Chapter XIII: Section I: The Rise and Progress of the Reformation (1)

PARTLY owing to the insular position of Scotland, the means of intercourse with the other communities of Europe had for ages been comparatively limited, but, from the closing years of the thirteenth century onward, the commercial and foreign relations of the kingdom had gradually extended, and new historic conditions had arisen. The gradual development of the industrial arts, the extension of commercial relations, and the consequent improvement of the means of intercommunication, had at length permitted different nations to influence each other more freely and directly. Step by step commercial enterprise had become a power in Europe, and the narrow feudalism of the earlier period had begun to relax and decay. The energy of the people of Europe had rendered it possible for the various communities to influence each other in their ideas and opinions, as well as to confer benefits by the exchange of their diverse commodities. This mutual influence was most decisively manifested in the department of thought and feeling associated with the Reformation movement. There had been some slight attempts to sow novel doctrines among the Scots in the fifteenth century, but they were still firmly attached to the Roman Catholic creed. The principles and the doctrines of the Reformation were not originated in Scotland, they were imported; and in treating of the historic rise of this revolutionary movement, it is necessary to extend our view beyond the boundaries of the Island.

The mechanical inventions connected with the manufacture of paper, and the art of printing, had a relative bearing on the Reformation. In Europe, paper was first made from cotton about the year 1000, and from rags in 1319; and thus the material for printing on was rendered available. In 1438, the art of printing was discovered; and a few years later, cut metal types were invented and brought into use. Before the end of the fifteenth century many thousands of books had been printed and published in the various countries of Europe. Thus the printing press soon made literature more accessible to mankind; while the range of an individual thinker’s influence was at once greatly widened, his ideas and opinions being easily promulgated to an extent which, in preceding ages, was unknown and undreamed.

These new agencies appeared upon the scene when the chief nations of Europe were seeking unity and aspiring to political independence, and when their languages were assuming the modern forms. This had a close relation and a deep influence on the Reformation movement. The Italians, the French, the Spaniards, the Germans, and the English, had each already begun to cultivate their respective languages, and to produce poetry and other compositions. But the languages of the three first were essentially descendants of the Latin; and it is a notable coincidence that, though the Reformation was attempted to be introduced among these nations, they still remain in the Roman Catholic Church. The Italians have produced a rich and varied literature, characterised by flowing cadence and dramatic power. Spanish literature is distinguished for its sonorous rhythm and its romantic characteristics. Both Italian and Spanish literature are somewhat poor in the departments of philosophy and criticism: in these departments French literature has taken a higher rank. German literature and English literature were also influenced by the Latins, but in a much less degree than the rest, each of them having retained a large body of vernacular words, which have been developed into a great and massive national literature. The action of the above agencies and others began to indicate that a revolution was looming in Europe. The fetters which had so long entangled and enslaved the human mind were soon to be snapped; and the time was approaching when the mass of traditions, of legends, and of wonders, would be subjected to a rude and irreparable shock.

It has long been recognised that the revival of Classical literature aided the Reformation movement. This however only affected the educated class, and if there had been no stronger causes of the Reformation, classical learning would have been comparatively powerless to touch the body of a nation; but being in accord with other and deeper causes of the revolutionary movement, it may be reckoned a considerable factor among the antecedents of the Reformation. Inasmuch as this revival of ancient literature contributed to weaken the authority of the theology of the schools, it trenched upon the supreme power of the Church, and by assisting to modify the forms of thought and opinion proved exceedingly favourable to the general movement. Even to awaken a spirit of inquiry was a step of the utmost consequence. Many learned men of the period had no intention of reforming religion, but owing to other tendencies which had been long in operation, their efforts conduced to that end.

At the same time the revival of art and the rise of modern painting in Italy gave an impetus to the onward movement. It is the essential function of painting to embody man’s feelings, emotions, and ideas of beauty, and within certain limits to give them living form and realised existence. The Church thought that art could help her; and to a certain extent it did. By vividly portraying Scripture histories and the lives of the saints, by presenting new types of serene beauty and pure joy, by giving form to the floating notions of angelic beings, and by rousing deep sympathy with our Lord in His Passion, painting lent efficient aid to piety. But its effect was not exactly what the Church desired. Instead of tightening the fetters of ecclesiastical authority and encouraging mysticism and asceticism, it restored humanity to a sense of its dignity and beauty, and helped to show the untenability of the mediæval standpoint; for art is emphatically and uncontrollably free, and it is free in the realm of sensuous delightfulness from which conventual religion turns aside to enjoy her own ecstatic liberty of contemplation. Thus art early contributed to the emancipation of the modern mind by proclaiming to men the tidings of their greatness in a world of manifold enjoyment created for their use. “Whatever painting touched, became by that touch, human; piety at the lure of art, folded her soaring wings and rested on the genial earth. This the Church had not foreseen.”¹

¹ Symonds’ _Renaissance_, Volume III., pages 29‒32, _et seq._

Before the Reformation the Catholic Church presented a vast and powerful organisation with innumerable agencies which penetrated into every form of society, and attempted to control the whole life of mankind. The body of the clergy, including the monks and friars, had assumed the characteristics and the position of a distinct caste. They were not only distinct, but in many respects antagonistic to the other classes of the people; in their view of life, their laws, their special privileges, their social duties, and in the aim of their existence, they were separated from the lay classes of society by an impassible limit. Their theory of life was to neglect and subdue the body, to mortify the flesh in order that the soul might be made perfect. Whether all this was done for the good of humanity or for the benefit of the clergy themselves is a question of the most momentous importance, and perchance some light may be thrown upon it in the course of this volume.

In every country of Europe the Church held a considerable extent of landed property, which varied in different kingdoms, but at the beginning of the sixteenth century the wealth of the Church was enormous. In England the landed estates of the bishops, of the cathedrals, and of the monastic orders extended into every parish of the kingdom; while the tithes and offerings which maintained the beneficed clergy brought in a revenue larger than the lands. In France a long series of causes and circumstances had combined to throw into the hands of the clergy a very large stretch of landed property; for many generations the Kings of France had vied with each other in heaping estates upon the bishops and in endowing monasteries. The title deeds of church property in France date from a very early period; and in Scotland the earliest body of charters relating to land rights are found in the registers of the Church. The Church lands however formed but a small part of the revenues of the clergy. They had the tenth of all the produce of land, which was extended to include not only all kinds of grain and vegetable produce, but also cattle, sheep, poultry, and all kinds of fish. There were also the votive offerings, many of which were at first free gifts, but had assumed the form of lawful demands. Then the whole life of every Catholic was interwoven with the ceremonial of the Church, and the priest had to be paid for confession, baptism, confirmation, marriage, and the rites of burial, and the saying of masses which were believed to lighten the suffering of the soul after death. Moreover, there were the offerings at the crosses and the shrines of famous and popular saints for their intercessory prayers to avert calamities, to grant success to schemes of ambition, to obtain pardon for sin, and to bring down blessing. Many of the crosses and shrines were supposed to be invested with miraculous powers, and the miracles which were said to have been wrought at them were innumerable. When to all these are added the large subsidies which must have been given to the swarms of friars spread over every country of Christendom,¹ it will be easily realised that the Church was in receipt of a large portion of the industrial produce of Europe, and drew into her coffers an almost incredible amount of wealth.

¹ Selden’s _Book on Tithes_; Speed’s _Catalogue of Religious
Houses, Benefices_, etc.; Dugdale and Stevens on _The
Revenues of the Monasteries_; Stubbs’ _Constitutional
History Of England_, Volume III., page 521; Milman’s
_History of Latin Christianity_, Volume VI., pages 344‒375;
for Germany see Ranke’s _History of the Reformation in
Germany_, Volume I., pages 272‒278.

Such education as then existed was almost wholly under the control of the Church, and the clergy themselves were the best educated body of men in the world. Rome was the head of the educational department as well as the centre of everything else connected with religion, morals, and philosophy. No university could be properly established without the sanction and the approval of its constitution by the Pope; but it does not appear that the Pope threw obstacles in the way of the erection of these institutions. At the beginning of the sixteenth century there were upwards of fifty universities scattered over Europe: and all learned people were regarded as belonging to the clergy, for the Pope had long claimed them as the special subjects of his empire. It was well understood that all the members of the universities should talk and write in Latin, the universal language of the Church and the learned, in which all the knowledge of the times was sealed up and monopolised by the clergy. They were the canon lawyers, the historians, and the philosophers, for philosophy was wholly under the dominion of theology. They reigned supreme, and everything which they deemed opposed to the Faith or inconsistent with their theology was rigorously excluded from the pale of orthodox Christendom. Medicine and science were left to the Jews and the Arabians; as the Christian had higher objects with which to occupy his mind. If it had been possible to continue making Latin the only medium of communication and record, the sole vehicle of literature, with the Church as its depository, there would have been no Reformation. The modern languages even in their crude state aided the onward movement, and the comparatively rapid development of their varied literature secured its success. Hence, since the sixteenth century, in spite of every effort, the Latin tongue has been constantly falling more and more into the background; it was relegated into the study of the scholar, and into books intended only for the learned. But at the beginning of that century the spiritual authority and the power of the clergy stood unchallenged; and the minds of men were held in the most complete slavery. They declared the eternal destiny of every one, and to doubt their sentence was the most abhorrent sin; those who disbelieved trembled in silence, and shrouded themselves from their fellow creatures; the few who openly ventured to question the unlimited power of the clergy to absolve were the outcasts of society, detested and proscribed by the Church and hated by the people. The whole life and moral being of man was claimed to be under the supervision and control of the clergy; no act was beyond their cognisance, all the thoughts of the mind and the inmost secrets of the heart had to be disclosed to them. Every one was bound to inform against himself, and to submit to a moral torture which threatened him with the severest condemnation. If he concealed anything, he had to undergo the most crushing penance. The sacraments of the spiritual life could be granted or withheld according to the arbitrary judgment of the priest; absolution might be delayed and even refused; after death the body might repose in consecrated ground with the saints, or be cast out into the domain of devils. Excommunication cut the man off from the Church, beyond whose pale there was no possibility of salvation; no one could presume to hope for any one who died under its ban. The inward assurance of faith, of virtue, or of rectitude, unless avouched by the priest, was accounted nothing; without the priestly passport admission into the kingdom of heaven was impossible. But the sacredness of the priest himself was indefeasible, whatever his habits and life might be. The people might murmur in secret at his cupidity and licentiousness; he might even be openly exposed to shame, but he was still a priest and his verdict of condemnation or absolution remained equally valid. This was the crowning triumph of the Roman priesthood over the moral and intellectual faculties of mankind, but it was too complete to endure. Great as the power of the Church was, she could not bind the human mind for ever; she might cramp its freedom and retard its progress, but to arrest the onward movement and destiny of humanity was more than she could do, and the moral indignation of the people at last rent the veil.

The written creed of the Church comprised only a small part of the belief of Roman Catholicism. During the period of a thousand and four hundred years the Church had accumulated and interwoven with Christianity a vast mass of mythology, which consisted partly of notions belonging to the old heathen religions that were current in these countries when the Gospel was introduced into them, and partly of notions and opinions which prevailed among the Jews when Christianity was founded, and largely of traditions and legends associated with the Christian saints.¹ The popular religion of the middle ages composed from these diverse sources, contained a remarkable combination of beliefs, and a mass of crude, unsifted, and materialised notions. Tradition claimed equal authority with the Scriptures; the Church and the hierarchy were assumed to have the power of indefinitely multiplying the objects and articles of faith, and by degrees the whole imaginary belief of the Middle Ages was authorised and ingrafted upon Christianity. Externally there was a certain unity in the diversity of the public worship. Although each nation and even each parish had its peculiar patron saint, no one denied the influence and the power of the saints of other nations and parishes; as there was always plenty of employment for them all within the vast organisation of Roman Catholicism.

¹ Mackintosh’s _History of Civilisation in Scotland_, Volume
I., pages 99‒102, 123, 128‒130, 437. _Supernatural Religion_,
Volume I., pages 88‒141, 148, _et seq._, 1874‒77. If I
might venture to pass a remark on this important work, it
appears to me that the first part of it is by far the most
effectively handled. When the author comes into the heart
of the subject, to the examination of the evidence of the
fundamental doctrines of Christianity, he always seems
rather anxious to prove his special view; and his criticism
loses much of its force owing to its excessive minuteness
and length, and he sometimes fails to see the real bearings
of the points in question.

All historians of opinions and doctrines are aware that
there existed a speculative connection between the current
notions of the philosophy of the age and those set forth
in the New Testament; indeed, the speculative tendency of
the early Fathers caused them to adopt the existing logical
distinctions of philosophical schools. But nevertheless
the opinions of the Fathers were all tinged by their belief
in supernatural agencies. Numerous allusions and direct
references to good and evil spirits, angels, and demons,
occur in their writings; and the doctrine of the existence
of demons stands in close association with the existence of
evil in the world. In the onward development of Catholicism
this class of beings seems to have constantly multiplied.
“If we pass from the Fathers into the Middle Ages we find
ourselves in an atmosphere that was dense and charged
with the supernatural. The demand for miracles was almost
boundless, and the supply was equal to the demand.” (Lecky’s
_History of Rationalism_, Volume I., page 152.) Compare Dean
Milman’s _History of Latin Christianity_, Volume VI., pages
399‒332.

There were the realms of angels and devils, and the hierarchies of heaven and hell. The celestial host of angels was divided into three classes, and each class sub-divided into three orders;¹ and these beings formed circles around the throne of the Trinity. They were of a fiery nature, as fire had most of the properties of the divinity, and they were endowed with countless eyes and wings; their form, however, was human, their raiment priestly and exceedingly bright, and they were holy and full of joy. Occasionally they visited the earth as messengers, but angelic apparitions were far less frequent than the interferences and temptations of the demons. The latter were base and cruel, malignant, hideous, and hateful; they took a peculiar delight in the tortures which they inflicted, but the saints often mastered them, and exultingly repulsed their fiercest assaults. The devils were very numerous and ever present under the name of the spirits of the air; this world was their almost exclusive domain; sometimes they assumed beautiful forms, as of frisky women, to tempt the saints; sometimes the devil appeared in the shape of a monstrous animal, at other times as a priest to declaim in the pulpit. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest Catholic writer of the fourteenth century, distinctly maintained that diseases and tempests were the direct acts of the devil; that the devil could transport men at his pleasure through the air, and that he could transform himself into any shape. It was generally taught and believed that innumerable evil spirits were ranging over the world, seeking the misery and the ruin of mankind; and that they were always hovering around the inhabitants of the earth, and originating wind, hail, and tempests.²

¹ In the primitive Church the doctrine of angels was indefinite,
but it gradually assumed form, and most of the scholastics
adopted the classification indicated in the text. The
Council of Lateran, held in 1215, declared as the doctrine
of the Church that the angels are spiritual beings, and were
created in a state of innocence. But touching particular
points, ample scope was still left for poetical and
imaginary speculations. Some of the Fathers held rather
curious notions about the angels. Clement and Origen
assigned to the angels the office of watching over provinces
and towns, in accordance with the notions of individual
guardian angels. (Clement, Stromata, V., page 700.) Clement
further says――“That they have neither ears, nor tongue, nor
lips, nor entrails, nor organs of respiration,” etc.

² _Malleus Maleficarum_; Lecky’s _History of Rationalism_,
Volume I., pages 72, 74, _et seq._ Regarding the devil there
has been great diversity of doctrine and opinions. According
to the opinion of Origen, there was still hope of the final
conversion and pardon of Satan himself. Tertullian and
Origen both ascribed the failures of crops, drought, famine,
pestilence, and murrain to the influence of demons.

Closely associated with these demoniac agencies, was the belief in witchcraft, sorcery, spells, talismans, and conjurations. These vaguely connated notions rested upon the supposition that acts and operations were performed by persons who were under the influence of the devil, or who acted as the assistants of evil spirits. The Church had long encouraged these silly notions and wild hallucinations by recognising and treating them as facts; and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the belief in witchcraft reached a height which produced the most frightful results. Many thousands of human creatures were burnt and drowned for the supposed crime of having sold themselves to the devil, and having held communication with evil spirits.

The intense and vivid sense of satanic presence which pervaded the minds of the clergy and the legislators of those times, induced them to look upon heresy and witchcraft as nearly allied, and the zeal against both grew together. The idea of demoniac power had so deep a hold upon the minds of men that even the Reformation failed to shake it; and for some time this revolution gave a new impetus to the persecution for witchcraft, and it required the enlightenment of other two centuries to weaken and dispel this dark and cruel belief.

The saints were an intermediate class of beings between God and the living Catholic world of Christians. As they were endowed with human feelings and sympathies, they were naturally supposed to be more closely associated with, and interested in, the welfare of their kindred upon the earth. This kinship between the blessed saints and their brethren and votaries still in the flesh seemed to be mutual; and each saint willingly kept up his special interest and attachment for the places and the associates of his earthly sojourn. By his intercession he exercised a beneficent influence; he was tutelar within his sphere, and so he became an object of devout adoration. So useful a class of beings could not fail to be constantly multiplied, and some of them deified, as they had assumed the position of the rulers and the disposing providence of the earth, and it appeared that the Deity had almost abandoned the government of the world to them. The unmistakable evidence of their place and power in the popular imagination was seen in the numbers of their altars in every church and chapel throughout Christendom, and the costly oblations that were continually offered at their shrines.

But the Virgin Mary was seated far above all the saints and martyrs. Since the beginning of the seventh century the worship of the Virgin had been constantly on the ascendant. Every cathedral, and almost every church, had its Chapel of our Lady; and in every breviary the hymns to the Virgin teemed with poetic images expressive of the homage paid to her: in the worship of the people she was addressed in words similar to those applied to the Deity. A copious and rich legend unfolded the whole history of her birth and life, a subject on which the New Testament was silent: but the spurious gospels had furnished ample incidents, which threw a halo of authority around the details.¹ Painting and sculpture both lent their aid to embody and realise this worship of the Blessed Virgin. At last the question was raised, whether she was entirely free from the sin of Adam, and there were great discussions on the point. The Council of Basle in 1439 passed a decree in favour of the Immaculate Conception; yet some still doubted, and Pope Sixtus the Fourth, in 1477, and again in 1483, declared that the opposite doctrine should not be called heretical, but his bulls did not prohibit those who differed from retaining their own views.² At this time the festivals in honour of the Virgin had increased to seven; and it is almost unnecessary to say that countless miracles were attributed to her.

¹ _Supernatural Religion_, Volume I., pages 308, 314, _et seq._

² “Those theologians who sought to clear the Mother of Christ
from the guilt of original sin, did not bear in mind that
they only pushed the miracle one step further back, without
entirely removing it; for in that case the parents of Mary
must have been free from original sin, and again their
parents, etc., and so on up to Adam. Bernard of Clairvaux
seems to have perceived this difficulty.” Hagenbach’s
_History of Doctrines_, Volume II., page 23; 1847.

This worship of the Virgin and the Saints was continually receiving fresh accessions. For many centuries the passions and feelings were kept in a state of excitement, as new saints were always arising and crowding on to the Calendar, and whenever a saint was canonised, it was deemed necessary to show that he had worked miracles; so all the lives of the old saints are full of miracles. Some of the saints had a world-wide fame; their churches were erected in every Christian kingdom, and their shrines sprung up in all lands; but others had only a national or a merely local fame, although within these limits they were worshipped with equal fidelity, their legends, their acts, and their miracles, were commemorated and presented to the eye in architecture, sculpture, and painting. A few of the patron saints of the western kingdoms of Europe belong to a comparatively late date, England placed herself under St. George, a personage of very doubtful origin; St. Louis was the Saint of the Crusades; and St. Thomas Aquinas of Scholasticism. Each order of monks and of friars were bound to hold up to the utmost the saints of their order, and it was the sacred duty of all who wore the garb to spread their fame with especial assiduity. It was also the duty of every king, burgess, and craftsman and parishioner, to assist in propagating the renown and the miracles of his patron saint.¹ Most of the chief churches of a kingdom had a commemorative anniversary of their patron saint, when his wonders were made the subject of endless sermons. Great processions, rejoicings, and feastings were held, and occasionally rendered more attractive by some new miracle, some marvellous cure, some demon ejected, or something which outdid the miracles of every neighbouring saint. Each of these notable saints had his life of strange incidents, the legend of his virtues and miracles, his shrines and his relics; and this legend was to his votaries a kind of gospel, which was worked into the popular belief by constant iteration. Legend, in fact, was the universal poetry of the times. The mythic literature of Roman Catholic Christianity is almost interminable in quantity, and its life and strength is centred in its particularity and individuality; whenever it is reduced to a more compendious form it withers, the chill of the tomb gathers around it; and under the searching grasp of comparative criticism, the specified particulars and the minute detail, are found to lack evidence, and one by one, each story is made to pass from the realm of fact into that of belief, or the hallucinations of the dark and perplexed imagination of the sons of men.

¹ Incidental evidence of this has already been given in the
first volume of this work, pages 125 _et seq._, 406, 438.
The great authority for the lives of the Saints is the large
folio volumes of the Bollandists’ Collection, which was
begun in 1643 by the Jesuit, Bolland. Within the past fifty
years many of the materials relating to the Roman Catholic
Church in England and Scotland have been published by the
authority of the Commissioners of Records; and by Clubs and
Societies formed with the object of printing early records.

The worship of the saints was connected with the adoration of images, and the veneration of relics. The legend was confirmed and kept alive by the somewhat dimly shown relics, which were generally in the church, either under or upon the altar. In 787, the Second Council of Nice issued a decree prohibiting the consecration of any church without relics; hence it may easily be understood that objects of such virtue and importance continually multiplied. The reliquary was the most precious ornament in the king’s hall, in the lady’s chamber, and in the knight’s armoury. It cannot be denied that there is something human and even amiable in preserving memorials of the departed; and this natural and universal feeling when transferred to the relics of the Blessed Virgin and the saints had an almost incredible power. No one doubted that the relics of the saints worked miracles; while the wood of the true cross grew into a forest, and the most perishable things――the garments of the Saviour and of the saints――became imperishable. To such a degree was the veneration of relics carried, and the belief in their virtue and miraculous powers had become so absolute, that the very devil himself failed to detect imposture. Up to the verge of the Reformation period the veneration of relics and the worship of images continued in unshaken authority.

As the Catholic Church developed and completed her organisation, the world after death became more and more distinctly imagined and vividly described. Hell, purgatory, and heaven, were palpably represented to the senses. The conception of hell and the doctrine of future punishment was especially clear and minutely elaborated; the site of the former, its topography, trials and torments, were all portrayed with harrowing exactness and repulsiveness. Hell was described in the writings of the Middle Ages in words too gross to be repeated here; its imagery, gathered from various sources besides the Old and New Testaments, had been for long accumulating. It was held and taught that eternal damnation was the lot which God had prepared for an immense majority of the human race; that their punishment consisted in the burning of their bodies in a literal fire; that the flames of this fire were never quenched and that the bodies of the damned were never consumed; that God had made the contemplation of their sufferings an essential element of the happiness of the redeemed; and that the saint was frequently permitted in visions to behold the agonies of the lost, and to describe the fearful spectacle he had seen. “He loved to tell how by the lurid glare of the eternal flames he had seen millions writhing in every form of ghastly suffering, their eyeballs rolling with unspeakable anguish, their limbs gashed and mutilated and quivering with pain, tortured by pangs that seemed ever keener by their recurrence, and shrieking in vain for mercy to an unpitying heaven. Hideous beings of dreadful aspect and of fantastic forms hovered around, mocking them and their torments, casting them into cauldrons of boiling brimstone, or inventing new tortures more subtle and refined. Amid all this a sulphur stream was ever seething, feeding, and intensifying the waves of fire. There was no respite, no alleviation, no hope. The tortures were ever varied in their character, and they never paused for a moment upon the sense. Sometimes, it was said, the flames while retaining their intensity withheld their light; a shroud of darkness covered the scene, but the ceaseless shriek of anguish attested the agonies that were below.”¹

¹ Lecky’s _History of Rationalism_, Volume I., pages 348‒349;
St. Thomas Aquinas, In Question 97, Articles 4, 5, 6;
Hagenbach’s _History of Doctrines_, Volume II., pages
148‒149, 151‒152. There is a large literature on hell and
the punishment of the lost. Besides passages in the Fathers,
and in the writings of the Schoolmen, and in the legends
of the saints, we have the well-known works of the great
Italian poet Dante; but another of his countrymen, not so
well known, Antonio Rusca, was the author of a book entitled
_De Inferno_; Milan, 1621. It settles logically, and with
great learning, every question relating to hell and its
inhabitants――its place, extent, divisions, and torments.
The more modern books which treat on the subject are very
numerous, and quite recently the main points involved in the
doctrine of future punishment have been handled from very
opposite standpoints.

The doctrine of hell and eternal punishment as presented in the tenets of the Church of the Middle Ages, destroyed all sense of the Divine goodness, and would at length have extinguished the principles of right and morality. Religion, instead of exhibiting a pure and exemplary morality, had become a system of dogmas, of ceremonies and of relics, of asceticism and of abuse, of extreme credulity and of savage persecution, and all this was mainly supported and maintained by fear.

The doctrine of purgatory seems to have arisen gradually from the notion of a purifying fire, and it was afterwards brought into connection with the notion of the mass. It came in to soften the horrible idea of eternal torture in hell; in another respect it was simply a continuation of the doctrine of penance. The possession of the keys of heaven and hell certainly entailed a terrible responsibility upon the priesthood; and it is only charitable to suppose that many a priest might have thought that the key of purgatory might be used with much less presumption; and so it came to pass that praying souls out of purgatory by saying masses on their behalf was speedily developed into an elaborate office which demanded large remuneration. The purchase of indulgence naturally followed in the same wake; and so much alms-giving to churches or to churchmen was understood to secure the remission of so many years, or it might be, centuries of purgatory.

But the idea of heaven, the state of the blessed, was not nearly so firmly realised as the notions of hell and purgatory. Many had brought back visions of hell and purgatory, but no one had returned from heaven with clear information about it; though some of the saints might occasionally descend on beneficent missions to the world of living men, yet of the state of the blessed they gave only the vaguest tidings. In fact, the notion of heaven was mixed up with the prevailing cosmic theory, as well as with the theology of the age. The whole belief of Roman Catholicism was materialistic; a palpable image or a representation of everything was eagerly sought and as fully supplied.

At the opening of the sixteenth century the political power of the Church varied in different kingdoms. Although the head of the Church made the same absolute claims upon all the rulers of Christendom, the rulers did not always respond equally to his calls and pretensions. In England the aristocracy and the commons had united to limit the exorbitant power and influence of the Pope within the kingdom, and his remonstrances and threats were often unavailing. The English clergy, as a body, had a considerable share of political power; they constituted one of the estates of the realm, and the territorial wealth of the bishops being large, contributed to enhance their social importance. The Pope, however, was still recognised as the head of the Church, and by artful management, and the policy of seizing every opportunity to extend his influence, he as yet retained a firm hold upon the English clergy.

In France the clergy were very powerful in the Middle Ages; and in the first half of the thirteenth century they had begun to exercise an almost complete social tyranny. Heresy was a crime which fell under their jurisdiction; they had a monopoly of granting licences to marry and of power to sanction wills; they had an exclusive right to give judgment in cases of usury, that is loans; and thus became the judges in nearly all the important disputes of daily life. Indeed they interfered in everything, and upon every opportunity launched forth their excommunications, which, if not removed, ended in confiscation. The French nobles who tamely yielded to the encroachments of the kings, resisted the clergy, and entered into a bond to aid each other in defying the Papal ban. In 1249, King Louis issued his Pragmatic Sanction, an ordinance against the undue privileges of the clergy and the usurpations of the Popes. It established the rights of the national prelates to confer benefices as handed down to them, and the right of chapters and cathedrals to elect their bishops; it also abolished simony, which Rome in her urgent need of funds had introduced on a large scale. All these arrangements King Louis declared to be under the protection of his own royal courts. The decree forbade the levy of any tax by the court of Rome, unless it was sanctioned by the King, and consented to, by the national Church. This ordinance remained in force till the reign of Francis I. in the sixteenth century. The Pragmatic Sanction was not a very bold assertion of religious freedom, but it seems to have been highly valued by the French; although one of its results was to foster the growth of the royal authority which long proved fatal to the peace and happiness of the French.

The French nobility were a separate caste and paid no national taxes. Their estates descended to their eldest sons, but the younger sons, according to etiquette, also belonged to the noble class; they became very numerous, and though often poor they were extremely proud of their blood and privileges. Thus it was that the hard worked tillers of the soil of France from an early period were hard pressed by the payment of rents to the nobles, taxes to the King, tithes to the Church, and other fees and payments, which were rigorously exacted from them. In 1483 the French peasants laid their grievances before Charles VIII., hoping for some remedy, but in vain, as the new monarch proceeded to invade Italy, and thereby increased their taxes and shed more of their blood. Absolute monarchy became firmly established in France, and there the Reformation failed, not because the French were Roman Catholic, but mainly because the struggle in France was finally decided upon secular and political grounds. The persecution of heresy in France was excessively severe till Catholicism gained the upper hand, and as it was more favourable to despotic government than Protestantism, the absolute monarchy of France ruled the people almost without a challenge for nearly two centuries. But the accumulated oppressions and wrongs perpetrated upon the people for many generations at last exhausted their endurance, and they arose and laid the Throne and the Church both in the dust. The Reformation which was stifled in the sixteenth century burst with volcanic violence at the end of the eighteenth, when the people, goaded almost to madness, rose in their might, scattered the glittering brass of the Crown, and rent to shreds the hallowed veil of the Church, which had so long favoured the instruments of the oppressors.

In Germany the strife between the Emperor and the Pope had ceased; while externally there seemed to be peace with the head of the Church in that quarter of Christendom. But there were many other elements of discord among the Germans. As yet they were far from having attained national unity. The country, though nominally under the Emperor, was really ruled by a number of petty princes and prelates, and the Emperor merely held a kind of feudal headship. Germany was still under the meshes of the feudal system; she had a class of little princes and great dukes, and under them a host of petty nobles and lords, most of whom were poor but proud and independent, and these constantly resisted all the attempts of the higher powers to control them. They claimed the right of waging private war, and the public peace was often broken. It was only in the free towns of Germany that there was union and orderly organised society; the citizens were thrifty, toiled hard, and saved much, and thus they had obtained wealth. The great want of Germany was a central and organised government with sufficient power to maintain the public peace.

No class in Germany had suffered more from the lawlessness of the nobles and knights than the peasantry, who were still in feudal serfdom. Since the beginning of the sixteenth century there had been several insurrections among the peasantry against their masters; and at last these risings began to be mixed up with the religious movement. They were the natural result of oppression――in the circumstances rebellion was the only remedy. The peasants of Swabia, a district of South Germany, rebelled in 1525 against the exactions of the Church and the nobles, but they were soon crushed. The demands which the leaders of the peasants put forward were comprised in twelve short articles――“The right to choose their own pastors; they would pay tithe of corn, out of which the pastors should be paid, the rest to go for the use of the parish; but small tithes, that is, the produce of animals, every tenth calf, lamb, pig, or egg, and so on, they would not pay; they would be free and no longer serfs and bondmen; wild game and fish to be free to all; woods and forests to belong to all for fuel; rent when above the value of the land to be valued and lowered; common land to be again given up to common use; punishments for crimes to be fixed; death gifts, that is, the right of the lord to take the best chattel of the deceased tenant, to be done away with. If any of these articles be proved contrary to Scripture or God’s justice, such to be null and void.” But there was no chance of their demands being granted.

Other local rebellions of the peasantry followed, and severe and savage measures were adopted on both sides, and many were put to death. It has been calculated that before the Peasants’ War was terminated 100,000 were slain. Luther throughout this struggle sided with the ruling powers; he was firmly opposed to the use of the sword against the civil authorities. The sons of toil naturally thought that they should have found a friend in Luther but they were bitterly disappointed, as he openly exhorted the princes and the nobles to crush the rebellion, and urged them on in the work of slaughter.¹ It need not be denied that in some degree this rebellion was incited by the seed which Luther himself had sown, and therefore he deserves the less sympathy for his hard and cruel bearing towards the poor peasantry and their somewhat wild leaders. The monks, who had suffered severely at the hands of the peasants during the progress of the rebellion, blamed Erasmus and the new learning for causing it; Erasmus blamed Luther, and Luther blamed the wild teachers. But history must tell that it was the refusal of timely reforms by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities that was the real cause of these rebellions, and so persistent were the authorities against social reform that the German peasantry were doomed to groan under the yoke of serfdom till the beginning of the nineteenth century. Since then, unhappily for the German race, they have been subjected to a crushing and exhausting militarism, a modern form of despotism, which is threatening to extinguish the spirit and consume the heart of this great but too submissive people.

¹ Worsley’s _Life of Luther_, Volume II., pages 62‒64, 67‒69,
71‒73. There is a full account of the Peasants’ War in
Ranke’s _History of the Reformation in Germany_, Volume I.

The revival of learning had a remarkable influence on the Reformation movement in Germany. Erasmus had a European reputation and influence, but there was a number of other notable scholars more immediately connected with the rise of the Reformation in Germany; amongst whom were Reuchlin, Buschius, and Hutten; they were called “Humanists,” and those who were bent on maintaining the old modes of learning branded them as “preachers of perversion, and winnowers of the devil’s chaff.” Greek in particular was declared to be heretical: the monks and masters of the Universities were afraid of the light. Reuchlin was the greatest Hebrew scholar of his day, at once a man of the world and of books, but Hebrew was not more in favour than Greek with the theologians of the old school, and they resolved to crush the leaders of the literary reformation. Great efforts were put forth by the enemies of light to overwhelm Reuchlin; the struggle was desperate, and for some time the issue seemed doubtful. His enemies were fast closing around him, when, as a last resort, he wrote to his friends throughout Europe, entreating them to make the utmost efforts to obtain for him new allies. He received from all quarters expressions of sympathy and assistance. Reuchlin’s victory in public opinion was completed by a satire which appeared in the beginning of the year 1516, entitled _Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum_, etc. The aim of this memorable satire was to make the enemies of Reuchlin and polite letters represent themselves: “And the representation is managed with a truth of nature only equalled by the absurdity of the postures in which the actors are exhibited.... Never certainly were unconscious barbarism, self-glorious ignorance, intolerant stupidity, and sanctimonious immorality so ludicrously delineated. The _Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum_ are at once the most cruel and the most natural of satires, and as such they were the most effective.... So truly, in fact, did it hit the mark that the objects of the ridicule themselves, with the exception of those who were necessarily in the secret, read the letters as the genuine product of their brethren, and even hailed the publication as highly conducive to the honour of scholasticism and monasticism.”¹

¹ Sir W. Hamilton’s _Discussions_, pages 203‒217; 1852. Ranke’s
_History of the Reformation in Germany_, Volume I., pages
300‒308; 1845.

Hutten, who has generally been supposed to be one of the authors of the above satire, at first wrote in Latin rhyme, but he at length resolved to write in German for the instruction of the people. The burden of his popular German rhymes was that Germany should abandon Rome; and he exposed her tyranny and worldliness, and stirred up the people against it. Many other writers also freely ridiculed the existing priestcraft in fables, letters, and rhymes, and prepared the people for the inception of the Reformation.

Before the end of the fifteenth century Spain had fully entered upon the task of persecuting the heretics. The Inquisition was early established in Spain, and more effectively applied to crush all attempts for the reformation of religion than in any other country; and she long enjoyed the glory of being the most Catholic nation in Europe. The modern form of the Inquisition was adopted in Spain in 1484. It was at this time that Torquemada, a friar, was placed at its head with the title of Inquisitor-General, and he at once proceeded to organise the institution. After constituting the new tribunal, he framed a body of rules for its government, which were issued in 1484, and from time to time new rules were added till 1561, when the whole code was revised and published in eighty-one articles, which continued to be the law, with slight variations, down to the present century. Without entering into minute details, it may be stated that the Inquisition was not merely a court for the trial and condemnation of heretics; it exercised the duties of an organised body of police employed in searching out heresy, and thus it was one of its chief functions to hunt for the crimes on which it was afterwards to sit in judgment, and every member of its higher and lower courts was charged with this work. At times when its vigilance was aroused by the alarm of heresy, it had its spies and agents at every port and pass of the kingdom, fully armed with authority to arrest the persons and goods of all who incurred their suspicion. The forms of trial in its courts were all on the side of the inquisitors, and to render it an instrument at once of injustice and terror, all its proceedings were shrouded in complete secrecy. The part of the procedure relating to torture was full of inhuman cruelties; and when the evidence was not sufficient to convict the heretic, he was tortured in order to force him to give answers against himself. From 1484 to 1517 the victims of the Inquisition in Spain numbered thirteen thousand persons who were burnt alive, eight thousand seven hundred burnt in effigy, and one hundred and sixty-nine thousand, seven hundred and twenty-three condemned to undergo penance, all within a period of thirty-four years.¹

¹ Limborch’s _History of the Inquisition_, Volume I., pages
119‒127, 156‒159; Volume II., pages 211‒226; 1731. Compare
M‘Crie’s _History of the Progress and Suppression of the
Reformation in Spain_, Works, Volume III., pages 50‒51; 1855.

Various attempts were made to introduce the reformed doctrines into Spain, but they completely failed. Everything savouring of heresy was utterly extinguished. In the sixteenth century, Spain constituted herself the great champion of Roman Catholicism; but the ends for which she leagued with the court of Rome were chiefly political. She aimed at subjecting all classes to the absolute will of the monarch, and the power and seeming greatness which was raised upon this foundation, contained within itself the vices which soon consumed her energy and ensured her decay.

At the opening of the sixteenth century Italy had made but little progress towards becoming a united nation. The country was divided into a number of separate states with varying and opposite interests. The chief states were Venice, Milan, and Florence, in the north; Naples to the south; and the States of the Church lying between them, over which the Pope had endeavoured to rule. These States of the Church contained a number of petty lordships and cities which claimed independence, and the Nobles and the Pope were always quarrelling as to who should bear the chief sway. Quarrels were constantly fomented among the Italian states; and the governments of the neighbouring kingdoms were apt to seize these comparatively weak principalities. Milan was claimed by the Kings of France, Spain, Naples, and the German Emperor; and through these internal and external forces Italy was kept in a sea of unrest and disorder. The power of the Papal Court was not so complete in Italy as it was in some other countries; and even excommunication had lost some of its former power and terrors.