REFORMATION 



653 1 



REFORMATION 



exceedingly strained ; therefore he 

 took matters into his own hands, 

 and issued on his own authority 

 the terms of a compromise known 

 as the interim of Augsburg, which 

 was satisfactory to no one. A re- 

 action set in, and in 1552 the 

 emperor without warning found 

 himself almost deprived of author- 

 ity, and was obliged to submit to 

 the treaty of Passau, which in 1555 

 was confirmed by the pacification 

 of Augsburg, intended to estab- 

 lish a permanent religious peace 

 throughout Germany, having as 

 its basis the principles that the 

 religion in each state should be 

 the religion of its prince, and that 

 toleration should be granted to 

 the Lutheran worship. For various 

 reasons the settlement did not 

 prove permanent, but it secured 

 peace for more than 60 years. 

 Reformation in Switzerland 



In Germany the struggle had 

 practically been one between the 

 adherents of the Lutheran confes- 

 sion and the adherents of the papal 

 authority on questions of religion. 

 But it had been bound up with a 

 constitutional resistance to the 

 emperor's political design for cen- 

 tralising the control of the empire 

 by establishing his own suprem- 

 acy. It had been further compli- 

 cated by the traditional antago- 

 nism between pope and emperor 

 as to the spheres of their respective 

 authorities. Only latterly it was 

 touched also by a non-Lutheran 

 form of Protestantism which pre- 

 dominated outside of Germany. 

 The fountain-head of this other 

 form of Protestantism was in 

 Switzerland. The Swiss school 

 predominated in France, in the 

 Netherlands, and in Scotland. In 

 England the Reformation was a 

 peculiar and distinctive com- 

 promise in which the dominating 

 factors were political. 



The Swiss reformation was set in 

 motion by Zwingli, at Zurich. 

 Zwingli, like Luther, successfully 

 challenged the doctrine of indul- 

 gences and the attempt to sell 

 them. Like Luther, he attacked 

 abuses, and made the Scriptures 

 the criterion of truth. But his 

 interpretations of Scripture were 

 not identical with those of Luther ; 

 on the question of the Eucharist 

 the two held fundamentally diver- 

 gent views. Luther, rejecting the 

 Roman doctrine of transubstan- 

 tiation, substituted for it the 

 doctrine of consubstantiation, 

 affirming the real presence, though 

 in another form. Zwingli denied 

 the real presence altogether, claim- 

 ing that the Lord's Supper was 

 purely commemorative. Zwingli 

 was tolerant, willing to recognize 

 as legitimate much wider diversi- 



ties of opinion than Luther, who 

 denounced him almost as ener- 

 getically as he denounced the pope. 



Reforming refugees from other 

 countries sought asylum in Switz- 

 erland. Among these was John 

 Calvin, who, in 1536, issued 

 from Basel the Institutes, which 

 at once laid down the doctrines of 

 the Calvinistic theology, and the 

 principles of the form of Church 

 government known as Presby- 

 terianism. Calvin, without ac- 

 cepting consubstantiation, ad- 

 mitted in his doctrine of the 

 Eucharist a more mystical view 

 than the frank rationalism of 

 Zwingli. But he was still further 

 removed than was Luther from 

 theZwinglian attitude of toleration ; 

 his creed was more rigid than that 

 of either Zwingli or Luther, and 

 more completely irreconcilable 

 with mere modifications of Roman 

 doctrines, or the Roman organiza- 

 tion. 



When Luther defied the papacy, 

 Lutheran and Zwinglian doctrines 

 at once began to make way in 

 other countries, though the secular 

 authorities were generally dis- 

 posed to suppress them with more 

 or less vigour. Jealousy of the 

 clergy, however, was common 

 among the nobility. In France the 

 crown, after a brief hesitation, 

 definitely took the side of ortho- 

 doxy against innovation. But 

 many of the nobility followed the 

 opposite course ; they derived, 

 moreover, a certain strength from 

 the obvious fact that Francis, 

 despite his title of the Most 

 Christian king, was quite ready to 

 ally himself with heretics, or even 

 with infidels, if by doing so he could 

 serve his own political purposes. 

 Then Calvinism, originated by a 

 Frenchman, appealed to the French 

 mind. Calvinism lent itself to 

 political organization, and the 

 Huguenots, as the French re- 

 formers were called, became a 

 very powerful body. 



Growth of Politic a! Parties 



The adherents of the rival faiths 

 assumed the character of political 

 parties. The Catholics themselves 

 were largely anti-papal in the days 

 of the council of Trent, at least 

 in the sense of claiming a great 

 degree of national independence ; 

 and though Catholicism was de- 

 finitely predominant, it by no 

 means held a decisive mastery. 

 For 35 years to come there was a 

 continuous struggle, which was 

 only brought to a conclusion when 

 the legitimate Huguenot claimant 

 of the crown purchased Catholic 

 support by renouncing his Pro- 

 testantism, but kept faith with his 

 former co-religionists by issuing 

 the edict of Nantes in 1598. 



In Scotland the movement, 

 which, as in France, drew its in- 

 spiration from Geneva, was vigor- 

 ous among the commons. The 

 crown, closely allied to the Church 

 in its struggle with the nobles, 

 encouraged persecution ; the nobles, 

 angrily hostile towards the church- 

 men, leaned strongly to the side 

 of the Reformation, and finally 

 won a complete victory with the 

 aid of Queen Elizabeth in 1560. In 

 the Northern Netherlands Calvin- 

 ism took a firm grip in spite of the 

 persecuting policy of Charles V 

 and his successor, Philip II of 

 Spain ; but the great struggle of 

 those provinces for religions liberty 

 was still to come. 



Henry VIII and England 



In England, before the appear- 

 ance of Luther in Germany, a re- 

 forming movement had already 

 made great progress under the 

 guidance of scholars and humanists, 

 not without encouragement from 

 leading ecclesiastics, all acutely 

 conscious of the need of raising the 

 moral and intellectual standards, 

 both of clergy and laity. But the 

 Lutheran propaganda, and the 

 anarchist propaganda, by which, 

 in spite of Luther's own denun- 

 ciations, it was accompanied, made 

 reactionaries of the reforming 

 leaders themselves. There was 

 among most cf them no dis- 

 position to question the spiritual 

 authority of the Church, or of the 

 papacy, no thought of challenging 

 received doctrines, though much 

 demand for the abolition of ob- 

 viously corrupt customs. But cir- 

 cumstances developed in the mind 

 of Henry VIII a determination to 

 repudiate the authority of the 

 papacy, because he found that it 

 stood in the way of his personal 

 desires. Since the pope was not to 

 be persuaded to annul his mar- 

 riage with Catherine of Aragon, 

 the pope was to be penalised by 

 the unqualified refusal to recognize 

 in England any papal authority 

 whatever, and by the cutting off of 

 all English contributions to the 

 papal coffers. 



The English clergy were not dis- 

 inclined to claim national inde- 

 pendence of the Roman episcopate. 

 Having failed to take their stand on 

 the side of ecclesiastical against 

 secular authority, they found them- 

 selves powerless to resist the king 

 when he went on to assert his own 

 personal supremacy as head of the 

 Church in England, or when he 

 proceeded, with the assent of 

 parliament, to enormous confis- 

 cations of ecclesiastical property, 

 and the complete suppression of 

 monastic establishments. In all 

 this the king had the support of 

 every ant i clerical element in the 



