Chapter IV: The Counter-Reformation (18)

§ 137.5. =The Religious Peace of Augsburg, A.D. 1555.=--When
the diet met at Augsburg in February, A.D. 1555, the emperor’s
power was gone. To save his pride and conscience he renounced
all share in its proceedings in favour of his brother.
The Protestant members stood well together in claiming
unconditional religious freedom, and Ferdinand inclined
to their side. Meanwhile Pope Julius died, and the cardinals
Morone and Truchsess hasted from the diet to Rome to take part
in the papal election. The Catholic opposition was thus weakened
in the diet. The Protestants insisted that the peace should
apply to all who might in future join this confession. This
demand gave occasion to strong contests. At last the simple
formula was agreed upon, that no one should be interfered with
on account of the Augsburg Confession. But a more vehement
dispute arose as to what should happen if prelates or spiritual
princes should join the Protestant party. This was a vital
question for Catholicism, and acceptance of the Protestant
view would be its deathblow. It was therefore proposed that
every prelate who went over would lose, not only his spiritual
rank, but also his civil dominion. But the opposition would
not give in. Both parties appealed to Ferdinand, and he
delayed giving a decision. Advice was also asked about the
peace proclamation. The Protestants claimed that the judges
of the imperial court should be sworn to observe the Religious
Peace, and should be chosen in equal numbers from both religious
parties. On 30th Aug. Ferdinand stated his resolution. As
was expected, he went with the Catholics in regard to prelates
becoming Protestants, but, contrary to all expectations, he
also refused lasting unconditional peace. On this last point,
however, he declared himself on 6th Sept. willing to yield
if the Protestants would concede the point about the prelates.
They sought to sell their concession as dearly as possible
by securing to evangelical subjects of Catholic princes the
right to the free exercise of their religion. But the Catholic
prelates, on the ground of the territorial system (§ 126, 6)
advocated by the Protestants themselves, would not give in.
It was finally agreed that every noble in matters of religion
had territorial authority, but that subjects of another faith,
in case of the free exercise of their religion being refused,
should have guaranteed unrestricted liberty to withdraw without
loss of honour, property, or freedom. On 25th Sept., A.D. 1555,
the decrees of the diet were promulgated. The Reformed were
not included in the Religious Peace; this was first done in
the Peace of Westphalia (§ 153, 2).

§ 137B. GERMANY AFTER THE RELIGIOUS PEACE.

The political importance of the Protestant princes was about equal to that of the Catholics; the Electors of Cologne, Mainz, and Treves were not more powerful than those of Saxony, the Palatinate, and Brandenburg; and the great array of Protestant cities, with almost all the minor princes, were not behind the combined forces of Austria and Bavaria. The maintenance of the peace was assigned to a legally constituted corporation of Catholic and Protestant nobles, which held power down to A.D. 1806. The hope of reaching a mutual understanding on matters of religion was by no means abandoned, but the continuance of the peace was to be in no way dependent upon its realization. A new attempt to effect a union, which like all previous efforts ended in failure, was soon made in the Worms Consultation. Equally unsuccessful was a union project of the emperor Ferdinand I. Protestantism could get no more out of the Catholic princes. A second attempt to protestantize the Cologne electorate broke down as the first had done (§ 136, 2).

§ 137.6. =The Worms Consultation, A.D. 1557.=--Another effort
was made after the failure of the council in the interests of
union. Catholic and Protestant delegates under the presidency
of Pflugk met at Worms in A.D. 1557. At a preliminary meeting
the princes of Hesse, Württemburg [Württemberg], and the
Palatinate adopted the Augsburg Confession as bond of union
and standard for negotiations. The Saxon delegates insisted
upon a distinct repudiation of the interim and the insertion
of other details, which gave the Catholics an excuse for putting
an end to the negotiations. They had previously expressly
refused to acknowledge Scripture as the unconditional and
sole judge of controversies, as that was itself a matter in
dispute (§ 136, 4).

§ 137.7. =Second Attempt at Reformation in the Electorate of
Cologne, A.D. 1582.=--The Archbishop and Elector of Cologne,
Gebhard Truchsess of Waldburg went over in A.D. 1582 to the
Protestant Church, married the Countess Agnes of Mansfeld,
proclaimed religious freedom, and sought to convert his
ecclesiastical principality into a temporal dominion. His
plan was acceptable to nobles and people, but the clergy of
his diocese opposed it with all their might. The pope thundered
the ban against him, and Emperor Rudolph II. deposed him. The
Protestant princes at last deserted him, and the newly elected
archbishop, Duke Ernest of Bavaria, overpowered him by an armed
force. The issue of Gebhard’s attempt struck terror into other
prelates who had been contemplating similar moves.

§ 137.8. =The German Emperor.=--=Ferdinand I.=, A.D. 1556-1564,
conciliatory toward Protestantism, thoroughly dissatisfied
with the Tridentine Council, once and again made attempts to
secure a union, which all ended in failure. =Maximilian II.=,
A.D. 1564-1576, imbued by his tutor, Wolfgang Severus, with an
evangelical spirit, which was deepened under the influence of
his physician Crato von Crafftheim (§ 141, 10), gave perfect
liberty to the Protestants in his dominions, admitted them
to many of the higher and lower offices of state, kept down
the Jesuits, and was prevented from himself formally going
over to Protestantism only by his political relations with
Spain and the Catholic princes of the empire. These relations,
however, led to the adoption of half measures, out of which
afterwards sprang the Thirty Years’ War. His son =Rudolph II.=,
A.D. 1576-1612, educated by Jesuits at the Spanish court, gave
again to that order unlimited scope, injured the Protestants on
every side, and was only prevented by indecision and cowardice
from attempting the complete suppression of Protestantism.

§ 138. THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.[369]

In French Switzerland the Reformation appeared somewhat later, but in essentially the same form as in German Switzerland. Its special character was given it by Farel and Viret, the predecessors of Calvin. The powerful genius of Calvin secured for his views victory over Zwinglianism in Switzerland, and won the ascendency for them in the other Reformed Churches.

§ 138.1. =Calvin’s Predecessors, A.D. 1526-1535.=--=William
Farel=, the pupil and friend of the liberal exegete Faber
Stapulensis (§ 120, 8), was born in A.D. 1489 at Gap in
Dauphiné. When in A.D. 1521 the Sorbonne condemned Luther’s
doctrines and writings, he was obliged, as a suspected adherent
of Luther, to quit Paris. He retired to Meaux, where he was
well received by Bishop Briçonnet, but so boldly preached
the reformed doctrines, that even the bishop, on renewed
complaints being made, neither could nor would protect him.
He then withdrew to Basel (§ 130, 3). His first permanent
residence was at Neuchatel, where in November, A.D. 1530,
the Reformation was introduced by his influence. He left
Neuchatel in A.D. 1532 in order to work in Geneva. But the
civil authorities there could not protect him against the
bishop and clergy. He was obliged to leave the city, but
Saunier, Fromant, and Olivetan (§ 143, 5) continued the work
in his spirit. A revolution took place; the bishop thundered
his ban against the refractory council, and the senate replied
by declaring his office forfeited. Farel now returned to Geneva,
A.D. 1535, and there accompanied him =Peter Viret=, afterwards
the reformer of Lausanne. Viret was born at Orbe in A.D. 1511,
and had attached himself to the Protestant cause during his
studies in Paris. He therefore had also been obliged to quit
the capital. He retired to his native town, and sought there
diligently to spread the knowledge of the gospel. The arrival
of these two enthusiastic reformers in Geneva led to a life
and death struggle, from which the evangelicals went forth
triumphant. As the result of a public disputation in August,
A.D. 1535, the magistracy declared in their favour, and
Farel gave the movement a doctrinal basis by the issuing
of a confession. In the following year Calvin was passing
through Geneva. Farel adjured him in God’s name to remain
there. Farel indeed needed a fellow labourer of such genius
and power, for he had a hard battle to fight.

§ 138.2. =Calvin before his Genevan Ministry.=--=John Calvin=,
son of diocesan procurator Gerhard Cauvin, was born on 10th July,
A.D. 1509, at Noyou in Picardy. Intended for the church, he was,
from his twelfth year, in possession of a benefice. Meeting with
his relation Olivetan, he had his first doubts of the truth of
the Catholic system awakened. With his father’s consent he now
turned to the study of law, which he eagerly prosecuted for
four years at Orleans and Bourges. At Bourges, Melchior Wolmar,
a German professor of Greek, exercised so powerful an influence
over him, especially through the study of the Scriptures, that
he decided, after the death of his father, to devote himself
exclusively to theology. With this intention he went to Paris
in A.D. 1532, and there enthusiastically adopted the principles
of the Reformation. The newly appointed rector of the university,
Nic. Cop, had to deliver an address on the Feast of All Saints.
Calvin prepared it for him, and expressed therein such liberal
and evangelical views, as had never before been uttered in that
place. Cop read it boldly, and escaped the outburst of wrath
only by a timely flight. Calvin, too, found it prudent to quit
Paris. The bloody persecution of the Protestants by Francis I.
led him at last to leave France altogether. So he went, in
A.D. 1535, to Basel, where he became acquainted with Capito
and Grynæus. In the following year he issued the first sketch
of the _Institutio Religionis Christianæ_. It was made as
a defence of the Protestants of France, persecuted by Francis
on the pretext that they held Anabaptist and revolutionary
views. He therefore dedicated the book to the king, with a
noble and firm address. He soon left Basel, and went to the
court of the evangelical-minded Duchess Renata of Ferrara
(§ 139, 22), in order to secure her good offices for his fellow
countrymen suffering for their faith. He won the full confidence
of the duchess, but after some weeks was banished the country
by her husband. On his journey back to Basel, Farel and Viret
detained him in Geneva in A.D. 1536, and declared that he was
called to be a preacher and teacher of theology. On 1st October,
A.D. 1536, the three reformers, at a public disputation in
Lausanne, defended the principles of the Reformation. Viret
remained in Lausanne, and perfected the work of Reformation
there. As a confession of faith, a catechism, not in dialogue
form, was composed by Calvin as a popular summary of his
_Institutio_ in the French language, and was sworn to, in
A.D. 1536, by all the citizens of Geneva. The _Catechismus
Genevensis_, highly prized in all the Reformed churches, was
a later redaction, which appeared first in French in A.D. 1542,
and then in Latin, in A.D. 1545.[370]

§ 138.3. =Calvin’s First Ministry in Geneva, A.D. 1536-1538.=--In
Geneva, as in other places, there sprang up alongside of the
Reformation, and soon in deadly opposition to it, an antinomian
libertine sect, which strove for freedom from all restraint
and order (§ 146, 4). In the struggle against this dangerous
development, which found special favour among the aristocratic
youth of Geneva, Calvin put forth all the power of his logical
mind and unbending will, and sought to break its force by
the exercise of an excessively strict church discipline. He
created a spiritual consistory which arrogated to itself the
exclusive right of church discipline and excommunication, and
wished to lay upon the magistrates the duty of inflicting civil
punishments on all persons condemned by it. But not only did
the libertine sections offer the most strenuous opposition,
but also the magistrates regarded with jealousy and suspicion
the erection of such a tribunal. Magistrates and libertines
therefore combined to overthrow the consistory. A welcome
pretext was found in a synod at Lausanne in A.D. 1538, which
condemned the abolition of all festivals but the Sundays,
the removal of baptismal fonts from the churches, and the
introduction of leavened bread at the Lord’s Supper by the
Genevan church as uncalled for innovations. The magistrates
now demanded the withdrawal of these, and banished the preachers
who would not obey. Farel went to Neuchatel, where he remained
till his death in A.D. 1565; Calvin went to Strassburg, where
Bucer, Capito, and Hedio gave him the office of a professor
and preacher. During his three years’ residence there Calvin,
as a Strassburg delegate, was frequently brought into close
relationship with the German reformers, especially with
Melanchthon (§§ 134, 135). But he ever remained closely
associated with Geneva, and when Cardinal Sadolet (§ 139, 12)
issued from Lyons in A.D. 1539 an appeal to the Genevese to
return to the bosom of the Romish church, Calvin thundered
against him an annihilating reply. His Genevan friends, too,
spared no pains to win for him the favour of the council and
the citizens. They succeeded all the more easily because since
the overthrow of the theocratic consistory the libertine party
had run into all manner of riotous excesses. By a decree of
council of 20th Oct., A.D. 1540, Calvin was most honourably
recalled. After long consideration he accepted the call in
Sept., A.D. 1541, and now, with redoubled energy, set himself
to carry out most strictly the work that had been interrupted.

§ 138.4. =Calvin’s Second Ministry in Geneva,
A.D. 1541-1564.=--Calvin set up again, after his return, the
consistory, consisting of six ministers and twelve lay elders,
and by it ruled with almost absolute power. It was a thoroughly
organized inquisition tribunal, which regulated in all details
the moral, religious, domestic, and social life of the citizens,
called them to account on every suspicion of a fault, had the
incorrigible banished by the civil authorities, and the more
dangerous of them put to death. The Ciceronian Bible translator,
Sebastian Castellio, appointed rector of the Genevan school by
Calvin, got out of sympathy with the rigorous moral strictures
and compulsory prescriptions of matters of faith under the
Calvinistic rule, and charged the clergy with intolerance and
pride. He also contested the doctrine of the descent into hell,
and described the Canticles as a love poem. He was deposed,
and in order to escape further penalties he fled to Basel in
A.D. 1544. A libertine called Gruet was executed in A.D. 1547,
because he had circulated an abusive tract against the clergy,
and blasphemous references were found in his papers; _e.g._
that Christianity is only a fable, that Christ was a deceiver
and His mother a prostitute, that all ends with death, that
neither heaven nor hell exists, etc. The physician, Jerome
Bolsec, previously a Carmelite monk in Paris, was imprisoned
in A.D. 1551, and then banished, because of his opposition
to Calvin’s doctrine of predestination. He afterwards returned
to the Romish church, and revenged himself by a biography
of Calvin full of spiteful calumnies. On the execution of
Servetus in A.D. 1533, see § 148, 2. Between the years 1542
and 1546 there were in Geneva, with a population of only
20,000, no less than fifty-seven death sentences carried out
with Calvin’s approval, and seventy-six sentences of banishment.
The magistrates faithfully supported him in all his measures.
But under the inquisitorial reign of terror of his consistory,
the libertine party gained strength for a vehement struggle,
and among the magistrates, from about A.D. 1546, there arose
a powerful opposition, and fanatical mobs repeatedly threatened
to throw him into the Rhone. This struggle lasted for nine
years. But Calvin abated not a single iota from the strictness
of his earlier demands, and so great was the fear of his
powerful personality that neither the rage of riotous mobs
nor the hostility of the magistracy could secure his banishment.
In A.D. 1555 his party again won the ascendency in the elections,
mainly by the aid of crowds of refugees from France, England,
and Scotland, who had obtained residence and thus the rights of
citizens in Geneva. From this time till his death on 27th March,
A.D. 1564, his influence was supreme. The impress of his strong
mind was more and more distinctly stamped upon every institution
of the commonwealth, the demands of his rigorous discipline were
willingly and heartily adopted as the moral code, and secured
for Geneva that pre-eminence which for two centuries it retained
among all the Reformed churches as an honourable, pious, and
strictly moral city. In spite of a weak body and frequent
attacks of sickness Calvin, during the twenty-three years of
his two residences in Geneva, performed an amazing amount of
work. He had married in A.D. 1540, at Strassburg, Idaletta de
Bures, the widow of an Anabaptist converted by him. His wife
died in A.D. 1549. He preached almost daily, attended all
the sittings of the consistory and the preachers’ association,
inspired all their deliberations and resolutions, delivered
lectures in the academy founded by his orders in A.D. 1559,
composed numerous doctrinal, controversial, and apologetical
works, conducted an extensive correspondence, etc.

§ 138.5. =Calvin’s Writings.=--The most important of the
writings of Calvin is his already mentioned _Institutio
Religionis Christianæ_, of which the best and most complete
edition appeared in A.D. 1559, a companion volume to
Melanchthon’s _Loci_, but much more thorough and complete
as a formal and scientific treatise. In this work Calvin
elaborates his profound doctrinal system with great speculative
power and bold, relentless logic, combined with the peculiar
grace of a clear and charming style. Next in order of importance
came his commentaries on almost all the books of Scripture.
Here also he shows himself everywhere possessed of brilliant
acuteness, religious geniality, profound Christian sympathy,
and remarkable exegetical talent, but also a stickler for
small points or seriously fettered by dogmatic prejudices.
His exegetical productions want the warmth and childlike
identification of the commentator with his text, which in
so high a degree distinguishes Luther, while in form they are
incomparably superior for conciseness and scientific precision.
In the pulpit Calvin was the same strict and consistent logician
as in his systematic and polemical works. Of Luther’s popular
eloquence he had not the slightest trace.[371]

§ 138.6. =Calvin’s Doctrine.=--Calvin set Zwingli far below
Luther, and had no hesitation in characterizing the Zwinglian
doctrine of the sacraments as profane. With Luther, who highly
respected him, he never came into close personal contact, but
his intercourse with Melanchthon had a powerful influence upon
the latter. But decidedly as he approached Luther’s doctrine,
he was in principle rather on the same platform with Zwingli.
His view of the Protestant principles is essentially Zwinglian.
Just as decidedly as Zwingli had he broken with ecclesiastical
tradition. In the doctrine of the person of Christ he inclined
to Nestorianism, and could not therefore reach the same
believing fulness as Luther in his doctrine of the Lord’s
Supper. He taught, as Berengar before had done, that the
believer by means of faith partakes in the sacrament only
spiritually, but yet really, of the body and blood of the
Lord, through a power issuing from the glorified body of Christ,
whereas the unbeliever receives only bread and wine. In his
doctrine of justification he formally agrees with Luther, but
introduced a very marked difference by his strict, almost Old
Testament, legalism. His predestination doctrine goes beyond
even that of Augustine in its rigid consistency and unbending
severity.[372]

§ 138.7. =The Victory of Calvinism over Zwinglianism.=--By
his extensive correspondence and numerous writings Calvin’s
influence extended far beyond the limits of Switzerland. Geneva
became the place of refuge for all who were exiled on account
of their faith, and the university founded there by Calvin
furnished almost all Reformed churches with teachers, who
were moulded after a strict Calvinistic pattern. Bern, not
uninfluenced by political jealousies, showed most reluctance
in adopting the Calvinistic doctrine. Zürich was more compliant.
After Zwingli’s death, =Henry Bullinger= stood at the head
of the Zürich clergy. With him Calvin entered into doctrinal
negotiations, and succeeded in at last bringing him over to
his views of the Lord’s Supper. In the _Consensus Tigurinus_
of A.D. 1549, drawn up by Calvin, a union was brought about on
a Calvinistic basis; but Bern, where the Zwinglians contending
with the Lutheranised friends of Calvin had the majority,
refused subscription. The _Consensus pastorum Genevensium_,
of A.D. 1554, called forth by the conflict with Bolsec,
in which the predestination doctrine of Calvin had similar
prominence, not only Bern, but also Zürich refused to accept.
Yet these two confessions gradually rose in repute throughout
German Switzerland. Even Bullinger’s personal objection
to the predestination doctrine was more and more overcome
from A.D. 1556 by the influence of his colleague Peter
Martyr (§ 139, 24), though he never accepted the Calvinistic
system in all its severity and harshness. When even the
Elector-palatine Frederick III. (§ 144, 1) wished to lay
a justificatory confession before the Diet of Augsburg in
A.D. 1566, which threatened to exclude him from the peace
on account of his going over to the Reformed church, Bullinger,
who was entrusted with its composition, sent him, as an appendix
to the testament he had composed, a confession, which came
to be known as the _Confessio Helvetica posterior_ (§ 133, 8).
This confession, not only obtained recognition in all the Swiss
cantons, with the exception of Basel, which likewise after
eighty years adopted it, but also gained great consideration
in the Reformed churches of other lands. Its doctrine of
the sacraments is Calvinistic, with not unimportant leanings
toward the Zwinglian theory. Its doctrine of predestination
is Calvinism, very considerably modified.

§ 138.8. =Calvin’s Successor in Geneva.=--=Theodore Beza= was
from A.D. 1559 Calvin’s most zealous fellow labourer, and after
his death succeeded him in his offices. He soon came to be
regarded at home and abroad with something of the same reverence
which his great master had won. He died in A.D. 1605. Born in
A.D. 1519 of an old noble family at Vezelay in Burgundy, he
was sent for his education in his ninth year to the humanist
Melchior Wolmar of Orleans, and accompanied his teacher when
he accepted a call to the Academy of Bourges, until in A.D. 1534
Wolmar was obliged to return to his Swabian home to escape
persecution as a friend and promoter of the Reformation. Beza
now applied himself to the study of law at the University of
Orleans, and obtained the rank of a licentiate in A.D. 1539.
He then spent several years in Paris as a man of the world,
where he gained the reputation of a poet and wit, and wasted
a considerable patrimony in a loose and reckless life. A secret
marriage with a young woman of the city in humble circumstances,
in A.D. 1544, put an end to his extravagances, and a serious
illness gave a religious direction to his moral change. He had
made the acquaintance of Calvin at Bourges, and in A.D. 1543 he
went to Geneva, was publicly married, and in the following year
received, on Viret’s recommendation, the professorship of Greek
at Lausanne. Thoroughly in sympathy with all Calvin’s views,
he supported his doctrine of predestination against the attacks
of Bolsec, justified the execution of Servetus in his tract _De
hæreticis a civili magistratu puniendis_, zealously befriended
the persecuted Waldensians, along with Farel made court to the
German Protestant princes in order to secure their intercession
for the French Huguenots, and negotiated with the South German
theologians for a union in regard to the doctrine of the
supper. In A.D. 1558 Calvin called him to Geneva as a preacher
and professor of theology in the academy erected there. In
A.D. 1559 he vindicated Calvin’s doctrine of the supper against
Westphal’s attacks (§ 141, 10) in pretty moderate language; but
in A.D. 1560 he thundered forth two violent polemical dialogues
against Hesshus (§ 144, 1). The next two years he spent in
France (§ 139, 14) as theological defender and advocate of
the Huguenots. After Calvin’s death the whole burden of the
government of the Genevan church fell upon his shoulders, and
for forty years the Reformed churches of all lands looked with
confidence to him as their well-tried patriarch. Next to the
church of Geneva, that of his native land lay nearest to his
heart. Repeatedly we find him called to France to direct the
meetings of synod. But scarcely less lively was the interest
which he took in the controversies of the German Reformed
with their Lutheran opponents. At the Religious Conference of
Mömpelgard, which the Lutheran Count Frederick of Württemberg
called in A.D. 1586, to make terms if possible whereby the
Calvinistic refugees might have the communion together with
their Lutheran brethren, Beza himself in person took the field
in defence of the palladium of Calvinistic orthodoxy against
Andreä, whose theory of ubiquity (§ 141, 9, 10) he had already
contested in his writings. Very near the close of his life the
Catholic Church, through its experienced converter of heretics,
Francis de Sales (§ 156, 1), made a vain attempt to win him back
to the Church in which alone is salvation. To a foolish report
that this effort had been successful Beza himself answered in
a satirical poem full of all his youthful fire.[373]

§ 139. THE REFORMATION IN OTHER LANDS.

The need of reform was so great and widespread, that the movement begun in Germany and Switzerland soon spread to every country in Europe. The Catholic Church opposed the Reformation everywhere with fire and sword, and succeeded in some countries in utterly suppressing it; while in others it was restricted within the limits of a merely tolerated sect. The German Lutheran Confession found acceptance generally among the Scandinavians of the north of Europe, the Swiss Reformed among the Romanic races of the south and west; while in the east, among the Slavs and Magyars, both confessions were received. Calvin’s powerful personal influence had done much to drive the Lutheran Confession out of those Romance countries where it had before obtained a footing. The presence of many refugees from the various western lands for a time in Switzerland, as well as the natural intercourse between it and such countries as Italy and France, contributed to the same result. But deeper grounds than these are required to account for this fact. On the one hand, the Romance people are inclined to extremes, and they found more thorough satisfaction in the radical reformation of Geneva than in the more moderate reformation of Wittenberg; and, on the other hand, they have a love for democratic and republican forms of government which the former, but not the latter, gratified.--Outside of the limits of the German empire the Lutheran Reformation first took root, from A.D. 1525, in Prussia, the seat of the Teutonic Knights (§ 127, 3); then in the Scandinavian countries. In Sweden it gained ascendency in A.D. 1527, and in Denmark and Norway in A.D. 1537. Also in the Baltic Provinces the Reformation had found entrance in A.D. 1520; by A.D. 1539 it had overcome all opposition in Livonia and Esthonia, but in Courland it took other ten years before it was thoroughly organized. The Reformed church got almost exclusive possession of England in A.D. 1562, of Scotland in A.D. 1560, and of the Netherlands in A.D. 1579. The Reformed Confession obtained mere toleration in France in A.D. 1598; the Reformed alongside of the Lutheran gained a footing in Poland in A.D. 1573, in Bohemia and Moravia in A.D. 1609, in Hungary in A.D. 1606, and in Transylvania in A.D. 1557. Only in Spain and Italy did the Catholic Church succeed in utterly crushing the Reformation. Some attempts to interest the Greek church in the Lutheran Confession were unsuccessful, but the remnants of the Waldensians were completely won over to the Reformed Confession.

§ 139.1. =Sweden.=--For fifty years Sweden had been free from
the Danish yoke which had been imposed upon it by the Calmar
union of A.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 in A.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 when =Gustavus Vasa=
landed 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 from A.D. 1516 in Wittenberg,
soon after his return home, in A.D. 1519, began as deacon
in Strengnæs, along with =Lawrence 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
in A.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,
in A.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 of =Westnæs=,
in A.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, in A.D. 1529, 1537, and
at Westnæs, in A.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
in A.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 in A.D. 1560. Under his son Eric
a Catholic reaction set in, and his brother John III., in
A.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 in A.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, in A.D. 1604, that he had forfeited the throne,
which his uncle now ascended as Charles IX.--The Reformation
had been already carried from Sweden into =Finland=.[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. In A.D. 1521 he succeeded in getting Carlstadt
to come to his assistance, but he was soon forced to quit the
country. In A.D. 1523 the clergy and nobles formally renounced
their allegiance, and gave the crown to his uncle =Frederick 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 in A.D. 1530.
In the following year he conquered Norway, and bound himself
on his coronation to maintain the Catholic religion. But in
A.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. In
A.D. 1526 he openly professed the evangelical faith, and
invited the Danish reformer =Hans Tausen=, a disciple of
Luther, who had preached the gospel amid much persecution
since A.D. 1524, to settle as preacher in Copenhagen. At a
diet at Odensee [Odense] in A.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 in A.D. 1530
submitted to the nobles his own confession, _Confessio Hafinca_,
and the Reformation rapidly advanced. Frederick died in A.D. 1533.
The bishops now rose in a body, and insisted that the estates
should refuse to acknowledge his son =Christian III.= But when
the burgomaster of Lübeck, taking advantage of the anarchy,
plotted to subject Denmark to the proud commercial city, and
in A.D. 1534 actually laid siege to Copenhagen, the Jutland
nobles hastened to swear fealty to Christian. He drove out the
Lübeckers, and by A.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 in
A.D. 1537. He crowned the king and queen, sketched a directory
of worship, which was adopted at the =Diet of Odensee [Odense]=
in A.D. 1539, and returned to Wittenberg in A.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 into =Norway=, which acknowledged
the king in A.D. 1536. The Archbishop of Drontheim, Olaf
Engelbrechtzen, fled with the church treasures to the Netherlands.
=Iceland= stood out longer, but yielded in A.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 in A.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 reformer =Briesmann= was 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, in A.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, in A.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=,
in A.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 in A.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,
in A.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, of A.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. In A.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. in A.D. 1526. Fryth was
rewarded with the stake in A.D. 1533, and Tyndal was beheaded
in the Netherlands in A.D. 1535.[377] But 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 in A.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 in A.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 in
A.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), in A.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.[378] Nevertheless in doctrine the king
wished to remain a good Catholic, and for this end passed in
the Parliament of A.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 in A.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 in A.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 in A.D. 1536.
The third wife, Jane Seymour, died in A.D. 1537 on the death
of a son. The fourth, Anne of Cleves, was after six months, in
A.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, in A.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. =Cranmer= had 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.[380] Bernardino 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
of _Homilies_, for the instruction of the young a _Catechism_,
and for the service a liturgy mediate between the Catholic
and Protestant form, the so-called _Book of Common Prayer_
of A.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, in A.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 in A.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.[381] The 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.[382] In 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 in A.D. 1556.--The
queen had married in A.D. 1554 Philip II. of Spain, eleven
years her junior, and when in A.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. In A.D. 1559 the
Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity, which reasserted the
royal supremacy over the national church, prescribed a revision
of the _Book 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
in A.D. 1562, and were adopted as a fundamental statute
of England by Act of Parliament in A.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 in A.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 in A.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 in A.D. 1154. Yet the king
only managed to conquer the eastern border, the _Pale_, during
the years 1171-1175. Henry VIII. introduced the Reformation
into this province in A.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 in A.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
in A.D. 1528.[387] Amid 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 in A.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, in A.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, in A.D. 1546, surprised in his castle and slain. When
in A.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 in A.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 in A.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 (?) in A.D. 1559.[388]
The 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, in A.D. 1560. The French were obliged to
withdraw, and the victory of the Scotch Protestants was
decisive.