§ 139.1.Sweden.—For fifty years Sweden had been free from the Danish yoke which had been imposed upon it by the Calmar union ofA.D.1397. The higher clergy, who possessed two-thirds of the land, had continuously conspired in favour of Denmark. The Archbishop of Upsala, Gustavus Trolle, fell out with the chancellor, Sten Sture, and was deposed. Pope Leo X. pronounced the ban and interdict against Sweden. Christian II. of Denmark conquered the country inA.D.1520, and in the frightful massacre of Stockholm during the coronation festivities, in spite of his sworn assurances, 600 of the noblest in the land, marked out by the archbishop as enemies of Denmark, were slain. But scarcely had Christian reached home whenGustavus Vasalanded from Lübeck, whither he had fled, drove out the Danes, and was elected king,A.D.1523. In his exile he had become favourably inclined to the Reformation, and now he joined the Protestants to have their help against the opposing clergy.Olaf Peterson, who had studied fromA.D.1516 in Wittenberg, soon after his return home, inA.D.1519, began as deacon in Strengnæs, along withLawrence Anderson, afterwards administrator of the diocese of Strengnæs, to spread the reformed doctrines. Subsequently they were joined by Olaf’s younger brother,Laurence Peterson. During the king’s absence inA.D.1524, two Anabaptists visited Stockholm, and even the calm-minded Olaf was for a time carried away by them. The king quickly suppressed the disturbances, and entered heartily upon the work of reformation. Anderson, appointed chancellor by Vasa, inA.D.1526 translated the N.T., and Olaf with the help of his learned brother undertook the O.T. The people, however, still clung to the old faith, till at the Diet ofWestnæs, inA.D.1527, the king set before them the alternative of accepting his resignation or the Reformation. The people’s love for their king overcame all clerical opposition. Church property was used to supply revenues to kings and nobles, and to provide salaries for pastors who should preach the gospel in its purity. The Reformation was peacefully introduced into all parts of the land, and the diets at Örebro, inA.D.1529, 1537, and at Westnæs, inA.D.1544, carried out the work to completion. The new organization adopted the episcopal constitution, and also in worship, by connivance of the people, many Catholic ceremonies were allowed to remain. Most of the bishops accepted the inevitable. The Archbishop Magnus of Upsala, papal legate, went to Poland, and Bishop Brask of Linköping fled with all the treasures of his church to Danzig. Laurence Peterson was made inA.D.1531 first evangelical Archbishop of Upsala, and married a relative of the royal house. But his brother Olaf fell into disfavour on account of his protest against the king’s real or supposed acts of rapacity. He and Anderson, because they had failed to report a conspiracy which came to their knowledge in the confessional, were condemned to death, but were pardoned by the king. Gustavus died inA.D.1560. Under his son Eric a Catholic reaction set in, and his brother John III., inA.D.1578, made secret confession of Catholicism to the Jesuit Possevin, urged thereto by his Catholic queen and the prospect of the Polish throne. John’s son Sigismund, also king of Poland, openly joined the Romish Church. But his uncle Charles of Sodermanland, a zealous Protestant, as governor after John’s death, called together the nobles at Upsala inA.D.1593, when the Latin mass-book introduced by John was forbidden, and the acknowledgment of the Augsburg Confession was renewed. But as Sigismund continued to favour Catholicism, the peers of the realm declared, inA.D.1604, that he had forfeited the throne, which his uncle now ascended as Charles IX.—The Reformation had been already carried from Sweden intoFinland.374§ 139.2.Denmark and Norway.—Christian II., nephew of the Elector of Saxony and brother-in-law of the Emperor Charles V., although he had associated himself with the Romish hierarchy in Sweden for the overthrow of the national party, had in Denmark taken the side of the Reformation against the clergy, who were there supreme. InA.D.1521 he succeeded in getting Carlstadt to come to his assistance, but he was soon forced to quit the country. InA.D.1523 the clergy and nobles formally renounced their allegiance, and gave the crown to his uncleFrederick I., Duke of Schleswig and Holstein. Christian fled to Saxony, was there completely won over to the Reformation by Luther, converted also his wife, the emperor’s sister, and had the first Danish N.T., by Hans Michelson, printed at Leipzig and circulated in Denmark. To secure the emperor’s aid, however, he abjured the evangelical faith at Augsburg inA.D.1530. In the following year he conquered Norway, and bound himself on his coronation to maintain the Catholic religion. But inA.D.1532 he was obliged to surrender to Frederick, and spent the remaining twenty-seven years of his life in prison, where he repented his apostasy, and had the opportunity of instructing himself by the study of the Danish Bible.—Frederick I. had been previously favourable to the Reformation, yet his hands were bound by the express terms of his election. His son Christian III. unreservedly introduced the Reformation into his duchies. In this he was encouraged by his father. InA.D.1526 he openly professed the evangelical faith, and invited the Danish reformerHans Tausen, a disciple of Luther, who had preached the gospel amid much persecution sinceA.D.1524, to settle as preacher in Copenhagen. At a diet at Odensee [Odense] inA.D.1527 he restricted episcopal jurisdiction, proclaimed universal religious toleration, gave priests liberty to marry and to leave their cloisters, and thus laid the foundations of the Reformation. Tausen inA.D.1530 submitted to the nobles his own confession,Confessio Hafinca, and the Reformation rapidly advanced. Frederick died inA.D.1533. The bishops now rose in a body, and insisted that the estates should refuse to acknowledge his sonChristian III.But when the burgomaster of Lübeck, taking advantage of the anarchy, plotted to subject Denmark to the proud commercial city, and inA.D.1534 actually laid siege to Copenhagen, the Jutland nobles hastened to swear fealty to Christian. He drove out the Lübeckers, and byA.D.1536 had possession of the whole land. He resolved now to put an end for ever to the machinations of the clergy. In August,A.D.1536, he had all bishops imprisoned in one day, and at a diet at Copenhagen had them formally deposed. Their property fell into the royal exchequer, all monasteries were secularized, some presented to the nobles, some converted into hospitals and schools. In order to complete the organization of the church Bugenhagen was called in inA.D.1537. He crowned the king and queen, sketched a directory of worship, which was adopted at theDiet of Odensee [Odense]inA.D.1539, and returned to Wittenberg inA.D.1542. In place of bishops Lutheran superintendents were appointed, to whom subsequently the title of bishop was given, and the Augsburg Confession accepted as the standard. The Reformation was contemporaneously introduced intoNorway, which acknowledged the king inA.D.1536. The Archbishop of Drontheim, Olaf Engelbrechtzen, fled with the church treasures to the Netherlands.Icelandstood out longer, but yielded inA.D.1551, when the power of the rebel bishops was broken.375§ 139.3.Courland, Livonia, and Esthonia.—Livonia had seceded from the dominion of the Teutonic knights inA.D.1521, and under the grand-master Walter of Plattenburg assumed the position of an independent principality. In that same year a Lutheran archdeacon,Andr. Knöpken, expelled from Pomerania, came to Riga, and preached the gospel with moderation. Soon after Tegetmaier came from Rostock, and so vigorously denounced image worship that excited mobs entered the churches and tore down the images; yet he was protected by the council and the grand-master. The third reformerBriesmannwas the immediate scholar of Luther. The able town clerk of Riga, Lohmüller, heartily wrought with them, and the Reformation spread through city and country. At Wolmar and Dorpat, inA.D.1524, the work was carried on by Melchior Hoffmann, whose Lutheranism was seriously tinged with Anabaptist extravagances (§147, 1). The diocese of Oesel adopted the reformed doctrines, and at the same time a Lutheran church was formed in Reval. After strong opposition had been offered, at last, inA.D.1538, Riga accepted the evangelical confession, joined the Schmalcald League, and in a short time all Livonia and Esthonia accepted the Augsburg Confession. Political troubles, occasioned mainly by Russia, obliged the last grand-master,Kettler, inA.D.1561 to surrender Livonia to Sigismund Augustus of Poland, but with the formal assurance that the rights of the evangelicals should be preserved. He himself retained Courland as an hereditary duchy under the suzerainty of Poland, and gave himself unweariedly to the evangelical organization of his country, powerfully assisted by Bülau, first superintendent of Courland.—The Lutheran church of Livonia had in consequence to pass through severe trials. Under Polish protection a Jesuit college was established in Riga inA.D.1584. Two city churches had to be given over to the Catholics, and Possevin conducted an active Catholic propaganda, which was ended only when Livonia, inA.D.1629, as also Esthonia somewhat earlier, came under the rule of Sweden. In consequence of the Norse war both countries were incorporated into the Russian empire, and by the Peace of Nystadt, ofA.D.1721, its Lutheran church retained all its privileges, on condition that it did not interfere in any way with the Greek Orthodox Church in the province. InA.D.1795 Courland also came under Russian sway, and all these are now known as the Baltic Provinces.§ 139.4.England.376—Henry VIII.,A.D.1509-1547, after the literary feud with Luther (§125, 3), sought to justify his title, “Defender of the Faith,” by the use of sword and gibbet. Luther’s writings were eagerly read in England, where in many circles Wiclif’s movements were regarded with favour, and two noble Englishmen, John Fryth and William Tyndal, gave to their native land a translation of the N.T. inA.D.1526.Fryth was rewarded with the stake inA.D.1533, and Tyndal was beheaded in the Netherlands inA.D.1535.377But meanwhile the king quarrelled with the pope. On assuming the government he had married Catharine of Arragon, daughter of Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella, six years older than himself, the widow of his brother Arthur, who had died in his 16th year, for which he got a papal dispensation on the ground that the former marriage had not been consummated. His adulterous love for Anne Boleyn, the fair maid of honour to his queen, and Cranmer’s biblical opinion (Lev. xviii. 16; xx. 21) convinced him inA.D.1527 of the sinfulness of his uncanonical marriage. Clement VII., at first not indisposed to grant his request for a divorce, refused after he had been reconciled to the emperor, Catharine’s nephew (§132, 2). Thoroughly roused, the king now threw off the authority of the pope. Convocation was forced to recognise him inA.D.1531 as head of the English Church, and in 1532 Parliament forbade the paying of annats to the pope. In the same year Henry married Anne, and had a formal divorce from Catharine granted by a spiritual court. Parliament inA.D.1534 formally abolished papal jurisdiction in the land, and transferred all ecclesiastical rights and revenues to the king. The venerable Bishop Fisher of Rochester and the resolute chancellor, Sir Thomas More (§120, 7), inA.D.1535 paid the price of their opposition on the scaffold.Now came the long threatened ban. Under pretext of a highly necessary reform no less than 376 monasteries were closed during the years 1536-1538, their occupiers, monks and nuns, expelled, and their rich property confiscated.378Nevertheless in doctrine the king wished to remain a good Catholic, and for this end passed in the Parliament ofA.D.1539 the law of the Six Articles, which made any contradiction of the doctrines of transubstantiation, the withholding of the cup, celibacy of the clergy, the mass, and auricular confession, a capital offence. Persecution raged equally against Lutherans and Papists, sometimes more against the one, sometimes more against the other, according as he was moved by his own caprice, or the influence of his wives and favourites of the day. On the one side, at the head of the Papists, stood Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and Bonner, Bishop of London; and on the other, Thomas Cranmer, whom the king had raised inA.D.1533 to the see of Canterbury, in order to carry out his reforms in the ecclesiastical constitution. But Cranmer, who as the king’s agent in the divorce negotiations had often treated with foreign Protestant theologians, and at Nuremberg had secretly married Osiander’s niece, was in heart a zealous adherent of the Swiss Reformation, and furthered as far as he could with safety its introduction into England. Among other things, he secured the introduction inA.D.1539, into all the churches of England, of an English translation of the Bible, revised by himself. He was supported in his efforts by the king’s second wife, Anne Boleyn; but she, having fallen under suspicion of unfaithfulness, was executed inA.D.1536. The third wife, Jane Seymour, died inA.D.1537 on the death of a son. The fourth, Anne of Cleves, was after six months, inA.D.1540, cast aside, and the promoter of the marriage, the chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, was brought to the scaffold. The king now in the same year married Catharine Howard, with whom the Catholic party got to the helm again, and had the Act of the Six Articles rigorously enforced. But she, too, inA.D.1543, was charged with repeated adulteries, and fell, together with her friends and those reputed as guilty with her, under the executioner’s axe.The sixth wife, Catharine Parr, who again favoured the Protestants, escaped a like fate by the death of the tyrant.379§ 139.5.Edward VI.,A.D.1547-1553, son of Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour, succeeded his father in his tenth year. At the head of the regency stood his mother’s brother, the Duke of Somerset.Cranmerhad now a free hand. Private masses and image worship were forbidden, the supper was administered in both kinds, marriage of priests was made legitimate, and a general church visitation appointed for the introduction of the Reformation. Gardiner and Bonner, who opposed these changes, were sent to the Tower. Somerset corresponded with Calvin, and invited at Cranmer’s request distinguished foreign theologians to help in the visitation of the churches.Martin Bucer and Paul Fagius from Strassburg came to Cambridge, and Peter Martyr to Oxford.380Bernardino Ochino was preacher to a congregation of Italian refugees in London. A commission under Cranmer’s presidency drew up for reading in the churches a collection ofHomilies, for the instruction of the young aCatechism, and for the service a liturgy mediate between the Catholic and Protestant form, the so-calledBook of Common PrayerofA.D.1549; but from the second edition of which were left out chrism and exorcism, auricular confession, anointing the sick, and prayer for the dead. Then followed, inA.D.1553, a confession of faith, consisting of forty-two articles, drawn up by Cranmer and Bishop Ridley of Rochester, which was distinctly of the reformed type, and set forward the ecclesiastical supremacy of the king as an article of faith. The young king, who supported the Reformation with all his heart, died inA.D.1553, after nominating as his successor Jane Grey, the grand-daughter of a sister of his father. Not she, however, but a fanatical Catholic,Mary,A.D.1553-1558, daughter of Henry VIII. and Catharine of Spain, actually ascended the throne. The compliant Parliament now abrogated all the ecclesiastical laws of Edward VI., which it had itself sanctioned, reverted to Henry’s law of the Six Articles, and entrusted Gardiner as chancellor with its execution. The Protestant leaders were thrown into the Tower, the bones of Bucer and Fagius were publicly burnt, married priests with wives and children were driven in thousands from the land.In the following year,A.D.1554, Cardinal Reginald Pole, who had fled during Henry’s reign, returned as papal legate, absolved the repentant Parliament, and received all England back again into the fold of the Romish church.381The noble and innocent Lady Jane Grey, only in her sixteenth year, though she had voluntarily and cheerfully resigned the crown, was put to death with her husband and father.In the course of the next year,A.D.1555, Bishops Ridley, Latimer, Ferrar, and Hooper with noble constancy endured death at the stake.382In prison, Cranmer had renounced his evangelical faith, but abundantly atoned for this weakness by the heroic firmness with which he retracted his retractation, and held the hand which had subscribed it in the flames, that it might be first consumed. He suffered inA.D.1556.—The queen had married inA.D.1554 Philip II. of Spain, eleven years her junior, and when inA.D.1555 he returned to Spain, she fell into deep melancholy, and under its pressure her hatred of Protestantism was shown in the most bloody and cruel deeds. A heretic tribunal, after the fashion of the Spanish Inquisition, was created, which under the presidency of the “Bloody Bonner,” consigned to the flames crowds of confessors of the gospel, clergymen and laymen, men and women, old and young.After the persecution had raged for five years, “Bloody Mary” died of heart-break and dropsy.383§ 139.6.Elizabeth,A.D.1558-1603, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, though previously branded by the Parliament as a bastard, now ascended the throne unopposed as the last living member of the family of Henry VIII. Educated under the supervision of Cranmer in the Protestant faith of her mother, she had been obliged during the reign of her sister outwardly to conform to the Romish church. She proceeded with great prudence and moderation; but when Paul IV. pronounced her illegitimate, and the Scottish princess Mary Stuart, grand-daughter of Henry’s sister, assumed the title of queen of England, Elizabeth more heartily espoused the cause of Protestantism. InA.D.1559 the Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity, which reasserted the royal supremacy over the national church, prescribed a revision of theBook of Common Prayer, which set aside the prayer for deliverance from the “detestable enormities” of the papacy, etc., and practically reproduced the earlier, less perfect of the Prayer Books of Edward VI., while every perversion to papacy was threatened with confiscation of goods, imprisonment, banishment, and in cases of repetition with death, as an act of treason. At the head of the clergy was Matthew Parker, consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury by some bishops exiled under Mary. He had formerly been chaplain to Anne Boleyn. Under his direction Cranmer’s forty-two articles were reduced to thirty-nine, giving a type of doctrine midway between Lutheranism and Calvinism; these were confirmed by convocation inA.D.1562, and were adopted as a fundamental statute of England by Act of Parliament inA.D.1571.This brings to a close the first stage in the history of the English Reformation,—the setting up by law of the Anglican State Church with episcopal constitution, with apostolical succession, under royal supremacy, as the Established Church.384(For the Puritan opposition to it see §143, 3.) The somewhat indulgent manner in which the Act of Uniformity was at first enforced against the Catholics encouraged them more and more in attempts to secure a restoration. Even inA.D.1568 William Allen founded at Douay a seminary to train Catholic Englishmen for a mission at home, and Gregory XIII. some years later, for a similar purpose, founded in Rome the “English College.” His predecessor, Pius V., had inA.D.1570 deposed and issued the ban against the queen, and threatened all with the greater excommunication who should yield her obedience. Parliament now punished every withdrawal from the State church as high treason.Day and night houses were searched, and suspected persons inquisitorially examined by torture, and if found guilty they were not infrequently put to death as traitors.385—Continuation, §§ 153, 6; 154, 3.§ 139.7.Ireland.—Hadrian IV., himself an Englishman (§96, 14), on the plea that the donation of Constantine (§ 87, 4) embraced also the “islands,” gave over Ireland to King Henry II. as a papal fief inA.D.1154. Yet the king only managed to conquer the eastern border, thePale, during the years 1171-1175. Henry VIII. introduced the Reformation into this province inA.D.1535, by the help of his Archbishop of Dublin, George Brown. The ecclesiastical supremacy of the Crown was proclaimed, monasteries closed and their property impropriated, partly divided among Irish and English peers. But in matters of faith there was little change. More opposition was shown to the sweeping reformation of faith and worship of Edward VI. The bishops, Brown included, resisted, and the inferior clergy, who now were required to read the Book of Common Prayer in a language to most of them strange, diligently fostered the popular attachment to the old faith. The ascension of Queen Mary therefore was welcomed in Ireland, while Elizabeth’s attempt to reintroduce the Reformation met with opposition. Repeated outbreaks, in which also the people of the western districts took part, ended inA.D.1601 in the complete subjugation of the whole island.By wholesale confiscation of estates the entire nobility was impoverished and the church property was made over to the Anglican clergy; but the masses of the Irish people continued Catholic, and willingly supported their priests out of their own scanty resources.386—Continuation, § 153, 6.§ 139.8.Scotland.—Patrick Hamilton, who had studied in Wittenberg and Marburg, first preached the gospel in Scotland, and died at the stake in his twenty-fourth year inA.D.1528.387Amid the political confusions of the regency during the minority of James V.,A.D.1513-1542, a sister’s son of Henry VIII. of England, the Reformation obtained firm root among the nobles, who hated the clergy, and among the oppressed people, notwithstanding that the bishops, with David Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrew’s at their head, sought to crush it by the most violent persecution. When Henry VIII. called on his nephew to assist him in his Reformation work, James refused, and yielding to Beaton’s advice formed an alliance with France and married Mary of Guise. This occasioned a war inA.D.1540, the disastrous issue of which led to the king’s death of a broken heart. According to the king’s will Beaton was to undertake the regency, for Mary Stuart was only seven days old. But the nobles transferred it to the Protestant Earl of Arran, who imprisoned Beaton and had the royal child affianced to Henry’s son Edward. Beaton escaped, by connivance of the queen-mother got possession of the child, and compelled the weak regent, inA.D.1543, to abjure the English alliance. The persecution of the Protestants by fire and sword now began afresh. After many others had fallen victims to his persecuting rage, Beaton had a famous Protestant preacher, George Wishart, burnt before his eyes; but was soon after, inA.D.1546, surprised in his castle and slain. When inA.D.1548 Somerset, the English regent after Henry’s death, sought to renew negotiations about the marriage of Mary, now five years old, with Edward VI., her mother had her taken for safety to France, where she was educated in a convent and affianced to the dauphin, afterwards Francis II. By hypocritical acts she contrived to have the regency transferred inA.D.1554 from Arran to herself. For two years the Reformation progressed without much opposition. In December,A.D.1557, its most devoted promoters made a “covenant,” pledging themselves in life and death to advance the word of God and uproot the idolatry of the Romish church. The queen-regent, however, after the marriage of her daughter with the dauphin inA.D.1558, felt herself strong enough to defy the Protestant nobles. The old strict laws against heretics were renewed, and a tribunal established for the punishment of apostatizing priests.The last victim of the persecution was Walter Mill, a priest eighty-two years old, who died at the stake at Perth (?) inA.D.1559.388The country now rose in open revolt. The regent was thus obliged to make proclamation of universal religious toleration. But instead of keeping her promise to have all French troops withdrawn, their number was actually increased after Francis II. ascended the French throne. Elizabeth, too, was indignant at the assumption by the French king and queen of the English royal title, so that she aided the insurgents with an army and a fleet. During the victorious progress of the English the regent died, inA.D.1560. The French were obliged to withdraw, and the victory of the Scotch Protestants was decisive.§ 139.9. There was one man, whose unbending opposition to the constitution, worship, doctrine, and discipline of the Church of Rome, manifested with a rigid determination that has scarcely ever been equalled, left its indelible impress upon the Scottish Reformation.John Knox, born inA.D.1505, was by the study of Augustine and the Bible led to adopt evangelical views, which inA.D.1542 he preached in the south of Scotland. Persecuted in consequence by Archbishop Beaton, he joined the conspirators after that prelate’s assassination, inA.D.1546, was taken prisoner, and inA.D.1547 served as slave in the French galleys. The ill treatment he thus endured developed his naturally strong and resolute character and that fearlessness which so characterized all his subsequent life. By English mediation he was set free inA.D.1549, and became inA.D.1551 chaplain to Edward VI., but took offence at the popish leaven allowed to remain in the English Reformation, and consequently declined an offered bishopric. When the Catholic Mary ascended the throne inA.D.1553, he fled to Geneva, where he enjoyed the closest intimacy with Calvin, whose doctrine of predestination, rigid presbyterianism, and rigorous discipline he thoroughly approved. After presiding for some time over a congregation of English refugees at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, he returned inA.D.1555 to Scotland, but in the following year accepted a call to the church of English refugees at Geneva that had meanwhile been formed. The Scottish bishops, who had not ventured to touch him while present, condemned him to death after his departure, and burned him in effigy. But Knox kept up a lively correspondence with his native land by letters, proclamations, and controversial tracts, and with the help of several friends translated the Scriptures into English. InA.D.1558 he published with the title, “The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women,” the most violent of all his controversial works, directed mainly against the English Queen Mary, who was now dead. It roused against him the unconquerable dislike of her successor, and increased the hatred of the other two Maries against him to the utmost pitch. Yet he accepted the call of the Protestant lords, and returned next year to Scotland, and was the heart and soul of the revolution that soon thereafter broke out. Images and mass-books were burnt, altars in churches broken in pieces, and 150 monasteries were destroyed; for said Knox, “If the nests be pulled down, the crows will not come back.” After the death of the regent inA.D.1560, the Parliament proclaimed the abolition of the papacy, ratified the strictly CalvinisticConfessio Scotica, and forbade celebrating the mass on pain of death. Then in December, the firstGeneral Assemblyprescribed, in the “First Book of Discipline,” a strictly presbyterial constitution under Christ as only head, with a rigidly puritan order of worship (§ 163, 3).§ 139.10. In Aug.,A.D.1561, QueenMary Stuart, highly cultured and high-spirited, returned from France to Scotland, a young widow in her 19th year. Brought up in a French convent in fanatical attachment to the Romish Church, and at the French court, with absolutist ideas as well as easy-going morals, the severe Calvinism and moral strictness of Scottish Puritanism were to her as distasteful as its assertion of political independence. At the instigation of her half-brother James Stuart, whom she raised to the earldom of Moray, and who was head of the ministry as one of the leaders of the reformed party, she promised on her arrival not to interfere with the ecclesiastical arrangements of the country, but refused to give royal sanction to the proceedings ofA.D.1560, held Catholic service in her court chapel, and on all hands favoured the Romanists. By her marriage, inA.D.1565, with the young Catholic Lord Darnley, grandson by a second marriage of her grandmother Margaret of England, who now assumed the title of king, Moray was driven from his position, and the restoration of Catholicism was vigorously and openly prosecuted by negotiations with Spain, France, and the pope. The director of all those intrigues was the Italian musician David Rizzio, who came to the country as papal agent, and had become Mary’s favourite and private secretary. The rudeness and profligacy of the young king had soon estranged from him the heart of the queen. He therefore took part in a conspiracy of the Protestant lords, promising to go over to their faith. Their first victim was the hated Rizzio. He was fallen upon and slain on 9th March,A.D.1566, while he sat beside the queen, already far advanced in pregnancy. Darnley soon repented his deed, was reconciled to the queen, fled with her to the Castle of Dunbar, and an army gathered by the Protestant Earl of Bothwell soon suppressed the rising. The rebels and assassins were at Mary’s entreaty almost all pardoned. Darnley, now living in mortal enmity with the heads of the Protestant nobility, and again on bad terms with the queen, fell sick in Dec.,A.D.1566, at Glasgow. On his sick-bed a reconciliation with his wife was effected, and apparently in order that she might the better nurse him, he was brought to a villa near Edinburgh. But on the night of 9th Feb.,A.D.1567, while Mary was present at the marriage of a servant, the house with its inhabitants was blown up by an explosion of gunpowder. Public opinion charged Bothwell and the queen with contriving the horrible crime. Bothwell was tried, but acquitted by the lords. Suspicion increased when soon after Bothwell carried off the queen to his castle, and married her on 15th May. In the civil war that now broke out Mary was taken prisoner, and on 24th July obliged to abdicate in favour of her one-year old son James VI., for whom Mary undertook the regency. Bothwell fled to Denmark, where he died in misery and want; but Mary was allowed to escape from prison by the young George Douglas. He also raised on her behalf a small army, which, however, in May,A.D.1568, was completely destroyed by Moray at the village of Langside. The unhappy queen could now only seek protection with her deadly enemy Elizabeth of England, who, after twenty years’ imprisonment, sent her to the scaffold inA.D.1587, on the plea that she was guilty of murdering her own husband and of high treason in plotting the death of the English queen.—Mary’s guilt would be conclusively established, if a correspondence with Bothwell, said to have been found in her desk, should be accepted as genuine. But all her apologists, with apparently strong conviction, have sought to prove that these letters are fabrications of her enemies.The thorough investigation given to original documents, however, by Bresslau [Breslau], has resulted in recognising only the second of these as a forgery, and so proving, not indeed Mary’s complicity in the murder of her husband, but her adulterous love for Bothwell, and showing too that her apparent reconciliation with Darnley on his sick-bed was only hypocritical.389§ 139.11. The young queen had at first sought to win by her fair speeches the bold and influential reformerJohn Knox, who was then preacher in Edinburgh. But his heart was cased in sevenfold armour against all her flatteries, as afterwards against her threats; even her tears found him as stern and cold as her wrath. When he called an assembly of nobles to put a stop to the Catholic worship introduced by her at court, he was charged with high treason, but acquitted by the lords. The marriage with Darnley and all that followed from this unhappy union only increased his boldness. He publicly preached without reserve against the papacy and the light carriage of the queen, on the outbreak of the civil war urged her deposition, and demanded her execution for adultery and the murder of her husband. The assassination of Regent Moray inA.D.1570 threw the country into further confusion, which was only overcome by his third successor, Morton. The fugitive Knox now returned to Edinburgh, and soon after died, on 24th Nov.,A.D.1572. Of his extant writings the most important is his “History of the Reformation,” reaching down toA.D.1567. Morton’s vigorous government completely destroyed Mary’s party, but also restricted the pretensions of Presbyterianism. After his overthrow inA.D.1578,James VI., now in his 12th year, himself undertook the government at the head of a council of state. His weakness of character showed itself in his vacillating between an alliance with Catholic Spain and one with Protestant England, as well as between secret favouring of Catholicism and open endeavouring to supersede puritan Presbyterianism by Anglican-Protestant episcopacy. InA.D.1584 the parliament, enlarged by the introduction of the lower orders of the nobility, so defined the royal supremacy as to deprive the Presbyterian church of several of her rights and privileges. But inA.D.1592 the king was obliged absolutely to restore these.After Elizabeth’s death inA.D.1603, as the great-grandson of Henry VII., he united the kingdoms of England and Scotland under the title of James I.390—Continuation, § 153, 6.§ 139.12.The Netherlands.—By the marriage of Mary of Burgundy, the heiress of Charles the Bald, with Maximilian I., inA.D.1478, the Netherlands passed over to the house of Hapsburg, and after Maximilian’s death, inA.D.1519, went to his grandson Charles V. Even in the previous period the ground was broken in these regions for the introduction of the Reformation of the 16th century by means of the Brothers of the Common Life (§112, 9) and the Dutch precursors of the Reformation (§119, 10), working as they did among an intrepid and liberty loving people. The writings of Luther were introduced at a very early date into Holland, and the first martyrs from the Lutheran Confession (§128, 1) were led to the stake at Antwerp, inA.D.1523. The alliance with France and Switzerland, however, was the occasion of subsequently securing the triumph of the Reformed Confession (see § 160, 1). But fanatical Anabaptists soon followed in the wake of the reform movement, and sent forth their emissaries into Germany and Switzerland. As the emperor had here an authority as absolute as his heart could desire, he proceeded to execute unrelentingly the edict of Worms, and multitudes of witnesses for the gospel as well as fanatical sectaries were put to death by the sword and at the stake. Still more dreadful was the havoc committed by the Inquisition after Charles’ abdication, inA.D.1555, under his son and successorPhilip II.of Spain, which had for its aim the overthrow alike of ecclesiastical and political liberty. In order the more successfully to withstand the Reformation, the four original bishoprics were increased by the addition of fourteen new bishoprics, and three were raised into archbishoprics, Utrecht, Mechlin, and Cambray. But even these measures failed in securing the end desired, because the Dutch, even those who hitherto had remained faithful to the Romish Church, saw in them simply an instrument for advancing Spanish despotism.—InA.D.1523 Luther’s translation of the N.T. had already been rendered into Dutch and printed at Amsterdam. InA.D.1545 Jacob van Liesfield translated the whole Bible, and was for this sent to the scaffold inA.D.1545. A Calvinistic symbol was set forth inA.D.1562 in the Belgic Confession. The league formed by the nobles, inA.D.1566, to offer resistance to the tyranny of the Spaniards, to which their oppressors gave the contemptuous designation of the Beggars—a name which they themselves adopted as a title of honour—increased in strength and importance from day to day, and the people, thirsting for revenge, tore down churches, images, and altars. The prudent regent, however,Margaret of Parma, Philip’s half-sister, would have been more successful in preventing an outburst of rebellion by her conciliatory manœuvres, had her brother given her greater freedom of action. Instead of doing so he sent to her aid, inA.D.1587, the terribleDuke of Alva, with a standing army of 10,000 Spaniards. The “Bloody Council” instituted by him for stamping out the revolt now began its horrible proceedings, sending thousands upon thousands to the rack and the scaffold. The regent, protesting against such acts, demanded her recall, and Alva was put in her place. The bloody tribunal moved now from city to city; all the leading throughfares were covered with victims hanging from gibbets, and when Alva at last, inA.D.1573, was at his own request recalled, he could boast of having carried out in six years 18,600 executions. Meanwhile the greatPrince of Orange, William the Silent, formerly royal governor of the Dutch Provinces, but sinceA.D.1568 a fugitive under the ban, had now openly signified his adhesion to Protestantism, and in 1572 placed himself at the head of the revolt. After gaining several victories by land and by sea, he succeeded, in the so calledPacification of Ghent, ofA.D.1576, in uniting almost all the provinces, Protestant and Catholic, under a resolution to exercise toleration to one another and show resistance to the common foe. The new governor, Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, managed indeed to detach the southern Catholic provinces from the league, but all the more closely did the seven northern provinces bind themselves together in the Union of Utrecht ofA.D.1579, promising to fight to the end for their religious and political liberty. William’s truest friend, counsellor, and director of his political actions, since the formation of the league ofA.D.1566, wasPhilip van Marnix, Count of St. Aldegonde. He had drawn up the articles of the league, and was equally celebrated as a statesman and soldier, and as theologian, satirist, orator, and poet. He was pre-eminently an ardent patriot, and an enthusiastic adherent of Calvin’s Reformation. He had been himself a pupil of the great Genevan. Besides a spirited material version of the Psalter, his chief satirico-theological work was “The Beehive of the Holy Roman Church,” written in the Flemish dialect.—After William’s assassination by the hand of a Catholic, inA.D.1584, he was succeeded by his sonMaurice, who after long years of bloody conflict succeeded, inA.D.1609, in completely freeing his country from the Spanish yoke.391§ 139.13.France.—The Reformation in France had its beginning from Wittenberg, but subsequently the Genevan reformers obtained a dominating influence. Even inA.D.1521, the Sorbonne issued aDeterminatio super doctr. Luth., pronouncing Luther’s teaching and writings heretical, which Melanchthon in the same year answered with unusual vigour in hisApologia adv. furiosum Parisiensium theologastrorum decretum.Everything depended upon the attitude which the young kingFrancis I.,A.D.1515-1547, might assume in reference to the various religious parties. His love of humanist studies, now flourishing in France, whose zealous promoter and protector he was against the attacks of the scholastic Sorbonne (§120, 8), as well as the traditional policy of his family in ecclesiastical matters since the time of St. Louis (§96, 21), seemed to favour the hope that he would not prove altogether hostile to the ideas of the Reformation. But even as early asA.D.1516 he had, in his concordat with the pope (§110, 14), surrendered the acquisitions of the Basel Council by the revocation of the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII., and in this way, by the right given him to nominate all the bishops and abbots, he obtained a power over all the clergy of his realm which was too much in accordance with his dynastic ideas to allow of his sacrificing it in favour of the Lutheran autonomy in the management of the church, let alone the yet more radical demands of the Calvinistic constitution. Even in his antagonism to the emperor (§§126, 5,6;133, 7), which led him to befriend in a very decided manner the German Protestants, his interests crossed one another, inasmuch as he required to retain the goodwill of the pope. Suppression of Protestantism in his own land and the fostering of it in Germany were thus the aims of his crooked policy. He did indeed for a time entertain the idea of introducing a moderate Reformation into France after the Erasmian model, in order to secure closer attachment to and union with German Protestantism. He entered into negotiations with Philip the Magnanimous, and had Melanchthon invited inA.D.1535 to attend a conference on these matters in France. Melanchthon was not indisposed to go, but was interdicted by his prince the elector, who feared lest he might make too great concessions. And just about this time fanatically violent pamphlets and placards were published, which were even thrown into the royal apartments, and thus the anger of the king was roused to the utmost pitch. The persecutions, which, fromA.D.1524, had already brought many isolated witnesses to the scaffold and the stake, now assumed a systematic and general character. InA.D.1535, an Inquisition tribunal was set up, with members nominated by the pope, and as supplementary thereto there was instituted in the Parliament of Paris the so-calledchambre ardente: the former drew up the process against the heretics, the latter pronounced and executed the sentence. Thousands of heroic confessors died under torture, on the gallows, by sword, or by fire.UnderHenry II.,A.D.1547-1559, who continued his father’s crooked policy, thechambre ardentebecame more and more active, and the cruelty of the persecution increased. Among the sworn foes of the Reformation, Diana of Poitiers, an old love of his father’s, had for a time the greatest influence over the king. He raised her to the rank of duchess. With diabolic satisfaction she gloated upon the spectacle ofautos-de-fécarried out at her request, and enriched herself with the confiscated goods of the victims. Side by side with her, inspired by a like hate of Protestantism, stood the great marshal and all-powerful minister of state, the Constable Montmorency. These two were further backed up by all the influence of the powerful ducal family of the Guises, a branch of a Lorraine house naturalized in France, consisting of six brothers, at their head the two eldest, the Cardinal Charles of Lorraine, Archbishop of Rheims, who died inA.D.1574, and Francis, the conqueror of Calais. The least influential in the league at that time was the queen, Catharine de Medici.§ 139.14. In spite of all persecutions, the Reformed church made rapid progress, especially in the southern districts.Its adherents came to be known by the name ofHuguenots, meaning originally Leaguers, Covenanters, on account of their connection with Geneva. A popular etymology of the word derives it from the nightly assemblies in a locality haunted by the spirit of King Hugo. Calvin and Beza, as sons of France, assisted the young church with counsel and help. But even within the bounds of the kingdom it had very important political supporters. Certain members of the house of Bourbon, a powerful branch of the royal family, Anton, who married the brilliant heiress of Navarre, Jeanne d’Albret, and his brother Louis de Condé, had attached themselves to the Protestant cause. Also other distinguished personages,e.g.the noble Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, a nephew of Montmorency, and several prominent members of Parliament, were enthusiastically devoted to Protestantism, and, withdrawing from the frivolous and licentious court, gave to the profession of the reformed faith a wide reputation for strict morality and deep piety. The first general synod of the reformed church was held in Paris from 25th to 28th May,A.D.1559. It adopted a Calvinistic symbol, theConfessio Gallicana, and, as a directory for the constitution and discipline of the church, forty articles, also inspired by the spirit of Calvin.—Henry II. was followed in succession by his three sons, Francis, Charles, and Henry, all of whom died without issue.UnderFrancis II.,A.D.1559, 1560, who ascended the throne in his sixteenth year, the two Guises, the uncles of his queen Mary Stuart, held unlimited sway and gave abundance of work to thechambre ardente. A conspiracy directed against them inA.D.1560 led to the execution of 1,200 persons implicated in it. Even the two Bourbons were cast into prison, and the younger condemned to death. The king’s early death, however, prevented the execution of the sentence.The queen-mother, Catharine de Medici, now succeeded in breaking off the yoke of the Guises and securing to herself the regency during the minority of her sonCharles IX.,A.D.1560-1574. But the attempts of the Guises to undermine her authority obliged her to seek supporters meanwhile among the Protestants. Coligny was able inA.D.1560 to demand religious toleration of the imperial Parliament, and succeeded at last so far that inA.D.1561 an edict was issued abolishing capital punishment for heresy. In order to bring about wherever that was possible an understanding between the two great religious parties, a five weeks’ religious conference was held in September of that same year in the Abbey of Poissy, near Paris, to which on the evangelical side Beza from Geneva and Peter Martyr from Zürich, besides many other theologians, were invited. On the Catholic side, the Cardinal of Lorraine represented the doctrine of his church, and subsequently also the general of the Jesuits, Lainez. The proceedings, in which Beza’s learning, eloquence, and praiseworthy courtesy toward his opponents had great weight, were concentrated on the doctrines of the Church and the Lord’s Supper, but yielded no result. In order that they might be able to inflame the Lutherans and the Reformed against one another, the Catholics endeavoured to bring forward supporters of the Augsburg Confession into the discussions on those points. Five German theologians were actually brought forward, among them Jac. Andreä of Württemberg, but too late to take part in the conference. On 17th January,A.D.1562, the regent issued an edict, by which the Protestants were allowed to hold religious services outside of the towns, and also to have meetings of synod under the supervision of royal commissioners.§ 139.15. The rage of the Guises and their fanatical party at this edict knew no bounds. Francis of Guise swore to cut it up with his sword, and on 1st March,A.D.1562, at Passy in Champagne, he fell upon the Huguenots assembled there for worship in a barn, and slew them almost to a man. At Cahors, a Huguenot place of worship was surrounded by a Catholic mob and set on fire. None of those gathered together there survived, for those who escaped the flames were waylaid and murdered. At Toulouse, the oppressed Protestants, with wives and children, to the number of 4,000, had betaken themselves to the capitol. They were promised a free outlet, and were then slaughtered, because no one, it was said, should keep his word with a heretic (§ 200, 3). Louis Condé summoned his fellow Protestants to take up arms in their own defence against such atrocities, entrenched himself in Orleans, and obtained, by the help of the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, German auxiliaries. The Guises, on the other hand, won over to their side the king and his mother. And now the strict legitimist Coligny placed himself at the head of the Huguenot movement. The battle of Dreux in Dec.,A.D.1562, resulted unfavourably to the Protestants, but during the siege of Orleans Francis of Guise was assassinated by a Huguenot nobleman. The regent now, in the peace edict of Amboise, of 19th Nov.,A.D.1563, allowed to the Protestants liberty of worship except in certain districts and cities, of which Paris was one. After securing emancipation from the yoke of the Guises, however, she soon began openly to show her old hatred of the Protestants. She joined in a league with Spain for the extirpating of heresy, restricted inA.D.1564 by the Edict of Roussillon her previous concessions, and laid incessant plots in order to effect the capture or murder of the two great leaders of the Huguenot party. The threatening incursions of the Duke of Alva upon the neighbouring provinces of the Netherlands, inA.D.1567, occasioned the outbreak of the second religious war. The projected removal of the court to Monceaux fell through indeed, in consequence of the hasty flight of the king to Paris, but the overthrow of the royal army in the battle of St. Denys, in Nov.,A.D.1567, in which Montmorency fell, as well as the reinforcement of the Huguenot army by an auxiliary corps under the leadership of John Casimir, the prince of the Palatinate, led Catharine to conclude the Peace of Longjumeau, of March,A.D.1568, which guaranteed anew all previous concessions. But when the persecution of the Huguenots was continued in numberless executions, before the year was out they had again, for the third time, to have recourse to arms. England supported them with money and ammunition, and Protestant Germany gave them 11,000 auxiliaries; while Spain helped their opponents. Louis Condé fell by the hand of an assassin inA.D.1569, but the Huguenots had so evidently the best of it, that the king and his mother found themselves obliged to grant them complete liberty of conscience and of worship in the peace treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, on 8th of Aug.,A.D.1570, excepting in Paris and in the immediate surroundings of the palace. As a guarantee for the treaty, four strongholds in southern France were surrendered to them. It was further stipulated, in order to confirm for ever the good undertaking, that Henry of Navarre, son of Jeanne d’Albret, should marry Margaret, the sister of Charles IX.§ 139.16. At the marriage, consummated on 18th of August,A.D.1572, subsequently known as theBloody Marriage, the chiefs of the Huguenot party were gathered together at Paris. Jeanne d’Albret had died at the court, probably by poison, on 9th June, and Coligny had been fatally wounded by a shot on 22nd August. On the night of St. Bartholomew, between the 23rd and 24th August, the castle bell tolled. This was the concerted signal for the destruction of all the Huguenots present in Paris. For four days the carnage was unweariedly carried on by the city militia appointed for the purpose, the royal Swiss guards, and crowds of fanatical artisans. Coligny fell praying amid the blows of his murderers. No Huguenot was spared, neither children, nor women, nor the aged. Their princely chiefs, Henry of Navarre and Henry Condé, the son of Louis, were offered the choice between death and taking part in the celebration of mass. They decided for the latter. Meanwhile messengers had hasted into the provinces with the death-warrants, and there the slaughter began afresh. The whole number of victims is variously estimated at from 10,000 to 100,000; in Paris alone there fell from 1,000 to 10,000.—The death decree was not indeed so much the result of long planned and regularly conceived conspiracy, as a sudden resolve suggested by political circumstances. The queen-mother was at variance with her son with respect to his anti-Spanish policy, which had always inclined him favourably to Coligny; and so, in concert with her favourite son, Henry of Anjou, she succeeded in dealing a deadly stroke at the great admiral by the hand of an assassin. The king swore to take fearful vengeance on the unknown perpetrators of this crime. Catharine now made every effort to avert the threatened blow. She managed to convince the king, by means of her fellow conspirators, that the Huguenots regarded him as an accomplice in the perpetrating of the outrage, and that so his life was in danger because of them. He now swore by God’s death that not merely the chiefs, to whom Catharine and her auxiliaries had directed special attention, but all the Huguenots in France, should die, in order that not one should remain to bring this charge against him. On the other hand, it is all but certain that the thought of such a diabolical deed had previously suggested itself, if indeed expression had not been explicitly given to it. To the Spanish and Romish courts, the French government represented the deed as anacte prémédité, to the German court as anacte non prémédité. But even before this a letter from Rome to the Emperor Maximilian II. (§137, 8) had contained the following: “At that hour(referring to the marriage festivities)when all the birds are in the cage, they can seize upon them altogether, and can have any one that they desire.” He was profoundly excited about the villany of the transaction, while Philip II. of Spain on hearing of it is said to have laughed for the first time in his life. Pope Gregory XIII. indeed feared the worst consequences, but soon changed his mind, and had Rome illuminated, all the bells rung, the cannons fired, aTe Deumperformed, processions made, and a medal struck, with the inscription,Ugonottorum strages.He instructed the French ambassador to inform his king that this performance was a hundred times more grateful to him than fifty victories over the Turks.392§ 139.17. The dreadful deed, however, completely failed in accomplishing the end in view. Even after 100,000 had been slaughtered there still remained more than ten times that number of Huguenots, who, in possession of their strongholds, occupied positions of great strategical importance. After a brief breathing time of peace, therefore, they were able, on five occasions, inA.D.1573, 1576, 1577, 1580, to renew the religious civil war,when once and again the truce had been broken by the Catholics. Charles IX. was succeeded by Catharine’s favourite son,Henry III.,A.D.1574-1589, who, joining the most shameless immorality to the narrowest bigotry and asceticism (§149, 17), was no way behind his brother in dissoluteness, and was still more conspicuous for dastardliness and cowardice. Henry Condé had, just immediately after Charles’s death, abjured again the Catholic confession, and put himself at the head of the Huguenot revolt. Henry of Navarre rejoined his old friends two years later, after having in the meantime vied with his brother-in-law and his incestuous wife in frivolity and immorality. He was able to take part successfully in the fifth religious war, in which the Huguenots, supported once more by the German auxiliaries under the Count-palatine John Casimir, secured such advantages, that the court, in the Treaty of Beaulieu, ofA.D.1576, were obliged to grant them complete religious freedom and a larger number of strongholds. But now Henry of Guise, in concert with his brothers Louis, cardinal and Archbishop of Rheims, and Charles, Duke of Mayenne, formed the Holy League, which he compelled the king to join, and renewed the war with increased vigour. In the eighth war sinceA.D.1584, which on the part of the Guises was really as much directed against the king’s Huguenot policy as against the Huguenots themselves, Henry was obliged, by the Treaty of Nemours, ofA.D.1585, to declare that the Protestants were deprived of all rights and privileges. In the battle of Coutras, however, inA.D.1587, Henry of Navarre annihilated the opposing forces. But as he failed to follow up the advantages then secured, the Guises again recruited their strength to such a degree that they were able openly to work for the dethronement of the king. Henry could save himself only by the murder of both the elder Guises at the Diet of Blois. There was now no alternative left him but to cast himself into the arms of the Huguenots, and on this account, at the siege of the capital, he was murdered by the Dominican Clement.Henry of Navarre, as the only legitimate heir, now ascended the throne asHenry IV.,A.D.1589-1610. After a hard struggle, lasting for four years, in which he was supported by England and Germany, while his opponents, headed by the Duke of Mayenne, were aided with money and men by Spain, Savoy, and the pope, he at last decided, inA.D.1593, to pass over to Catholicism, because, as he said, “Paris is well worth a mass.”He secured, however, for his former co-religionists, by theEdict of Nantes, of 13th April,A.D.1598, complete liberty of holding religious services in all the cities where previously there had been reformed congregations, as well as thorough equality with the Catholics in all civil rights and privileges, especially in regard to eligibility for all civil and military offices. The fortresses and strongholds hitherto held by them were to be left with them for eight years, and in the Parliament a special “Chamber of the Edict” was instituted, with eight Catholic and eight Protestant members. But, on the other hand, they continued to be under the Catholic marriage laws, were obliged to cease from work on the Catholic festivals, and to pay tithes to the Catholic clergy. After a stubborn resistance on the part of the Parliament of Paris, the university, and the Sorbonne, as well as on that of the bishops, the king, in February,A.D.1599, secured the incorporation of the edict among the laws of France. On 14th May,A.D.1610, he was struck down by the dagger of the Feuillant Ravaillac, a fanatical Jesuit. Notwithstanding his many moral shortcomings, France has rightly celebrated him as one of the greatest and best of her kings. With wisdom, prudence, and humanity he wrought unweariedly for the advancement of a commonwealth that had been reduced to the lowest depths. He protected the Protestants in the enjoyment of privileges guaranteed to them, and though he did indeed put upon his old Huguenot friends some gentle pressure to get them to follow his example, he yet honoured those who steadfastly refused. His minister Sully, although it is supposed that he had felt obliged to advise the king to go over to Catholicism, stood himself unhesitatingly true to his profession of the Huguenot faith, while he retained the king’s confidence, and proved his most faithful adviser and administrator during all the negotiations of peace and war.Philip du Plessis Mornay, on the other hand, distinguished even more as a statesman, diplomatist, and field marshal than as a theologian and author,393but above all as a Christian and a man in the noblest sense of the word, who, in the belief that evangelical truth would, even in the Catholic church, assert its conquering power, had agreed with the Catholic League to instruct the king in the Catholic faith, and had thus made the act of apostasy appear to him less offensive. But just because the mere presence of a friend of high moral character and true religious principles acted as too sharp a sting to the king’s conscience, he had to submit to be relegated to an honorary post as governor of Saumur, where he became founder of the famous academy which Louis XIV. suppressed inA.D.1685. Theodore Agrippa d’Aubigné, too, distinguished as a brave warrior in the army of the Huguenots, as well as a historian, poet, and satirist, stood high in favour with the king, though Henry, often roused by his unbending pride, repeatedly expelled him from the court.After Henry’s death D’Aubigné returned to Geneva, where he died inA.D.1630.394§ 139.18.Poland.—The Reformation had been introduced into Poland first of all by the exiled Bohemian Brethren, and Luther’s writings soon after their appearance were eagerly read in that region.Sigismund I.,A.D.1506-1548, opposed it with all his might. It met with most success in Prussian Poland. Dantzig, inA.D.1525, drove out the Catholic council. Sigismund went down there himself, had several citizens executed, and restored the old mode of worship inA.D.1526. But scarcely had he left the town when it again went back to the profession of the Lutheran faith. Elbing and Thorn followed its example. In Poland proper also the new doctrines made way. In spite of all prohibitions many young Poles flocked to Wittenberg, and brought away from it to their native country a glowing enthusiasm for Luther and his teaching. The Swiss Confession had already found entrance there, and the persecutions which Ferdinand of Austria carried on after the Schmalcald war in Bohemia and Moravia led great numbers of Bohemian Brethren to cross over into the Polish territories.Sigismund Augustus,A.D.1548-1572, was personally favourable to the Reformation. He studied Calvin’s “Institutes,” received letters from him and from Melanchthon, and, in accordance with the decisions of a national assembly at Petrican inA.D.1555 demanded of the pope a national council, as well as permission for the marriage of priests, the communion in both kinds, the celebration of mass in the vernacular, and abolition of annats. The pope naturally refused to yield, but inA.D.1556 sent into the country a legate of a despotic and violent temper, called Aloysius Lippomanus, who was replaced inA.D.1563 by the bland and eloquent Commendone. Both were powerfully supported in their struggle against heresy by the fanatically Catholic cardinal Stanislaus Hosius, Bishop of Ermeland. The Protestant nobility then recalled, inA.D.1556, their celebrated countrymanJohn à Lasco, who twenty years before had, on account of his evangelical faith, resigned his office as provost of Gnesen and left his fatherland. He had meanwhile taken part in the Reformation of East Friesland, and had acted for several years as preacher at Emden. After that, he had gone, at the call of Cranmer, inA.D.1550, to England; upon the death of Edward VI., along with a part of his London flock of foreign exiles, had sought refuge in Denmark, which, however, was refused on account of his attachment to Zwingli’s doctrine; and at last settled down at Frankfort-on-the-Maine as pastor to a congregation of French, English, and Dutch exiles. After his return home he endeavoured to bring about a union of the Lutherans and Reformed, in concert with several friends made a translation of the Bible, and died inA.D.1560. At ageneral synod at Sendomir, inA.D.1570, a union was at last effected between the three dissentient parties, by which the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord’s Supper was acknowledged, yet in so indefinite a form that Calvin’s view might also be entertained. The Lutheran opposition at the synod had been suppressed by urgent entreaty, but afterwards broke out again in a still more violent form. At the Synod of Thorn, inA.D.1595, the Lutheran pastor Paul Gericke was the leader of it; but one of the nobles present held a dagger to his heart, and the synod suspended him from his office as a disturber of the peace. Sigismund Augustus had meanwhile died, inA.D.1572. During the interregnum that followed, the Protestant nobles formed a confederation, which before the election of a new king succeeded in obtaining a comprehensive religious peace, thePax dissidentiumofA.D.1573, by means of which Catholics and Protestants were for all time to live together in peace and enjoy equal civil rights. The newly elected king,Henry of Anjou, sought to avoid binding himself by oath to the observance of this peace, but the imperial marshal addressed him in firm and decided language,Si non jurabis, non regnabis. In the following year, however, the new king left Poland in order to mount the French throne as Henry III.Stephen Bathori,A.D.1576-1586, swore without hesitation to observe the peace, and kept his oath.Under his successor, Sigismund III., a Swedish prince,A.D.1587-1632, the Protestants had to complain of the infringement of many of their rights, which from this time down to the overthrow of the Polish kingdom, inA.D.1772, they never again enjoyed.395—Continuation, § 164, 4.§ 139.19.Bohemia and Moravia.—The numerous Bohemian and Moravian Brethren (§119, 8), at whose head was the elder Luke of Prague, greeted the appearance of Luther with the most hopeful joy. By messages and writings, however, which inA.D.1522-1524 were interchanged between them, some important diversities of view were discovered. Luke disliked Luther’s realistic theory of the Lord’s Supper, continued to hold by the seven sacraments, rejected the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and took special offence at Luther’s view of Christian freedom, which seemed to him to want the necessary rigour of the apostolic discipline of the life and to under-estimate the importance and worth of celibacy and virginity. Luther, on the other hand, charged them with a want of grasp of the doctrine and a Novatian over-estimation of mere outward exercises and discipline. And so these negotiations ended in mutual recrimination, and only after Luke’s death, inA.D.1528, and the glorious Diet of Augsburg, inA.D.1530, were they reopened. The Lutheranizing tendency, for which especially the two elders John Roh and John Augusta laboured, now gained the upper hand for two decades. InA.D.1532 the Brethren presented to the Margrave George of Brandenburg an apology of the doctrine and customs, which was printed at Wittenberg, and had a preface by Luther, in which he expressed himself in very favourable terms about the doctrine of the “Picards,” and only objected to their spiritualizing tendency, of which their doctrine of the supper and of baptism was not altogether free, inasmuch as they, while practising infant baptism, required that each one should on reaching maturity take the vows upon himself and have baptism repeated. Still more favourably did he speak of their confession presented inA.D.1535 to King Ferdinand, in which they had left out the rebaptizing, substituting for it the solemn imposition of hands as confirmation. When the Brethren at Luther’s request had modified the two articles at which he took offence, their unsatisfactory theory of justification, and that of the wholesomeness, though not necessity, of clerical celibacy, he declared himself thoroughly satisfied, and at their last personal conference, inA.D.1542, he stretched his hand over the table to Augusta and his companions as the pledge of indissoluble brotherly fellowship, although not agreed in regard to various matters of constitution and discipline. The refusal of the Brethren to fight against their German fellow Protestants in the Schmalcald war led to their king Ferdinand upon its close issuing some penal statutes against them. Driven away into exile inA.D.1548, many of them went to Poland, the larger number to Prussia, from whence they returned to their native land inA.D.1574. Meantime matters had there in many respects taken an altogether new turn. In the later years of his reign Ferdinand had become more favourable to the evangelical movement in his hereditary dominions, and Maximilian II.,A.D.1564-1576, gave it an absolutely free course (§137, 8). Thus the Brethren could not only go on from day to day increasing in numbers and in influence, but alongside of them there grew up a genuine Lutheran community and an independent Calvinist body. The Crypto-calvinism which was also at the same time gaining the victory in Saxony (§141, 10) cast its shadow upon the Lutheranizing movement among the Brethren. And this movement told all the more against the Lutheran party there from the circumstance that at an earlier period there had been powerful influences at work, inspired by a national Bohemian spirit, to resist German interference in matters of religion. Since the death of the elder Luke the national party had succeeded more and more in working back to the genuine Bohemian constitution, discipline, and confession of their fathers. At the head of this movement stood John Blahoslaw, fromA.D.1553 deacon of Jungbunzlau, after Luke of Prague and before Amos Comenius (§ 167, 2) the most important champion of the Bohemian-Moravian Confession. To him chiefly are the Brethren indebted for the high development of literary and scientific activity which they manifested during the second half of the century, and his numerous writings, but pre-eminently his translation of the N.T., proved almost as influential and epoch-making for the Bohemian language as Luther’s translation of the Bible did for the written language of Germany. Himself one of the ablest among the very numerous writers of spiritual songs in Bohemian, he was the restorer of the simple and majestic Bohemian chorales. As he had himself, inA.D.1568, translated the N.T. from the original Greek text, he also undertook, with the help of several younger men of noble gifts, a similar translation of the O.T. and a commentary on the whole Bible. But he died inA.D.1571, in his forty-eighth year, before the issue of his great work, upon the inception of which he had expended so much thought and care. This great undertaking was completed and published in six volumes betweenA.D.1579-1593. The strong spiritual affinity between the society of the Brethren and the Calvinistic church, especially in its doctrine of the supper and in its zeal for rigid church discipline, was meanwhile again brought into prominence, and had led to a more and more decided loosening of attachment to the Lutheran church, and, in spite of the antagonism of its episcopalianism to the Calvinistic presbyterianism, to the formation of closer ties with Calvinism. But now, on the other hand, the common danger that threatened them from Rudolph II., who had been king of Bohemia fromA.D.1575, at the instigation of Jesuits through the Spanish court, led all non-Catholics, of whatever special confession, to draw as closely together as possible. Thus a league came to be formed in the same year in which the Brethren were far outnumbered by Lutherans, Reformed, and Calixtines (§119, 7), by means of which, in theConfessio BohemicaofA.D.1575, a common symbol was drawn up, and all the four parties were placed under the management of a common consistory. But when, after Maximilian’s death, Rudolph II. proceeded more and more rigorously in his efforts to completely suppress all heresy, the Bohemians rose with one heart, and at last, inA.D.1609, extorted from him the rescript which gave them absolute religious liberty according to the Bohemian Confession, a common consistory of their own, and an academy at Prague.Bohemia was now an almost completely evangelical country, and scarcely a tenth part of its inhabitants professed attachment to the Catholic faith.396—Continuation, §§ 153, 2; 167, 2.
§ 139.1.Sweden.—For fifty years Sweden had been free from the Danish yoke which had been imposed upon it by the Calmar union ofA.D.1397. The higher clergy, who possessed two-thirds of the land, had continuously conspired in favour of Denmark. The Archbishop of Upsala, Gustavus Trolle, fell out with the chancellor, Sten Sture, and was deposed. Pope Leo X. pronounced the ban and interdict against Sweden. Christian II. of Denmark conquered the country inA.D.1520, and in the frightful massacre of Stockholm during the coronation festivities, in spite of his sworn assurances, 600 of the noblest in the land, marked out by the archbishop as enemies of Denmark, were slain. But scarcely had Christian reached home whenGustavus Vasalanded from Lübeck, whither he had fled, drove out the Danes, and was elected king,A.D.1523. In his exile he had become favourably inclined to the Reformation, and now he joined the Protestants to have their help against the opposing clergy.Olaf Peterson, who had studied fromA.D.1516 in Wittenberg, soon after his return home, inA.D.1519, began as deacon in Strengnæs, along withLawrence Anderson, afterwards administrator of the diocese of Strengnæs, to spread the reformed doctrines. Subsequently they were joined by Olaf’s younger brother,Laurence Peterson. During the king’s absence inA.D.1524, two Anabaptists visited Stockholm, and even the calm-minded Olaf was for a time carried away by them. The king quickly suppressed the disturbances, and entered heartily upon the work of reformation. Anderson, appointed chancellor by Vasa, inA.D.1526 translated the N.T., and Olaf with the help of his learned brother undertook the O.T. The people, however, still clung to the old faith, till at the Diet ofWestnæs, inA.D.1527, the king set before them the alternative of accepting his resignation or the Reformation. The people’s love for their king overcame all clerical opposition. Church property was used to supply revenues to kings and nobles, and to provide salaries for pastors who should preach the gospel in its purity. The Reformation was peacefully introduced into all parts of the land, and the diets at Örebro, inA.D.1529, 1537, and at Westnæs, inA.D.1544, carried out the work to completion. The new organization adopted the episcopal constitution, and also in worship, by connivance of the people, many Catholic ceremonies were allowed to remain. Most of the bishops accepted the inevitable. The Archbishop Magnus of Upsala, papal legate, went to Poland, and Bishop Brask of Linköping fled with all the treasures of his church to Danzig. Laurence Peterson was made inA.D.1531 first evangelical Archbishop of Upsala, and married a relative of the royal house. But his brother Olaf fell into disfavour on account of his protest against the king’s real or supposed acts of rapacity. He and Anderson, because they had failed to report a conspiracy which came to their knowledge in the confessional, were condemned to death, but were pardoned by the king. Gustavus died inA.D.1560. Under his son Eric a Catholic reaction set in, and his brother John III., inA.D.1578, made secret confession of Catholicism to the Jesuit Possevin, urged thereto by his Catholic queen and the prospect of the Polish throne. John’s son Sigismund, also king of Poland, openly joined the Romish Church. But his uncle Charles of Sodermanland, a zealous Protestant, as governor after John’s death, called together the nobles at Upsala inA.D.1593, when the Latin mass-book introduced by John was forbidden, and the acknowledgment of the Augsburg Confession was renewed. But as Sigismund continued to favour Catholicism, the peers of the realm declared, inA.D.1604, that he had forfeited the throne, which his uncle now ascended as Charles IX.—The Reformation had been already carried from Sweden intoFinland.374
§ 139.2.Denmark and Norway.—Christian II., nephew of the Elector of Saxony and brother-in-law of the Emperor Charles V., although he had associated himself with the Romish hierarchy in Sweden for the overthrow of the national party, had in Denmark taken the side of the Reformation against the clergy, who were there supreme. InA.D.1521 he succeeded in getting Carlstadt to come to his assistance, but he was soon forced to quit the country. InA.D.1523 the clergy and nobles formally renounced their allegiance, and gave the crown to his uncleFrederick I., Duke of Schleswig and Holstein. Christian fled to Saxony, was there completely won over to the Reformation by Luther, converted also his wife, the emperor’s sister, and had the first Danish N.T., by Hans Michelson, printed at Leipzig and circulated in Denmark. To secure the emperor’s aid, however, he abjured the evangelical faith at Augsburg inA.D.1530. In the following year he conquered Norway, and bound himself on his coronation to maintain the Catholic religion. But inA.D.1532 he was obliged to surrender to Frederick, and spent the remaining twenty-seven years of his life in prison, where he repented his apostasy, and had the opportunity of instructing himself by the study of the Danish Bible.—Frederick I. had been previously favourable to the Reformation, yet his hands were bound by the express terms of his election. His son Christian III. unreservedly introduced the Reformation into his duchies. In this he was encouraged by his father. InA.D.1526 he openly professed the evangelical faith, and invited the Danish reformerHans Tausen, a disciple of Luther, who had preached the gospel amid much persecution sinceA.D.1524, to settle as preacher in Copenhagen. At a diet at Odensee [Odense] inA.D.1527 he restricted episcopal jurisdiction, proclaimed universal religious toleration, gave priests liberty to marry and to leave their cloisters, and thus laid the foundations of the Reformation. Tausen inA.D.1530 submitted to the nobles his own confession,Confessio Hafinca, and the Reformation rapidly advanced. Frederick died inA.D.1533. The bishops now rose in a body, and insisted that the estates should refuse to acknowledge his sonChristian III.But when the burgomaster of Lübeck, taking advantage of the anarchy, plotted to subject Denmark to the proud commercial city, and inA.D.1534 actually laid siege to Copenhagen, the Jutland nobles hastened to swear fealty to Christian. He drove out the Lübeckers, and byA.D.1536 had possession of the whole land. He resolved now to put an end for ever to the machinations of the clergy. In August,A.D.1536, he had all bishops imprisoned in one day, and at a diet at Copenhagen had them formally deposed. Their property fell into the royal exchequer, all monasteries were secularized, some presented to the nobles, some converted into hospitals and schools. In order to complete the organization of the church Bugenhagen was called in inA.D.1537. He crowned the king and queen, sketched a directory of worship, which was adopted at theDiet of Odensee [Odense]inA.D.1539, and returned to Wittenberg inA.D.1542. In place of bishops Lutheran superintendents were appointed, to whom subsequently the title of bishop was given, and the Augsburg Confession accepted as the standard. The Reformation was contemporaneously introduced intoNorway, which acknowledged the king inA.D.1536. The Archbishop of Drontheim, Olaf Engelbrechtzen, fled with the church treasures to the Netherlands.Icelandstood out longer, but yielded inA.D.1551, when the power of the rebel bishops was broken.375
§ 139.3.Courland, Livonia, and Esthonia.—Livonia had seceded from the dominion of the Teutonic knights inA.D.1521, and under the grand-master Walter of Plattenburg assumed the position of an independent principality. In that same year a Lutheran archdeacon,Andr. Knöpken, expelled from Pomerania, came to Riga, and preached the gospel with moderation. Soon after Tegetmaier came from Rostock, and so vigorously denounced image worship that excited mobs entered the churches and tore down the images; yet he was protected by the council and the grand-master. The third reformerBriesmannwas the immediate scholar of Luther. The able town clerk of Riga, Lohmüller, heartily wrought with them, and the Reformation spread through city and country. At Wolmar and Dorpat, inA.D.1524, the work was carried on by Melchior Hoffmann, whose Lutheranism was seriously tinged with Anabaptist extravagances (§147, 1). The diocese of Oesel adopted the reformed doctrines, and at the same time a Lutheran church was formed in Reval. After strong opposition had been offered, at last, inA.D.1538, Riga accepted the evangelical confession, joined the Schmalcald League, and in a short time all Livonia and Esthonia accepted the Augsburg Confession. Political troubles, occasioned mainly by Russia, obliged the last grand-master,Kettler, inA.D.1561 to surrender Livonia to Sigismund Augustus of Poland, but with the formal assurance that the rights of the evangelicals should be preserved. He himself retained Courland as an hereditary duchy under the suzerainty of Poland, and gave himself unweariedly to the evangelical organization of his country, powerfully assisted by Bülau, first superintendent of Courland.—The Lutheran church of Livonia had in consequence to pass through severe trials. Under Polish protection a Jesuit college was established in Riga inA.D.1584. Two city churches had to be given over to the Catholics, and Possevin conducted an active Catholic propaganda, which was ended only when Livonia, inA.D.1629, as also Esthonia somewhat earlier, came under the rule of Sweden. In consequence of the Norse war both countries were incorporated into the Russian empire, and by the Peace of Nystadt, ofA.D.1721, its Lutheran church retained all its privileges, on condition that it did not interfere in any way with the Greek Orthodox Church in the province. InA.D.1795 Courland also came under Russian sway, and all these are now known as the Baltic Provinces.
§ 139.4.England.376—Henry VIII.,A.D.1509-1547, after the literary feud with Luther (§125, 3), sought to justify his title, “Defender of the Faith,” by the use of sword and gibbet. Luther’s writings were eagerly read in England, where in many circles Wiclif’s movements were regarded with favour, and two noble Englishmen, John Fryth and William Tyndal, gave to their native land a translation of the N.T. inA.D.1526.Fryth was rewarded with the stake inA.D.1533, and Tyndal was beheaded in the Netherlands inA.D.1535.377But meanwhile the king quarrelled with the pope. On assuming the government he had married Catharine of Arragon, daughter of Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella, six years older than himself, the widow of his brother Arthur, who had died in his 16th year, for which he got a papal dispensation on the ground that the former marriage had not been consummated. His adulterous love for Anne Boleyn, the fair maid of honour to his queen, and Cranmer’s biblical opinion (Lev. xviii. 16; xx. 21) convinced him inA.D.1527 of the sinfulness of his uncanonical marriage. Clement VII., at first not indisposed to grant his request for a divorce, refused after he had been reconciled to the emperor, Catharine’s nephew (§132, 2). Thoroughly roused, the king now threw off the authority of the pope. Convocation was forced to recognise him inA.D.1531 as head of the English Church, and in 1532 Parliament forbade the paying of annats to the pope. In the same year Henry married Anne, and had a formal divorce from Catharine granted by a spiritual court. Parliament inA.D.1534 formally abolished papal jurisdiction in the land, and transferred all ecclesiastical rights and revenues to the king. The venerable Bishop Fisher of Rochester and the resolute chancellor, Sir Thomas More (§120, 7), inA.D.1535 paid the price of their opposition on the scaffold.Now came the long threatened ban. Under pretext of a highly necessary reform no less than 376 monasteries were closed during the years 1536-1538, their occupiers, monks and nuns, expelled, and their rich property confiscated.378Nevertheless in doctrine the king wished to remain a good Catholic, and for this end passed in the Parliament ofA.D.1539 the law of the Six Articles, which made any contradiction of the doctrines of transubstantiation, the withholding of the cup, celibacy of the clergy, the mass, and auricular confession, a capital offence. Persecution raged equally against Lutherans and Papists, sometimes more against the one, sometimes more against the other, according as he was moved by his own caprice, or the influence of his wives and favourites of the day. On the one side, at the head of the Papists, stood Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and Bonner, Bishop of London; and on the other, Thomas Cranmer, whom the king had raised inA.D.1533 to the see of Canterbury, in order to carry out his reforms in the ecclesiastical constitution. But Cranmer, who as the king’s agent in the divorce negotiations had often treated with foreign Protestant theologians, and at Nuremberg had secretly married Osiander’s niece, was in heart a zealous adherent of the Swiss Reformation, and furthered as far as he could with safety its introduction into England. Among other things, he secured the introduction inA.D.1539, into all the churches of England, of an English translation of the Bible, revised by himself. He was supported in his efforts by the king’s second wife, Anne Boleyn; but she, having fallen under suspicion of unfaithfulness, was executed inA.D.1536. The third wife, Jane Seymour, died inA.D.1537 on the death of a son. The fourth, Anne of Cleves, was after six months, inA.D.1540, cast aside, and the promoter of the marriage, the chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, was brought to the scaffold. The king now in the same year married Catharine Howard, with whom the Catholic party got to the helm again, and had the Act of the Six Articles rigorously enforced. But she, too, inA.D.1543, was charged with repeated adulteries, and fell, together with her friends and those reputed as guilty with her, under the executioner’s axe.The sixth wife, Catharine Parr, who again favoured the Protestants, escaped a like fate by the death of the tyrant.379
§ 139.5.Edward VI.,A.D.1547-1553, son of Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour, succeeded his father in his tenth year. At the head of the regency stood his mother’s brother, the Duke of Somerset.Cranmerhad now a free hand. Private masses and image worship were forbidden, the supper was administered in both kinds, marriage of priests was made legitimate, and a general church visitation appointed for the introduction of the Reformation. Gardiner and Bonner, who opposed these changes, were sent to the Tower. Somerset corresponded with Calvin, and invited at Cranmer’s request distinguished foreign theologians to help in the visitation of the churches.Martin Bucer and Paul Fagius from Strassburg came to Cambridge, and Peter Martyr to Oxford.380Bernardino Ochino was preacher to a congregation of Italian refugees in London. A commission under Cranmer’s presidency drew up for reading in the churches a collection ofHomilies, for the instruction of the young aCatechism, and for the service a liturgy mediate between the Catholic and Protestant form, the so-calledBook of Common PrayerofA.D.1549; but from the second edition of which were left out chrism and exorcism, auricular confession, anointing the sick, and prayer for the dead. Then followed, inA.D.1553, a confession of faith, consisting of forty-two articles, drawn up by Cranmer and Bishop Ridley of Rochester, which was distinctly of the reformed type, and set forward the ecclesiastical supremacy of the king as an article of faith. The young king, who supported the Reformation with all his heart, died inA.D.1553, after nominating as his successor Jane Grey, the grand-daughter of a sister of his father. Not she, however, but a fanatical Catholic,Mary,A.D.1553-1558, daughter of Henry VIII. and Catharine of Spain, actually ascended the throne. The compliant Parliament now abrogated all the ecclesiastical laws of Edward VI., which it had itself sanctioned, reverted to Henry’s law of the Six Articles, and entrusted Gardiner as chancellor with its execution. The Protestant leaders were thrown into the Tower, the bones of Bucer and Fagius were publicly burnt, married priests with wives and children were driven in thousands from the land.In the following year,A.D.1554, Cardinal Reginald Pole, who had fled during Henry’s reign, returned as papal legate, absolved the repentant Parliament, and received all England back again into the fold of the Romish church.381The noble and innocent Lady Jane Grey, only in her sixteenth year, though she had voluntarily and cheerfully resigned the crown, was put to death with her husband and father.In the course of the next year,A.D.1555, Bishops Ridley, Latimer, Ferrar, and Hooper with noble constancy endured death at the stake.382In prison, Cranmer had renounced his evangelical faith, but abundantly atoned for this weakness by the heroic firmness with which he retracted his retractation, and held the hand which had subscribed it in the flames, that it might be first consumed. He suffered inA.D.1556.—The queen had married inA.D.1554 Philip II. of Spain, eleven years her junior, and when inA.D.1555 he returned to Spain, she fell into deep melancholy, and under its pressure her hatred of Protestantism was shown in the most bloody and cruel deeds. A heretic tribunal, after the fashion of the Spanish Inquisition, was created, which under the presidency of the “Bloody Bonner,” consigned to the flames crowds of confessors of the gospel, clergymen and laymen, men and women, old and young.After the persecution had raged for five years, “Bloody Mary” died of heart-break and dropsy.383
§ 139.6.Elizabeth,A.D.1558-1603, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, though previously branded by the Parliament as a bastard, now ascended the throne unopposed as the last living member of the family of Henry VIII. Educated under the supervision of Cranmer in the Protestant faith of her mother, she had been obliged during the reign of her sister outwardly to conform to the Romish church. She proceeded with great prudence and moderation; but when Paul IV. pronounced her illegitimate, and the Scottish princess Mary Stuart, grand-daughter of Henry’s sister, assumed the title of queen of England, Elizabeth more heartily espoused the cause of Protestantism. InA.D.1559 the Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity, which reasserted the royal supremacy over the national church, prescribed a revision of theBook of Common Prayer, which set aside the prayer for deliverance from the “detestable enormities” of the papacy, etc., and practically reproduced the earlier, less perfect of the Prayer Books of Edward VI., while every perversion to papacy was threatened with confiscation of goods, imprisonment, banishment, and in cases of repetition with death, as an act of treason. At the head of the clergy was Matthew Parker, consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury by some bishops exiled under Mary. He had formerly been chaplain to Anne Boleyn. Under his direction Cranmer’s forty-two articles were reduced to thirty-nine, giving a type of doctrine midway between Lutheranism and Calvinism; these were confirmed by convocation inA.D.1562, and were adopted as a fundamental statute of England by Act of Parliament inA.D.1571.This brings to a close the first stage in the history of the English Reformation,—the setting up by law of the Anglican State Church with episcopal constitution, with apostolical succession, under royal supremacy, as the Established Church.384(For the Puritan opposition to it see §143, 3.) The somewhat indulgent manner in which the Act of Uniformity was at first enforced against the Catholics encouraged them more and more in attempts to secure a restoration. Even inA.D.1568 William Allen founded at Douay a seminary to train Catholic Englishmen for a mission at home, and Gregory XIII. some years later, for a similar purpose, founded in Rome the “English College.” His predecessor, Pius V., had inA.D.1570 deposed and issued the ban against the queen, and threatened all with the greater excommunication who should yield her obedience. Parliament now punished every withdrawal from the State church as high treason.Day and night houses were searched, and suspected persons inquisitorially examined by torture, and if found guilty they were not infrequently put to death as traitors.385—Continuation, §§ 153, 6; 154, 3.
§ 139.7.Ireland.—Hadrian IV., himself an Englishman (§96, 14), on the plea that the donation of Constantine (§ 87, 4) embraced also the “islands,” gave over Ireland to King Henry II. as a papal fief inA.D.1154. Yet the king only managed to conquer the eastern border, thePale, during the years 1171-1175. Henry VIII. introduced the Reformation into this province inA.D.1535, by the help of his Archbishop of Dublin, George Brown. The ecclesiastical supremacy of the Crown was proclaimed, monasteries closed and their property impropriated, partly divided among Irish and English peers. But in matters of faith there was little change. More opposition was shown to the sweeping reformation of faith and worship of Edward VI. The bishops, Brown included, resisted, and the inferior clergy, who now were required to read the Book of Common Prayer in a language to most of them strange, diligently fostered the popular attachment to the old faith. The ascension of Queen Mary therefore was welcomed in Ireland, while Elizabeth’s attempt to reintroduce the Reformation met with opposition. Repeated outbreaks, in which also the people of the western districts took part, ended inA.D.1601 in the complete subjugation of the whole island.By wholesale confiscation of estates the entire nobility was impoverished and the church property was made over to the Anglican clergy; but the masses of the Irish people continued Catholic, and willingly supported their priests out of their own scanty resources.386—Continuation, § 153, 6.
§ 139.8.Scotland.—Patrick Hamilton, who had studied in Wittenberg and Marburg, first preached the gospel in Scotland, and died at the stake in his twenty-fourth year inA.D.1528.387Amid the political confusions of the regency during the minority of James V.,A.D.1513-1542, a sister’s son of Henry VIII. of England, the Reformation obtained firm root among the nobles, who hated the clergy, and among the oppressed people, notwithstanding that the bishops, with David Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrew’s at their head, sought to crush it by the most violent persecution. When Henry VIII. called on his nephew to assist him in his Reformation work, James refused, and yielding to Beaton’s advice formed an alliance with France and married Mary of Guise. This occasioned a war inA.D.1540, the disastrous issue of which led to the king’s death of a broken heart. According to the king’s will Beaton was to undertake the regency, for Mary Stuart was only seven days old. But the nobles transferred it to the Protestant Earl of Arran, who imprisoned Beaton and had the royal child affianced to Henry’s son Edward. Beaton escaped, by connivance of the queen-mother got possession of the child, and compelled the weak regent, inA.D.1543, to abjure the English alliance. The persecution of the Protestants by fire and sword now began afresh. After many others had fallen victims to his persecuting rage, Beaton had a famous Protestant preacher, George Wishart, burnt before his eyes; but was soon after, inA.D.1546, surprised in his castle and slain. When inA.D.1548 Somerset, the English regent after Henry’s death, sought to renew negotiations about the marriage of Mary, now five years old, with Edward VI., her mother had her taken for safety to France, where she was educated in a convent and affianced to the dauphin, afterwards Francis II. By hypocritical acts she contrived to have the regency transferred inA.D.1554 from Arran to herself. For two years the Reformation progressed without much opposition. In December,A.D.1557, its most devoted promoters made a “covenant,” pledging themselves in life and death to advance the word of God and uproot the idolatry of the Romish church. The queen-regent, however, after the marriage of her daughter with the dauphin inA.D.1558, felt herself strong enough to defy the Protestant nobles. The old strict laws against heretics were renewed, and a tribunal established for the punishment of apostatizing priests.The last victim of the persecution was Walter Mill, a priest eighty-two years old, who died at the stake at Perth (?) inA.D.1559.388The country now rose in open revolt. The regent was thus obliged to make proclamation of universal religious toleration. But instead of keeping her promise to have all French troops withdrawn, their number was actually increased after Francis II. ascended the French throne. Elizabeth, too, was indignant at the assumption by the French king and queen of the English royal title, so that she aided the insurgents with an army and a fleet. During the victorious progress of the English the regent died, inA.D.1560. The French were obliged to withdraw, and the victory of the Scotch Protestants was decisive.
§ 139.9. There was one man, whose unbending opposition to the constitution, worship, doctrine, and discipline of the Church of Rome, manifested with a rigid determination that has scarcely ever been equalled, left its indelible impress upon the Scottish Reformation.John Knox, born inA.D.1505, was by the study of Augustine and the Bible led to adopt evangelical views, which inA.D.1542 he preached in the south of Scotland. Persecuted in consequence by Archbishop Beaton, he joined the conspirators after that prelate’s assassination, inA.D.1546, was taken prisoner, and inA.D.1547 served as slave in the French galleys. The ill treatment he thus endured developed his naturally strong and resolute character and that fearlessness which so characterized all his subsequent life. By English mediation he was set free inA.D.1549, and became inA.D.1551 chaplain to Edward VI., but took offence at the popish leaven allowed to remain in the English Reformation, and consequently declined an offered bishopric. When the Catholic Mary ascended the throne inA.D.1553, he fled to Geneva, where he enjoyed the closest intimacy with Calvin, whose doctrine of predestination, rigid presbyterianism, and rigorous discipline he thoroughly approved. After presiding for some time over a congregation of English refugees at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, he returned inA.D.1555 to Scotland, but in the following year accepted a call to the church of English refugees at Geneva that had meanwhile been formed. The Scottish bishops, who had not ventured to touch him while present, condemned him to death after his departure, and burned him in effigy. But Knox kept up a lively correspondence with his native land by letters, proclamations, and controversial tracts, and with the help of several friends translated the Scriptures into English. InA.D.1558 he published with the title, “The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women,” the most violent of all his controversial works, directed mainly against the English Queen Mary, who was now dead. It roused against him the unconquerable dislike of her successor, and increased the hatred of the other two Maries against him to the utmost pitch. Yet he accepted the call of the Protestant lords, and returned next year to Scotland, and was the heart and soul of the revolution that soon thereafter broke out. Images and mass-books were burnt, altars in churches broken in pieces, and 150 monasteries were destroyed; for said Knox, “If the nests be pulled down, the crows will not come back.” After the death of the regent inA.D.1560, the Parliament proclaimed the abolition of the papacy, ratified the strictly CalvinisticConfessio Scotica, and forbade celebrating the mass on pain of death. Then in December, the firstGeneral Assemblyprescribed, in the “First Book of Discipline,” a strictly presbyterial constitution under Christ as only head, with a rigidly puritan order of worship (§ 163, 3).
§ 139.10. In Aug.,A.D.1561, QueenMary Stuart, highly cultured and high-spirited, returned from France to Scotland, a young widow in her 19th year. Brought up in a French convent in fanatical attachment to the Romish Church, and at the French court, with absolutist ideas as well as easy-going morals, the severe Calvinism and moral strictness of Scottish Puritanism were to her as distasteful as its assertion of political independence. At the instigation of her half-brother James Stuart, whom she raised to the earldom of Moray, and who was head of the ministry as one of the leaders of the reformed party, she promised on her arrival not to interfere with the ecclesiastical arrangements of the country, but refused to give royal sanction to the proceedings ofA.D.1560, held Catholic service in her court chapel, and on all hands favoured the Romanists. By her marriage, inA.D.1565, with the young Catholic Lord Darnley, grandson by a second marriage of her grandmother Margaret of England, who now assumed the title of king, Moray was driven from his position, and the restoration of Catholicism was vigorously and openly prosecuted by negotiations with Spain, France, and the pope. The director of all those intrigues was the Italian musician David Rizzio, who came to the country as papal agent, and had become Mary’s favourite and private secretary. The rudeness and profligacy of the young king had soon estranged from him the heart of the queen. He therefore took part in a conspiracy of the Protestant lords, promising to go over to their faith. Their first victim was the hated Rizzio. He was fallen upon and slain on 9th March,A.D.1566, while he sat beside the queen, already far advanced in pregnancy. Darnley soon repented his deed, was reconciled to the queen, fled with her to the Castle of Dunbar, and an army gathered by the Protestant Earl of Bothwell soon suppressed the rising. The rebels and assassins were at Mary’s entreaty almost all pardoned. Darnley, now living in mortal enmity with the heads of the Protestant nobility, and again on bad terms with the queen, fell sick in Dec.,A.D.1566, at Glasgow. On his sick-bed a reconciliation with his wife was effected, and apparently in order that she might the better nurse him, he was brought to a villa near Edinburgh. But on the night of 9th Feb.,A.D.1567, while Mary was present at the marriage of a servant, the house with its inhabitants was blown up by an explosion of gunpowder. Public opinion charged Bothwell and the queen with contriving the horrible crime. Bothwell was tried, but acquitted by the lords. Suspicion increased when soon after Bothwell carried off the queen to his castle, and married her on 15th May. In the civil war that now broke out Mary was taken prisoner, and on 24th July obliged to abdicate in favour of her one-year old son James VI., for whom Mary undertook the regency. Bothwell fled to Denmark, where he died in misery and want; but Mary was allowed to escape from prison by the young George Douglas. He also raised on her behalf a small army, which, however, in May,A.D.1568, was completely destroyed by Moray at the village of Langside. The unhappy queen could now only seek protection with her deadly enemy Elizabeth of England, who, after twenty years’ imprisonment, sent her to the scaffold inA.D.1587, on the plea that she was guilty of murdering her own husband and of high treason in plotting the death of the English queen.—Mary’s guilt would be conclusively established, if a correspondence with Bothwell, said to have been found in her desk, should be accepted as genuine. But all her apologists, with apparently strong conviction, have sought to prove that these letters are fabrications of her enemies.The thorough investigation given to original documents, however, by Bresslau [Breslau], has resulted in recognising only the second of these as a forgery, and so proving, not indeed Mary’s complicity in the murder of her husband, but her adulterous love for Bothwell, and showing too that her apparent reconciliation with Darnley on his sick-bed was only hypocritical.389
§ 139.11. The young queen had at first sought to win by her fair speeches the bold and influential reformerJohn Knox, who was then preacher in Edinburgh. But his heart was cased in sevenfold armour against all her flatteries, as afterwards against her threats; even her tears found him as stern and cold as her wrath. When he called an assembly of nobles to put a stop to the Catholic worship introduced by her at court, he was charged with high treason, but acquitted by the lords. The marriage with Darnley and all that followed from this unhappy union only increased his boldness. He publicly preached without reserve against the papacy and the light carriage of the queen, on the outbreak of the civil war urged her deposition, and demanded her execution for adultery and the murder of her husband. The assassination of Regent Moray inA.D.1570 threw the country into further confusion, which was only overcome by his third successor, Morton. The fugitive Knox now returned to Edinburgh, and soon after died, on 24th Nov.,A.D.1572. Of his extant writings the most important is his “History of the Reformation,” reaching down toA.D.1567. Morton’s vigorous government completely destroyed Mary’s party, but also restricted the pretensions of Presbyterianism. After his overthrow inA.D.1578,James VI., now in his 12th year, himself undertook the government at the head of a council of state. His weakness of character showed itself in his vacillating between an alliance with Catholic Spain and one with Protestant England, as well as between secret favouring of Catholicism and open endeavouring to supersede puritan Presbyterianism by Anglican-Protestant episcopacy. InA.D.1584 the parliament, enlarged by the introduction of the lower orders of the nobility, so defined the royal supremacy as to deprive the Presbyterian church of several of her rights and privileges. But inA.D.1592 the king was obliged absolutely to restore these.After Elizabeth’s death inA.D.1603, as the great-grandson of Henry VII., he united the kingdoms of England and Scotland under the title of James I.390—Continuation, § 153, 6.
§ 139.12.The Netherlands.—By the marriage of Mary of Burgundy, the heiress of Charles the Bald, with Maximilian I., inA.D.1478, the Netherlands passed over to the house of Hapsburg, and after Maximilian’s death, inA.D.1519, went to his grandson Charles V. Even in the previous period the ground was broken in these regions for the introduction of the Reformation of the 16th century by means of the Brothers of the Common Life (§112, 9) and the Dutch precursors of the Reformation (§119, 10), working as they did among an intrepid and liberty loving people. The writings of Luther were introduced at a very early date into Holland, and the first martyrs from the Lutheran Confession (§128, 1) were led to the stake at Antwerp, inA.D.1523. The alliance with France and Switzerland, however, was the occasion of subsequently securing the triumph of the Reformed Confession (see § 160, 1). But fanatical Anabaptists soon followed in the wake of the reform movement, and sent forth their emissaries into Germany and Switzerland. As the emperor had here an authority as absolute as his heart could desire, he proceeded to execute unrelentingly the edict of Worms, and multitudes of witnesses for the gospel as well as fanatical sectaries were put to death by the sword and at the stake. Still more dreadful was the havoc committed by the Inquisition after Charles’ abdication, inA.D.1555, under his son and successorPhilip II.of Spain, which had for its aim the overthrow alike of ecclesiastical and political liberty. In order the more successfully to withstand the Reformation, the four original bishoprics were increased by the addition of fourteen new bishoprics, and three were raised into archbishoprics, Utrecht, Mechlin, and Cambray. But even these measures failed in securing the end desired, because the Dutch, even those who hitherto had remained faithful to the Romish Church, saw in them simply an instrument for advancing Spanish despotism.—InA.D.1523 Luther’s translation of the N.T. had already been rendered into Dutch and printed at Amsterdam. InA.D.1545 Jacob van Liesfield translated the whole Bible, and was for this sent to the scaffold inA.D.1545. A Calvinistic symbol was set forth inA.D.1562 in the Belgic Confession. The league formed by the nobles, inA.D.1566, to offer resistance to the tyranny of the Spaniards, to which their oppressors gave the contemptuous designation of the Beggars—a name which they themselves adopted as a title of honour—increased in strength and importance from day to day, and the people, thirsting for revenge, tore down churches, images, and altars. The prudent regent, however,Margaret of Parma, Philip’s half-sister, would have been more successful in preventing an outburst of rebellion by her conciliatory manœuvres, had her brother given her greater freedom of action. Instead of doing so he sent to her aid, inA.D.1587, the terribleDuke of Alva, with a standing army of 10,000 Spaniards. The “Bloody Council” instituted by him for stamping out the revolt now began its horrible proceedings, sending thousands upon thousands to the rack and the scaffold. The regent, protesting against such acts, demanded her recall, and Alva was put in her place. The bloody tribunal moved now from city to city; all the leading throughfares were covered with victims hanging from gibbets, and when Alva at last, inA.D.1573, was at his own request recalled, he could boast of having carried out in six years 18,600 executions. Meanwhile the greatPrince of Orange, William the Silent, formerly royal governor of the Dutch Provinces, but sinceA.D.1568 a fugitive under the ban, had now openly signified his adhesion to Protestantism, and in 1572 placed himself at the head of the revolt. After gaining several victories by land and by sea, he succeeded, in the so calledPacification of Ghent, ofA.D.1576, in uniting almost all the provinces, Protestant and Catholic, under a resolution to exercise toleration to one another and show resistance to the common foe. The new governor, Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, managed indeed to detach the southern Catholic provinces from the league, but all the more closely did the seven northern provinces bind themselves together in the Union of Utrecht ofA.D.1579, promising to fight to the end for their religious and political liberty. William’s truest friend, counsellor, and director of his political actions, since the formation of the league ofA.D.1566, wasPhilip van Marnix, Count of St. Aldegonde. He had drawn up the articles of the league, and was equally celebrated as a statesman and soldier, and as theologian, satirist, orator, and poet. He was pre-eminently an ardent patriot, and an enthusiastic adherent of Calvin’s Reformation. He had been himself a pupil of the great Genevan. Besides a spirited material version of the Psalter, his chief satirico-theological work was “The Beehive of the Holy Roman Church,” written in the Flemish dialect.—After William’s assassination by the hand of a Catholic, inA.D.1584, he was succeeded by his sonMaurice, who after long years of bloody conflict succeeded, inA.D.1609, in completely freeing his country from the Spanish yoke.391
§ 139.13.France.—The Reformation in France had its beginning from Wittenberg, but subsequently the Genevan reformers obtained a dominating influence. Even inA.D.1521, the Sorbonne issued aDeterminatio super doctr. Luth., pronouncing Luther’s teaching and writings heretical, which Melanchthon in the same year answered with unusual vigour in hisApologia adv. furiosum Parisiensium theologastrorum decretum.Everything depended upon the attitude which the young kingFrancis I.,A.D.1515-1547, might assume in reference to the various religious parties. His love of humanist studies, now flourishing in France, whose zealous promoter and protector he was against the attacks of the scholastic Sorbonne (§120, 8), as well as the traditional policy of his family in ecclesiastical matters since the time of St. Louis (§96, 21), seemed to favour the hope that he would not prove altogether hostile to the ideas of the Reformation. But even as early asA.D.1516 he had, in his concordat with the pope (§110, 14), surrendered the acquisitions of the Basel Council by the revocation of the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII., and in this way, by the right given him to nominate all the bishops and abbots, he obtained a power over all the clergy of his realm which was too much in accordance with his dynastic ideas to allow of his sacrificing it in favour of the Lutheran autonomy in the management of the church, let alone the yet more radical demands of the Calvinistic constitution. Even in his antagonism to the emperor (§§126, 5,6;133, 7), which led him to befriend in a very decided manner the German Protestants, his interests crossed one another, inasmuch as he required to retain the goodwill of the pope. Suppression of Protestantism in his own land and the fostering of it in Germany were thus the aims of his crooked policy. He did indeed for a time entertain the idea of introducing a moderate Reformation into France after the Erasmian model, in order to secure closer attachment to and union with German Protestantism. He entered into negotiations with Philip the Magnanimous, and had Melanchthon invited inA.D.1535 to attend a conference on these matters in France. Melanchthon was not indisposed to go, but was interdicted by his prince the elector, who feared lest he might make too great concessions. And just about this time fanatically violent pamphlets and placards were published, which were even thrown into the royal apartments, and thus the anger of the king was roused to the utmost pitch. The persecutions, which, fromA.D.1524, had already brought many isolated witnesses to the scaffold and the stake, now assumed a systematic and general character. InA.D.1535, an Inquisition tribunal was set up, with members nominated by the pope, and as supplementary thereto there was instituted in the Parliament of Paris the so-calledchambre ardente: the former drew up the process against the heretics, the latter pronounced and executed the sentence. Thousands of heroic confessors died under torture, on the gallows, by sword, or by fire.UnderHenry II.,A.D.1547-1559, who continued his father’s crooked policy, thechambre ardentebecame more and more active, and the cruelty of the persecution increased. Among the sworn foes of the Reformation, Diana of Poitiers, an old love of his father’s, had for a time the greatest influence over the king. He raised her to the rank of duchess. With diabolic satisfaction she gloated upon the spectacle ofautos-de-fécarried out at her request, and enriched herself with the confiscated goods of the victims. Side by side with her, inspired by a like hate of Protestantism, stood the great marshal and all-powerful minister of state, the Constable Montmorency. These two were further backed up by all the influence of the powerful ducal family of the Guises, a branch of a Lorraine house naturalized in France, consisting of six brothers, at their head the two eldest, the Cardinal Charles of Lorraine, Archbishop of Rheims, who died inA.D.1574, and Francis, the conqueror of Calais. The least influential in the league at that time was the queen, Catharine de Medici.
§ 139.14. In spite of all persecutions, the Reformed church made rapid progress, especially in the southern districts.Its adherents came to be known by the name ofHuguenots, meaning originally Leaguers, Covenanters, on account of their connection with Geneva. A popular etymology of the word derives it from the nightly assemblies in a locality haunted by the spirit of King Hugo. Calvin and Beza, as sons of France, assisted the young church with counsel and help. But even within the bounds of the kingdom it had very important political supporters. Certain members of the house of Bourbon, a powerful branch of the royal family, Anton, who married the brilliant heiress of Navarre, Jeanne d’Albret, and his brother Louis de Condé, had attached themselves to the Protestant cause. Also other distinguished personages,e.g.the noble Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, a nephew of Montmorency, and several prominent members of Parliament, were enthusiastically devoted to Protestantism, and, withdrawing from the frivolous and licentious court, gave to the profession of the reformed faith a wide reputation for strict morality and deep piety. The first general synod of the reformed church was held in Paris from 25th to 28th May,A.D.1559. It adopted a Calvinistic symbol, theConfessio Gallicana, and, as a directory for the constitution and discipline of the church, forty articles, also inspired by the spirit of Calvin.—Henry II. was followed in succession by his three sons, Francis, Charles, and Henry, all of whom died without issue.UnderFrancis II.,A.D.1559, 1560, who ascended the throne in his sixteenth year, the two Guises, the uncles of his queen Mary Stuart, held unlimited sway and gave abundance of work to thechambre ardente. A conspiracy directed against them inA.D.1560 led to the execution of 1,200 persons implicated in it. Even the two Bourbons were cast into prison, and the younger condemned to death. The king’s early death, however, prevented the execution of the sentence.The queen-mother, Catharine de Medici, now succeeded in breaking off the yoke of the Guises and securing to herself the regency during the minority of her sonCharles IX.,A.D.1560-1574. But the attempts of the Guises to undermine her authority obliged her to seek supporters meanwhile among the Protestants. Coligny was able inA.D.1560 to demand religious toleration of the imperial Parliament, and succeeded at last so far that inA.D.1561 an edict was issued abolishing capital punishment for heresy. In order to bring about wherever that was possible an understanding between the two great religious parties, a five weeks’ religious conference was held in September of that same year in the Abbey of Poissy, near Paris, to which on the evangelical side Beza from Geneva and Peter Martyr from Zürich, besides many other theologians, were invited. On the Catholic side, the Cardinal of Lorraine represented the doctrine of his church, and subsequently also the general of the Jesuits, Lainez. The proceedings, in which Beza’s learning, eloquence, and praiseworthy courtesy toward his opponents had great weight, were concentrated on the doctrines of the Church and the Lord’s Supper, but yielded no result. In order that they might be able to inflame the Lutherans and the Reformed against one another, the Catholics endeavoured to bring forward supporters of the Augsburg Confession into the discussions on those points. Five German theologians were actually brought forward, among them Jac. Andreä of Württemberg, but too late to take part in the conference. On 17th January,A.D.1562, the regent issued an edict, by which the Protestants were allowed to hold religious services outside of the towns, and also to have meetings of synod under the supervision of royal commissioners.
§ 139.15. The rage of the Guises and their fanatical party at this edict knew no bounds. Francis of Guise swore to cut it up with his sword, and on 1st March,A.D.1562, at Passy in Champagne, he fell upon the Huguenots assembled there for worship in a barn, and slew them almost to a man. At Cahors, a Huguenot place of worship was surrounded by a Catholic mob and set on fire. None of those gathered together there survived, for those who escaped the flames were waylaid and murdered. At Toulouse, the oppressed Protestants, with wives and children, to the number of 4,000, had betaken themselves to the capitol. They were promised a free outlet, and were then slaughtered, because no one, it was said, should keep his word with a heretic (§ 200, 3). Louis Condé summoned his fellow Protestants to take up arms in their own defence against such atrocities, entrenched himself in Orleans, and obtained, by the help of the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, German auxiliaries. The Guises, on the other hand, won over to their side the king and his mother. And now the strict legitimist Coligny placed himself at the head of the Huguenot movement. The battle of Dreux in Dec.,A.D.1562, resulted unfavourably to the Protestants, but during the siege of Orleans Francis of Guise was assassinated by a Huguenot nobleman. The regent now, in the peace edict of Amboise, of 19th Nov.,A.D.1563, allowed to the Protestants liberty of worship except in certain districts and cities, of which Paris was one. After securing emancipation from the yoke of the Guises, however, she soon began openly to show her old hatred of the Protestants. She joined in a league with Spain for the extirpating of heresy, restricted inA.D.1564 by the Edict of Roussillon her previous concessions, and laid incessant plots in order to effect the capture or murder of the two great leaders of the Huguenot party. The threatening incursions of the Duke of Alva upon the neighbouring provinces of the Netherlands, inA.D.1567, occasioned the outbreak of the second religious war. The projected removal of the court to Monceaux fell through indeed, in consequence of the hasty flight of the king to Paris, but the overthrow of the royal army in the battle of St. Denys, in Nov.,A.D.1567, in which Montmorency fell, as well as the reinforcement of the Huguenot army by an auxiliary corps under the leadership of John Casimir, the prince of the Palatinate, led Catharine to conclude the Peace of Longjumeau, of March,A.D.1568, which guaranteed anew all previous concessions. But when the persecution of the Huguenots was continued in numberless executions, before the year was out they had again, for the third time, to have recourse to arms. England supported them with money and ammunition, and Protestant Germany gave them 11,000 auxiliaries; while Spain helped their opponents. Louis Condé fell by the hand of an assassin inA.D.1569, but the Huguenots had so evidently the best of it, that the king and his mother found themselves obliged to grant them complete liberty of conscience and of worship in the peace treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, on 8th of Aug.,A.D.1570, excepting in Paris and in the immediate surroundings of the palace. As a guarantee for the treaty, four strongholds in southern France were surrendered to them. It was further stipulated, in order to confirm for ever the good undertaking, that Henry of Navarre, son of Jeanne d’Albret, should marry Margaret, the sister of Charles IX.
§ 139.16. At the marriage, consummated on 18th of August,A.D.1572, subsequently known as theBloody Marriage, the chiefs of the Huguenot party were gathered together at Paris. Jeanne d’Albret had died at the court, probably by poison, on 9th June, and Coligny had been fatally wounded by a shot on 22nd August. On the night of St. Bartholomew, between the 23rd and 24th August, the castle bell tolled. This was the concerted signal for the destruction of all the Huguenots present in Paris. For four days the carnage was unweariedly carried on by the city militia appointed for the purpose, the royal Swiss guards, and crowds of fanatical artisans. Coligny fell praying amid the blows of his murderers. No Huguenot was spared, neither children, nor women, nor the aged. Their princely chiefs, Henry of Navarre and Henry Condé, the son of Louis, were offered the choice between death and taking part in the celebration of mass. They decided for the latter. Meanwhile messengers had hasted into the provinces with the death-warrants, and there the slaughter began afresh. The whole number of victims is variously estimated at from 10,000 to 100,000; in Paris alone there fell from 1,000 to 10,000.—The death decree was not indeed so much the result of long planned and regularly conceived conspiracy, as a sudden resolve suggested by political circumstances. The queen-mother was at variance with her son with respect to his anti-Spanish policy, which had always inclined him favourably to Coligny; and so, in concert with her favourite son, Henry of Anjou, she succeeded in dealing a deadly stroke at the great admiral by the hand of an assassin. The king swore to take fearful vengeance on the unknown perpetrators of this crime. Catharine now made every effort to avert the threatened blow. She managed to convince the king, by means of her fellow conspirators, that the Huguenots regarded him as an accomplice in the perpetrating of the outrage, and that so his life was in danger because of them. He now swore by God’s death that not merely the chiefs, to whom Catharine and her auxiliaries had directed special attention, but all the Huguenots in France, should die, in order that not one should remain to bring this charge against him. On the other hand, it is all but certain that the thought of such a diabolical deed had previously suggested itself, if indeed expression had not been explicitly given to it. To the Spanish and Romish courts, the French government represented the deed as anacte prémédité, to the German court as anacte non prémédité. But even before this a letter from Rome to the Emperor Maximilian II. (§137, 8) had contained the following: “At that hour(referring to the marriage festivities)when all the birds are in the cage, they can seize upon them altogether, and can have any one that they desire.” He was profoundly excited about the villany of the transaction, while Philip II. of Spain on hearing of it is said to have laughed for the first time in his life. Pope Gregory XIII. indeed feared the worst consequences, but soon changed his mind, and had Rome illuminated, all the bells rung, the cannons fired, aTe Deumperformed, processions made, and a medal struck, with the inscription,Ugonottorum strages.He instructed the French ambassador to inform his king that this performance was a hundred times more grateful to him than fifty victories over the Turks.392
§ 139.17. The dreadful deed, however, completely failed in accomplishing the end in view. Even after 100,000 had been slaughtered there still remained more than ten times that number of Huguenots, who, in possession of their strongholds, occupied positions of great strategical importance. After a brief breathing time of peace, therefore, they were able, on five occasions, inA.D.1573, 1576, 1577, 1580, to renew the religious civil war,when once and again the truce had been broken by the Catholics. Charles IX. was succeeded by Catharine’s favourite son,Henry III.,A.D.1574-1589, who, joining the most shameless immorality to the narrowest bigotry and asceticism (§149, 17), was no way behind his brother in dissoluteness, and was still more conspicuous for dastardliness and cowardice. Henry Condé had, just immediately after Charles’s death, abjured again the Catholic confession, and put himself at the head of the Huguenot revolt. Henry of Navarre rejoined his old friends two years later, after having in the meantime vied with his brother-in-law and his incestuous wife in frivolity and immorality. He was able to take part successfully in the fifth religious war, in which the Huguenots, supported once more by the German auxiliaries under the Count-palatine John Casimir, secured such advantages, that the court, in the Treaty of Beaulieu, ofA.D.1576, were obliged to grant them complete religious freedom and a larger number of strongholds. But now Henry of Guise, in concert with his brothers Louis, cardinal and Archbishop of Rheims, and Charles, Duke of Mayenne, formed the Holy League, which he compelled the king to join, and renewed the war with increased vigour. In the eighth war sinceA.D.1584, which on the part of the Guises was really as much directed against the king’s Huguenot policy as against the Huguenots themselves, Henry was obliged, by the Treaty of Nemours, ofA.D.1585, to declare that the Protestants were deprived of all rights and privileges. In the battle of Coutras, however, inA.D.1587, Henry of Navarre annihilated the opposing forces. But as he failed to follow up the advantages then secured, the Guises again recruited their strength to such a degree that they were able openly to work for the dethronement of the king. Henry could save himself only by the murder of both the elder Guises at the Diet of Blois. There was now no alternative left him but to cast himself into the arms of the Huguenots, and on this account, at the siege of the capital, he was murdered by the Dominican Clement.Henry of Navarre, as the only legitimate heir, now ascended the throne asHenry IV.,A.D.1589-1610. After a hard struggle, lasting for four years, in which he was supported by England and Germany, while his opponents, headed by the Duke of Mayenne, were aided with money and men by Spain, Savoy, and the pope, he at last decided, inA.D.1593, to pass over to Catholicism, because, as he said, “Paris is well worth a mass.”He secured, however, for his former co-religionists, by theEdict of Nantes, of 13th April,A.D.1598, complete liberty of holding religious services in all the cities where previously there had been reformed congregations, as well as thorough equality with the Catholics in all civil rights and privileges, especially in regard to eligibility for all civil and military offices. The fortresses and strongholds hitherto held by them were to be left with them for eight years, and in the Parliament a special “Chamber of the Edict” was instituted, with eight Catholic and eight Protestant members. But, on the other hand, they continued to be under the Catholic marriage laws, were obliged to cease from work on the Catholic festivals, and to pay tithes to the Catholic clergy. After a stubborn resistance on the part of the Parliament of Paris, the university, and the Sorbonne, as well as on that of the bishops, the king, in February,A.D.1599, secured the incorporation of the edict among the laws of France. On 14th May,A.D.1610, he was struck down by the dagger of the Feuillant Ravaillac, a fanatical Jesuit. Notwithstanding his many moral shortcomings, France has rightly celebrated him as one of the greatest and best of her kings. With wisdom, prudence, and humanity he wrought unweariedly for the advancement of a commonwealth that had been reduced to the lowest depths. He protected the Protestants in the enjoyment of privileges guaranteed to them, and though he did indeed put upon his old Huguenot friends some gentle pressure to get them to follow his example, he yet honoured those who steadfastly refused. His minister Sully, although it is supposed that he had felt obliged to advise the king to go over to Catholicism, stood himself unhesitatingly true to his profession of the Huguenot faith, while he retained the king’s confidence, and proved his most faithful adviser and administrator during all the negotiations of peace and war.Philip du Plessis Mornay, on the other hand, distinguished even more as a statesman, diplomatist, and field marshal than as a theologian and author,393but above all as a Christian and a man in the noblest sense of the word, who, in the belief that evangelical truth would, even in the Catholic church, assert its conquering power, had agreed with the Catholic League to instruct the king in the Catholic faith, and had thus made the act of apostasy appear to him less offensive. But just because the mere presence of a friend of high moral character and true religious principles acted as too sharp a sting to the king’s conscience, he had to submit to be relegated to an honorary post as governor of Saumur, where he became founder of the famous academy which Louis XIV. suppressed inA.D.1685. Theodore Agrippa d’Aubigné, too, distinguished as a brave warrior in the army of the Huguenots, as well as a historian, poet, and satirist, stood high in favour with the king, though Henry, often roused by his unbending pride, repeatedly expelled him from the court.After Henry’s death D’Aubigné returned to Geneva, where he died inA.D.1630.394
§ 139.18.Poland.—The Reformation had been introduced into Poland first of all by the exiled Bohemian Brethren, and Luther’s writings soon after their appearance were eagerly read in that region.Sigismund I.,A.D.1506-1548, opposed it with all his might. It met with most success in Prussian Poland. Dantzig, inA.D.1525, drove out the Catholic council. Sigismund went down there himself, had several citizens executed, and restored the old mode of worship inA.D.1526. But scarcely had he left the town when it again went back to the profession of the Lutheran faith. Elbing and Thorn followed its example. In Poland proper also the new doctrines made way. In spite of all prohibitions many young Poles flocked to Wittenberg, and brought away from it to their native country a glowing enthusiasm for Luther and his teaching. The Swiss Confession had already found entrance there, and the persecutions which Ferdinand of Austria carried on after the Schmalcald war in Bohemia and Moravia led great numbers of Bohemian Brethren to cross over into the Polish territories.Sigismund Augustus,A.D.1548-1572, was personally favourable to the Reformation. He studied Calvin’s “Institutes,” received letters from him and from Melanchthon, and, in accordance with the decisions of a national assembly at Petrican inA.D.1555 demanded of the pope a national council, as well as permission for the marriage of priests, the communion in both kinds, the celebration of mass in the vernacular, and abolition of annats. The pope naturally refused to yield, but inA.D.1556 sent into the country a legate of a despotic and violent temper, called Aloysius Lippomanus, who was replaced inA.D.1563 by the bland and eloquent Commendone. Both were powerfully supported in their struggle against heresy by the fanatically Catholic cardinal Stanislaus Hosius, Bishop of Ermeland. The Protestant nobility then recalled, inA.D.1556, their celebrated countrymanJohn à Lasco, who twenty years before had, on account of his evangelical faith, resigned his office as provost of Gnesen and left his fatherland. He had meanwhile taken part in the Reformation of East Friesland, and had acted for several years as preacher at Emden. After that, he had gone, at the call of Cranmer, inA.D.1550, to England; upon the death of Edward VI., along with a part of his London flock of foreign exiles, had sought refuge in Denmark, which, however, was refused on account of his attachment to Zwingli’s doctrine; and at last settled down at Frankfort-on-the-Maine as pastor to a congregation of French, English, and Dutch exiles. After his return home he endeavoured to bring about a union of the Lutherans and Reformed, in concert with several friends made a translation of the Bible, and died inA.D.1560. At ageneral synod at Sendomir, inA.D.1570, a union was at last effected between the three dissentient parties, by which the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord’s Supper was acknowledged, yet in so indefinite a form that Calvin’s view might also be entertained. The Lutheran opposition at the synod had been suppressed by urgent entreaty, but afterwards broke out again in a still more violent form. At the Synod of Thorn, inA.D.1595, the Lutheran pastor Paul Gericke was the leader of it; but one of the nobles present held a dagger to his heart, and the synod suspended him from his office as a disturber of the peace. Sigismund Augustus had meanwhile died, inA.D.1572. During the interregnum that followed, the Protestant nobles formed a confederation, which before the election of a new king succeeded in obtaining a comprehensive religious peace, thePax dissidentiumofA.D.1573, by means of which Catholics and Protestants were for all time to live together in peace and enjoy equal civil rights. The newly elected king,Henry of Anjou, sought to avoid binding himself by oath to the observance of this peace, but the imperial marshal addressed him in firm and decided language,Si non jurabis, non regnabis. In the following year, however, the new king left Poland in order to mount the French throne as Henry III.Stephen Bathori,A.D.1576-1586, swore without hesitation to observe the peace, and kept his oath.Under his successor, Sigismund III., a Swedish prince,A.D.1587-1632, the Protestants had to complain of the infringement of many of their rights, which from this time down to the overthrow of the Polish kingdom, inA.D.1772, they never again enjoyed.395—Continuation, § 164, 4.
§ 139.19.Bohemia and Moravia.—The numerous Bohemian and Moravian Brethren (§119, 8), at whose head was the elder Luke of Prague, greeted the appearance of Luther with the most hopeful joy. By messages and writings, however, which inA.D.1522-1524 were interchanged between them, some important diversities of view were discovered. Luke disliked Luther’s realistic theory of the Lord’s Supper, continued to hold by the seven sacraments, rejected the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and took special offence at Luther’s view of Christian freedom, which seemed to him to want the necessary rigour of the apostolic discipline of the life and to under-estimate the importance and worth of celibacy and virginity. Luther, on the other hand, charged them with a want of grasp of the doctrine and a Novatian over-estimation of mere outward exercises and discipline. And so these negotiations ended in mutual recrimination, and only after Luke’s death, inA.D.1528, and the glorious Diet of Augsburg, inA.D.1530, were they reopened. The Lutheranizing tendency, for which especially the two elders John Roh and John Augusta laboured, now gained the upper hand for two decades. InA.D.1532 the Brethren presented to the Margrave George of Brandenburg an apology of the doctrine and customs, which was printed at Wittenberg, and had a preface by Luther, in which he expressed himself in very favourable terms about the doctrine of the “Picards,” and only objected to their spiritualizing tendency, of which their doctrine of the supper and of baptism was not altogether free, inasmuch as they, while practising infant baptism, required that each one should on reaching maturity take the vows upon himself and have baptism repeated. Still more favourably did he speak of their confession presented inA.D.1535 to King Ferdinand, in which they had left out the rebaptizing, substituting for it the solemn imposition of hands as confirmation. When the Brethren at Luther’s request had modified the two articles at which he took offence, their unsatisfactory theory of justification, and that of the wholesomeness, though not necessity, of clerical celibacy, he declared himself thoroughly satisfied, and at their last personal conference, inA.D.1542, he stretched his hand over the table to Augusta and his companions as the pledge of indissoluble brotherly fellowship, although not agreed in regard to various matters of constitution and discipline. The refusal of the Brethren to fight against their German fellow Protestants in the Schmalcald war led to their king Ferdinand upon its close issuing some penal statutes against them. Driven away into exile inA.D.1548, many of them went to Poland, the larger number to Prussia, from whence they returned to their native land inA.D.1574. Meantime matters had there in many respects taken an altogether new turn. In the later years of his reign Ferdinand had become more favourable to the evangelical movement in his hereditary dominions, and Maximilian II.,A.D.1564-1576, gave it an absolutely free course (§137, 8). Thus the Brethren could not only go on from day to day increasing in numbers and in influence, but alongside of them there grew up a genuine Lutheran community and an independent Calvinist body. The Crypto-calvinism which was also at the same time gaining the victory in Saxony (§141, 10) cast its shadow upon the Lutheranizing movement among the Brethren. And this movement told all the more against the Lutheran party there from the circumstance that at an earlier period there had been powerful influences at work, inspired by a national Bohemian spirit, to resist German interference in matters of religion. Since the death of the elder Luke the national party had succeeded more and more in working back to the genuine Bohemian constitution, discipline, and confession of their fathers. At the head of this movement stood John Blahoslaw, fromA.D.1553 deacon of Jungbunzlau, after Luke of Prague and before Amos Comenius (§ 167, 2) the most important champion of the Bohemian-Moravian Confession. To him chiefly are the Brethren indebted for the high development of literary and scientific activity which they manifested during the second half of the century, and his numerous writings, but pre-eminently his translation of the N.T., proved almost as influential and epoch-making for the Bohemian language as Luther’s translation of the Bible did for the written language of Germany. Himself one of the ablest among the very numerous writers of spiritual songs in Bohemian, he was the restorer of the simple and majestic Bohemian chorales. As he had himself, inA.D.1568, translated the N.T. from the original Greek text, he also undertook, with the help of several younger men of noble gifts, a similar translation of the O.T. and a commentary on the whole Bible. But he died inA.D.1571, in his forty-eighth year, before the issue of his great work, upon the inception of which he had expended so much thought and care. This great undertaking was completed and published in six volumes betweenA.D.1579-1593. The strong spiritual affinity between the society of the Brethren and the Calvinistic church, especially in its doctrine of the supper and in its zeal for rigid church discipline, was meanwhile again brought into prominence, and had led to a more and more decided loosening of attachment to the Lutheran church, and, in spite of the antagonism of its episcopalianism to the Calvinistic presbyterianism, to the formation of closer ties with Calvinism. But now, on the other hand, the common danger that threatened them from Rudolph II., who had been king of Bohemia fromA.D.1575, at the instigation of Jesuits through the Spanish court, led all non-Catholics, of whatever special confession, to draw as closely together as possible. Thus a league came to be formed in the same year in which the Brethren were far outnumbered by Lutherans, Reformed, and Calixtines (§119, 7), by means of which, in theConfessio BohemicaofA.D.1575, a common symbol was drawn up, and all the four parties were placed under the management of a common consistory. But when, after Maximilian’s death, Rudolph II. proceeded more and more rigorously in his efforts to completely suppress all heresy, the Bohemians rose with one heart, and at last, inA.D.1609, extorted from him the rescript which gave them absolute religious liberty according to the Bohemian Confession, a common consistory of their own, and an academy at Prague.Bohemia was now an almost completely evangelical country, and scarcely a tenth part of its inhabitants professed attachment to the Catholic faith.396—Continuation, §§ 153, 2; 167, 2.