REFORMATION 



613 



with pope and priest, and in this had lain the 

 essential principle of mediaeval Christianity. By 

 the new principle Luther made the pope no longer 

 an indispensable factor in individual or corporate 

 life, and thus initiated a new phase in the develop- 

 ment of society. As was to be expected, this prin- 

 ciple, so organic in its working, cleft the German 

 nation in twain, and gave rise to a struggle which 

 did not close till more than a century after the 

 death of Luther himself. Luther's attack on the 

 sale of indulgences ( 1517), the burning of the papal 

 bull (1520), Luther's condemnation by the Emperor 

 Charles V. at the diet of Worms (1521), his tem- 

 porary triumph at the first diet of Spires in 1526 

 (the beginning of modern Germany, according to 

 Kaiike), the confession of the Protestant faith at 

 Augsburg (1530), are the outstanding events in 

 the contest closed by the peace of Augsburg in 

 1555, nine years after Luther's own death, but 

 again renewed in the disastrous Thirty Years' War 

 ( 1619-48), and finally settled by the peace of West- 

 phalia (1648). 



The religious revolt of Germany left no country 

 of Christendom unmoved. Before the 16th century 

 had closed the bulk of the Teutonic peoples had 

 followed her example and broken with the papacy. 

 Under one aspect, indeed, the Reformation may 

 almost be regarded as a Teutonic revolt against 

 the domination of the Latin races. Between 1525 

 and 1560 Denmark and Sweden, taking the occasion 

 of a political revolution, both declared for Protes- 

 tantism; and in 1581 the United Provinces defini- 

 tively threw olF their double allegiance to Spain 

 and the pope. But it is more important to trace 

 the course of the revolution in the great powers of 

 the West. 



In Spain heresy of all kinds had no chance of 

 finding a home. In its terrible Inquisition, reor- 

 ganised in 1478, it had an institution ready made 

 for effectually dealing with all attempts at reform 

 or revolution. Luther found followers in Spain as 

 in other countries ; but they were literally extin- 

 guished liefore their voices could be heard, and of 

 all the great powers Spain profited least by the 

 quickening spirit of the Information. 



Much more interesting and important is the 

 history of religious reform in France. Between 

 1520 and 1530, the period of Luther's greatest 

 activity, Imth renaissance and reform found a 

 firm footing in France, and so many circumstances 

 seemed to favour the future of both that for a time 

 it was doubtful with which side the victory would 

 eventually lie. On the one side was the university 

 of Paris, which throughout the middle ages had 

 claimed for itself the right denied to the pope 

 himself of sovereign decree on the truth or falsity 

 of all religious doctrine. As its decrees had in 

 every case the strenuous support of the parliament 

 nf Paris, the university was a formidable force to 

 lie reckoned with by every innovator in studies or 

 religion. In 1519 Luthers dispute with Eck had 

 lieen referred to the doctors of Paris for decision, 

 and their judgment, delayed for two years, had 

 leen the unqualified censure of Luthers position. 

 Thenceforward every advocate of the new religion, 

 and they daily grew in numbers, especially among 

 the middle class, Imth in Paris and in the provinces, 

 was pursued by the unrelenting hate of tlie parlia- 

 ment and the university. On the other hand, the 

 king (Francis I.), eagerly encouraged by his famous 

 cister, Margaret of Navarre, who herself had strong 

 Protestant leanings, was at first disposed to use 

 the new religious movement as a weapon to his 

 hand in his dealings with the court of Rome. In 

 the end Francis saw that separation from Rome 

 meant the disruption of the French nation, and 

 after 1534 he resolutely set himself to the exter- 

 mination of every heretic in his dominions. His 



son and successor, Henry II. (1547-59), carried out 

 this policy with even greater rigour, but in spite of 

 all efforts to suppress them the French Protestants 

 grew into a body formidable alike by their position, 

 wealth, and intelligence. The Huguenot wars, the 

 Ma>sacre of St Bartholomew (1572), and the Edict 

 of Nantes ( 1598) are the outstanding events in this 

 long struggle, which, involving political as well as 

 religious questions of the first importance, threat- 

 ened the very existence of France by suggesting to 

 Philip II. the possibility of annexing the divided 

 country as a province of Spain. By the Edict of 

 Nantes the French Protestants attained a certain 

 measure of religious freedom ; by its revocation in 

 1685 Protestantism was stamped out of the country, 

 and France thus deprived of the noblest elements 

 in its society. 



The religious revolution in Switzerland is second 

 only to that of Germany in its direct influence on 

 the subsequent fortunes of the European nations. 

 In Switzerland we have the case of a double revolt 

 from Rome springing from the same conditions, 

 yet each having a character and an animating soul 

 of its own. At Zurich, as early as 1519, and 

 inde]>enderitly of Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, who, 

 according to Ranke, combined in himself the best 

 elements of renaissance and reform, gave rise to 

 a movement which split the Swiss cantons into 

 two hostile sections, and issued in the peace of 

 Cappel ( 1531 ), which permitted to each canton the 

 choice of its own form of faith. More important 

 than the movement of Zwingli at Zurich is that 

 associated with Calvin and Geneva. As in almost 

 every other case of revolt, political considerations 

 wrought with religious zeal in the breach of Geneva 

 with Rome. Before 1530 the town had received 

 the new religion from French refugees, who thus 

 gave its peculiar character to the creed eventually 

 associated with Calvin and Geneva. But it was in 

 the successful effort of the town in throwing off the 

 yoke of the Catholic Dukes of Savoy (1534) that 

 it found itself forced to join the great Protestant 

 schism, and to fashion a civil and religious polity 

 compatible with an independent corporate life. It 

 was in the accomplishment of this task that Calvin 

 proved himself the great consolidator of the ten- 

 dencies that underlay the Protestant movement. 

 Inspired by Calvin, it was the pre-eminent destiny 

 of Geneva at once to produce a reasoned civil and 

 religious creed and a type of Christian believer 

 that offered a solid front against the vast powers 

 still at the command of the Roman see, and 

 assured to Protestantism its own independent 

 course in the history of mankind. 



In 1532 the schism of England from Rome also 

 became an accomplished fact. In this result had 

 issued the negotiations of Henry VIII. with Pope 

 Clement VII. for his divorce from Catharine of 

 Aragon. But the view summed up in Gray's line, 

 ' And gospel light first dawned from Bullen s eyes,' 

 implies a totally inadequate recognition of the 

 many forces that went to produce the English 

 Reformation. The king's divorce was the mere 

 occasion of what must sooner or later have been 

 the only solution of England's relations with the 

 popedom. In England all the forces, in greater or 

 less degree, were at work which had produced the 

 religious revolution in Germany. As in Germany, 

 the church alike in its teaching and practice no 

 longer represented the highest consciousness of the 

 nation. It has of late been shown that its degra- 

 dation was far from being so general or so complete 

 as the official reports of Henry had seemed to 

 prove ; yet the state to which it had come was 

 clearly such as to lend some countenance to the 

 most drastic measures against it. By the end of 

 the 15th century, also, the Renaissance, which was 

 everywhere the solvent of tradition, had found its 



