Chapter IV: The Counter-Reformation (19)

§ 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 in A.D. 1505, was by the study
of Augustine and the Bible led to adopt evangelical views, which
in A.D. 1542 he preached in the south of Scotland. Persecuted
in consequence by Archbishop Beaton, he joined the conspirators
after that prelate’s assassination, in A.D. 1546, was taken
prisoner, and in A.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 in A.D. 1549, and became in A.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
in A.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 in A.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. In A.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 in A.D. 1560, the Parliament proclaimed
the abolition of the papacy, ratified the strictly Calvinistic
_Confessio Scotica_, and forbade celebrating the mass on
pain of death. Then in December, the first _General Assembly_
prescribed, 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, Queen =Mary 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 of A.D. 1560, held
Catholic service in her court chapel, and on all hands favoured
the Romanists. By her marriage, in A.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
in A.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 reformer =John 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 in A.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 to A.D. 1567. Morton’s
vigorous government completely destroyed Mary’s party, but
also restricted the pretensions of Presbyterianism. After
his overthrow in A.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. In A.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 in A.D. 1592 the king was obliged absolutely
to restore these. After Elizabeth’s death in A.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.,
in A.D. 1478, the Netherlands passed over to the house of
Hapsburg, and after Maximilian’s death, in A.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, in A.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,
in A.D. 1555, under his son and successor =Philip 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.--In A.D. 1523 Luther’s translation of the N.T.
had already been rendered into Dutch and printed at Amsterdam.
In A.D. 1545 Jacob van Liesfield translated the whole Bible, and
was for this sent to the scaffold in A.D. 1545. A Calvinistic
symbol was set forth in A.D. 1562 in the Belgic Confession. The
league formed by the nobles, in A.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, in A.D. 1587, the terrible =Duke 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, in A.D. 1573, was at his own
request recalled, he could boast of having carried out in six
years 18,600 executions. Meanwhile the great =Prince of Orange,
William the Silent=, formerly royal governor of the Dutch
Provinces, but since A.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 called
_Pacification of Ghent_, of A.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 of
A.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 of A.D. 1566, was =Philip 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, in A.D. 1584, he
was succeeded by his son =Maurice=, who after long years of
bloody conflict succeeded, in A.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 in A.D. 1521, the Sorbonne issued
a _Determinatio super doctr. Luth._, pronouncing Luther’s
teaching and writings heretical, which Melanchthon in the
same year answered with unusual vigour in his _Apologia adv.
furiosum Parisiensium theologastrorum decretum_. Everything
depended upon the attitude which the young king =Francis 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 as A.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 in
A.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, from
A.D. 1524, had already brought many isolated witnesses to the
scaffold and the stake, now assumed a systematic and general
character. In A.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-called
_chambre 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. Under =Henry II.=, A.D. 1547-1559,
who continued his father’s crooked policy, the _chambre ardente_
became 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 of _autos-de-fé_ carried 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 in A.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 of =Huguenots=, 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, the _Confessio
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. Under =Francis 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 the _chambre ardente_. A conspiracy
directed against them in A.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 son =Charles 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 in A.D. 1560 to demand religious toleration
of the imperial Parliament, and succeeded at last so far that
in A.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 in A.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, in
A.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 in A.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 the =Bloody 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 an _acte
prémédité_, to the German court as an _acte 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, a _Te Deum_ performed, 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, in A.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, of A.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 since A.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, of
A.D. 1585, to declare that the Protestants were deprived of
all rights and privileges. In the battle of Coutras, however,
in A.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 as =Henry 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, in A.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 the
=Edict 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,[393] but 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 in A.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 in A.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, in A.D. 1525, drove out the Catholic council. Sigismund
went down there himself, had several citizens executed, and
restored the old mode of worship in A.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 in A.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
in A.D. 1556 sent into the country a legate of a despotic and
violent temper, called Aloysius Lippomanus, who was replaced
in A.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, in A.D. 1556,
their celebrated countryman =John 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, in A.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 in A.D. 1560. At a =general
synod at Sendomir=, in A.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, in A.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, in A.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, the =Pax dissidentium of
A.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, in A.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 in A.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, in A.D. 1528, and the glorious Diet of Augsburg,
in A.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. In
A.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
in A.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, in A.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 in A.D. 1548, many of them went to Poland, the
larger number to Prussia, from whence they returned to their
native land in A.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, from A.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, in A.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 in A.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 between
A.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 from A.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 the _Confessio
Bohemica_ of A.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, in A.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.

§ 139.20. =Hungary and Transylvania.=--From A.D. 1524, Martin
Cyriaci, a student of Wittenberg, wrought in =Hungary= for
the spread of the true doctrine. King Louis II. threatened its
adherents with all possible penalties. But in A.D. 1526 he fell
in battle against the Turks at Mohacz. The election of a new
king resulted in two claimants taking possession of the field;
Ferdinand of Austria secured a footing in the western, and
the Woiwode John Zapolya in the eastern provinces. Both sought
to suppress the Reformation, in order to win over the clergy
to support them. But it nevertheless gained the ascendency,
favoured by the political confusions of the time. =Matthias
Devay=, a scholar of Luther, and for a time a resident in
his house, from A.D. 1521 preached the gospel at Ofen, having
been called thither by several of the leading inhabitants on
Melanchthon’s recommendation, and in A.D. 1533 had a Hungarian
translation of the Pauline epistles printed at Cracow. In
A.D. 1541 Erdösy issued the complete New Testament, which was
also the first book printed in Hungary. At a synod at Erdöd, in
A.D. 1545, twenty-nine ministers drew up a confession of faith
in twelve articles, in agreement with the Augsburg Confession.
But also the Swiss doctrine had now found entrance, and won
more and more adherents from day to day. These adopted at a
council at Czengar, in A.D. 1557, a Calvinistic confession,
with decided repudiation of the Zwinglian as well as the
Lutheran theory of the Lord’s Supper, describing the latter
as an _insania sarcophagica_. The government of Maximilian II.
did not interfere with the progress of the Reformation; but when
Rudolph II. attempted to interfere with violent measures, the
Protestants rose in revolt under Stephen Bocskai, and compelled
the king to grant them complete religious liberty by the Vienna
Peace of A.D. 1606. Among the native Hungarians the Reformed
confession prevailed, but the German residents remained true
to Lutheranism. (Continuation § 153, 3.)--As early as A.D. 1521
merchants had brought into =Transylvania= from Hermanstadt
copies of Luther’s writings. King Louis II. of Hungary, however,
carried his persecution of the evangelicals even into this
territory, which was continued after his death by Zapolya.
In A.D. 1529, however, Hermanstadt ventured to expel all
adherents of the Romish church from within its walls. In
Cronstadt, the work of the Reformation was carried on from
A.D. 1533 by =Jac. Honter=, who had studied at Basel. Since
Zapolya through an agreement with Ferdinand, in A.D. 1538,
was assured of possession for his lifetime of Transylvania,
he acted more mildly toward the Protestants. After his death
the monk Martinuzzi, as Bishop of Grosswardein, assumed the helm
of affairs for Zapolya’s son during his minority, oppressing the
Protestants with bloody persecutions, while Isabella, Zapolya’s
widow, was favourable to them. Martinuzzi therefore handed over
the country to Ferdinand, but was assassinated in A.D. 1551.
After some years Isabella returned with her son, and a =national
assembly at Clausenburg=, in A.D. 1557, gave an organization
to the country as an independent principality, and proclaimed
universal religious liberty. The Saxon population continued
attached to the Lutheran confession, and the Czecks and Magyars
preferred to adopt the Reformed.[397]

§ 139.21. =Spain.=--The connection brought about between Spain
and Germany through the election of =Charles V.= as emperor led
to the very early introduction into the Peninsula of Luther’s
doctrine and writings. Indeed many of the theologians and
statesmen who went in Charles’ train into Germany returned
with evangelical convictions in their hearts, as, _e.g._, the
Benedictine Alphonso de Virves, the fiery Ponce de la Fuente,
both court chaplains of the emperor, and his private secretary
Alphonso Valdez. A layman, Roderigo de Valer, by earnest study
of the Bible attained unto a knowledge of the gospel, and became
the instrument of leading many others into the way of salvation.
The Inquisition confiscated his goods and condemned him to
wear the _san benito_ (§ 117, 2). Juan Gil, a friend of Valer,
Bishop of Tortosa, founded a society for the study of the
Bible. The Inquisition deposed him, and only Charles’ favour
protected him from the stake; but subsequently his bones were
dug up and burnt. Many other prelates also, such as Carranza
of Toledo, Guerrero of Granada, Guesta of Leon, Carrubias of
Ciudad Roderigo, Agostino of Lerida, Ayala of Segovia, etc.,
admitted the necessity for a thoroughgoing revision of doctrine,
without detaching themselves from the pope and the Romish church;
and in this direction they laboured with zeal and success amid
the threatenings of the Inquisition. The first Protestant martyr
in Spain was Francisco san Romano, a merchant who had become
acquainted with Luther’s doctrine at Antwerp. He was led to the
stake at Valladolid, in A.D. 1544. Francis Enzina, in A.D. 1543,
translated the New Testament. He was cast into prison, and the
book prohibited. A complete Spanish Bible was printed by Cassiod.
de Reyna at Basel, in A.D. 1569. In Seville and Valladolid first
of all, and at a later period also in many other Spanish cities,
evangelical congregations held secret services. Even so soon as
about A.D. 1550, the Reformation movement threatened to become
so general and widespread, that a Spanish historian of that age,
Ilesca, in his history of the popes, expresses the conviction
that all Spain would have become overrun with heresy if the
Inquisition had delayed for three months longer to put an
end to the pestilence. But it now applied that remedy in the
largest and strongest doses possible. The measures of the
Inquisition were specially prompt and vigorous during the
reign of =Philip II.=, A.D. 1555-1598. Scarcely a year passed
in which there were not at each of the twelve Inquisition courts
one or more great _autos-de-fé_, in which crowds of heretics
were burnt. And the remedy was effectual. After two decades
the evangelical movement was stamped out. How determinedly the
crusade was carried out is shown by the proceedings in the case
of the Archbishop of Toledo, Barthol. Carranza. This prelate had
published a “Commentary on the Catechism,” in which he expressed
a wish to see “the ancient spirit of our forefathers and of
the early church revived in its simplicity and purity.” The
grand-inquisitor discerned therein Lutheran heresy, and though
he bore one of the highest positions in the Spanish church,
Carranza was kept close prisoner for eight years in the dungeons
of the Inquisition, and after he had at last reached the pope
with his appeal, he was kept for nine years in the castle of
St. Angelo at Rome. There at last, upon his abjuring sixteen
heretical propositions, especially about justification, saint
and image worship, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment
in the Dominican cloister at Orvieto, but died some weeks after,
in A.D. 1576, in his seventy-third year. At the Quemadero,
the scene of the _autos-de-fé_ of the Madrid Inquisition court,
there were till quite recently discernible the traces of the
human hecatombs that had there been offered up to the insatiable
Moloch of religious fanaticism. The official newspaper of the
capital of the 12th April, A.D. 1869, reports how on the removal
of the soil for the purpose of lengthening a street, the grim
geological archives of the burnings of the Inquisition were laid
bare, while with horrifying minuteness it proceeds to describe
the maximum reached, and the gradual diminution of these papal
atrocities.[398]