Chapter XIII

Section I.

The Rise and Progress of the Reformation.

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.

Touching the morals of the clergy before the Reformation, there was a general concurrence of testimony against them; to the historian, however, this subject appears as a complicated problem tinged by the contorted notions of the age; inasmuch as it is difficult to reach the truth and do justice to opposing parties. From the beginning of the fifteenth century, a reformation of the Church had been loudly demanded; and the shortcomings of the clergy were generally, if somewhat reluctantly, acknowledged throughout Christendom. They neglected the religious instruction of the people, and their sacred functions were often prostituted to worldly purposes; while the exactions of the Church were becoming more and more unbearable. Nowhere were these abuses and grievances more rampant than in Italy. The Court of Rome itself was more corrupted than any of the political Courts of Europe; the unprincipled and faithless character of its policy was everywhere notorious; in fact, it was a system of intrigue, of cabal, and of bribery. The sacred bodies of clerical dignitaries who surrounded the throne of the Pope might agree to dupe the world; yet they rarely scrupled to supplant and deceive each other when their personal interests were at stake.¹ Many of the clergy did nothing but say masses for the dead, a more lucrative occupation than praying for the living. The education of the clergy and their modes of life were not well calculated to encourage self-culture nor the study of Divine truth, in order to qualify them to instruct others; and the root of the prevailing system directly tended to narrow their sympathy and to dwarf their humanity. Celibacy cut them off from all the interests and duties of domestic life, and this left them at leisure for mischief of all kinds. “The history of the clerical celibacy, in England as elsewhere, is indeed tender ground; the benefits which it is supposed to secure are the personal purity of the individual, his separation from secular ways and interests, and his entire devotion to the work of God and the Church. But the results, as legal and historical records show us, were very different. Instead of personal purity, there is a long story of licensed and unlicensed concubinage, and appendant to it, much miscellaneous profligacy and a general low tone of morality in the very point that is supposed to be secured. Instead of separation from secular work is found in the higher class of the clergy entire devotion to the legal and political service of the country, and in the lower class idleness and poverty as the alternative. Instead of greater spirituality, there is greater frivolity. The abuses of monastic life, great as they may occasionally have been, sink into insignificance by the side of this evil, as an occasional crime tells against the moral condition of a nation far less fatally than the prevalence of a low morality. The records of the spiritual courts of the middle ages remain in such quantity and in such concord of testimony as to leave no doubt of the facts; among the laity as well as among the clergy, of the towns and clerical centres, there existed an amount of coarse vice which had no secrecy to screen it or prevent it from spreading.... And in this, as in other particulars, the mediæval Church incurred a fearful responsibility. The evils against which she had to contend were beyond her power to overcome, yet she resisted interference from any other hand. The treatment of such moral evils as did not come within the contemplation of the common law were left to the Church courts; the Church courts became centres of corruption which archbishops, legates, and councils tried to reform and failed, acquiescing in the failure rather, than allow the intrusion of the secular power. The spiritual jurisdiction over the clergy was an engine which courts altogether failed to manage, or so far failed as to render reformation of manners by such means absolutely hopeless: yet any interference of the temporal courts was resented and warded off until the evil was irremediable, because a clerk stripped of the reality of his immunities, but retaining all the odium with which they had invested him would have no chance of justice in a lay court. Thus on a smaller stage was reproduced the result which the policy of the papacy brought about in the greater theatre of ecclesiastical politics. The practical assertion that, except by the court of Rome, there should be no reformation, was supplemented by an acknowledgment of the evils that were to be reformed, and of the incapacity of the court of Rome to cure them: there popes and councils toiled in vain; they could neither bear the evils of the age nor their remedies. Strange to say, some part of the mischief of the spiritual jurisdiction survived the Reformation itself, and enlarged its scope as well as strengthened its operation by the close temporary alliance between the Church and Crown.”² Everywhere there was a number of priests and friars, whose religious duties occupied only a small portion of their time, and whose standard of morality was formed upon an extremely low ideal; and it was the moral standard that required to be raised before there could be any real improvement in the social condition either of the clergy or the people.

¹ “The corruption of the Papal Court involved a corresponding moral ♦weakness throughout Italy.”​—Symonds’ Renaissance, Volume I., page 382, and the whole of the 7th Chapter.

² Stubbs’ Constitutional History Of England, Volume III., pages 372‒374; 1878.

For several centuries before the Reformation much of the popular literature of Europe was directed against the vices of the clergy and the abuses of the Church; upon this theme the most orthodox and the most heretical were agreed. The secular clergy often despised the monks, the monks satirised the begging friars, and thus their inconsistencies were exposed to the people, and gradually the strength of the old traditions and prejudices were loosened and impaired, and the people partly prepared for a revolution in their opinions and belief.

From an early period in Italy the corruptions of the Church were ably exposed by persons who had not thought of renouncing her communion. The Italian poets laid open the abuses of the head of the Church as well as of the subordinate orders of the clergy. Dante, who was a sincere believer in the Roman Catholic Church, showed little faith in the infallibility of the Popes or general councils, and he describes the avarice and the luxurious lives of the clergy in the language of indignation and ridicule. In his treatise on Monarchy, he inveighed with remarkable boldness against the corruption of the Church; and in the same work he also attacked tradition, the grand fortress of Catholicism. Petrarch and Boccaccio followed in a similar strain; and the latter, especially by his broad humour, keen wit, and reckless pleasantry was exceedingly effective. He mercilessly assailed the popular religion; its pilgrimages, relics, and miracles were scoffed at in the most playful style; its corruptions were exposed, and the monks, the nuns, and the friars were stripped of their sanctity and derided in profane mockery and jeering scorn.¹ The Decameron of Boccaccio is the bitterest satire of the religion of the Middle ages ever written, and to this day it remains the most curious illustration of the belief and notions of that age. Many other Italian poets and writers employed their talents to unmask the ignorance, the vice, the greed, the hypocrisy, and the absurdities of the hierarchy, from the Popes downward to the wandering mendicants; and this warfare was continued down to the eve of the Reformation.

¹ Dante’s Inferno, H. F. Cary’s Translation; Petrarch’s Sonnets and other Poems; Milman’s History of Latin Christianity, Volume VI., pages 516‒518, etc.; M‘Crie’s History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Italy, Works, Volume III., pages 14‒19; 1855. “While so much liberty of thought prevailed in Italy it may be wondered why the Renaissance, eminently fertile in the domains of arts and culture, bore but meagre fruit in those of religion and philosophy. The German Reformation was the Renaissance of Christianity; and in this the Italians had no share, though it should be remembered that, without their previous labours in the field of scholarship, the band which led the Reformation could hardly have given that high intellectual character to the movement which made it a new starting point in the history of the reason. To expect from Italy the ethical regeneration of the modern world would be to misapprehend her true vocation; art and erudition were sufficient to engage her spiritual energies.”

“True to culture as their main preoccupation, the Italian thinkers sought to philosophise faith by bringing Christianity into harmony with antique speculation, and forming for themselves a theism that should embrace the system of the Platonists and Stoics, the Hebrew Cabbala, and the Sermon on the Mount. There is much that strikes us as both crude and pedantic, at the same time infantine and pompous in the systems elaborated by those pioneers of modern eclecticism.”​—Symonds’ Renaissance in Italy, Volume II., pages 21‒23; 1877.

In the latter part of the fifteenth century, Savonarola, a Dominican friar, became a religious reformer; he was an Italian by birth and education, a man of talents and great piety; but he seems to have yielded to the illusions of his imagination, and at last persuaded himself that he was possessed of supernatural gifts. In 1486, he commenced preaching against the vices of the popes, cardinals, priests, and monks, the tyranny of princes, and the immorality of the people; he was an eloquent and powerful preacher, and he called earnestly for repentance and reformation. He preached in various cities, and vast crowds of the people came to hear him. Florence was chosen as the scene of his labour, and for a short time he had a great influence in that city. His aim was to improve the morals of the clergy and the people, not to change the faith of the Christian world. He was also a warm friend of the cause of political liberty and freedom. From this standpoint he was one of the most ardent reformers. Towards the close of his career his mind seems to have become fevered and unbalanced. In 1495, Pope Alexander VI. deemed it time to extinguish so bold a preacher, and he was excommunicated and proclaimed a heresiarch; and he was afterwards taken, tortured, condemned to the flames, and strangled and burned in May, 1498, by the order of the Pope, who had himself committed many dark crimes.¹

¹ Symonds’ Renaissance, Volume I., pages 428, 471.

For two centuries preceding the Reformation a literature in the language of the people had been growing up in Germany, France, and England, and in each of these countries the vernacular contained a mass of writings which satirised the corruptions of the Church and the vices of the clergy. These compositions were sometimes in the form of rude rhymes and short poems, and sometimes songs or ballads, but occasionally they assumed a more ambitious form, as in the poems of Chaucer, and Piers Ploughman. As before indicated, the general result of this literature upon the minds of the people was that gradually and with difficulty they began to see some of the inconsistencies of the Church, and their moral and religious consciousness at last awoke to a clearer conception of their rights.

But the causes of the Reformation were manifold and extremely varied, rising so high and at the same time descending so low, and yet invoking so many venerated feelings and sentiments; and it must be added, so many prejudices and passions were inflamed on both sides, so many great prizes and vested interests depended upon the issue, that even at this day it is almost impossible for any man to assign the true and just measure of all the causes and influences which contributed to this the most momentous struggle of the Christian era.

Another important agency of the revolutionary movement was implied in the printing and publication of editions and translations of the Scriptures. In Italy during the fifteenth century much attention was devoted to the Hebrew language and to sacred literature. The Psalter appeared in 1477, and from that date parts of the Old Testament in the original continued to be issued from the press till in 1488 a complete Hebrew Bible was printed at Soncino in Italy. The first edition of the Septuagint came from the Aldine press at Venice in 1518. Erasmus published at Basle in 1516 his edition of the Greek text of the New Testament, together with his own Latin version and explanatory annotations. The book of Job in Hebrew was printed at Paris in 1516. The Complutensian Polyglot Bible under the patronage and at the expense of Cardinal Ximenes, was printed at Alcala between 1502 and 1517 and published in 1520, in six volumes folio, six hundred copies on paper, and three on vellum. It contained in three columns the Hebrew, the Septuagint Greek, and the Latin Vulgate version of Jerome; the Chaldee paraphrase of the Pentateuch by Onkelos was printed at the foot of the page, and to it a Latin translation was given; the New Testament included the original Greek and the Vulgate Latin version. The work also had a grammar and dictionary of the Hebrew, a Greek vocabulary, and other explanatory treatises attached to it. Spain thus had the credit of printing the first complete edition of the Scriptures. It is said that this work cost 250,000 ducats. An edition of the Septuagint and of the Greek New Testament was published at Strasburg by Cephalæus in 1524 and 1526; editions of the New Testament also appeared at Paris in 1534, and at Venice in 1538; and about the same time editions were printed at various other places. Hebrew and Greek grammars and lexicons then began to appear, and commentaries on the Scriptures followed.¹

¹ Ginguene’s History of Italian Literature, Tome VII.; M‘Crie’s Works, Volume III., pages 31, 34, 36; 1855. Among the earliest books of any kind printed was a Psalter in 1457, and a Latin Bible about the year 1455, usually called the Mazarin Bible, the exact date of its printing is uncertain, but it is not earlier than 1450 nor later than 1455.

But these important works were confined to the learned, and could have had no impression upon the popular mind. The influences, however, which had contributed to produce them were general and not limited to any class; for the religious feelings and sentiments were as active among the unlearned as among the most cultured men of the age. The activity of the learned class, as manifested in the publication of the Scriptures, was the effect of general and widely spread influences which were running in a definite direction. Translations of the Scriptures were therefore eagerly solicited, and then for the first time began to be supplied. It is said that the Scriptures were translated into the Italian language in the thirteenth century, and it appears that fragments of very early translations were found in libraries during the fifteenth century. Nicolo Malermi, a monk, produced an Italian version of the Bible from the Vulgate, which was published in 1471. Before the end of the century it went through eleven editions, and in the following century through twelve. About this period also Italian versions of parts of the Scriptures appeared. An improved and more faithful translation of the New Testament was executed by Antonio Brucioli, and printed at Venice in 1530. His translation of the whole Bible was published in 1532, and revised and printed in 1541. Other Italian versions of the Scriptures soon followed. But in none of the modern languages were so many translations and editions of the Bible published as in the Flemish or Dutch tongue. A Flemish version of the Bible appeared in 1477; a translation from the Vulgate was printed at Delft in 1497, and reprinted several times before the Reformation at the presses of Antwerp and Amsterdam. A Flemish version of the New Testament from that of Luther was published at Antwerp in 1522, and reprinted twelve times within the next five years. During the first thirty-six years of the sixteenth century fifteen editions of the entire Bible were printed in the Flemish language, and thirty-four editions of the New Testament alone within the same period, twenty-four of which were printed at Antwerp; some of them were taken from the Vulgate, but most of them were from Luther’s version. The earliest French translation of the Old Testament from the Vulgate was printed about 1477; a French version of the New Testament was published in 1512, and a version of the Bible in 1530. The earliest Protestant translation of the Bible in French was printed at Neufchatel in 1535.¹

¹ Panfer’s An. Typ. In.; Simon’s Critical History of the New Testament; M‘Crie’s Works, Volume III., pages 38‒40.

In Spain the Scriptures were translated into the Castilian dialect in the year 1260, and other ancient versions of the Bible in the dialects of the Spanish people have been preserved in the libraries of the Continent. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, Bonifacio Ferrer, a Carthusian monk, translated the whole of the Scriptures into the Spanish language, and this translation was printed at Valencia in 1478; but shortly after its publication it was suppressed by the Inquisition, and the whole impression ordered to be burned. A Spanish version of the New Testament was printed at Antwerp in 1543.¹ Luther’s German translation of the Old and New Testaments was published between the years 1522 and 1530. Translations of the Bible were published in the Danish language in 1524, and in the Swedish in 1526.

¹ The Bible of Saci, Book I. Andres.

Wycliffe commenced his English translation of the Bible from the Vulgate in 1380, and it is supposed that portions of it were widely circulated in manuscript. Tyndale’s English version of the New Testament was printed in 1526, and within ten years fourteen editions of it were published. Coverdale’s translation of the whole Bible was published in 1535; and another version, mainly based upon Tyndale’s, appeared in 1537. A revised translation was issued in 1539,¹ which was sometimes called Cranmer’s Bible. The publication of so many translations of the Scriptures in the languages and dialects of the people, and the numerous editions which they passed through, seemed to indicate that a crisis was approaching, as the religious sentiments of the people were warmed, and that their feelings and passions were being raised to a pitch of excitement which might be extremely difficult to control. The lower classes in many parts of Europe had been long groaning under oppression, and a sense of wrong had begun to rankle in their minds. A century and a half earlier the English peasantry had rebelled against their masters, and we have seen that the same classes had revolted against the Church and the nobles in Germany. The inconsistencies of the profession and the practice of the clergy could not fail to open the eyes of the people, while the social position in which they found themselves placed did not harmonise with the most elementary ideas of justice and truth. They therefore listened with keen emotion and swelling hearts to the impassioned appeals of the reformed preachers, who they easily won over the multitude; but there was much more difficulty in moderating the zeal and the passions aroused by their preaching. Even in Luther himself the destructive leaning was pretty strong and pronounced; he said​—“I believe it to be impossible that the Church should be reformed without completely eradicating canons, decretals, scholastic theology, philosophy, and logic, as they are now received and taught, and instituting others in their place.”²

¹ Dibdin’s Typographical Antiquities; Anderson’s Annals of the English Bible, 1862.

² Ueberweg’s History of Philosophy, Volume II., pages 16‒17. “Luther railed against all speculative doctrines and pursuits with violent, indiscriminate recklessness. He frequently expresses the most withering contempt for Aristotle and all his works.”​—Blakey’s History of the Philosophy of the Mind, Volume II., page 129; 1848. Compare D’Aubigne’s History of the Reformation, Volume I., pages 154, 219.

This awakening of the religious consciousness, and its association with moral and social practice, soon led to important issues. The married life, which had hitherto been regarded as inferior to celibacy, now appeared in a new light, as something divine, as a law imposed by God Himself; and the domestic duties at once assumed a higher and nobler significance. Poverty was no longer considered an object in itself, and the life of the monk, though before deemed higher than the worldly energy and industry of the layman who supported himself by the labour of his hands, began to be regarded with contempt. Religious freedom took the place of blind obedience, and henceforward monkhood and priesthood lost much of their sway.

Again, in relation to knowledge and to thought, man returned, as it were, from the extramundane to the genial earth​—from the alien region of authority to himself. He was at last convinced that the entire work of salvation must be accomplished within himself, and that reconciliation and grace were matters that stood in a direct relation between himself and God. With this conviction in the core of his soul, he found his real and true being; thus it is that the philosophy of the human mind is closely connected with Protestantism, for the principle of both is one and the same, though it realises itself in the course of development in varying forms.¹

¹ Schwegler’s History of Philosophy, Stirling’s Translation, pages 148, 149; 1868.

The Bible appeared to the early Reformers as the pure, genuine, and true word of God, and whatever had been added to it, was not regarded as a real advance upon the original, but rather as a debasement. The authority of tradition was denied, the mediæval hierarchy, and the scholastic tendency to rationalise Christian dogmas were rejected. In the first burst of their enthusiasm, the Reformers called the Pope Antichrist, and Aristotle, the chief of the Catholic school of philosophy, the godless bulwark of the Papists. The logical result of this would have been the abandonment of all philosophy in favour of immediate, unquestioning faith: but when Protestantism gained a fixed consistence the necessity of a definite order of instruction became as apparent as that of a new ecclesiastical polity. Melanchthon perceived the need of Aristotle, the master of form, and at last Luther allowed the use of the text of the Aristotelian writings, when not encumbered with scholastic commentaries. Thus there arose at the Protestant Universities a new, though simpler, scholasticism; the development of an independent philosophy on the basis of the generalised Protestant principle was the work of a later time.¹ Modern Philosophy began when the intellect threw off that entire subservience to theology which characterised it in the Middle Ages. In the words of one of the best authorities the chief divisions of modern philosophy are:​—“1. The Transitional Period, beginning with the revival of Platonism; 2. The Epoch of Empiricism, Dogmatism, and Scepticism, from Bacon and Descartes to the Encyclopedists and Hume; and 3. The Epoch of the Kantian Criticism, and of the systems issuing from it, from Kant till the present time.

¹ Ueberweg’s History of Philosophy, Volume II., pages 15‒16.

“Unity, servitude, freedom​—these are the three stages through which the philosophy of the Christian era has passed in its relation to ecclesiastical theology. The stage of freedom corresponds with the general character of the modern era, which seeks to restore, in place of mediæval antagonism, harmonious unity. Freedom of thought, in respect of form and substance, has been secured gradually by modern philosophy. The first movement in this direction consisted in a mere exchange of authorities, or in the reproduction of other ancient systems than that of Aristotle, without much modification, and such adaption to new and changed conditions, as the scholastics had effected in the system of Aristotle. Then followed the era of independent investigation in the realm of nature, and finally also in the realm of mind. There was a transitional period marked by the endeavour of philosophy to become independent. The second epoch, the epoch of Empiricism and Dogmatism, was characterised by methodical investigations and comprehensive systems, which were based on the confident belief that knowledge of natural and spiritual reality was independently attainable by means of experience or thought alone. Scepticism prepared the way for the third stadium in the history of modern philosophy, which was formed by criticism. According to the critical philosophy, the investigation of the cognitive faculty of man is the necessary basis for all strictly scientific philosophising, and the result aimed at by it is, that thought is incompetent to the cognition of the real world of phenomena, beyond which the only guide is man’s moral consciousness. This result has been denied by the following systems, although these systems are all lineal descendants from the Kantian philosophy, which is still of immediate (not merely historical) significance for the philosophy of the present day.”¹

¹ Ibid., Volume II., pages 1‒3; 1874.

There is only a limited truth in the presuppositions of a complete parallelism between the progress of the development of the ancient philosophy and that of modern systems. “Modern philosophy has from the beginning owed its existence in a far greater measure to an interest in theology (though not for the most part to an interest in the specially ecclesiastical form of theology) than did ancient philosophy previous to the time of Neo-Platonism.” The most remarkable difference between the ancient and modern philosophy is in the science of mind. Psychology has in comparatively recent times been developed to a stage of completeness much beyond what the philosophers of Greece had reached; and the departments of moral and social science are now treated on a different and far wider method than in ancient times.

From the outset there were two chief doctrines which determined the course taken by the Reformers. One of these was the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith, the other manifested itself in the constant appeal to the Bible as the only decisive authority in questions concerning faith. It is pretty evident that the German Reformers held mainly by the first, while those of Switzerland, Zuinglius and Calvin, gave the preference to the second.

Although the leaders of the Reformation did not adopt a bold critical method of inquiry, and though the systems which Luther and Calvin founded were essentially dogmatic at all points; yet the admission of an act of spiritual rebellion, of an appeal to conscience and to the judgment of the people, instead of the authority of the Catholic Church, involved a principle which must ultimately lead to consequences that the Reformers hardly intended and could not have ♦foreseen. Questions concerning the sacraments, the meaning of certain texts of Scripture, the forms of church polity, were discussed with the utmost zeal; but the grand issue of the revolution​—the rebellion of the moral faculty against the doctrines that collided with its teaching​—was as yet little manifested by the Reformers. They had rejected many of the traditions and external ceremonies of the Church, but they still looked to the Bible and historical authority for the basis of their theology. And yet it cannot be doubted that the Reformation introduced influences which had a powerful effect on the philosophy of the human mind;¹ and at length greatly modified the moral ideas and sentiments of the people, and led to political and social results. This revolutionary movement also gave a marked impetus to scientific inquiry. It was then that empirical science began to assume importance, and it is only from this epoch that it has a continuous history.

¹ D. Stewart’s Works, Volume I., pages 28‒30; 1854. Blakey’s History of the Philosophy of the Mind, Volume II., page 128; 1848.

When we inquire what was the meaning of a national revolt from Romanism, and look only to external circumstances, it will not appear to amount to much. It was the claim set up by the Government or the Crown for the control of those rights within the nation, which the Pope had before claimed as the head of the Christian empire; the clergy, monks, and friars had hitherto been regarded as subjects of the Pope’s sacerdotal rule. Now, where there was a revolt from Rome, the allegiance of this class of persons was annulled, and the civil government claimed as full a power over them as it had over its lay subjects; there were some partial exceptions to this, but the essential point was the entire exclusion of all the pretensions of the Pope to interfere with any of the affairs of the nation. Generally, matters relating to marriage and wills still remained under the jurisdiction of the clergy, but when the ecclesiastical courts ceased to be papal they became national, and the special matters with which they dealt, might, if necessary, be brought under the control of the Government. Even touching religious doctrine and the forms of public worship, the Government often claimed the final authority, which had been before exercised by the Pope. Thus externally considered, the revolt from Rome was rather a political and ecclesiastical arrangement than a purely religious matter. In relation to the ruling powers, it was an assertion of free, independent national life; the instinctive feeling for unity and the pride of distinct national independence entered as a very strong influence into the struggles of the Reformation, but it was not always on the side of the Protestants; and in those countries where the movement failed, as in Spain and France, it was probably owing to influences of this kind more than to any other cause. In the imperfectly tutored mind the instinctive tendencies, the inherited feelings, and the traditional notions, form a conservative and unreasoning force which it is almost impossible to overcome without a gradual change of surroundings and circumstances; while to many highly cultured individuals, the mere idea of belonging to the great historical and the only true and infallible Church is exceedingly soothing and gratifying. To be relieved also from all perplexing doubts and questions touching the spiritual and eternal destiny of the soul, is to many a matter of exquisite satisfaction; they glory in the thought of the certainty of their everlasting salvation; they glory in the notion that whatever others may be, they at least cannot be wrong; time may come and go, generation after generation of heretics and heathens may be whirled into everlasting misery, but they alone go on for ever, rejoicing that the universe was specially created for their eternal happiness.

The eras of the Reformation among the different nations of Europe were comprised within a period of about fifty years, though in some countries the struggle lasted longer. The revolt of Luther is usually dated 1517, the year in which he published his theses against indulgences, but the Reformation in Germany was only partly successful. Denmark and Sweden both broke off from Rome and adopted the Lutheran doctrines between 1521 and 1534; about the same time several of the cantons and chief cities of Switzerland became Protestant. England threw off the authority of the Pope in 1535. But the struggle with the Roman Catholic powers was long continued in the Netherlands, in France, and in Germany; and in the two latter the Catholics ultimately recovered much of the ground they had lost.

Luther was supported by the Elector of Saxony, and this enabled him to continue his controversy with the Church. His activity and writings soon raised a stir in Germany, which spread to other lands. In 1520, he published two pamphlets. The first was addressed to the nobility of the German nation, and in it we find the following sentiments:​—“The Romanists have raised round themselves walls to protect themselves from reform. One is their doctrine, that there are two separate estates: the one spiritual, including the pope, bishops, priests, and monks; the other secular, embracing the princes, nobles, artizans, and peasants. And they lay it down that the secular power has no authority over the spiritual, but that the spiritual is above the secular; whereas, in truth, all Christians are spiritual, and there is no difference between them. The secular power is of God, to punish the wicked and protect the good, and so has power over the whole body of Christians without exception, pope, bishops, monks, nuns, and all. For St. Paul says​—‘Let every soul (and I reckon the pope one) be subject to the higher powers.’ Why should 300,000 florins be sent every year from Germany to Rome? Why do the Germans let themselves be fleeced by cardinals, who get hold of the best preferments and spend the revenues at Rome? Let us not give another farthing to the Pope as subsidies against the Turk; the whole thing is a snare to drain from us more money. Let the secular authorities send no more annates to Rome; let the power of the Pope be reduced within clear limits; let there be fewer cardinals, and let them not keep the best things to themselves; let the national churches be more independent of Rome; let there be fewer pilgrimages to Italy; let there be fewer convents; let priests marry; let begging be stopped by making each parish take charge of its own poor; let us inquire into the position of the Bohemians, and if Huss was in the right, let us join with him in resisting Rome.”¹ This passage shows that Luther knew well how to catch the ear of the people, and it was a strain admirably calculated to arrest the attention of the princes of the day; nothing could be more gratifying to them than to set their own authority above the clergy and the Church. From this date Luther’s impassioned nature hurried him onward; and he burned the Pope’s bull and the canon law books in the month of December 1520. But it would be unjust not to mention that there were many in the Roman Catholic Church who earnestly wished for a reform of the discipline, the manners of the clergy, and the monastic orders, although they were averse to any separation from her communion or any breaking up of what was deemed her legitimate authority. This class of moderate men, though some of them were not without influence, were doomed to effect very little, because in times of revolution bold measures alone have the chance of commanding success.

¹ Luther’s Works, Walch’s edition; H. Worsley’s Life of Luther, Volume I., pages 169‒171.

Luther was a voluminous writer as well as a great preacher, and in spite of his faults, taking him all in all, he presents the characteristics of a veritable hero. His works are both numerous and diverse. They consist of sermons and expositions of Scripture, disputations, and controversial writings, many letters and circular epistles, maxims, and hymns, besides his translation of the Bible already mentioned. Most of Luther’s writings were produced on the spur of the moment to meet some exigency. None of them can be regarded as finished compositions, yet they are fresh and full of vigour and energy. Many editions of his works, more or less complete, have been published: one at Wittenberg, twelve volumes in German, 1539‒59, and seven in Latin, 1545‒58; one at Jena, eight volumes in German, 1555‒58, and four in Latin, 1556‒58; another at Altenburg, in ten volumes in German, 1661‒64, and there are several later editions. But it fell to the lot of the calmer and more learned Melanchthon to lead the stream of the newly awakened life of faith into its methodically circumscribed channel. Besides many other valuable works, he composed the first compend of the doctrines of the Protestant Church, which formed the basis of other treatises. His Loci Communes rerum Theologicarum seu Hypotyposes Theologiæ was published in 1521, and has passed through upwards of a hundred editions, about fifty of which appeared during his lifetime.

Melanchthon was appointed by the newly formed Protestant party to draw up a Confession of Faith, in a concise and moderate form, on the basis of the doctrines which he and Luther and other divines had determined. It was laid before the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, and hence it has been called the Confession of Augsburg. It consists of twenty-eight articles; and in the first twenty-one the principal doctrines of faith were discussed in reference to the Roman Catholic Church, but with remarkable moderation of tone; the last seven articles treated of the prevailing abuses of Catholicism. A confutation of this Confession published by the Roman Catholics, was soon after followed by a treatise from Melanchthon, entitled the Apology of the Confession. A similar arrangement was adopted in the Apology as in the Confession, but the number of articles was reduced to sixteen. This work long held the first place among the theological books of the Lutheran Church; and in argumentative power the Apology is exceptionally masterly amongst this class of theological literature. The Articles of Schmalkald, which were written by Luther in a far bolder strain, appeared in 1536, and the first German edition was published in 1538. With these may be mentioned Luther’s larger and smaller Catechisms, the larger one for the use of the clergy and schoolmasters, and the other for the use of the people and children.

The early Swiss Reformer, Zuinglius, proclaimed the principles of evangelical faith in various writings, which may be regarded as the beginning of the consecutive theology of the reformed Church. Besides his polemical writings, sermons, and letters, he wrote Commentaries concerning True and False Religion, published in 1525, and A Brief and Clear Exposition of the Christian Faith. A Confession of the Reformed Church was published in 1534, which is known as the Confession of Basle. But owing to the controversy touching the Lord’s Supper, and the efforts made to restore peace, a second Confession was composed by the Swiss Reformers and divines in 1536, and is usually called the Helvetian Confession.

From the very commencement of the Reformation it became manifest that the Protestants must proceed upon a different method of attaining knowledge from that followed by the Roman Catholics. The radical difference between the two, which has continued to become wider down to the present day, may be shortly stated: The Protestants assert that the Old and New Testament is the only safe source of religious knowledge, and forms the sole rule of faith; the Roman Catholic Church assumes the existence of another source associated with the first, namely, tradition. The Roman Catholic Church emphatically claims the sole right of interpreting Scripture; but the Protestant Church concedes this right, within limits, to every one who has the requisite gifts and attainments, and in a wider sense to every one seeking after salvation; she proceeds upon the view that Scripture should be interpreted in its entirety according to the analogy of faith, and she also allows for the distinction between a critical and general understanding​—between the common understanding and a deeper insight into the meaning of Scripture. Having presented a sketch of the antecedents of the Reformation, I return to the more immediate subject of the work.

Section II.

History of the Reformation in Scotland to the Death of Cardinal Beaton.

WHEN Europe was on the eve of the first stage of the Reformation struggle, Scotland as we have seen in the foregoing volume, had lost her king and many of her leading men upon the disastrous field of Flodden. The citizens of Edinburgh, however, were equal to the emergency, and they immediately took steps to preserve order and to defend the capital; and it was at this time that the authorities resolved to build a wall around Edinburgh.¹ But the fear of an invasion was soon dispelled as the Earl of Surrey disbanded his host. In October, 1513, the infant king was crowned at Scone, and his mother named as regent; but her frothy disposition speedily led her into actions which rendered this arrangement nugatory, as in the following year she married the young Earl of Angus, which at once deprived her of the regency.

¹ Burgh Records of Edinburgh, Volume I., pages 143‒144, 146.

Meanwhile a party of the nobles were looking to the Duke of Albany as a likely personage to take the reins of Government. He was a son of Alexander Stuart, Duke of Albany, a brother of James III., who after his forfeiture passed into France, and had attained to a position of wealth and honour. As a member of the Royal family, after the infant king, he was next heir to the throne. He was requested to assume the functions of Governor of the kingdom; but the state of society in Scotland offered comparatively few attractions to a man habituated to the gay and fashionable society of France, and he seems to have been very loath to leave the enjoyments of his adopted country, even in exchange for the highest office in the Council of Scotland.

As usual there was strife amongst the nobles; while a fierce contest was raging among the dignitaries of the Church about the See of St. Andrews. Gavin Douglas, the provost of St. Giles, John Hepburn, the prior of St. Andrews, and Andrew Forman, the bishop of Moray, were all eagerly struggling to obtain possession of the much coveted primacy. After some very unseemly demonstrations of force, a compromise was effected by a distribution of benefices amongst the aspirants, and Forman obtained St. Andrews with the power of Legate a Latere, and the promise of a cardinal’s hat.¹

¹ Buchanan’s History of Scotland, Book XIII., chapter 48; Statutes of the Scottish Church, Volume I., pages 125‒127.

In May 1515 the Duke of Albany arrived in Scotland, and received a warm welcome from the people, as they hoped to enjoy greater tranquility under his rule. The task, however, of restoring order amongst the nobles was exceedingly difficult. Although the new governor’s talents were above the average of his class, he laboured under the disadvantage of being French in manner and habits, and of being quite unacquainted with the usages and feelings of the Scots. He began his government with bold measures. Offenders of high rank were seized, imprisoned, and executed. But these proceedings failed to produce the intended effect, and were too much out of the usual course. In a short time Albany discovered the hopelessness of his task. He repeatedly returned to France to be free of the turmoil; and after a fluctuating sway of eight years, his regency terminated in 1524.¹

¹ Buchanan’s History of Scotland, Book XIII. Among modern historians Tytler has treated the regency of Albany at greatest length. History of Scotland, Volume V. pages 101‒174; 1834.

The persistent interference of Henry VIII. with the internal affairs of Scotland added another element of anarchy, and he appears to have had a special animus at the Duke of Albany, continuing to tease and torment Scotland throughout his reign. Henry’s intrigues and projects were unceasing; he endeavoured to get the young King into his hands by encouraging his sister to flee with her children into England. He kept a number of paid spies and agents in Scotland for the express purpose of exciting popular tumults, private quarrels, and rekindling the jealousy of the nobles, in order to distract and discredit the government of Albany. Project after project arose in his passionate breast, which his ambitious and brutal nature pursued with unrelenting and murderous severity; sometimes his hobby was political, sometimes religious, at other times matrimonial, and in almost every instance he inflicted great suffering upon the people of Scotland. During the regency of Albany, the Earl of Angus, having previously been forced to leave the country, entered into a paction with the English Government in ♦1524, and returned to Scotland.¹

¹ State Papers, reign of Henry VIII., Volume IV., throughout. Tytler’s History of Scotland, Volume V., pages 99, 117‒119, 182.

At this time the chief nobles were much divided; and the Earl of Angus quickly matured his plot. Having secured the concurrence of the Earl of Arran and others, he seized the young King, and, as had often been done before in similar circumstances, he shortly concentrated in his own hands all the power of the Crown. Angus kept the King in close restraint, and revelling in his usurped authority, he exercised a severe tyranny on all who dared to oppose him. The kingdom remained in this state for several years, though two attempts were made to rescue the King from the grasp of the bold noble, in one of which the Earl of Lennox lost his life, while the chains of the captive were more firmly rivetted than before. The Douglases were complete masters of the situation, Angus himself was chancellor, his uncle treasurer, and they compelled the King to sign all deeds which they presented to him, while the revenue and the law of the country were wholly under their control. At last, with the assistance of Archbishop Beaton, James escaped from Angus in May 1528, and from that time to the end of his reign, he pursued the Earl and his adherents with relentless severity.¹