REFORM 



REFORMATION 



611 



that which had been given to the boroughs ; but 

 the Lords refused to pass any bill for extending the 

 franchise until the details of the government scheme 

 of redistribution were before them. The action 

 of the Lords led to considerable agitation in the 

 autumn recess. The bill was re-introduced in an 

 autumn session ; and the question at issue between 

 the two Houses was settled by a very remarkable 

 act of compromise. The government agreed not 

 only to communicate their plan of redistribution to 

 the leaders of the opposition, but to settle the 

 details by mutual arrangement ; Lord Salisbury 

 ami Sir S. Northcote attended meetings of the 

 cabinet, and conferred with ministers for that 

 purpose. The results of this conference were 

 >ml)odied in a series of bills which were passed 

 into law before the general election of 1885. Two 

 point- in the measures of 1884-85 have been some- 

 what severely criticised the adoption of single- 

 memlier districts, a mode of distribution which 

 suppresses the opinions of all local minorities (see 

 REPRESENTATION ), and the addition of twelve 

 members to the House of Commons, which was 

 already too large a body for deliberative purposes. 



At the end of the reign of George III. there were, 

 in a population of 2-2,000,000, only 440,000 voters. 

 The Reform Bill of 1832 added less than 500,000 

 voters to the electorate ; the reform of 1867-68 

 increased the electorate from 1,136,000 to 2,448,000. 

 At the passing of the measures of 1884-85 the 

 electorate had by natural growth risen to about 

 3,000,000 ; and the Act of 1884 added at once about 

 2,000,000 more to the list of voters. Of the new 

 electors, about 1,300,000 were in England and 

 Wales, 200,000 in Scotland, and 400,000 in Ireland. 



See the articles PARLIAMENT, CHARTISM, GLADSTONE, 

 ItOBSELL (EARL); May's ConttitiUianal Hittory ; and 

 the speeches of Gladstone, Bright, Disraeli, ic. 



Reformation. The religious revolution of 

 the 16th century, known as the Reformation, is 

 the greatest event in the history of civilisation 

 since Paganism gave place to Christianity as the 

 faith of the leading nations of the world. It marks 

 the supreme importance of this revolution that the 

 which preceded and the age which followed it 

 I ."long to two different phases of the human spirit. 

 With the Reformation begins what is distinctively 

 known as Modern Europe, while the epoch that 

 preceded it bears the equally distinctive designa- 

 tion of the Middle Ayes. As a revolution in which 

 all the countries of western Europe were more or 

 less directly involved, the subject of the Reforma- 

 tion has necessarily been treated in the different 

 accounts of these countries. lu the articles on 

 Luther, Charles V., Henry VIII., Calvin, Knox, 

 and others further details will be found regarding 

 the aims and methods of the revolution in the 

 various countries where it declared itself. Here, 

 therefore, it will be sufficient to indicate briefly 

 the general causes which produced it, the special 

 course and character it took among the different 

 peoples, and its chief results for the human spirit 

 at large. 



The central fact of the Refonnation was the 

 detachment from papal Christianity of the nations 

 distinguished by the general name of Protestant. 

 By this severance an order of things came to an 

 if 1 under which Christian Europe liad been con- 

 tent to exist from the close of the 8th century. 

 From the year 800, when, by a mutual under- 

 standing of their respective functions, Charle- 

 magne was crowned emperor of the Romans by 

 Pope Leo III., western Europe had come to regard 

 the papacy as the essential condition of individual 

 and corporate life, as prime a necessity in human 

 affairs as the sun in the course of nature. Thus 

 conceived, the power of the church underlay nil 

 human relations. It was the consecration of the 



church that constituted the family ; the church 

 defined the relations of rulers and their subjects, 

 and the church was the final court of appeal on 

 the ultimate questions of human life and destiny. 

 In the nature of things such a power could never 

 be realised as it was ideally conceived. Yet during 

 the lltli and 12th centuries, the period when the 

 power of the popes was most adequate to their 

 claims, they undoubtedly went far to make the 

 idea a reality. But the energies of the human 

 spirit were bound sooner or later to issue in 

 developments with which medurval conceptions 

 were fundamentally irreconcilable. By the 13th 

 century, along every line of man's activity, there 

 were already protests, conscious and unconscious, 

 against the system typified in the pope at Rome. 



The most remarkable of these protests was the 

 order of ideas associated with the name of Joachim 

 of Flora in Calabria (died 1202). Under the name 

 of the ' Eternal Gospel ' ( used for the first time in 

 1254) these ideas ran a course which for a time 

 seriously threatened the existence of the mediaeval 

 church. The new teaching struck at the very root 

 of the papal system, for its essence was that the 

 hour had come when a new dispensation, that of 

 the Holy Spirit, should supersede the provisional 



fospel delivered by Christ. During the second 

 alt of the 13th anil the first half of the 14th cen- 

 tury the influence of these ideas is traceable in 

 every country of Christendom, and it was only the 

 unflinching action of the church that postponed its 

 disintegration for other three centuries. The 

 numerous sects which either sprang from or were 

 quickened by this movement speak clearly to the 

 revolutionary fever that had seized on men a spirits 

 and was impelling them to other ideals than the 

 traditions of Rome. Mainly the offspring of the 

 third order of St Francis, these sects swarmed 

 throughout every Christian country under the names 

 of Beguins, Beghards, Fratricelli, Flagellants, 

 Lollards, Apostolic Brethren, &c., and everywhere 

 spread discontent with the existing church. Even 

 John Knox ( in answer to a letter by James Tyrie, a 

 Scottish Jesuit) claims Joachim of Flora as an ally 

 in the work which it was the labour of his own life 

 to achieve the ruin of the papacy, and the pro- 

 motion of what he deemed a purer gospel. 



Simultaneously with this manifestation of re- 

 volutionary feeling there were tendencies in the 

 sphere of pure thought in essential antagonism to 

 the teaching of the church. The labour of the 

 thinkers of the middle ages was to reconcile faith, 

 as inculcated by religious authority, with human 

 reason as they found it embodied in the accessible 

 writings of Aristotle. In the 13th century, how- 

 ever, the Arabic texts of Aristotle, and notably that 

 of the great commentator Averrhoes, made their 

 way into the Christian schools, and thenceforward 

 a leaven of scepticism was a present element in all 

 the universities of Europe. As the result of the 

 teaching of Averrhoes, a name of the most sinister 

 import to every true son of the church, material- 

 ism and pantheism l>ecame common creeds among 

 thinkers, and the notion spread even among in- 

 telligent laymen that Christianity was not the 

 absolute thing the church had taught them to 

 believe. In Dante's (died 1321 ) fierce exclamation 

 that the knife is the one reply to him who denies 

 the immortality of the soul we have the outburst 

 of a passionate faith in presence of a widespread 

 libertinism of thought. 



But the most serious menace against the integrity 

 of the papal system lay in the political development 

 of Europe during the last three centuries of the 

 middle ages. As the countries of western Europe 

 became more and more individualised, their peoples 

 grew every year into a fuller consciousness of dis- 

 tinct national interests and national ideals. While 



