STATE RELIGION 



693 



conceptions of divine things was a treason which 

 even a Socrates must expiate by his death. In 

 more grim and serious Italy the mingled native 

 and Greek theology became characteristically trans- 

 muted into downright law. Offences against the 

 state religion were supposed to bring down on 

 army and navy, on agriculture and commerce, 

 the anger of a justly indignant heaven. And as 

 for any such unheard-of novelty as a catholic 

 or world-wide religion, unacknowledged as its 

 own even by any subject state still more, for 

 any preposterous claim to worship according to 

 each man's private conscience away with people 

 possessed of such ideas ' to the lions ! ' For Chris- 

 tians, therefore, and all state heretics of that sort 

 there was but one answer to be made, non licet esse 

 voa, you have no right to exist, you have placed 

 yourselves outside the protection of the Roman 

 empire. 



With the conversion of Constantino (313 A.D.), 

 of coarse, all this was entirely changed ; but it 

 was only changed by the parts being reversed. 

 The state religion had now become Christian ; and 

 paganism was ere long held to have no right to 

 exist. It is true that with Christianity a new 

 and gentler spirit had found entrance, and that a 

 day might certainly be foreseen when men would 

 cease to persecute and to be persecuted for religion ; 

 but that day did not, in fact, come for more than 

 a thousand years. Under the imperial legislation 

 of Justinian the orthodox alone possessed the full 

 privileges of citizenship. And even when the 

 Roman empire was broken up at all points by the 

 irruption of the barbarians, and everything else 

 became changed, still the old-world system of 

 state religions remained unchanged. The Moham- 

 medans, who broke in from the south-east, have 

 always regarded intolerance as a sacred duty; 

 and the Teutonic tribes, who broke in from the 

 north-east, accepted as a matter of course, along 

 with Christianity, its traditional outward forms. 

 Thug, Clovis (500) established the new religion 

 in his Prankish kingdom; Charlemagne (800) 

 even drove the Saxons to conversion at the point of 

 the sword, and with his ' missi,' or royal com- 

 missioners, inspected ami managed church affairs 

 throughout his wide dominions ; and the English 

 Heptarchy, gradually blended into unity, combined 

 in intimate connection the authorities of church 

 and state, without any suspicion that they might 

 one day turn against each other. 



But the dangers of such a feeble patchwork of 

 state religions, covering the face of Europe, were 

 obvious and manifold. There was first the insidi- 

 ous danger of 'Simony' i.e. of a corrupt use of 

 patronage by the laity. Then there was the danger 

 of violent destruction of small state-churches in 

 detail by the fierce and greedy barons of the neigh- 

 lionrhood ; and lastly, there was the yet larger 

 jieril looming in the future, that each kingdom 

 might finally set up a state religion for itself, and 

 thus hopelessly break up the unity of Christendom. 

 To meet and cope with all these dangers some 

 powerful churchman of large ideas was urgently 

 required, and such a man providentially appeared 

 (1050) in Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII.). 

 Under his vigorous rule all the existing state 

 religions of Europe were crushed and cramped 

 together into a sort of imperial religion ; and for 

 two centuries (till 1300) it seemed as though one 

 all-embracing empire religion were destined to 

 swallow up and destroy all the minor state 

 religions of the world. But when the vast win- 

 waged by the papacy in the Crusades had ended in 

 ignominious failure, and when the insensate am- 

 bition of men like Innocent III. and Boniface VIII. 

 had roused both France and England to resistance, 

 that great movement of return to state religions 



(in the proper sense) began which culminated at 

 last in the Reformation. And then the effect of 

 prolonged and obstinate resistance to all change, 

 and of desperate recourse to fire and sword and 

 fraud and treachery, in maintenance of a despotic 

 system in the church which the free strong nations 

 of the north would not endure, was seen in a general 

 break-up of Christendom. 



The first thought naturally was to revert to the 

 previous long-tried system of state religion. But 

 when that seemed reduced to an absurdity in the 

 Augsburg settlement (1555) of citjus regio ejus 

 religio making the church an aristocracy instead 

 of a despotism, and every petty duke anil count a 

 pope in his own dominions the tormented nations 

 had recourse to the sword. Germany was torn to 

 pieces and ruined for two hundred years, France 

 was steeped to the lips in blood, Spain and Austria 

 were silenced, the Netherlands thrown into revolt, 

 and England plunged into her great rebellion, till 

 out of the seething strife between papal religion 

 and state religion there gradually emerged a third 

 form democratic religion. It began, naturally 

 enough, in Switzerland at Zurich and Geneva. 

 It permeated and honeycombed, to their ultimate 

 downfall, the despotisms in church and state which 

 ' concordats ' had conspired to establish ; till at 

 last the various acts of toleration in England, the 

 secular 'Constitution' of the United States, and 

 the French revolutionary enactments of 1789 and 

 1830 completed the transformation of every state 

 religion throughout Europe into a congeries of 

 virtually free churches sometimes with, some- 

 times without, a survival from the past in the 

 shape of a central establishment fully tolerating 

 all its neighbours. Thus, at the present moment, 

 England and Scotland retain,, along with absolute 

 toleration for every other form of religion, modi- 

 fied state churches ; while Ireland like the United 

 States has none. France accepts, as a religion 

 recognised and maintained by the state, every 

 communion which numbers 100,000 adherents 

 those at present receiving state-payment being 

 Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and (in 

 Algeria) Mohammedans. In Belgium the state 

 does not interfere with the internal affairs of any 

 religious body, but it subsidises the Roman 

 Catholics, the Protestants, and the Jews. In the 

 German empire there is universal toleration, but 

 the various states subsidise their religious com- 

 munities in various ways. In Denmark there is 

 full toleration for all, but the state religion is 

 Lutheranism ; and the same arrangement prevails 

 in Sweden and Norway. 



The most prominent example of a surviving state 

 religion, with intolerance for all other forms of 

 faith, is to be found in Russia, where the orthodox 

 Greek Church reigns supreme and dissent is severely 

 persecuted. In Austria-Hungary there is liberty 

 for all, hut the recognised religions are those of 

 the Roman Catholics (the dominant church), the 

 Greeks, the Protestants, the Armenians, and the 

 Jews. Even in Greece there is full toleration, 

 though the state religion is that of the Greek 

 Church. In Italy, ' by the fundamental law of 

 the kingdom' in 1870, the state religion is Roman 

 Catholic, but there is now complete toleration for 

 other forms of faith. In Spain and Portugal the 

 state religion is also Roman Catholic, and toleration 

 is very limited. In Holland Protestants, Roman 

 Catholics, and Jews are subsidised by the state, 

 but there is toleration for all. In Turkey the 

 state religion is Mohammedanism. In Switzer- 

 land there is absolute freedom for every form of 

 faith. On the whole it would seem that the system 

 of state religion is, by the advancing tide of 

 democracy, threatened with extinction ; but that 

 some countries retain it, as an axis round which 



