Part 348

Dying in 1547, Henry left three children: Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon, Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, and Edward, son of Jane Seymour. The latter, in his tenth year, became King (Edward VI.), and his uncle, the Duke of Somerset, acquired the control of the government, with the title of Protector. Somerset headed a party which had begun before the death of the king to press for more changes in the character of the new Church of England and less adherence to the pattern of Rome. There seems to be little reason to suppose that the court leaders of this party were much moved in the matter by any interest of a religious kind; but the growth of thinking and feeling in England tended that way, and the side of Reformation had become the stronger. They simply gave way to it, and, abandoned the repression which Henry had persisted in. At the same time, their new policy gave them more freedom to grasp the spoils of the old Church, which Henry VIII. had begun to lay hands on, by suppression of monasteries and confiscation of their estates. The wealth thus sequestered went largely into private hands.

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It was in the short reign of Edward VI. that the Church of England really took on its organic form as one of the Churches of the Reformation, by the composition of its first prayer-books, and by the framing of a definite creed.

Lady Jane Grey.

In 1553, the young king died. Somerset had fallen from power the previous year and had suffered death. He had been supplanted by Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland, and that minister had persuaded Edward to bequeath his crown to Lady Jane Grey, grand-daughter of the younger sister of Henry VIII. But Northumberland was hated by the people, and few could recognize the right of a boy on the throne to change the order of regal succession by his will. Parliament had formally legitimated both Catherine's daughter, Mary, and Anne Boleyn's daughter, Elizabeth, and had placed them in the line of inheritance. Mary's legal title to the crown was clear. She had adhered with her mother to the Roman Church, and her advent upon the throne would mean the subjection of the English Church to the Papacy anew; since the constitution of the Church armed the sovereign with supreme and indisputable power over it. The Protestants of the kingdom knew what to expect, and were in great fear; but they submitted. Lady Jane Grey was recommended to them by her Protestant belief, and by her beautiful character; but her title was too defective and her supporters too much distrusted. There were few to stand by the poor young girl when Northumberland proclaimed her queen, and she was easily dethroned by the partisans of Mary. A year later she was sent to the block.

Catholicism was now ascendant again, and England was brought to share in the great reaction against the Reformation which prevailed generally through Europe and which we shall presently consider. Before doing so, let us glance briefly at the religious state of some other countries not yet touched upon.

The Reformation in Scotland.

In Scotland, a deep undercurrent of feeling against the corruptions of the Church had been repressed by resolute persecutions, until after the middle of the sixteenth century. Wars with England, and the close connection of the Scottish Court with the Guises of France, had both tended to retard the progress of a reform sentiment, or to delay the manifestation of it. But when the pent-up feeling began to respond to the voice of the great Calvinistic evangelist and organizer, John Knox, it swept the nation like a storm. Knox's first preaching, after his captivity in France and exile to Geneva, was in 1555. In 1560, the authority of the Pope was renounced, the mass prohibited, and the Geneva confession of faith adopted, by the Scottish Estates. After that time the Reformed Church in Scotland—the Church of Presbyterianism—had only to resist the futile hostility of Mary Stuart for a few years, until it came to its great struggle against English Episcopacy, under Mary's son and grandson, James and Charles.

The Reformation in the North.

In the three Scandinavian nations the ideas of the Reformation, diffused from Germany, had won early favor, both from kings and people, and had soon secured an enduring foothold. They owed their reception quite as much, perhaps, to the political situation as to the religious feeling of the northern peoples.

When the ferment of the Reformation movement began, the three crowns were worn by one king, as they had been since the "Union of Calmar," in 1397, and the King of Denmark was the sovereign of the Union. His actual power in Sweden and Norway was slight; his theoretical authority was sufficient to irritate both. In Sweden, especially, the nobles chafed under the yoke of the profitless federation. Christian II., the last Danish king of the three kingdoms, crushed their disaffection by a harsh conquest of the country (1520), and by savage executions, so perfidious and so numerous that they are known in Swedish history as the Massacre of Stockholm. But this brutal and faithless king became so hateful in his own proper kingdom that the Danish nobles rose against him in 1523 and he was driven from the land. The crown was given to his uncle, Frederick, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein. In that German Duchy, Lutheranism had already made its way, and Frederick was in accord with it. On coming to the throne of Denmark, where Catholicism still prevailed, he pledged himself to attempt no interference with it; but he felt no obligation, on the other hand, to protect it. He demanded and established a toleration for both doctrines, and gave to the reformers a freedom of opportunity which speedily undermined the old faith and overthrew it.

In the meantime, Sweden had undergone the important revolution of her history, which placed the national hero, Gustavus Vasa, on the throne. Gustavus was a young noble whose title to the crown was not derived from his lineage, but from his genius. After Christian II. had bloodily exterminated the elder leaders of the Swedish state, this young lord, then a hostage and prisoner in the tyrant's hands, made his escape and took upon himself the mission of setting his country free. For three years Gustavus lived a life like that of Alfred the Great in England, when he, too, struggled with the Danes. His heroic adventures were crowned with success, and Sweden, led to independence by its natural king, bestowed the regal title upon him (1523) and seated him upon its ancient throne. The new Danish king, Frederick, acknowledged the revolution, and the Union of Calmar was dissolved. Sweden under Gustavus Vasa recovered from the state of great disorder into which it had fallen, and grew to be a nation of important strength. As a measure of policy, he encouraged the introduction of Lutheranism and promoted the spread of it, in order to break the power of the Catholic clergy, and also, in order, without doubt, to obtain possession of the property of the Church, which secured to the Crown the substantial revenues it required.

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Italy.

In Italy, the reformed doctrines obtained no popular footing at any time, though many among the cultivated people regarded them with favor, and would gladly have witnessed, not only a practical purging of the Church, but a revision of those Catholic dogmas most offensive to a rational mind. But such little movement as stirred in that direction was soon stopped by the success of the Emperor, Charles V., in his Italian wars with Francis I., and by the Spanish domination in the peninsula which ensued thereon. The Spain of that age was like the bloodless octopus which paralyzes the victim in its clutch, and Italy, gripped in half of its many principalities by the deadly tentacles thrust out from Madrid, showed no consciousness for the next two centuries.

The Council of Trent.

The long demanded, long promised General Council, for considering the alleged abuses in the Church and the alleged falsities in its doctrine, and generally for discussion and action upon the questions raised by the Reformation, assembled at Trent in December, 1545. The Emperor seems to have desired with sincerity that the Council might be one which the Protestants would have confidence in, and in which they might be represented, for a full discussion of their differences with Rome. But this was made impossible from the beginning. The Protestants demanded that "final appeal on all debated points should be made to the sole authority of Holy Scripture," and this being refused by the Pope (Paul III.), there remained no ground on which the two parties could meet. The Italian prelates who composed the majority of the Council made haste, it would seem, to take action which closed the doors of conciliation against the Reformers. "First, they declared that divine revelation was continuous in the Church of which the Pope was the head; and that the chief written depository of this revelation—namely, the Scriptures—had no authority except in the version of the Vulgate. Secondly, they condemned the doctrine of justification by Faith. … Thirdly, they confirmed the efficacy and the binding authority of the Seven Sacraments." "The Council terminated in December [1563] with an act of submission, which placed all its decrees at the pleasure of the Papal sanction. Pius [Pius IV. became Pope in 1560] was wise enough to pass and ratify the decrees of the Tridentine fathers by a Bull dated on December 26, 1563, reserving to the Papal sovereign the sole right of interpreting them in doubtful or disputed cases. This he could well afford to do; for not an article had been penned without his concurrence, and not a stipulation had been made without a previous understanding with the Catholic powers. The very terms, moreover, by which his ratification was conveyed, secured his supremacy, and conferred upon his successors and himself the privileges of a court of ultimate appeal. At no previous period in the history of the Church had so wide, so undefined, and so unlimited an authority been accorded to the See of Rome" (Symonds).

Some practical reforms in the Church were wrought by the Council of Trent, but its disciplinary decrees were less important than the dogmatic. From beginning to end of its sessions, which, broken by many suspensions and adjournments, dragged through eighteen years, it addressed itself to the task of solidifying the Church of Rome, as left by the Protestant schism,—not of healing the schism itself or of removing the provocations to it. The work which the Council did in that direction was of vast importance, and profoundly affected the future of the Papacy and of its spiritual realm. It gave a firm dogmatic footing to the great reactionary new forces which now came into play, with aggressive enthusiasm and zeal, to arrest the advance of the Reformation and roll it back.

The Catholic reaction.

The extraordinary revival of Catholicism and thrusting back of Protestantism which occurred in the later half of the sixteenth century had several causes behind it and within it.

1. The spiritual impulse from which the Reformation started had considerably spent itself, or had become debased by a gross admixture of political and mercenary aims. In Germany, the spoils derived from the suppressing of monastic establishments and the secularizing of ecclesiastical fiefs and estates, appeared very early among the potent inducements by which mercenary princes were drawn to the side of the Lutheran reform. Later, as the opposing leagues, Protestant and Catholic, settled into chronic opposition and hostility, the struggle between them took on more and more the character of a great political game, and lost more and more the spirit of a battle for free conscience and a free mind. In France, as we have noticed, the political entanglements of the Huguenot party were such, by this time, that it could not fail to be lowered by them in its religious tone. In England, every breath of spirituality in the movement had so far (to the death of Henry VIII.) been stifled, and it showed nothing but a brazen political front to the world. In the Netherlands, the struggle for religious freedom was about to merge itself in a fight of forty years for self-government, and the fortitude and valor of the citizen were more surely developed in that long war than the faith and fervor of the Christian. And so, generally throughout Europe, Protestantism, in its conflict with the powers of the ancient Church, had descended, ere the sixteenth century ran far into its second half, to a distinctly lower plane than it occupied at first. On that lower plane Rome fronted it more formidably, with stronger arms, than on the higher.

2. Broadly stating the fact, it may be said that Protestantism made all its great inroads upon the Church of Rome before partisanship came to the rescue of the latter, and closed the open mind with which Luther, and Zwingli, and Farel, and Calvin were listened to at first. It happens always, when new ideas, combative of old ones, whether religious or political, are first put forward in the world, they are listened to for a time with a certain disinterestedness of attention—a certain native candor in the mind—which gives them a fair hearing. If they seem reasonable, they obtain ready acceptance, and spread rapidly,—until the conservatism of the beliefs assailed takes serious alarm, and the radicalism of the innovating beliefs becomes ambitious and rampant; until the for and the against stiffen themselves in opposing ranks, and the voice of argument is drowned by the cries of party. That ends all shifting of masses from the old to the new ground. That ends conversion as an epidemic and dwindles it to the sporadic character.

3. Protestantism became bitterly divided within itself at an early stage of its career by doctrinal differences, first between Zwinglians and Lutherans, and then between Lutherans and Calvinists, while Catholicism, under attack, settled into more unity and solidity than before.

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4. The tremendous power in Europe to which the Spanish monarchy, with its subject dominions, and its dynastic relations, had now risen, passed, in 1556, to a dull-brained and soulless bigot, who saw but one use for it, namely, the extinction of all dissent from his own beliefs, and all opposition to his own will. Philip II. differed from his father, Charles V., not in the enormity of his bigoted egotism—they were equals, perhaps, in that—but in the exclusiveness of it. There was something else in Charles, something sometimes faintly admirable. He did have some interests in life that were not purely malignant. But his horrid vampire of a son, the most repulsive creature of his kind in all history, had nothing in him that was not as deadly to mankind as the venom secreted behind the fang of a cobra. It was a frightful day for the world when a despotism which shadowed Spain, Sicily, Italy and the Low Countries, and which had begun to drag unbounded treasure from America, fell to the possession of such a being as this. Nothing substantial was taken away from the potent malevolence of Philip by his failure of election in Germany to the Imperial throne. On the contrary, he was the stronger for it, because all his dominion was real and all his authority might assume to be absolute. His father had been more handicapped than helped by his German responsibilities and embarrassments, which Philip escaped. It is not strange that his concentration of the vast enginery under his hands to one limited aim, of exterminating what his dull and ignorant mind conceived to be irreligion and treason, had its large measure of success. The stranger thing is, that there was fortitude and courage to resist such power, in even one corner of his realm.

5. The Papacy was restored at this time to the purer and higher character of its best ages, by well-guided elections, which raised in succession to the throne a number of men, very different in ability, and quite different, too, in the spirit of their piety, but generally alike in dignity and decency of life, and in qualities which command respect. The fiery Neapolitan zealot, Caraffa, who became Pope in 1555 as Paul IV.; his cool-tempered diplomatic successor, Pius IV., who manipulated the closing labors of the Council of Trent; the austere inquisitor, Pius V.; the more commonplace Gregory XIII., and the powerful Sixtus V., were pontiffs who gave new strength to Catholicism, in their different ways, both by what they did and by what they were.

6. The revival of zeal in the Roman Church, naturally following the attacks upon it, gave rise to many new religious organizations within its elastic fold, some reformatory, some missionary and militant, but all bringing an effectual reinforcement to it, at the time when its assailants began to show faltering signs. Among these was one—Loyola's Society of Jesus—which marched promptly to the front of the battle, and which contributed more than any other single force in the field to the rallying of the Church, to the stopping of retreat, and to the facing of its stubborn columns forward for a fresh advance. The Jesuits took such a lead and accomplished such results by virtue of the military precision of discipline under which they had been placed and to which they were singularly trained by the rules of the founder; and also by effect of a certain subtle sophistry that runs through their ethical maxims and their counsels of piety. They fought for their faith with a sublime courage, with a devotion almost unparalleled, with an earnestness of belief that cannot be questioned; but they used weapons and modes of warfare which the higher moral feeling of civilized mankind, whether Christian or Pagan, has always condemned. It is not Protestant enemies alone who say this. It is the accusation that has been brought against them again and again in their own Church, and which has expelled them from Catholic countries, again and again. In the first century or more of their career, this plastic conscience, moulded by a passionate zeal, and surrendered, with every gift of mind and body, to a service of obedience which tolerated no evasion on one side nor bending on the other, made the Jesuits the most invincible and dangerous body of men that was ever organized for defense and aggression in any cause.

The order was founded in 1540, by a bull of Pope Paul III. At the time of Loyola's death, in 1556, it numbered about one thousand members, and under Lainez, the second general of the order, who succeeded Loyola at the head, it advanced rapidly, in numbers, in efficiency of organization, and in wide-spread influence.

Briefly stated, these are the incidents and circumstances which help to explain—not fully, perhaps, but almost sufficiently—the check to Protestantism and the restored energy and aggressiveness of the Catholic Church, in the later half of the sixteenth century.

The Ruin of Spain.

In his kingdoms of Spain, Philip II. may be said to have finished the work of death which his father and his father's grand-parents committed to him. They began it, and appointed the lines on which it was to be done. The Spain of their day had the fairest opportunity of any nation in Europe for a great and noble career. The golden gates of her opportunity were unlocked and opened by good Queen Isabella; but the pure hands of the same pious queen threw over the neck of her country the noose of a strangler, and tightened it prayerfully. Her grandson, who was neither pious nor good, flung his vast weight of power upon it. But the strangling halter of the Spanish Inquisition did not extinguish signs of life in his kingdom fast enough to satisfy his royal impatience, and he tightened other cords upon the suffering body and all its limbs. Philip, when he came to take up the murderous task, found every equipment for it that he could desire. He had only to gather the strands of the infernal mesh into his hands, and bring the strain of his awful sovereignty to bear upon them: then sit and watch the palsy of death creep over his dominions.

Of political life, Charles really left nothing for his son to kill. Of positive religious life, there can have been no important survival, for he and his Inquisition had been keenly vigilant; but Philip made much of the little he could discover. As to the industrial life of Spain, father and son were alike active in the murdering of it, and alike ingenious. They paralyzed manufactures, in the first instance, by persecuting and expelling the thrifty and skilful Moriscoes; then they made their work complete by heavy duties on raw materials. To extinguish the agricultural industries of the kingdom, they had happy inspirations. {1066} They prohibited the exportation of one commodity after another—corn, cattle, wool, cloth, leather, and the like—until they had brought Spain practically to the point of being dependent on other countries for many products of skill, and yet of having nothing to offer in exchange, except the treasure of precious metals which she drew from America. Hence it happened that the silver and gold of the Peruvian and Mexican mines ran like quicksand through her fingers, into the coffers of the merchants of the Low Countries and of England; and, probably, no other country in Europe saw so little of them, had so little of benefit from them, as the country they were supposed to enrich.

If the killing of Spain needed to be made complete by anything more, Philip supplied the need, in the deadliness of his taxation. Spending vast sums in his attempt to repeat upon the Netherlands the work of national murder he had accomplished in Spain; losing, by the same act, the rich revenues of the thrifty provinces; launching into new expenditures as he pursued, by clumsy warfare, his mission of death into fresh fields, aiming now at the life of France, and now at the life of England,—he squeezed the cost of his armies and armadas from a country in which he had strangled production already, and made poverty the common estate. It was the last draining of the life-blood of a nation which ought to have been strong and great, but which suffered murder most foul and unnatural.

We hardly exaggerate even in figure when we say that Spain was a dead nation whim Philip quitted the scene of his arduous labors. It is true that his successors still found something for their hands to do, in the ways that were pleasant to their race, and burned and bled and crushed the unhappy kingdom with indefatigable persistency; but it was really the corpse of a nation which they practised on. The life of Spain, as a breathing, sentient state, came to an end under the hands of Philip II., first of the Thugs.

Philip II. and the Netherlands.