CHAPTER IV

CHRISTIANITY: FROM LUTHER TO THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA

Causes of the Reformation-Martin Luther-Diet of Worms-The Anabaptists and the Peasants' War-Zwingli-Calvin at Geneva-Michael Servetus-Henry VIII. and the Anglican Church-Mary Tudor-Elizabeth -The Reformation in France-Massacre of the Waldenses.

The Counter-Reformation-New Policy of the Church-The Council of Trent-Progress of Catholicism-The Jesuits-Protestant Sects-Philip II. and William the Silent.

Charles I. and the English Rebellion-James II. and William of Orange -The Persecutions in Ireland-The Pilgrim Fathers The Quakers-The Thirty Years' War-German Pietism-Socinus.

France under the last Valois-Massacre of St. Bartholomew-Edict of Nantes-Revocation of the Edict of Nantes-The Dragonades-The Camisards-Responsibility of the Roman Church-The Earliest Ideas of Toleration-New Religious Orders-The Liberties the Gallican Church-The Four Articles of 1682-Jansenism and Port Royal-The Bull Unigenitus-Quietism: Fénelon and Bossuet.

The Inquisition in Spain: Torquemada-Expulsion of the Jews and Moors-Conquest and Christianisation of America.

Condemnation of Giordano Bruno-Retractation imposed on Galileo by the Inquisition.

1. Ir the Reformation had been the effect of a single cause, it would not have succeeded, even partially. Its comparative success was due to the variety of its origins-religious, political, and social.

2. The religious cause was the corruption of Catholicism, which appeared to Luther on his visit to Rome in 1511 to be a caricature of Christianity. Paganised by her rites and by the traffic in indulgences, the Church had also lost her salutary contact with Scripture. The Reformation wished to lead her back to the Bible, and succeeded with its own adherents at least.

3. One political cause was impatience of the spiritual domination of Rome, and of her interference in temporal affairs; another was the necessity of resistance to the Emperors, who called themselves Roman Emperors and were making long strides towards despotic power. The definitive successes of

1 Voltaire.

the Reformation were won in those countries into which the influence of Rome, from the first to the fourth centuries, had not penetrated very deeply. In this connection, the Reformation was only a continuation of the movement which had withdrawn the ancient provinces of the Eastern Empire from obedience to Rome; it was, in short, a reaction of Germanism against Romanism.

Both

4. The social and economical causes were numerous. prince and peasant coveted the riches of the Church. The Knights with nothing-Conti di Allemagna poveri, as the legate wrote to the Pope-were jealous of the wealthy abbots. The people resented being squeezed by monks and priests. The secular clergy rebelled against the exactions of the Roman Curia and the competition of the monastic orders. These abuses were not new, but the invention of printing (1447), by spreading the taste for reading, had stimulated thought and enabled one man to speak for many.

5. The transition from despotism to liberty must be slow. Wherever it was successful, the Reformation adopted the authoritative principles of the Roman Church. Instead of individual freedom of faith and thought, it produced a kind of attenuated Catholicism. The seeds of religious liberty were there, but it was only after two centuries that they blossomed and bore fruit, thanks to the breach made by Luther in the ancient edifice of Rome. The Reformation miscarried in those quarters where habit was stronger than the desire for an even partial emancipation. Face to face with the uncompromising theologians of Wittenberg and Geneva, many confessed that "all they had was a choice of fetters, and that it would be better to keep those to which they had been born."1 Again, rulers such as Charles V. and Francis I. were alarmed at the effect so profound a revolution threatened to have upon the principle of authority. Monarchists by trade-as Joseph II. was to say at a later date— they fought against a movement which menaced all authority and pointed to the triumph of the democratic idea as its natural conclusion. Even Luther himself, during the Peasant's Revolt, took fright and recoiled before the social consequences

1 Voltaire.

of his own doctrines. After ten centuries of Catholicism, Europe was unripe for liberty, all the more unripe because no scientific criticism of the Scriptures yet existed. Luther's work had to be completed by that of a pious French Catholic, Richard Simon.

6. The final exciting cause of the Reformation was an extravagant sale of indulgences conceded to the German Dominicans, under pretext of a war against the Turks, but in reality to provide funds for the construction of St. Peter's at Rome. In the sixteenth century it was asserted, but not proved, that the Augustinians envied the Dominicans this privilege. An Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, a native of Eisleben, where he was born in 1483, on the approach of Tetzel, the indulgence broker, affixed to the Cathedral door at Wittenberg ninety-five arguments against the abuses of such a commerce (October 31, 1517). These flew over Germany like a train of gunpowder. Luther had penned what thousands of the faithful had been thinking in silence. A war of words began between Dominican and Augustinian. Others struck in and embittered it. Leo. X., impatient of this "monks' quarrel," began by trying to make terms, but ended by launching his anathema. Luther treated him very roughly in his Captivity of Babylon, in which he fulminated against private Masses and against transubstantiation, "a word not to be found in the Scriptures." The gravest difference of opinion had to do with the Communion. "Luther retained one-half of the mystery and rejected the other. He confesses that the body of Jesus Christ is in the consecrated elements, but it is, he says, as fire is in red-hot iron: the fire and the iron subsist together. This is what they called impanation, invination, consubstantiation. Thus, while those they called Papists ate God without bread, the Lutherans ate God and bread; soon afterwards came the Calvinists, who ate bread and did not eat God." 1

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7. In order to make the schism complete, Luther burnt Leo's Bull of excommunication on the public place of Wittenberg (December 1520), and hurled insults at the Holy Father:

1 Voltaire.

"Little Pope," he wrote, "little Popelet, you are an ass, a little ass." German grossness found such an address amusing. "Luther, rough and uncouth, triumphed in his own country over all the urbanity of Rome." 1

8. "He demanded the abolition of monastic vows, because they were not of primitive institution; permission for priests to marry, because several of the apostles were married men; the Communion in both kinds, because Jesus said Drink ye of it; the cessation of image worship, because Jesus had no image; in short, he was in harmony with the Roman Church in nothing but the doctrines of the Trinity, Baptism, the Incarnation and the Resurrection.” 2

Under the influence of St. Augustine, the patron of his order, Luther also rejected free-will, which was afterwards admitted by his followers; and, to the great scandal of the Faculty of Paris, he denied that the study of Aristotle was any help to the comprehension of the Scriptures. Reacting against the Roman doctrine of salvation by works, the origin of the abuse of indulgences, he proclaimed that faith alone was efficacious, and that faith was the fruit of grace. This was to reject as superfluous all those ideas on which the Church lived, all those things by which her wealth and power were secured.

9. Charles V., who had been Emperor since February 1519, summoned the reformer to appear before the Diet at Worms (January 1521). He obeyed the summons with a safe-conduct which was respected, supported by popular sympathy, and protected by Frederick the Wise and the German Knights. Before the Diet, he pleaded his conscience and refused to retract. Charles placed him under the ban of the Empire, but the sentence could not be put in force. Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, a convert to the new ideas, carried him off in the night and hid him in the Saxon fortress of the Wartburg, where he lived under the name of "Junker Georg." It was in this Patmos, as he called it, that he began his translation of the Bible, an admirable version, which became the Reformer's most efficient weapon in German lands.

10. "The aged Frederick hoped for the extirpation of the

Roman Church. Luther thought it was time to abolish private Mass. He pretended the devil had appeared to him and reproached him for saying Mass and consecrating the elements. The devil had proved to him, he said, that it was idolatry. Luther declared that the devil was right and must be believed. The Mass was abolished in Wittenberg, and soon afterwards throughout Saxony. The images were thrown down, monks and nuns left their cloisters, and, a few years later, Luther married a nun called Catherine von Bora (1525)." This is why when a priest quits the Roman Church in order to marry, he is said "to go out through Luther's door."

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11. After having taken the devil's advice as to the abolition of the Mass, Luther restricted or abolished the use of exorcisms intended to keep the fiend at a distance. "It was afterwards noticed that wherever exorcism was abandoned, the number of those possessed or bewitched greatly diminished." "

12. Luther's activity was seconded by that of a gentle and amiable scholar, Melancthon. It was embarrassed rather than helped by the fanatical Carlstadt, who declared the marriage of priests not only permissible, but obligatory, and, in his hatred of Catholicism, handled the monks roughly and destroyed works of art. In 1522, Luther quitted his retreat in order to combat the violent adherents of Carlstadt at Wittenberg itself. These were known as the Sacramentarians, because they refused to } recognise more than one sacrament, that of Baptism. Luther denounced them as "supporters of Satan," and drove them out of the town.

13. Denmark and Sweden, where the archbishops of Upsala had wielded despotic power, also rallied to the Reformation. "Luther found himself the apostle of the north, and enjoyed his glory in peace. As early as 1525 the States of Saxony, Brunswick and Hesse, and the cities of Strasburg and Frankfort embraced his doctrine. . . . This Anti-Pope imitated the Pope by authorising Philip Landgrave of Hesse to marry a second wife while his first was still alive. This permission was accorded at a little Synod gathered at Wittenberg. It is true that Gregory II., in a decretal of 726, had allowed that in certain

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