg,

and in Bohemia. They used a common catechism for the instruction of

their young people which was printed in French, German, Bohemian, and

perhaps Italian. In Germany, the Bible was the German Vulgate--a version

retained among the Anabaptists long after the publication of Luther's.

They exhibited great zeal in printing and distributing the pious

literature of the _Friends of God_ of the fourteenth and fifteenth

centuries. Many of them taught Baptist views, though the tenets were not

universally accepted, and they were already called Anabaptists or

Katabaptists--a term of reproach. Some of their more distinguished

leaders were pious Humanists, and _their_ influence may perhaps be seen

in the efforts made by the _Brethren_ to print and distribute the

_Defensor Pacis_ of Marsiglio of Padua.

This quiet Evangelical movement assumed a more definite form in 1524.

Before that date the associations of pious people acted like the

Pietists of the seventeenth or like the Wesleyans of the eighteenth

century. They associated together for mutual edification; they did not

obtrusively separate themselves from the corrupt or slothful Church. But

in June 1524, delegates representing a very wide circle of "praying

assemblies" or _Readings_ met at Waldshut, in the house of Balthasar

Hübmaier,[606] bringing their Bibles with them, to consult how to

organise their Christian living on the lines laid down in the New

Testament. No regular ecclesiastical organisation was formed. _The

Brethren_ resolved to separate from the Papal Church; they published a

Directory for Christian living, and drew up a statement of principles in

which they believed. Amongst other things, they protested against any

miraculous efficacy in the Sacraments in general, and held that Baptism

is efficacious only when it is received in faith. This led afterwards to

the adoption of Baptist views. A second conference was held at Augsburg

in 1526, which probably dates the time when adult baptism became a

distinctive belief among all the _Brethren_. This conference suggested a

General Synod which met at Augsburg in 1527 (Aug.), and included among

its members, delegates from Munich, Franconia, Ingolstadt, Upper

Austria, Styria, and Switzerland. There they drew up a statement of

doctrinal truth, which is very simple, and corresponds intimately with

what is now taught among the Moravian Brethren. Their Hymn-book[607]

does not bear any traces of the errors in doctrine usually attributed to

them. Its chief theme is the love of God awakening our love to God and

to our fellow-men. Instead of infant baptism they had a ceremony in

which the children were consecrated to God. Baptism was regarded as the

sign of conversion and of definite resolve to give one's self up to the

worship and service of God. It was administered by _sprinkling_; the

recipient knelt to receive it in the presence of the congregation. The

Holy Supper was administered at stated times, and always after one or

two days of solemn preparation. Their office-bearers were deacons,

elders, masters and teachers, or pastors. They distinguished between

pastors who were wandering evangelists and those who were attached to

single congregations. The latter, who were ordained by the laying on of

hands, alone had the right to dispense the Sacraments. All the deacons,

elders, and pastors belonging to communities within a prescribed

district, selected from among themselves delegates who formed their

ecclesiastical council for the district, and this council elected one of

the pastors to act as Bishop or Superintendent. It was the

Superintendent who ordained by laying on of hands. The whole of the

_Brethren_ were governed ecclesiastically by a series of Synods

corresponding to those in the Presbyterian Churches. This organisation

enabled the Anabaptists to endure the frightful persecution which they

were soon to experience at the hands of the papal and Lutheran State

Churches.

The chief leaders were Balthasar Hübmaier and Hans Denck. Hübmaier was a

distinguished scholar. He became, at an unusually early age, Professor

of theology at Ingolstadt (1512); he was Rector of the famous High

School in that city (1515); and Cathedral preacher at Regensburg

(Ratisbon) (1516). In 1519, feeling that he could no longer

conscientiously occupy such positions, he retired to the little town of

Waldshut. Hans Denck was a noted Humanist, a member of the "Erasmus

circle" at Basel, and esteemed the most accurate Greek scholar in the

learned community. Conrad Grebel, another well-known Anabaptist leader,

also belonged to the "Erasmus circle," and was a member of one of the

patrician families of Zurich. Like Hübmaier and Denck, he gave up all to

become an evangelist, and spent his life on long preaching tours. These

facts are sufficient to refute the common statement that the Anabaptists

were ignorant fanatics.

Perhaps Denck was the most widely known and highly esteemed. In the

summer of 1523 he was appointed Rector of the celebrated Sebaldus School

in Nürnberg. In the end of 1524 he was charged with heresy, and along

with him Jörg Penz, the artist, the favourite pupil of Albert Dürer, and

four others. Denck was banished from the city, and his name became well

known. This trial and sentence was the occasion of his beginning that

life of wandering evangelist which had among other results the

conferences in 1526 and 1527, and the organisation above described.

Denck had drunk deeply at the well of the fourteenth and fifteenth

century Mystics, and his teaching was tinged by many of their ideas. He

believed that there was a spark of the divine nature in man, an Inner

Word, which urged man to walk in the ways of God, and that man could

always keep true to the inward monitor, who was none else than Christ.

The accounts given of some of his addresses seem to be echoes of

Tauler's famous sermon on the Bridegroom and the Bride, for he taught

that the sufferings of the faithful are to be looked upon as the

love-gifts of the Saviour, and are neither to be mourned nor resisted.

We are told in the quaint _Chronicle_ of Sebastian Frauck, that the

Baptist current swept swiftly through the whole land; many thousands

were baptized, and many hearts drawn to them. "For they taught nothing

but love, faith, and crucifixion of the flesh, manifesting patience and

humility under many sufferings, breaking bread with one another in sign

of unity and love, helping one another with true helpfulness, lending,

borrowing, giving, learning to have all things in common, calling each

other 'brother.'"[608] He adds that they were accused of many things of

which they were innocent, and were treated very tyrannically.

The Anabaptists, like the earlier Mystics, displayed a strong

individuality; and this makes it impossible to classify their tenets in

a body of doctrine which can be held to express the system of

intellectual belief which lay at the basis of the whole movement. We

have three contemporary accounts which show the divergence of opinion

among them--two from hostile and one from a sympathetic historian.

Bullinger[609] attempts a classification of their different divisions,

and mentions thirteen distinct sects within the Anabaptist circle; but

they manifestly overlap in such a way as to suggest a very large amount

of difference which cannot be distinctly tabulated. Sebastian

Franck[610] notes all the varieties of views which Bullinger mentions,

but refrains from any classification. "There are," he says, "more sects

and opinions, which I do not know and cannot describe, but it appears to

me that there are not two to be found who agree with each other on all

points." Kessler,[611] who recounts the story of the Anabaptists of St.

Gallen, notes the same great variety of opinions.

It is quite possible to describe the leading ideas taught by a few noted

men and approved of by their immediate circle of followers, and so to

arrive with some accuracy at the popularity of certain leading

principles among different parties, but it must be remembered that no

great leader imposed his opinions on the whole Anabaptist circle, and

that the views held at different times by prominent men were not

invariably the sentiments which lay at the basis of the whole movement.

The doctrine of passive resistance was held by almost all the earlier

Anabaptists, but it was taught and practised in such a great variety of

ways that a merely general statement gives a misleading idea. All the

earlier Anabaptists believed that it was unchristian to return evil for

evil, and that they should take the persecutions which came to them

without attempting to retaliate. Some, like the young Humanist, Hans

Denck, pushed the theory so far that they believed that no real

Christian could be either a magistrate or a soldier. A small band of

Anabaptists, to whom one of the Counts of Liechtenstein had given

shelter at Nikolsburg, told their protector plainly that they utterly

disapproved of his threatening the Austrian Commissary with armed

resistance if he entered the Nikolsburg territory to seize them. In

short, what is called "passive resistance" took any number of forms,

from the ordinary Christian maxim to be patient under tribulation, to

that inculcated and practised by the modern sect of Dunkers.

The followers of Melchior Hoffman, called "Melchiorites," held

apocalyptic or millenarian views, and expected in the near future the

return of Christ to reign over His saints; but there is no reason to

suppose that this conception was very widely adopted, still less that it

can be called a tenet of Anabaptism in general. All the Anabaptists

inculcated the duty of charity and the claims of the poor on the richer

members of the community; but that is a common Christian precept, and

does not necessarily imply communistic theories or practices. All that

can be definitely said of the whole Anabaptist circle was that they did

keep very clearly before them the obligations of Christian love. The

so-called Communism in Münster will be described later.

When we examine carefully the incidental records of contemporary

witnesses observing their Anabaptist neighbours, we reach the general

conclusion that their main thought was to reproduce in their own lives

what seemed to them to be the beliefs, usages, and social practices of

the primitive Christians. Translations of the Bible and of parts of it

had been common enough in Germany before Luther's days. The "common

man," especially the artisan of the towns, knew a great deal about the

Bible. It was the one book he read, re-read, and pondered over. Fired

with the thoughts created in his mind by its perusal, simple men felt

impelled to become itinerant preachers. The "call" came to them, and

they responded at once to what they believed to be the divine voice.

Witness Hans Ber of Alten-Erlangen, a poor peasant. He rose from his bed

one night and suddenly began to put on his clothes. "Whither goest

thou?" asked his poor wife. "I know not; God knoweth," he answered.

"What evil have I done thee? Stay and help me to bring up my little

children," "Dear wife," he answered, "trouble me not with the things of

time. I must away, that I may learn the will of the Lord."[612] Such men

wandered about in rude homespun garments, often barefooted, their heads

covered with rough felt hats. They craved hospitality in houses, and

after supper produced their portions of the Bible, read and expounded,

then vanished in the early morning. We are told how Hans Hut came to the

house of Franz Strigel at Weier in Franconia, produced his Bible, read

and expounded, explained the necessity of adult baptism, convinced

Strigel, the house father, and eight others, and baptized them there and

then. He wandered forth the same night. None of the baptized saw him

again; but the little community remained--a small band of

Anabaptists.[613]

These wandering preachers, "prophets" they may be called if we give them

the early Christian name, were not drilled in any common set of

opinions. Each conceived the primitive teaching and social life as he

seemed to see it reflected in the New Testament; and no two conceptions

were exactly the same. The circumstances and surroundings produced an

infinite variety of thought about the doctrines and usages which ought

to be accepted and practised. Yet they had traditional modes of

interpretation handed down to them from the praying circles of the

"Brethren." Compare what the Austrian Inquisitor says of the "Brethren"

in the thirteenth century, with what Johann Kessler tells about the

Anabaptists of St. Gallen, and the resemblance is striking so far as

external appearance goes. "Hæretici cognoscuntur per mores et verba,"

says the Inquisitor. "Sunt enim in moribus compositi et modesti;

superbiam in vestibus non habent, nec pretiosis, nec multum abjectis

utuntur.... Doctores etiam ipsorum sunt sutores et textores. Divitias

non multiplicant, sed necessariis sunt contenti. Casti etiam sunt....

Temperati etiam in cibo et potu. Ad tabernas non eunt, nec ad choreas,

nec ad alias vanitates. Ab ira se cohibent; semper operantur, discunt

vel docent, et ideo parum orant.... Cognoscuntur etiam in verbis

præcisis et modestis. Cavent etiam a scurrilitate et detractione, et

verborum levitate, et mendacio, et juramento."[614] Kessler tells us

that the walk and conversation of these Anabaptists was "throughout

pious, holy, and blameless"; that they refrained from wearing costly

apparel, despised luxurious eating and drinking, clothed themselves in

rough cloth, wore slouch hats on their heads. Franck relates that they

refused to frequent wine-shops and the "gild" rooms where dances were

held.

As they lived again the life of these mediæval sectaries, so they

reproduced their opinions in the same sporadic way. Some of them

objected to all war even in self-defence, as did some of the earlier

Lollards. Their Lord had said to His first disciples: "Go your ways:

behold, I send you forth as lambs in the midst of wolves." They flung

from them the sword, with which peasant and artisan were then alike

girt, and went about as the apostles were ordered to do, with staves in

their hands--the _Stäbler_ or _staffmen_ who would have nothing to do

with the weapons of wolves. Others, also like some of the Lollards,

would not enter the "huge stone houses with great glass windows which

men called 'churches.'" The early Christians had preached and "broken

bread" in houses; and they would follow their example; and in private

rooms, in the streets, in the market-places, they proclaimed their

gospel of peace and contentment. The infinitesimal number who taught

something like "free love," and who were repudiated by the others, were

reproducing the vagaries of the mediæval _Brethren and Sisters of the

Free Spirit_, who gave Meister Eckhart so much trouble centuries before

in the Rhineland. All the more extravagant ideas and practices which

appear among small sections of these Anabaptists of the sixteenth

century can be found among the sectaries of the Middle Ages. For the

whole Anabaptist movement was mediæval to the core; and, like most of

the mediæval religious awakenings, produced an infinite variety of

opinions and practices. The one idea common to all was, that the

Christians of the sixteenth century were called to reproduce in thought

and life the intellectual beliefs and usages of the primitive

Christians. It is simply impossible to give any account of opinions and

practices which were _universally_ prevalent among them. Even the most

widely spread usages, adult baptism and the "breaking of bread," were

not adopted in all the divisions of the Anabaptists.

What is more, they were modern enough, at least in the earlier stages of

the movement, to be conscious of this (which the Mystics were not), and

to give it expression. All felt and thought as did a "simple man," Hans

Müller of Medikon, when brought before the Zurich magistrates: "Do not

lay a burden on my conscience, for faith is a gift given freely by God,

and is not common property. The mystery of God lies hidden, like the

treasure in the field, which no one can find but he to whom the Spirit

shows it. So I beg you, ye servants of God, let my faith stand

free."[615] And the Anabaptists, alone of all the religious parties in

those strenuous times, seem to have recognised that what they claimed

for themselves they were bound to grant to others. Great differences in

opinion did not prevent the strictest brotherly fellowship. Hans Denck

held a doctrine of non-resistance as thoroughgoing as that of Count

Tolstoy, and fully recognised the practical consequences to which it

led. But this did not prevent the ardent and gifted young Humanist

working loyally with Hübmaier, who did not share his extreme opinions.

The divergences among the leaders appeared in their followers without

destroying the sense of brotherhood. Franck tells us in his

_Chronicle_[616] that some, but very few, held that no Christian could

enter the magistracy, for Christians had nothing to do with the sword,

but only with spiritual excommunication, and that no Christian should

fight and slay. The others, he says, including the very great majority,

believed that Christians might become magistrates, and that in case of

dire necessity and when they clearly saw the leading of God, might take

their share in fighting as soldiers.

Melchior Hoffman, while he believed in the incarnation, held that Jesus

received His flesh directly from God, and did not owe His body to the

Virgin Mother, through whom He passed "as light through a pane of

glass." He also held that the whole history of the world, down to the

last days, was revealed in Scripture, and could be discovered through

prayer and meditation. He was an eloquent and persuasive preacher, and

his views were accepted by many; but it would be a great mistake to

assume that they were shared in by the Anabaptists as a community. Yet

even contemporaries, who were opponents, usually attribute the extreme

opinions of a few to the entire body.

It ought to be observed that this tolerance of different opinions within

the one society did not extend to those who remained true to the State

Churches, whether Romanist or Reformed. The Anabaptists would have

nothing to do with a State Church; and this was the main point in their

separation from the Lutherans, Zwinglians, and Calvinists. It was

perhaps the _one_ conception on which all parties among them were in

absolute accord. The real Church, which might be small or great, was for

them an association of believing people; and the great ecclesiastical

institutions into which unconscious infants were admitted by a ceremony

called baptism long before they could have or exercise faith,

represented to them an idea subversive of true Christianity. They had no

wish to persecute men who differed widely from them, but they would not

associate with them. This enforced "separation," like everything else

connected with Anabaptism, differed considerably in the way in which it

was carried into practice. In some of the smaller sections it appeared

in very extravagant forms. Wives and husbands, Anabaptists whose

partners belonged to the State Churches, were in some small sections

advised to refuse cohabitation. It is more than probable that some

recorded sayings on which opponents have founded charges of encouraging

sexual irregularities,--that it was better for women to have connection

irregularly with members of the brotherhood than to cohabit with

unbelieving husbands,--were simply extravagant ways of expressing this

duty of separation.

It is also true that as time went on and sects of extreme opinions

multiplied, the excommunication of members for their views came to be a

common practice. It was as frequent among some of the smaller divisions

as it is among modern Plymouth Brethren; but the occasion was, as a

rule, difference of opinion about the way to express and exercise the

duty of not returning evil for evil--was it permitted to pay taxes or

not? was it lawful to see without protest their protectors using force

to prevent their enemies from attacking them, etc.?

The earlier ideas of non-resistance, whatever practical shape they might

take, gave way before the continuous and terrible persecution which the

Anabaptists had to endure. They were first definitely condemned by

Melchior Hoffman and his followers. They believed in the speedy

establishment on earth of the millennial kingdom of Christ, and they

declared that they were ready to fight for it when it appeared. With

them the conception was simply a pious opinion, and they had no occasion

to reduce it to action. The Anabaptists, however, who followed the

teaching of Jan Matthys and of his disciple Jan Bockelson, repudiated

passive resistance both in theory and in practice.

Of course, there are many things about some, perhaps all, great

religious awakenings which critics can lay hold of to their

disparagement; and it was so with the Anabaptist movement. Everything,

from the scientific frame of mind to the religious sensibility, has the

defects of its qualities. When a man is seized and possessed by a new

spiritual emotion which seems to lift him above all previous experience

of life or of thought, all things are new to him, and all things seem

possible. His old life with its limitations has departed. He is embarked

on a sea which has no imprisoning shores. He is carried along on a great

current of emotion, and others are borne with him. Human deep calleth

unto deep when they exchange confidences. He and his fellows have become

new creatures; and that is almost all that they know about themselves.

Such experiences are quite consistent with soundness of mind and

clearness of vision of God and Divine things--that is usual; but

sometimes they are too powerful for the imperfect mind which holds them.

The converts are "puffed up," as St. Paul said. Then arise morbid

states, distorted vision, sometimes actual shipwreck of mental

faculties, not seldom acute religious mania. Leaders in a great

religious awakening have always to reckon with such developments--St.

Paul, Francis of Assisi, Eckhart, Tauler, to say nothing of modern

instances. The Apostle addressed morbid souls with severe sarcasm. Did

any man really think, he asked, that to commit incest, to take to wife

his father's widow, was an example of the freedom with which Christ had

made them free?

The Anabaptist movement had its share of such cases, like other

religious movements; they grew more frequent as the unfortunate people

were maddened by persecution; and these exceptional incidents are

invariably retailed at length by historians hostile to the movement.

The Anabaptists, as a whole, were subjected to persecutions, especially

from the Romanists and the Lutherans, much more harsh than befell any of

the religious parties of the sixteenth century. Their treatment in

Zurich may be taken as an example of how they came in contact with the

civil authorities, and how their treatment grew in severity.[617]

The Swiss Anabaptists were in no sense disciples of Zwingli. They had

held their distinctive principles and were a recognised community long

before Zwingli came from Einsiedeln, and were the lineal descendants of

the mediæval Waldenses. They welcomed the Reformer; some of them were in

the company who challenged the authorities by eating meat during Lent in

1522; but a fundamental difference soon emerged. After the Public

Disputation of 1523, when it became clear that Zurich meant to accept

the Reformation, a deputation of the _Brethren_ appeared before the

Council to urge their idea of what a Reformed Church should be. Their

statement of principles is an exposition of the fundamental conceptions

which lay at the basis of the whole Anabaptist movement, and explains

why they could not join either the Lutheran or the Reformed branch of

the Reformation Church. They insisted that an Evangelical Church must

differ from the Roman Church in this among other things, that it should

consist of members who had made a personal profession of faith in their

Saviour, and who had vowed to live in obedience to Jesus Christ their

_Hauptmann_. It could not be like a State Church, whether Romanist or

other, to which people belonged without any individual profession of

faith. They insisted that the Church, thus formed, should be free from

all civil control, to decide for itself what doctrines and ceremonies of

worship were founded on the Word of God, and agreeable thereto, and

should make this decision according to the opinions of a majority of the

members. They further asked that the Church should be free to exercise,

by brotherly admonition and, as a last resort, by excommunication,

discipline on such of its members as offended against the moral law.

They also declared that the Church which thus rejected State control

ought to refuse State support, and proposed that the tithes should be

secularised. The New Testament, they said, knew nothing about interest

and usury, tithes, livings, and prebends.

These views were quite opposed to the ideas of the Zurich Council, who

contemplated a State Church reformed from Romanist abuses, but strictly

under the control of the State, and supported by the tithes, as the

mediæval Church had been. They refused to adopt the ideas of the

Anabaptists; and this was the beginning of the antagonism. The Council

found that the great majority of the petitioners had doubts about infant

baptism, and were inclined to what are now called Baptist views; and

they brought matters to a crisis by ordering a Public Disputation on

Baptism (Jan. 17th, 1525). Among the Anabaptists who appeared to defend

their principles, were young Conrad Grebel the Humanist, Felix Manz, and

Brother Jörg from Jacob's House, a conventual establishment near Chur,

who is always called "Blaurock" (Blue-coat). They were opposed by

Zwingli, who insisted that infant baptism must be maintained, because it

took the place of circumcision. The Council decided that Zwingli's

contention was right, and they made it a _law_ that _all children must

be baptized_, and added that all persons who refused to have their

children baptized after Feb. 1st, 1525, were to be arrested. The

Anabaptists were not slow to answer the challenge thus given. They met,

and after deliberation and prayer Blaurock asked Conrad Grebel to

baptize him in a truly Christian fashion, "there being no ordained

person present," and Grebel did so. "When this had been done the others

entreated Blaurock to baptize them, which he did; and in deep fear of

the Lord they gave themselves to God." They resolved to preach and

baptize, because in this they ought to obey God rather than men.[618]

When the Council heard that adult baptism had begun, they enacted that

all who had been rebaptized after Feb. 8th (1525) were to be fined a

silver mark, and that whoever was baptized after the issue of their

decree should be banished. They also imprisoned the leaders. When they

found that neither fines, nor threats, nor imprisonment, nor banishment

had any effect on the Anabaptists, the Town Council thought to terrify

them by a death sentence. Two were selected, Manz and Blaurock. The

latter was not a citizen, and the sentence of death was commuted to one

of public scourging and being thrust out of the town; but Felix Manz, a

townsman, was put to death by drowning (1527). Zwingli insisted that

this judicial murder was not done because of baptism, but because of

rebellion!

What was done in Reformed Switzerland was seen all over Roman Catholic

and Lutheran Germany. It is only fair to say that the persecution was

more murderous within the Romanist districts; but the only Lutheran

Prince who refused to permit a death penalty on Anabaptism was Philip of

Hesse. He was afterwards joined by the Elector of Saxony.

In 1527 (Aug. 26th), the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria published an

imperial mandate threatening all Anabaptists with the punishment of

death. Two months later, two thousand copies of this proclamation were

sent to the provinces of the German Empire, calling on the authorities

to extirpate these unfortunate people. The rulers in Salzburg and in

the Tyrol obeyed the order at once, and a fierce persecution soon raged.

The minds of the population were inflamed by infamous calumnies. It was

said in Salzburg that the Anabaptists had planned to massacre all the

priests and monks within the principality. The well-known dislike of the

brethren to war was tortured into the accusation that on a Turkish

invasion they would side with the enemy against all loyal Germans. A

certain Leopold Dickius, who wrote an atrocious book against the

Anabaptists, demanded that all the men should be slain and the women and

children suffered to perish from starvation; in this way only, he said,

could their errors be stamped out.

The Salzburg chronicler, Kilian Leib, a Romanist, gives details of the

persecution. He tells us that men, women, and young maidens suffered

death by fire, beheading, and drowning, not only uncomplainingly, but

with solemn joy. He dwells on the case of "a beautiful young girl" of

sixteen, whose gentle innocence excited universal compassion, and who

utterly refused to recant. The executioner pinned her hands to her

sides, plunged her head downwards into a horse trough, held her there

till she was suffocated, and then took her body away to burn it. The

official lists show that the victims came from all classes in society.

Noblemen, girdle-makers, wallet-makers, shoemakers, a town clerk, and

ex-priests.

The persecution in the Tyrol was severe and thorough. A large number of

the miners of the district were Anabaptists, and it was resolved to root

out the so-called heresy. Descriptions were published of prominent

Anabaptists, who wandered from place to place encouraging their brethren

to steadfastness. "One named Mayerhofer has a long brown beard and wears

a grey soldier's coat; a companion, tall and pale, wears a long black

coat with trimming; a third is shorter; a fourth, thin and of a ruddy

complexion, is known as a cutler." Conrad Braun, an assessor to the

imperial Chamber and an eye-witness to the persecutions, wrote,--"I have

seen with my own eyes that nothing has been able to bring back the

Anabaptists from their errors or to make them recant. The hardest

imprisonment, hunger, fire, water, the sword, all sorts of frightful

executions, have not been able to shake them. I have seen young people,

men, women, go to the stake singing, filled with joy; and I can say that

in the course of my whole life nothing has moved me more."[619] In the

Tyrol and Görz the number of executions by the year 1531 amounted to a

thousand, according to the chronicler Kirchmayr. Sebastian Franck

reckons the number in Enisheim, within the government of Upper Austria,

at six hundred. Seventy-three martyrs suffered in Linz within six weeks.

The persecution in Bavaria was particularly severe; Duke William ordered

that those who recanted were to be beheaded, and those who refused were

to be burned. The general practice, made a law by Ferdinand of Austria

in 1529 (April 23rd), was that only preachers, baptizers, Baptists who

refused to recant, and those who had relapsed after recantation, were to

be punished with death.[620]

In these bloody persecutions, which raged over almost all Europe, most

of the earlier leaders of the Anabaptists perished; but the great body

of their followers were neither intimidated nor disposed to abjure their

teaching. Persecution did not come unexpectedly. No one was admitted

into an Anabaptist community without being warned of the probable fate

which lay before him. Baptism was a vow that he would be constant unto

death; the "breaking of bread" strengthened his faith; the sermon was

full of exhortations to endurance unto the end. Their whole service of

worship was a preparation for and an expectation of martyrdom.

The strain of Christian song seemed to rise higher with the fires of

persecution. Most of the Anabaptist hymns belong to the time when their

sufferings were greatest. Some are simply histories of a martyrdom, as

of Jörg Wagner at Munich, or of the "Seven Brethren at Germünd." They

are all echoes of endurance where the notes of the sob, the trust, the

warning, the hosanna of a time of martyrdom, blend in rough heroic

strains. They sing of Christ, who in these last days has manifested

Himself that the pure word of His Gospel may again run through the earth

as it did in the days of the early Church. They tell how the arch-enemy

of souls seeks to protect himself against the advancing host of Jesus by

exciting bloody persecutions. They utter warnings against false

prophets, ravening wolves in sheep's clothing, who beset all the paths

of life leading towards the true fold, who pour forth threats and curses

against the people of God, and urge on the rulers of this world to

torture and to slay. They depict how the evil world storms against the

true Church, shrieks out lies against the true followers of Jesus, and

threatens them with burnings and all manner of cruel deaths. They mourn

that the disciples of Jesus are slaughtered like sheep who have lost

their shepherd; that they wander in wildernesses full of thorns that

tear; that they have their homes like the night-birds among the cliffs

or in the clefts of the rocks; that they are snared in the nets of the

fowler; that they are hunted with hounds like the hares. Others,

inspired by the internal hope which lives undying in every Christian

heart, tell how Christ the Bridegroom seeks the love of the soul His

bride, and how He wins her to Himself by His love-gifts of trial and of

suffering, till at last the marriage feast is held, and the soul becomes

wholly united to her Lord. The thoughts and phrases of the old Hebrew

prophets, of the Psalmist, of the hymns of the Apocalypse, which have

fed the fears and the hopes of longing, suffering, trusting generations

of Christian people, reappear in those Anabaptist hymns. Life is for

them a continuous Holy War, a Pilgrim's Progress through an evil world

full of snares, of dangers, of temptations, until at last the weary

feet tread the Delectable Mountains, the River of Death is passed, and

the open gates of the heavenly Jerusalem receive the wayfarer who has

persevered to the end.

These poor persecuted people naturally sought for some city of refuge,

_i.e._ a municipality or district where baptism of children was not

enforced under penalties, and where the rebaptism of adults was not

punished by imprisonment, torture, and death. For a time they found many

such asylums. The Anabaptists were for the most part good workmen, and

patient and provident cultivators of the soil, ready to pay all dues but

the unscriptural war-tax. They were a source of wealth to many a great

landed proprietor who was willing to allow them to live their lives in

peace. Moravia, East Friesland, and, among the municipalities, Augsburg,

Worms, and Strassburg gave shelter until the slow determined pressure of

the higher authorities of the Empire compelled them to act otherwise.

All that the Anabaptists desired was to be allowed to live in peace, and

we hear of no great disturbances caused by their presence in any of

these "cities of refuge."

This brings us to what has been called "The Kingdom of God in Münster,"

and to the behaviour of the Anabaptists there--the communism, polygamy,

and so forth, which are described in all histories of the times.

Münster was the capital of the large and important ecclesiastical

principality which bears the same name. The bishop was a Prince of the

German Empire, and ruled his principality with all the rights of a

secular prince. Clergy filled almost all the important posts of

government; they levied taxes on imports and exports; the rich canonries

of the cathedral were reserved for the sons of the landed gentry; the

townspeople had no share in the richer benefices, and chafed under their

clerical rulers. The citizens lived in a state of almost permanent

disaffection, and their discontent had frequently taken the form of

civic insurrections. They rose in 1525, in 1527 (in which year the name

of a wealthy burgher, Bernardin Knipperdolling, first appears as a

leader of his fellow-citizens), and in 1529, the dreadful year of famine

and plague.[621] Many have been disposed to see in these _emeutes_,

anticipations of the struggle which followed; but nothing in the sources

warrants the conclusion. They were simply examples of the discontent of

the unprivileged classes which had been common enough in Germany for at

least a century.

The city of Münster had been slow to receive the religious Reformation,

but in 1529 the people began to listen to the preaching of an obscure

young chaplain attached to the Church of St. Maurice, built outside the

walls of the town.[622] Bernhard Rothmann was a scholar, imbued with

Humanist culture, gifted with the power of clear reasoning, and with

natural eloquence. It is probable that he had early been attracted by

the teaching of Luther;[623] but while he dwelt upon justification by

faith, his sermons were full of that sympathy for the down-trodden

toiling masses of the community which was a permanent note in all

Anabaptist teaching. His sermons were greatly appreciated by the

townsfolk, especially by the artisans, who streamed out of the gate to

hear the young chaplain of St. Maurice. Was he not one of themselves,

the son of a poor smith! The cathedral Canons, who, in the absence of

the Bishop, had the oversight of all ecclesiastical affairs, grew

alarmed at his popularity. Their opportunity for interference came when

the mob, excited, they said, by Rothmann's denunciations of relic and

image worship, profaned the altars, tore the pictures, and destroyed the

decorations in St. Maurice on the eve of Good Friday, 1531. Rothmann's

influence with the townsmen might have enabled him to defy the Canons,

especially as the Prince Bishop, Friedrich von Wied, showed no

inclination to molest the chaplain, and was himself suspected of

Evangelical sympathies. But he quietly left the town and spent a year in

travelling. He visited Wittenberg, where he made the acquaintance of

Luther, Melanchthon, and Bugenhagen; went to Marburg, Speyer, and

Strassburg. At Strassburg he had long intercourse with Capito and with

Schwenkfeld the Mystic, who is frequently classed with the Anabaptists.

An irresistible impulse seems to have drawn him back to Münster, where

he was welcomed by the people, and the church of St. Maurice became

henceforth the centre of a movement for religious Reformation; the

preacher was supported by the "gilds" of artisans and by most of the

citizens, among whom the most noted was Bernhard Knipperdolling.

An energetic protest by the Canons induced the Bishop to inhibit

Rothmann from preaching in St. Maurice. He continued his addresses in

the churchyard of St. Lambert (Feb. 18th, 1532), and a few days later he

was placed in possession of the church itself. St. Lambert's had been

built by the municipality, and was the property of the town. Rothmann

was appointed by the Town Council Evangelical preacher to the town, and

was given one of the town's "gild" houses for a parsonage.

Two months later the Bishop resigned, and was succeeded by Duke Erich of

Brunswick-Grubenhagen, already Bishop of Osnabrück and Paderborn. The

new Bishop determined to get rid of Rothmann. He made representations

to Hesse and Electoral Saxony and other Evangelical Powers, and

persuaded them to induce the more moderate of the reforming party in

Münster to abandon Rothmann; and, this done, the preacher was ordered to

leave the city. The "gilds" of artisans refused to let their preacher

depart, and, under the leadership of Knipperdolling,[624] drafted a

letter to the authorities declaring their determination to retain him at

all hazards. The democracy of Münster and the religious movement for the

first time openly combined against the authorities of the city.

While things were at this pass, the Bishop died (May 13th, 1532). The

Chapter elected (June 1st) Count Franz von Waldeck, already in

possession of Minden, and made Bishop of Osnabrück a few days later

(June 11th)--a pluralist of the first rank. The reforming party in

Münster expected the worst from their new ruler. A full assembly of the

"gilds" of the town was held, and by an overwhelming majority the

members pledged themselves to defend their pastor and his Gospel with

body and goods while life lasted. A committee of thirty-six burghers was

elected to watch the course of events and to take counsel with the civic

rulers and the presidents of the "gilds." Rothmann published _theses_

explaining his teaching, and challenging objectors to a public

disputation. Public meetings were held; the Town Council was formally

requested to hand over all the parochial churches to Evangelical

preachers; which was done--the Cathedral alone remaining for Roman

Catholic worship.

These proceedings produced unavailing remonstrances from the Bishop. The

nobles in the neighbourhood tried to interfere, but to no purpose. In

October (1532) the Bishop's party within the town began to take action.

They attempted to sequester the goods of the more prominent disaffected

citizens; chains were placed across the principal streets to prevent

communication between the different quarters; an attempt was made to

isolate the town itself. These things meant war. The "gilds," always a

military organisation in mediæval cities, armed. A party of knights sent

to invade the town retired before the armed citizens. While the Bishop

sought to strengthen himself by alliances and to beguile the townsmen by

negotiation, a thousand armed burghers marched by night to the little

township of Telgte, where a large number of the ecclesiastical and

secular nobles were encamped, surrounded it, captured the Bishop's

partisans, and returned to hold them as hostages. This act afforded the

occasion for the intervention of Philip of Hesse. An arrangement was

come to by which Münster was declared to be an Evangelical city and

enrolled within the Schmalkald League. The history of Münster up to this

time (Feb. 14th, 1533) did not differ from that of many towns which had

adopted the Reformation. Rothmann had been the leader in Münster, like

Brenz in Hall, Alber in Reutlingen, or Lachmann at Heilbron.

It is usually assumed that up to this time Rothmann was a Lutheran in

his teaching, that he had won Münster for the great Lutheran party, and

that his future aberrations from the Evangelical theology were due to

his weakness before the Anabaptist mob who later invaded the city. This

seems to be a mere assumption. He had certainly taught justification by

faith; but that did not make him a Lutheran. The dividing line between

the various classes of objectors to the Roman Catholic theology in the

sixteenth century was drawn at the meaning of the Sacraments, and

especially of the Lord's Supper. There is absolutely no evidence to show

that Rothmann was ever a follower of Luther in his theory of the Holy

Supper. He had visited Luther and Melanchthon during his year of

absence from Münster, but they had never been quite sure of him. He has

confessed that it was at Strassburg and not at Wittenberg that he got

most help for his future work and received it from Capito, who was no

Lutheran, and from Schwenkfeld, who was an Anabaptist Mystic. It was

Strassburg and not Wittenberg that he called "the crown of all Christian

cities and Churches!" In his confession of faith he says that the Mass

is no sacrifice, but only a sign of the true Sacrifice; and that the

Mass and the Lord's Supper have _no other meaning_ than to remind us of

the death of Christ, and to awaken in our hearts a certainty of the

freely given grace of God. That is not Lutheran doctrine, it is not even

Zwinglian; it is much nearer the Anabaptist. It is also pretty clear

that he held the doctrine of the "inner light" in the sense of many

Anabaptists. It may be safely said that if Rothmann was not an

Anabaptist from the beginning, his was a mind prepared to accept their

doctrines almost as soon as they were clearly presented to him. Heinrich

Roll, a fugitive from Jülich who sought refuge in Münster, convinced

Rothmann of the unlawfulness of infant baptism. No sooner had this

conviction laid hold on him than he refused to baptize infants--for

Rothmann was always straightforward. His views annoyed a large number of

the leading citizens, prominent among whom was Van der Wieck, the syndic

of the town. These men, all Lutherans, besieged their pastor with

remonstrances, and finally brought him before the Town Council. The

matter came to a head on Sept. 7th (1533), when Staprade, the assistant

preacher at St. Lambert's, refused to baptize the children of two

Lutheran members of the Town Council who had been brought to the church

for the purpose. When the preachers were brought before the Council,

they were informed that such things would not be allowed. Staprade, the

chief offender and a non-burgher, was banished, and Rothmann with the

other clergy who agreed with him were threatened with the same fate if

they persisted in declining to baptize infants. They refused to obey

the Council; they were promptly deposed, and their churches were closed

against them. But the mass of the citizens were attached to Rothmann,

and their attitude became too threatening for the Magistrates to

maintain their uncompromising position. Rothmann was permitted to

remain, and was allowed to preach in the Church of St. Servatius. The

Lutheran Magistrates brought preachers into the town to occupy the other

places of worship.

The Magistrates, Van der Wieck being the leading spirit among them,

resolved to hold a public disputation on the subject of Baptism. They

had brought to Münster the famous Humanist, Hermann von dem Busche, now

a professor in Marburg and a distinguished defender of the Lutheran

Reformation, and they counted on his known learning and eloquence to

convince their fellow-citizens that the views of Rothmann were

unscriptural. The conference was to be perfectly free. Roman Catholic

theologians were invited, and took part. Rothmann appeared to defend his

position. The invitations had been signed not only by the Magistrates,

but by the heads of the "gilds" of the town.[625] Van der Wieck

confessed that the result of the disputation was not what he expected.

So far as the great mass of the people were concerned, Rothmann appeared

to have the best of the argument, and he stood higher than ever in the

estimation of the citizens. Rothmann, whose whole career shows that

opposition made him more and more advanced, now began to dwell upon the

wrongs of the commonalty and the duty of the rich to do much more for

their poorer brethren than they did. He taught by precept as well as

example. He lived an openly ascetic life, that he might abound in

charity. His sermons and his life had an extraordinary effect on the

rich as well as on the poor. Creditors forgave debtors, men placed sums

of money in the hands of Rothmann for distribution. There was no

enforced communism, but the example of primitive Church in Jerusalem

was followed as far as possible. Among these thoroughgoing followers of

Rothmann, a wealthy lady, the mother-in-law of Bernardin Knipperdolling,

was conspicuous.

The Magistrates became seriously alarmed at the condition of things.

They knew that so long as they remained a Lutheran municipality, even

nominally, the great Lutheran Princes, like Philip of Hesse and the

Elector of Saxony, would protect them against their Romanist Bishop; but

Lutherans and Romanists alike disliked and distrusted Anabaptists, and

the imperial edict would surely be enforced against them sooner or

later. Rothmann's preaching, which they could not control, and the power

he exercised through the "gilds," made it impossible for them to

maintain that Münster was a member of the confederacy of Lutheran

cities. On the other hand, the news that Münster had practically become

Anabaptist, spread far and wide among these persecuted people, who began

to think that it was destined to be a conspicuous city of refuge,

perhaps the Zion or New Jerusalem whose establishment Melchior Hoffman

had predicted. They gathered from all parts to place themselves under

the protection of its walls. The great majority naturally came from the

Netherlands, where the persecution was hottest. The refugees were almost

all _Melchiorites_--men who looked for a speedy termination of their

sufferings in the establishment of the kingdom of God upon the earth;

and the majority of them were Dutch _Melchiorites_, men to whom freedom

was a tradition, ready to fight for it, disciples of Jan Matthys, who

had taught them to abandon the doctrine of passive resistance so

universally held by all sections of the earlier Anabaptists.[626]

Rothmann had long been acquainted with the books and tracts of Hoffman,

and had great sympathy with them. He as well as the Magistrates foresaw

trouble for himself and for the city. He went the length of advising

friends who did not share his opinions to leave the town; for himself,

his manifest duty appeared to be to risk all on behalf of the poor

people whom God had given into his hand.

The last months of 1532 saw Rothmann and the Lutheran Town Council

facing each other with growing mutual suspicion. On Dec. 8th, a

journeyman smith, Johann Schröder, began preaching Anabaptist doctrines

in the churchyard of St. Lambert's, and challenged the Lutheran pastor,

Fabricius, to a disputation. This was more than the Town Council could

endure. They prohibited Rothmann preaching, and declared that they

withdrew their protection--a sentence of virtual outlawry (Dec. 11th).

He calmly told the messenger of the Council that he depended on the help

of higher powers than his masters, and preached publicly in the Church

of St. Servatius. Schröder had begun to preach again, and was

apprehended. The "gild" of the smiths rose, and, headed by their

officials, forced the Council to release their comrade. The Anabaptists

and Rothmann had won a notable triumph, which was soon widely known.

Banished Anabaptist pastors returned to the town.

Events marched quickly thereafter. Bartholomaeus Boekbinder and Willem

de Kuiper, sent by Jan Matthys, appeared in Münster (Jan. 5th, 1533). We

can infer what their message was from what followed. Rothmann denounced

the Council and its Lutheran preachers. Riots were the consequence, many

of the rioters being women, among whom the nuns of the Überwasser

convent were conspicuous. It was declared that all believers ought to be

rebaptized, and that a list of the faithful ought to be made. The

document contained fourteen hundred names within eight days. The mass of

the people enthusiastically believed in the near approach of the Day of

the Lord.

Soon afterwards (Jan. 13th, 1533), Jan Bockelson (John of Leyden)

entered the town. He was the favourite disciple and _alter ego_ of Jan

Matthys. He brought with him the famous Twenty-one Articles, and called

upon the faithful to unite themselves into a compact organisation

pledged to carry them out. He was received with enthusiasm.

The Council, feeling their helplessness, appealed to the Bishop, who

contented himself with ordering them to execute the imperial mandate

against Anabaptists. He was as much incensed against the Lutherans as

against the Anabaptists, and hoped that the two parties would destroy

themselves. Within the town, Anabaptists fought with the combined

Evangelicals and Romanists, and on two occasions the tumults were

succeeded by truces which guaranteed full liberty of worship to all

persons (Jan. 28th and Feb. 9th). Then the Council abandoned the

struggle. The principal Burgomaster, Tylbeck, was baptized, and Van der

Wieck, with many of the principal citizens, left the town. Van der Wieck

fell into the hands of the Bishop, who slaughtered him barbarously.

A new Council, entirely Anabaptist, was elected, with Bernardin

Knipperdolling and Gerhard Kibbenbroick, a leading merchant, as

Burgomasters (Feb. 28th). The complete rule of the Anabaptists had

begun. This date also marks the beginning of the investment of the city

by the Bishop's troops. It should never be forgotten, as it frequently

is, that during the _whole_ period of Anabaptist domination in Münster

the town was undergoing the perils of a siege, and that military

considerations _had_ to be largely kept in mind. Nor should it be

forgotten that during its existence the Bishop's troops were murdering

in cold blood every Anabaptist they could lay their hands on.

Jan Matthys himself had come to Münster some time in February, urged

thereto by a letter from Bockelson, and the citizens had become

accustomed to see the long lean figure of the prophet, with his piercing

eyes and flowing black beard, pass to and fro in their streets. They had

learned to hang breathless on his words as his sonorous voice repeated

the message which the Lord had given him to utter, or described the

visions which had been vouchsafed to him. When an Anabaptist Council

ruled the city they were but the mouthpiece of the prophet. His reign

was brief, but while it lasted he issued command after command.

Separation from the world was one of the ideas he dwelt upon in his

addresses; and to him this meant that no unbelievers, no unbaptized,

could remain within the walls of an Anabaptist city. The command went

forth that all adults must be baptized or leave the town. It is scarcely

to be wondered that, with the great likelihood of falling into the hands

of the Bishop's soldiers as soon as they got beyond the walls, the great

majority of those who had not yet received the seal of the new communion

submitted to the ceremony. They were marched to the market-place, where

they found "three or more" Anabaptist preachers, each with a great

vessel full of water before them. The neophytes knelt down, received the

usual admonition, and a dish of water was thrice emptied on their heads

in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. This done, they

went to the Burgomaster's house and had their names entered on the

roll.[627]

It was also by Matthys' orders that what is called the communism of

Münster was begun. The duty of systematic and brotherly charity had from

the first been an outstanding one among the Anabaptists. Like all other

principles which find immediate outcome in action, this one of brotherly

love had found many ways of taking actual shape. In a few of the smaller

sections of the brethren it had appeared in the form of communism so far

as food and raiment went. In some of the communities in Moravia the

Brethren subscribed to a common fund out of which common meals were

provided; and these payments were compulsory. We have seen how

Rothmann's sermons had produced an extraordinary outburst of benevolence

in Münster before the coming of the prophets. It does not appear that

Matthys' commands went further than the exhortations of Rothmann.

Münster was a beleaguered city. When the siege began it contained about

seventeen hundred men, between five and six thousand women, besides

thousands of children. The largest proportion of these were refugees. It

is evident that numbers could not support themselves, but were

absolutely dependent upon the charity of their neighbours. The preachers

invited the faithful to give up their money, and what provisions they

could spare to feed the poverty striken. Large numbers thus appealed to

brought all their portable property; others gave part; some refused, and

were denounced publicly. The provisions stored in the monasteries or in

private houses abandoned by their proprietors--were taken for the common

good. When the siege had lasted long, and the enemy were deliberately

starving the inhabitants into surrender, the communism in food became

stricter, as is the case in any beleaguered fortress. No attempt was

ever made to institute a thoroughgoing communism. What existed at first

was simply an abundant Christian charity enforced by public

opinion,[628] and latterly a requisitioning of everything that could be

used to support the whole population of a besieged city.

Jan Matthys did not long survive his coming to Münster. On the evening

of the 4th of April, as he sat at supper in a friend's house, he was

observed to spend long minutes in brooding. At last, sighing heavily, he

was heard to ejaculate, "Loved Father, not my will but Thine be done."

He rose quietly from his seat, shook hands with all his companions,

solemnly kissed each one; then left the house in silence, accompanied by

his wife. Next day with about twenty companions he went out by one of

the gates of the city, fell fiercely on the enemy, was overpowered by

numbers, and received his death-stroke. A religious enthusiast and a

singularly straightforward and courageous man!

His death depressed the defenders of Münster greatly; but they were

rallied by the persuasive eloquence of Jan Bockelson, the favourite

disciple of the dead prophet. It was under the leadership of

Bockelson--Jan of Leyden he was called--that the Town Council of Münster

was abolished; that twelve elders were chosen to rule the people; that

Jan himself became king, and had his Court; that the old miracle plays

were revived, etc. The only one of the many actions of this highly

talented and eloquent young Dutchman which need concern us was the

institution of polygamy, for which he seems to have been almost solely

responsible.

Polygamy is the one dark stain on the Anabaptists of Münster, and one

that is ineffaceable. Not unnaturally, yet quite unjustly, the fact of

its institution has been used continually to blacken the character of

the whole movement. It was an episode, a lamentable one, in the history

of Anabaptism in Münster; it had nothing to do with the brethren outside

the town. The whole question presents difficulties which, with our

present information, cannot be removed. That men whose whole past lives

had been examples of the most correct moral behaviour, and who had been

influenced by deep and earnest religious feelings, should suddenly (for

it was sudden) have given the lie to their own previous teaching and to

the tenets of every separate section of Anabaptism, that they should

have sullied the last few months of an heroic and desperate defence

within a doomed city by the institution of polygamy, is an insoluble

puzzle.[629]

We are not now dependent for our knowledge of the Anabaptist movement

on the writings of embittered opponents, or upon such tainted sources as

confessions of martyrs wrung from them under torture. The diligence of

archæologists has exhumed a long list of writings of the leaders in the

rising. They give us trustworthy accounts of the opinions and teachings

of almost every sect classed under the common name. We know what they

thought about all the more important matters which were in controversy

during the sixteenth century--what they taught about Free Will, Original

Sin, Justification, the Trinity, the Person of Christ, and so on. We

have clear glimpses of the kind of lives they led--a genuinely pious,

self-denying, Christian walk and conversation. Their teaching was often

at variance with the Romanist and the Lutheran doctrinal confessions;

but they never varied from the moral life which all Christians are

called upon to live. Their writings seldom refer to marriage; but when

they do it is always to bear witness to the universal and deeply rooted

Christian sentiment that marriage is a sacred and unbreakable union of

one man with one woman. Nay more, one document has descended to us which

bears testimony to the teaching of the Anabaptists within the

beleaguered city only a few weeks before the proclamation of polygamy.

It is entitled _Bekentones des globens und lebens der gemein Criste zu

Monster_,[630] and was meant to be an answer to calumnies circulated by

their enemies. It contains a paragraph on Marriage which is a clear and

distinct assertion that the only Christian marriage is the unbreakable

union of one man with one woman.[631]

It is true that the Anabaptist thought of "separation," when carried out

in its most extreme way and to its utmost logical consequences, struck a

blow at the sanctity of the marriage tie. All taught that the

"believer," _i.e._ he or she who had been rebaptized, ought to keep

themselves separate from the "world," _i.e._ those who had not submitted

to rebaptism; and in the more extreme sects it was alleged that this

meant that spouses ought not to cohabit with "unbelieving" partners.

This was held and practised among the _Melchiorites_, and was stated in

its extremest form in the Twenty-one Rules sent to Münster by Jan

Matthys by the hand of Bockelson. They contained two prescriptions--one

for the unmarried, which exhorted them only to marry in the Lord;

another for the married, which implies that marriage contracted between

husband and wife before rebaptism ought to be repeated. This meant that

marriages contracted by persons yet "in the world" were not valid, and,

of course, destroyed the sanctity of all marriages outside the circle of

the brethren. But when a _Melchiorite_ at Strassburg, Klaus Frey, whose

wife was not an Anabaptist, carried out the principle to its logical

consequences and married an Anabaptist woman, his "unbelieving" wife

being alive, he was promptly excommunicated.

When the information to be gathered from the various sources is

combined, what took place in Münster seems to have been as follows.

Sometime in July (1534), John Bockelson summoned the preachers, Rothmann

at their head, and the twelve elders to meet him in the _Rathaus_. There

he propounded to them his proposal to inaugurate polygamy, and argued

the matter with them for eight successive days. We are told that

Rothmann and the preachers opposed the scheme in a determined manner.

The arguments used by the prophet--arguments of the flimsiest

nature--have also been recorded. He dwelt on the necessity of accepting

certain biblical expressions in their most literal sense, and in giving

them their widest application. He insisted especially on the command of

God, _Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth_; he brought

forward the example of the patriarchs and other examples of polygamy

from the Old Testament; he went the length of saying that when St. Paul

insisted that bishops must be husbands of one wife, the phrase implied

that all who were not bishops were free to take more than one; he dwelt

on the special conditions existing among the population within the

town,--the number of male refugees, either unmarried or who had left

their wives behind them in the places from which they had fled; the

disproportionate number of women (more than three women for every

man),--and the difficulties thereby created to prevent them from obeying

the command of God to be fruitful and increase; and he urged that in

their present condition the command of God could only be obeyed by means

of polygamy.

In the end he brought preachers and elders round to his opinion; and in

spite of opportunities given them for revolt, they remained steadfast to

it. They preached upon its advantages for three days to the people in

the Cathedral square; and it was Rothmann who proclaimed the decree

commanding polygamy to the people. How were the preachers persuaded to

forego their opposition? What one of the threadbare arguments used by

the prophet convinced them? Had he proclaimed polygamy as a divine

command received by him as a prophet, we might imagine the preachers and

people, such was the exalted state of their minds, receiving it with

reverence; but the prophet did not announce that he had received any

such message. He relied solely upon his arguments. They did not convince

all the people. The proclamation of polygamy awoke violent protests upon

the part of the native townsmen, who, headed by a "master-smith" named

Möllenbecke, felt that they would rather hand over the city to the

Bishop's forces than live in a polygamist society, and the revolt was

almost successful; but the preachers stood firm in their support of the

prophet and of his polygamy; and it was the women who were mainly

instrumental in causing the revolt to be a failure.

If we are to judge by the use made of it in Rothmann's

_Restitution_,[632] which defends the introduction of the new marriage

laws, the preachers seem to have been most impressed by the argument

which dwelt on the condition of the city--the large proportion of men

whose wives were in the towns they had abandoned to take refuge in

Münster, and the great multitude of women. It is just possible that it

was this economic argument that affected both them and the prophet

himself. This is the view taken by such writers as Kautsky, Belfort Bax,

and Heath. The explanation is confirmed by the fact that the decree was

more than a proclamation of polygamy. It provided that _all_

marriageable men must take wives, and that _all_ women must be under the

care of a husband. The laws against sexual irregularity were as strong

during the reign of polygamy as before its introduction. But there is

this to be said against it, that the town of Münster, notwithstanding

its abnormal conditions, was singularly pure in life, and that polygamy,

so far from improving the moral condition, made it distinctly worse.

Detmer, whose opinions are always worthy of respect, believes than Jan

of Leyden had fallen violently in love with the young, beautiful, and

intellectual Divara, the widow of Jan Matthys, and that, as he could not

marry her apart from polygamy, he persuaded his preachers and elders to

consent to his proposals. His wonderful magnetic influence overbore

their better judgment.

What is evident is that the decree of polygamy was suddenly conceived

and forced upon the people. If Jan of Leyden[633] took no share in its

proclamation, he set the people an example of obedience. He promptly

married Divara as soon as it was lawful to do so. He used the ordinance

to strengthen his position. His other wives--he had sixteen in all--were

the daughters or near relations of the leaders in Münster. There is

evidence to show that his own character deteriorated rapidly under the

new conditions of life.

The siege of Münster went on during all these months. The Bishop's

soldiers attempted several assaults, and were always beaten back. They

seem latterly to have relied on the power of hunger. The sufferings of

the citizens during the later weeks were terrible. At length Heinrich

Gresbeck, deserting to the besiegers' camp, offered to betray the city

to its enemies. He showed them, by plans and models in clay, how to get

through the defences, and himself prepared the way for the Bishop's

soldiers to enter. The Anabaptists gathered for one last desperate

defence in the market-place, under the leadership of Bernardin

Knipperdolling and Bernard Krechting, with Rothmann by their side. When

the band was reduced to three hundred men, they capitulated on promise

of safe-conduct to leave the town. It is needless to say that the

bargain was not kept. Rothmann was believed to have perished in the

market-place. The city was given over to pillage, and the streets were

soon strewn with dead bodies. Then a court was established to try the

Anabaptist prisoners. The first woman to suffer was the fair young

Divara. She steadfastly refused to abjure, and met her fate in her own

queenly way. No man who had been in any way prominent during the siege

was allowed to escape death. Jan Bockelson, Bernardin Knipperdolling,

and Bernard Krechting were reserved to suffer the most terrible tortures

that the diabolical ingenuity of mediæval executioners could devise. It

was long believed that Rothmann had escaped, and that he had got away to

Rostock or to Lübeck; more than one person was arrested on the suspicion

of being the famous preacher of Münster--"a short, dark man, with

straight brown hair," was his description in the Lübeck handbills.

The horrible fate of Münster did not destroy the indomitable

Anabaptists. Menno Simons (b. 1496 or 1505 at Witmarsum, a village near

Franecker), "a man of integrity, mild, accommodating, patient of

injuries, and so ardent in his piety as to exemplify in his own life the

precepts he gave to others," spent twenty-five laborious years in

visiting the scattered Anabaptist communities and uniting them in a

simple brotherly association. He purged their minds of the apocalyptic

fancies taught by many of their later leaders under the influence of

persecution, inculcated the old ideas of non-resistance, of the evils of

State control over the Church, of the need of personal conversion, and

of adult baptism as its sign and seal. From his labours have come all

the modern Baptist Churches.

CHAPTER III.

SOCINIANISM.[634]

The fathers of the Socinian Church were the two Sozzini, uncle and

nephew, Lelio and Fausto, both natives of the town of Siena.

The uncle, Lelio Sozzini (b. 1525), was by profession a lawyer. He was a

man of irreproachable moral life, a Humanist by training, a student of

the classics and also of theology. He was thoroughly dissatisfied with

the condition of the Romish Church, and early began to entertain grave

doubts about some of its leading doctrinal positions. He communicated

his views to a select circle of friends. Notwithstanding the precautions

he had taken, he became suspected. Cardinal Caraffa had persuaded Pope

Paul III. to consent to the reorganisation of the Inquisition in 1542,

and Italy soon became a very unsafe place for any suspected person.

Lelio left Siena in 1547, and spent the remaining portion of his life in

travelling in those lands which had accepted the Lutheran or the

Reformed faith. He made the acquaintance of all the leading Protestant

theologians, including Melanchthon and Calvin. He kept up an extensive

correspondence with them, representing his own personal theological

opinions in the form of questions which he desired to have solved for

him. From Calvin's letters we can learn that the great theologian had

grave doubts about the moral earnestness of his Italian correspondent,

and repeatedly warned him that he was losing hold on the saving facts of

heart religion.

All the while Sozzini seems to have made up his mind already on all the

topics introduced into his correspondence, and to have been

communicating his views, on pledge of secrecy, to the small communities

of Italian refugees who were settled in Switzerland. He can scarcely be

blamed for this secretiveness; toleration, as the sad example of the

burning of Servede had shown, was not recognised to be a Christian

principle among the Churches of the Reformation. Lelio died at Zurich in

1562 without having published his opinions, and without his neighbours

and hosts being aware of his real theological position.

He bequeathed all his property, including his books and his manuscripts,

to his nephew, Fausto, who had remained at Siena. This nephew was the

founder of the Socinian Church.

Fausto Sozzini (b. 1539) was, like his uncle, a man of irreproachable

life, a lawyer, a diligent and earnest student, fond of theology, and of

great force of character. How early he had come to think as his uncle

had done, is unknown. Report affirms that after he had received his

uncle's books and papers, and had given sufficient time to their study,

he left Italy, visited the places where Lelio had gathered small

companies of secret sympathisers, to confirm them in the faith. His

uncle had visited Poland twice, and Fausto went there in 1579. He found

that the anti-Trinitarians there had no need to conceal their opinions.

The Transylvanian Prince, Stephen Báthory, protected them, and they had

in the town of Krakau their own church, school, and printing-press. But

the sect as a whole was torn by internal divisions. Fausto bent his

whole energies to overcome these differences.

Before his arrival in Poland he had published two books, which are

interesting because they show the pathway by which Fausto arrived at his

theological conclusions. He started not with the doctrines of the

Trinity or of the Person of Christ, but with the doctrine of the

Atonement--a fact to be kept in mind when the whole Socinian system of

theology is examined.

He believed that the real cause of the divisions which wasted the sect

was that the Polish Unitarians were largely Anabaptists. They insisted

that no one could be a recognised member of the community unless he was

rebaptized. They refused to enroll Fausto Sozzini himself, and excluded

him from the Sacrament of the Supper, because he would not submit to

rebaptism. They declared that no member of their communities could enter

the magistracy, or sue in a civil court, or pay a war tax. They

disagreed on many small points of doctrine, and used the ban very freely

against each other. Sozzini saw that he could not hope to make any

progress in his attempts to unite the Unitarians unless he was able to

purge out this Anabaptist leaven. His troubles can be seen in his

correspondence, and in some of his smaller tracts in the first volume of

the _Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum_.[635] In spite of the rebuffs he met

with, he devoted all his energies to the thankless task of furthering

union, and in the end of his days he had the satisfaction of seeing that

he had not laboured in vain. Shortly before his death, a synod held at

Krakau (1603) declared that rebaptism was not necessary for entrance

into a Unitarian community. Many of the lesser differences had been got

rid of earlier. The literary activity of Sozzini was enormous: books and

pamphlets flowed from his untiring pen, all devoted to the enforcing or

explaining the Socinian theology. It is not too much to say that the

inner history of the Unitarian communities in Poland from 1579 until his

death in 1604 is contained in his voluminous correspondence. The united

Unitarians of Poland took the name of the _Polish Brethren_; and from

this society what was known as Socinian theology spread through Germany

(especially the Rhineland), Switzerland, and England. Its principles

were not formulated in a creed until 1642, when the _Racovian Catechism_

was published. It was never formally declared to be the standard of the

Unitarian Church, but its statements are universally held to represent

the views of the older Socinians.

Socinianism, unlike the great religious movement under the guidance of

Luther, had its distinct and definite beginning in a criticism of

doctrines, and this must never be forgotten if its true character is to

be understood. We have already seen[636] that there is no trace of any

intellectual difficulties about doctrines or statement of doctrines in

Luther's mind during the supreme crisis in his spiritual history. Its

whole course, from the time he entered the Erfurt convent down to the

publication of the Augsburg Confession, shows that the spiritual revolt

of which he was the soul and centre took its rise from something much

deeper than any mere criticism of the doctrines of the mediæval Church,

and that it resulted in something very much greater than a

reconstruction of doctrinal conceptions. The central thing about the

Protestant Reformation was that it meant a rediscovery of religion as

_faith_, "as a relation between person and person, higher therefore,

than all reason, and living not upon commands and hopes, but on the

power of God, and apprehending in Jesus Christ the Lord of heaven and

earth as Father."[637] The Reformation started from this living

experience of the believing Christian, which it proclaimed to be the one

fundamental fact in Christianity--something which could never be proved

by argument, and could never be dissolved away by speculation.

On the contrary, the earliest glimpse that we have of Lelio Sozzini is

his meeting with friends to discuss and cast doubts upon such doctrines

as the Satisfaction of Christ, the Trinity, and others like them.[638]

Socinianism maintained to the end the character with which it came into

being. It was from first to last a criticism and attempted

reconstruction of doctrines.

This is sufficient of itself to discount the usual accounts which

Romanist controversialists give of the Socinian movement, and of its

relation to the Protestant Reformation. They, and many Anglicans who

have no sympathy with the great Reformation movement, are accustomed to

say that the Socinian system of doctrines is the legitimate deduction

from the principles of the Reformation, and courageously carries out the

rationalist conceptions lurking in all Protestant theology. They point

to the fact that many of the early Presbyterians of England and Puritans

of America have furnished a large number of recruits to the Unitarian or

Socinian ranks. They assert that the central point in the Socinian

theology is the denial of the Divinity of our Lord, which they allege is

the logical outcome of refusing to accept the Romanist doctrine of the

Mass and the principle of ecclesiastical tradition.

The question is purely historical, and can only be answered by examining

the sources of Socinian theology and tracing it to its roots. The result

of such an examination seems to show that, while Socinianism did

undoubtedly owe much to Humanism, and to the spirit of critical inquiry

and keen sense of the value of the individual which it fostered, most of

its distinguishing theological conceptions are mediæval. It laid hold on

the leading principles of the Scotist-Pelagian theology, which were

extremely popular in the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth

centuries, and carried them out to their logical consequences. In fact,

most of the theological principles of Socinian theology are more akin to

those of the Jesuit dogmatic-which is the prolongation of Scotism into

modern times--than they are to the theology of Luther or of Calvin. It

is, of course, to be remembered that by discarding the authority of the

Church the Socinians are widely separated from both Scotists and

Jesuits. Still the roots of Socinian theology are to be found in the

Scotist doctrines of God and of the Atonement, and these two doctrines

are their starting-point, and not the mere negation of the Divinity of

Christ.

In three most important conceptions the Socinian thought is distinctly

mediæval, and mediæval in the Scotist way.

Their idea of _faith_ is intellectual. It is _assensus_ and not

_fiducia_. "In Scripture," says the Racovian Catechism, "the _faith_ is

most perfectly _taught_, that God exists and that He recompenses. This,

however, and nothing else, is the faith that is to be directed to God

and Christ." It is afterwards described as the way in which one must

adjust himself to the known commands and promises of God; and there is

added that this faith "both makes our obedience more acceptable and

well-pleasing to God, and supplies the defects of our obedience,

provided it be sincere and earnest, and brings it about that we are

justified by God." This is good Scotist doctrine. These theologians were

accustomed to declare that all that the Christian needs is to have faith

in God as the recompenser (_i.e._ to assent to the truth that God does

recompense), and that with regard to all the other doctrines of the

Church implicit faith (_i.e._ submission to the Church's teaching) is

enough. Of course the extreme individualism of the Socinians coloured

their conception of faith; they cannot accept an implicit faith; their

assent to truth must always be explicit; what they assent to must

recommend itself to their individual reason. They cannot assent to a

round of truths which are presented to them by the Church, and receive

them implicitly on the principle of obedience to authority. But what is

to be observed here is that the Socinian type of faith is always assent

to truths which can be stated in propositional form; they have no idea

of that faith which, to use Luther's phrase, throws itself upon God.

They further declare, quite in accordance with Scotist teaching, that

men are justified because of their _actual_ obedience to the _known_

commands and promises of God. There is not a trace of the Evangelical

attitude. The accordance with Scotist theology descends to very minute

particulars, did space permit to trace it.

The Socinian conception of _Scripture_ corresponds to their idea of

faith. The two thoughts of Scripture and saving faith, as has been

already said,[639] always correspond in mediæval theology they are

primarily intellectual and propositional; in Reformation thinking they

are, in the first instance, experimental and personal. The Socinian

conception allies itself with the mediæval, and discards the Reformation

way of regarding both faith and Scripture. With the Socinians as with

mediæval theologians, Scripture is the divine source of information

about doctrines and morals; they have no idea of Scripture as a means of

grace, as the channel of a personal communion between God and His

trusting people. But here as elsewhere the new individualism of the

Socinians compels them to establish both the authority and the dogmatic

contents of Scripture in a way different from their mediæval

predecessors. They had rejected altogether the authority of the Church,

and they could not make use of the thought to warrant either the

authority of Scripture or a correct interpretation of its contents. In

the place of it they put what they called _reason_. "The use of right

reason (_rectæ rationis_) is great in things which pertain to salvation,

since without it, it is impossible either to grasp with certainty the

authority of Scripture, or to understand those things that are contained

in it, or to deduce some things from other things, or, finally, to

recall them to put them to use (_ad usum revocari_)." The _certitudo

sacrarum litterarum_ is accordingly established, or attempted to be

proved, by a series of external proofs which appeal to the ordinary

reasoning faculties of man. The Reformation conception of the Witness of

the Spirit, an essential part of its doctrine of Scripture, finds no

place in Socinian theology. They try to establish the authority of

Scripture without any appeal to faith; the Confessions of the

Reformation do not recognise any infallibility or divine authority

which is otherwise apprehended than by faith. The Reformation and the

Socinian doctrines are miles apart; but the Socinian and the mediæval

approach each other closely. It is somewhat difficult to know what books

the older Socinians recognise as their rule of faith. They did not

accept the Canon of the mediæval Church. They had no difficulty about

the New Testament; but the references to the Old Testament in the

Racovian Catechism are very slight: its authority is guaranteed for them

by the references to it in the New Testament.

When we turn to the Socinian statements about _God_, and to their

assertions about the _nature and meaning of the Work of Christ_, we find

the clearest proof of their mediæval origin. The Scotist theology is

simply reproduced, and cleared of its limitations.

A fundamental conception of God lay at the basis of the whole Scotist

theology. God, it maintained, could best be defined as _Dominium

Absolutum_; man as set over against God they described as an individual

free will. If God be conceived as simply _Dominium Absolutum_, we can

never affirm that God _must_ act in any given way; we may not even say

that He is bound to act according to moral considerations. He is high

above all considerations of any kind. He does not will to act in any way

because it is right; and action is right because God wills to act in

that way. There can be neither metaphysical nor moral necessity in any

of God's actions or purposes. This Scotist idea, that God is the

absolutely arbitrary one, is expressed in the strongest language in the

Racovian Catechism. "It belongs to the nature of God that He has the

right and supreme power to decree whatsoever He wills concerning all

things and concerning us, even in those matters with which no other

power has to do; for example, He can give laws, and appoint rewards and

penalties according to His own judgment, to our thoughts, hidden as

these may be in the innermost recesses of our hearts."

If this thought, that God is simply _Dominium Absolutum_, be applied to

explain the nature and meaning of the work of Christ, of the Atonement,

it follows at once that there can be no real necessity for that work;

for all necessity, metaphysical or moral, is derogatory to the _Dominium

Absolutum_, which is God. If the Atonement has merit in it, that is only

because God has announced that He means to accept the work of Christ as

meritorious, and that He will therefore free men from the burden of sin

on account of what Christ, the Saviour, has done. It is the announced

_acceptation_ of God which makes the work of Christ meritorious. A

_meritorious_ work has nothing in its nature which makes it so. To be

meritorious simply means that the work so described will be followed by

God's doing something in return for its being done, and this only

because God has made this announcement. God could have freed men from

the guilt and punishment due for sin without the work of Christ; He

could have appointed a human mediator if He had so willed it; He might

have pardoned and accepted man as righteous in His sight without any

mediator at all. He could have simply pardoned man without anything

coming between His act of pardon and man's sin. This being the case, the

Scotist theologians argued that it might seem that the work of Christ,

called the Atonement, was entirely superfluous; it is, indeed,

superfluous as far as reason is concerned; it can never be justified on

rational grounds. But, according to the dogmatic tradition of the

Church, confirmed by the circle of the Sacraments, God has selected this

mode of getting rid of the sin and guilt of man. He has announced that

He will _accept_ this work of Christ, Atonement, and therefore the

Scotist theologians declared the Atonement must be believed in and seen

to be the divinely appointed way of salvation. Erasmus satirised the

long arguments and hypotheses of the Scotist theologians when he

enumerated among the questions which were highly interesting to them:

"Could God have taken the form of a woman, a devil, an ass, a gourd, or

a stone? How could a gourd have preached, done miracles, hung on the

Cross?"[640]

It is manifest that this idea of _Dominium Absolutum_ is simply the

conception of the extremest individualism applied to God instead of

being used to describe man. If we treat it anthropomorphically, it comes

to this, that the relation of God to man is that of an infinite

Individual Will set over against a number of finite individual wills. If

this view be taken of the relations between God and man, then God can

never be thought of as the Moral Ruler in a moral commonwealth, but only

as a private individual face to face with other individuals; and the

relations between God and man must be discussed from the standpoint of

private and not of public law. When wrong-doing is regarded under the

scheme of public law, the ruler can never treat it as an injury done to

himself, and which he can forgive because he is of a kindly nature; he

must consider it an offence against the whole community of which he is

the public guardian. On the other hand, when offences are considered

under a scheme of private law, they are simply wrongs done to a private

person who, as an individual, may forgive what is merely a debt due to

himself. In such a case the wrong-doer may be forgiven without

infringing any general moral principle.

The Socinians, following the mediæval Scotist theologians, invariably

applied the principles of private law to the relations between God and

man. God, the _Dominium Absolutum_, the Supreme Arbitrary Will, was

never regarded as the Moral Ruler in a moral commonwealth where subjects

and rulers are constrained by the same moral laws. Sins are simply

private debts due by the individual finite wills to the One Infinite

Will. From such premises the Scotists deduced the conclusion that the

Atonement was unnecessary; there they stopped; they could not say that

there was no such thing as Atonement, for the dogmatic tradition of the

Church prevented them. The Socinians had thrown overboard the thought

of a dogmatic tradition which had to be respected even when it appeared

to be irrational. If the Atonement was not necessary, that meant to them

that it did not exist; they simply carried out the theological premises

of the Scotist-Pelagian mediæval theologians to their legitimate

consequences.

In these three important conceptions--faith, Scripture, the nature of

God, involving the character of His relations to man--the Socinians

belong to a mediæval school of thought, and have no sympathy whatever

with the general principles which inspired Reformation theological

thinking.

But the Socinians were not exclusively mediæval; they owed much to the

Renaissance. This appears in a very marked manner in the way in which

they conceived the very important religious conception of the _Church_.

It is a characteristic of Socinian theology, that the individual

believer is considered without much, if any, reference to the Church or

community of the saved. This separates the Socinians not only from

mediæval Christians, but from all who belonged to the great Protestant

Evangelical movement.

The mediæval Church always regarded itself, and taught men to look to

it, as a religious community which came logically and really before the

individual believer. It presented itself to men as a great society

founded on a dogmatic tradition, possessing the Sacraments, and governed

by an officially holy caste. The pious layman of the Middle Ages found

himself within it as he might have done within one of its great

cathedrals. The dogmatic tradition did not trouble him much, nor did the

worldliness and insincerity often manifested by its official guardians.

What they required of him was implicit faith, which really meant a

decorous external obedience. That once rendered, he was comparatively

free to worship within what was for him a great house of prayer. The

hymns, the prayers, many of the sermons of the mediæval Church, make us

feel that the Institution was for the mediæval Christian the visible

symbol of a wide purpose of God, which embraced his individual life and

guaranteed a repose which he could use in resting on the promises of

God. The records of mediæval piety continually show us that the Church

was etherealised into an assured and historical fellowship of believers

into which the individual entered, and within which he found the

assuring sense of fellowship. He left all else to the professional

guardians of this ecclesiastical edifice. Probably such are the unspoken

thoughts of thousands of devout men and women in the Roman and Greek

communions to-day. They value the Church because it represents to them

in a visible and historical way a fellowship with Christ and His saints

which is the result of His redeeming work.

This thought is as deeply rooted in Reformation as in mediæval piety.

The Reformers felt compelled to protest against the political form which

the mediæval Church had assumed. They conceived that to be a degradation

from its ideal. They saw the manifold abuses which the degradation had

given rise to. But they always regarded visible Christendom as a

religious community called into being by the work of Christ. They had

always before them the thought of the Church of Christ as the fellowship

which logically and really comes _before_ the individual believer, the

society into which the believer is brought; and this conception stood

with them in close and reciprocal connection with the thought that

Jesus, by His work of Atonement, had reconciled men with God, had

founded the Church on that work of His, and, _within_ it had opened for

sinners the way to God. They protested against the political form which

the Church had assumed; they never ceased to cling to the thought of the

Catholic Church Visible which is founded on the redeeming work of

Christ, and within which man finds the way of salvation. They described

this Church in all their creeds and testimonies; they gave the marks

which characterised it and manifested its divine origin; the thought was

an essential part of their theology.

The Socinians never felt the need of any such conception. Jesus was for

them only the teacher of a superior kind of morality detailed in the

commands and promises of God; they looked to Him for that guidance and

impulse towards a moral self-culture which each man can appropriate for

himself without first coming into a society which is the fellowship of

the redeemed. Had they ever felt the burden of sin as the Reformers felt

it, had they ever yearned for such a fellowship with Christ as

whole-hearted personal trust gives, or even for such as comes in the

sense of bodily contact in the Sacrament, had they ever felt the craving

to get in touch with their Lord _somehow_ or _anyhow_, they would never

have been able to do without this conception of a Church Catholic of

some kind or other. They never seemed to feel the need of it. The

Racovian Catechism was compelled to make some reference to the kingly

and priestly offices of Christ. It owed so much to the New Testament.

Its perfunctory sentences show that our Lord was for the Socinians

simply a Prophet sent from God to proclaim a superior kind of morality.

His highest function was to communicate knowledge to men, and perhaps to

teach them by example how to make use of it. They had no conception that

Jesus came to _do_ something for His people, and that what He _did_ was

much more valuable than what He said, however precious that might be.

They were content to become His scholars, the scholars of a teacher sent

from God, and to become members of His school, where His opinions were

known and could be learned. They had no idea that they needed to be

saved in the deeper sense of that word. They have no need, therefore,

for the conception of the Church; what they did need and what they have

is the thought of a school of opinions to which they could belong.[641]

In this one thought they were equally far apart from the circle of

mediæval and of Reformation theological thinking. In most of their other

theological conceptions their opinions were inherited from mediæval

theology. They had little or no connection with Reformation theology or

with what that represents--the piety of the mediæval Church.

BOOK VI.

_THE COUNTER-REFORMATION._

CHAPTER I.

THE NECESSITY OF A REFORMATION OF SOME SORT UNIVERSALLY ADMITTED.[642]

In the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries the

urgent need for a Reformation of the Church was recognised by all

thoughtful men everywhere throughout western Europe, and was loudly

expressed by almost everyone outside the circle of the influence of the

Roman Curia. Statesmen and men of letters, nobles and burghers, great

Churchmen as well as monks and parish priests--all bewailed the

condition of the organised Christian life, and most of them recognised

that the unreformed Papacy was the running sore of Europe. The protest

against the state of religion was not confined to individual outcries;

it found expression in the States-General of France, in Diet of Germany,

and in the Parliament of England.

The complaints took many forms. One of the most universal was that the

clergy, especially those of higher rank, busied themselves with

everything save the one thing which specially belonged to them--the cure

of souls. They took undue share in the government of the countries of

Europe, and ousted the nobles from their legitimate places of rule.

Clerical law-courts interfered constantly with the lives of burghers;

and the clergy protested that they were not bound to obey the ordinary

laws of the land. A brawling priest could plead the "benefit of clergy";

but a layman who struck a priest, no matter what the provocation, was

liable to the dread penalty of excommunication. Their "right of

sanctuary" was a perpetual encouragement to crime.[643] They and their

claims menaced the quiet life of civilised towns and States.

Constitutional lawyers, trained by Humanism to know the old imperial law

codes of Theodosius and Justinian, traced these evils back to the

interference of Canon Law with Civil, and that to the universal and

absolute dominion of a papal absolutism. The Reformation desired,

floated before the minds of statesmen as a reduction more or less

thorough of the papal absolutism, and of the control exercised by the

Pope and the clergy over the internal affairs of the State, even its

national ecclesiastical regulations. The historical fact that the

loosely formed kingdoms of the Middle Ages were being slowly transformed

into modern States, perhaps furnished unconsciously the basis for this

idea of a Reformation.

The same thought took another and more purely ecclesiastical form. The

papal absolutism meant frequently that Italians received preferments all

over western Europe, and supplanted the native clergy in the more

important and richer benefices. Why should the Churches of Spain,

England, or France be ruled by Italian prelates, whether resident or

non-resident? It was universally felt that Roman rule meant a lack of

spirituality, and was a source of religious as well as of national

degradation. Men longed for a change, clergy as well as laity; and the

thought of National Churches really independent of Rome, if still

nominally under the Western Obedience, filled the minds of many

Reformers.[644]

The early mediæval Church had been a stern preacher of righteousness,

had taught the barbarous invaders of Europe lessons of pure living,

honesty, sobriety; it had insisted that the clergy ought to be examples

as well as preachers; Canon Law was full of penalties ordained to check

clerical vices. But it was notorious that the higher clergy, whose duty

it was to put the laws in execution, were themselves the worst

offenders. How could English Bishops enforce laws against incontinence,

when Wolsey, Archbishop, Cardinal, and Legate, had made his illegitimate

daughter the Abbess of Salisbury? What hope was there for strict

discipline when no inconsiderable portion of a Bishop's annual income

came from money paid in order to practise clerical incontinence in

security? Reformers demanded a reformation of clerical morals, beginning

with the Bishops and descending through all grades to monks and

nuns.[645]

Humanism brought forward yet another conception of reform. It demanded

either a thorough repudiation of the whole of Scholastic Theology and a

return to the pure and simple "Christian Philosophy" of the Church of

the first six centuries, or such a relaxation of that Scholastic as

would afford room for the encouragement of the New Learning.

Lastly, a few pious souls, with the clear vision of God which purity and

simplicity of heart and mind give, declared that the Church had lost

religion itself, and that the one reformation needed was the rediscovery

of religion and the gracious enlightenment of the individual heart and

conscience.[646]

The first conception of a reformation which looked for a cure of the

evils which all acknowledged to the supremacy of the secular over

ecclesiastical rule, may be seen in the reformation of the local

Churches of Brandenburg and Saxony under Frederick of Brandenburg and

William of Saxony. Archbishop Cranmer believed that the only way of

removing the evils under which the Church of the later Middle Ages was

groaning was to subordinate the ecclesiastical to the secular powers.

The reformation of the Church of England under Henry VIII. carried out

this idea to practical issue, but involved with it a nominal as well as

a real destruction of the political unity of the mediæval Church. His

actions were carefully watched and admired by many of the German

Romanist Princes, who made more than one attempt, about the year 1540,

to create a National Church in Germany under secular guidance, and

remaining true to mediæval doctrine, hierarchy, and ritual.[647] The

thought of a reformation of this kind was so familiar to men of the

sixteenth century, that the probability of Henry VIII.'s separation from

Rome was matter of discussion long before it had entered into the mind

of that monarch.[648]

CHAPTER II.

THE SPANISH CONCEPTION OF A REFORMATION.[649]

§ 1. _The Religious Condition of Spain._

The country, however, where all these various conceptions of what was

meant by a reformation of the Church were combined in one definite

scheme of reform which was carried through successfully, was Spain. It

is to that country one must turn to see what mediævalists, who were at

the same time reformers, wished to effect, and what they meant by a

reformation of the Church. It included a measure of secular control, a

revival and enforcement of all canonical laws framed to purify the

morals of the clergy, a measured accommodation with Humanism, a steady

adherence to the main doctrines of the Scholastic Theology, the

preservation in their entirety of the hierarchy, the rites and the

usages of the mediæval Church, and a ruthless suppression of heresy.

Spain furnishes the example of what has been called the Catholic

Reformation.