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Title: A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1.

Author: Carlton J. H. Hayes

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A POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE
VOLUME I
1500-1815

BY CARLTON J. H. HAYES




PREFACE


This book represents an attempt on the part of the author to satisfy a
very real need of a textbook which will reach far enough back to afford
secure foundations for a college course in modern European history.

The book is a long one, and purposely so. Not only does it undertake to
deal with a period at once the most complicated and the most inherently
interesting of any in the whole recorded history of mankind, but it
aims to impart sufficiently detailed information about the various
topics discussed to make the college student feel that he is advanced a
grade beyond the student in secondary school. There is too often a
tendency to underestimate the intellectual capabilities of the
collegian and to feed him so simple and scanty a mental pabulum that he
becomes as a child and thinks as a child. Of course the author
appreciates the fact that most college instructors of history piece out
the elementary textbooks by means of assignments of collateral reading
in large standard treatises. All too frequently, however, such
assignments, excellent in themselves, leave woeful gaps which a slender
elementary manual is inadequate to fill. And the student becomes too
painfully aware, for his own educational good, of a chasmal separation
between his textbook and his collateral reading. The present manual is
designed to supply a narrative of such proportions that the need of
additional reading will be somewhat lessened, and at the same time it
is provided with critical bibliographies and so arranged as to enable
the judicious instructor more easily to make substitutions here and
there from other works or to pass over this or that section entirely.
Perhaps these considerations will commend to others the judgment of the
author in writing a long book.

Nowadays prefaces to textbooks of modern history almost invariably
proclaim their writers' intention to stress recent happenings or at
least those events of the past which have had a direct bearing upon the
present. An examination of the following pages will show that in the
case of this book there is no discrepancy between such an intention on
the part of the present writer and its achievement. Beginning with the
sixteenth century, the story of the civilization of modern Europe is
carried down the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries with
constant _crescendo_. Of the total space devoted to the four
hundred years under review, the last century fills half. And the
greatest care has been taken to bring the story down to date and to
indicate as clearly and calmly as possible the underlying causes of the
vast contemporaneous European war, which has already put a new
complexion on our old historical knowledge and made everything that
went before seem part and parcel of an old régime.

As to why the author has preferred to begin the story of modern Europe
with the sixteenth century, rather than with the thirteenth or with the
French Revolution, the reader is specially referred to the
_Introduction_. It has seemed to the author that particularly from
the Commercial Revolution of the sixteenth century dates the remarkable
and steady evolution of that powerful middle class--the bourgeoisie--
which has done more than all other classes put together to condition
the progress of the several countries of modern Europe and to create
the life and thought of the present generation throughout the world.
The rise of the bourgeoisie is the great central theme of modern
history; it is the great central theme of this book.

Not so very long ago distinguished historians were insisting that the
state, as the highest expression of man's social instincts and as the
immediate concern of all human beings, is the only fit subject of
historical study, and that history, therefore, must be simply "past
politics"; under their influence most textbooks became compendiums of
data about kings and constitutions, about rebellions and battles. More
recently historians of repute, as well as eminent economists, have
given their attention and patronage to painstaking investigations of
how, apart from state action, man in the past has toiled or traveled or
done the other ordinary things of everyday life; and the influence of
such scholars has served to provide us with a considerable number of
convenient manuals on special phases of social history. Yet more
recently several writers of textbooks have endeavored to combine the
two tendencies and to present in a single volume both political and
social facts, but it must be confessed that sometimes these writers
have been content to tell the old political tale in orthodox manner and
then to append a chapter or two of social miscellany, whose connection
with the body of their book is seldom apparent to the student.

The present volume represents an effort really to combine political and
social history in one synthesis: the author, quite convinced of the
importance of the view that political activities constitute the most
perfect expression of man's social instincts and touch mankind most
universally, has not neglected to treat of monarchs and parliaments, of
democracy and nationalism; at the same time he has cordially accepted
the opinion that political activities are determined largely by
economic and social needs and ambitions; and accordingly he has
undertaken not only to incorporate at fairly regular intervals such
chapters as those on the Commercial Revolution, Society in the
Eighteenth Century, the Industrial Revolution, and Social Factors,
1870-1914, but also to show in every part of the narrative the economic
aspects of the chief political facts.

Despite the length of this book, critics will undoubtedly note
omissions. Confronting the writer of every textbook of history is the
eternal problem of selection--the choice of what is most pointedly
significant from the sum total of man's thoughts, words, and deeds. It
is a matter of personal judgment, and personal judgments are
notoriously variant. Certainly there will be critics who will complain
of the present author's failure to follow up his suggestions concerning
sixteenth-century art and culture with a fuller account of the
development of philosophy and literature from the seventeenth to the
twentieth century; and the only rejoinders that the harassed author can
make are the rather lame ones that a book, to be a book, must conform
to the mechanical laws of space and dimension, and that a serious
attempt on the part of the present writer to make a synthesis of social
and political facts precludes no effort on the part of other and abler
writers to synthesize all these facts with the phenomena which are
conventionally assigned to the realm of "cultural" or "intellectual"
history. In this, and in all other respects, the author trusts that his
particular solution of the vexatious problem of selection will prove as
generally acceptable as any.

In the all-important matter of accuracy, the author cannot hope to have
escaped all the pitfalls that in a peculiarly broad and crowded field
everywhere trip the feet of even the most wary and persistent searchers
after truth. He has naturally been forced to rely for the truth of his
statements chiefly upon numerous secondary works, of which some
acknowledgment is made in the following _Note_, and upon the
kindly criticisms of a number of his colleagues; in some instances,
notably in parts of the chapters on the Protestant Revolt, the French
Revolution, and developments since 1848 in Great Britain, France, and
Germany, he has been able to draw on his own special studies of primary
source material, and in certain of these instances he has ventured to
dissent from opinions that have been copied unquestioningly from one
work to another.

No period of history can be more interesting or illuminating than the
period with which this book is concerned, especially now, when a war of
tremendous magnitude and meaning is attracting the attention of the
whole civilized world and arousing a desire in the minds of all
intelligent persons to know something of the past that has produced it.
The great basic causes of the present war the author has sought, not in
the ambitions of a single power nor in an isolated outrage, but in the
history of four hundred years. He has tried to write a book that would
be suggestive and informing, not only to the ordinary college student,
but to the more mature and thoughtful student of public affairs in the
university of the world.

CARLTON J. H. HAYES. AFTON, NEW YORK, May, 1916.




NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT


The author begs to acknowledge his general indebtedness to a veritable
host of historical writers, of whose original researches or secondary
compilations he has constantly and almost unblushingly made use in the
preparation of this book. At the close of the _Introduction_ will
be found a list of the major works dealing with the whole period under
review, or with the greater part of it, which have been drawn upon most
heavily. And there is hardly a book cited in any of the special
bibliographies following the several chapters that has not supplied
some single fact or suggestion to the accompanying narrative.

For many of the general ideas set forth in this work as well as for
painstaking assistance in reading manuscript and correcting errors of
detail, the author confesses his debt to various colleagues in Columbia
University and elsewhere. In particular, Professor R. L. Schuyler has
helpfully read the chapters on English history; Professor James T.
Shotwell, the chapter on the Commercial Revolution; Professor D. S.
Muzzey, the chapters on the French Revolution, Napoleon, and
Metternich; Professor William R. Shepherd, the chapters on "National
Imperialism"; and Professor Edward B. Krehbiel of Leland Stanford
Junior University, the chapter on recent international relations.
Professor E. F. Humphrey of Trinity College (Connecticut) has given
profitable criticism on the greater part of the text; and Professor
Charles A. Beard of Columbia University, Professor Sidney B. Fay of
Smith College, and Mr. Edward L. Durfee of Yale University, have read
the whole work and suggested several valuable emendations. Three
instructors in history at Columbia have been of marked service--Dr.
Austin P. Evans, Mr. D. R. Fox, and Mr. Parker T. Moon. The last named
devoted the chief part of two summers to the task of preparing notes
for several chapters of the book and he has attended the author on the
long dreary road of proof reading.




CONTENTS

VOLUME I

PART I

FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE


CHAPTER I. THE COUNTRIES OF EUROPE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH
  CENTURY
  The New National Monarchies
  The Old Holy Roman Empire
  The City-States
  Northern and Eastern Europe in the year 1500

CHAPTER II. THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION
  Agriculture in the Sixteenth Century
  Towns on the Eve of the Commercial Revolution
  Trade Prior to the Commercial Revolution
  The Age of Exploration
  Establishment of Colonial Empires
  Effects of the Commercial Revolution

CHAPTER III. EUROPEAN POLITICS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
  The Emperor Charles V
  Philip II and the Predominance of Spain

CHAPTER IV. THE PROTESTANT REVOLT AND THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION
  The Catholic Church at the Opening of the Sixteenth Century
  The Protestant Revolt
  Lutheranism
  Calvinism
  Anglicanism
  The Catholic Reformation
  Summary of the Religious Revolution in the Sixteenth Century

CHAPTER V. THE CULTURE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
  The Invention of Printing
  Humanism
  Art in the Sixteenth Century
  National Literatures in the Sixteenth Century
  Beginnings of Modern Natural Science


PART II

DYNASTIC AND COLONIAL RIVALRY

CHAPTER VI. THE GROWTH OF ABSOLUTISM IN FRANCE AND THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN
  BOURBONS AND HABSBURGS, 1589-1661
  Growth of Absolutism in France: Henry IV, Richelieu, and Mazarin
  Struggle between Bourbons and Habsburgs: The Thirty Years' War

CHAPTER VII. THE GROWTH OF ABSOLUTISM IN FRANCE AND THE STRUGGLE
  BETWEEN BOURBONS AND HABSBURGS, 1661-1743
  The Age of Louis XIV
  Extension of French Frontiers
  The War of the Spanish Succession

CHAPTER VIII. THE TRIUMPH OF PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND
  Conflicting Political Tendencies in England: Absolutism _versus_
    Parliamentarianism
  The Puritan Revolution
  The Restoration: the Reign of Charles II
  The "Glorious Revolution" and the Final Establishment of
    Parliamentary Government in Great Britain

CHAPTER IX. THE WORLD CONFLICT OF FRANCE AND GREAT BRITAIN
  French and English Colonies in the Seventeenth Century
  Preliminary Encounters, 1689-1748
  The Triumph of Great Britain: The Seven Years' War, 1756-1763

CHAPTER X. THE REVOLUTION WITHIN THE BRITISH EMPIRE
  The British Colonial System in the Eighteenth Century
  The War of American Independence, 1775-1783
  The Reformation of the British Empire

CHAPTER XI. THE GERMANIES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
  The Holy Roman Empire in Decline
  The Habsburg Dominions
  The Rise of Prussia. The Hohenzollerns
  The Minor German States
  The Struggle between Hohenzollerns and Habsburgs

CHAPTER XII. THE RISE OF RUSSIA, AND THE DECLINE OF TURKEY, SWEDEN, AND
  POLAND
  Russia in the Seventeenth Century
  Peter the Great
  Sweden and the Career of Charles XII
  Catherine the Great: the Defeat of Turkey and the Dismemberment of
    Poland


PART III

"LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY"

CHAPTER XIII. EUROPEAN SOCIETY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
  Agriculture in the Eighteenth Century
  Commerce and Industry in the Eighteenth Century
  The Privileged Classes
  Religious and Ecclesiastical Conditions in the Eighteenth Century
  Scientific and Intellectual Developments in the Eighteenth Century

CHAPTER XIV. EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
  The British Monarchy
  The Enlightened Despots
  The French Monarchy

CHAPTER XV. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
  Introductory
  The End of Absolutism in France, 1789
  The End of the Old Regime: the National Constituent Assembly,
    1789-1791
  The Limited Monarchy in Operation: the Legislative Assembly
    (1791-1792) and the Outbreak of Foreign War
  Establishment of the First French Republic: the National
     Convention, 1792-1795
  The Directory (1795-1799) and the Transformation of the Republic into
    a Military Dictatorship
  Significance of the French Revolution

CHAPTER XVI. THE ERA OF NAPOLEON
  The French Republic under the Consulate, 1799-1804
  The French Empire and its Territorial Expansion
  Destruction of the French Empire
  Significance of the Era of Napoleon




INTRODUCTION

The story of modern times is but a small fraction of the long epic of
human history. If, as seems highly probable, the conservative estimates
of recent scientists that mankind has inhabited the earth more than
fifty thousand years [Footnote: Professor James Geikie, of the
University of Edinburgh, suggests, in his _Antiquity of Man in
Europe_ (1914), the possible existence of human beings on the earth
more than 500,000 years ago!], are accurate, then the bare five hundred
years which these volumes pass in review constitute, in time, less than
a hundredth part of man's past. Certainly, thousands of years before
our day there were empires and kingdoms and city-states, showing
considerable advancement in those intellectual pursuits which we call
civilization or culture,--that is, in religion, learning, literature,
political organization, and business; and such basic institutions as
the family, the state, and society go back even further, past our
earliest records, until their origins are shrouded in deepest mystery.
Despite its brevity, modern history is of supreme importance. Within
its comparatively brief limits are set greater changes in human life
and action than are to be found in the records of any earlier
millennium. While the present is conditioned in part by the deeds and
thoughts of our distant forbears who lived thousands of years ago, it
has been influenced in a very special way by historical events of the
last five hundred years. Let us see how this is true.

Suppose we ask ourselves in what important respects the year 1900
differed from the year 1400. In other words, what are the great
distinguishing achievements of modern times? At least six may be noted:

(1) _Exploration and knowledge of the whole globe_. To our
ancestors from time out of mind the civilized world was but the lands
adjacent to the Mediterranean and, at most, vague stretches of Persia,
India, and China. Not much over four hundred years ago was America
discovered and the globe circumnavigated for the first time, and very
recently has the use of steamship, telegraph, and railway served to
bind together the uttermost parts of the world, thereby making it
relatively smaller, less mysterious, and in culture more unified.

(2) _Higher standards of individual efficiency and comfort_. The
physical welfare of the individual has been promoted to a greater
degree, or at all events preached more eloquently, within the last few
generations than ever before. This has doubtless been due to changes in
the commonplace everyday life of all the people. It must be remembered
that in the fifteenth century man did the ordinary things of life in
much the same manner as did early Romans or Greeks or Egyptians, and
that our present remarkable ways of living, of working, and of
traveling are the direct outcome of the Commercial Revolution of the
sixteenth century and of the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth.

(3) _Intensification of political organization, with attendant public
guarantees of personal liberties_. The ideas of nationalism and of
democracy are essentially modern in their expression. The notion that
people who speak the same language and have a common culture should be
organized as an independent state with uniform laws and customs was
hardly held prior to the fifteenth century. The national states of
England, France, and Spain did not appear unmistakably with their
national boundaries, national consciousness, national literature, until
the opening of the sixteenth century; and it was long afterwards that
in Italy and Germany the national idea supplanted the older notions of
world empire or of city-state or of feudalism. The national state has
proved everywhere a far more powerful political organization than any
other: its functions have steadily increased, now at the expense of
feudalism, now at the expense of the church; and such increase has been
as constant under industrial democracy of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries as under the benevolent despotism of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. But in measure as government has enlarged its
scope, the governed have worked out and applied protective principles
of personal liberties. The Puritan Revolution, the French Revolution,
the American Revolution, the uprisings of oppressed populations
throughout the nineteenth century, would be quite inexplicable in other
than modern times. In fact the whole political history of the last four
centuries is in essence a series of compromises between the conflicting
results of the modern exaltation of the state and the modern exaltation
of the individual.

(4) _Replacement of the idea of the necessity of uniformity in a
definite faith and religion by toleration of many faiths or even of no
faith_. A great state religion, professed publicly, and financially
supported by all the citizens, has been a distinguishing mark of every
earlier age. Whatever else may be thought of the Protestant movement of
the sixteenth century, of the rise of deism and skepticism in the
seventeenth and eighteenth, and of the existence of scientific
rationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth, there can be little doubt
that each of them has contributed its share to the prevalence of the
idea that religion is essentially a private, not a public, affair and
that friendly rivalry in good works is preferable to uniformity in
faith.

(5) _Diffusion of learning_. The invention of printing towards the
close of the fifteenth century gradually revolutionized the pursuit of
knowledge and created a real democracy of letters. What learning might
have lost in depth through its marvelous broadening has perhaps been
compensated for by the application of the keenest minds in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to experimental science and in our
own day to applied science.

(6) _Spirit of progress and decline of conservatism_. For better
or for worse the modern man is intellectually more self-reliant than
his ancestors, more prone to try new inventions and to profit by new
discoveries, more conscious and therefore more critical of conditions
about him, more convinced that he lives in a better world than did his
fathers, and that his children who come after him should have a better
chance than he has had. This is the modern spirit. It is the product of
all the other elements of the history of five hundred years--the larger
geographical horizon, the greater physical comfort, the revolutionized
political institutions, the broader sympathies, the newer ideals of
education. Springing thus from events of the past few centuries, the
modern spirit nevertheless looks ever forward, not backward. A debtor
to the past, it will be doubly creditor to the future. It will
determine the type of individual and social betterment through coming
centuries. Such an idea is implied in the phrase, "the continuity of
history"--the ever-flowing stream of happenings that brings down to us
the heritage of past ages and that carries on our richer legacies to
generations yet unborn.

From such a conception of the continuity of history, the real
significance of our study can be derived. It becomes perfectly clear
that if we understand the present we shall be better prepared to face
the problems and difficulties of the future. But to understand the
present thoroughly, it becomes necessary not only to learn what are its
great features and tendencies, but likewise how they have been evolved.
Now, as we have already remarked, six most important characteristics of
the present day have been developed within the last four or five
centuries. To follow the history of this period, therefore, will tend
to familiarize us both with present-day conditions and with future
needs. This is the genuine justification for the study of the history
of modern times.

Modern history may conveniently be defined as that part of history
which deals with the origin and evolution of the great distinguishing
characteristics of the present. No precise dates can be assigned to
modern history as contrasted with what has commonly been called ancient
or medieval. In a sense, any division of the historical stream into
parts or periods is fundamentally fallacious: for example, inasmuch as
the present generation owes to the Greeks of the fourth century before
Christ many of its artistic models and philosophical ideas and very few
of its political theories, the former might plausibly be embraced in
the field of modern history, the latter excluded therefrom. But the
problem before us is not so difficult as may seem on first thought. To
all intents and purposes the development of the six characteristics
that have been noted has taken place within five hundred years. The
sixteenth century witnessed the true beginnings of the change in the
extensive world discoveries, in the establishment of a recognized
European state system, in the rise of Protestantism, and in the
quickening of intellectual activity. It is the foundation of modern
Europe.

The sixteenth century will therefore be the general subject of Part I
of this volume. After reviewing the geography of Europe about the year
1500, we shall take up in turn the _four_ factors of the century
which have had a lasting influence upon us: (1) socially and
economically--The Commercial Revolution; (2) politically--European
Politics in the Sixteenth Century; (3) religiously and
ecclesiastically--The Protestant Revolt; (4) intellectually--The
Culture of the Sixteenth Century.


ADDITIONAL READING


THE STUDY OF HISTORY. On historical method: C. V. Langlois and Charles
Seignobos, _Introduction to the Study of History_, trans. by G. G.
Berry (1912); J. M. Vincent, _Historical Research: an Outline of Theory
and Practice_ (1911); H. B. George, _Historical Evidence_ (1909); F. M.
Fling, _Outline of Historical Method_ (1899). Different views of
history: J. H. Robinson, _The New History_ (1912), a collection of
stimulating essays; J. T. Shotwell, suggestive article _History_ in
11th edition of _Encyclopædia Britannica_; T. B. Macaulay, essay on
_History_; Thomas Carlyle, _Heroes and Hero Worship_; Karl Lamprecht,
_What is History_? trans. by E. A. Andrews (1905). Also see Henry
Johnson, _The Teaching of History_ (1915); Eduard Fueter, _Geschichte
der neueren Historiographie_ (1911); Ernst Bernheim, _Lehrbuch der
historischen Methode und der Geschichtsphilosophie_, 5th ed. (1914); G.
P. Gooch, _History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century_ (1913).

TEXTBOOKS AND MANUALS OF MODERN HISTORY. J. H. Robinson and C. A.
Beard, _The Development of Modern Europe_, 2 vols. (1907), a political
and social narrative from the time of Louis XIV, and by the same
authors, _Readings in Modern European History_, 2 vols. (1908-1909), an
indispensable sourcebook, with critical bibliographies; Ferdinand
Schevill, _A Political History of Modern Europe from the Reformation to
the Present Day_ (1907); T. H. Dyer, _A History of Modern Europe from
the Fall of Constantinople_, 3d ed. revised and continued to the end of
the nineteenth century by Arthur Hassall, 6 vols. (1901), somewhat
antiquated but still valuable for its vast store of political facts;
Victor Duruy, _History of Modern Times from the Fall of Constantinople
to the French Revolution_, trans. by E. A. Grosvenor (1894), verbose
and somewhat uncritical, but usable for French history. More up-to-date
series of historical manuals are now appearing or are projected by
Henry Holt and Company under the editorship of Professor C. H. Haskins,
by The Century Company under Professor G. L. Burr, by Ginn and Company
under Professor J. H. Robinson, and by Houghton Mifflin Company under
Professor J. T. Shotwell: such of these volumes as have appeared are
noted in the appropriate chapter bibliographies following. The
Macmillan Company has published _Periods of European History,_ 8 vols.
(1893-1901), under the editorship of Arthur Hassall, of which the last
five volumes treat of political Europe from 1494 to 1899; and a more
elementary political series, _Six Ages of European History_, 6 vols.
(1910), under the editorship of A. H. Johnson, of which the last three
volumes cover the years from 1453 to 1878. Much additional information
is obtainable from such popular series as _Story of the Nations_ (1886
_sqq._), _Heroes of the Nations_ (1890 _sqq._), and _Home University
Library,_ though the volumes in such series are of very unequal merit.
Convenient chronological summaries are: G. P. and G. H. Putnam,
_Tabular Views of Universal History_ (1914); Carl Ploetz, _Manual of
Universal History_, trans. and enlarged by W. H. Tillinghast, new
edition (1915); _Haydn's Dictionary of Dates_, 25th ed. (1911); C. E.
Little, _Cyclopædia of Classified Dates_ (1900); _Cambridge Modern
History_, Vol. XIII (1911). The best atlas--a vitally necessary adjunct
of historical study--is either that of W. R. Shepherd, _Historical
Atlas_ (1911), or that of Ramsay Muir, _Hammond's New Historical Atlas
for Students_, 2d ed. (1915); a smaller historical atlas is that of E.
W. Dow (1907), and longer ones are _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. XIV
(1912) and, in German, Putzger, _Historischer Schulatlas_. Elaborate
treatises on historical geography: Elisée Reclus, _The Universal
Geography_, trans. and ed. by E. G. Ravenstein, 19 vols.; _Nouveau
Dictionnaire de Géographie Universelle_, by Vivien de Saint-Martin and
Louis Rousselet, 10 vols. See also H. B. George, _The Relations of
Geography and History_ (1910) and Ellen C. Semple, _The Influence of
Geographic Environment_ (1911).

STANDARD SECONDARY WORKS AND SETS ON MODERN HISTORY. _The Cambridge
Modern History_, 12 vols. and 2 supplementary vols. (1902-1912),
planned by Lord Acton, edited by A. W. Ward, G. W. Prothero, and
Stanley Leathes, written by English scholars, covering the period from
1450 to 1910, generally sound but rather narrowly political. Better
balanced is the monumental work of a group of French scholars,
_Histoire générale du IVe siècle à nos jours_, edited by Ernest Lavisse
and Alfred Rambaud, 12 vols. (1894-1901), of which the last nine treat
of the years from 1492 to 1900. For social history a series, _Histoire
universelle du travail_, 12 vols., is projected under the editorship of
Georges Renard. _The Encyclopædia Britannica_, 11th ed. (1910-1911), is
the work mainly of distinguished scholars and a storehouse of
historical information, political, social, and intellectual. Also
available in English is _History of All Nations_, 24 vols. (1902), the
first nineteen based on translation of Theodor Flathe, _Allgemeine
Weltgeschichte_,--Vols. X-XXIV dealing with modern history,--Vol. XX,
on Europe, Asia, and Africa since 1871, by C. M. Andrews, and Vols.
XXI-XXIII, on American history, by John Fiske; likewise H. F. Helmolt
(editor), _Weltgeschichte_, trans. into English, 8 vols. (1902-1907).
Sets and series in German: Wilhelm Oncken (editor), _Allgemeine
Geschichte in Einzeldarstellungen_, 50 vols. (1879-1893); _Geschichte
der europäischen Staaten_, an enormous collection, appearing more or
less constantly from 1829 to the present and edited successively by
such famous scholars as A. H. L. Heeren, F. A. Ukert, Wilhelm von
Giesebrecht, and Karl Lamprecht; G. von Below and F. Meinecke
(editors), _Handbuch der mittel-alterlichen und neueren Geschichte_, a
series begun in 1903 and planned, when completed, to comprise 40 vols.;
Paul Hinneberg (editor), _Die Kultur der Gegenwart, ihre Entwicklung
und ihre Ziele_, a remarkable series begun in 1906 and intended to
explain in many volumes the civilization of the twentieth century in
all its aspects; Erich Brandenburg (editor), _Bibliothek der
Geschichtswissenschaft_, a series recently projected, the first volume
appearing in 1912; J. von Pflugk-Harttung, _Weltgeschichte: die
Entwicklung der Menschheit in Staat und Gesellschaft, in Kultur und
Geistesleben_, 6 vols. illust. (1908-1911); Theodor Lindner,
_Weltgeschichte seit der Völkerwanderung_, 8 vols. (1908-1914).
Valuable contributions to general modern history occur in such
monumental national histories as Karl Lamprecht, _Deutsche Geschichte_,
12 vols. in 16 (1891-1909), and, more particularly, Ernest Lavisse
(editor), _Histoire de France depuis les origines jusqu'à la
Révolution_, 9 double vols. (1900-1911).

BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARIES. General: _Encyclopedia Britannica_, 11th
ed., 29 vols. (1910-1911); _New International Encyclopedia_, 2d ed., 24
vols. (1914-1916); _Catholic Encyclopedia_, 15 vols. (1907-1912). Great
Britain: Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee (editors), _Dictionary of
National Biography_, 72 vols. (1885-1913). France: Hoefer (editor),
_Nouvelle biographie générale_, 46 vols. (1855-1866); _Dictionnaire de
biographie française_, projected (1913) under editorship of Louis
Didier, Albert Isnard, and Gabriel Ledos. Germany: Liliencron and
Wegele (editors), _Allgemeine deutsche Biographie_, 54 vols. (1875
_sqq_.). Austria-Hungary: Wurzbach (editor), _Biographisches Lexikon
des Kaiserthums Oesterreich_, 60 vols. (1856-1891). There is also a
well-known French work--L. G. Michaud, _Biographie universelle ancienne
et moderne_, 45 vols. (1880).

BIBLIOGRAPHY. Many of the works cited above and most of the works
mentioned in the following chapter bibliographies contain convenient
bibliographies on special topics. The best general guide to collections
of source material and to the organization of historical study and
research, though already somewhat out-of-date, is C. V. Langlois,
_Manuel de bibliographie historique_, 2 vols. (1901-1904). See also C.
M. Andrews, J. M. Gambrill, and Lida Tall, _A Bibliography of History
for Schools and Libraries_ (1910); and C. K. Adams, _A Manual of
Historical Literature_, 3d ed. (1889). Specifically, for Great Britain:
W. P. Courtney, _A Register of National Bibliography_, 3 vols. (1905-
1912); S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger, _Introduction to the Study
of English History_, 4th ed. (1903); H. L. Cannon, _Reading References
for English History_ (1910); _Bibliography of Modern English History_,
now (1916) in preparation under the auspices of English scholars and of
the American Historical Association. For German bibliography: Dahlmann-
Waitz, _Quellenkunde der deutschen Geschichte_, 8th ed. (1912);
_Jahresberichte der Geschichtswissenschaft_, a valuable annual
publication issued under the auspices of the Historical Association of
Berlin. For French bibliography: Gabriel Monod, _Bibliographie de
l'histoire de France_ (1888), new ed. projected (1910) in 4 vols.;
_Manuels de bibliographie historique_ (1907-1916): Part II, 1494-1610,
by Henri Hauser, _Part III, 1610-1715_, by Émile Bourgeois and Louis
André; _Répertoire méthodique de l'histoire moderne et contemporaine de
la France_, an annual publication edited by Brière and Caron. For
American bibliography: Edward Channing, A. B. Hart, and F. J. Turner,
_Guide to the Study of American History_ (1912). Among important
historical periodicals, containing bibliographical notes and book
reviews, are, _History Teacher's Magazine, The American Historical
Review, The English Historical Review, Die historische Zeitschrift,
Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, La revue historique_, and
_La revue des questions historiques_. For periodical literature see
_Poole's Index_ (1802-1906) and _Readers' Guide_ (1900 _sqq._). The
most famous lists of published books are: _The American Catalogue_
(1876 _sqq._); the _English Catalogue_ (1835 _sqq._); C. G. Kayser,
_Bücher-Lexikon_ (1750 _sqq._); Wilhelm Heinsius, _Bücher-Lexikon_
(1700-1892); Otto Lorenz, _Catalogue général de la librarie française
(1840 _sqq_.); and, for general comment, American Library Association,
_Index to General Literature_ (1893 _sqq._).




PART I

FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EUROPE




CHAPTER I

THE COUNTRIES OF EUROPE AT THE OPENING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY


1. THE NEW NATIONAL MONARCHIES

[Sidenote: "National Monarchies" in 1500]

Before we can safely proceed with the story of European development
during the past four hundred years, it is necessary to know what were
the chief countries that existed at the beginning of our period and
what were the distinctive political institutions of each.

A glance at the map of Europe in 1500 will show numerous unfamiliar
divisions and names, especially in the central and eastern portions.
Only in the extreme west, along the Atlantic seaboard, will the eye
detect geographical boundaries which resemble those of the present day.
There, England, France, Spain, and Portugal have already taken form. In
each one of these countries is a real nation, with a single monarch,
and with a distinctive literary language. These four states are the
_national_ states of the sixteenth century. They attract our
immediate attention.


ENGLAND

[Sidenote: The English Monarchy]

In the year 1500 the English monarchy embraced little more than what on
the map is now called "England." It is true that to the west the
principality of Wales had been incorporated two hundred years earlier,
but the clannish mountaineers and hardy lowlanders of the northern part
of the island of Great Britain still preserved the independence of the
kingdom of Scotland, while Irish princes and chieftains rendered
English occupation of their island extremely precarious beyond the so-
called Pale of Dublin which an English king had conquered in the
twelfth century. Across the English Channel, on the Continent, the
English monarchy retained after 1453, the date of the conclusion of the
Hundred Years' War, only the town of Calais out of the many rich French
provinces which ever since the time of William the Conqueror (1066-
1087) had been a bone of contention between French and English rulers.

While the English monarchy was assuming its geographical form, peculiar
national institutions were taking root in the country, and the English
language, as a combination of earlier Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French,
was being evolved. The Hundred Years' War with France, or rather its
outcome, served to exalt the sense of English nationality and English
patriotism, and to enable the king to devote his whole attention to the
consolidation of his power in the British islands. For several years
after the conclusion of peace on the Continent, England was harassed by
bloody and confused struggles, known as the Wars of the Roses, between
rival claimants to the throne, but at length, in 1485, Henry VII, the
first of the Tudor dynasty, secured the crown and ushered in a new era
of English history.

[Sidenote: Increase of Royal Power in England under Henry VII]

Henry VII (1485-1509) sought to create what has been termed a "strong
monarchy." Traditionally the power of the king had been restricted by a
Parliament, composed of a House of Lords and a House of Commons, and as
the former was then far more influential than the latter, supreme
political control had rested practically with the king and the members
of the upper house--great land-holding nobles and the princes of the
church. The Wars of the Roses had two effects which redounded to the
advantage of the king: (1) the struggle, being really a contest of two
factions of nobles, destroyed many noble families and enabled the crown
to seize their estates, thereby lessening the influence of an ancient
class; (2) the struggle, being long and disorderly, created in the
middle class or "common people" a longing for peace and the conviction
that order and security could be maintained only by repression of the
nobility and the strengthening of monarchy. Henry took advantage of
these circumstances to fix upon his country an absolutism, or one-man
power in government, which was to endure throughout the sixteenth
century, during the reigns of the four other members of the Tudor
family, and, in fact, until a popular revolution in the seventeenth
century.

Henry VII repressed disorder with a heavy hand and secured the
establishment of an extraordinary court, afterwards called the "Court
of Star Chamber," to hear cases, especially those affecting the nobles,
which the ordinary courts had not been able to settle. Then, too, he
was very economical: the public revenue was increased by means of more
careful attention to the cultivation of the crown lands and the
collection of feudal dues, fines, benevolences [Footnote:
"Benevolences" were sums of money extorted from the people in the guise
of gifts. A celebrated minister of Henry VII collected a very large
number of "benevolences" for his master. If a man lived economically,
it was reasoned he was saving money and could afford a "present" for
the king. If, on the contrary, he lived sumptuously, he was evidently
wealthy and could likewise afford a "gift."], import and export duties,
and past parliamentary grants, while, by means of frugality and a
foreign policy of peace, the expenditure was appreciably decreased.
Henry VII was thereby freed in large measure from dependence on
Parliament for grants of money, and the power of Parliament naturally
declined. In fact, Parliament met only five times during his whole
reign and only once during the last twelve years, and in all its
actions was quite subservient to the royal desires.

[Sidenote: Foreign relations of England under Henry VII]

Henry VII refrained in general from foreign war, but sought by other
means to promote the international welfare of his country. He
negotiated several treaties by which English traders might buy and sell
goods in other countries. One of the most famous of these commercial
treaties was the _Intercursus Magnus_ concluded in 1496 with the
duke of Burgundy, admitting English goods into the Netherlands. He
likewise encouraged English companies of merchants to engage in foreign
trade and commissioned the explorations of John Cabot in the New World.
Henry increased the prestige of his house by politic marital alliances.
He arranged a marriage between the heir to his throne, Arthur, and
Catherine, eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Spanish
sovereigns. Arthur died a few months after his wedding, but it was
arranged that Catherine should remain in England as the bride of the
king's second son, who subsequently became Henry VIII. The king's
daughter Margaret was married to King James IV of Scotland, thereby
paving the way much later for the union of the crowns of England and
Scotland.

England in the year 1500 was a real national monarchy, and the power of
the king appeared to be distinctly in the ascendant. Parliament was
fast becoming a purely formal and perfunctory body.


FRANCE

[Sidenote: The French Monarchy]

By the year 1500 the French monarchy was largely consolidated
territorially and politically. It had been a slow and painful process,
for long ago in 987, when Hugh Capet came to the throne, the France of
his day was hardly more than the neighborhood of Paris, and it had
taken five full centuries to unite the petty feudal divisions of the
country into the great centralized state which we call France. The
Hundred Years' War had finally freed the western duchies and counties
from English control. Just before the opening of the sixteenth century
the wily and tactful Louis XI (1461-1483) had rounded out French
territories: on the east he had occupied the powerful duchy of
Burgundy; on the west and on the southeast he had possessed himself of
most of the great inheritance of the Angevin branch of his own family,
including Anjou, and Provence east of the Rhone; and on the south the
French frontier had been carried to the Pyrenees. Finally, Louis's son,
Charles VIII (1483-1498), by marrying the heiress of Brittany, had
absorbed that western duchy into France.

[Sidenote: Steady Growth of Royal Power in France]

Meanwhile, centralized political institutions had been taking slow but
tenacious root in the country. Of course, many local institutions and
customs survived in the various states which had been gradually added
to France, but the king was now recognized from Flanders to Spain and
from the Rhone to the Ocean as the source of law, justice, and order.
There was a uniform royal coinage and a standing army under the king's
command. The monarchs had struggled valiantly against the disruptive
tendencies of feudalism; they had been aided by the commoners or middle
class; and the proof of their success was their comparative freedom
from political checks. The Estates-General, to which French commoners
had been admitted in 1302, resembled in certain externals the English
Parliament,--for example, in comprising representatives of the clergy,
nobles, and commons,--but it had never had final say in levying taxes
or in authorizing expenditures or in trying royal officers. And unlike
England, there was in France no live tradition of popular participation
in government and no written guarantee of personal liberty.

[Sidenote: Foreign Relations of the French Kings about 1500]

Consolidated at home in territory and in government, Frenchmen began
about the year 1500 to be attracted to questions of external policy. By
attempting to enforce an inherited claim to the crown of Naples,
Charles VIII in 1494 started that career of foreign war and
aggrandizement which was to mark the history of France throughout
following centuries. His efforts in Italy were far from successful, but
his heir, Louis XII (1498-1515), continued to lay claim to Naples and
to the duchy of Milan as well. In 1504 Louis was obliged to resign
Naples to King Ferdinand of Aragon, in whose family it remained for two
centuries, but about Milan continued a conflict, with varying fortunes,
ultimately merging into the general struggle between Francis I (1515-
1547) and the Emperor Charles V.

France in the year 1500 was a real national monarchy, with the
beginnings of a national literature and with a national patriotism
centering in the king. It was becoming self-conscious. Like England,
France was on the road to one-man power, but unlike England, the way
had been marked by no liberal or constitutional mile-posts.


SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

[Sidenote: Development of the Spanish and Portuguese Monarchies]

South of the Pyrenees were the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies,
which, in a long process of unification, not only had to contend
against the same disuniting tendencies as appeared in France and
England, but also had to solve the problem of the existence side by
side of two great rival religions--Christianity and Mohammedanism.
Mohammedan invaders from Africa had secured political control of nearly
the whole peninsula as early as the eighth century, but in course of
time there appeared in the northern and western mountains several
diminutive Christian states, of which the following may be mentioned:
Barcelona, in the northeast, along the Mediterranean; Aragon, occupying
the south-central portion of the Pyrenees and extending southward
toward the Ebro River; Navarre, at the west of the Pyrenees, reaching
northward into what is now France and southward into what is now Spain;
Castile, west of Navarre, circling about the town of Burgos; Leon, in
the northwestern corner of the peninsula; and Portugal, south of Leon,
lying along the Atlantic coast. Little by little these Christian states
extended their southern frontiers at the expense of the Mohammedan
power and showed some disposition to combine. In the twelfth century
Barcelona was united with the kingdom of Aragon, and a hundred years
later Castile and Leon were finally joined. Thus, by the close of the
thirteenth century, there were three important states in the peninsula
--Aragon on the east, Castile in the center, and Portugal on the west--
and two less important states--Christian Navarre in the extreme north,
and Mohammedan Granada in the extreme south.

While Portugal acquired its full territorial extension in the peninsula
by the year 1263, the unity of modern Spain was delayed until after the
marriage of Ferdinand (1479-1516) and Isabella (1474-1504), sovereigns
respectively of Aragon and Castile. Granada, the last foothold of the
Mohammedans, fell in 1492, and in 1512 Ferdinand acquired that part of
the ancient kingdom of Navarre which lay upon the southern slope of the
Pyrenees. The peninsula was henceforth divided between the two modern
states of Spain and Portugal.

[Sidenote: Portugal a Real National Monarchy in 1500]

Portugal, the older and smaller of the two states, had become a
conspicuous member of the family of nations by the year 1500, thanks to
a line of able kings and to the remarkable series of foreign
discoveries that cluster about the name of Prince Henry the Navigator.
Portugal possessed a distinctive language of Latin origin and already
cherished a literature of no mean proportions. In harmony with the
spirit of the age the monarchy was tending toward absolutism, and the
parliament, called the Cortes, which had played an important part in
earlier times, ceased to meet regularly after 1521. The Portuguese
royal family were closely related to the Castilian line, and there were
people in both kingdoms who hoped that one day the whole peninsula
would be united under one sovereign.

[Sidenote: The Spanish Kingdom in 1500]

From several standpoints the Spanish monarchy was less unified in 1500
than England, France, or Portugal. The union of Castile and Aragon was,
for over two centuries, hardly more than personal. Each retained its
own customs, parliaments (Cortes), and separate administration. Each
possessed a distinctive language, although Castilian gradually became
the literary "Spanish," while Catalan, the speech of Aragon, was
reduced to the position of an inferior. Despite the continuance of
excessive pride in local traditions and institutions, the cause of
Spanish nationality received great impetus during the reign of
Ferdinand and Isabella. It was under them that territorial unity had
been obtained. It was they who turned the attention of Spaniards to
foreign and colonial enterprises. The year that marked the fall of
Granada and the final extinction of Mohammedan power in Spain was
likewise signalized by the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, which
prefigured the establishment of a greater Spain beyond the seas. On the
continent of Europe, Spain speedily acquired a commanding position in
international affairs, as the result largely of Ferdinand's ability.
The royal house of Aragon had long held claims to the Neapolitan and
Sicilian kingdoms and for two hundred years had freely mixed in the
politics of Italy. Now, in 1504, Ferdinand definitely secured
recognition from France of his rights in Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia.
Spain was becoming the rival of Venice for the leadership of the
Mediterranean.

[Sidenote: Increase of Royal Power in Spain under Ferdinand and
Isabella]

While interfering very little with the forms of representative
government in their respective kingdoms, Ferdinand and Isabella worked
ever, in fact, toward uniformity and absolutism. They sought to
ingratiate themselves with the middle class, to strip the nobility of
its political influence, and to enlist the church in their service. The
Cortes were more or less regularly convened, but their functions were
almost imperceptibly transferred to royal commissions and officers of
state. Privileges granted to towns in earlier times were now gradually
revoked. The king, by becoming the head of the ancient military orders
which had borne prominent part in the struggle against the Mohammedans,
easily gained control of considerable treasure and of an effective
fighting force. The sovereigns prevailed upon the pope to transfer
control of the Inquisition, the medieval ecclesiastical tribunal for
the trial of heretics, to the crown, so that the harsh penalties which
were to be inflicted for many years upon dissenters from orthodox
Christianity were due not only to religious bigotry but likewise to the
desire for political uniformity.

In population and in domestic resources Spain was not so important as
France, but the exploits of Ferdinand and Isabella, the great wealth
which temporarily flowed to her from the colonies, the prestige which
long attended her diplomacy and her armies, were to exalt the Spanish
monarchy throughout the sixteenth century to a position quite out of
keeping with her true importance.


2. THE OLD HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

[Sidenote: The Idea of an "Empire" Different in 1500 from that of a
"National Monarchy"]

The national monarchies of western Europe--England, France, Spain, and
Portugal--were political novelties in the year 1500: the idea of
uniting the people of similar language and customs under a strongly
centralized state had been slowly developing but had not reached
fruition much before that date. On the other hand, in central Europe
survived in weakness an entirely different kind of state, called an
empire. The theory of an empire was a very ancient one--it meant a
state which should embrace all peoples of whatsoever race or language,
bound together in obedience to a common prince. Such, for example, had
been the ideal of the old Roman Empire, under whose Caesars practically
the whole civilized world had once been joined, so that the inhabitant
of Egypt or Armenia united with the citizen of Britain or Spain in
allegiance to the emperor. That empire retained its hold on portions of
eastern Europe until its final conquest by the Ottoman Turks in 1453,
but a thousand years earlier it had lost control of the West because of
external violence and internal weakness. So great, however, was the
strength of the idea of an "empire," even in the West, that Charlemagne
about the year 800 temporarily united what are now France, Germany,
Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium into what he persisted in styling
the "Roman Empire." Nearly two centuries later, Otto the Great, a
famous prince in Germany, gave other form to the idea, in the "Holy
Roman Empire" of which he became emperor. This form endured from 962 to
1806.

[Sidenote: The Holy Roman Empire; Its Mighty Claims in Theory and its
Slight Power in Practice]

In theory, the Holy Roman Empire claimed supremacy over all Christian
rulers and peoples of central and western Europe, and after the
extinction of the eastern empire in 1453 it could insist that it was
the sole secular heir to the ancient Roman tradition. But the greatness
of the theoretical claim of the Holy Roman Empire was matched only by
the insignificance of its practical acceptance. The feudal nobles of
western Europe had never recognized it, and the national monarchs,
though they might occasionally sport with its honors and titles, never
admitted any real dependence upon it of England, France, Portugal, or
Spain. In central Europe, it had to struggle against the anarchical
tendencies of feudalism, against the rise of powerful and jealous city-
states, and against a rival organization, the Catholic Church, which in
its temporal affairs was at least as clearly an heir to the Roman
tradition as was the Holy Roman Empire. From the eleventh to the
thirteenth century the conflict raged, with results important for all
concerned,--results which were thoroughly obvious in the year 1500.

[Sidenote: The Holy Roman Empire practically Restricted by 1500 to the
Germanies]

In the first place, the Holy Roman Empire was practically restricted to
German-speaking peoples. The papacy and the Italian cities had been
freed from imperial control, and both the Netherlands--that is, Holland
and Belgium--and the Swiss cantons were only nominally connected. Over
the Slavic people to the east--Russians, Poles, etc.--or the
Scandinavians to the north, the empire had secured comparatively small
influence. By the year 1500 the words Empire and Germany had become
virtually interchangeable terms.

Secondly, there was throughout central Europe no conspicuous desire for
strong centralized national states, such as prevailed in western
Europe.

[Sidenote: Internal Weakness of the Holy Roman Empire]

Separatism was the rule. In Italy and in the Netherlands the city-
states were the political units. Within the Holy Roman Empire was a
vast hodge-podge of city-states, and feudal survivals--arch-duchies,
such as Austria; margravates, such as Brandenburg; duchies, like
Saxony, Bavaria, and Württemberg; counties like the Palatinate, and a
host of free cities, baronies, and domains, some of them smaller than
an American township. In all there were over three hundred states which
collectively were called "the Germanies" and which were united only by
the slender imperial thread. The idea of empire had not only been
narrowed to one nation; it also, in its failure to overcome feudalism,
had prevented the growth of a real national monarchy.

[Sidenote: Government of the Holy Roman Empire]

What was the nature of this slight tie that nominally held the
Germanies together? There was the form of a central government with an
emperor to execute laws and a Diet to make them. The emperor was not
necessarily hereditary but was chosen by seven "electors," who were the
chief princes of the realm. These seven were the archbishops of Mainz
(Mayence), of Cologne, and of Trier (Trèves), the king of Bohemia, the
duke of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg, and the count palatine of
the Rhine. Not infrequently the electors used their position to extort
concessions from the emperor elect which helped to destroy German unity
and to promote the selfish interests of the princes. The imperial Diet
was composed of the seven electors, the lesser princes (including the
higher ecclesiastical dignitaries, such as bishops and abbots), and
representatives of the free cities, grouped in three separate houses.
The emperor was not supposed to perform any imperial act without the
authorization of the Diet, and petty jealousies between its members or
houses often prevented action in the Diet. The individual states,
moreover, reserved to themselves the management of most affairs which
in western Europe had been surrendered to the central national
government. The Diet, and therefore the emperor, was without a treasury
or an army, unless the individual states saw fit to act favorably upon
its advice and furnish the requested quotas. The Diet resembled far
more a congress of diplomats than a legislative body.

[Sidenote: The Habsburgs: Weak as Emperors but Strong as Rulers of
Particular States within the Holy Roman Empire]

It will be readily perceived that under these circumstances the emperor
as such could have little influence. Yet the fear of impending Slavic
or Turkish attacks upon the eastern frontier, or other fears,
frequently operated to secure the election of some prince who had
sufficiently strong power of his own to stay the attack or remove the
fear. In this way, Rudolph, count of Habsburg, had been chosen emperor
in 1273, and in his family, with few interruptions, continued the
imperial title, not only to 1500 but to the final extinction of the
empire in 1806. Several of these Habsburg emperors were influential,
but it must always be remembered that they owed their power not to the
empire but to their own hereditary states.

Originally lords of a small district in Switzerland, the Habsburgs had
gradually increased their holdings until at length in 1273 Rudolph, the
maker of his family's real fortunes, had been chosen Holy Roman
Emperor, and three years later had conquered the valuable archduchy of
Austria with its capital of Vienna. The family subsequently became
related by marriage to reigning families in Hungary and in Italy as
well as in Bohemia and other states of the empire. In 1477 the Emperor
Maximilian I (1493-1519) married Mary of Burgundy, daughter of Charles
the Bold and heiress of the wealthy provinces of the Netherlands; and
in 1496 his son Philip was united to Joanna, the daughter of Ferdinand
and Isabella and heiress of the crowns of Castile and Aragon. The
fortunes of the Habsburgs were decidedly auspicious.

[Sidenote: Vain Attempts to "Reform" the Holy Roman Empire]

Of course, signs were not wanting of some national life in the
Germanies. Most of the people spoke a common language; a form of
national unity existed in the Diet; and many patriots raised their
voice in behalf of a stronger and more centralized government. In 1495
a Diet met at the city of Worms to discuss with Emperor Maximilian
projects of reform. After protracted debates, it was agreed that
private warfare, a survival of feudal days, should be abolished; a
perpetual peace should be declared; and an imperial court should be
established to settle all disputes between states within the empire.
These efforts at reform, like many before and after, were largely
unfruitful, and, despite occasional protests, practical disunion
prevailed in the Germanies of the sixteenth century, albeit under the
high-sounding title of "Holy Roman Empire."


3. THE CITY-STATES

[Sidenote: "City-States" in 1500]

Before the dawn of the Christian era the Greeks and Romans had
entertained a general idea of political organization which would seem
strange to most of us at the present time. They believed that every
city with its outlying country should constitute an independent state,
with its own particular law-making and governing bodies, army, coinage,
and foreign relations. To them, the idea of an empire was intolerable
and the concept of a national state, such as we commonly have to-day,
unthinkable.

Now it so happened, as we shall see in the following chapter, that the
commerce of the middle ages stimulated the growth of important trading
towns in Italy, in Germany, and in the Netherlands. These towns, in one
way or another, managed to secure a large measure of self-government,
so that by the year 1500 they had become somewhat similar to the city-
states of antiquity. In Germany, though they still maintained their
local self-government, they were loosely attached to the Holy Roman
Empire and were overshadowed in political influence by other states. In
the case of Italy and of the Netherlands, however, it is impossible to
understand the politics of those countries in the sixteenth century
without paying some attention to city-states, which played leading
rôles in both.

[Sidenote: Italy in 1500 neither a National Monarchy not Attached to
the Holy Roman Empire]

In the Italy of the year 1500 there was not even the semblance of
national political unity. Despite the ardent longings of many Italian
patriots [Footnote: Of such patriots was Machiavelli (see below, p.
194). Machiavelli wrote in _The Prince:_ "Our country, left almost
without life, still waits to know who it is that is to heal her
bruises, to put an end to the devastation and plunder of Lombardy and
to the exactions and imposts of Naples and Tuscany, and to stanch those
wounds of hers which long neglect has changed into running sores. We
see how she prays God to send some one to rescue her from these
barbarous cruelties and oppressions. We see too how ready and eager she
is to follow any standard, were there only some one to raise it."], and
the rise of a common language, which, under such masters as Dante and
Petrarch, had become a great medium for literary expression, the people
of the peninsula had not built up a national monarchy like those of
western Europe nor had they even preserved the form of allegiance to
the Holy Roman Empire. This was due to several significant events of
earlier times. In the first place, the attempt of the medieval German
emperors to gain control of Italy not only had signally failed but had
left behind two contending factions throughout the whole country,--one,
the Ghibellines, supporting the doctrine of maintaining the traditional
connection with the Germanies; the other, the Guelphs, rejecting that
doctrine. In the second place, the pope, who exercised extensive
political as well as religious power, felt that his ecclesiastical
influence would be seriously impaired by the creation of political
unity in the country; a strong lay monarch with a solid Italy behind
him would in time reduce the sovereign pontiff to a subservient
position and diminish the prestige which the head of the church enjoyed
in foreign lands; therefore the popes participated actively in the game
of Italian politics, always endeavoring to prevent any one state from
becoming too powerful. Thirdly, the comparatively early commercial
prominence of the Italian towns had stimulated trade rivalries which
tended to make each proud of its independence and wealth; and as the
cities grew and prospered to an unwonted degree, it became increasingly
difficult to join them together. Finally, the riches of the Italians,
and the local jealousies and strife, to say nothing of the papal
policy, marked the country as natural prey for foreign interference and
conquest; and in this way the peninsula became a battleground for
Spaniards, Frenchmen, and Germans.

Before reviewing the chief city-states of northern Italy, it will be
well to say a word about two other political divisions of the country.
The southern third of the peninsula comprised the ancient kingdom of
Naples, which had grown up about the city of that name, and which
together with the large island of Sicily, was called the kingdom of the
Two Sicilies.

[Sidenote: Southern Italy in 1500: the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies]

This state, having been first formed by Scandinavian adventurers in the
eleventh century, had successively passed under papal suzerainty, under
the domination of the German emperors, and at length in 1266 under
French control. A revolt in Sicily in the year 1282, commonly called
the Sicilian Vespers, had severed the relation between the island and
the mainland, the former passing to the royal family of Aragon, and the
latter troublously remaining in French hands until 1442. The reunion of
the Two Sicilies at that date under the crown of Aragon served to keep
alive the quarrel between the French and the Spanish; and it was not
until 1504 that the king of France definitely renounced his Neapolitan
claims in favor of Ferdinand of Aragon. Socially and politically Naples
was the most backward state in Italy.

[Sidenote: Italy in 1500: the Papal States]

About the city of Rome had grown up in the course of centuries the
Papal States, or as they were officially styled, the Patrimony of St.
Peter. It had early fallen to the lot of the bishop, as the most
important person in the city, to exercise political power over Rome,
when barbarian invasions no longer permitted the exercise of authority
by Roman emperors; and control over neighboring districts, as well as
over the city, had been expressly recognized and conferred upon the
bishop by Charlemagne in the eighth century. This bishop of Rome was,
of course, the pope; and the pope slowly extended his territories
through central Italy from the Tiber to the Adriatic, long using them
merely as a bulwark to his religious and ecclesiastical prerogatives.
By the year 1500, however, the popes were becoming prone to regard
themselves as Italian princes who might normally employ their states as
so many pawns in the game of peninsular politics. The policy of the
notorious Alexander VI (1492-1503) centered in his desire to establish
his son, Cesare Borgia, as an Italian ruler; and Julius II (1503-1513)
was famed more for statecraft and military prowess than for religious
fervor.

[Sidenote: The City-States of Northern Italy in 1500]

North and west of the Papal States were the various city-states which
were so thoroughly distinctive of Italian politics at the opening of
the sixteenth century. Although these towns had probably reached a
higher plane both of material prosperity and of intellectual culture
than was to be found at that time in any other part of Europe,
nevertheless they were deeply jealous of each other and carried on an
interminable series of petty wars, the brunt of which was borne by
professional hired soldiers and freebooters styled _condottieri_.
Among the Italian city-states, the most famous in the year 1500 were
Milan, Venice, Genoa, and Florence.

[Sidenote: Italian City-States: Milan Governed by Despots]

Of these cities, Milan was still in theory a ducal fief of the Holy
Roman Empire, but had long been in fact the prize of despotic rulers
who were descended from two famous families--the Visconti and the
Sforza--and who combined the patronage of art with the fine political
subtleties of Italian tyrants. The Visconti ruled Milan from the
thirteenth century to the middle of the fifteenth, when a Sforza, a
leader of _condottieri_ established the supremacy of his own
family. In 1499, however, King Louis XII of France, claiming the duchy
as heir to the Visconti, seized Milan and held it until he was expelled
in 1512 by the Holy League, composed of the pope, Venice, Spain, and
England, and a Sforza was temporarily reinstated.

[Sidenote: Venice, a Type of the Commercial and Aristocratic Italian
City-States]

As Milan was the type of Italian city ruled by a despot or tyrant, so
Venice was a type of the commercial, oligarchical city-states. Venice
was by far the most powerful state in the peninsula. Located on the
islands and lagoons at the head of the Adriatic, she had profited
greatly by the crusades to build up a maritime empire and an enviable
trade on the eastern Mediterranean and had extended her sway over rich
lands in the northeastern part of Italy. In the year 1500, Venice
boasted 3000 ships, 300,000 sailors, a numerous and veteran army,
famous factories of plate glass, silk stuffs, and gold and silver
objects, and a singularly strong government. Nominally Venice was a
republic, but actually an oligarchy. Political power was intrusted
jointly to several agencies: (1) a grand council controlled by the
commercial magnates; (2) a centralized committee of ten; (3) an elected
doge, or duke; and (4), after 1454, three state inquisitors, henceforth
the city's real masters. The inquisitors could pronounce sentence of
death, dispose of the public funds, and enact statutes; they maintained
a regular spy system; and trial, judgment, and execution were secret.
The mouth of the lion of St. Mark received anonymous denunciations, and
the waves which passed under the Bridge of Sighs carried away the
corpses. To this regime Venice owed an internal peace which contrasted
with the endless civil wars of the other Italian cities. Till the final
destruction of the state in 1798 Venice knew no political revolution.
In foreign affairs, also, Venice possessed considerable influence; she
was the first European state to send regular envoys, or ambassadors, to
other courts. It seemed in 1500 as if she were particularly wealthy and
great, but already had been sowed the seed of her subsequent decline
and humiliation. The advance of the Ottoman Turks threatened her
position in eastern Europe, although she still held the Morea in
Greece, Crete, Cyprus, and many Ionian and Ægean islands. The discovery
of America and of a new route to India was destined to shake the very
basis of her commercial supremacy. And her unscrupulous policy toward
her Italian rivals lost her friends to the west. So great was the
enmity against Venice that the formidable League of Cambrai, entered
into by the emperor, the pope, France, and Spain in 1508, wrung many
concessions from her.

[Sidenote: Genoa]

Second only to Venice in commercial importance, Genoa, in marked
contrast with her rival, passed through all manner of political
vicissitudes until in 1499 she fell prey to the invasion of King Louis
XII of France. Thereafter Genoa remained some years subject to the
French, but in 1528 the resolution of an able citizen, Andrea Doria,
freed the state from foreign invaders and restored to Genoa her
republican institutions.

The famed city-state of Florence may be taken as the best type of the
democratic community, controlled by a political leader. The city, as
famous for its free institutions as for its art, in the first half of
the fifteenth century had come under the tutelage of a family of
traders and bankers, the wealthy Medici, who preserved the republican
forms, and for a while, under Lorenzo de' Medici (1449-1492), surnamed
the Magnificent, made Florence the center of Italian culture and
civilization.

[Sidenote: Florence, a Type of the Cultured and Democratic Italian
City-State]

Soon after the death of Lorenzo, a democratic reaction took place under
an enthusiastic and puritanical monk, Savonarola, who welcomed the
advent of the French king, Charles VIII, in 1494, and aided materially
in the expulsion of the Medici. Savonarola soon fell a victim to the
plots of his Florentine enemies and to the vengeance of the pope, whom
Charles VIII had offended, and was put to death in 1498, The democracy
managed to survive until 1512 when the Medici returned. The city-state
of Florence subsequently became the grand-duchy of Tuscany.

[Sidenote: The Obscure Duchy of Savoy in 1500]

Before we take leave of the Italian states of the year 1500, mention
should be made of the insignificant duchy of Savoy, tucked away in the
fastnesses of the northwestern Alps, whose duke, after varying
fortunes, was to become, in the nineteenth century, king of a united
Italy.

[Sidenote: The City-States in the Netherlands]

The city-state was the dominant form of political organization not only
in Italy but also in the Netherlands. The Netherlands, or the Low
Countries, were seventeen provinces occupying the flat lowlands along
the North Sea,--the Holland, Belgium, and northern France of our own
day. Most of the inhabitants, Flemings and Dutch, spoke a language akin
to German, but in the south the Walloons used a French dialect. At
first the provinces had been mere feudal states at the mercy of various
warring noblemen, but gradually in the course of the twelfth,
thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, important towns had arisen so
wealthy and populous that they were able to wrest charters from the
lords. Thus arose a number of municipalities--practically self-
governing republics--semi-independent vassals of feudal nobles; and in
many cases the early oligarchic systems of municipal government
speedily gave way to more democratic institutions. Remarkable in
industry and prosperity were Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, Brussels, Liege,
Utrecht, Delft, Rotterdam, and many another.

[Sidenote: Relation of the City-Stats of the Netherlands to the Dukes
of Burgundy]

Beginning in 1384 and continuing throughout the fifteenth century, the
dukes of Burgundy, who as vassals of the French king had long held the
duchy of that name in eastern France, succeeded by marriage, purchase,
treachery, or force in bringing one by one the seventeen provinces of
the Netherlands under their rule. This extension of dominion on the
part of the dukes of Burgundy implied the establishment of a strong
monarchical authority, which was supported by the nobility and clergy
and opposed by the cities. In 1465 a common parliament, called the
States General, was constituted at Brussels, containing deputies from
each of the seventeen provinces; and eight years later a grand council
was organized with supreme judicial and financial functions. Charles
the Bold, who died in 1477, was prevented from constructing a great
central kingdom between France and the Germanies only by the shrewdness
of his implacable foe, King Louis XI of France. As we have seen, in
another connection, Louis seized the duchy of Burgundy on the death of
Charles the Bold, thereby extending the eastern frontier of France, but
the duke's inheritance in the Netherlands passed to his daughter Mary.
In 1477 Mary's marriage with Maximilian of Austria began the long
domination of the Netherlands by the house of Habsburg.

Throughout these political changes, the towns of the Netherlands
maintained many of their former privileges, and their prosperity
steadily increased. The country became the richest in Europe, and the
splendor of the ducal court surpassed that of any contemporary
sovereign. A permanent memorial of it remains in the celebrated Order
of the Golden Fleece, which was instituted by the duke of Burgundy in
the fifteenth century and was so named from the English wool, the raw
material used in the Flemish looms and the very foundation of the
country's fortunes.


4. NORTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPE IN THE YEAR 1500

[Sidenote: Northern and Eastern Europe of Small Importance in the
Sixteenth Century, but of Great Importance Subsequently]

We have now reviewed the states that were to be the main factors in the
historical events of the sixteenth century--the national monarchies of
England, France, Portugal, and Spain; the Holy Roman Empire of the
Germanies; and the city-states of Italy and the Netherlands. It may be
well, however, to point out that in northern and eastern Europe other
states had already come into existence, which subsequently were to
affect in no small degree the history of modern times, such as the
Scandinavian kingdoms, the tsardom of Muscovy, the feudal kingdoms of
Poland and Hungary, and the empire of the Ottoman Turks.

[Sidenote: Northwestern Europe: the Scandinavian Countries]

In the early homes of those Northmen who had long before ravaged the
coasts of England and France and southern Italy and had colonized
Iceland and Greenland, were situated in 1500 three kingdoms, Denmark,
Norway, and Sweden, corresponding generally to the present-day states
of those names. The three countries had many racial and social
characteristics in common, and they had been politically joined under
the king of Denmark by the Union of Calmar in 1397. This union never
evoked any popularity among the Swedes, and after a series of revolts
and disorders extending over fifty years, Gustavus Vasa (1523-1560)
established the independence of Sweden. Norway remained under Danish
kings until 1814.

[Sidenote: The Slavs in Central and Eastern Europe]

East of the Scandinavian peninsula and of the German-speaking
population of central Europe, spread out like a great fan, are a
variety of peoples who possess many common characteristics, including a
group of closely related languages, which are called Slavic. These
Slavs in the year 1500 included (1) the Russians, (2) the Poles and
Lithuanians, (3) the Czechs, or natives of Bohemia, within the confines
of the Holy Roman Empire, and (4) various nations in southeastern
Europe, such as the Serbs and Bulgars.

[Sidenote: Russia in 1500]

The Russians in 1500 did not possess such a huge autocratic state as
they do to-day. They were distributed among several principalities, the
chief and center of which was the grand-duchy of Muscovy, with Moscow
as its capital. Muscovy's reigning family was of Scandinavian
extraction but what civilization and Christianity the principalities
possessed had been brought by Greek missionaries from Constantinople.
For two centuries, from the middle of the thirteenth to the middle of
the fifteenth, the Russians paid tribute to Mongol [Footnote: The
Mongols were a people of central Asia, whose famous leader, Jenghiz
Khan (1162-1227), established an empire which stretched from the China
Sea to the banks of the Dnieper. It was these Mongols who drove the
Ottoman Turks from their original Asiatic home and thus precipitated
the Turkish invasion of Europe. After the death of Jenghiz Khan the
Mongol Empire was broken into a variety of "khanates," all of which in
course of time dwindled away. In the sixteenth century the Mongols
north of the Black Sea succumbed to the Turks as well as to the
Russians.] khans who had set up an Asiatic despotism north of the Black
Sea. The beginnings of Russian greatness are traceable to Ivan III, the
Great (1462-1505), [Footnote: Ivan IV (1533-1584), called "The
Terrible," a successor of Ivan III, assumed the title of "Tsar" in
1547.] who freed his people from Mongol domination, united the numerous
principalities, conquered the important cities of Novgorod and Pskov,
and extended his sway as far as the Arctic Ocean and the Ural
Mountains. Russia, however, could hardly then be called a modern state,
for the political and social life still smacked of Asia rather than of
Europe, and the Russian Christianity, having been derived from
Constantinople, differed from the Christianity of western Europe.
Russia was not to appear as a conspicuous European state until the
eighteenth century.

[Sidenote: Poland in 1500]

Southwest of the tsardom of Muscovy and east of the Holy Roman Empire
was the kingdom of Poland, to which Lithuanians as well as Poles owed
allegiance. Despite wide territories and a succession of able rulers,
Poland was a weak monarchy. Lack of natural boundaries made national
defense difficult. Civil war between the two peoples who composed the
state and foreign war with the neighboring Germans worked havoc and
distress. An obstructive parliament of great lords rendered effective
administration impossible. The nobles possessed the property and
controlled politics; in their hands the king gradually became a puppet.
Poland seemed committed to feudal society and feudal government at the
very time when the countries of western Europe were ridding themselves
of such checks upon the free growth of centralized national states.

[Sidenote: Hungary in 1500]

Somewhat similar to Poland in its feudal propensities was the kingdom
of Hungary, which an invasion of Asiatic tribesmen [Footnote:
Hungarians, or Magyars--different names for the same people.] in the
tenth century had driven like a wedge between the Slavs of the Balkan
peninsula and those of the north Poles and Russians. At first, the
efforts of such kings as St. Stephen (997-1038) promised the
development of a great state, but the weakness of the sovereigns in the
thirteenth century, the infiltration of western feudalism, and the
endless civil discords brought to the front a powerful and predatory
class of barons who ultimately overshadowed the throne. The brilliant
reign of Matthias Hunyadi (1458-1490) was but an exception to the
general rule. Not only were the kings obliged to struggle against the
nobles for their very existence--the crown was elective in Hungary--but
no rulers had to contend with more or greater enemies on their
frontiers. To the north there was perpetual conflict with the Habsburgs
of German Austria and with the forces of the Holy Roman Empire; to the
east there were spasmodic quarrels with the Vlachs, the natives of
modern Rumania; to the south there was continual fighting, at first
with the Greeks and the Slavs--Serbs and Bulgars, and later, most
terrible of all, with the Ottoman Turks.

[Sidenote: The Ottoman Turks in 1500]

To the Eastern Roman Empire, with Constantinople as its capital, and
with the Greeks as its dominant population, and to the medieval
kingdoms of the Bulgars and Serbs, had succeeded by the year 1500 the
empire of the Ottoman Turks. The Ottoman Turks were a tribe of Asiatic
Mohammedans who took their name from a certain Othman (died 1326),
under whom they had established themselves in Asia Minor, across the
Bosphorus from Constantinople. Thence they rapidly extended their
dominion over Syria, and over Greece and the Balkan peninsula, except
the little mountain state of Montenegro, and in 1453 they captured
Constantinople. The lands conquered by the arms of the Turks were
divided into large estates for the military leaders, or else assigned
to the maintenance of mosques and schools, or converted into common and
pasturage lands; the conquered Christians were reduced to the payment
of tribute and a life of serfdom. For two centuries the Turks were to
remain a source of grave apprehension to Europe.


ADDITIONAL READINGS


THE NATIONAL MONARCHIES ABOUT 1600. A. F. Pollard, _Factors in European
History_ (1907), ch. i on "Nationality" and ch. iii on "The New
Monarchy"; _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. I, ch. xiv, xii, xi;
_Histoire générale_, Vol. IV, ch. xiii, iv, v; _History of All
Nations_, Vol. X, ch. xii-xvi; A. H. Johnson, _Europe in the Sixteenth
Century_ (1897), ch. i, ii; Mary A. Hollings, _Renaissance and
Reformation_ (1910), ch. i-v. On England: A. L. Cross, _History of
England and Greater Britain_ (1914), ch. xviii; J. F. Bright, _History
of England_, Vol. II, a standard work; James Gairdner, _Henry VII_
(1889), a reliable short biography; Gladys Temperley, _Henry VII_
(1914), fairly reliable and quite readable; H. A. L. Fisher, _Political
History of England 1485-1547_ (1906), ch. i-iv, brilliant and
scholarly; A. D. Innes, _History of England and the British Empire_
(1914), Vol. II, ch. i, ii; William Cunningham, _The Growth of English
Industry and Commerce in Modern Times_, 5th ed., 3 vols. (1910-1912),
Vol. I, Book V valuable for social conditions under Henry VII; William
(Bishop) Stubbs, _Lectures on Mediæval and Modern History_, ch. xv,
xvi; F. W. Maitland, _The Constitutional History of England_ (1908),
Period II. On Scotland: P. H. Brown, _History of Scotland_, 3 vols.
(1899-1909), Vol. I from earliest times to the middle of the sixteenth
century; Andrew Lang, _A History of Scotland_, 2d ed., 4 vols. (1901-
1907), Vol. I. On France: A. J. Grant, _The French Monarchy, 1483-
1789_, 2 vols. (1900), Vol. I, ch. i, ii, brief and general; G. B.
Adams, _The Growth of the French Nation_ (1896), ch. viii-x, a
suggestive sketch; G. W. Kitchin, _A History of France_, 4th ed., 3
vols. (1894-1899), Vol. I and Vol. II (in part), dry and narrowly
political; Lavisse (editor), _Histoire de France_, Vol. V, Part I
(1903), an exhaustive and scholarly study. On Spain and Portugal: E. P.
Cheyney, _European Background of American History_ (1904), pp. 60-103;
U. R. Burke, _A History of Spain from the Earliest Times to the Death
of Ferdinand the Catholic_, 2d ed., 2 vols. (1900), edited by M. A. S.
Hume, Vol. II best account of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella; W.
H. Prescott, _History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella_, 3 vols.
(1836), antiquated but extremely readable; Mrs. Julia Cartwright,
_Isabella the Catholic_ (1914), in "Heroes of the Nations" Series; H.
M. Stephens, _Portugal_ (1891) in "Story of the Nations" Series; F. W.
Schirrmacher, _Geschichte von Spanien_, 7 vols. (1902), an elaborate
German work, of which Vol. VII covers the years 1492-1516.

THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. I (1902), ch.
ix, a political sketch; James (Viscount) Bryce, _The Holy Roman
Empire_, new ed. revised (1911); William Coxe, _History of the House of
Austria_, Bohn edition, 4 vols. (1893-1894), a century-old work but
still useful for Habsburg history; Sidney Whitman, _Austria_ (1899),
and, by the same author, _The Realm of the Habsburgs_ (1893) 5 Kurt
Kaser, _Deutsche Geschichte zur Zeit Maximilians I, 1486-1519_ (1912),
an excellent study appearing in "Bibliothek deutscher Geschichte,"
edited by Von Zwiedineck-Südenhorst; Franz Krones, _Handbuch der
Geschichte Oesterreichs von der altesten Zeit_, 5 vols. (1876-1879), of
which Vol. II, Book XI treats of political events in Austria from 1493
to 1526 and Vol. III, Book XII of constitutional development 1100-1526;
Leopold von Ranke, _History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations_, 1494-
1514, a rev. trans. in the Bohn Library (1915) of the earliest
important work of this distinguished historian, published originally in
1824.

ITALY AND THE CITY STATES. _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. I (1902),
ch. iv-viii; _Histoire générale, Vol. IV, ch. i, ii; Mrs. H. M. Vernon,
_Italy from 1494 to 1790_ (1909), a clear account in the "Cambridge
Historical Series"; J. A. Symonds, _Age of the Despots_ (1883),
pleasant but inclined to the picturesque; Pompeo Molmenti, _Venice, its
Individual Growth from the Earliest Beginnings to the Fall of the
Republic_, trans. by H. F. Brown, 6 vols. (1906-1908), an exhaustive
narrative of the details of Venetian history; Edward Armstrong,
_Lorenzo de' Medici_ (1897), in the "Heroes of the Nations" Series,
valuable for Florentine history about 1500; Col. G. F. Young, _The
Medici_, 2 vols. (1909), an extended history of this famous Florentine
family from 1400 to 1743; Ferdinand Gregorovius, _History of the City
of Rome in the Middle Ages_, trans. from 4th German ed. by Annie
Hamilton, 8 vols. in 13, a non-Catholic account of the papal monarchy
in Italy, of which Vol. VII, Part II and Vol. VIII, Part I treat of
Rome about 1500. For the city-states of the Netherlands see _Cambridge
Modern History_, Vol. I (1902), ch. xiii; the monumental _History of
the People of the Netherlands_, by the distinguished Dutch historian P.
J. Blok, trans. by O. A. Bierstadt, 5 vols. (1898-1912), especially
Vols. I and II; and _Belgian Democracy: its Early History_, trans. by
J. V. Saunders (1915) from the authoritative work of the famous Belgian
historian Henri Pirenne (1910). For the German city-states see
references under HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE above.

NORTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPE ABOUT 1500. General: _Cambridge Modern
History_, Vol. I (1902), ch. x, iii; _Histoire générale, Vol. IV, ch.
xviii-xxi; R. N. Bain, _Slavonic Europe: a Political History of Poland
and Russia from 1447 to 1796_ (1908), ch. i-iv; T. Schiemann,
_Russland, Polen, und Livland bis ins 17ten Jahrhundert_, 2 vols.
(1886-1887). Norway: H. H. Boyesen, _The History of Norway_ (1886), a
brief popular account in "Story of the Nations" Series. Muscovy: V. O.
Kliuchevsky, _A History of Russia_, trans. with some abridgments by C.
J. Hogarth, 3 vols. to close of seventeenth century (1911-1913), latest
and, despite faulty translation, most authoritative work on early
Russian history now available in English; Alfred Rambaud, _Histoire de
la Russie depuis les origines jusqu'à nos jours_, 6th ed. completed to
1913 by Émile Haumant (1914), a brilliant work, of which the portion
down to 1877 has been trans. by Leonora B. Lang, 2 vols. (1879); W. R.
A. Morfill, _Russia_, in "Story of the Nations" Series, and _Poland_, a
companion volume in the same series. See also Jeremiah Curtin, _The
Mongols: a History_ (1908). For the Magyars: C. M. Knatchbull-Hugessen,
_The Political Evolution of the Hungarian Nation_, 2 vols. (1908),
especially Vol. I, ch. i-iii; A. Vámbéry, _The Story of Hungary_ (1886)
in "Story of the Nations" Series; Count Julius Andrássy, _The
Development of Hungarian Constitutional Liberty_, trans. by C. Arthur
and Ilona Ginever (1908), the views of a contemporary Magyar statesman
on the constitutional development of his country throughout the middle
ages and down to 1619, difficult to read. For the Ottoman Turks and the
Balkan peoples: Stanley Lane-Poole, _Turkey_ (1889), in "Story of the
Nations" Series, best brief introduction; A. H. Lybyer, _The Government
of the Ottoman Empire in the Time of Suleiman the Magnificent_ (1913);
Prince and Princess Lazarovich-Hrebelianovich, _The Servian People,
their Past Glory and their Destiny_, 2 vols. (1910), particularly Vol.
II, ch. xi, xii; far more pretentious works are, Joseph von Hammer,
_Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches_, 2d ed., 4 vols. (1834-1835), and
Nicolae Jorga, _Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches nach den Quellen
dargestellt_, 5 vols. (1908-1913), especially Vol. II, _1451-1538_,
and H. A. Gibbons, _The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire _(1916),
covering the earlier years, from 1300 to 1403.




CHAPTER II

THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION


[Sidenote: Introductory]

Five hundred years ago a European could search in vain the map of "the
world" for America, or Australia, or the Pacific Ocean. Experienced
mariners, and even learned geographers, were quite unaware that beyond
the Western Sea lay two great continents peopled by red men; of Africa
they knew only the northern coast; and in respect of Asia a thousand
absurd tales passed current. The unexplored waste of waters that
constituted the Atlantic Ocean was, to many ignorant Europeans of the
fifteenth century, a terrible region frequented by fierce and fantastic
monsters. To the average European the countries surveyed in the
preceding chapter, together with their Mohammedan neighbors across the
Mediterranean, still comprised the entire known world.

Shortly before the close of the fifteenth century, daring captains
began to direct long voyages on the high seas and to discover the
existence of new lands; and from that time to the present, Europeans
have been busily exploring and conquering--veritably "Europeanizing"--
the whole globe. Although religion as well as commerce played an
important role in promoting the process, the movement was attended from
the very outset by so startling a transformation in the routes,
methods, and commodities of trade that usually it has been styled the
Commercial Revolution. By the close of the sixteenth century it had
proceeded far enough to indicate that its results would rank among the
most fateful events of all history.

It was in the commonplace affairs of everyday life that the Commercial
Revolution was destined to produce its most far-reaching results. To
appreciate, therefore, its true nature and significance, we must first
turn aside to ascertain how our European ancestors actually lived about
the year 1500, and what work they did to earn their living. Then, after
recounting the story of foreign exploration and colonization, we shall
be in a position to reappraise the domestic situation in town and on
the farm.


AGRICULTURE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

[Sidenote: Differences between Sixteenth-century Farming and That of
To-day]

Agriculture has always been the ultimate basis of society, but in the
sixteenth century it was of greater relative importance than it is now.
People then reckoned their wealth, not by the quantity of stocks and
bonds they held, but by the extent of land they owned. Farming was
still the occupation of the vast majority of the population of every
European state, for the towns were as yet small in size and few in
number. The "masses" lived in the country, not, as to-day, in the city.

A twentieth-century observer would be struck by other peculiarities of
sixteenth-century agriculture. He would find a curious organization of
rural society, strange theories of land-ownership, and most unfamiliar
methods of tillage. He would discover, moreover, that practically each
farm was self-sufficing, producing only what its own occupants could
consume, and that consequently there was comparatively little external
trade in farm produce. From these facts he would readily understand
that the rural communities in the year 1500, numerous yet isolated,
were invulnerable strongholds of conservatism and ignorance.

[Sidenote: Two Rural Classes: Nobility and Peasantry]

In certain respects a remarkable uniformity prevailed in rural
districts throughout all Europe. Whether one visited Germany, Hungary,
France, or England, one was sure to find the agricultural population
sharply divided into two social classes--nobility and peasantry. There
might be varying gradations of these classes in different regions, but
certain general distinctions everywhere prevailed.

[Sidenote: The Nobility]

The nobility [Footnote: As a part of the nobility must be included at
the opening of the sixteenth century many of the higher clergy of the
Catholic Church--archbishops, bishops, and abbots--who owned large
landed estates quite like their lay brethren.] comprised men who gained
a living from the soil without manual labor. They held the land on
feudal tenure, that is to say, they had a right to be supported by the
peasants living on their estates, and, in return, they owed to some
higher or wealthier nobleman or to the king certain duties, such as
fighting for him, [Footnote: This obligation rested only upon lay
noblemen, not upon ecclesiastics.] attending his court at specified
times, and paying him various irregular taxes (the feudal dues). The
estate of each nobleman might embrace a single farm, or "manor" as it
was called, inclosing a petty hamlet, or village; or it might include
dozens of such manors; or, if the landlord were a particularly mighty
magnate or powerful prelate, it might stretch over whole counties.

Each nobleman had his manor-house or, if he were rich enough, his
castle, lording it over the humble thatch-roofed cottages of the
villagers. In his stables were spirited horses and a carriage adorned
with his family crest; he had servants and lackeys, a footman to open
his carriage door, a game-warden to keep poachers from shooting his
deer, and men-at-arms to quell disturbances, to aid him against
quarrelsome neighbors, or to follow him to the wars. While he lived, he
might occupy the best pew in the village church; when he died, he would
be laid to rest within the church where only noblemen were buried.

[Sidenote: Reason for the Preëminence of the Nobility]

In earlier times, when feudal society was young, the nobility had
performed a very real service as the defenders of the peasants against
foreign enemies and likewise against marauders and bandits of whom the
land had been full. Then fighting had been the profession of the
nobility, And to enable them to possess the expensive accoutrements of
fighting--horses, armor, swords, and lances--the kings and the peasants
had assured them liberal incomes.

Now, however, at the opening of the sixteenth century, the palmy days
of feudalism were past and gone. Later generations of noblemen,
although they continued by right of inheritance to enjoy the financial
income and the social prestige which their forbears had earned, no
longer served king, country, or common people in the traditional
manner. At least in the national monarchies it was the king who now had
undertaken the defense of the land and the preservation of peace; and
the nobleman, deprived of his old occupation, had little else to do
than to hunt, or quarrel with other noblemen, or engage in political
intrigues. More and more the nobility, especially in France, were
attracted to a life of amusement and luxury in the royal court. The
nobility already had outlived its usefulness, yet it retained its old-
time privileges.

[Sidenote: The Peasantry]

In striking contrast to the nobility--the small minority of land-owning
aristocrats--were the peasantry--the mass of the people. They were the
human beings who had to toil for their bread in the sweat of their
brows and who were deemed of ignoble birth, as social inferiors, and as
stupid and rude. Actual farm work was "servile labor," and between the
man whose hands were stained by servile labor and the person of "gentle
birth" a wide gulf was fixed.

[Sidenote: Serfdom and the Manorial System]

During the early middle ages most of the peasants throughout Europe
were "serfs." For various reasons, which we shall explain presently,
serfdom had tended gradually to and the die out in western Europe, but
at the opening of the sixteenth century most of the agricultural
laborers in eastern and central Europe, and even a considerable number
in France, were still serfs, living and working on nobles' manors in
accordance with ancient customs which can be described collectively as
the "manorial system."

The serf occupied a position in rural society which it is difficult for
us to understand. He was not a slave, such as was usual in the Southern
States of the American Union before the Civil War; he was neither a
hired man nor a rent-paying tenant-farmer, such as is common enough in
all agricultural communities nowadays. The serf was not a slave,
because he was free to work for himself at least part of the time; he
could not be sold to another master; and he could not be deprived of
the right to cultivate land for his own benefit. He was not a hired
man, for he received no wages. And he was not a tenant-farmer, inasmuch
as he was "attached to the soil," that is, he was bound to stay and
work on his land, unless he succeeded in running away or in purchasing
complete freedom, in which case he would cease to be a serf and would
become a freeman.

[Sidenote: Obligations of the Serf to the Lord]

To the lord of the manor the serf was under many and varied
obligations, the most essential of which may be grouped conveniently as
follows: (1) The serf had to work without pay two or three days in each
week on the strips of land and the fields whose produce belonged
exclusively to the nobleman. In the harvest season extra days, known as
"boon-days," were stipulated on which the serf must leave his own work
in order to harvest for the lord. He also might be called upon in
emergencies to draw a cord of wood from the forest to the great manor-
house, or to work upon the highway (_corvée_). (2) The serf had to
pay occasional dues, customarily "in kind." Thus at certain feast-days
he was expected to bring a dozen fat fowls or a bushel of grain to the
pantry of the manor-house. (3) Ovens, wine-presses, gristmills, and
bridges were usually owned solely by the nobleman, and each time the
peasant used them he was obliged to give one of his loaves of bread, a
share of his wine, a bushel of his grain, or a toll-fee, as a kind of
rent, or "banality" as it was euphoniously styled. (4) If the serf died
without heirs, his holdings were transferred outright to the lord, and
if he left heirs, the nobleman had the rights of "heriot," that is, to
appropriate the best animal owned by the deceased peasant, and of
"relief," that is, to oblige the designated heir to make a definite
additional payment that was equivalent to a kind of inheritance tax.

[Sidenote: Free-Tenants]

As has been intimated, the manorial system was already on a steady
decline, especially in western Europe, at the opening of the sixteenth
century. A goodly number of peasants who had once been serfs were now
free-tenants, lessees, or hired laborers. Of course rent of farm-land
in our present sense--each owner of the land letting out his property
to a tenant and, in return, exacting as large a monetary payment as
possible--was then unknown. But there was a growing class of peasants
who were spoken of as free-tenants to distinguish them from serf-
tenants. These free-tenants, while paying regular dues, as did the
others, were not compelled to work two or three days every week in the
lord's fields, except occasionally in busy seasons such as harvest;
they were free to leave the estate and to marry off their daughters or
to sell their oxen without the consent of the lord; and they came to
regard their customary payments to the lord not so much as his due for
their protection as actual rent for their land.

[Sidenote: Hired Laborers]

While more prosperous peasants were becoming free-tenants, many of
their poorer neighbors found it so difficult to gain a living as serfs
that they were willing to surrender all claim to their own little
strips of land on the manor and to devote their whole time to working
for fixed wages on the fields which were cultivated for the nobleman
himself, the so-called lord's demesne. Thus a body of hired laborers
grew up claiming no land beyond that on which their miserable huts
stood and possibly their small garden-plots.

[Sidenote: Métayers]

Besides hired laborers and free-tenants, a third group of peasants
appeared in places where the noble proprietor did not care to
superintend the cultivation of his own land. In this case he parceled
it out among particular peasants, furnishing each with livestock and a
plow and expecting in return a fixed proportion of the crops, which in
France usually amounted to one-half. Peasants who made such a bargain
were called in France _métayers_, and in England "stock-and-land
lessees." The arrangement was not different essentially from the
familiar present-day practice of working a farm "on shares."

[Sidenote: Steady Decline of Serfdom]

In France and in England the serfs had mostly become hired laborers,
tenants, or _métayers_ by the sixteenth century. The obligations
of serfdom had proved too galling for the serf and too unprofitable for
the lord. It was much easier and cheaper for the latter to hire men to
work just when he needed them, than to bother with serfs, who could not
be discharged readily for slackness, and who naturally worked for
themselves far more zealously than for him. For this reason many
landlords were glad to allow their serfs to make payments in money or
in grain in lieu of the performance of customary labor. In England,
moreover, many lords, finding it profitable to inclose [Footnote: There
were no fences on the old manors. Inclosing a plot of ground meant
fencing or hedging it in.] their land in order to utilize it as
pasturage for sheep, voluntarily freed their serfs. The result was that
serfdom virtually had disappeared in England before the sixteenth
century. In France as early as the fourteenth century the bulk of the
serfs had purchased their liberty, although in a few districts serfdom
remained in its pristine vigor until the French Revolution.

In other countries agricultural conditions were more backward and
serfdom longer survived. Prussian and Austrian landowners retained
their serfs until the nineteenth century; the emancipation of Russian
serfs on a large scale was not inaugurated until 1861. There are still
survivals of serfdom in parts of eastern Europe.

[Sidenote: Survival of Servile Obligations after Decline of Serfdom]

Emancipation from serfdom by no means released the peasants from all
the disabilities under which they labored as serfs. True, the freeman
no longer had week-work to do, provided he could pay for his time, and
in theory at least he could marry as he chose and move freely from
place to place. But he might still be called upon for an occasional
day's labor, he still was expected to work on the roads, and he still
had to pay annoying fees for oven, mill, and wine-press. Then, too, his
own crops might be eaten with impunity by doves from the noble dovecote
or trampled underfoot by a merry hunting-party from the manor-house.
The peasant himself ventured not to hunt: he was precluded even from
shooting the deer that devoured his garden. Certain other customs
prevailed in various localities, conceived originally no doubt in a
spirit of good-natured familiarity between noble and peasants, but now
grown irritating if none the less humorous. It is said, for instance,
that in some places newly married couples were compelled to vault the
wall of the churchyard, and that on certain nights the peasants were
obliged to beat the castle ditch in order to rest the lord's family
from the dismal croaking of the frogs.

[Sidenote: Persistence of "Three-field System" of Agriculture]

In another important respect the manorial system survived long after
serfdom had begun to decline. This was the method of doing farm work. A
universal and insistent tradition had fixed agricultural method on the
medieval manor and tended to preserve it unaltered well into modern
times. The tradition was that of the "three-field system" of
agriculture. The land of the manor, which might vary in amount from a
few hundred to five thousand acres, was not divided up into farms of
irregular shape and size, as it would be now. The waste-land, which
could be used only for pasture, and the woodland on the outskirts of
the clearing, were treated as "commons," that is to say, each villager,
as well as the lord of the manor, might freely gather fire-wood, or he
might turn his swine loose to feed on the acorns in the forest and his
cattle to graze over the entire pasture. The cultivable or arable land
was divided into several--usually three--great grain fields. Ridges or
"balks" of unplowed turf divided each field into long parallel strips,
which were usually forty rods or a furlong (furrow-long) in length, and
from one to four rods wide. Each peasant had exclusive right to one or
more of these strips in each of the three great fields, making, say,
thirty acres in all; [Footnote: In some localities it was usual to
redistribute these strips every year. In that way the greater part of
the manor was theoretically "common" land, and no peasant had a right
of private ownership to any one strip.] the lord too had individual
right to a number of strips in the great fields.

[Sidenote: Disadvantages of Three-field System of Agriculture]

This so-called three-field system of agriculture was distinctly
disadvantageous in many ways. Much time was wasted in going back and
forth between the scattered plots of land. The individual peasant,
moreover, was bound by custom to cultivate his land precisely as his
ancestors had done, without attempting to introduce improvements. He
grew the same crops as his neighbors--usually wheat or rye in one
field; beans or barley in the second; and nothing in the third. Little
was known about preserving the fertility of the soil by artificial
manuring or by rotation of crops; and, although every year one-third of
the land was left "fallow" (uncultivated) in order to restore its
fertility, the yield per acre was hardly a fourth as large as now. Farm
implements were of the crudest kind; scythes and sickles did the work
of mowing machines; plows were made of wood, occasionally shod with
iron; and threshing was done with flails. After the grain had been
harvested, cattle were turned out indiscriminately on the stubble, on
the supposition that the fields were common property. It was useless to
attempt to breed fine cattle when all were herded together. The breed
deteriorated, and both cattle and sheep were undersized and poor. A
full-grown ox was hardly larger than a good-sized calf of the present
time. Moreover, there were no potatoes or turnips, and few farmers grew
clover or other grasses for winter fodder. It was impossible,
therefore, to keep many cattle through the winter; most of the animals
were killed off in the autumn and salted down for the long winter
months when it was impossible to secure fresh meat.

[Sidenote: Peasant Life on the Manor]

Crude farm-methods and the heavy dues exacted by the lord [Footnote: In
addition to the dues paid to the lay lord, the peasants were under
obligation to make a regular contribution to the church, which was
called the "tithe" and amounted to a share, less than a tenth, of the
annual crops.] of the manor must have left the poor man little for
himself. Compared with the comfort of the farmer today, the poverty of
sixteenth-century peasants must have been inexpressibly distressful.
How keenly the cold pierced the dark huts of the poorest, is hard for
us to imagine. The winter diet of salt meat, the lack of vegetables,
the chronic filth and squalor, and the sorry ignorance of all laws of
health opened the way to disease and contagion. And if the crops
failed, famine was added to plague.

On the other hand we must not forget that the tenement-houses of our
great cities have been crowded in the nineteenth century with people
more miserable than ever was serf of the middle ages. The serf, at any
rate, had the open air instead of a factory in which to work. When
times were good, he had grain and meat in plenty, and possibly wine or
cider, and he hardly envied the tapestried chambers, the bejeweled
clothes, and the spiced foods of the nobility, for he looked upon them
as belonging to a different world.

In one place nobleman and peasant met on a common footing--in the
village church. There, on Sundays and feast-days, they came together as
Christians to hear Mass; and afterwards, perhaps, holiday games and
dancing on the green, benignantly patronized by the lord's family,
helped the common folk to forget their labors. The village priest,
[Footnote: Usually very different from the higher clergy, who had large
landed estates of their own, the parish priests had but modest incomes
from the tithes of their parishioners and frequently eked out a living
by toiling on allotted patches of ground. The monks too were ordinarily
poor, although the monastery might be wealthy, and they likewise often
tilled the fields.] himself often of humble birth, though the most
learned man on the manor, was at once the friend and benefactor of the
poor and the spiritual director of the lord. Occasionally a visit of
the bishop to administer confirmation to the children, afforded an
opportunity for gayety and universal festivity.

[Sidenote: Rural Isolation and Conservatism]

At other times there was little to disturb the monotony of village life
and little to remind it of the outside world, except when a gossiping
peddler chanced along, or when the squire rode away to court or to war.
Intercourse with other villages was unnecessary, unless there were no
blacksmith or miller on the spot. The roads were poor and in wet
weather impassable. Travel was largely on horseback, and what few
commodities were carried from place to place were transported by pack-
horses. Only a few old soldiers, and possibly a priest, had traveled
very much; they were the only geographies and the only books of travel
which the village possessed, for few peasants could read or write.

Self-sufficient and secluded from the outer world, the rural village
went on treasuring its traditions, keeping its old customs, century
after century. The country instinctively distrusted all novelties; it
always preferred old ways to new; it was heartily conservative.
Country-folk did not discover America. It was the enterprise of the
cities, with their growing industries and commerce, which brought about
the Commercial Revolution; and to the development of commerce,
industry, and the towns, we now must turn our attention.


TOWNS ON THE EVE OF THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION

[Sidenote: Trade and the Towns ]

Except for the wealthy Italian city-states and a few other cities which
traced their history back to Roman times, most European towns, it must
be remembered, dated only from the later middle ages. At first there
was little excuse for their existence except to sell to farmers salt,
fish, iron, and a few plows. But with the increase of commerce, which,
as we shall see, especially marked the thirteenth, fourteenth, and
fifteenth centuries, more merchants traveled through the country, ways
of spending money multiplied, and the little agricultural villages
learned to look on the town as the place to buy not only luxuries but
such tools, clothing, and shoes as could be manufactured more
conveniently by skillful town artisans than by clumsy rustics. The
towns, moreover, became exchanges where surplus farm products could be
marketed, where wine could be bartered for wool, or wheat for flax. And
as the towns grew in size, the prosperous citizens proved to be the
best customers for foreign luxuries, and foreign trade grew apace.
Town, trade, and industry thus worked together: trade stimulated
industry, industry assisted trade, and the town profited by both. By
the sixteenth century the towns had grown out of their infancy and were
maintaining a great measure of political and economic freedom.

[Sidenote: Freedom of the Towns.]
[Sidenote: Town Charters]

Originally many a town had belonged to some nobleman's extensive manor
and its inhabitants had been under much the same servile obligations to
the lord as were the strictly rural serfs. But with the lapse of time
and the growth of the towns, the townsmen or burghers had begun a
struggle for freedom from their feudal lords. They did not want to pay
servile dues to a baron, but preferred to substitute a fixed annual
payment for individual obligations; they besought the right to manage
their market; they wished to have cases at law tried in a court of
their own rather than in the feudal court over which the nobleman
presided; and they demanded the right to pay all taxes in a lump sum
for the town, themselves assessing and collecting the share of each
citizen. These concessions they eventually had won, and each city had
its charter, in which its privileges were enumerated and recognized by
the authority of the nobleman, or of the king, to whom the city owed
allegiance. In England these charters had been acquired generally by
merchant gilds, upon payment of a substantial sum to the nobleman; in
France frequently the townsmen had formed associations, called
_communes_, and had rebelled successfully against their feudal
lords; in Germany the cities had leagued together for mutual protection
and for the acquisition of common privileges. Other towns, formerly
founded by bishops, abbots, or counts, had received charters at the
very outset.

[Sidenote: Merchant Gilds]

A peculiar outgrowth of the need for protection against oppressive
feudal lords, as well as against thieves, swindlers, and dishonest
workmen, had been the typically urban organization known as the
merchant gild or the merchants' company. In the year 1500 the merchant
gilds were everywhere on the decline, but they still preserved many of
their earlier and more glorious traditions. At the time of their
greatest importance they had embraced merchants, butchers, bakers, and
candlestick-makers: in fact, all who bought or sold in the town were
included in the gild. And the merchant gild had then possessed the
widest functions.

[Sidenote: Earlier Functions of the Merchant Gild.]
[Sidenote: Social]

Its social and religious functions, inherited from much earlier bodies,
consisted in paying some special honor to a patron saint, in giving aid
to members in sickness or misfortune, attending funerals, and also in
the more enjoyable meetings when the freely flowing bowl enlivened the
transaction of gild business.

[Sidenote: Protective]

As a protective organization, the gild had been particularly effective.
Backed by the combined forces of all the gildsmen, it was able to
assert itself against the lord who claimed manorial rights over the
town, and to insist that a runaway serf who had lived in the town for a
year and a day should not be dragged back to perform his servile labor
on the manor, but should be recognized as a freeman. The protection of
the gild was accorded also to townsmen on their travels. In those days
all strangers were regarded as suspicious persons, and not infrequently
when a merchant of the gild traveled to another town he would be set
upon and robbed or cast into prison. In such cases it was necessary for
the gild to ransom the imprisoned "brother" and, if possible, to punish
the persons who had done the injury, so that thereafter the liberties
of the gild members would be respected. That the business of the gild
might be increased, it was often desirable to enter into special
arrangements with neighboring cities whereby the rights, lives, and
properties of gildsmen were guaranteed; and the gild as a whole was
responsible for the debts of any of its members.

[Sidenote: Regulative]

The most important duty of the gild had been the regulation of the home
market. Burdensome restrictions were laid upon the stranger who
attempted to utilize the advantages of the market without sharing the
expense of maintenance. No goods were allowed to be carried away from
the city if the townsmen wished to buy; and a tax, called in France the
_octroi_, was levied on goods brought into the town. [Footnote:
The _octroi_ is still collected in Paris.] Moreover, a conviction
prevailed that the gild was morally bound to enforce honest
straightforward methods of business; and the "wardens" appointed by the
gild to supervise the market endeavored to prevent, as dishonest
practices, "forestalling" (buying outside of the regular market),
"engrossing" (cornering the market), [Footnote: The idea that
"combinations in restraint of trade" are wrong quite possibly goes back
to this abhorrence of engrossing.] and "regrating" (retailing at higher
than market price). The dishonest green grocer was not allowed to use a
peck-measure with false bottom, for weighing and measuring were done by
officials. Cheats were fined heavily and, if they persisted in their
evil ways, they might be expelled from the gild.

These merchant gilds, with their social, protective, and regulative
functions, had first begun to be important in the eleventh century. In
England, where their growth was most rapid, 82 out of the total of 102
towns had merchant gilds by the end of the thirteenth century.
[Footnote: Several important places, such as London, Colchester, and
Norwich, belonged to the small minority without merchant gilds.] On the
Continent many towns, especially in Germany, had quite different
arrangements, and where merchant gilds existed, they were often
exclusive and selfish groups of merchants in a single branch of
business.

[Sidenote: Decline of Merchant Guilds]

With the expansion of trade and industry in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries the rule of the old merchant gilds, instead of
keeping pace with the times, became oppressive, limited, or merely
nominal. Where the merchant gilds became oppressive oligarchical
associations, as they did in Germany and elsewhere on the Continent,
they lost their power by the revolt of the more democratic "craft
gilds." In England specialized control of industry and trade by craft
gilds, journeymen's gilds, and dealers' associations gradually took the
place of the general supervision of the older merchant gild. After
suffering the loss of its vital functions, the merchant gild by the
sixteenth century either quietly succumbed or lived on with power in a
limited branch of trade, or continued as an honorary organization with
occasional feasts, or, and this was especially true in England, it
became practically identical with the town corporation, from which
originally it had been distinct.

[Sidenote: Industry: the Craft Guilds]

Alongside of the merchant gilds, which had been associated with the
growth of commerce and the rise of towns, were other guilds connected
with the growth of industry, which retained their importance long after
1500. These were the craft gilds. [Footnote: The craft gild was also
called a company, or a mistery, or _métier_ (French), or _Zunft_
(German).] Springing into prominence in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, the craft gild sometimes, as in Germany, voiced a popular
revolt against corrupt and oligarchical merchant gilds, and
sometimes most frequently so in England--worked quite harmoniously with
the merchant gild, to which its own members belonged. In common with
the merchant gild, the craft gild had religious and social aspects, and
like the merchant gild it insisted on righteous dealings; but unlike
the merchant gild it was composed of men in a single industry, and it
controlled in detail the manufacture as well as the marketing of
commodities. There were bakers' gilds, brewers' gilds, smiths' gilds,
saddlers' gilds, shoemakers' gilds, weavers' gilds, tailors' gilds,
tanners' gilds, even gilds of masters of arts who constituted the
teaching staff of colleges and universities.

When to-day we speak of a boy "serving his apprenticeship" in a trade,
we seldom reflect that the expression is derived from a practice of the
medieval craft gilds, a practice which survived after the gilds were
extinct. Apprenticeship was designed to make sure that recruits to the
trade were properly trained. The apprentice was usually selected as a
boy by a master-workman and indentured--that is, bound to work several
years without wages, while living at the master's house. After the
expiration of this period of apprenticeship, during which he had
learned his trade thoroughly, the youth became a "journeyman," and
worked for wages, until he should finally receive admission to the gild
as a master, with the right to set up his own little shop, with
apprentices and journeymen of his own, and to sell his wares directly
to those who used them.

This restriction of membership was not the only way in which the trade
was supervised. The gild had rules specifying the quality of materials
to be used and often, likewise, the methods of manufacture; it might
prohibit night-work, and it usually fixed a "fair price" at which goods
were to be sold. By means of such provisions, enforced by wardens or
inspectors, the gild not only perpetuated the "good old way" of doing
things, but guaranteed to the purchaser a thoroughly good article at a
fair price.

[Sidenote: Partial Decay of Craft Gilds]

By the opening of the sixteenth century the craft gilds, though not so
weakened as the merchant gilds, were suffering from various internal
diseases which sapped their vitality. They tended to become exclusive
and to direct their power and affluence in hereditary grooves. They
steadily raised their entrance fees and qualifications. Struggles
between gilds in allied trades, such as spinning, weaving, fulling, and
dyeing, often resulted in the reduction of several gilds to a dependent
position. The regulation of the processes of manufacture, once designed
to keep up the standard of skill, came in time to be a powerful
hindrance to technical improvements; and in the method as well as in
the amount of his work, the enterprising master found himself
handicapped. Even the old conscientiousness often gave way to greed,
until in many places inferior workmanship received the approval of the
gild.

Many craft gilds exhibited in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a
tendency to split somewhat along the present lines of capital and
labor. On the one hand the old gild organization would be usurped and
controlled by the wealthier master-workmen, called "livery men,"
because they wore rich uniforms, or a class of dealers would arise and
organize a "merchants' company" to conduct a wholesale business in the
products of a particular industry. Thus the rich drapers sold all the
cloth, but did not help to make it. On the other hand it became
increasingly difficult for journeymen and apprentices to rise to the
station of masters; oftentimes they remained wage-earners for life. In
order to better their condition they formed new associations, which in
England were called journeymen's or yeomen's companies. These new
organizations were symptomatic of injustice but otherwise unimportant.
The craft gilds, with all their imperfections, were to continue in
power awhile longer, slowly giving away as new trades arose outside of
their control, gradually succumbing in competition with capitalists who
refused to be bound by gild rules and who were to evolve a new
"domestic system," [Footnote: See Vol. II, ch xviii.] and slowly
suffering diminution of prestige through royal interference.

[Sidenote: Life in the Towns]

In the year 1500 the European towns displayed little uniformity in
government or in the amount of liberty they possessed. Some were petty
republics subject only in a very vague way to an extraneous potentate;
some merely paid annual tribute to a lord; some were administered by
officers of a king or feudal magnate; others were controlled by
oligarchical commercial associations. But of the general appearance and
life of sixteenth-century towns, it is possible to secure a more
uniform notion.

It must be borne in mind that the towns were comparatively small, for
the great bulk of people still lived in the country. A town of 5000
inhabitants was then accounted large; and even the largest places, like
Nuremberg, Strassburg, London, Paris, and Bruges, would have been only
small cities in our eyes. The approach to an ordinary city of the time
lay through suburbs, farms, and garden-plots, for the townsman still
supplemented industry with small-scale agriculture. Usually the town
itself was inclosed by strong walls, and admission was to be gained
only by passing through the gates, where one might be accosted by
soldiers and forced to pay toll. Inside the walls were clustered houses
of every description. Rising from the midst of tumble-down dwellings
might stand a magnificent cathedral, town-hall, or gild building. Here
and there a prosperous merchant would have his luxurious home, built in
what we now call the Gothic style, with pointed windows and gables,
and, to save space in a walled town, with the second story projecting
out over the street.

The streets were usually in deplorable condition. There might be one or
two broad highways, but the rest were mere alleys, devious, dark, and
dirty. Often their narrowness made them impassable for wagons. In
places the pedestrian waded gallantly through mud and garbage; pigs
grunted ponderously as he pushed them aside; chickens ran under his
feet; and occasionally a dead dog obstructed the way. There were no
sidewalks, and only the main thoroughfares were paved. Dirt and filth
and refuse were ordinarily disposed of only when a heaven-sent rain
washed them down the open gutters constructed along the middle, or on
each side, of a street. Not only was there no general sewerage for the
town, but there was likewise no public water supply. In many of the
garden plots at the rear of the low-roofed dwellings were dug wells
which provided water for the family; and the visitor, before he left
the town, would be likely to meet with water-sellers calling out their
ware. To guard against the danger of fires, each municipality
encouraged its citizens to build their houses of stone and to keep a
tub full of water before every building; and in each district a special
official was equipped with a proper hook and cord for pulling down
houses on fire. At night respectable town-life was practically at a
standstill: the gates were shut; the curfew sounded; no street-lamps
dispelled the darkness, except possibly an occasional lantern which an
altruistic or festive townsman might hang in his front-window; and no
efficient police-force existed--merely a handful of townsmen were
drafted from time to time as "watchmen" to preserve order, and the
"night watch" was famed rather for its ability to sleep or to roister
than to protect life or purse. Under these circumstances the citizen
who would escape an assault by ruffians or thieves remained prudently
indoors at night and retired early to bed. Picturesque and quaint the
sixteenth-century town may have been; but it was also an uncomfortable
and an unhealthful place in which to live.


TRADE PRIOR TO THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION

Just as agriculture is the ultimate basis of human society, so town-
life has always been an index of culture and civilization. And the
fortunes of town-life have ever depended upon the vicissitudes of trade
and commerce. So the reviving commerce of the later middle ages between
Europe and the East meant the growth of cities and betokened an advance
in civilization.

[Sidenote: Revival of Trade with the East]

Trade between Europe and Asia, which had been a feature of the antique
world of Greeks and Romans, had been very nearly destroyed by the
barbarian invasions of the fifth century and by subsequent conflicts
between Mohammedans and Christians, so that during several centuries
the old trade-routes were traveled only by a few Jews and with the
Syrians. In the tenth century, however, a group of towns in southern
Italy--Brindisi, Bari, Taranto, and Amalfi--began to send ships to the
eastern Mediterranean and were soon imitated by Venice and later by
Genoa and Pisa.

This revival of intercourse between the East and the West was well
under way before the first Crusade, but the Crusades (1095-1270)
hastened the process. Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, on account of their
convenient location, were called upon to furnish the crusaders with
transportation and provisions, and their shrewd Italian citizens made
certain that such services were well rewarded. Italian ships, plying to
and from the Holy Land, gradually enriched their owners. Many Italian
cities profited, but Venice secured the major share. It was during the
Crusades that Venice gained numerous coastal districts and islands in
the Ægean besides immunities and privileges in Constantinople, and
thereby laid the foundation of her maritime empire.

The Crusades not only enabled Italian merchants to bring Eastern
commodities to the West; they increased the demand for such
commodities. Crusaders--pilgrims and adventurers--returned from the
Holy Land with astonishing tales of the luxury and opulence of the
East. Not infrequently they had acquired a taste for Eastern silks or
spices during their stay in Asia Minor or Palestine; or they brought
curious jewels stripped from fallen infidels to awaken the envy of the
stay-at-homes. Wealth was rapidly increasing in Europe at this time,
and the many well-to-do people who were eager to affect magnificence
provided a ready market for the wares imported by Italian merchants.

[Sidenote: Commodities of Eastern Trade]

It is desirable to note just what were these wares and why they were
demanded so insistently. First were spices, far more important then
than now. The diet of those times was simple and monotonous without our
variety of vegetables and sauces and sweets, and the meat, if fresh,
was likely to be tough in fiber and strong in flavor. Spices were the
very thing to add zest to such a diet, and without them the epicure of
the sixteenth century would have been truly miserable. Ale and wine, as
well as meats, were spiced, and pepper was eaten separately as a
delicacy. No wonder that, although the rich alone could buy it, the
Venetians were able annually to dispose of 420,000 pounds of pepper,
which they purchased from the sultan of Egypt, to whom it was brought,
after a hazardous journey, from the pepper vines of Ceylon, Sumatra, or
western India. From the same regions came cinnamon-bark; ginger was a
product of Arabia, India, and China; and nutmegs, cloves, and allspice
grew only in the far-off Spice Islands of the Malay Archipelago.

Precious stones were then, as always, in demand for personal adornment
as well as for the decoration of shrines and ecclesiastical vestments;
and in the middle ages they were thought by many to possess magical
qualities which rendered them doubly valuable. [Footnote: Medieval
literature is full of this idea. Thus we read in the book of travel
which has borne the name of Sir John Maundeville:
"And if you wish to know the virtues of the diamond, I shall tell you,
as they that are beyond the seas say and affirm, from whom all science
and philosophy comes. He who carries the diamond upon him, it gives him
hardiness and manhood, and it keeps the limbs of his body whole. It
gives him victory over his enemies, in court and in war, if his cause
be just; and it keeps him that bears it in good wit; and it keeps him
from strife and riot, from sorrows and enchantments, and from fantasies
and illusions of wicked spirits. ... [It] heals him that is lunatic,
and those whom the fiend torments or pursues."] The supply of diamonds,
rubies, pearls, and other precious stones was then almost exclusively
from Persia, India, and Ceylon.

Other miscellaneous products of the East were in great demand for
various purposes: camphor and cubebs from Sumatra and Borneo; musk from
China; cane-sugar from Arabia and Persia; indigo, sandal-wood, and
aloes-wood from India; and alum from Asia Minor.

The East was not only a treasure-house of spices, jewels, valuable
goods, and medicaments, but a factory of marvelously delicate goods and
wares which the West could not rival--glass, porcelain, silks, satins,
rugs, tapestries, and metal-work. The tradition of Asiatic supremacy in
these manufactures has been preserved to our own day in such familiar
names as damask linen, china-ware, japanned ware, Persian rugs, and
cashmere shawls.

In exchange for the manifold products of the East, Europe had only
rough woolen cloth, arsenic, antimony, quicksilver, tin, copper, lead,
and coral to give; and a balance, therefore, always existed for the
European merchant to pay in gold and silver, with the result that gold
and silver coins grew scarce in the West. It is hard to say what would
have happened had not a new supply of the precious metals been
discovered in America. But we are anticipating our story.

[Sidenote: Oriental Trade-Routes]

Nature has rendered intercourse between Europe and Asia exceedingly
difficult by reason of a vast stretch of almost impassable waste,
extending from the bleak plains on either side of the Ural hills down
across the steppes of Turkestan and the desert of Arabia to the great
sandy Sahara. Through the few gaps in this desert barrier have led from
early times the avenues of trade. In the fifteenth century three main
trade-routes--a central, a southern, and a northern--precariously
linked the two continents.

(1) The central trade-route utilized the valley of the Tigris River.
Goods from China, from the Spice Islands, and from India were brought
by odd native craft from point to point along the coast to Ormuz, an
important city at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, thence to the mouth of
the Tigris, and up the valley to Bagdad. From Bagdad caravans journeyed
either to Aleppo and Antioch on the northeastern corner of the
Mediterranean, or across the desert to Damascus and the ports on the
Syrian coast. Occasionally caravans detoured southward to Cairo and
Alexandria in Egypt. Whether at Antioch, Jaffa, or Alexandria, the
caravans met the masters of Venetian ships ready to carry the cargo to
Europe.

(2) The southern route was by the Red Sea. Arabs sailed their ships
from India and the Far East across the Indian Ocean and into the Red
Sea, whence they transferred their cargoes to caravans which completed
the trip to Cairo and Alexandria. By taking advantage of monsoons,--the
favorable winds which blew steadily in certain seasons,--the skipper of
a merchant vessel could make the voyage from India to Egypt in somewhat
less than three months. It was often possible to shorten the time by
landing the cargoes at Ormuz and thence dispatching them by caravan
across the desert of Arabia to Mecca, and so to the Red Sea, but
caravan travel was sometimes slower and always more hazardous than
sailing.

(3) The so-called "northern route" was rather a system of routes
leading in general from the "back doors" of India and China to the
Black Sea. Caravans from India and China met at Samarkand and Bokhara,
two famous cities on the western slope of the Tian-Shan Mountains. West
of Bokhara the route branched out. Some caravans went north of the
Caspian, through Russia to Novgorod and the Baltic. Other caravans
passed through Astrakhan, at the mouth of the Volga River, and
terminated in ports on the Sea of Azov. Still others skirted the shore
of the Caspian Sea, passing through Tabriz and Armenia to Trebizond on
the Black Sea.

The transportation of goods from the Black Sea and eastern
Mediterranean was largely in the hands of the Italian cities,[Footnote:
In general, the journey from the Far East to the ports on the Black Sea
and the eastern Mediterranean was performed by Arabs, although some of
the more enterprising Italians pushed on from the European settlements,
or _fondachi_, in ports like Cairo and Trebizond, and established
_fondachi_ in the inland cities of Asia Minor, Persia, and Russia.]
especially Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Florence, although Marseilles
and Barcelona had a small share. From Italy trade-routes led
through the passes of the Alps to all parts of Europe. German merchants
from Nuremberg, Augsburg, Ulm, Regensburg, and Constance purchased
Eastern commodities in the markets of Venice, and sent them back to the
Germanies, to England, and to the Scandinavian countries. After the
lapse of many months, and even years, since the time when spices had
been packed first in the distant Moluccas, they would be exposed
finally for sale at the European fairs or markets to which thousands of
countryfolk resorted. There a nobleman's steward could lay in a year's
supply of condiments, or a peddler could fill his pack with silks and
ornaments to delight the eyes of the ladies in many a lonesome castle.

[Sidenote: Difficulties of European Commerce]

Within Europe commerce gradually extended its scope in spite of the
almost insuperable difficulties. The roads were still so miserable that
wares had to be carried on pack-horses instead of in wagons. Frequently
the merchant had to risk spoiling his bales of silk in fording a
stream, for bridges were few and usually in urgent need of repair.
Travel not only was fraught with hardship; it was expensive. Feudal
lords exacted heavy tolls from travelers on road, bridge, or river.
Between Mainz and Cologne, on the Rhine, toll was levied in thirteen
different places. The construction of shorter and better highways was
blocked often by nobles who feared to lose their toll-rights on the old
roads. So heavy was the burden of tolls on commerce that transportation
from Nantes to Orleans, a short distance up the River Loire, doubled
the price of goods. Besides the tolls, one had to pay for local market
privileges; towns exacted taxes on imports; and the merchant in a
strange city or village often found himself seriously handicapped by
regulations against "foreigners," and by unfamiliar weights, measures,
and coinage.

Most dreaded of all, however, and most injurious to trade were the
robbers who infested the roads. Needy knights did not scruple to turn
highwaymen. Cautious travelers carried arms and journeyed in bands, but
even they were not wholly safe from the dashing "gentlemen of the
road." On the seas there was still greater danger from pirates. Fleets
of merchantmen, despite the fact that they were accompanied usually by
a vessel of war, often were assailed by corsairs, defeated, robbed, and
sold as prizes to the Mohammedans. The black flag of piracy flew over
whole fleets in the Baltic and in the Mediterranean. The amateur
pirate, if less formidable, was no less common, for many a vessel
carrying brass cannon, ostensibly for protection, found it convenient
to use them to attack foreign craft and more frequently "took" a cargo
than purchased one.

[Sidenote: Venice]

These dangers and difficulties of commercial intercourse were due
chiefly to the lack of any strong power to punish pirates or
highwaymen, to maintain roads, or to check the exactions of toll-
collectors. Each city attempted to protect its own commerce. A great
city-state like Venice was well able to send out her galleys against
Mediterranean pirates, to wage war against the rival city of Genoa, to
make treaties with Oriental potentates, and to build up a maritime
empire. Smaller towns were helpless. But what, as in the case of the
German towns, they could not do alone, was partially achieved by
combination.

[Sidenote: The Hanseatic League. Towns in the Netherlands: Bruges]

The Hanse or the Hanseatic League, as the confederation of Cologne,
Brunswick, Hamburg, Lübeck, Dantzig, Königsberg, and other German
cities was called, waged war against the Baltic pirates, maintained its
trade-routes, and negotiated with monarchs and municipalities in order
to obtain exceptional privileges. From their Baltic stations,--
Novgorod, Stockholm, Königsberg, etc.,--the Hanseatic merchants brought
amber, wax, fish, furs, timber, and tar to sell in the markets of
Bruges, London, and Venice; they returned with wheat, wine, salt,
metals, cloth, and beer for their Scandinavian and Russian customers.
The German trading post at Venice received metals, furs, leather goods,
and woolen cloth from the North, and sent back spices, silks, and other
commodities of the East, together with glassware, fine textiles,
weapons, and paper of Venetian manufacture. Baltic and Venetian trade-
routes crossed in the Netherlands, and during the fourteenth century
Bruges became the trade-metropolis of western Europe, where met the raw
wool from England and Spain, the manufactured woolen cloth of Flanders,
clarets from France, sherry and port wines from the Iberian peninsula,
pitch from Sweden, tallow from Norway, grain from France and Germany,
and English tin, not to mention Eastern luxuries, Venetian
manufactures, and the cunning carved-work of south-German artificers.


THE AGE OF EXPLORATION

[Sidenote: Desire of Spaniards and Portuguese for New Trade-Routes]

In the unprecedented commercial prosperity which marked the fifteenth
century, two European peoples--the Portuguese and the Spanish--had
little part. For purposes of general Continental trade they were not so
conveniently situated as the peoples of Germany and the Netherlands;
and the Venetians and other Italians had shut them off from direct
trade with Asia. Yet Spanish and Portuguese had developed much the same
taste for Oriental spices and wares as had the inhabitants of central
Europe, and they begrudged the exorbitant prices which they were
compelled to pay to Italian merchants. Moreover, their centuries-long
crusades against Mohammedans in the Iberian peninsula and in northern
Africa had bred in them a stern and zealous Christianity which urged
them on to undertake missionary enterprises in distant pagan lands.
This missionary spirit reënforced the desire they already entertained
of finding new trade-routes to Asia untrammeled by rival and selfish
Italians. In view of these circumstances it is not surprising that
Spaniards and Portuguese sought eagerly in the fifteenth century to
find new trade-routes to "the Indies."

[Sidenote: Geographical Knowledge]

In their search for new trade-routes to the lands of silk and spice,
these peoples of southwestern Europe were not as much in the dark as
sometimes we are inclined to believe. Geographical knowledge, almost
non-existent in the earlier middle ages, had been enriched by the
Franciscan friars who had traversed central Asia to the court of the
Mongol emperor as early as 1245, and by such merchants and travelers as
Marco Polo, who had been attached to the court of Kublai Khan and who
subsequently had described that potentate's realms and the wealth of
"Cipangu" (Japan). These travels afforded at once information about
Asia and enormous incentive to later explorers.

Popular notions that the waters of the tropics boiled, that demons and
monsters awaited explorers to the westward, and that the earth was a
great flat disk, did not pass current among well-informed geographers.
Especially since the revival of Ptolemy's works in the fifteenth
century, learned men asserted that the earth was spherical in shape,
and they even calculated its circumference, erring only by two or three
thousand miles. It was maintained repeatedly that the Indies formed the
western boundary of the Atlantic Ocean, and that consequently they
might be reached by sailing due west, as well as by traveling eastward;
but at the same time it was believed that shorter routes might be found
northeast of Europe, or southward around Africa.

[Sidenote: Navigation]

Along with this general knowledge of the situation of continents, the
sailors of the fifteenth century had learned a good deal about
navigation. The compass had been used first by Italian navigators in
the thirteenth century, mounted on the compass card in the fourteenth.
Latitude was determined with the aid of the astrolabe, a device for
measuring the elevation of the pole star above the horizon. With maps
and accurate sailing directions (_portolani_), seamen could lose
sight of land and still feel confident of their whereabouts. Yet it
undoubtedly took courage for the explorers of the fifteenth century to
steer their frail sailing vessels either down the unexplored African
coast or across the uncharted Atlantic Ocean.

[Sidenote: The Portuguese Explorers]

In the series of world-discoveries which brought about the Commercial
Revolution and which are often taken as the beginning of "modern
history," there is no name more illustrious than that of a Portuguese
prince of the blood,--Prince Henry, the Navigator (1394-1460), who,
with the support of two successive Portuguese kings, made the first
systematic attempts to convert the theories of geographers into proved
fact. A variety of motives were his: the stern zeal of the crusader
against the infidel; the ardent proselyting spirit which already had
sent Franciscan monks into the heart of Asia; the hope of
reëstablishing intercourse with "Prester John's" fabled Christian
empire of the East; the love of exploration; and a desire to gain for
Portugal a share of the Eastern trade.

To his naval training-station at Sagres and the neighboring port of
Lagos, Prince Henry attracted the most skillful Italian navigators and
the most learned geographers of the day. The expeditions which he sent
out year after year rediscovered and colonized the Madeira and Azores
Islands, and crept further and further down the unknown coast of the
Dark Continent. When in the year 1445, a quarter of a century after the
initial efforts of Prince Henry, Denis Diaz reached Cape Verde, he
thought that the turning point was at hand; but four more weary decades
were to elapse before Bartholomew Diaz, in 1488, attained the
southernmost point of the African coast. What he then called the Cape
of Storms, King John II of Portugal in a more optimistic vein
rechristened the Cape of Good Hope. Following in the wake of Diaz,
Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape in 1497, and then, continuing on his own
way, he sailed up the east coast to Malindi, where he found a pilot
able to guide his course eastward through the Indian Ocean to India. At
Calicut Vasco da Gama landed in May, 1498, and there he erected a
marble pillar as a monument of his discovery of a new route to the
Indies.

[Sidenote: Occupation of Old Trade-Routes by the Turks]

While the Portuguese were discovering this new and all-water route to
the Indies, the more ancient Mediterranean and overland routes, which
had been of inestimable value to the Italians, were in process of
occupation by the Routes by Ottoman Turks. [Footnote: Professor A. H.
Lybyer has recently and ably contended that, contrary to a view which
has often prevailed, the occupation of the medieval trade-routes by the
Ottoman Turks was not the cause of the Portuguese and Spanish
explorations which ushered in the Commercial Revolution. He has pointed
out that prior to 1500 the prices of spices were not generally raised
throughout western Europe, and that apparently before that date the
Turks had not seriously increased the difficulties of Oriental trade.
In confirmation of this opinion, it should be remembered that the
Portuguese had begun their epochal explorations long before 1500 and
that Christopher Columbus had already returned from "the Indies."]
These Turks, as we have seen, were a nomadic and warlike nation of the
Mohammedan faith who "added to the Moslem contempt for the Christian,
the warrior's contempt for the mere merchant." Realizing that
advantageous trade relations with such a people were next to
impossible, the Italian merchants viewed with consternation the advance
of the Turkish armies, as Asia Minor, Thrace, Macedonia, Greece, and
the islands of the Ægean were rapidly overrun. Constantinople, the
heart of the Eastern Empire, repeatedly repelled the Moslems, but in
1453 Emperor Constantine XI was defeated by Sultan Mohammed II, and the
crescent replaced the Greek cross above the Church of Saint Sophia.
Eight years later Trebizond, the terminal of the trade-route from
Tabriz, was taken. In vain Venice attempted to defend her possessions
in the Black Sea and in the Ægean; by the year 1500 most of her empire
in the Levant was lost. The Turks, now in complete control of the
northern route, proceeded to impose crushing burdens on the trade of
the defeated Venetians. Florentines and other Italians who fared less
hardly continued to frequent the Black Sea, but the entire trade
suffered from Turkish exactions and from disturbing wars between the
Turks and another Asiatic people--the Mongols.

[Sidenote: Loss to the Italians]

For some time the central and southern routes, terminating respectively
in Syria and Egypt, exhibited increased activity, and by rich profits
in Alexandria the Venetians were able to retrieve their losses in the
Black Sea. But it was only a matter of time before the Turks,
conquering Damascus in 1516 and Cairo in 1517, extended their
burdensome restrictions and taxes over those regions likewise. Eastern
luxuries, transported by caravan and caravel over thousands of miles,
had been expensive and rare enough before; now the added peril of
travel and the exactions of the Turks bade fair to deprive the Italians
of the greater part of their Oriental trade. It was at this very moment
that the Portuguese opened up independent routes to the East, lowered
the prices of Asiatic commodities, and grasped the scepter of maritime
and commercial power which was gradually slipping from the hands of the
Venetians. The misfortune of Venice was the real opportunity of
Portugal.

[Sidenote: Columbus]

Meanwhile Spain had entered the field, and was meeting with cruel
disappointment. A decade before Vasco da Gama's famous voyage, an
Italian navigator, Christopher Columbus, had presented himself at the
Spanish court with a scheme for sailing westward to the Indies. The
Portuguese king, by whom Columbus formerly had been employed, already
had refused to support the project, but after several vexatious rebuffs
Columbus finally secured the aid of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Spanish
monarchs who were at the time jubilant over their capture of Granada
from the Mohammedans (January, 1492). In August, 1492, he sailed from
Palos with 100 men in three small ships, the largest of which weighed
only a hundred tons. After a tiresome voyage he landed (12 October,
1492) on "San Salvador," one of the Bahama Islands. In that bold voyage
across the trackless Atlantic lay the greatness of Columbus. He was not
attempting to prove a theory that the earth was spherical--that was
accepted generally by the well informed. Nor was he in search of a new
continent. The realization that he had discovered not Asia, but a new
world, would have been his bitterest disappointment. He was seeking
merely another route to the spices and treasures of the East; and he
bore with him a royal letter of introduction to the great Khan of
Cathay (China). In his quest he failed, even though he returned in
1493, in 1498, and finally in 1502 and explored successively the
Caribbean Sea, the coast of Venezuela, and Central America in a vain
search for the island "Cipangu" and the realms of the "Great Khan." He
found only "lands of vanity and delusion as the miserable graves of
Castilian gentlemen," and he died ignorant of the magnitude of his real
achievement.

[Sidenote: America]

Had Columbus perished in mid ocean, it is doubtful whether America
would have remained long undiscovered. In 1497 John Cabot, an Italian
in the service of Henry VII of England, reached the Canadian coast
probably near Cape Breton Island. In 1500 Cabral with a Portuguese
expedition bound for India was so far driven out of his course by
equatorial currents that he came upon Brazil, which he claimed for the
king of Portugal. Yet America was named for neither Columbus, Cabot,
nor Cabral, but for another Italian, the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci,
who, returning from voyages to Brazil (1499-1500), published a letter
concerning what he called "the new world." It was thought that he had
discovered this new world, and so it was called after him,--America.

[Sidenote: First Circumnavigation of the Earth]

Very slowly the truth about America was borne in upon the people of
Europe. They persisted in calling the newly discovered lands the
"Indies," and even after Balboa had discovered (1513) that another
ocean lay beyond the Isthmus of Panama, it was thought that a few days'
sail would bring one to the outlying possessions of the Great Khan. Not
until Magellan, leaving Spain in 1519, passed through the straits that
still bear his name and crossed the Pacific was this vain hope
relinquished. Magellan was killed by the natives of the Philippine
Islands, but one of his ships reached Seville in 1522 with the tale of
the marvelous voyage.

Even after the circumnavigation of the world explorers looked for
channels leading through or around the Americas. Such were the attempts
of Verrazano (1524), Cartier (1534), Frobisher (1576-1578), Davis
(1585-1587), and Henry Hudson in 1609.


ESTABLISHMENT OF COLONIAL EMPIRES

[Sidenote: Portugal]

When Vasco da Gama returned to Lisbon in 1499 with a cargo worth sixty
times the cost of his expedition, the Portuguese knew that the wealth
of the Indies was theirs. Cabral in 1500, and Albuquerque in 1503,
followed the route of Da Gama, and thereafter Portuguese fleets rounded
the Cape year by year to gain control of Goa (India), Ormuz, Diu
(India), Ceylon, Malacca, and the Spice Islands, and to bring back from
these places and from Sumatra, Java, Celebes, and Nanking (China) rich
cargoes of "spicery." After the Turkish conquest of Egypt in 1517 the
bulk of commerce was carried on by way of the Cape of Good Hope, for it
was cheaper to transport goods by sea than to pay taxes to the Turks in
addition to caravan cartage. Lisbon rapidly gained prominence as a
market for Eastern wares.

The Portuguese triumph was short-lived. Dominion over half the world--
for Portugal claimed all Africa, southern Asia, and Brazil as hers by
right of discovery--had been acquired by the wise policy of the
Portuguese royal house, but Portugal had neither products of her own to
ship to Asia, nor the might to defend her exclusive right to the
carrying trade with the Indies. The annexation of Portugal to Spain
(1580) by Philip II precipitated disaster. The port of Lisbon was
closed to the French, English, and Dutch, with whom Philip was at war,
and much of the colonial empire of Portugal was conquered speedily by
the Dutch.

[Sidenote: Spain]

On the first voyage of Columbus Spain based her claim to share the
world with Portugal. In order that there might be perfect harmony
between the rival explorers of the unknown seas, Pope Alexander VI
issued on 4 May, 1493, the famous bull [Footnote: A bull was a solemn
letter or edict issued by the pope.] attempting to divide the
uncivilized parts of the world between Spain and Portugal by the "papal
line of demarcation," drawn from pole to pole, 100 leagues west of the
Azores. A year later the line was shifted to about 360 leagues west of
the Cape Verde Islands. Portugal had the eastern half of modern Brazil,
Africa, and all other heathen lands in that hemisphere; the rest
comprised the share of Spain.

For a time the Spanish adventurers were disappointed tremendously to
find neither spices nor silks and but little gold in the "Indies," and
Columbus was derisively dubbed the "Admiral of the Mosquitos." In spite
of failures the search for wealth was prosecuted with vigor. During the
next half century Haiti, called Hispaniola ("Spanish Isle"), served as
a starting point for the occupation of Puerto Rico, Cuba (1508), and
other islands. An aged adventurer, Ponce de Leon, in search of a
fountain of youth, explored the coast of Florida in 1513, and
subsequent expeditions pushed on to the Mississippi, across the plain
of Texas, and even to California.

Montezuma, ruler of the ancient Aztec [Footnote: The Aztec Indians of
Mexico, like various other tribes in Central America and in Peru, had
reached in many respects a high degree of civilization before the
arrival of Europeans.] confederacy of Mexico, was overthrown in 1519 by
the reckless Hernando Cortez with a small band of soldiers. Here at
last the Spaniards found treasures of gold and silver, and more
abundant yet were the stores of precious metal found by Pizarro in Peru
(1531). Those were the days when a few score of brave men could capture
kingdoms and carry away untold wealth.

In the next chapter we shall see how the Spanish monarchy, backed by
the power of American riches, dazzled the eyes of Europe in the
sixteenth century. Not content to see his standard waving over almost
half of Europe, and all America (except Brazil), Philip II of Spain by
conquering Portugal in 1580 added to his possessions the Portuguese
empire in the Orient and in Brazil. The gold mines of America, the
spices of Asia, and the busiest market of Europe--Antwerp--all paid
tribute to his Catholic Majesty, Philip II of Spain.

By an unwise administration of this vast empire, Spain, in the course
of time, killed the goose that laid the golden egg. The native Indians,
enslaved and lashed to their work in Peruvian and Mexican silver mines,
rapidly lost even their primitive civilization and died in alarming
numbers. This in itself would not have weakened the monarchy greatly,
but it appeared more serious when we remember that the high-handed and
harassing regulations imposed by short-sighted or selfish officials had
checked the growth of a healthy agricultural and industrial population
in the colonies, and that the bulk of the silver was going to support
the pride of grandees and to swell the fortunes of German speculators,
rather than to fill the royal coffers. The taxes levied on trade with
the colonies were so exorbitant that the commerce with America fell
largely into the hands of English and Dutch smugglers. Under wise
government the monopoly of the African trade-route might have proved
extremely valuable, but Philip II, absorbed in other matters, allowed
this, too, to slip from his fingers.

While the Spanish monarchy was thus reaping little benefit from its
world-wide colonial possessions, it was neglecting to encourage
prosperity at home. Trade and manufacture had expanded enormously in
the sixteenth century in the hands of the Jews and Moors. Woolen
manufactures supported nearly a third of the population. The silk
manufacture had become important. It is recorded that salt-works of the
region about Santa Maria often sent out fifty shiploads at a time.

These signs of growth soon gave way to signs of decay and depopulation.
Chief among the causes of ruin were the taxes, increased enormously
during the sixteenth century. Property taxes, said to have increased 30
per cent, ruined farmers, and the "alcabala," or tax on commodities
bought and sold, was increased until merchants went out of business,
and many an industrial establishment closed its doors rather than pay
the taxes. Industry and commerce, already diseased, were almost
completely killed by the expulsion of the Jews (1492) and of the Moors
(1609), who had been respectively the bankers and the manufacturers of
Spain. Spanish gold now went to the English and Dutch smugglers who
supplied the peninsula with manufactures, and German bankers became the
financiers of the realm.

The crowning misfortune was the revolt of the Netherlands, the richest
provinces of the whole empire. Some of the wealthiest cities of Europe
were situated in the Netherlands. Bruges had once been a great city,
and in 1566 was still able to buy nearly $2,000,000 worth of wool to
feed its looms; but as a commercial and financial center, the Flemish
city of Antwerp had taken first place. In 1566 it was said that 300
ships and as many wagons arrived daily with rich cargoes to be bought
and sold by the thousand commercial houses of Antwerp. Antwerp was the
heart through which the money of Europe flowed. Through the bankers of
Antwerp a French king might borrow money of a Turkish pasha. Yet
Antwerp was only the greatest among the many cities of the Netherlands.

Charles V, king of Spain during the first half of the sixteenth
century, had found in the Netherlands his richest source of income, and
had wisely done all in his power to preserve their prosperity. As we
shall see in Chapter III, the governors appointed by King Philip II in
the second half of the sixteenth century lost the love of the people by
the harsh measures against the Protestants, and ruined commerce and
industry by imposing taxes of 5 and 10 per cent on every sale of land
or goods. In 1566 the Netherlands rose in revolt, and after many bloody
battles, the northern or Dutch provinces succeeded in breaking away
from Spanish rule.

Spain had not only lost the little Dutch provinces; Flanders was
ruined: its fields lay waste, its weavers had emigrated to England, its
commerce to Amsterdam. Commercial supremacy never returned to Antwerp
after the "Spanish Fury" of 1576. Moreover, during the war Dutch
sailors had captured most of the former possessions of Portugal, and
English sea-power, beginning in mere piratical attacks on Spanish
treasure-fleets, had become firmly established. The finest part of
North America was claimed by the English and French. Of her world
empire, Spain retained only Central and South America (except Brazil),
Mexico, California, Florida, most of the West Indies, and in the East
the Philippine Islands and part of Borneo.

[Sidenote: Dutch Sea Power]

The Dutch, driven to sea by the limited resources of their narrow strip
of coastland, had begun their maritime career as fishermen "exchanging
tons of herring for tons of gold." In the sixteenth century they had
built up a considerable carrying trade, bringing cloth, tar, timber,
and grain to Spain and France, and distributing to the Baltic countries
the wines and liquors and other products of southwestern Europe, in
addition to wares from the Portuguese East Indies.

The Dutch traders had purchased their Eastern wares largely from
Portuguese merchants in the port of Lisbon. Two circumstances--the
union of Spain with Portugal in 1580 and the revolt of the Netherlands
from Spain--combined to give the Dutch their great opportunity. In 1594
the port of Lisbon was closed to Dutch merchants. The following year
the Dutch made their first voyage to India, and, long jealous of the
Portuguese colonial possessions, they began systematically to make the
trade with the Spice Islands their own. By 1602, 65 Dutch ships had
been to India. In the thirteen years--1602 to 1615--they captured 545
Portuguese and Spanish ships, seized ports on the coasts of Africa and
India, and established themselves in the Spice Islands. In addition to
most of the old Portuguese empire,--ports in Africa and India, Malacca,
Oceanica, and Brazil, [Footnote: Brazil was more or less under Dutch
control from 1624 until 1654, when, through an uprising of Portuguese
colonists, the country was fully recovered by Portugal. Holland
recognized the Portuguese ownership of Brazil by treaty of 1662, and
thenceforth the Dutch retained in South America only a portion of
Guiana (Surinam).]--the Dutch had acquired a foothold in North America
by the discoveries of Henry Hudson in 1609 and by settlement in 1621.
Their colonists along the Hudson River called the new territory New
Netherland and the town on Manhattan island New Amsterdam, but when
Charles II of England seized the land in 1664, he renamed it New York.

Thus the Dutch had succeeded to the colonial empire of the Portuguese.
With their increased power they were able entirely to usurp the Baltic
trade from the hands of the Hanseatic (German) merchants, who had
incurred heavy losses by the injury to their interests in Antwerp
during the sixteenth century. Throughout the seventeenth century the
Dutch almost monopolized the carrying-trade from Asia and between
southwestern Europe and the Baltic. The prosperity of the Dutch was the
envy of all Europe.

[Sidenote: Beginnings of English and French Explorations]

It took the whole sixteenth century for the English and French to get
thoroughly into the colonial contest. During that period the activities
of the English were confined to exploration and piracy, with the
exception of the ill-starred attempts of Gilbert and Raleigh to
colonize Newfoundland and North Carolina. The voyages of the Anglo-
Italian John Cabot in 1497-1498 were later to be the basis of British
claims to North America. The search for a northwest passage drove
Frobisher (1576-1578), Davis (1585-1587), Hudson (1610-1611), and
Baffin (1616) to explore the northern extremity of North America, to
leave the record of their exploits in names of bays, islands, and
straits, and to establish England's claim to northern Canada; while the
search for a northeast passage enticed Willoughby and Chancellor (1553)
around Lapland, and Jenkinson (1557-1558) to the icebound port of
Archangel in northern Russia. Elizabethan England had neither silver
mines nor spice islands, but the deficiency was never felt while
British privateers sailed the seas. Hawkins, the great slaver, Drake,
the second circumnavigator of the globe, Davis, and Cavendish were but
four of the bold captains who towed home many a stately Spanish galleon
laden with silver plate and with gold. As for spices, the English East
India Company, chartered in 1600, was soon to build up an empire in the
East in competition with the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the French, but
that story belongs to a later chapter.

France was less active. The rivalry of Francis I [Footnote: See below,
pp. 77 ff.] with Charles I of Spain had extended even to the New World.
Verrazano (1524) sailed the coast from Carolina to Labrador, and
Cartier (1534-1535) pushed up the Saint Lawrence to Montreal, looking
for a northwest passage, and demonstrating that France had no respect
for the Spanish claim to all America. After 1535, however, nothing of
permanence was done until the end of the century, and the founding of
French colonies in India and along the Saint Lawrence and Mississippi
rivers belongs rather to the history of the seventeenth century.

[Sidenote: Motives for Colonization]

One of the most amazing spectacles in history is the expansion of
Europe since the sixteenth century. Not resting content with
discovering the rest of the world, the European nations with sublime
confidence pressed on to divide the new continents among them, to
conquer, Christianize, and civilize the natives, and to send out
millions of new emigrants to establish beyond the seas a New England, a
New France, a New Spain, and a New Netherland. The Spaniards in Spain
to-day are far outnumbered by the Spanish-speaking people in Argentina,
Chili, Peru, Venezuela, Colombia, Central America, and the Philippine
Islands.

[Sidenote: Religion]

It was not merely greed for gold and thirst for glory which inspired
the colonizing movement. To the merchant's eager search for precious
metals and costly spices, and to the adventurer's fierce delight in
braving unknown dangers where white man never had ventured, the
Portuguese and Spanish explorers added the inspiration of an ennobling
missionary ideal. In the conquest of the New World priests and chapels
were as important as soldiers and fortresses; and its settlements were
named in honor of Saint Francis (San Francisco), Saint Augustine (St.
Augustine), the Holy Saviour (San Salvador), the Holy Cross (Santa
Cruz), or the Holy Faith (Santa Fé). Fearless priests penetrated the
interior of America, preaching and baptizing as they went.
Unfortunately some of the Spanish adventurers who came to make fortunes
in the mines of America, and a great number of the non-Spanish
foreigners who owned mines in the Spanish colonies, set gain before
religion, and imposed crushing burdens on the natives who toiled as
slaves in their mines. Cruelty and forced labor decimated the natives,
but in the course of time this abuse was remedied, thanks largely to
the Spanish bishop, Bartolomé de las Casas, and instead of forming a
miserable remnant of an almost extinct race, as they do in the United
States, the Indians freely intermarried with the Spaniards, whom they
always outnumbered. As a result, Latin America is peopled by nations
which are predominantly Indian in blood, [Footnote: Except in the
southern part of South America.] Spanish or Portuguese [Footnote: In
Brazil.] in language, and Roman Catholic in religion.

The same religious zeal which had actuated Spanish missionary-explorers
was manifested at a later date by the French Jesuit Fathers who
penetrated North America in order to preach the Christian faith to the
Indians. Quite different were the religious motives which in the
seventeenth century inspired Protestant colonists in the New World.
They came not as evangelists, but as religious outcasts fleeing from
persecution, or as restless souls worsted at politics or unable to gain
a living at home. This meant the dispossession and ultimate extinction
rather than the conversion of the Indians.

[Sidenote: Decline of the Hanseatic League]

The stirring story of the colonial struggles which occupied the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries will be taken up in another
chapter; at this point, therefore, we turn from the expanding nations
on the Atlantic seaboard to note the mournful plight of the older
commercial powers--the German and Italian city-states. As for the
former, the Hanseatic League, despoiled of its Baltic commerce by
enterprising Dutch and English merchants, its cities restless and
rebellious, gradually broke up. In 1601 an Englishman metaphorically
observed: "Most of their [the league's] teeth have fallen out, the rest
sit but loosely in their head,"--and in fact all were soon lost except
Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg.

[Sidenote: Decay of Venice]

Less rapid, but no less striking, was the decay of Venice and the other
Italian cities. The first cargoes brought by the Portuguese from India
caused the price of pepper and spices to fall to a degree which spelled
ruin for the Venetians. The Turks continued to harry Italian traders in
the Levant, and the Turkish sea-power grew to menacing proportions,
until in 1571 Venice had to appeal to Spain for help. To the terror of
the Turk was added the torment of the Barbary pirates, who from the
northern coast of Africa frequently descended upon Italian seaports.
The commerce of Venice was ruined. The brilliance of Venice in art and
literature lasted through another century (the seventeenth), supported
on the ruins of Venetian opulence; but the splendor of Venice was
extinguished finally in the turbulent sea of political intrigue into
which the rest of Italy had already sunk.


EFFECTS OF THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION

In a way, all of the colonizing movements, which we have been at pains
to trace, might be regarded as the first and greatest result of the
Commercial Revolution--that is, if by the Commercial Revolution one
understands simply the discovery of new trade-routes; but, as it is
difficult to separate explorations from colonization, we have used the
term "Commercial Revolution" to include both. By the Commercial
Revolution we mean that expansive movement by which European commerce
escaped from the narrow confines of the Mediterranean and encompassed
the whole world. We shall proceed now to consider that movement in its
secondary aspects or effects.

One of the first in importance of these effects was the advent of a new
politico-economic doctrine—mercantilism--the result of the transference
of commercial supremacy from Italian and German city-states to national
states.

[Sidenote: Nationalism in Commerce]

With the declining Italian and German commercial cities, the era of
municipal commerce passed away forever. In the peoples of the Atlantic
seaboard, who now became masters of the seas, national consciousness
already was strongly developed, and centralized governments were
perfected; these nations carried the national spirit into commerce.
Portugal and Spain owed their colonial empires to the enterprise of
their royal families; Holland gained a trade route as an incident of
her struggle for national independence; England and France, which were
to become the great commercial rivals of the eighteenth century, were
the two strongest national monarchies.

[Sidenote: Mercantilism]

The new nations founded their power not on the fearlessness of their
chevaliers, but on the extent of their financial resources. Wealth was
needed to arm and to pay the soldiers, wealth to build warships, wealth
to bribe diplomats. And since this wealth must come from the people by
taxes, it was essential to have a people prosperous enough to pay
taxes. The wealth of the nation must be the primary consideration of
the legislators. In endeavoring to cultivate and preserve the wealth of
their subjects, European monarchs proceeded upon the assumption that if
a nation exported costly manufactures to its own colonies and imported
cheap raw materials from them, the money paid into the home country for
manufactures would more than counterbalance the money paid out for raw
materials, and this "favorable balance of trade" would bring gold to
the nation. This economic theory and the system based upon it are
called mercantilism. In order to establish such a balance of trade, the
government might either forbid or heavily tax the importation of
manufactures from abroad, might prohibit the export of raw materials,
might subsidize the export of manufactures, and might attempt by minute
regulations to foster industry at home as well as to discourage
competition in the colonies. Thus, intending to retain the profits of
commerce for Englishmen, Cromwell and later rulers required that
certain goods must be carried on English ships.

[Sidenote: Chartered Companies]

By far the most popular method of developing a lucrative colonial
trade--especially towards the end of the sixteenth and throughout the
seventeenth century--was by means of chartered commercial companies.
England (in 1600), Holland (in 1602), France (in 1664), Sweden,
Denmark, Scotland, and Prussia each chartered its own "East India
Company." The English possessions on the Atlantic coast of America were
shared by the London and Plymouth Companies (1606). English companies
for trade with Russia, Turkey, Morocco, Guiana, Bermuda, the Canaries,
and Hudson Bay were organized and reorganized with bewildering
activity. In France the crop of commercial companies was no less
abundant.

To each of these companies was assigned the exclusive right to trade
with and to govern the inhabitants of a particular colony, with the
privilege and duty of defending the same. Sometimes the companies were
required to pay money into the royal treasury, or on the other hand, if
the enterprise were a difficult one, a company might be supported by
royal subsidies. The Dutch West India Company (1621) was authorized to
build forts, maintain troops, and make war on land and sea; the
government endowed the company with one million florins, sixteen ships,
four yachts, and exemption from all tolls and license dues on its
vessels. The English East India Company, first organized in 1600,
conducted the conquest and government of India for more than two
centuries, before its administrative power was taken away in 1858.

[Sidenote: Financial Methods.]
[Sidenote: The "Regulated Company"]

The great commercial companies were a new departure in business method.
In the middle ages business had been carried on mostly by individuals
or by partnerships, the partners being, as a rule, members of the same
family. After the expansion of commerce, trading with another country
necessitated building forts and equipping fleets for protection against
savages, pirates, or other nations. Since this could not be
accomplished with the limited resources of a few individuals, it was
necessary to form large companies in which many investors shared
expense and risk. Some had been created for European trade, but the
important growth of such companies was for distant trade. Their first
form was the "regulated company." Each member would contribute to the
general fund for such expenses as building forts; and certain rules
would be made for the governance of all. Subject to these rules, each
merchant traded as he pleased, and there was no pooling of profits. The
regulated company, the first form of the commercial company, was
encouraged by the king. He could charter such a company, grant it a
monopoly over a certain district, and trust it to develop the trade as
no individual could, and there was no evasion of taxes as by
independent merchants.

[Sidenote: The Joint-stock Company]

After a decade or so, many of the regulated companies found that their
members often pursued individual advantage to the detriment of the
company's interests, and it was thought that, taken altogether, profits
would be greater and the risk less, if all should contribute to a
common treasury, intrusting to the most able members the direction of
the business for the benefit of all. Then each would receive a dividend
or part of the profits proportional to his share in the general
treasury or "joint stock." The idea that while the company as a whole
was permanent each individual could buy or sell "shares" in the joint
stock, helped to make such "joint-stock" companies very popular after
the opening of the seventeenth century. The English East India Company,
organized as a regulated company in 1600, was reorganized piecemeal for
half a century until it acquired the form of a joint-stock enterprise;
most of the other chartered colonial companies followed the same plan.
In these early stock-companies we find the germ of the most
characteristic of present-day business institutions--the corporation.
In the seventeenth century this form of business organization, then in
its rudimentary stages, as yet had not been applied to industry, nor
had sad experience yet revealed the lengths to which corrupt
corporation directors might go.

[Sidenote: Banking]

The development of the joint-stock company was attended by increased
activity in banking. In the early middle ages the lending of money for
interest had been forbidden by the Catholic Church; in this as in other
branches of business it was immoral to receive profit without giving
work. The Jews, however, with no such scruples, had found money-lending
very profitable, even though royal debtors occasionally refused to pay.
As business developed in Italy, however, Christians lost their
repugnance to interest-taking, and Italian (Lombard) and later French
and German money-lenders and money-changers became famous. Since the
coins minted by feudal lords and kings were hard to pass except in
limited districts, and since the danger of counterfeit or light-weight
coins was far greater than now, the "money-changers" who would buy and
sell the coins of different countries did a thriving business at
Antwerp in the early sixteenth century. Later, Amsterdam, London,
Hamburg, and Frankfort took over the business of Antwerp and developed
the institutions of finance to a higher degree. [Footnote: The gold of
the New World and the larger scope of commercial enterprises had
increased the scale of operations, as may be seen by comparing the
fortunes of three great banking families: 1300--the Peruzzi's,
$800,000; 1440--the Medici's, $7,500,000; 1546--the Fuggers',
$40,000,000.] The money-lenders became bankers, paying interest on
deposits and receiving higher interest on loans. Shares of the stock of
commercial companies were bought and sold in exchanges, and as early as
1542 there were complaints about speculating on the rise and fall of
stocks.

Within a comparatively short time the medieval merchants' gilds had
given way to great stock-companies, and Jewish money-lenders to
millionaire bankers and banking houses with many of our instruments of
exchange such as the bill of exchange. Such was the revolution in
business that attended, and that was partly caused, partly helped, by
the changes in foreign trade, which we call the Commercial Revolution.

[Sidenote: New Commodities]

Not only was foreign trade changed from the south and east of Europe to
the west, from the city-states to nations, from land-routes to ocean-
routes; but the vessels which sailed the Atlantic were larger,
stronger, and more numerous, and they sailed with amazing confidence
and safety, as compared with the fragile caravels and galleys of a few
centuries before. The cargoes they carried had changed too. The
comparative cheapness of water-transportation had made it possible
profitably to carry grain and meat, as well as costly luxuries of small
bulk such as spices and silks. Manufactures were an important item.
Moreover, new commodities came into commerce, such as tea and coffee.
The Americas sent to Europe the potato, "Indian" corn, tobacco, cocoa,
cane-sugar (hitherto scarce), molasses, rice, rum, fish, whale-oil and
whalebone, dye-woods and timber and furs; Europe sent back
manufactures, luxuries, and slaves.

[Sidenote: Slavery]

Slaves had been articles of commerce since time immemorial; at the end
of the fifteenth century there were said to have been 3000 in Venice;
and the Portuguese had enslaved some Africans before 1500. But the need
for cheap labor in the mines and on the sugar and tobacco plantations
of the New World gave the slave-trade a new and tremendous impetus. The
Spaniards began early to enslave the natives of America, although the
practice was opposed by the noble endeavors of the Dominican friar and
bishop, Bartolomé de las Casas. But the native population was not
sufficient,--or, as in the English colonies, the Indians were
exterminated rather than enslaved,--and in the sixteenth century it was
deemed necessary to import negroes from Africa. The trade in African
negroes was fathered by the English captain Hawkins, and fostered alike
by English and Dutch. It proved highly lucrative, and it was long
before the trade yielded to the better judgment of civilized nations,
and still longer before the institution of slavery could be eradicated.

[Sidenote: Effects on Industry and Agriculture]

The expansion of trade was the strongest possible stimulus to
agriculture and industry. New industries--such as the silk and cotton
manufacture--grew up outside of the antiquated gild system. The old
industries, especially the English woolen industry, grew to new
importance and often came under the control of the newer and more
powerful merchants who conducted a wholesale business in a single
commodity, such as cloth. Capitalists had their agents buy wool, dole
it out to spinners and weavers who were paid so much for a given amount
of work, and then sell the finished product. This was called the
"domestic system," because the work was done at home, or
"capitalistic," because raw material and finished product were owned
not by the man who worked them, but by a "capitalist" or rich merchant.
How these changing conditions were dealt with by mercantilist
statesmen, we shall see in later chapters.

The effect on agriculture had been less direct but no less real. The
land had to be tilled with greater care to produce grain sufficient to
support populous cities and to ship to foreign ports. Countries were
now more inclined to specialize--France in wine, England in wool--and
so certain branches of production grew more important. The introduction
of new crops produced no more remarkable results than in Ireland where
the potato, transplanted from America, became a staple in the Irish
diet: "Irish potatoes" in common parlance attest the completeness of
domestication.

[Sidenote: General Significance of Commercial Revolution]

In the preceding pages we have attempted to study particular effects of
the Commercial Revolution (in the broad sense including the expansion
of commerce as well as the change of trade-routes), such as the decline
of Venice and of the Hanse, the formation of colonial empires, the rise
of commercial companies, the expansion of banking, the introduction of
new articles of commerce, and the development of agriculture and
industry. In each particular the change was noticeable and important.

But the Commercial Revolution possesses a more general significance.

[Sidenote: Europeanization of the World]

(1) It was the Commercial Revolution that started Europe on her career
of world conquest. The petty, quarrelsome feudal states of the smallest
of five continents have become the Powers of to-day, dividing up
Africa, Asia, and America, founding empires greater and more lasting
than that of Alexander. The colonists of Europe imparted their language
to South America and made of North America a second Europe with a
common cultural heritage. The explorers, missionaries, and merchants of
Europe have penetrated all lands, bringing in their train European
manners, dress, and institutions. They are still at work Europeanizing
the world.

[Sidenote: 2. Increase of Wealth, Knowledge, and Comfort]

(2) The expansion of commerce meant the increase of wealth, knowledge,
and comfort. All the continents heaped their treasures in the lap of
Europe. Knowledge of the New World, with its many peoples, products,
and peculiarities, tended to dispel the silly notions of medieval
ignorance; and the goods of every land were brought for the comfort of
the European--American timber for his house, Persian rugs for his
floors, Indian ebony for his table, Irish linen to cover it, Peruvian
silver for his fork, Chinese tea, sweetened with sugar from Cuba.

[Sidenote: 3. The Rise of the Bourgeoisie]

(3) This new comfort, knowledge, and wealth went not merely to nobles
and prelates; it was noticeable most of all in a new class, the
"bourgeoisie." In the towns of Europe lived bankers, merchants, and
shop-keepers,--intelligent, able, and wealthy enough to live like kings
or princes. These bourgeois or townspeople (_bourg_ = town) were
to grow in intelligence, in wealth, and in political influence; they
were destined to precipitate revolutions in industry and politics,
thereby establishing their individual rule over factories, and their
collective rule over legislatures.


ADDITIONAL READING


GENERAL. A. F. Pollard, _Factors in Modern History_ (1907), ch.
ii, vi, x, three illuminating essays; E. P. Cheyney, _An Introduction
to the Industrial and Social History of England_ (1901), ch. ii-vi,
a good outline; F. W. Tickner, _A Social and Industrial History of
England_ (1915), an interesting and valuable elementary manual, ch.
i-vii, x-xii, xvi, xvii, xix-xxi, xxiv-xxvii; W. J. Ashley, _The
Economic Organization of England_ (1914), ch. i-v; G. T. Warner,
_Landmarks in English Industrial History_, 11th ed. (1912), ch.
vii-xiii; H. D. Traill and J. S. Mann (editors), _Social England_
(1909), Vols. II, III; H. de B. Gibbins, _Industry in England_,
6th ed. (1910), compact general survey; William Cunningham, _The
Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times_, 5th ed., 3
vols. (1910-1912), a standard work; H. D. Bax, _German Society at the
Close of the Middle Ages_ (1894), brief but clear, especially ch. i,
v, vii on towns and country-life in the Germanies. Very detailed works:
Maxime Kovalevsky, _Die ökonomische Entwicklung Europas bis zum
Beginn der kapitalistischen Wirtschaftsform_, trans. into German
from Russian, 7 vols. (1901-1914), especially vols. III, IV, VI; Émile
Levasseur, _Histoire des classes ouvrières et de l'industrie en
France avant 1789_, Vol. II (1901), Book V; Georges d'Avenel,
_Histoire économique de la propriété, des salaires, etc._, 1200-
1800, 6 vols. (1894-1912).

AGRICULTURE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. R. E. Prothero, _English
Farming Past and Present_ (1912), ch. iv; E. C. K. Gonner, _Common
Land and Inclosure_ (1912), valuable for England; R. H. Tawney,
_The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century_ (1912); E. F. Gay,
_Essays on English Agrarian History in the Sixteenth Century_
(1913); H. T. Stephenson, _The Elizabethan People_ (1910); W.
Hasbach, _A History of the English Agricultural Labourer_, trans.
by Ruth Kenyon (1908), an excellent work, particularly Part I on the
development of the class of free laborers from that of the medieval
serfs. Valuable for feudal survivals in France is the brief _Feudal
Regime_ by Charles Seignobos, trans. by Dow. Useful for social
conditions in Russia: James Mavor, _An Economic History of
Russia_, 2 vols. (1914), Vol. I, Book I, ch. iii. See also Eva M.
Tappan, _When Knights were Bold_ (1911) for a very entertaining
chapter for young people, on agriculture in the sixteenth century;
Augustus Jessopp, _The Coming of the Friars_ (1913), ch. ii, for a
sympathetic treatment of "Village Life Six Hundred Years Ago"; and W.
J. Ashley, _Surveys, Historical and Economic_, for a series of
scholarly essays dealing with recent controversies in regard to
medieval land-tenure.

TOWNS AND COMMERCE ABOUT 1500. Clive Day, _History of Commerce_ (1907),
best brief account; W. C. Webster, _A General History of Commerce_
(1903), another excellent outline; E. P. Cheyney, _European Background
of American History_ (1904) in "American Nation" Series, clear account
of the medieval trade routes, pp. 3-40, of the early activities of
chartered companies, pp. 123-167, and of the connection of the
Protestant Revolution with colonialism, pp. 168-239; W. S. Lindsay,
_History of Merchant Shipping and Ancient Commerce_, 4 vols. (1874-
1876), very detailed. The best account of sixteenth-century industry is
in Vol. II of W. J. Ashley, _English Economic History and Theory_, with
elaborate critical bibliographies. For town-life and the gilds: Mrs. J.
R. Green, _Town Life in England in the Fifteenth Century_, 2 vols.
(1894); Charles Gross, _The Gild Merchant_, 2 vols. (1890); Lujo
Brentano, _On the History and Development of Gilds_ (1870); George
Unwin, _The Gilds and Companies of London_ (1908), particularly the
interesting chapter on "The Place of the Gild in the History of Western
Europe." A brief view of English town-life in the later middle ages: E.
Lipson, _An Introduction to the Economic History of England_, Vol. I
(1915), ch. v-ix. On town-life in the Netherlands: Henri Pirenne,
_Belgian Democracy: its Early History_, trans. by J. V. Saunders
(1915). On town-life in the Germanies: Helen Zimmern, _The Hansa Towns_
(1889) in "Story of the Nations" Series; Karl von Hegel, _Städte und
Gilden der germanischen Volker im Mittelalter_, 2 vols. (1891), the
standard treatise in German. On French gilds: Martin St. Leon,
_Histoire des corporations des métiers_ (1897). See also, for advanced
study of trade-routes, Wilhelm Heyd, _Geschichte des Levantehandels im
Mittelalter_, 2 vols. (1879), with a French trans. (1885-1886), and
Aloys Schulte, _Geschichte des mittelalterlichen Handels und Verkehrs
zwischen Westdeutschland und Italien_, 2 vols. (1900).

GENERAL TREATMENTS OF EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION. _Cambridge Modern
History_, Vol. I (1902), ch. i, ii; A. G. Keller, _Colonization: a
Study of the Founding of New Societies_ (1908), a textbook, omitting
reference to English and French colonization; H. C. Morris, _History
of Colonization_, 2 vols. (1908), a useful general text; M. B.
Synge, _A Book of Discovery: the History of the World's Exploration,
from the Earliest Times to the Finding of the South Pole_ (1912);
_Histoire générale_, Vol. IV, ch. xxii, xxiii, and Vol. V, ch.
xxii; S. Ruge, _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_
(1881), in the ambitious Oncken Series; Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, _La
colonisation chez les peuples modernes_, 6th ed., 2 vols. (1908),
the best general work in French; Charles de Lannoy and Hermann van der
Linden, _Histoire de l'expansion coloniale des peuples européens_,
an important undertaking of two Belgian professors, of which two
volumes have appeared--Vol. I, _Portugal et Espagne_ (1907), and
Vol. II, _Néerlande et Danemark, 17e et 18e siècle_ (1911); Alfred
Zimmermann, _Die europaischen Kolonien_, the main German treatise,
in 5 vols. (1896-1903), dealing with Spain and Portugal (Vol. I), Great
Britain (Vols. II, III), France (Vol. IV), and Holland (Vol. V). Much
illustrative source-material is available in the publications of the
Hakluyt Society, Old Series, 100 vols. (1847-1898), and New Series, 35
vols. (1899-1914), selections having been separately published by E. J.
Payne (1893-1900) and by C. R. Beazley (1907). An account of the
medieval travels of Marco Polo is published conveniently in the
"Everyman" Series, and the best edition of the medieval travel-tales
which have passed under the name of Sir John Maundeville is that of The
Macmillan Company (1900). For exploration prior to Columbus and Da
Gama, see C. R. Beazley, _The Dawn of Modern Geography_, 3 vols.
(1897-1906).

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO AMERICA: J. S. Bassett, _A Short History of
the United States_ (1914), ch. i, ii, a good outline; Edward
Channing, _A History of the United States_, Vol. I (1905), an
excellent and more detailed narrative; Livingston Farrand, _Basis of
American History_ (1904), Vol. II of the "American Nation" Series,
especially valuable on the American aborigines; E. J. Payne, _History
of the New World called America_, 2 vols. (1892-1899); John Fiske,
_Colonization of the New World_, Vol. XXI of _History of All
Nations_, ch. i-vi; R. G. Watson, _Spanish and Portuguese South
America_, 2 vols. (1884); Bernard Moses, _The Establishment of
Spanish Rule in America_ (1898), and, by the same author, _The
Spanish Dependencies in South America_, 2 vols. (1914). With special
reference to Asiatic India: Mountstuart Elphinstone, _History of
India: the Hindu and Mohametan Periods_, 9th ed. (1905), an old but
still valuable work on the background of Indian history; Sir W. W.
Hunter, _A Brief History of the Indian Peoples_, rev. ed. (1903),
and, by the same author, _A History of British India_ to the
opening of the eighteenth century, 2 vols. (1899-1900), especially Vol.
I; Pringle Kennedy, _A History of the Great Moghuls_, 2 vols.
(1905-1911). With special reference to African exploration and
colonization in the sixteenth century: Sir Harry Johnston, _History
of the Colonization of Africa by Alien Races_ (1899), a very useful
and authoritative manual; Robert Brown, _The Story of Africa_, 4
vols. (1894-1895), a detailed study; G. M. Theal, _South Africa_
(1894), a clear summary in the "Story of the Nations" Series; J. S.
Keltic, _The Partition of Africa_ (1895). See also Sir Harry
Johnston, _The Negro in the New World_ (1910), important for the
slave-trade and interesting, though in tone somewhat anti-English and
pro-Spanish; J. K. Ingram, _A History of Slavery and Serfdom_
(1895), a brief sketch; and W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, _The Negro_
(1915), a handy volume in the "Home University Library."

EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION COUNTRY BY COUNTRY. Portugal: C. R.
Beazley, _Prince Henry the Navigator_ in "Heroes of the Nation," Series
(1897); J. P. Oliveira Martins, _The Golden Age of Prince Henry the
Navigator_, trans. with notes and additions by J. J. Abraham and W. E.
Reynolds (1914); K. G. Jayne, _Vasco da Gama and his Successors_, 1460-
1580 (1910); H. M. Stephens, _Portugal_ (1891), a brief sketch in the
"Story of the Nations" Series; F. C. Danvers, _The Portuguese In
India_, 2 vols. (1894), a thorough and scholarly work; H. M. Stephens,
_Albuquerque and the Portuguese Settlements in India_ (1892), in
"Rulers of India" Series; Angel Marvaud, _Le Portugal et ses colonies_
(1912); G. M. Theal, _History and Ethnography of Africa South of the
Zambesi_, Vol. I, _The Portuguese in South Africa from 1505 to 1700_
(1907), a standard work by the Keeper of the Archives of Cape Colony.
Spain: John Fiske, _Discovery of America_, 2 vols. (1892), most
delightful narrative; Wilhelm Roscher, _The Spanish Colonial System_, a
brief but highly suggestive extract from an old German work trans. by
E. G. Bourne (1904); E. G. Bourne, _Spain in America_, 1450-1580
(1904), Vol. III of "American Nation" Series, excellent in content and
form; W. R. Shepherd, _Latin America_ (1914) in "Home University
Library." pp. 9-68, clear and suggestive; Sir Arthur Helps, _The
Spanish Conquest in America_, new ed., 4 vols. (1900-1904). A scholarly
study of Columbus's career is J. B. Thacher, _Christopher Columbus_, 3
vols. (1903-1904), incorporating many of the sources; Washington
Irving, _Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus_, originally
published in 1828-1831, but still very readable and generally sound;
Filson Young, _Christopher Columbus and the New World of his
Discovery_, 2 vols. (1906), a popular account, splendidly illustrated;
Henry Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb, son origine, sa vie, ses voyages_,
2 vols. (1884), a standard work by an authority on the age of
exploration; Henri Vignaud, _Histoire critique de la grande entreprise
de Christophe Colomb_, 2 vols. (1911), destructive of many commonly
accepted ideas regarding Columbus; F. H. H. Guillemard, _The Life of
Ferdinand Magellan_ (1890); F. A. MacNutt, _Fernando Cortes and the
Conquest of Mexico_, 1485-1547 (1909), in the "Heroes of the Nations"
Series, and, by the same author, both _Letters of Cortes_, 2 vols.
(1908), and _Bartholomew de las Casas_ (1909); Sir Clements Markham,
_The Incas of Peru_ (1910). On the transference of colonial power from
Spain to the Dutch and English, see _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. IV
(1906), ch. xxv, by H. E. Egerton. England: H. E. Egerton, _A Short
History of British Colonial Policy_, 2d ed. (1909), a bald summary,
provided, however, with good bibliographies; W. H. Woodward, _A Short
History of the Expansion of the British Empire, 1500-1911_, 3d ed.
(1912), a useful epitome; C. R. Beazley, _John and Sebastian Cabot: the
Discovery of North America_ (1898); J. A. Williamson, _Maritime
Enterprise, 1485-1558_ (1913); E. J. Payne (editor), _Voyages of the
Elizabethan Seamen to America_, 2 vols. (1893-1900); L. G. Tyler,
_England in America, 1580-1652_ (1904), Vol. IV of "American Nation"
Series; George Edmundson, _Anglo-Dutch Rivalry, 1600-1653_ (1911).
France: R. G. Thwaites, _France in America, 1497-1763_ (1905), Vol. VII
of "American Nation" Series.

ECONOMIC RESULTS OF THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION. William Cunningham, _An
Essay on Western Civilization in its Economic Aspects_, Vol. II,
_Mediaeval and Modern Times_ (1910), pp. 162-224, and, by the same
author, ch. xv of Vol. I (1902) of the _Cambridge Modern History_; E.
P. Cheyney, _Social Changes in England in the Sixteenth Century_
(1912); George Unwin, _Industrial Organization in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries_ (1904); G. Cawston and A. H. Keane, _Early
Chartered Companies_ (1896); W. R. Scott, _The Constitution and Finance
of English, Scottish, and Irish Joint-Stock Companies to 1720_, Vol. I
(1912); C. T. Carr (editor), _Select Charters of Trading Companies_
(1913); Beckles Willson, _The Great Company_ (1899), an account of the
Hudson Bay Company; Henry Weber, _La Compagnie française des Indes,
1604-1675_ (1904); _Recueil des voyages de la Compagnie des Indes
orientales des Hollandois_, 10 vols. (1730), the monumental source for
the activities of the chief Dutch trading-company.




CHAPTER III

EUROPEAN POLITICS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY


THE EMPEROR CHARLES V

As we look back upon the confused sixteenth century, we are struck at
once by two commanding figures,--the Emperor Charles V [Footnote:
Charles I of Spain.] and his son Philip II,--about whom we may group
most of the political events of the period. The father occupies the
center of the stage during the first half of the century; the son,
during the second half.

[Sidenote: Extensive Dominions of Charles]

At Ghent in the Netherlands, Charles was born in 1500 of illustrious
parentage. His father was Philip of Habsburg, son of the Emperor
Maximilian and Mary, duchess of Burgundy. His mother was the Infanta
Joanna, daughter and heiress of Ferdinand of Aragon and Naples and
Isabella of Castile and the Indies. The death of his father and the
incapacity of his mother--she had become insane--left Charles at the
tender age of six years an orphan under the guardianship of his
grandfathers Maximilian and Ferdinand. The death of the latter in 1516
transferred the whole Spanish inheritance to Charles, and three years
later, by the death of the former, he came into possession of the
hereditary dominions of the Habsburgs. Thus under a youth of nineteen
years were grouped wider lands and greater populations than any
Christian sovereign had ever ruled. Vienna, Amsterdam, Antwerp,
Brussels, Milan, Naples, Madrid, Cadiz,--even the City of Mexico,--owed
him allegiance. His titles alone would fill several pages.

Maximilian had intended not only that all these lands should pass into
the hands of the Habsburg family, but also that his grandson should
succeed him as head of the Holy Roman Empire. This ambition, however,
was hard of fulfillment, because the French king, Francis I (1515-
1547), feared the encircling of his own country by a united German-
Spanish-Italian state, and set himself to preserve what he called the
"Balance of Power"--preventing the undue growth of one political power
at the expense of others. It was only by means of appeal to national
and family sentiment and the most wholesale bribery that Charles
managed to secure a majority of the electors' votes against his French
rival [Footnote: Henry VIII of England was also a candidate.] and
thereby to acquire the coveted imperial title. He was crowned at Aix-
la-Chapelle in his twenty-first year.

[Sidenote: Character of Charles]

Never have greater difficulties confronted a sovereign than those which
Charles V was obliged to face throughout his reign; never did monarch
lead a more strenuous life. He was the central figure in a very
critical period of history: his own character as well as the
painstaking education he had received in the Netherlands conferred upon
him a lively appreciation of his position and a dogged pertinacity in
discharging its obligations. Both in administering his extensive
dominions and in dealing with foreign foes, Charles was a zealous,
hard-working, and calculating prince, and the lack of success which
attended many of his projects was due not to want of ability in the
ruler but to the multiplicity of interests among the ruled. The emperor
must do too many things to allow of his doing any one thing well.

[Sidenote: Difficulties Confronting Charles]

Suppose we turn over in our minds some of the chief problems of Charles
V, for they will serve to explain much of the political history of the
sixteenth century. In the first place, the emperor was confronted with
extraordinary difficulties in governing his territories. Each one of
the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands--the country which he always
considered peculiarly his own--was a distinct political unit, for there
existed only the rudiments of a central administration and a common
representative system, while the county of Burgundy had a separate
political organization. The crown of Castile brought with it the
recently conquered kingdom of Granada, together with the new colonies
in America and scattered posts in northern Africa. The crown of Aragon
comprised the four distinct states of Aragon, Valencia, Catalonia, and
Navarre, [Footnote: The part south of the Pyrenees. See above, p. 8.]
and, in addition, the kingdoms of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, each
with its own customs and government. At least eight independent cortes
or parliaments existed in this Spanish-Italian group, adding greatly to
the intricacy of administration. Much the same was true of that other
Habsburg group of states,--Austria, Styria, Carniola, Carinthia, the
Tyrol, etc., but Charles soon freed himself from immediate
responsibility for their government by intrusting them (1521) to his
younger brother, Ferdinand, who by his own marriage and elections added
the kingdoms of Bohemia [Footnote: Including the Bohemian crown lands
of Moravia and Silesia.] and Hungary (1526) to the Habsburg dominions.
The Empire afforded additional problems: it made serious demands upon
the time, money, and energies of its ruler; in return, it gave little
but glamour. In all these regions Charles had to do with financial,
judicial, and ecclesiastical matters. He had to reconcile conflicting
interests and appeal for popularity to many varied races. More than
once during his reign he even had to repress rebellion. In Germany,
from his very first Diet in 1521, he was face to face with rising
Protestantism which seemed to him to blaspheme his altar and to assail
his throne.

The emperor's overwhelming administrative difficulties were complicated
at every turn by the intricacies of foreign politics. In the first
place, Charles was obliged to wage war with France throughout the
greater part of his reign; he had inherited a longstanding quarrel with
the French kings, to which the rivalry of Francis I for the empire gave
a personal aspect. In the second place, and almost as formidable, was
the advance of the Turks up the Danube and the increase of Mohammedan
naval power in the Mediterranean. Against Protestant Germany a Catholic
monarch might hope to rely on papal assistance, and English support
might conceivably be enlisted against France. But the popes, who
usually disliked the emperor's Italian policy, were not of great aid to
him elsewhere; and the English sovereigns had domestic reasons for
developing hostility to Charles. A brief sketch of the foreign affairs
of Charles may make the situation clear.

[Sidenote: Francis I of France and the Reasons for his Wars with the
Emperor Charles V]

Six years older than Charles, Francis I had succeeded to the French
throne in 1515, irresponsible, frivolous, and vain of military
reputation. The general political situation of the time,--the gradual
inclosure of the French monarchy by a string of Habsburg territories,--
to say nothing of the remarkable contrast between the character of
Francis and that of the persevering Charles, made a great conflict
inevitable, and definite pretexts were not lacking for an early
outbreak of hostilities. (1) Francis revived the claims of the French
crown to Naples, although Louis XII had renounced them in 1504. (2)
Francis, bent on regaining Milan, which his predecessor had lost in
1512, invaded the duchy and, after winning the brilliant victory of
Marignano in the first year of his reign, occupied the city of Milan.
Charles subsequently insisted, however, that the duchy was a fief of
the Holy Roman Empire and that he was sworn by oath to recover it. (3)
Francis asserted the claims of a kinsman to the little kingdom of
Navarre, the greater part of which, it will be remembered, had recently
[Footnote: In 1512. See above.] been forcibly annexed to Spain. (4)
Francis desired to extend his sway over the rich French-speaking
provinces of the Netherlands, while Charles was determined not only to
prevent further aggressions but to recover the duchy of Burgundy of
which his grandmother had been deprived by Louis XI. (5) The outcome of
the contest for the imperial crown in 1519 virtually completed the
breach between the two rivals. War broke out in 1521, and with few
interruptions it was destined to outlast the lives of both Francis and
Charles.

[Sidenote: The Italian Wars of Charles V and Francis I]

Italy was the main theater of the combat. In the first stage, the
imperial forces, with the aid of a papal army, speedily drove the
French garrison out of Milan. The Sforza family  was duly invested with
the duchy as a fief of the Empire, and the pope was compensated by the
addition of Parma and Piacenza to the Patrimony of Saint Peter. The
victorious Imperialists then pressed across the Alps and besieged
Marseilles. Francis, who had been detained by domestic troubles in
France, [Footnote: These troubles related to the disposition of the
important landed estates of the Bourbon family. The duke of Bourbon,
who was constable of France, felt himself injured by the king and
accordingly deserted to the emperor.] now succeeded in raising the
siege and pursued the retreating enemy to Milan. Instead of following
up his advantage by promptly attacking the main army of the
Imperialists, the French king dispatched a part of his force to Naples,
and with the other turned aside to blockade the city of Pavia. This
blunder enabled the Imperialists to reform their ranks and to march
towards Pavia in order to join the besieged. Here on 24 February,
1525,--the emperor's twenty-fifth birthday,--the army of Charles won an
overwhelming victory. Eight thousand French soldiers fell on the field
that day, and Francis, who had been in the thick of the fight, was
compelled to surrender. "No thing in the world is left me save my honor
and my life," wrote the king to his mother. Everything seemed
auspicious for the cause of Charles. Francis, after a brief captivity
in Spain, was released on condition that he would surrender all claims
to Burgundy, the Netherlands, and Italy, and would marry the emperor's
sister.

[Sidenote: The Sack of Rome, 1527]

Francis swore upon the Gospels and upon his knightly word that he would
fulfill these conditions, but in his own and contemporary opinion the
compulsion exercised upon him absolved him from his oath. No sooner was
he back in France than he declared the treaty null and void and
proceeded to form alliances with all the Italian powers that had become
alarmed by the sudden strengthening of the emperor's position in the
peninsula,--the pope, Venice, Florence, and even the Sforza who owed
everything to Charles. Upon the resumption of hostilities the league
displayed the same want of agreement and energy which characterized
every coalition of Italian city-states; and soon the Imperialists were
able to possess themselves of much of the country. In 1527 occurred a
famous episode--the sack of Rome. It was not displeasing to the emperor
that the pope should be punished for giving aid to France, although
Charles cannot be held altogether responsible for what befell. His army
in Italy, composed largely of Spaniards and Germans, being short of
food and money, and without orders, mutinied and marched upon the
Eternal City, which was soon at their mercy. About four thousand people
perished in the capture. The pillage lasted nine months, and the
brigands were halted only by a frightful pestilence which decimated
their numbers. Convents were forced, altars stripped, tombs profaned,
the library of the Vatican sacked, and works of art torn down as
monuments of idolatry. Pope Clement VII (1523-1534), a nephew of the
other Medici pope, Leo X, had taken refuge in the impregnable castle of
St. Angelo and was now obliged to make peace with the emperor.

[Sidenote: Peace of Cambrai, 1529]

The sack of Rome aroused bitter feelings throughout Catholic Europe,
and Henry VIII of England, at that time still loyal to the pope,
ostentatiously sent aid to Francis. But although the emperor made
little headway against Francis, the French king, on account of
strategic blunders and the disunion of the league, was unable to
maintain a sure foothold in Italy. The peace of Cambrai (1529) provided
that Francis should abandon Naples, Milan, and the Netherlands, but the
cession of Burgundy was no longer insisted upon. Francis proceeded to
celebrate his marriage with the emperor's sister.

[Sidenote: Habsburg Predominance in Italy]

Eight years of warfare had left Charles V and the Habsburg family
unquestionable masters of Italy. Naples was under Charles's direct
government. For Milan he received the homage of Sforza. The Medici
pope, whose family he had restored in Florence, was now his ally.
Charles visited Italy for the first time in 1529 to view his
territories, and at Bologna (1530) received from the pope's hands the
ancient iron crown of Lombard Italy and the imperial crown of Rome. It
was the last papal coronation of a ruler of the Holy Roman Empire.

The peace of Cambrai proved but a truce, and war between Charles and
Francis repeatedly blazed forth. Francis made strange alliances in
order to create all possible trouble for the emperor,--Scotland,
Sweden, Denmark, the Ottoman Turks, even the rebellious Protestant
princes within the empire. There were spasmodic campaigns between 1536
and 1538 and between 1542 and 1544, and after the death of Francis and
the abdication of Charles, the former's son, Henry II (1547-1559),
continued the conflict, newly begun in 1552, until the conclusion of
the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559, by which the Habsburgs retained
their hold upon Italy, while France, by the occupation of the important
bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, extended her northeastern
frontier, at the expense of the empire, toward the Rhine River.
[Footnote: It was during this war that in 1558 the French captured
Calais from the English, and thus put an end to English territorial
holdings on the Continent. The English Queen Mary was the wife of
Philip II of Spain.]

[Sidenote: Results of the Wars between Charles V and Francis I]

Indirectly, the long wars occasioned by the personal rivalry of Charles
and Francis had other results than Habsburg predominance in Italy and
French expansion towards the Rhine. They preserved a "balance of power"
and prevented the incorporation of the French monarchy into an
obsolescent empire. They rendered easier the rise of the Ottoman power
in eastern Europe; and French alliance with the Turks gave French trade
and enterprise a decided lead in the Levant. They also permitted the
comparatively free growth of Protestantism in Germany.

[Sidenote: The Turkish Peril]

More sinister to Charles V than his wars with the French was the
advance of the Ottoman Turks. Under their greatest sultan, Suleiman II,
the Magnificent (1520-1566), a contemporary of Charles, the Turks were
rapidly extending their sway. The Black Sea was practically a Turkish
lake; and the whole Euphrates valley, with Bagdad, had fallen into the
sultan's power, now established on the Persian Gulf and in control of
all of the ancient trade-routes to the East. The northern coasts of
Africa from Egypt to Algeria acknowledged the supremacy of Suleiman,
whose sea power in the Mediterranean had become a factor to be reckoned
with in European politics, threatening not only the islands but the
great Christian countries of Italy and Spain. The Venetians were driven
from the Morea and from the Ægean Islands; only Cyprus, Crete, and
Malta survived in the Mediterranean as outposts of Christendom.

[Sidenote: Suleiman the Magnificent]

Suleiman devoted many years to the extension of his power in Europe,
sometimes in alliance with the French king, sometimes upon his own
initiative,--and with almost unbroken success. In 1521 he declared war
against the king of Hungary on the pretext that he had received no
Hungarian congratulations on his accession to the throne. He besieged
and captured Belgrade, and in 1526 on the field of Mohács his forces
met and overwhelmed the Hungarians, whose king was killed with the
flower of the Hungarian chivalry. The battle of Mohács marked the
extinction of an independent and united Hungarian state; Ferdinand of
Habsburg, brother of Charles V, claimed the kingdom; Suleiman was in
actual possession of fully a third of it. The sultan's army carried the
war into Austria and in 1529 bombarded and invested Vienna, but so
valiant was the resistance offered that after three weeks the siege was
abandoned. Twelve years later the greater part of Hungary, including
the city of Budapest, became a Turkish province, and in many places
churches were turned into mosques. In 1547 Charles V and Ferdinand were
compelled to recognize the Turkish conquests in Hungary, and the latter
agreed to pay the sultan an annual tribute of 30,000 ducats. Suleiman
not only thwarted every attempt of his rivals to recover their
territories, but remained throughout his life a constant menace to the
security of the hereditary dominions of the Habsburgs.

[Sidenote: Charles V and the Holy Roman Empire.]
[Sidenote: Possibility of transforming the Empire into a National
German Monarchy]

At the very time when Charles V was encountering these grave troubles
in administering his scattered hereditary possessions and in waging war
now with the French and now with the Mohammedans, he likewise was
saddled with problems peculiar to the government of his empire. Had he
been able to devote all his talent and energy to the domestic affairs
of the Holy Roman Empire, he might have contributed potently to the
establishment of a compact German state. It should be borne in mind
that when Charles V was elected emperor in 1519 the Holy Roman Empire
was virtually restricted to German-speaking peoples, and that the
national unifications of England, France, and Spain, already far
advanced, pointed the path to a similar political evolution for
Germany. Why should not a modern German national state have been
created coextensive with the medieval empire, a state which would have
included not only the twentieth-century German Empire but Austria,
Holland, and Belgium, and which, stretching from the Baltic to the
Adriatic and from the English Channel to the Vistula, would have
dominated the continent of Europe throughout the whole modern era?
There were certainly grave difficulties in the way, but grave
difficulties had also been encountered in consolidating France or
Spain, and the difference was rather of degree than of kind. In every
other case a strong monarch had overcome feudal princes and ambitious
nobles, had deprived cities of many of their liberties, had trampled
upon, or tampered with, the privileges of representative assemblies,
and had enforced internal order and security. In every such case the
monarch had commanded the support of important popular elements and had
directed his major efforts to the realization of national aims.

National patriotism was not altogether lacking among Germans of the
sixteenth century. They were conscious of a common language which was
already becoming a vehicle of literary expression. They were conscious
of a common tradition and of a common nationality. They recognized, in
many cases, the absurdly antiquated character of their political
institutions and ardently longed for reforms. In fact, the trouble with
the Germans was not so much the lack of thought about political reform
as the actual conflicts between various groups concerning the method
and goal of reform. Germans despised the Holy Roman Empire, much as
Frenchmen abhorred the memory of feudal society; but Germans were not
as unanimous as Frenchmen in advocating the establishment of a strong
national monarchy. In Germany were princes, free cities, and knights,--
all nationalistic after a fashion, but all quarreling with each other
and with their nominal sovereign.

[Sidenote: Charles V bent on Strengthening Monarchical Power though not
on a National Basis]

The emperors themselves were the only sincere and consistent champions
of centralized monarchical power, but the emperors were probably less
patriotic than any one else in the Holy Roman Empire. Charles V would
never abandon his pretensions to world power in order to become a
strong monarch over a single nation. Early in his reign he declared
that "no monarchy was comparable though not to the Roman Empire. This
the whole world had once obeyed, and Christ Himself had paid it honor
and obedience. Unfortunately it was now only a shadow of what it had
been, but he hoped, with the help of those powerful countries and
alliances which God had granted him, to raise it to its ancient glory."
Charles V labored for an increase of personal power not only in Germany
but also in the Netherlands, in Spain, and in Italy; and with the vast
imperial ambition of Charles the ideal of creating a national monarchy
on a strictly German basis was in sharp conflict. Charles V could not,
certainly would not, pose simply as a German king--a national leader.

[Sidenote: Nationalism among the German Princes]

Under these circumstances the powerful German princes, in defying the
emperor's authority and in promoting disruptive tendencies in the Holy
Roman Empire, were enabled to lay the blame at the feet of their
unpatriotic sovereign and thereby arouse in their behalf a good deal of
German national sentiment. In choosing Charles V to be their emperor,
the princely electors in 1519 had demanded that German or Latin should
be the official language of the Holy Roman Empire, that imperial
offices should be open only to Germans, that the various princes should
not be subject to any foreign political jurisdiction, that no foreign
troops should serve in imperial wars without the approval of the Diet,
and that Charles should confirm the sovereign rights of all the princes
and appoint from their number a Council of Regency
(_Reichsregiment_) to share in his government.

[Sidenote: The Council of Regency, 1521-1531]
[Sidenote: Its Failure to Unify Germany]

In accordance with an agreement reached by a Diet held at Worms in
1521, the Council of Regency was created. Most of its twenty-three
members were named by, and represented the interests of, the German
princes. Here might be the starting-point toward a closer political
union of the German-speaking people, if only a certain amount of
financial independence could be secured to the Council. The proposal on
this score was a most promising one; it was to support the new imperial
administration, not, as formerly, by levying more or less voluntary
contributions on the various states, but by establishing a kind of
customs-union (_Zollverein_) and imposing on foreign importations
a tariff for revenue. This time, however, the German burghers raised
angry protests; the merchants and traders of the Hanseatic towns
insisted that the proposed financial burden would fall on them and
destroy their business; and their protests were potent enough to bring
to nought the princes' plan. Thus the government was forced again to
resort to the levy of special financial contributions,--an expedient
which usually put the emperor and the Council of Regency at the mercy
of the most selfish and least patriotic of the German princes.

[Sidenote: Nationalism among the German Knights]

More truly patriotic as a class than German princes or German burghers
were the German knights--those gentlemen of the hill-top and of the
road, who, usually poor in pocket though stout of heart, looked down
from their high-perched castles with badly disguised contempt upon the
vulgar tradesmen of the town or beheld with anger and jealousy the
encroachments of neighboring princes, lay and ecclesiastical, more
wealthy and powerful than themselves. Especially against the princes
the knights contended, sometimes under the forms of law, more often by
force and violence and all the barbarous accompaniments of private
warfare and personal feud. Some of the knights were well educated and
some had literary and scholarly abilities; hardly any one of them was a
friend of public order. Yet practically all the knights were intensely
proud of their German nationality. It was the knights, who, under the
leadership of such fiery patriots as Ulrich von Hutten and Franz von
Sickingen, had forcefully contributed in 1519 to the imperial election
of Charles V, a German Habsburg, in preference to non-German candidates
such as Francis I of France or Henry VIII of England. For a brief
period Charles V leaned heavily upon the German knights for support in
his struggle with princes and burghers; and at one time it looked as if
the knights in union with the emperor would succeed in curbing the
power of the princes and in laying the foundations of a strongly
centralized national German monarchy.

[Sidenote: Rise of Lutheranism Favored by the Knights and Opposed by
Charles V]

But at the critical moment Protestantism arose in Germany, marking a
cleavage between the knightly leaders and the emperor. To knights like
Ulrich von Hutten and Franz von Sickingen the final break in 1520
between Martin Luther and the pope seemed to assure a separation of
Germany from Italy and the erection of a peculiar form of German
Christianity about which a truly national state could be builded. As a
class the knights applauded Luther and rejoiced at the rapid spread of
his teachings throughout Germany. On the other hand, Charles V remained
a Roman Catholic. Not only was he loyally attached to the religion of
his fathers through personal training and belief, but he felt that the
maintenance of what political authority he possessed was dependent
largely on the maintenance of the universal authority of the ancient
Church, and practically he needed papal assistance for his many foreign
projects. The same reasons that led many German princes to accept the
Lutheran doctrines as a means of lessening imperial control caused
Charles V to reject them. At the same Diet at Worms (1521), at which
the Council of Regency had been created, Charles V prevailed upon the
Germans present to condemn and outlaw Luther; and this action alienated
the knights from the emperor.

[Sidenote: The Knights' War, 1522-1523]

Franz von Sickingen, a Rhenish knight and the ablest of his class,
speedily took advantage of the emperor's absence from Germany in 1522
to precipitate a Knights' War. In supreme command of a motley army of
fellow-knights, Franz made an energetic attack upon the rich landed
estates of the Catholic prince-bishop of Trier. At this point, the
German princes, lay as well as ecclesiastical, forgetting their
religious predilections and mindful only of their common hatred of the
knights, rushed to the defense of the bishop of Trier and drove off
Sickingen, who, in April, 1523, died fighting before his own castle of
Ebernburg. Ulrich von Hutten fled to Switzerland and perished miserably
shortly afterwards. The knights' cause collapsed, and princes and
burghers remained triumphant. [Footnote: The Knights' War was soon
followed by the Peasants' Revolt, a social rather than a political
movement. For an account of the Peasants' Revolt see pp. 133 ff.] It
was the end of serious efforts in the sixteenth century to create a
national German state.

[Sidenote: Failure of German Nationalism in the Sixteenth Century]

The Council of Regency lasted until 1531, though its inability to
preserve domestic peace discredited it, and in its later years it
enjoyed little authority. Left to themselves, many of the princes
espoused Protestantism. In vain Charles V combated the new religious
movement. In vain he proscribed it in several Diets after that of
Worms. In vain he assailed its upholders in several military campaigns,
such as those against the Schmalkaldic League, which will be treated
more fully in another connection. But the long absences of Charles V
from Germany and his absorption in a multitude of cares and worries, to
say nothing of the spasmodic aid which Francis, the Catholic king of
France, gave to the Protestants in Germany, contributed indirectly to
the spread of Lutheranism. In the last year of Charles's rule (1555)
the profession of the Lutheran faith on the part of German princes was
placed by the peace of Augsburg [Footnote: See below, p. 136.] on an
equal footing with that of the Catholic religion. Protestantism among
the German princes proved a disintegrating, rather than a unifying,
factor of national life. The rise of Protestantism was the last straw
which broke German nationalism.

[Sidenote: Charles V and England]

With England the relations of Charles V were interesting but not so
important as those already noted with the Germans, the Turks, and the
French. At first in practical alliance with the impetuous self-willed
Henry VIII (1509-1547), whose wife--Catherine of Aragon--was the
emperor's aunt, Charles subsequently broke off friendly relations when
the English sovereign asked the pope to declare his marriage null and
void. Charles prevailed upon the pope to deny Henry's request, and the
schism which Henry then created between the Catholic Church in England
and the Roman See increased the emperor's bitterness. Towards the close
of Henry's reign relations improved again, but it was not until the
accession of Charles's cousin, Mary (1553-1558), to the English throne
that really cordial friendship was restored. To this Queen Mary,
Charles V married his son and successor Philip.

[Sidenote: Abdication of Charles V]

At length exhausted by his manifold labors, Charles V resolved to
divide his dominions between his brother Ferdinand and his son Philip
and to retire from government. In the hall of the Golden Fleece at
Brussels on 25 October, 1555, he formally abdicated the sovereignty of
his beloved Netherlands. Turning to the representatives, he said:
"Gentlemen, you must not be astonished if, old and feeble as I am in
all my members, and also from the love I bear you, I shed some tears."
At least in the Netherlands the love was reciprocal. In 1556 he
resigned the Spanish and Italian crowns, [Footnote: He made over to his
brother all his imperial authority, though he nominally retained the
crown of the Holy Roman Empire until 1558] and spent his last years in
preparation for a future world. He died in 1558. Personally, Charles V
had a prominent lower jaw and a thin, pale face, relieved by a wide
forehead and bright, flashing eyes. He was well formed and dignified in
appearance. In character he was slow and at times both irresolute and
obstinate, but he had a high sense of duty, honest intentions, good
soldierly qualities, and a large amount of cold common sense. Though
not highly educated, he was well read and genuinely appreciative of
music and painting.


PHILIP II AND THE PREDOMINANCE OF SPAIN

For a century and a half after the retirement of Charles V in 1556, we
hear of two branches of the Habsburg family--the Spanish Habsburgs and
the Austrian Habsburgs, descended respectively from Philip II and
Ferdinand. By the terms of the division, Ferdinand, the brother of
Charles, received the compact family possessions in the East--Austria
and its dependencies, Bohemia, that portion of Hungary not occupied by
the Turks, and the title of Holy Roman Emperor,--while the remainder
went to Charles's son, Philip II,--Spain, the Netherlands, Franche
Comté (the eastern part of Burgundy), the Two Sicilies, Milan, and the
American colonies.

Over the history of Ferdinand and his immediate successors, we need not
tarry, because, aside from efforts to preserve religious peace and the
family's political predominance within the empire and to recover
Hungary from the Turks, it is hardly essential. But in western Europe
Philip II for a variety of reasons became a figure of world-wide
importance: we must examine his career.

[Sidenote: Character and policies of Philip II]

Few characters in history have elicited more widely contradictory
estimates than Philip II. Represented by many Protestant writers as a
villain, despot, and bigot, he has been extolled by patriotic Spaniards
as Philip the Great, champion of religion and right. These conflicting
opinions are derived from different views which may be taken of the
value and inherent worth of Philip's policies and methods, but what
those policies and methods were there can be no doubt. In the first
place, Philip II prized Spain as his native country and his main
possession--in marked contrast to his father, for he himself had been
born in Spain and had resided there during almost all of his life--and
he was determined to make Spain the greatest country in the world. In
the second place, Philip II was sincerely and piously attached to
Catholicism; he abhorred Protestantism as a blasphemous rending of the
seamless garment of the Church; and he set his heart upon the universal
triumph of his faith. If, by any chance, a question should arise
between the advantage of Spain and the best interests of the Church,
the former must be sacrificed relentlessly to the latter. Such was the
sovereign's stern ideal. No seeming failure of his policies could shake
his belief in their fundamental excellence. That whatever he did was
done for the greater glory of God, that success or failure depended
upon the inscrutable will of the Almighty and not upon himself, were
his guiding convictions, which he transmitted to his Spanish
successors. Not only was Philip a man of principles and ideals, but he
was possessed of a boundless capacity for work and an indomitable will.
He preferred tact and diplomacy to war and prowess of arms, though he
was quite willing to order his troops to battle if the object, in his
opinion, was right. He was personally less accustomed to the sword than
to the pen, and no clerk ever toiled more industriously at his papers
than did this king. From early morning until far into the night he bent
over minutes and reports and other business of kingcraft. Naturally
cautious and reserved, he was dignified and princely in public. In his
private life, he was orderly and extremely affectionate to his family
and servants. Loyalty was Philip's best attribute.

There was a less happy side to the character of Philip II. His free use
of the Inquisition in order to extirpate heresy throughout his
dominions has rendered him in modern eyes an embodiment of bigotry and
intolerance, but it must be remembered that he lived in an essentially
intolerant age, when religious persecution was stock in trade of
Protestants no less than of Catholics. It is likewise true that he
constantly employed craft and deceit and was ready to make use of
assassination for political purposes, but this too was in accordance
with the temper of the times: lawyers then taught, following the
precepts of the famous historian and political philosopher,
Machiavelli, that Christian morality is a guide for private conduct
rather than for public business, and that "the Prince" may act above
the laws in order to promote the public good, and even such famous
Protestant leaders as Coligny and William the Silent entered into
murder plots. But when all due allowances have been made, the student
cannot help feeling that the purpose of Philip II would have been
served better by the employment of means other than persecution and
murder.

The reign of Philip II covered approximately the second half of the
sixteenth century (1556-1598). In his efforts to make Spain the
greatest power in the world and to restore the unity problems of
Christendom, he was doomed to failure. The chief Confronting reason for
the failure is simple--the number and [side note Problems Confronting
Philip II] variety of the problems and projects with which Philip II
was concerned. It was a case of the king putting a finger in too many
pies--he was cruelly burned. Could Philip II have devoted all his
energies to one thing at a time, he might conceivably have had greater
success, but as it was, he must divide his attention between
supervising the complex administration of his already wide dominions
and annexing in addition the monarchy and empire of Portugal, between
promoting a vigorous commercial and colonial policy and suppressing a
stubborn revolt in the Netherlands, between championing Catholicism in
both England and France and protecting Christendom against the
victorious Mohammedans. It was this multiplicity of interests that
paralyzed the might of the Spanish monarch, yet each one of his foreign
activities was epochal in the history of the country affected. We shall
therefore briefly review Philip's activities in order.

[Sidenote: Spain under Philip II: Political]

As we have seen, Philip II inherited a number of states which had
separate political institutions and customs. He believed in national
unification, at least of Spain. National unification implied
uniformity, and uniformity implied greater power of the crown. So
Philip sought to further the work of his great-grandparents, Ferdinand
and Isabella,--absolutism and uniformity became his watchwords in
internal administration. Politically Philip made no pretense of
consulting the Cortes on legislation, and, although he convoked them to
vote new taxes, he established the rule that the old taxes were to be
considered as granted in perpetuity and as constituting the ordinary
revenue of the crown. He treated the nobles as ornamental rather than
useful, retiring them from royal offices in favor of lawyers and other
subservient members of the middle class. All business was conducted by
correspondence and with a final reference to the king, and the natural
result was endless delay.

[Sidenote: Spain under Philip II: Economic]

Financially and economically the period was unfortunate for Spain. The
burden of the host of foreign enterprises fell with crushing weight
upon the Spanish kingdom and particularly upon Castile. Aragon, which
was poor and jealous of its own rights, would give little. The income
from the Netherlands, at first large, was stopped by the revolt. The
Italian states barely paid expenses. The revenue from the American
mines, which has been greatly exaggerated, enriched the pockets of
individuals rather than the treasury of the state. In Spain itself, the
greater part of the land was owned by the ecclesiastical corporations
and the nobles, who were exempt from taxation but were intermittently
fleeced. Moreover, the 10 per cent tax on all sales--the alcabala
[Footnote: See above, p. 57.]--gradually paralyzed all native
industrial enterprise. And the persecution of wealthy and industrious
Jews and Moors diminished the resources of the kingdom. Spain, at the
close of the century, was on the verge of bankruptcy.

[Sidenote: Spain under Philip II: Religious]

In religious matters Philip II aimed at uniform adherence to the
doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. He felt, like so many of his
contemporaries, that disparity of belief  among subjects would imperil
a state. Both from political motives and from religious zeal Philip was
a Catholic. He therefore advised the pope, watched with interest the
proceedings of the great Council of Trent which was engaged with the
reformation of the Church, [Footnote: See below, pp. 158 ff.] and
labored for the triumph of his religion not only in his own dominions
and in France, but also in Poland, in England, and even in Scandinavia.
In Spain he strengthened the Inquisition and used it as a tool of royal
despotism.

[Sidenote: Temporary Union of Spain and Portugal]

Territorially Philip II desired to complete political unity in the
peninsula by combining the crown of Portugal with those of Castile and
Aragon. He himself was closely related to the Portuguese royal family,
and in 1580 he laid formal claim to that kingdom. The duke of Braganza,
whose claim was better than Philip's, was bought off by immense grants
and the country was overrun by Spanish troops. Philip endeavored to
placate the Portuguese by full recognition of their constitutional
rights and in particular by favoring the lesser nobility or country
gentry. Although the monarchies and vast colonial possessions of Spain
and Portugal were thus joined for sixty years under a common king, the
arrangement never commanded any affection in Portugal, with the result
that at the first opportunity, in 1640, Portuguese independence was
restored under the leadership of the Braganza family.

[Sidenote: Rebellions Against Philip II in Spain]

The most serious domestic difficulty which Philip had to face was the
revolt of the rich and populous Netherlands, which we shall discuss
presently. But with other revolts the king had to contend. In his
efforts to stamp out heresy and peculiar customs among the descendants
of the Moors who still lived in the southern part of Spain, Philip
aroused armed opposition. The Moriscos, as they were called, struggled
desperately from 1568 to 1570 to reëstablish the independence of
Granada. This rebellion was suppressed with great cruelty, and the
surviving Moriscos were forced to find new homes in less favored parts
of Spain until their final expulsion from the country in 1609. A revolt
of Aragon in 1591 was put down by a Castilian army; the constitutional
rights of Aragon were diminished and the kingdom was reduced to a
greater measure of submission.

[Sidenote: Revolt of the Netherlands: The Causes]

The causes that led to the revolt of the Netherlands may be stated as
fourfold. (1) Financial. The burdensome taxes which Charles V had laid
upon the country were increased by Philip II and often applied to
defray the expenses of other parts of the Spanish possessions.
Furthermore, the restrictions which Philip imposed upon Dutch commerce
in the interest of that of Spain threatened to interfere seriously with
the wonted economic prosperity of the Netherlands. (2) Political.
Philip II sought to centralize authority in the Netherlands and
despotically deprived the cities and nobles of many of their
traditional privileges. Philip never visited the country in person
after 1559, and he intrusted his arbitrary government to regents and to
Spaniards rather than to native leaders. The scions of the old and
proud noble families of the Netherlands naturally resented being
supplanted in lucrative and honorable public offices by persons whom
they could regard only as upstarts. (3) Religious. Despite the rapid
and universal spread of Calvinistic Protestantism throughout the
northern provinces, Philip was resolved to force Catholicism upon all
of his subjects. He increased the number of bishoprics, decreed acts of
uniformity, and in a vigorous way utilized the Inquisition to carry his
policy into effect. (4) Personal. The Dutch and Flemish loved Charles V
because he had been born and reared among them and always considered
their country as his native land. Philip II was born and brought up in
Spain. He spoke a language foreign to the Netherlands, and by their
inhabitants he was thought of as an alien.

[Sidenote: Margaret of Parma and the "Beggars"]

At first the opposition in the Netherlands was directed chiefly against
the Inquisition and the presence of Spanish garrisons in the towns. The
regent, Margaret of Parma, Philip's half-sister, endeavored to banish
public discontent by a few concessions. The Spanish troops were
withdrawn and certain unpopular officials were dismissed. But
influential noblemen and burghers banded themselves together early in
1566 and presented to the regent Margaret a petition, in which, while
protesting their loyalty, they expressed fear of a general revolt and
begged that a special embassy be sent to Philip to urge upon him the
necessity of abolishing the Inquisition and of redressing their other
grievances. The regent, at first disquieted by the petitioners, was
reassured by one of her advisers, who exclaimed, "What, Madam, is your
Highness afraid of these beggars (_ces gueux_)?" Henceforth the
chief opponents of Philip's policies in the Netherlands humorously
labeled themselves "Beggars" and assumed the emblems of common begging,
the wallet and the bowl. The fashion spread quickly, and the "Beggars'"
insignia were everywhere to be seen, worn as trinkets, especially in
the large towns. In accordance with the "Beggars'" petition, an embassy
was dispatched to Spain to lay the grievances before Philip II.

[Sidenote: Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, 1567-1573]

Philip II at first promised to abolish the Inquisition in the
Netherlands, but soon repented of his promise. For meanwhile mobs of
fanatical Protestants, far more radical than the respectable "Beggars,"
were rushing to arms, breaking into Catholic churches, wrecking the
altars, smashing the images to pieces, profaning monasteries, and
showing in their retaliation as much violence--as their enemies had
shown cruelty in persecution. In August, 1566, this sacrilegious
iconoclasm reached its climax in the irreparable ruin of the
magnificent cathedral at Antwerp. Philip replied to these acts, which
he interpreted as disloyalty, by sending (1567) his most famous
general, the duke of Alva, into the Netherlands with a large army and
with instructions to cow the people into submission. Alva proved
himself quite capable of understanding and executing his master's
wishes: one of his first acts was the creation of a "Council of
Troubles," an arbitrary tribunal which tried cases of treason and which
operated so notoriously as to merit its popular appellation of the
"Council of Blood." During the duke's stay of six years, it has been
estimated that eight thousand persons were executed, including the
counts of Egmont and Horn, thirty thousand were despoiled of their
property, and one hundred thousand quitted the country. Alva, moreover,
levied an enormous tax of one-tenth upon the price of merchandise sold.
As the tax was collected on several distinct processes, it absorbed at
least seven-tenths of the value of certain goods--of cloth, for
instance. The tax, together with the lawless confusion throughout the
country, meant the destruction of Flemish manufactures and trade. It
was, therefore, quite natural that the burgesses of the southern
Netherlands, Catholic though most of them were, should unite with the
nobles and with the Protestants of the North in opposing Spanish
tyranny. The whole country was now called to arms.

[Sidenote: William the Silent, Prince of Orange]

One of the principal noblemen of the Netherlands was a German, William
of Nassau, prince of Orange.[Footnote: William (1533-1584), now
commonly called "the Silent." There appears to be no contemporaneous
justification of the adjective as applied to him, but the misnomer,
once adopted by later writers, has insistently clung to him.] He had
been governing the provinces of Holland and Zeeland when Alva arrived,
but as he was already at the point of accepting Protestantism he had
prudently retired into Germany, leaving his estates to be confiscated
by the Spanish governor. Certain trifling successes of the insurgents
now called William back to head the popular movement. For many years he
bore the brunt of the war and proved himself not only a resourceful
general, but an able diplomat and a whole-souled patriot. He eventually
gained the admiration and love of the whole Dutch people.

[Sidenote: The "Sea Beggars"]

The first armed forces of William of Orange were easily routed by Alva,
but in 1569 a far more menacing situation was presented. In that year
William began to charter corsairs and privateers to prey upon Spanish
shipping. These "Sea Beggars," as they were called, were mostly wild
and lawless desperadoes who stopped at nothing in their hatred of
Catholics and Spaniards: they early laid the foundations of Dutch
maritime power and at the same time proved a constant torment to Alva.
They made frequent incursions into the numerous waterways of the
Netherlands and perpetually fanned the embers of revolt on land.
Gradually William collected new armies, which more and more
successfully defied Alva.

[Sidenote: The "Spanish Fury" and the Pacification of Ghent, 1576]

The harsh tactics of Alva had failed to restore the Netherlands to
Philip's control, and in 1573 Alva was replaced in the regency by the
more politic Requesens, who continued the struggle as best he could but
with even less success than Alva. Soon after Requesens's death in 1576,
the Spanish army in the Netherlands, left without pay or food, mutinied
and inflicted such horrible indignities upon several cities, notably
Antwerp, that the savage attack is called the "Spanish Fury." Deputies
of all the seventeen provinces at once concluded an agreement, termed
the Pacification of Ghent (1576), by which they mutually guaranteed
resistance to the Spanish until the king should abolish the Inquisition
and restore their old-time liberties.

Then Philip II tried a policy of concession, but the new governor, the
dashing Don John of Austria, fresh from a great naval victory over the
Turks, soon discovered that it was too late to reconcile the
Protestants. William the Silent was wary of the Spanish offers, and Don
John died in 1578 without having achieved very much.

[Sidenote: Farnese, Duke of Parma]
[Sidenote: The Treaty of Array and the Union of Utrecht (1579): the
Permanent Division of the Netherlands]

But Philip II was not without some success in the Netherlands. He was
fortunate in having a particularly determined and tactful governor in
the country from 1578 to 1592 in the person of Alexander Farnese, duke
of Parma. Skillfully mingling war and diplomacy, Farnese succeeded in
sowing discord between the northern and southern provinces: the former
were Dutch, Calvinist, and commercial; the latter were Flemish and
Walloon, Catholic, and industrial. The ten southern provinces might
eventually have more to fear from the North than from continued union
with Spain; their representatives, therefore, signed a defensive league
at Arras in 1579 for the protection of the Catholic religion and with
the avowed purpose of effecting a reconciliation with Philip II. In the
same year the northern provinces agreed to the Union of Utrecht,
binding themselves together "as if they were one province" to maintain
their rights and liberties "with life-blood and goods" against Spanish
tyranny and to grant complete freedom of worship and of religious
opinion throughout the confederation. In this way the Pacification of
Ghent was nullified and the Netherlands were split into two parts, each
going its own way, each developing its own history. The southern
portion was to remain in Habsburg hands for over two centuries, being
successively termed "Spanish Netherlands" and "Austrian Netherlands"--
roughly speaking, it is what to-day we call Belgium. The northern
portion was to become free and independent, and, as the "United
Provinces" or simply "Holland," to take its place among the nations of
the world. For a considerable period of time Holland was destined to be
more prosperous than Belgium. The latter suffered more grievously than
the former from the actual hostilities; and the Dutch, by closing the
River Scheldt and dominating the adjacent seas, dealt a mortal blow at
the industrial and commercial supremacy of Antwerp and transferred the
chief trade and business of all the Netherlands to their own city of
Amsterdam.

[Sidenote: Reasons for the Success of the Dutch]

For many years the struggle dragged on. At times it seemed probable
that Farnese and the Spaniards would overcome the North by force as
they had obtained the South by diplomacy. But a variety of reasons
explain the ultimate success of the Dutch. The nature of the country
rendered ordinary campaigning very difficult--the network of canals
constituted natural lines of defense and the cutting of the dikes might
easily imperil an invading army. Again, the seafaring propensities of
the Dutch stimulated them to fit out an increasing number of privateers
which constantly preyed upon Spanish commerce: it was not long before
this traffic grew important and legitimate, so that in the following
century Amsterdam became one of the greatest cities of the world, and
Holland assumed a prominent place among commercial and colonial
nations. Thirdly, the employment of foreign mercenaries in the army of
defense enabled the native population to devote the more time to
peaceful pursuits, and, despite the persistence of war, the Dutch
provinces increased steadily in wealth and prosperity. Fourthly, the
cautious Fabian policy of William the Silent prevented the Dutch from
staking heavily upon battles in the open field. Fifthly, the Dutch
received a good deal of assistance from Protestants of Germany,
England, and France. Finally, Philip II pursued too many great projects
at once to be able to bring a single one to a satisfactory conclusion:
his war with Queen Elizabeth of England and his interference in the
affairs of France inextricably complicated his plans in the
Netherlands.

[Sidenote: Formal Declaration of Dutch Independence, 1581]

In 1581 Philip II published a ban against William of Orange,
proclaiming him a traitor and an outlaw and offering a reward to any
one who would take him dead or alive. William replied by his famous
"Apology" to the charges against him; but his practical answer to the
king was the Act of Abjuration, by which at his persuasion the
representatives of the northern provinces, assembled at The Hague,
solemnly proclaimed their separation from the crown of Spain, broke the
royal seal of Philip II, and declared the king deprived of all
authority over them. We should call this Act of 1581 the Dutch
declaration of independence. It was an augury of the definitive result
of the war.

[Sidenote: Recognition of Dutch Independence]

Although William the Silent was assassinated by an agent of Spain
(1584), and Antwerp was captured from the Protestants in 1585, the
ability and genius of Farnese did not avail to make further headway
against the United Provinces; but Philip II, stubborn to the end,
positively refused to recognize Dutch independence. In 1609 Philip III
of Spain consented to a twelve years' truce with the States-General of
The Hague. In the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) the Dutch and Spaniards
again became embroiled, and the freedom of the republic was not
recognized officially by Spain till the general peace of Westphalia in
1648. [Footnote: See below, p. 229.]

The seven provinces, which had waged such long war with Spain,
constituted, by mutual agreement, a confederacy, each preserving a
distinct local government and administration, but all subject to a
general parliament--the States-General--and to a stadtholder, or
governor-general, an office which subsequently became hereditary in the
Orange family. Between the States-General and the stadtholder, a
constitutional conflict was carried on throughout the greater part of
the seventeenth century--the former, supported by well-to-do burghers,
favoring a greater measure of political democracy, the latter, upheld
by aristocratically minded nobles, laboring for the development of
monarchical institutions under the Orange family.

[Sidenote: Natural Opposition of England and France to the Policies of
Philip II]

Not only his efforts in the Netherlands but many other projects of
Philip II were frustrated by remarkable parallel developments in the
two national monarchies of England and France. Both these countries
were naturally jealous opposition and fearful of an undue expansion of
Spain, which might upset the balance of power. Both states, from their
geographical locations, would normally be inimical to Philip II:
England would desire, from her island position, to destroy the monopoly
which Spain claimed of the carrying trade of the seas; France, still
encircled by Habsburg possessions in Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands,
would adhere to her traditional policy of allying herself with every
foe of the Spanish king. Then, too, the papal authority had been
rejected in England and seriously questioned in France: Philip's
crusading zeal made him the champion of the Church in those countries.
For ecclesiastical as well as for economic and political purposes it
seemed necessary to the Spanish king that he should bring France and
England under his direct influence. On their side, patriotic French and
English resented such foreign interest in their domestic affairs, and
the eventual failure of Philip registered a wonderful growth of
national feeling among the peoples who victoriously contended against
him. The beginnings of the real modern greatness of France and England
date from their struggle with Philip II.

[Sidenote: Philip II and Mary Tudor]

At the outset of his reign, Philip seemed quite successful in his
foreign relations. As we have seen, he was in alliance with England
through his marriage with Queen Mary Tudor (1553-1558): she had
temporarily restored the English Church to communion with the Holy See,
and was conducting her foreign policy in harmony with Philip's--because
of her husband she lost to the French the town of Calais, the last
English possession on the Continent (1558). Likewise, as has been said,
Philip II concluded with France in 1559 the advantageous treaty of
Cateau-Cambrésis. But during the ensuing thirty years the tables were
completely turned. Both England and France ended by securing respite
from Spanish interference.

[Sidenote: Philip II and Elizabeth]

Mary Tudor died unhappy and childless in 1558, and the succession of
her sister Queen Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn,
altered the relations between the English and Spanish courts. Elizabeth
(1558-1603) was possessed of an imperious, haughty, energetic
character; she had remarkable intelligence and an absorbing patriotism.
She inspired confidence in her advisers and respect among her people,
so that she was commonly called "Good Queen Bess" despite the fact that
her habits of deceit and double-dealing gave color to the French king's
remark that she was the greatest liar in Christendom. This was the
woman with whom Philip II had to deal; he tried many tactics in order
to gain his ends,--all of them hopelessly unsuccessful.

Philip first proposed matrimony, but Elizabeth was very careful not to
give herself, or England, such a master. Then when the queen declared
herself a Protestant and showed no inclination to assist Philip in any
of his enterprises, the Spanish king proceeded to plot against her
throne. He subsidized Roman Catholic priests, especially Jesuits, who
violated the laws of the land. He stirred up sedition and even went so
far as to plan Elizabeth's assassination. Many conspiracies against the
English queen centered in the person of the ill-starred Mary Stuart,
[Footnote: Mary Stuart (1542-1587).] queen of Scotland, who was
next in line of succession to the English throne and withal a Catholic.

[Sidenote: Mary Stuart]

Descended from the Stuart kings of Scotland and from Henry VII of
England, related to the powerful family of Guise in France, Mary had
been brought up at the French court and married to the short-lived
French king, Francis II. Upon the death of the latter she returned in
1561 to Scotland, a young woman of but eighteen years, only to find
that the government had fallen victim to the prevalent factional fights
among the Scotch nobles and that in the preceding year the parliament
had solemnly adopted a Calvinistic form of Protestantism. By means of
tact and mildness, however, Mary won the respect of the nobles and the
admiration of the people, until a series of marital troubles and
blunders--her marriage with a worthless cousin, Henry Darnley, and then
her scandalous marriage with Darnley's profligate murderer, the earl of
Bothwell--alienated her people from her and drove her into exile. She
abdicated the throne of Scotland in favor of her infant son, James VI,
who was reared a Protestant and subsequently became King James I of
England, and she then (1568) threw herself upon the mercy of Elizabeth.
She thought she would find in England a haven of refuge; instead she
found there a prison.

For the score of years during which she remained Elizabeth's prisoner,
Mary Stuart was the object of many plots and conspiracies against the
existing governments of both Scotland and England. In every such scheme
were to be found the machinations and money of the Spanish king. In
fact, as time went on, it seemed to a growing section of the English
people as though the cause of Elizabeth was bound up with Protestantism
and with national independence and prosperity just as certainly as the
success of Mary would lead to the triumph of Catholicism, the political
supremacy of Spain, and the commercial ruin of England. It was under
these circumstances that Mary's fate was sealed. Because of a political
situation over which she had slight control, the ex-queen of Scotland
was beheaded by Elizabeth's orders in 1587.

[Sidenote: The Armada]

Philip II had now tried and failed in every expedient but one,--the
employment of sheer force. Even this he attempted in order to avenge
the death of Mary Stuart and to bring England, politically,
religiously, and commercially, into harmony with his Spanish policies.
The story of the preparation and the fate of the Invincible Armada is
almost too well known to require repetition. It was in 1588 that there
issued from the mouth of the Tagus River the most formidable fleet
which up to that time Christendom had ever beheld--130 ships, 8000
seamen, 19,000 soldiers, the flower of the Spanish chivalry. In the
Netherlands it was to be joined by Alexander Farnese with 33,000
veteran troops. But in one important respect Philip had underestimated
his enemy: he had counted upon a divided country. Now the attack upon
England was primarily national, rather than religious, and Catholics
vied with Protestants in offering aid to the queen: it was a united
rather than a divided nation which Philip faced. The English fleet,
composed of comparatively small and easily maneuvered vessels, worked
great havoc upon the ponderous and slow-moving Spanish galleons, and
the wreck of the Armada was completed by a furious gale which tossed
ship after ship upon the rocks of northern Scotland. Less than a third
of the original expedition ever returned to Spain.

Philip II had thus failed in his herculean effort against England. He
continued in small ways to annoy and to irritate Elizabeth. He tried--
without result--to incite the Catholics of Ireland against the queen.
He exhausted his arsenals and his treasures in despairing attempts to
equip a second and even a third Armada. But he was doomed to bitterest
disappointment, for two years before his death an English fleet sacked
his own great port of Cadiz. The war with England ruined the navy and
the commerce of Spain. The defeat of the Armada was England's first
title to commercial supremacy.

[Sidenote: Economic Benefits of the Period for England]

It was long maintained that the underlying causes of the conflict
between England and Spain in the second half of the sixteenth century
and its chief interest was religious--that it was part of an epic
struggle between Protestantism and Catholicism. There may be a measure
of truth in such an idea, but most recent writers believe that the
chief motives for the conflict, as well as its important results, were
essentially economic. From the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, English
sailors and freebooters, such as Hawkins and Drake, took the offensive
against Spanish trade and commerce; and many ships, laden with silver
and goods from the New World and bound for Cadiz, were seized and towed
into English harbors. The queen herself frequently received a share of
the booty and therefore tended to encourage the practice. For nearly
thirty years Philip put up with the capture of his treasure ships, the
raiding of his colonies, and the open assistance rendered to his
rebellious subjects. Only when he reached the conclusion that his power
would never be secure in the Netherlands or in America did he dispatch
the Armada. Its failure finally freed Holland and marked the collapse
of the Spanish monopoly upon the high seas and in the New World.

[Sidenote: Affairs in France]

Before we can appreciate the motives and results of the interference of
Philip II in French affairs, a few words must be said about what had
happened in France since Francis I (1515-1547) and his son, Henry II
(1547-1559), exalted the royal power in their country and not only
preserved French independence of the surrounding empire of Charles V
but also increased French prestige by means of a strong policy in Italy
and by the extension of frontiers toward the Rhine. Henry II had
married a member of the famous Florentine family of the Medici--
Catherine de' Medici--a large and ugly woman, but ambitious,
resourceful, and capable, who, by means of trickery and deceit, took an
active part in French politics from the death of her husband,
throughout the reigns of her feeble sons, Francis II (1559-1560),
Charles IX (1560-1574), and Henry III (1574-1589). Catherine found her
position and that of her royal children continually threatened by (1)
the Protestants (Huguenots), (2) the great nobles, and (3) Philip II of
Spain.

[Sidenote: Dangers to Royal Power in France: Protestantism]

French Protestantism had grown steadily during the first half of the
sixteenth century until it was estimated that from a twentieth to a
thirtieth of the nation had fallen away from the Catholic Church. The
influence of the advocates of the new faith was, however, much greater
than their number, because the Huguenots, as they were called, were
recruited mainly from the prosperous, intelligent middle class,--the
bourgeoisie,--who had been intrusted by preceding French kings with
many important offices. The Huguenots represented, therefore, a
powerful social class and likewise one that was opposed to the undue
increase of royal power. They demanded, not only religious toleration
for themselves, but also regular meetings of the Estates-General and
control of the nation's representatives over financial matters. The
kings, on their part, felt that political solidarity and their own
personal rule were dependent upon the maintenance of religious
uniformity in the nation and the consequent defeat of the pretensions
of the Huguenots. Francis I and Henry II had persecuted the Protestants
with bitterness. From 1562 to 1593 a series of so-called religious wars
embroiled the whole country.

[Sidenote: Dangers to Royal Power in France: the Nobles]

French politics were further complicated during the second half of the
sixteenth century by the recrudescence of the power of the nobles. The
so-called religious wars were quite as much political as religious--
they resulted from efforts of this or that faction of noblemen to
dictate to a weak king. Two noble families particularly vied with each
other for power,--the Bourbons and the Guises,--and the unqualified
triumph of either would be certain to bring calamity to the sons of
Catherine de' Medici.

[Sidenote: The Bourbons]

The Bourbons bore the proud title of princes of the blood because they
were direct descendants of a French king. Their descent, to be sure,
was from Saint Louis, king in the thirteenth century, and they were
now, therefore, only distant cousins of the reigning kings, but as the
latter died off, one after another, leaving no direct successors, the
Bourbons by the French law of strict male succession became heirs to
the royal family. The head of the Bourbons, a certain Anthony, had
married the queen of Navarre and had become thereby king of Navarre,
although the greater part of that country--the region south of the
Pyrenees--had been annexed to Spain in 1512. Anthony's brother Louis,
prince of Condé, had a reputation for bravery, loyalty, and ability.
Both Condé and the king of Navarre were Protestants.

[Sidenote: The Guise Family]

The Guise family was descended from a duke of Lorraine who had attached
himself to the court of Francis I. It was really a foreign family,
inasmuch as Lorraine was then a dependency of the Holy Roman Empire,
but the patriotic exploits of the head of the family in defending Metz
against the Emperor Charles V and in capturing Calais from the English
endeared the Guises to a goodly part of the French nation. The duke of
Guise remained a stanch Catholic, and his brother, called the Cardinal
of Lorraine, was head of as many as twelve bishoprics, which gave him
an enormous revenue and made him the most conspicuous churchman in
France. During the reign of Henry II (1547-1559) the Guises were
especially influential. They fought valiantly in foreign wars. They
spurred on the king to a great persecution of the Huguenots. They
increased their own landed estates. And they married one of their
relatives--Mary, queen of Scots--to the heir to the throne. But after
the brief reign of Mary's husband, Francis II (1559-1560), the Guise
family encountered not only the active opposition of their chief noble
rivals, the Bourbons, with their Huguenot allies, but likewise the
jealousy and crafty intrigues of Catherine de' Medici.

[Sidenote: Religious Wars in France]

Catherine feared both the ambition of the powerful Guise family and the
disruptive tendencies of Protestantism. The result was a long series of
confused civil wars between  the ardent followers, respectively
Catholic and Protestant, of the Guise and Bourbon families, in which
the queen-mother gave support first to one side and then to the other.
There were no fewer than eight of these sanguinary conflicts, each one
ending with the grant of slight concessions to the Huguenots and the
maintenance of the weak kings upon the throne. The massacre of Saint
Bartholomew's Day (1572) was a horrible incident of Catherine's policy
of "trimming." Fearing the undue influence over the king of Admiral de
Coligny, an upright and able Huguenot leader, the queen-mother, with
the aid of the Guises, prevailed upon the weak-minded Charles IX to
authorize the wholesale assassination of Protestants. The signal was
given by the ringing of a Parisian church-bell at two o'clock in the
morning of 24 August, 1572, and the slaughter went on throughout the
day in the capital and for several weeks in the provinces. Coligny was
murdered; even women and children were not spared. It is estimated that
in all at least three thousand--perhaps ten thousand--lost their lives.

[Sidenote: The "Politiques"]

The massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day did not destroy French
Protestantism or render the Huguenot leaders more timid in
asserting their claims. On the other hand, it brought into
clear light a noteworthy division within the ranks of their Catholic
opponents in France--on one side, the rigorous followers of the Guise
family, who complained only that the massacre had not been sufficiently
comprehensive, and, on the other side, a group of moderate Catholics,
usually styled the "Politiques" who, while continuing to adhere to the
Roman Church, and, when called upon, bearing arms on the side of the
king, were strongly opposed to the employment of force or violence or
persecution in matters of religion. The Politiques were particularly
patriotic, and they blamed the religious wars and the intolerant policy
of the Guises for the seeming weakness of the French monarchy. They
thought the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day a blunder as well as a
crime.

The emergence of the Politiques did not immediately make for peace;
rather, it substituted a three-sided for a two-sided conflict.

[Sidenote: Philip II and the War of the Three Henries]

After many years, filled with disorder, it became apparent that the
children of Catherine de' Medici would have no direct male heirs and
that the crown would therefore legally devolve upon the son of Anthony
of Bourbon--Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre and a Protestant. Such an
outcome was naturally distasteful to the Guises and abhorrent to Philip
II of Spain. In 1585 a definite league was formed between Henry, duke
of Guise, and the Spanish king, whereby the latter undertook by
military force to aid the former's family in seizing the throne: French
politics in that event would be controlled by Spain, and Philip would
secure valuable assistance in crushing the Netherlands and conquering
England.[Footnote: At that very time, Mary, Queen of Scots, cousin of
Henry, duke of Guise, was held a prisoner in England by Queen
Elizabeth. See above, p. 99.] The immediate outcome of the agreement
was the war of the three Henries--Henry III, son of Catherine de'
Medici and king of France; Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre and heir
to the French throne; and Henry, duke of Guise, with the foreign
support of Philip II of Spain. Henry of Guise represented the extreme
Catholic party; Henry of Navarre, the Protestant faction; and Henry of
France, the Catholic moderates--the Politiques--who wanted peace and
were willing to grant a measure of toleration. The last two were
upholders of French independence against the encroachments of Spain.

The king was speedily gotten into the power of the Guises, but little
headway was made by the extreme Catholics against Henry of Navarre, who
now received domestic aid from the _Politiques_ and foreign
assistance from Queen Elizabeth of England and who benefited by the
continued misfortunes of Philip II. At no time was the Spanish king
able to devote his whole attention and energy to the French war. At
length in 1588 Henry III caused Henry of Guise to be assassinated. The
king never had a real chance to prove whether he could become a
national leader in expelling the foreigners and putting an end to civil
war, for he himself was assassinated in 1589. With his dying breath he
designated the king of Navarre as his successor.

[Sidenote: Henry of Navarre]

Henry of Navarre, the first of the Bourbon family upon the throne of
France, took the title of Henry IV (1589-1610). [Footnote: It is a
curious fact that Henry of Navarre, like Henry of Guise and Henry of
France, died by the hand of an assassin.] For four years after his
accession, Henry IV was obliged to continue the civil war, but his
abjuration of Protestantism and his acceptance of Catholicism in 1593
removed the chief source of opposition to him within France, and the
rebellion speedily collapsed. With the Spanish king, however, the
struggle dragged on until the treaty of Vervins, which in the last year
of Philip's life practically confirmed the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis.

[Sidenote: Decline of Spain and Rise of France]

Thus Philip II had failed to conquer or to dismember France. He had
been unable to harmonize French policies with those of his own in the
Netherlands or in England. Despite his endeavors, the French crown was
now on the head of one of his enemies, who, if something of a renegade
Protestant himself, had nevertheless granted qualified toleration to
heretics. Nor were these failures of Philip's political and religious
policies mere negative results to France. The unsuccessful interference
of the Spanish king contributed to the assurance of French
independence, patriotism, and solidarity. France, not Spain, was to be
the center of European politics during the succeeding century.

[Sidenote: Philip II and the Turks]

In concluding this chapter, a large section of which has been devoted
to an account of the manifold failures of Philip II, a word should be
added about one exploit that brought glory to the Spanish monarch. It
was he who administered the first effective check to the advancing
Ottoman Turks.

After the death of Suleiman the Magnificent (1566), the Turks continued
to strengthen their hold upon Hungary and to fit out piratical
expeditions in the Mediterranean. The latter repeatedly ravaged
portions of Sicily, southern Italy, and even the Balearic Islands, and
in 1570 an Ottoman fleet captured Cyprus from the Venetians. Malta and
Crete remained as the only Christian outposts in the Mediterranean. In
this extremity, a league was formed to save Italy. Its inspirer and
preacher was Pope Pius V, but Genoa and Venice furnished the bulk of
the fleet, while Philip II supplied the necessary additional ships and
the commander-in-chief in the person of his half-brother, Don John of
Austria. The expedition, which comprised 208 vessels, met the Ottoman
fleet of 273 ships in the Gulf of Lepanto, off the coast of Greece, on
7 October, 1571, and inflicted upon it a crushing defeat. The Turkish
warships were almost all sunk or driven ashore; it is estimated that
8000 Turks lost their lives. When news of the victory reached Rome,
Pope Pius intoned the famous verse, "There was a man sent from God
whose name was John."

[Sidenote: Lepanto]

The battle of Lepanto was of great political importance. It gave the
naval power of the Mohammedans a blow from which it never recovered and
ended their aggressive warfare in the Mediterranean. It was, in
reality, the last Crusade: Philip II was in his most becoming rôle as
champion of church and pope; hardly a noble family in Spain or Italy
was not represented in the battle; volunteers came from all parts of
the world; the celebrated Spanish writer Cervantes lost an arm at
Lepanto. Western Europe was henceforth to be comparatively free from
the Ottoman peril.

[Illustration: THE HABSBURG FAMILY IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH
CENTURIES]

[Illustration: THE VALOIS, BOURBON, AND GUISE FAMILIES, PHILIP OF SPAIN
AND MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS]

[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF TUDOR: SOVEREIGNS OF ENGLAND (1485-1603)]


ADDITIONAL READING


GENERAL, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE HABSBURG TERRITORIES. A. H.
Johnson, _Europe in the Sixteenth Century, 1494-1598_ (1897), ch. iii-
ix, a political summary; Mary A. Hollings, _Renaissance and
Reformation, 1453-1660_ (1910), ch. vi, ix, x, a brief outline; E. M.
Hulme, _Renaissance and Reformation_, 2d ed. (1915), ch. x, xiv, xxiv-
xxviii, a brief and fragmentary account; T. H. Dyer, _A History of
Modern Europe_, 3d ed., rev. by Arthur Hassall (1901), ch. ix, xi-
xxvii, old but containing a multitude of political facts; _Cambridge
Modern History_, Vol. II (1904), ch. ii, iii, vii, viii, and Vol. III
(1905), ch. xv, v; _History of All Nations_, Vol. XI and Vol. XII, ch.
i-iii, by the German scholar on the period, Martin Philippson;
_Histoire générale_, Vol. IV, ch. iii, ix, Vol. V, ch. ii-v, xv. Of the
Emperor Charles V the old standard English biography by William
Robertson, still readable, has now been largely superseded by that of
Edward Armstrong, 2 vols. (1902); two important German works on Charles
V are Baumgarten, _Geschichte Karls V_, 3 vols. (1885-1892), and Konrad
Häbler, _Geschichte Spaniens unter den Habsburgen_, Vol. I (1907). Of
Philip II the best brief biography in English is Martin Hume's (1902),
which should be consulted, if possible, in connection with Charles
Bratli, _Philippe II, Roi d'Espagne: Etude sur sa vie et son
caractère_, new ed. (1912), an attempt to counteract traditional
Protestant bias against the Spanish monarch. Also see M. A. S. Hume,
_Spain, its Greatness and Decay, 1479-1788_ (1898), ch. i-vi, for a
general account of the reigns of Philip II and Philip III; and Paul
Herre, _Papstium und Papstwahl im Zeitalter Philipps II_ (1907) for a
sympathetic treatment of Philip's relations with the papacy. For a
proper understanding of sixteenth-century politics the student should
read that all-important book, Machiavelli's _Prince_, the most
convenient English edition of which is in "Everyman's Library." For
political events in the Germanies in the sixteenth century: E. F.
Henderson, _A Short History of Germany_, 2 vols. in 1 (1902); Sidney
Whitman, _Austria_ (1899); Gustav Welf, _Deutsche Geschichte im
Zeitalter der Gegenreformation_ (1899), an elaborate study; Franz
Krones, _Handbuch der Geschichte Oesterreichs von der ältesten Zeit_,
Vol. III (1877), Book XIII.

FRANCE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. A. J. Grant, _The French Monarchy,
1483-1789_ (1900), Vol. I, ch. iii-v; G. W. Kitchin, _A History of
France,_ 4th ed. (1894-1899), Vol. II, Book II, ch. iv-v, and Book III;
_Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. III (1905), ch. i; Ernest Lavisse
(editor), _Histoire de France_, Vol. V (1903), Books III, IV, VII,
VIII, and Vol. VI (1904), Books I-III, the most thorough and best
treatment; Edward Armstrong, _The French Wars of Religion_ (1892); J.
W. Thompson, _The Wars of Religion in France: the Huguenots, Catherine
de Medici and Philip II of Spain_, 1559-1576 (1909), containing several
suggestions on the economic conditions of the time; A. W. Whitehead,
_Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France_ (1904); C. C. Jackson, _The
Last of the Valois_, 2 vols. (1888), and, by the same author, _The
First of the Bourbons_, 2 vols. (1890); Lucien Romier, _Les origines
politiques des Guerres de Religion_, Vol. I, _Henri II et l'Italie,
1547-1555_ (1913), scholarly and authoritative, stressing economic
rather than political aspects; Louis Batiffol, _The Century of the
Renaissance in France_, Eng. trans. by Elsie F. Buckley (1916),
covering the years 1483-1610, largely political.

ENGLAND IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. Brief accounts: A. L. Cross, _History
of England and Greater Britain_ (1914), ch. xix-xxvi; E. P. Cheyney, _A
Short History of England_ (1904), ch. xii, xiii; _Cambridge Modern
History,_ Vol. III (1905), ch. viii-xi; J. F. Bright, _History of
England_, 5 vols. (1884-1904), Vol. II, _Personal Monarchy, 1485-1688_
(in part); A. D. Innes, _History of England and the British Empire_, 4
vols, (1914), Vol. II, ch. iii-viii; J. R. Seeley, _Growth of British
Policy_, 2 vols. (1895), a brilliant work, of which Vol. I, Part I,
affords an able account of the policy of Elizabeth. More detailed
studies: J. S. Brewer, _The Reign of Henry VIII from his Accession to
the Death of Wolsey_, 2 vols. (1884); H. A. L. Fisher, _Political
History of England, 1485-1547_ (1906), ch. vi-xviii; A. F. Pollard,
_History of England from the Accession of Edward VI to the Death of
Elizabeth_ (1910); J. A. Froude, _History of England from the Fall of
Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada_, 12 vols. (1870-1872), a
masterpiece of prose-style but strongly biased in favor of Henry VIII
and against anything connected with the Roman Church; E. P. Cheyney, _A
History of England from the Defeat of the Armada to the Death of
Elizabeth_, Vol. I (1914), scholarly and well-written. Also see Andrew
Lang, _A History of Scotland_, 2d ed. (1901-1907), Vols. I and II; and
P. H. Brown, _History of Scotland_ (1899-1900), Vols. I and II.
Important biographies: A. F. Pollard, _Henry VIII_ (1905), the result
of much research and distinctly favorable to Henry; E. L. Taunton,
_Thomas Wolsey, Legate and Reformer_ (1902), the careful estimate of a
Catholic scholar; Mandell Creighton, _Cardinal Wolsey_ (1888), a good
clear account, rather favorable to the cardinal; J. M. Stone, _Mary the
First, Queen of England_ (1901), a sympathetic biography of Mary Tudor;
Mandell Creighton, _Queen Elizabeth_ (1909), the best biography of the
Virgin Queen; E. S. Beesly, _Queen Elizabeth_ (1892), another good
biography. For Mary, Queen of Scots, see the histories of Scotland
mentioned above and also Andrew Lang, _The Mystery of Mary Stuart_
(1901); P. H. Brown, _Scotland in the Time of Queen Mary_ (1904); and
R. S. Rait, _Mary Queen of Scots_, 2d ed. (1899), containing important
source-material concerning Mary. Walter Walsh, _The Jesuits in Great
Britain_ (1903), emphasizes their political opposition to Elizabeth.
Martin Hume, _Two English Queens and Philip_ (1908), valuable for the
English relations of Philip II. For English maritime development see
David Hannay, _A Short History of the English Navy_ (1898); J. S.
Corbett, _Drake and the Tudor Navy_, 2 vols. (1898), and, by the same
author, _The Successors of Drake_ (1900); J. A. Froude, _English Seamen
in the Sixteenth Century_ (1895).

THE NETHERLANDS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. A good brief account is that
of George Edmundson in the _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. III
(1905), ch. vi, vii, and Vol. II (1904), ch. xix. For the Dutch
Netherlands the great standard work is now P. J. Blok, _History of
the People of the Netherlands_, trans. in large part by O. A.
Bierstadt, and for the Belgian Netherlands a corresponding function is
performed in French by Henri Pirenne. J. L. Motley, _Rise of the
Dutch Republic_, 3 vols. (many editions), is brilliantly written and
still famous, but it is based on an inadequate study of the sources and
is marred throughout by bitter prejudice against the Spaniards and in
favor of the Protestant Dutch: it is now completely superseded by the
works of Blok and Pirenne. Admirable accounts of William the Silent are
the two-volume biography by Ruth Putnam and the volume by the same
author in the "Heroes of the Nations" Series (1911); the most detailed
study is the German work of Felix Rachfahl.

THE TURKS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. _Cambridge Modern History_,
Vol. III (1905), ch. iv; A. H. Lybyer, _The Government of the Ottoman
Empire in the Time of Suleiman the Magnificent_ (1913); Stanley
Lane-Poole, _Turkey_ (1889) in the "Story of the Nations" Series;
Nicolae Jorga, _Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches_; Leopold von
Ranke, _Die Osmanen und die spanische Monarchie im sechzehnten und
siebzehnten Jahrhundert_; Joseph von Hammer, _Geschichte des
osmanischen Reiches_, 2d ed., 4 vols. (1834-1835), Vol. II, a famous
German work, which has been translated into French.




CHAPTER IV

THE PROTESTANT REVOLT AND THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AT THE OPENING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

[Sidenote: Differences between Religious Bodies in 1500 and Those in
1900]

Four hundred years ago, practically all people who lived in central or
western Europe called themselves "Christians" and in common recognized
allegiance to an ecclesiastical body which was called the "Catholic
Church." This Catholic Church in 1500 differed from any present-day
religious society in the following respects: (1) Every child was born
into the Church as now he is born into the state; every person was
expected to conform, at least outwardly, to the doctrines and practices
of the Church; in other words the Catholic Church claimed a universal
membership. (2) The Church was not supported by voluntary contributions
as now, but by compulsory taxes; every person was compelled to assist
in defraying the expenses of the official religion. (3) The state
undertook to enforce obedience on the part of its subjects to the
Church; a person attacking the authority of the Catholic Church would
be liable to punishment by the state, and this held true in England and
Germany as well as in Spain or Italy.

[Sidenote: Rise of Protestantism]

Then, within fifty years, between 1520 and 1570, a large number of
Catholic Christians, particularly in Germany, Scandinavia, Scotland,
and England, and a smaller number in the Low Countries and in France,
broke off communion with the ancient Church and became known as
Protestants. Before the year 1500 there were no Protestants; since the
sixteenth century, the dominant Christianity of western and central
Europe has been divided into two parts--Catholic and Protestant. It is
important that we should know something of the origin and significance
of this division, because the Christian religion and the Christian
Church had long played very great roles in the evolution of European
civilization and because ecclesiastical and religious questions have
continued, since the division, to deserve general attention.

[Sidenote: "Catholic" Christianity]

Let us understand clearly what was meant in the year 1500 by the
expression "Catholic Christianity." It embraced a belief in certain
religious precepts which it was believed Jesus of Nazareth had taught
at the beginning of the Christian era, the inculcation of certain moral
teachings which were likewise derived from Jesus, and a definite
organization--the Church--founded, it was assumed, by Jesus in order to
teach and practice, till the end of time, His religious and moral
doctrines. By means of the Church, man would know best how to order his
life in this world and how to prepare his soul for everlasting
happiness in the world to come.

[Sidenote: The Catholic Church]

The Catholic Church was, therefore, a vast human society, believed to
be of divine foundation and sanction, and with a mission greater and
more lofty than that of any other organization. Church and state had
each its own sphere, but the Church had insisted for centuries that it
was greater and more necessary than the state. The members of the
Church were the sum-total of Christian believers who had been baptized
--practically the population of western and central Europe--and its
officers constituted a regular governing hierarchy.

[Sidenote: Head of the Church]

At the head of the hierarchy was the bishop of Rome, styled the pope or
sovereign pontiff, who from the first had probably enjoyed a leading
position in the Church as the successor of St. Peter, prince of the
apostles, and whose claims to be the divinely appointed chief bishop
had been generally recognized throughout western Europe as early as the
third century--perhaps earlier. The bishop of Rome was elected for life
by a group of clergymen, called cardinals, who originally had been in
direct charge of the parish churches in the city of Rome, but who later
were frequently selected by the pope from various countries because
they were distinguished churchmen. The pope chose the cardinals; the
cardinals elected the pope. Part of the cardinals resided in Rome, and
in conjunction with a host of clerks, translators, lawyers, and special
officials, constituted the _Curia_, or papal court, for the
conduct of general church business.

[Sidenote: Local Administration of the Church]
[Sidenote: Secular Clergy]

For the local administration of church affairs, the Catholic world was
divided under the pope into several territorial subdivisions, (1) The
patriarchates had been under patriarchs who had their sees [Footnote:
"See," so called from the Latin _sedes_, referring to their seat
or chair of office. Similarly our word "cathedral" is derived from the
Latin _cathedra_, the official chair which the bishop occupies in
his own church.] in such ancient Christian centers as Rome. Jerusalem,
Alexandria, Antioch. and Constantinople. (2) The provinces were
divisions of the patriarchates and usually centered in the most
important cities, such as Milan, Florence, Cologne, Upsala, Lyons,
Seville, Lisbon, Canterbury, York; and the head of each was styled a
metropolitan or archbishop. (3) The diocese--the most essential unit of
local administration--was a subdivision of the province, commonly a
city or a town, with a certain amount of surrounding country, under the
immediate supervision of a bishop. (4) Smaller divisions, particularly
parishes, were to be found in every diocese, embracing a village or a
section of a city, and each parish had its church building and its
priest. Thus the Catholic Church possessed a veritable army of
officials from pope and cardinals down through patriarchs, archbishops,
and bishops, to the parish priests and their assistants, the deacons.
This hierarchy, because it labored _in the world_ (_sæculo_),
was called the "secular clergy."

[Sidenote: "Regular" Clergy]

Another variety of clergy--the "regulars"--supplemented the work of the
seculars. The regulars were monks, [Footnote: The word "monk" is
applied, of course, only to men; women who followed similar rules are
commonly styled nuns.] that is, Christians who lived by a special
_rule_ (_regula_), who renounced the world, took vows of
chastity, poverty, and obedience, and strove to imitate the life of
Christ as literally as possible. The regular clergy were organized
under their own abbots, priors, provincials, or generals, being usually
exempt from secular jurisdiction, except that of the pope. The regulars
were the great missionaries of the Church, and many charitable and
educational institutions were in their hands. Among the various orders
of monks which had grown up in the course of time, the following should
be enumerated: (1) The monks who lived in fixed abodes, tilled the
soil, copied manuscripts, and conducted local schools. Most of the
monks of this kind followed a rule, or society by-laws, which had been
prepared by the celebrated St. Benedict about the year 525: they were
called therefore Benedictines. (2) The monks who organized crusades,
often bore arms themselves, and tended the holy places connected with
incidents in the life of Christ: such orders were the Knights Templars,
the Knights Hospitalers of St. John and of Malta, and the Teutonic
Knights who subsequently undertook the conversion of the Slavs. (3) The
monks who were called the begging friars or mendicants because they had
no fixed abode but wandered from place to place, preaching to the
common people and dependent for their own living upon alms. These
orders came into prominence in the thirteenth century and included,
among others, the Franciscan, whose lovable founder Saint Francis of
Assisi had urged humility and love of the poor as its distinguishing
characteristics, and the Dominican, or Order of the Preachers, devoted
by the precept of its practical founder, Saint Dominic, to missionary
zeal. All the mendicant orders, as well as the Benedictine monasteries,
became famous in the history of education, and the majority of the
distinguished scholars of the middle ages were monks. It was not
uncommon, moreover, for regulars to enter the secular hierarchy and
thus become parish priests or bishops, or even popes.

[Sidenote: Church Councils]
[Sidenote: Conciliar Movement]

The clergy--bishops, priests, and deacons--constituted, in popular
belief, the divinely ordained administration of the Catholic Church.
The legislative authority in the Church similarly was vested in the
pope and in the general councils, neither of which, however, could set
aside a law of God, as affirmed in the gospels, or establish a doctrine
at variance with the tradition of the early Christian writers. The
general councils were assemblies of prelates of the Catholic world, and
there had been considerable discussion as to the relative authority of
their decrees and the decisions and directions of the pope. [Footnote:
Papal documents have been called by various names, such as decretals,
bulls, or encyclicals.] General church councils held in eastern Europe
from the fourth to the ninth centuries had issued important decrees or
canons defining Christian dogmas and establishing ecclesiastical
discipline, which had been subsequently ratified and promulgated by the
pope as by other bishops and by the emperors; and several councils had
been held in western Europe from the twelfth to the fourteenth
centuries under the direct supervision of the bishop of Rome, all the
canons of which had been enacted in accordance with his wishes. But
early in the fifteenth century a movement was inaugurated by certain
Catholic bishops and scholars in favor of making the councils superior
to the pope and a regular source of supreme legislation for the Church.
In this way, the councils of Constance (1414-1418) and Basel (1431 ff.)
had endeavored to introduce representative, if not democratic,
government into the Church. The popes, however, objected to this
conciliar movement and managed to have it condemned by the Council of
Ferrara-Florence (1438-1442). By the year 1512 the papal theory had
triumphed and Catholics generally recognized again that the government
of the Church was essentially monarchical. The laws of the Catholic
Church were known as canons, and, of several codes of canon law which
had been prepared, that of a monk named Gratian, compiled in the
twelfth century, was the most widely used.

[Sidenote: The Pope and his Powers]

We are now in a position to summarize the claims and prerogatives of
the bishop of Rome or pope. (1) He was the supreme lawgiver. He could
issue decrees of his own, which might not be set aside by any other
person. No council might enact canons without his approval. From any
law, other than divine, he might dispense persons. (2) He was the
supreme judge in Christendom. He claimed that appeals might be taken
from decisions in foreign courts to his own Curia, as court of last
resort. He himself frequently acted as arbitrator, as, for example, in
the famous dispute between Spain and Portugal concerning the boundaries
of their newly discovered possessions. (3) He was the supreme
administrator. He claimed the right to supervise the general business
of the whole Church. No archbishop might perform the functions of his
office until he received his insignia--the pallium--from the pope. No
bishop might be canonically installed until his election had been
confirmed by the pope. The pope claimed the right to transfer a bishop
from one diocese to another and to settle all disputed elections. He
exercised immediate control over the regular clergy--the monks and
nuns. He sent ambassadors, styled legates, to represent him at the
various royal courts and to see that his instructions were obeyed. (4)
He insisted upon certain temporal rights, as distinct from his directly
religious prerogatives. He crowned the Holy Roman Emperor. He might
depose an emperor or king and release a ruler's subjects from their
oath of allegiance. He might declare null and void, and forbid the
people to obey, a law of any state, if he thought it was injurious to
the interests of the Church. He was temporal ruler of the city of Rome
and the surrounding papal states, and over those territories he
exercised a power similar to that of any duke or king. (5) He claimed
financial powers. In order to defray the enormous expenses of his
government, he charged fees for certain services at Rome, assessed the
dioceses throughout the Catholic world, and levied a small tax--Peter's
Pence--upon all Christian householders.

[Sidenote: Purpose of the Church]

So far we have concerned ourselves with the organization of the
Catholic Church--its membership, its officers, the clergy, secular and
regular, all culminating in the pope, the bishop of Rome. But why did
this great institution exist? Why was it loved, venerated, and well
served? The purpose of the Church, according to its own teaching, was
to follow the instructions of its Divine Master, Jesus Christ, in
saving souls. Only the Church might interpret those instructions; the
Church alone might apply the means of salvation; outside the Church no
one could be saved. [Footnote: Catholic theologians have recognized,
however, the possibility of salvation of persons outside the visible
Church. Thus, the catechism of Pope Pius X says: "Whoever, without any
fault of his own, and in good faith, being outside the Church, happens
to have been baptized or to have at least an implicit desire for
baptism, and, furthermore, has been sincere in seeking to find the
truth, and has done his best to do the will of God, such an one,
although separated from the body of the Church, would still belong to
her soul, and therefore be in the way of salvation."] The salvation of
souls for eternity was thus the supreme business of the Church.

[Sidenote: Theology]

This salvation of souls involved a theology and a sacramental system,
which we shall proceed to explain. Theology was the study of God. It
sought to explain how and why man was created, what were his actual and
desirable relations with God, what would be the fate of man in a future
life. The most famous theologians of the Catholic Church, for example,
St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), studied carefully the teachings of
Christ, the Bible, the early Christian writings, and the decrees of
popes and councils, and drew therefrom elaborate explanations of
Christian theology--the dogmas and faith of the Catholic Church.

[Sidenote: The Sacramental System]

The very center of Catholic theology was the sacramental system, for
that was the means, and essentially the only means, of saving souls. It
was, therefore, for the purpose of the sacramental system that the
Church and its hierarchy existed. The sacraments were believed to have
been instituted by Christ Himself, and were defined as "outward signs
instituted by Christ to give grace." The number generally accepted was
seven: baptism, confirmation, holy eucharist, penance, extreme unction,
holy orders, and matrimony. By means of the sacraments the Church
accompanied the faithful throughout life. Baptism, the pouring of
water, cleansed the child from original sin and from all previous
actual sins, and made him a Christian, a child of God, and an heir of
heaven. The priest was the ordinary minister of baptism, but in case of
necessity any one who had the use of reason might baptize.
Confirmation, conferred usually by a bishop upon young persons by the
laying on of hands and the anointing with oil, gave them the Holy Ghost
to render them strong and perfect Christians and soldiers of Jesus
Christ. Penance, one of the most important sacraments, was intended to
forgive sins committed after baptism. To receive the sacrament of
penance worthily it was necessary for the penitent (1) to examine his
conscience, (2) to have sorrow for his sins, (3) to make a firm
resolution never more to offend God, (4) to confess his mortal sins
orally to a priest, (5) to receive absolution from the priest, (6) to
accept the particular penance--visitation of churches, saying of
certain prayers, or almsgiving--which the priest might enjoin. The holy
eucharist was the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the consecration of
bread and wine by priest or bishop, its miraculous transformation
(transubstantiation) at his word into the very Body and Blood of
Christ, and its reception by the faithful. It was around the eucharist
that the elaborate ritual and ceremonies of the Mass developed, that
fine vestments and candles and incense and flowers were used, and that
magnificent cathedrals were erected. Extreme unction was the anointing
at the hands of a priest of the Christian who was in immediate danger
of death, and it was supposed to give health and strength to the soul
and sometimes to the body. By means of holy orders,--the special
imposition of hands on the part of a bishop,--priests, bishops, and
other ministers of the Church were ordained and received the power and
grace to perform their sacred duties. Matrimony was the sacrament, held
to be indissoluble by human power, by which man and woman were united
in lawful Christian marriage.

Of the seven sacraments it will be noticed that two--baptism and
penance--dealt with the forgiveness of sins, and that two--holy orders
and matrimony--were received only by certain persons. Three--baptism,
confirmation, and holy orders--could be received by a Christian only
once. Two--confirmation and holy orders--required the ministry of a
bishop; and all others, except baptism and possibly matrimony, required
the ministry of at least a priest. The priesthood was, therefore, the
absolutely indispensable agent of the Church in the administration of
the sacramental system. It was the priesthood that absolved penitents
from their sins, wrought the great daily miracle of transubstantiation,
and offered to God the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

[Sidenote: Various Objections to the Church]

It must not be supposed that either the theology or the organization of
the Catholic Church, as they existed in the year 1500, had been
precisely the same throughout the Christian era. While educated
Catholics insisted that Christ was indirectly the source of all faith
and all practice, they were quite willing to admit that external
changes and adaptations of institutions to varying conditions had taken
place. Moreover, it must not be supposed that the proud eminence to
which the Catholic Church had attained by 1500 in central and western
Europe had been won easily or at that time was readily maintained.
Throughout the whole course of Christian history there had been
repeated objections to new definitions of dogma--many positively
refused to accept the teaching of the Church as divine or infallible--
and there had been likewise a good deal of opposition to the temporal
claims of the Church, resulting in increasing friction between the
clergy and the lay rulers. Thus it often transpired that the kings who
vied with one another in recognizing the spiritual and religious
headship of the pope and in burning heretics who denied doctrines of
the Catholic Church, were the very kings who quarreled with the pope
concerning the latter's civil jurisdiction and directed harsh laws
against its exercise.

[Sidenote: Sources of Conflict between Church and State]

As strong national monarchies rose in western Europe, this friction
became more acute. On one side the royal power was determined to exalt
the state and to bring into subjection to it not only the nobles and
common people but the clergy as well; the national state must manage
absolutely every temporal affair. On the other side, the clergy stoutly
defended the special powers that they had long enjoyed in various
states and which they believed to be rightly theirs. There were
_four_ chief sources of conflict between the temporal and
spiritual jurisdictions, (1) Appointments of bishops, abbots, and other
high church officers. Inasmuch as these were usually foremost citizens
of their native kingdom, holding large estates and actually
participating in the conduct of government, the kings frequently
claimed the right to dictate their election. On the other hand the
popes insisted upon their rights in the matter and often "reserved" to
themselves the appointment to certain valuable bishoprics. (2) Taxation
of land and other property of the clergy. The clergy insisted that by
right they were exempt from taxation and that in practice they had not
been taxed since the first public recognition of Christianity in the
fourth century. The kings pointed out that the wealth of the clergy and
the needs of the state had increased along parallel lines, that the
clergy were citizens of the state and should pay a just share for its
maintenance. (3) Ecclesiastical courts. For several centuries the
Church had maintained its own courts for trying clerical offenders and
for hearing certain cases, which nowadays are heard in state courts--
probating of wills, the marriage relations, blasphemy, etc. From these
local church courts, the pope insisted that appeals might be taken to
the Roman Curia. On their side, the kings were resolved to substitute
royal justice for that of both feudal and ecclesiastical courts: they
diminished, therefore, the privileges of the local church courts and
forbade the taking of appeals to Rome. (4) How far might the pope, as
universally acknowledged head of the Church, interfere in the internal
affairs of particular states? While the pope claimed to be the sole
judge of his own rights and powers, several kings forbade the
publication of papal documents within their states or the reception of
papal legates unless the royal assent had been vouchsafed.

[Sidenote: Royal Restrictions on the Church]

Gradually the national monarchs secured at least a partial control over
episcopal appointments, and in both England and France papal
jurisdiction was seriously restricted in other ways. In England the
power of the ecclesiastical courts had been reduced (1164); no property
might be bestowed upon the Church without royal permission (1279); the
pope might not make provision in England for his personal appointees to
office (1351); and appeals to Rome had been forbidden (1392).
[Footnote: All these anti-papal enactments were very poorly enforced.]
In France the clergy had been taxed early in the fourteenth century,
and the papacy, which had condemned such action, had been humiliated by
a forced temporary removal from Rome to Avignon, where it was
controlled by French rulers for nearly seventy years (1309-1377); and
in 1438 the French king, Charles VII, in a document, styled the
Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, solemnly proclaimed the "liberties of
the Gallican Church," that a general council was superior to the pope,
that the pope might not interfere in episcopal elections, that he might
not levy taxes on French dioceses. The Pragmatic Sanction was condemned
by the pope, but for three-quarters of a century after its issuance
there were strained relations between the Church in France and the
sovereign pontiff.

[Sidenote: Political Differences Distinct from Religious Differences]

Similar conflicts between spiritual and temporal jurisdictions were
common to all Christian states, but the national strength and the
patriotism of the western monarchies caused them to proceed further
than any other state in restricting the papal privileges. Despite the
conflict over temporal affairs, which at times was exceedingly bitter,
the kings and rulers of England and France never appear to have
seriously questioned the religious authority of the Church or the
spiritual supremacy of the pope. Religiously, the Catholic Church
seemed in 1500 to hold absolute sway over all central and western
Europe.

[Sidenote: Religious Opposition to Catholicism]

Yet this very religious authority of the Catholic Church had been again
and again brought into question and repeatedly rejected. Originally, a
united Christianity had conquered western Asia, northern Africa, and
eastern Europe; by 1500 nearly all these wide regions were lost to
Catholic Christianity as that phrase was understood in western Europe.
The loss was due to (1) the development of a great Christian schism,
and (2) the rise of a new religion--Mohammedanism.

[Sidenote: The Schism between the East and the West]

Eastern Europe had been lost through an ever-widening breach in
Christian practice from the fifth to the eleventh century. The Eastern
Church used the Greek language in its liturgy; that of the West used
the Latin language. The former remained more dependent upon the state;
the latter grew less dependent. Minor differences of doctrine appeared.
And the Eastern Christians thought the pope was usurping unwarrantable
prerogatives, while the Western Christians accused the Oriental
patriarchs of departing from their earlier loyalty to the pope and
destroying the unity of Christendom. Several attempts had been made to
reunite the Catholic Church of the West and the Orthodox Church of the
East, but with slight success. In 1500, the Christians of Greece, the
Balkan peninsula, and Russia were thought to be outside the Catholic
Church and were defined, therefore, by the pope as schismatics.

[Sidenote: Mohammedanism]

Far more numerous and dangerous to Catholic Christianity than the
schismatic Easterners were the Mohammedans. Mohammed himself had lived
in Arabia in the early part the seventh century and had taught that he
was the inspired prophet of the one true God. In a celebrated book,--
the Koran,--which was compiled from the sayings of the prophet, are to
be found the precepts and commandments of the Mohammedan religion.
Mohammedanism spread rapidly: within a hundred years of its founder's
death it had conquered western Asia and northern Africa and had gained
a temporary foothold in Spain; thenceforth it stretched eastward across
Persia and Turkestan into India and southward into central Africa; and
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as we have seen, it
possessed itself of Constantinople, the Balkans, Greece, and part of
Hungary, and threatened Christendom in the Germanies and in the
Mediterranean.

[Sidenote: Western Heresies]

Even in western Europe, the Catholic Church had had to encounter
spasmodic opposition from "heretics," as those persons were called who,
although baptized as Christians, refused to accept all the dogmas of
Catholic Christianity. Such were the Arian Christians, who in early
times had been condemned for rejecting the doctrine of the divinity of
Christ, and who had eventually been won back to Catholicism only with
the greatest efforts. Then in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the
Albigensian heretics in southern France had assailed the sacramental
system and the organization of the Church and had been suppressed only
by armed force. In the fourteenth century, John Wycliffe appeared in
England and John Hus in Bohemia, both preaching that the individual
Christian needs no priestly mediation between himself and God and that
the very sacraments of the Church, however desirable, are not
essentially necessary to salvation. The Lollards, as Wycliffe's English
followers were called, were speedily extirpated by fire and sword,
through the stern orthodoxy of an English king, but the Hussites long
defied the pope and survivals of their heresy were to be found in 1500.

[Sidenote: Skeptics]

In addition to these heretics and the Jews, [Footnote: For detailed
accounts of the Jews during the middle ages as well as in modern times,
see the _Jewish Encyclopædia_, ed. by Isidore Singer, 12 vols.
(1901-1906).] many so-called skeptics no doubt existed. These were
people who outwardly conformed to Catholicism but inwardly doubted and
even scoffed at the very foundations of Christianity. They were
essentially irreligious, but they seem to have suffered less from
persecution than the heretics. Many of the Italian humanists,
concerning whom we shall later say a word, [Footnote: See below] were
in the fifteenth century more or less avowed skeptics.


THE PROTESTANT REVOLT

[Sidenote: A Religious and Political Movement]

We have seen in the preceding pages that prior to 1500 there had been
many conflicts between kings and popes concerning their respective
temporal rights and likewise there had been serious doubts in the minds
of various people as to the authority and teachings of the Catholic
Church. But these two facts--political and religious--had never been
united in a general revolt against the Church until the sixteenth
century. Then it was that Christians of Germany, Scandinavia, Scotland,
and England, even of the Low Countries and France, successfully
revolted against the papal monarchy and set up establishments of their
own, usually under the protection of their lay rulers, which became
known as the Protestant churches. The movement is called, therefore,
the Protestant Revolt. It was begun and practically completed between
1520 and 1570.

[Sidenote: Political Causes of Protestant Revolt]

In explaining this remarkable and sudden break with the religious and
ecclesiastical development of a thousand years, it is well to bear in
mind that its causes were at once political, economic, and religious.
Politically, it was merely an accentuation of the conflict which had
long been increasing in virulence between the spiritual and temporal
authorities. It cannot be stated too emphatically that the Catholic
Church during many centuries prior to the sixteenth had been not only a
religious body, like a present-day church, but also a vast political
power which readily found sources of friction with other political
institutions. The Catholic Church, as we have seen, had its own
elaborate organization in every country of western and central Europe;
and its officials--pope, bishops, priests, and monks--denied allegiance
to the secular government; the Church owned many valuable lands and
estates, which normally were exempt from taxation and virtually outside
the jurisdiction of the lay government; the Church had its own
independent and compulsory income, and its own courts to try its own
officers and certain kinds of cases for every one. Such political
jurisdiction of the Church had been quite needful and satisfactory in
the period--from the fifth to the twelfth century, let us say--when the
secular governments were weak and the Church found itself the chief
unifying force in Christendom, the veritable heir to the universal
dominion of the ancient Roman Empire.

But gradually the temporal rulers themselves repressed feudalism.
Political ambition increased in laymen, and local pride was exalted
into patriotism. By the year 1200 was begun the growth of that notable
idea of national monarchy, the general outline of which we sketched in
the opening chapter. We there indicated that at the commencement of the
sixteenth century, England, France, Spain, and Portugal had become
strong states, with well-organized lay governments under powerful
kings, with patriotic populations, and with well-developed, distinctive
languages and literatures. The one thing that seemed to be needed to
complete this national sovereignty was to bring the Church entirely
under royal control. The autocratic sovereigns desired to enlist the
wealth and influence of the Church in their behalf; they coveted her
lands, her taxes, and her courts. Although Italy, the Netherlands, and
the Germanies were not yet developed as strong united monarchies, many
of their patriotic leaders longed for such a development, worked for
it, and believed that the principal obstacle to it was the great
Christian Church with the pope at its head. Viewed from the political
standpoint, the Protestant Revolt was caused by the rise of national
feeling, which found itself in natural conflict with the older
cosmopolitan or catholic idea of the Church. It was nationalism
_versus_ Catholicism.

[Sidenote: Economic Causes of Protestant Revolt]

Economically, the causes of the Protestant Revolt were twofold. In the
first place, the Catholic Church had grown so wealthy that many people,
particularly kings and princes, coveted her possessions. In the second
place, financial abuses in ecclesiastical administration bore heavily
upon the common people and created serious scandal. Let us say a word
about each one of these difficulties.

At the opening of the sixteenth century, many bishops and abbots in
wealth and power were not unlike great lay lords: they held vast fair
dominions--in the Germanics a third of the whole country, in France a
fifth, etc.--and they were attended by armies of retainers. Most of
them were sons of noblemen who had had them consecrated bishops so as
to insure them fine positions. Even the monks, who now often lived in
rich monasteries as though they had never taken vows of poverty, were
sometimes of noble birth and quite worldly in their lives. The large
estates and vast revenues of Catholic ecclesiastics were thus at first
the lure and then the prey of their royal and princely neighbors. The
latter grew quite willing to utilize any favorable opportunity which
might enable them to confiscate church property and add it to their own
possessions. Later such confiscation was euphemistically styled
"secularization."

On the other hand, many plain people, such as peasants and artisans,
begrudged the numerous and burdensome ecclesiastical taxes, and an
increasing number felt that they were not getting the worth of their
money. There was universal complaint, particularly in the Germanies,
that the people were exploited by the Roman Curia. Each ecclesiastic,
be he bishop, abbot, or priest, had right to a benefice, that is, to
the revenue of a parcel of land attached to his post. When he took
possession of a benefice, he paid the pope a special assessment, called
the "annate," amounting to a year's income--which of course came from
the peasants living on the land. The pope likewise "reserved" to
himself the right of naming the holders of certain benefices: these he
gave preferably to Italians who drew the revenues but remained in their
own country; the people thus supported foreign prelates in luxury and
sometimes paid a second time in order to maintain resident
ecclesiastics. The archbishops paid enormous sums to the pope for their
badges of office (_pallia_). Fat fees for dispensations or for
court trials found their way across the Alps. And the bulk of the
burden ultimately rested upon the backs of the people. At least in the
Germanics the idea became very prevalent that the pope and Curia were
really robbing honest German Christians for the benefit of scandalously
immoral Italians.

There were certainly grave financial abuses in church government in the
fifteenth century and in the early part of the sixteenth. A project of
German reform, drawn up in 1438, had declared: "It is a shame which
cries to heaven, this oppression of tithes, dues, penalties,
excommunication, and tolls of the peasant, on whose labor all men
depend for their existence." An "apocalyptic pamphlet of 1508 shows on
its cover the Church upside down, with the peasant performing the
services, while the priest guides the plow outside and a monk drives
the horses." It was, in fact, in the Germanics that all the social
classes--princes, burghers, knights, and peasants--had special economic
grievances against the Church, and in many places were ready to combine
in rejecting papal claims.

This emphasis upon the political and particularly upon the economic
causes need not belittle the strictly religious factor in the movement.
The success of the revolt was due to the fact that many kings, nobles,
and commoners, for financial and political advantages to themselves,
became the valuable allies of real religious reformers. It required
dogmatic differences as well as social grievances to destroy the
dominion of the Church.

[Sidenote: Abuses in the Catholic Church]

Nearly all thoughtful men in the sixteenth century recognized the
existence of abuses in the Catholic Church. The scandals connected with
the papal court at Rome were notorious at the opening of the century.
Several of the the popes lived grossly immoral lives. Simony (the sale
of church offices for money) and nepotism (favoritism shown by a pope
to his relatives) were not rare. The most lucrative ecclesiastical
positions throughout Europe were frequently conferred upon Italians who
seldom discharged their duties. One person might be made bishop of
several foreign dioceses and yet continue to reside in Rome. Leo X, who
was pope when the Protestant Revolt began, and son of Lorenzo de'
Medici, surnamed the Magnificent, had been ordained to the priesthood
at the age of seven, named cardinal when he was thirteen, and speedily
loaded with a multitude of rich benefices and preferments; this same
pope, by his munificence and extravagance, was forced to resort to the
most questionable means for raising money: he created many new offices
and shamelessly sold them; he increased the revenue from indulgences,
jubilees, and regular taxation; he pawned palace furniture, table
plate, pontifical jewels, even statues of the apostles; several banking
firms and many individual creditors were ruined by his death.

[Sidenote: Attacks on Immorality of Clergymen]

What immorality and worldliness prevailed at Rome was reflected in the
lives of many lesser churchmen. To one of the popes of the fifteenth
century, a distinguished cardinal represented the disorders of the
clergy, especially in the Germanics. "These disorders," he said,
"excite the hatred of the people against all ecclesiastical order; if
it is not corrected, it is to be feared that the laity, following the
example of the Hussites, will attack the clergy as they now openly
menace us with doing." If the clergy of Germany were not reformed
promptly, he predicted that after the Bohemian heresy was crushed
another would speedily arise far more dangerous. "For they will say,"
he continued, "that the clergy is incorrigible and is willing to apply
no remedy to its disorders. They will attack us when they no longer
have any hope of our correction. Men's minds are waiting for what shall
be done; it seems as if shortly something tragic will be brought forth.
The venom which they have against us is becoming evident; soon they
will believe they are making a sacrifice agreeable to God by
maltreating or despoiling the ecclesiastics as people odious to God and
man and immersed to the utmost in evil. The little reverence still
remaining for the sacred order will be destroyed. Responsibility for
all these disorders will be charged upon the Roman Curia, which will be
regarded as the cause of all these evils because it has neglected to
apply the necessary remedy." To many other thoughtful persons, a moral
reformation in the head and members of the Church seemed vitally
necessary.

Complaints against the evil lives of the clergy as well as against
their ignorance and credulity were echoed by most of the great scholars
and humanists of the time. The patriotic knight and vagabond scholar,
Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523), contributed to a clever series of
satirical "Letters of Obscure Men," which were read widely, and which
poked fun at the lack of learning among the monks and the ease with
which the papal court emptied German pockets.

[Sidenote: Ulrich von Hutten and Erasmus]

Then, too, the great Erasmus (1466-1536) employed all his wit and
sarcasm, in his celebrated "Praise of Folly," against the theologians
and monks, complaining that the foolish people thought that religion
consisted simply in pilgrimages, the invocation of saints, and the
veneration of relics. Erasmus would have suppressed the monasteries,
put an end to the domination of the clergy, and swept away scandalous
abuses. He wanted Christianity to regain its early spiritual force, and
largely for that purpose he published in 1516 the Greek text of the New
Testament with a new Latin translation and with notes which mercilessly
flayed hair-splitting theologians.

Thus throughout the fifteenth century and the early part of the
sixteenth, much was heard from scholars, princes, and people, of the
need for "reformation" of the Church. That did not signify a change of
the old regulations but rather their restoration and enforcement. For a
long time it was not a question of abolishing the authority of the
pope, or altering ecclesiastical organization, or changing creeds. It
was merely a question of reforming the lives of the clergy and of
suppressing the means by which Italians drew money from other nations.

[Sidenote: Religious Causes of Protestant Revolt]

In the sixteenth century, however, a group of religious leaders, such
as Luther, Cranmer, Zwingli, Calvin, and Knox, went much further than
Erasmus and the majority of the humanists had gone: they applied the
word "reformation" not only to a reform in morals but to an open break
which they made with the government and doctrines of the Catholic
Church. The new theology, which these reformers championed, was derived
mainly from the teachings of such heretics as Wycliffe and Hus and was
supposed to depend directly upon the Bible rather than upon the Church.
The religious causes of the Protestant Revolt accordingly may be summed
up as: first, the existence of abuses within the Catholic Church;
second, the attacks of distinguished men upon the immorality and
worldliness of the Catholic clergy; and third, the substitution by
certain religious leaders of new doctrines and practices, which were
presumed to have been authorized by the Bible, but which were at
variance with those of the medieval Church.

[Sidenote: Date and Extent of the Protestant Revolt]

For the great variety of reasons, which we have now indicated,--
political, economic, and religious,--the peoples of northern Germany,
Scandinavia, the Dutch Netherlands, most of Switzerland, Scotland,
England, and a part of France and of Hungary, separated themselves,
between the years 1520 and 1570, from the great religious and political
body which had been known historically for over a thousand years as the
Catholic Christian Church. The name "Protestant" was first applied
exclusively to those followers of Martin Luther in the Holy Roman
Empire who in 1529 protested against an attempt of the Diet of Speyer
to prevent the introduction of religious novelties, but subsequently
the word passed into common parlance among historians and the general
reading public as betokening all Christians who rejected the papal
supremacy and who were not in communion with the Orthodox Church of
eastern Europe.

Of this Protestant Christianity three main forms appeared in the
sixteenth century--Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism. Concerning
the origin and development of each one of these major forms, a brief
sketch must be given.


LUTHERANISM

[Sidenote: Martin Luther]

Lutheranism takes its name from its great apostle, Martin Luther.
Luther was born in Eisleben in Germany in 1483 of a poor family whose
ancestors had been peasants. Martin early showed himself bold,
headstrong, willing to pit his own opinions against those of the world,
but yet possessing ability, tact, and a love of sound knowledge.
Educated at the university of Erfurt, where he became acquainted with
the humanistic movement, young Martin entered one of the mendicant
orders--the Augustinian--in 1505 and went to live in a monastery. In
1508 Luther was sent with some other monks to Wittenberg to assist a
university which had been opened there recently by the elector of
Saxony, and a few years later was appointed professor of theology in
the institution.

[Sidenote: Justification by Faith]

While lecturing and preaching at Wittenberg, where he was very popular,
Luther developed from the writings of St. Paul and St. Augustine an
important doctrinal conviction which differed widely from the faith of
the Catholic Church. It concerned the means of eternal salvation. The
Church taught, as we have seen, that she possessed the sole means, and
that every Christian must perform certain "good works" in order to
secure salvation. Luther, on the other hand, became convinced that man
was incapable, in the sight of God, of any good works whatsoever, and
could be saved only by faith in God's promises. In other words, this
monk placed his doctrine of "justification by faith" in opposition to
the generally accepted belief in "justification by faith and works."

[Sidenote: Tetzel's "Sale" of Indulgences]

So far, Luther certainly had no thought of revolting against the
authority of the Church. In fact, when he visited Rome in 1511, it was
as a pious pilgrim rather than as a carping critic. But a significant
event in the year 1517 served to make clear a wide discrepancy between
what he was teaching and what the Church taught. That year a certain
papal agent, Tetzel by name, was disposing of indulgences in the great
archbishopric of Mainz. An indulgence, according to Catholic theology,
was a remission of the temporal punishment in purgatory due to sin, and
could be granted only by authority of the Church; the grant of
indulgences depended upon the contrition and confession of the
applicant, and often at that time upon money-payments. Against what he
believed was a corruption of Christian doctrine and a swindling of the
poorer people, Luther protested in a series of ninety-five Theses which
he posted on the church door in Wittenberg (31 October, 1517).

[Sidenote: The Ninety-five Theses]

The Theses had been written in Latin for the educated class but they
were now speedily translated into German and spread like wildfire among
all classes throughout the country. Luther's underlying principle of
"salvation through simple faith" was in sharp contrast with the theory
of "good works," on which the indulgences rested. "The Christian who
has true repentance," wrote Luther, "has already received pardon from
God altogether apart from an indulgence, and does not need one; Christ
demands this true repentance from every one." Luther's attitude
provoked spirited discussion throughout the Germanics, and the more
discussion, the more interest and excitement. The pope, who had
dismissed the subject at first as a mere squabble among the monks, was
moved at length to summon Luther to Rome to answer for the Theses, but
the elector of Saxony intervened and prevailed upon the pope not to
press the matter.

[Sidenote: Disputation at Leipzig, 1519]

The next important step in the development of Luther's religious ideas
was a debate on the general question of papal supremacy, held at
Leipzig in 1519, between himself and an eminent Catholic apologist,
Johann Eck. Eck skillfully forced Luther to admit that certain views of
his, especially those concerning man's direct relation with God,
without the mediation of the Church, were the same as those which John
Hus had held a century earlier and which had been condemned both by the
pope and by the great general council of Constance. Luther thereby
virtually admitted that a general council as well as a pope might err.
For him, the divine authority of the Roman Catholic Church ceased to
be.

[Sidenote: Separation of Luther from the Catholic Church]

Separation from the traditional Church was the only course now open to
Luther and this was consummated in the year 1520. In a series of three
bold pamphlets, he vigorously and definitely attacked the position of
the Church. In the first--_An Address to the Nobility of the German
Nation_--Luther stated that there was nothing inherently sacred
about the Christian priesthood and that the clergy should be deprived
immediately of their special privileges; he urged the German princes to
free their country from foreign control and shrewdly called their
attention to the wealth and power of the Church which they might justly
appropriate to themselves. In the second--_On the Babylonian
Captivity of the Church of God_--he assailed the papacy and the
whole sacramental system. The third--_On the Freedom of a Christian
Man_--contained the essence of Luther's new theology that salvation
was not a painful _progress_ toward a goal by means of sacraments
and right conduct but a _condition_ "in which man found himself so
soon as he despaired absolutely of his own efforts and threw himself on
God's assurances"; the author claimed that man's utter personal
dependence on God's grace rendered the system of the Church
superfluous.

In the midst of these attacks upon the Church, the pope excommunicated
Luther, and in the following year (1521) influenced the Diet of the
Holy Roman Empire, assembled at Worms, to pronounce him an outlaw. But
the rebel calmly burnt the papal bull and from the imperial ban he was
protected by the elector of Saxony. He at once devoted himself to
making a new German translation of the Bible, which became very popular
and is still prized as a monument in the history of German literature.
[Footnote: The first edition of the Bible in German had been printed as
early as 1466. At least eighteen editions in German (including four Low
German versions) had appeared before Luther issued his German New
Testament in 1522.]

[Sidenote: Spread of Lutheranism]

Within the next few years the Lutheran teachings carried everything
before them throughout the northern and central Germanies. Nor are the
reasons for Luther's success in defying pope and emperor and for the
rapid acceptance of his new theology hard to understand. The movement
was essentially popular and national. It appealed to the pious-minded
who desired a simplification of Christian dogma and a comprehensible
method of salvation. It also appealed to the worldly minded who longed
to seize ecclesiastical lands and revenues. Above all, it appealed to
the patriots who were tired of foreign despotism and of abuses which
they traced directly to the Roman Curia. Then, too, the Emperor Charles
V, who remained a loyal Catholic, was too immersed in the difficulties
of foreign war and in the manifold administrative problems of his huge
dominions to be able to devote much time to the extirpation of heresy
in the Germanies. Finally, the character of Luther contributed to
effective leadership--he was tireless in flooding the country with
pamphlets, letters, and inflammatory diatribes, tactful in keeping his
party together, and always bold and courageous. Princes, burghers,
artisans, and peasants joined hands in espousing the new cause.

[Sidenote: Luther and the German Peasants]

But the peasants espoused it in a manner altogether too logical and too
violent to suit Luther or the desires of the princes. The German
peasants had grievances against the old order compared with which those
of the knights and towns-folk were imaginary. For at least a century
several causes had contributed to make their lot worse and worse. While
their taxes and other burdens were increasing, the ability of the
emperor to protect them was decreasing; they were plundered by every
class in the community, especially by the higher clergy. Thus, under
the influence of social and economic conditions, various uprisings of
the peasants had taken place during the latter part of the fifteenth
century. These insurrections became almost regular in the southwestern
Germanies, and were called _Bundschuhe_, a shoe fastened upon the
end of a pole serving as a standard of revolt. When Luther urged the
princes to assail the ecclesiastics, to seize church lands, and to put
an end to financial abuses, the peasants naturally listened to his
words with open ears and proceeded with glad hearts to apply his advice
themselves.

The new Lutheran theology may have been too refined for the peasants,
but they imagined they understood its purport. And spurred on by
fanatics, whom the religious ferment of the times produced in large
numbers, [Footnote: Many of these radical religious leaders were more
consistent and thoroughgoing than Luther in maintaining the right of
each Christian to interpret the Scriptures for himself. Since they
generally refused to recognize infant baptism as valid and insisted
that baptism should be administered only to adults, they were
subsequently often referred to as "Anabaptists." Many of the
"Anabaptists" condemned oaths and capital punishment; some advocated
communism of worldly goods, in several instances even the community of
women. Nicholas Storch (d. 1525), a weaver, and Thomas Munzer (d.
1525), a Lutheran preacher, spread these doctrines widely among the
peasants. Luther vehemently denounced the "Anabaptists."] the peasants
again took arms against feudal oppression. That the peasants' demands
were essentially moderate and involved no more than is granted
everywhere to-day as a matter of course, may be inferred from their
declaration of principles, the Twelve Articles, among which were:
abolition of serfdom, free right of fishing and hunting, payment in
wages for services rendered, and abolition of arbitrary punishment. So
long as the peasants directed their efforts against the Catholic
ecclesiastics, Luther expressed sympathy with them, but when the
revolt, which broke out in 1524, became general all over central and
southern Germany and was directed not only against the Catholic clergy
but also against the lay lords,--many of whom were now Lutheran,--the
religious leader foresaw a grave danger to his new religion in a split
between peasants and nobles. Luther ended by taking strong sides with
the nobles--he had most to expect from them. He was shocked by the
excesses of the revolt, he said. Insisting upon toleration for his own
revolt, he condemned the peasants to most horrible fates in this world
and in the world hereafter. [Footnote: Although Luther was particularly
bitter against the "Anabaptist" exhorters, upon whom he fastened
responsibility for the Peasants' Revolt, and although many of them met
death thereby, the "Anabaptists" were by no means exterminated.
Largely through the activity of a certain Melchior Hofmann, a widely
traveled furrier, "Anabaptist" doctrines were disseminated in northern
Germany and the Netherlands.  From 1533 to 1535 they reigned supreme,
attended by much bloodshed and plenty of personal license, in the
important city of Munster in western Germany. Subsequently, Carlstadt
(1480-1541), an early associate of Luther, though his later antagonist,
set forth Anabaptist views with greater moderation; and in course of
time the sect became more or less tinged with Calvinistic theology.] He
furiously begged the princes to put down the insurrection. "Whoever
can, should smite, strangle, or stab, secretly or publicly!"

[Sidenote: The Peasants' Revolt]

The Peasants' Revolt was crushed in 1525 with utmost cruelty. Probably
fifty thousand lost their lives in the vain effort. The general result
was that the power of the territorial lords became greater than ever,
although in a few cases, particularly in the Tyrol and in Baden, the
condition of the peasants was slightly improved. Elsewhere, however,
this was not the case; and the German peasants were assigned for over
two centuries to a lot worse than that of almost any people in Europe.
Another result was the decline of Luther's influence among the
peasantry in southern and central Germany. They turned rapidly from one
who, they believed, had betrayed them. On the other hand, many Catholic
princes, who had been wavering in their religious support, now had
before their eyes what they thought was an object lesson of the results
of Luther's appeal to revolution, and so they cast their lot decisively
with the ancient Church. The Peasants' Revolt registered a distinct
check to the further spread of Lutheranism.

[Sidenote: Diets of Speyer 1526, 1529]
[Sidenote: The Word "Protestant"]

The Diet of the Holy Roman Empire which assembled at Speyer in 1526 saw
the German princes divided into a Lutheran and a Roman Catholic party,
but left the legal status of the new faith still in doubt, contenting
itself with the vague declaration that "each prince should so conduct
himself as he could answer for his behavior to God and to the emperor."
But at the next Diet, held at the same place in 1529, the emperor
directed that the edict against heretics should be enforced and that
the old ecclesiastical revenues should not be appropriated for the new
worship. The Lutheran princes drafted a legal protest, in which they
declared that they meant to abide by the law of 1526. From this protest
came the name _Protestant_.

[Sidenote: Confession of Augsburg, 1530]

The next year, Luther's great friend, Melancthon, presented to the Diet
of Augsburg an account of the beliefs of the German reformers, which
later became known as the Confession of Augsburg and constitutes to the
present day the distinctive creed of the Lutheran Church. The emperor
was still unconvinced, however, of the truth or value of the reformed
doctrine, and declared his intention of ending the heresy by force of
arms.

[Sidenote: Religious Peace of Augsburg, 1555]

In this predicament, the Lutheran princes formed a league at Schmalkald
for mutual protection (1531); and from 1546 to 1555 a desultory civil
war was waged. The Protestants received some assistance from the French
king, who, for political reasons, was bent on humiliating the emperor.
The end of the religious conflict appeared to have been reached by the
peace of Augsburg (1555), which contained the following provisions: (1)
Each prince was to be free to dictate the religion of his subjects
[Footnote: _Cuius regio eius religio_.]; (2) All church property
appropriated by the Protestants before 1552 was to remain in their
hands; (3) No form of Protestantism except Lutheranism was to be
tolerated; (4) Lutheran subjects of ecclesiastical states were not to
be obliged to renounce their faith; (5) By an "ecclesiastical
reservation" any ecclesiastical prince on becoming a Protestant was to
give up his see.

[Sidenote: Lutheranism in the Germanies]

Thus, between 1520 and 1555, Martin Luther [Footnote: He died in 1546,
aged 62.] had preached his new theology at variance with the Catholic,
and had found general acceptance for it throughout the northern half of
the Germanies; its creed had been settled and defined in 1530, and its
official toleration had been recognized in 1555. The toleration was
limited, however, to princes, and for many years Lutheran rulers showed
themselves quite as intolerant within their own dominions as did the
Catholics.

[Sidenote: Lutheranism in Scandinavia]

The triumph of Lutheranism in the Scandinavian countries has been
traced largely to political and economic causes. When Martin Luther
broke with the Catholic Church, Christian II (1513-1523) was reigning
as elected king over Denmark and Norway and had recently conquered
Sweden by force of arms. The king encountered political difficulties
with the Church although he maintained Catholic worship and doctrine
and apparently recognized the spiritual supremacy of the pope. But
Christian II had trouble with most of his subjects, especially the
Swedes, who were conscious of separate nationality and desirous of
political independence; and the king eventually lost his throne in a
general uprising. The definite separation of Sweden from Denmark and
Norway followed immediately. The Swedes chose the celebrated Gustavus
Vasa (1523-1560) as their king, while the Danish and Norwegian crowns
passed to the uncle of Christian II, who assumed the title of Frederick
I (1523-1533).

[Sidenote: Denmark]

In Denmark, King Frederick was very desirous of increasing the royal
power, and the subservient ecclesiastical organization which Martin
Luther was advocating seemed to him for his purposes infinitely
preferable to the ancient self-willed Church. But Frederick realized
that the Catholic Church was deeply rooted in the affections of his
people and that changes would have to be effected slowly and
cautiously. He therefore collected around him Lutheran teachers from
Germany and made his court the center of the propaganda of the new
doctrine, and so well was the work of the new teachers done that the
king was able in 1527 to put the two religions on an equal footing
before the law. Upon Frederick's death in 1533, the Catholics made a
determined effort to prevent the accession of his son, Christian III,
who was not only an avowed Lutheran but was known to stand for
absolutist principles in government.

The popular protest against royal despotism failed in Denmark and the
triumph of Christian III in 1536 sealed the fate of Catholicism in that
country and in Norway. It was promptly enacted that the Catholic
bishops should forfeit their temporal and spiritual authority and all
their property should be transferred to the crown "for the good of the
commonwealth." After discussions with Luther the new religion was
definitely organized and declared the state religion in 1537. It might
be added that Catholicism died with difficulty in Denmark,--many
peasants as well as high churchmen resented the changes, and Helgesen,
the foremost Scandinavian scholar and humanist of the time, protested
vigorously against the new order. But the crown was growing powerful,
and the crown prevailed. The enormous increase of royal revenue,
consequent upon the confiscation of the property of the Church, enabled
the king to make Denmark the leading Scandinavian country throughout
the second half of the sixteenth century and the first quarter of the
seventeenth. In time national patriotism came to be intertwined with
Lutheranism.

[Sidenote: Sweden]

In Sweden the success of the new religion was due to the crown quite as
much as in Denmark and Norway. Gustavus Vasa had obtained the Swedish
throne through the efforts of a nationalist party, but there was still
a hostile faction, headed by the chief churchman, the archbishop of
Upsala, who favored the maintenance of the union with Denmark. In order
to deprive the unionists of their leader, Gustavus begged the pope to
remove the rebellious archbishop and to appoint one in sympathy with
the nationalist cause. This the pope peremptorily refused to do, and
the breach with Rome began. Gustavus succeeded in suppressing the
insurrection, and then persevered in introducing Protestantism. The
introduction was very gradual, especially among the peasantry, and its
eventual success was largely the result of the work of one strong man
assisted by a subservient parliament.

At first Gustavus maintained Catholic worship and doctrines, contenting
himself with the suppression of the monasteries, the seizure of two-
thirds of the church tithes, and the circulation of a popular Swedish
translation of the New Testament. In 1527 all ecclesiastical property
was transferred to the crown and two Catholic bishops were cruelly put
to death. Meanwhile Lutheran teachers were encouraged to take up their
residence in Sweden and in 1531 the first Protestant archbishop of
Upsala was chosen. Thenceforth, the progress of Lutheranism was more
rapid, although a Catholic reaction was threatened several times in the
second half of the sixteenth century. The Confession of Augsburg was
adopted as the creed of the Swedish Church in 1593, and in 1604
Catholics were deprived of offices and estates and banished from the
realm.


CALVINISM

The second general type of Protestantism which appeared in the
sixteenth century was the immediate forerunner of the modern
Presbyterian, Congregational, and Reformed Churches and at one time or
another considerably affected the theology of the Episcopalians and
Baptists and even of Lutherans. Taken as a group, it is usually called
Calvinism. Of its rise and spread, some idea may be gained from brief
accounts of the lives of two of its great apostles--Calvin and Knox.
But first it will be necessary to say a few words concerning an older
reformer, Zwingli by name, who prepared the way for Calvin's work in
the Swiss cantons.

[Sidenote: Zwingli]

Switzerland comprised in the sixteenth century some thirteen cantons,
all of which were technically under the suzerainty of the Holy Roman
Empire, but constituted in practice so many independent republics,
bound together only by a number of protective treaties. To the town of
Einsiedeln in the canton of Schwyz came Huldreich Zwingli in the year
1516 as a Catholic priest. Slightly younger than Luther, he was well
born, had received an excellent university education in Vienna and in
Basel, and had now been in holy orders about ten years. He had shown
for some time more interest in humanism than in the old-fashioned
theology, but hardly any one would have suspected him of heresy, for it
was well known that he was a regular pensioner of the pope.

Zwingli's opposition to the Roman Church seems to have been based at
first largely on political grounds. He preached eloquently against the
practice of hiring out Swiss troops to foreign rulers and abused the
Church for its share in this shameless traffic in soldiers. Then he was
led on to attack all manner of abuses in ecclesiastical organization,
but it was not until he was installed in 1518 as preacher in the great
cathedral at Zürich that he clearly denied papal supremacy and
proceeded to proclaim the Scriptures as the sole guide of faith and
morals. He preached against fasting, the veneration of saints, and the
celibacy of the clergy. Some of his hearers began to put his teachings
into practice: church edifices were profaned, statues demolished,
windows smashed, and relics burned. Zwingli himself took a wife.

[Sidenote: Zwinglian Revolt in Switzerland]

In 1523 a papal appeal to Zürich to abandon Zwingli was answered by the
canton's formal declaration of independence from the Catholic Church.
Henceforth the revolt spread rapidly throughout Switzerland, except in
the five forest cantons, the very heart of the country, where the
ancient religion was still deeply intrenched. Serious efforts were made
to join the followers of Zwingli with those of Luther, and thus to
present a united front to the common enemy, but there seemed to be
irreconcilable differences between Lutheranism and the views of
Zwingli. The latter, which were succinctly expressed in sixty-seven
Theses published at Zürich in 1523, insisted more firmly than the
former on the supreme authority of Scripture, and broke more thoroughly
and radically with the traditions of the Catholic Church. Zwingli aimed
at a reformation of government and discipline as well as of theology,
and entertained a notion of an ideal state in which the democracy would
order human activities, whether political or religious. Zwingli
differed essentially from Luther in never distrusting "the people."
Perhaps the most distinctive mark of the Swiss reformer's theology was
his idea that the Lord's Supper is not a miracle but simply a symbol
and a memorial.

In 1531 Zwingli urged the Protestant Swiss to convert the five forest
cantons to the new religion by force of arms. In answer to his
entreaties, civil war ensued, but the Catholic mountaineers won a great
victory that very year and the reformer himself was killed. A truce was
then arranged, the provisions of which foreshadowed the religious
settlement in the Germanies--each canton was to be free to determine
its own religion. Switzerland has remained to this day part Catholic
and part Protestant.

[Sidenote: Calvin]

By the sudden death of Zwingli, Swiss Protestantism was left without a
leader, but not for long, because the more celebrated Calvin took up
his residence in Geneva in 1536. From that time until his death in 1564
Calvin was the center of a movement which, starting from these small
Zwinglian beginnings among the Swiss mountains, speedily spread over
more countries and affected more people than did Lutheranism. In
Calvinism, Catholicism was to find her most implacable foe.

John Calvin, who, next to Martin Luther, was the most conspicuous
Protestant leader of the sixteenth century, was a Frenchman. Born of
middle-class parentage at Noyon in the province of Picardy in 1509, he
was intended from an early age for an ecclesiastical career. A pension
from the Catholic Church enabled him to study at Paris, where he
displayed an aptitude for theology and literature. When he was nineteen
years of age, however, his father advised him to abandon the idea of
entering the priesthood in favor of becoming a lawyer--so young Calvin
spent several years studying law.

[Sidenote: Calvin in France]

It was in 1529 that Calvin is said to have experienced a sudden
"conversion." Although as yet there had been no organized revolt in
France against the Catholic Church, that country, like many others, was
teeming with religious critics. Thousands of Frenchmen were in sympathy
with any attempt to improve the Church by education, by purer morals,
or by better preaching. Lutheranism was winning a few converts, and
various evangelical sects were appearing in divers places. The chief
problem was whether reform should be sought within the traditional
Church or by rebellion against it. Calvin believed that his conversion
was a divine call to forsake Roman Catholicism and to become the
apostle of a purer life. His heart, he said, was "so subdued and
reduced to docility that in comparison with his zeal for true piety he
regarded all other studies with indifference, though not entirely
abandoning them. Though himself a beginner, many flocked to him to
learn the pure doctrine, and he began to seek some hiding-place and
means of withdrawal from people."

[Sidenote: "The Institutes"]

His search for a hiding-place was quickened by the announced
determination of the French king, Francis I, to put an end to religious
dissent among his subjects. Calvin abruptly left France and found an
asylum in the Swiss town of Basel, where he became acquainted at first
hand with the type of reformed religion which Zwingli had propagated
and where he proceeded to write a full account of the Protestant
position as contrasted with the Catholic. This exposition,--_The
Institutes of the Christian Religion_,--which was published in 1536,
was dedicated to King Francis I and was intended to influence him in
favor of Protestantism.

Although the book failed of its immediate purpose, it speedily won a
deservedly great reputation. It was a statement of Calvin's views,
borrowed in part from Zwingli, and in part from Luther and other
reformers. It was orderly and concise, and it did for Protestant
theology what the medieval writers had done for Catholic theology. It
contained the germ of all that subsequently developed as Calvinism.

[Sidenote: Calvin and Luther]

It seemed for some time as if the _Institutes_ might provide a
common religious rule and guide for all Christians who rebelled against
Rome. But Calvin, in mind and nature, was quite different from Luther.
The latter was impetuous, excitable, but very human; the former was
ascetic, calm, and inhumanly logical. Then, too, Luther was quite
willing to leave everything in the church which was not prohibited by
Scripture; Calvin insisted that nothing should remain in the church
which was not expressly authorized by Scripture. The _Institutes_
had a tremendous influence upon Protestantism but did not unite the
followers of Calvin and Luther. Calvin's book seems all the more
wonderful, when it is recalled that it was written when the author was
but twenty-six years of age.

[Sidenote: Calvin at Geneva]

In 1536 Calvin went to Geneva, which was then in the throes of a
revolution at once political and religious, for the townsfolk were
freeing themselves from the feudal suzerainty of the duke of Savoy and
banishing the Catholic Church, whose cause the duke championed. Calvin
aided in the work and was rewarded by an appointment as chief pastor
and preacher in the city. This position he continued to hold, except
for a brief period when he was exiled, until his death in 1564. It
proved to be a commanding position not only in ordering the affairs of
the town, but also in giving form to an important branch of Protestant
Christianity.

The government of Geneva under Calvin's regime was a curious theocracy
of which Calvin himself was both religious leader and political "boss."
The minister of the reformed faith became God's mouthpiece upon earth
and inculcated an unbending puritanism in daily life. "No more
festivals, no more jovial reunions, no more theaters or society; the
rigid monotony of an austere rule weighed upon life. A poet was
decapitated because of his verses; Calvin wished adultery to be
punished by death like heresy, and he had Michael Servetus [Footnote: A
celebrated Spanish reformer.] burned for not entertaining the same
opinions as himself upon the mystery of the Trinity."

Under Calvin's theocratic despotism, Geneva became famous throughout
Europe as the center of elaborate Protestant propaganda. Calvin, who
set the example of stern simplicity and relentless activity, was
sometimes styled the Protestant pope. He not only preached every day,
wrote numerous theological treatises, and issued a French translation
of the Bible, but he established important Protestant schools--
including the University of Geneva--which attracted students from
distant lands, and he conducted a correspondence with his disciples and
would-be reformers in all points of Europe. His letters alone would
fill thirty folio volumes.

[Sidenote: Diffusion of Calvinism]

Such activities account for the almost bewildering diffusion of
Calvinism. French, Dutch, Germans, Scotch, and English flocked to
Geneva to hear Calvin or to attend his schools, and when they returned
to their own countries they were likely to be so many glowing sparks
ready to start mighty conflagrations.

Calvinism was known by various names in the different countries which
it entered. On the continent of Europe it was called the Reformed
Faith, and in France its followers were styled Huguenots; in Scotland
it became Presbyterianism; and in England, Puritanism. Its essential
characteristics, however, remained the same wherever it was carried.

[Sidenote: Calvinism in Switzerland]

We have already noticed how Switzerland, except for the five forest
cantons, had been converted to Protestantism by the preaching of
Zwingli. Calvin was Zwingli's real theological successor, and the
majority of the Swiss, especially those in the urban cantons of Zürich
and Bern as well as of Geneva, cheerfully accepted Calvinism.

[Sidenote: Calvinism in France: the Huguenots]

Calvinism also made converts in France. The doctrines and writings of
Luther had there encountered small success. Many French reformers
believed that greater good would eventually be achieved within the
Catholic Church than without. There appeared to be fewer abuses among
the French clergy than among the ecclesiastics of northern Europe, for
they possessed less wealth and power. The French sovereign felt less
prompted to lay his hand upon the dominions of the clergy, because a
special agreement with the pope in 1516 bestowed upon the king the
nomination of bishops and the disposition of benefices. For these
reasons the bulk of the French people resisted Protestantism of every
form and remained loyally Catholic.

What progress the new religion made in France was due to Calvin rather
than to Luther. Calvin, as we have seen, was a Frenchman himself, and
his teachings and logic appealed to a small but influential body of his
fellow-countrymen. A considerable portion of the lower nobility, a few
merchants and business men, and many magistrates conformed to Calvinism
openly; the majority of great lawyers and men of learning adhered to it
in public or in secret. Probably from a twentieth to a thirtieth of the
total population embraced Calvinism. The movement was essentially
confined to the middle-class or _bourgeoisie_, and almost from the
outset it acquired a political as well as a religious significance. It
represented among the lesser nobility an awakening of the aristocratic
spirit and among the middle-class a reaction against the growing power
of the king. The financial and moneyed interests of the country were
largely attracted to French Calvinism. The Huguenots, as the French
Calvinists were called, were particularly strong in the law courts and
in the Estates-General or parliament, and these had been the main
checks upon royal despotism.

[Sidenote: Edict of Nantes]

The Huguenots were involved in sanguinary civil and religious wars
which raged in France throughout the greater part of the sixteenth
century and which have already been treated in their appropriate
political aspect. The outcome was the settlement accorded by King Henry
IV in the famous Edict of Nantes (1598), which contained the following
provisions: (1) Private worship and liberty of conscience were allowed
to the Calvinists throughout France; (2) Public Protestant worship
might be held in 200 enumerated towns and over 3000 castles; (3) A
financial grant was made to Protestant schools, and the publication of
Calvinist books was legalized; (4) Huguenots received full civil
rights, with admission to all public offices; (5) Huguenots were
granted for eight years the political control of two hundred towns, the
garrisons of which were to be maintained by the crown; and (6)
Huguenots were accorded certain judicial privileges and the right of
holding religious and political assemblies. For nearly a hundred years
France practiced a religious toleration which was almost unique among
European nations, and it was Calvinists who benefited.

[Sidenote: Calvinism in the Netherlands]

The Netherlands were too near the Germanies not to be affected by the
Lutheran revolt against the Catholic Church. And the northern or Dutch
provinces became quite thoroughly saturated with Lutheranism and also
with the doctrines of various radical sects that from time to time were
expelled from the German states. The Emperor Charles V tried to stamp
out heresy by harsh action of the Inquisition, but succeeded only in
changing its name and nature. Lutheranism disappeared from the
Netherlands; but in its place came Calvinism, [Footnote: Many
Anabaptist refugees from Germany had already sought refuge in the
Netherlands: they naturally found the teachings of Zwingli and Calvin
more radical, and therefore more appropriate to themselves, than the
teachings of Luther. This fact also serves to explain the acceptance of
Calvinism in regions of southern Germany where Lutheranism, since the
Peasants' Revolt, had failed to take root.] descending from Geneva
through Alsace and thence down the Rhine, or entering from Great
Britain by means of the close commercial relations existing between
those countries. While the southern Netherlands eventually were
recovered for Catholicism, the protracted political and economic
conflict which the northern Netherlands waged against the Catholic king
of Spain contributed to a final fixing of Calvinism as the national
religion of patriotic Dutchmen. Calvinism in Holland was known as the
Dutch Reformed religion.

[Sidenote: Calvinism in Southern Germany]

We have already noted that southern Germany had rejected aristocratic
Lutheranism, partially at least because of Luther's bitter words to the
peasants. Catholicism, however, was not destined to have complete sway
in those regions, for democratic Calvinism permeated Württemberg,
Baden, and the Rhenish provinces, and the Reformed doctrines gained
numerous converts among the middle-class. The growth of Calvinism in
Germany was seriously handicapped by the religious settlement of
Augsburg in 1555 which officially tolerated only Catholicism and
Lutheranism. It was not until after the close of the direful Thirty
Years' War in the seventeenth century that German Calvinists received
formal recognition.

[Sidenote: Scotland]

Scotland, like every other European country in the early part of the
sixteenth century, had been a place of protest against moral and
financial abuses in the Catholic Church, but the beginnings of
ecclesiastical rebellion are to be traced rather to political causes.
The kingdom had long been a prey to the bitter rivalry of great noble
families, and the premature death of James V (1542), which left the
throne to his ill-fated infant daughter, Mary Stuart, gave free rein to
a feudal reaction against the crown. In general, the Catholic clergy
sided with the royal cause, while the religious reformers egged on the
nobles to champion Protestantism in order to deal an effective blow
against the union of the altar and the throne. Thus Cardinal Beaton,
head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, ordered numerous executions on
the score of protecting religion and the authority of the queen-regent;
on the other hand several noblemen, professing the new theology,
assassinated the cardinal and hung his body on the battlements of the
castle of St. Andrews (1546). Such was the general situation in
Scotland when John Knox appeared upon the scene.

[Sidenote: John Knox]

Born of peasant parents about 1515, John Knox [Footnote: John Knox (c.
1515-1572).] had become a Catholic priest, albeit in sympathy with many
of the revolutionary ideas which were entering Scotland from the
Continent and from England. In 1546 he openly rejected the authority of
the Church and proceeded to preach "the Gospel" and a stern puritanical
morality. "Others snipped the branches," he said, "he struck at the
root." But the Catholic court was able to banish Knox from Scotland.
After romantic imprisonment in France, Knox spent a few years in
England, preaching an extreme puritanism, holding a chaplaincy under
Edward VI (1547-1553), and exerting his influence to insure an
indelibly Protestant character to the Anglican Church. Then upon the
accession to the English throne of the Catholic Mary Tudor, Knox betook
himself to Geneva where he made the acquaintance of Calvin and found
himself in essential agreement with the teachings of the French
reformer.

[Sidenote: Calvinism in Scotland]

After a stay of some five years on the Continent, Knox returned finally
to Scotland and became the organizer and director of the "Lords of the
Congregation," a league of the chief Protestant noblemen for purposes
of religious propaganda and political power. In 1560 he drew up the
creed and discipline of the Presbyterian Church after the model of
Calvin's church at Geneva; and in the same year with the support of the
"Lords of the Congregation" and the troops of Queen Elizabeth of
England, Knox effected a political and religious revolution in
Scotland. The queen-regent was imprisoned and the subservient
parliament abolished the papal supremacy and enacted the death penalty
against any one who should even attend Catholic worship. John Knox had
carried everything before him.

Mary Stuart, during her brief stay in Scotland (1561-1567), tried in
vain to stem the tide. The jealous barons would brook no increase of
royal authority. The austere Knox hounded the girl-queen in public
sermons and fairly flayed her character. The queen's downfall and
subsequent long imprisonment in England finally decided the
ecclesiastical future of Scotland. Except in a few fastnesses in the
northern highlands, where Catholicism survived among the clansmen, the
whole country was committed to Calvinism.

[Sidenote: Calvinism in England]

Calvinism was not without influence in England. Introduced towards the
close of the reign of Henry VIII, it gave rise to a number of small
sects which troubled the king's Anglican Church almost as much as did
the Roman Catholics. Under Edward VI (1547-1553), it considerably
influenced the theology of the Anglican Church itself, but the moderate
policies of Elizabeth (1558-1603) tended to fix an inseparable gulf
between Anglicans and Calvinists. Thenceforth, Calvinism lived in
England, in the forms of Presbyterianism, Independency, [Footnote:
Among the "Independents" were the Baptists, a sect related not so
immediately to Calvinism as to the radical Anabaptists of Germany. See
above, pp. 134 f., 145, footnotes] and Puritanism, as the religion
largely of the commercial middle class. It was treated with contempt,
and even persecuted, by Anglicans, especially by the monarchs of the
Stuart family. After a complete but temporary triumph under Cromwell,
in the seventeenth century, it was at length legally tolerated in
England after the settlement of 1689. It was from England that New
England received the Calvinistic religion which dominated colonial
forefathers of many present-day Americans.


ANGLICANISM

Anglicanism is the name frequently applied to that form of
Protestantism which stamped the state church in England in the
sixteenth century and which is now represented by the Episcopal Church
in the United States as well as by the established Church of England.
The Methodist churches are comparatively late off-shoots of
Anglicanism.

The separation of England from the papacy was a more gradual and
halting process than were the contemporary revolutions on the
Continent; and the new Anglicanism was correspondingly more
conservative than Lutheranism or Calvinism.

[Sidenote: English Catholicism in 1500]
[Sidenote: Church of England]

At the opening of the sixteenth century, the word "Catholic" meant the
same in England as in every other country of western or central Europe
--belief in the seven sacraments, the sacrifice of the Mass, and the
veneration of saints; acceptance of papal supremacy and support of
monasticism and of other institutions and practices of the medieval
Church. During several centuries it had been customary in legal
documents to refer to the Catholic Church in England as the _Ecclesia
Anglicana_, or Anglican Church, just as the popes in their letters
repeatedly referred to the "Gallican Church," the "Spanish Church," the
"Neapolitan Church," or the "Hungarian Church." But such phraseology
did not imply a separation of any one national church from the common
Catholic communion, and for nearly a thousand years--ever since there
had been an _Ecclesia Anglicana_--the English had recognized the
bishop of Rome as the center of Catholic unity. In the course of the
sixteenth century, however, the great majority of Englishmen changed
their conception of the _Ecclesia Anglicana_, so that to them it
continued to exist as the Church of England, but henceforth on a
strictly national basis, in communion neither with the pope nor with
the Orthodox Church of the East nor with the Lutherans or Calvinists,
abandoning several doctrines that had been universally held in earlier
times and substituting in their place beliefs and customs which were
distinctively Protestant. This new conception of the Anglican Church--
resulting from the revolution in the sixteenth century--is what we mean
by Anglicanism as a form of Protestantism. It took shape in the
eventful years between 1520 and 1570.

[Sidenote: Religious Opposition to the Roman Catholic Church in
England]

In order to understand how this religious and ecclesiastical revolution
was effected in England, we must appreciate the various elements
distrustful of the Catholic Church in that country about the year 1525.
In the first place, the Lutheran teachings were infiltrating into the
country. As early as 1521 a small group at Cambridge had become
interested in the new German theology, and thence the sect spread to
Oxford, London, and other intellectual centers. It found its early
converts chiefly among the lower clergy and the merchants of the large
towns, but for several years it was not numerous.

In the second place, there was the same feeling in England as we have
already noted throughout all Europe that the clergy needed reform in
morals and in manners. This view was shared not only by the
comparatively insignificant group of heretical Lutherans, but likewise
by a large proportion of the leading men who accounted themselves
orthodox members of the Catholic Church. The well-educated humanists
were especially eloquent in preaching reform. The writings of Erasmus
had great vogue in England. John Colet (1467?-1519), a famous dean of
St. Paul's cathedral in London, was a keen reformer who disapproved of
auricular confession and of the celibacy of the clergy. Sir Thomas More
(1478-1535), one of the greatest minds of the century, thought the
monks were lazy and indolent, and the whole body of churchmen in need
of an intellectual betterment. But neither Colet nor More had any
intention of breaking away from the Roman Church. To them, and to many
like them, reform could be secured best within the traditional
ecclesiastical body.

[Sidenote: Political Opposition to the Roman Catholic Church in
England]

A third source of distrust of the Church was a purely political feeling
against the papacy. As we have already seen, the English king and
English parliament on several earlier occasions had sought to restrict
the temporal and political jurisdiction of the pope in England, but
each restriction had been imposed for political reasons and even then
had represented the will of the monarch rather than that of the nation.
In fact, the most striking limitations of the pope's political
jurisdiction in the kingdom had been enacted during the early stages of
the Hundred Years' War, when the papacy was under French influence, and
had served, therefore, indirectly as political weapons against the
French king. Before that war was over, the operation of the statutes
had been relaxed, and for a century or more prior to 1525 little was
heard of even a political feeling against the bishop of Rome.

Nevertheless an evolution in English government was in progress at that
very time, which was bound sooner or later to create friction with the
Holy See. On one hand, a sense of nationalism and of patriotism had
been steadily growing in England, and it was at variance with the older
cosmopolitan idea of Catholicism. On the other hand, a great increase
of royal power had appeared in the fifteenth century, notably after the
accession of the Tudor family in 1485. Henry VII (1485-1509) had
subordinated to the crown both the nobility and the parliament, and the
patriotic support of the middle class he had secured. And when his son,
Henry VIII (1509-1547), came to the throne, the only serious obstacle
which appeared to be left in the way of royal absolutism was the
privileged independence of the Catholic Church.

[Sidenote: Early Loyalty of Henry VIII to the Roman Catholic Church]

Yet a number of years passed before Henry VIII laid violent hands upon
the Church. In the meanwhile, he proved himself a devoted Roman
Catholic. He scented the new Lutheran heresy and sought speedily to
exterminate it. He even wrote in 1521 with his own royal pen a bitter
arraignment of the new theology, and sent his book, which he called
_The Defence of the Seven Sacraments_, with a delightful
dedicatory epistle to the pope. For his prompt piety and filial
orthodoxy, he received from the bishop of Rome the proud title of
_Fidei Defensor_, or Defender of the Faith, a title which he
jealously bore until his death, and which his successors, the
sovereigns of Great Britain, with like humor have continued to bear
ever since. He seemed not even to question the pope's political claims.
He allied himself on several occasions with Leo X in the great game of
European politics. His chief minister and adviser in England for many
years was Thomas Wolsey, the most conspicuous ecclesiastic in his
kingdom and a cardinal of the Roman Church.

[Sidenote: The Marriage Difficulty of Henry VIII]

Under these circumstances it is difficult to see how the Anglican
Church would have immediately broken away from Catholic unity had it
not been for the peculiar marital troubles of Henry VIII. The king had
been married eighteen years to Catherine of Aragon, and had been
presented by her with six children (of whom only one daughter, the
Princess Mary, had survived), when one day he informed her that they
had been living all those years in mortal sin and that their union was
not true marriage. The queen could hardly be expected to agree with
such a definition, and there ensued a legal suit between the royal
pair.

To Henry VIII the matter was really quite simple. Henry was tired of
Catherine and wanted to get rid of her; he believed the queen could
bear him no more children and yet he ardently desired a male heir;
rumor reported that the susceptible king had recently been smitten by
the brilliant black eyes of a certain Anne Boleyn, a maid-in-waiting at
the court. The purpose of Henry was obvious; so was the means, he
thought. For it had occurred to him that Catherine was his elder
brother's widow, and, therefore, had no right, by church law, to marry
him. To be sure, a papal dispensation had been obtained from Pope
Julius II authorizing the marriage, but why not now obtain a revocation
of that dispensation from the reigning Pope Clement VII? Thus the
marriage with Catherine could be declared null and void, and Henry
would be a bachelor, thirty-six years of age, free to wed some
princess, or haply Anne Boleyn.

[Sidenote: Difficult Position of the Pope]

There was no doubt that Clement VII would like to do a favor for his
great English champion, but two difficulties at once presented
themselves. It would be a most dangerous precedent for the pope to
reverse the decision of one of his predecessors. Worse still, the
Emperor Charles V, the nephew of Queen Catherine, took up cudgels in
his aunt's behalf and threatened Clement with dire penalties if he
nullified the marriage. The pope complained truthfully that he was
between the anvil and the hammer. There was little for him to do except
to temporize and to delay decision as long as possible.

The protracted delay was very irritating to the impulsive English king,
who was now really in love with Anne Boleyn. Gradually Henry's former
effusive loyalty to the Roman See gave way to a settled conviction of
the tyranny of the papal power, and there rushed to his mind the
recollection of efforts of earlier English rulers to restrict that
power. A few salutary enactments against the Church might compel a
favorable decision from the pope.

Henry VIII seriously opened his campaign against the Roman Church in
1531, when he frightened the English clergy into paying a fine of over
half a million dollars for violating an obsolete statute that had
forbidden reception of papal legates without royal sanction, and in the
same year he forced the clergy to recognize himself as supreme head of
the Church "as far as that is permitted by the law of Christ." His
subservient Parliament then empowered him to stop the payment of
annates and to appoint the bishops without recourse to the papacy.
Without waiting longer for the papal decision, he had Cranmer, one of
his own creatures, whom he had just named archbishop of Canterbury,
declare his marriage with Catherine null and void and his union with
Anne Boleyn canonical and legal. Pope Clement VII thereupon handed down
his long-delayed decision favorable to Queen Catherine, and
excommunicated Henry VIII for adultery.

[Sidenote: Separation of England from the Roman Catholic Church: the
Act of Supremacy]

The formal breach between England and Rome occurred in 1534. Parliament
passed a series of laws, one of which declared the king to be the "only
supreme head in earth of the Church of England," and others cut off all
communication with the pope and inflicted the penalty of treason upon
any one who should deny the king's ecclesiastical supremacy.

One step in the transition of the Church of England had now been taken.
For centuries its members had recognized the pope as their
ecclesiastical head; henceforth they were to own the ecclesiastical
headship of their king. From the former Catholic standpoint, this might
be schism but it was not necessarily heresy. Yet Henry VIII encountered
considerable opposition from the higher clergy, from the monks, and
from many intellectual leaders, as well as from large numbers of the
lower classes. A popular uprising--the Pilgrimage of Grace--was sternly
suppressed, and such men as the brilliant Sir Thomas More and John
Fisher, the aged and saintly bishop of Rochester, were beheaded because
they retained their former belief in papal supremacy. Tudor despotism
triumphed.

[Sidenote: The "Six Articles"]

The breach with Rome naturally encouraged the Lutherans and other
heretics to think that England was on the point of becoming Protestant,
but nothing was further from the king's mind. The assailant of Luther
remained at least partially consistent. And the Six Articles (1539)
reaffirmed the chief points in Catholic doctrine and practice and
visited dissenters with horrible punishment. While separating England
from the papacy, Henry was firmly resolved to maintain every other
tenet of the Catholic faith as he had received it. His middle-of-the-
road policy was enforced with much bloodshed. On one side, the Catholic
who denied the royal supremacy was beheaded; on the other, the
Protestant who denied transubstantiation was burned! It has been
estimated that during the reign of Henry VIII the number of capital
condemnations for politico-religious offenses ran into the thousands--
an inquisition that in terror and bloodshed is comparable to that of
Spain.

[Sidenote: Suppression of the Monasteries]

It was likewise during the reign of Henry VIII that one of the most
important of all earlier Christian institutions--monasticism--came to
an end in England. There were certainly grave abuses and scandals in
some of the monasteries which dotted the country, and a good deal of
popular sentiment had been aroused against the institution. Then, too
the monks had generally opposed the royal pretensions to religious
control and remained loyal to the pope. But the deciding factor in the
suppression of the monasteries was undoubtedly economic. Henry, always
in need of funds on account of his extravagances, appropriated part of
the confiscated property for the benefit of the crown, and the rest he
astutely distributed as gigantic bribes to the upper classes of the
laity. The nobles who accepted the ecclesiastical wealth were thereby
committed to the new anti-papal religious settlement in England.

[Sidenote: Protestantizing the Church of England: Edward VI]

The Church of England, separated from the papacy under Henry VIII,
became Protestant under Edward VI (1547-1553). The young king's
guardian tolerated all manner of reforming propaganda, and Calvinists
as well as Lutherans preached their doctrines freely. Official articles
of religion, which were drawn up for the Anglican Church, showed
unmistakably Protestant influence. The Latin service books of the
Catholic Church were translated into English, under Cranmer's auspices,
and the edition of the _Book of Common Prayer_, published in 1552,
made clear that the Eucharist was no longer to be regarded as a
propitiatory sacrifice: the names "Holy Communion" and "Lord's Supper"
were substituted for "Mass," while the word "altar" was replaced by
"table." The old places of Catholic worship were changed to suit a new
order: altars and images were taken down, the former service books
destroyed, and stained-glass windows broken. Several peasant uprisings
signified that the nation was not completely united upon a policy of
religious change, but the reformers had their way, and Protestantism
advanced.

[Sidenote: Temporary Roman Catholic Revival under Mary Tudor]

A temporary setback to the progress of the new Anglicanism was afforded
by the reign of Mary Tudor (1553-1558), the daughter of Catherine of
Aragon, and a devout Roman Catholic. She reinstated the bishops who had
refused to take the oath of royal supremacy and punished those who had
taken it. She prevailed upon Parliament to repeal the ecclesiastical
legislation of both her father's and her brother's reigns and to
reconcile England once more with the bishop of Rome. A papal legate, in
the person of Cardinal Reginald Pole, sailed up the Thames with his
cross gleaming from the prow of his barge, and in full Parliament
administered the absolution which freed the kingdom from the guilt
under Mary incurred by its schism and heresy. As an additional support
to her policy of restoring the Catholic Church in England, Queen Mary
married her cousin, Philip II of Spain, the great champion of
Catholicism upon the Continent.

But events proved that despite outward appearances even the reign of
Mary registered an advance of Protestantism. The new doctrines were
zealously propagated by an ever-growing number of itinerant exhorters.
The Spanish alliance was disastrous to English fortunes abroad and
distasteful to all patriotic Englishmen at home. And finally, the
violent means which the queen took to stamp out heresy gave her the
unenviable surname of "Bloody" and reacted in the end in behalf of the
views for which the victims sacrificed their lives. During her reign
nearly three hundred reformers perished, many of them, including
Archbishop Cranmer, by fire. The work of the queen was in vain. No heir
was born to Philip and Mary, and the crown, therefore, passed to
Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, a Protestant not so much from
conviction as from circumstance.

[Sidenote: Definite Fashioning of Anglicanism: the Reign of Elizabeth]

It was in the reign of Elizabeth (1558-1603) that the Church of England
assumed definitely the doctrines and practices which we now connect
with the word "Anglicanism." By act of Parliament, the English Church
was again separated from the papacy, and placed under royal authority,
Elizabeth assuming the title of "supreme governor." The worship of the
state church was to be in conformity with a slightly altered version of
Cranmer's _Book of Common Prayer_. A uniform doctrine was likewise
imposed by Parliament in the form of the _Thirty-nine Articles_,
which set a distinctively Protestant mark upon the Anglican Church in
its appeal to the Scriptures as the sole rule of faith, its insistence
on justification by faith alone, its repudiation of the sacrifice of
the Mass, and its definition of the Church. All the bishops who had
been appointed under Mary, with one exception, refused to accept the
changes, and were therefore deposed and imprisoned, but new bishops,
Elizabeth's own appointees, were consecrated and the "succession of
bishops" thereby maintained. Outwardly, the Church of England appeared
to retain a corporate continuity throughout the sixteenth century;
inwardly, a great revolution had changed it from Catholic to
Protestant.

Harsh laws sought to oblige all Englishmen to conform to Elizabeth's
religious settlement. Liberty of public worship was denied to any
dissenter from Anglicanism. To be a "papist" or "hear Mass"--which were
construed as the same thing--was punishable by death as high treason. A
special ecclesiastical court--the Court of High Commission--was
established under royal authority to search out heresy and to enforce
uniformity; it served throughout Elizabeth's reign as a kind of
Protestant Inquisition.

[Sidenote: English Dissent from Anglicanism]

While the large majority of the English nation gradually conformed to
the official Anglican Church, a considerable number refused their
allegiance. On one hand were the Roman Catholics, who still maintained
the doctrine of papal supremacy and were usually derisively styled
papists, and on the other hand were various Calvinistic sects, such as
Presbyterians or Independents or Quakers, who went by the name of
"Dissenters" or "Non-conformists." In the course of time, the number of
Roman Catholics tended to diminish, largely because, for political
reasons which have been indicated in the preceding chapter,
Protestantism in England became almost synonymous with English
patriotism. But despite drastic laws and dreadful persecutions, Roman
Catholicism survived in England among a conspicuous group of people. On
the other hand, the Calvinists tended somewhat to increase their
numbers so that in the seventeenth century they were able to
precipitate a great political and ecclesiastical conflict with
Anglicanism.


THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION

We have now traced the origins of the Protestant Revolt against the
Catholic Church, and have seen how, between 1520 and 1570, three major
varieties of new theology--Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism--
appeared on the scene and divided among themselves the nations of
northern Europe. The story of how, during that critical half-century,
the other civilized nations retained their loyalty to the Catholic
Church virtually as it had existed throughout the middle ages, remains
to be told. The preservation of the papal monarchy and Catholic
doctrine in southern Europe was due alike to religious and to political
circumstances.

It must not be supposed that pious critics of ecclesiastical abuses
were confined to countries which subsequently became Protestant. There
were many sincere Catholics in Italy, Austria, France, and Spain who
complained of the scandals and worldliness that afflicted the Church at
the opening of the sixteenth century: they demanded sweeping reforms in
discipline and a return of the clergy to a simple apostolic life. They
believed, however, that whatever change was desirable could best be
achieved by means of a reformation within the Catholic Church--that is,
without disturbing the unity of its organization or denying the
validity of its dogmas--while the critics of northern Europe, as we
have seen, preferred to put their reforms into practice by means of a
revolution--an out-and-out break with century-old traditions of
Catholic Christianity. Even in northern Europe some of the foremost
scholars of that period desired an intellectual reformation within
Catholicism rather than a dogmatic rebellion against it: with Luther's
defiance of papal authority, the great Erasmus had small sympathy, and
Sir Thomas More, the eminent English humanist, sacrificed his life for
his belief in the divine sanction of the papal power.

Thus, while the religious energy of northern Europe went into
Protestantism of various kinds, that of southern Europe fashioned a
reformation of the Catholic system. And this Catholic reformation, on
its religious side, was brought to a successful issue by means of the
improved conditions in the papal court, the labors of a great church
council, and the activity of new monastic orders. A few words must be
said about each one of these religious elements in the Catholic
reformation.

[Sidenote: Reforming Popes]

Mention has been made of the corruption that prevailed in papal affairs
in the fifteenth century, and of the Italian and family interests which
obscured to the Medici pope, Leo X (1513-1521), the importance of the
Lutheran movement in Germany. And Leo's nephew, who became Clement VII
(1523-1534), continued to act too much as an Italian prince and too
little as the moral and religious leader of Catholicism in the contest
which under him was joined with Zwinglians and Anglicans as well as
with Lutherans. But under Paul III (1534-1549), a new policy was
inaugurated, by which men were appointed to high church offices for
their virtue and learning rather than for family relationship or
financial gain. This policy was maintained by a series of upright and
far-sighted popes during the second half of the sixteenth century, so
that by the year 1600 a remarkable reformation had been gradually
wrought in the papacy, among the cardinals, down through the prelates,
even to the parish priests and monks.

[Sidenote: The Council of Trent]

The reforming zeal of individual popes was stimulated and reinforced by
the work of the Council of Trent (1545-1563). The idea of effecting a
"reformation in head and members" by means of a general council of the
Catholic Church had been invoked several times during the century that
preceded the Protestant Revolt, but, before Luther, little had been
accomplished in that way.

With the widening of the breach between Protestantism and the medieval
Church, what had formerly been desirable now became imperative. It
seemed to pious Catholics that every effort should be made to reconcile
differences and to restore the unity of the Church. The errors of the
manifold new theologies which now appeared might be refuted by a clear
statement of Catholic doctrine, and a reformation of discipline and
morals would deprive the innovators of one of their most telling
weapons against the Church.

It was no easy task, in that troublous time, to hold an ecumenical
council. There was mutual distrust between Catholics and Protestants.
There was uncertainty as to the relative powers and prerogatives of
council and pope. There were bitter national rivalries, especially
between Italians and Germans. There was actual warfare between the two
chief Catholic families--the Habsburgs of Germany and Spain and the
royal house of France.

Yet despite these difficulties, which long postponed its convocation
and repeatedly interrupted its labors, the Council of Trent [Footnote:
Trent was selected largely by reason of its geographical location,
being situated on the boundary between the German-speaking and Italian-
speaking peoples.] consummated a great reform in the Church and
contributed materially to the preservation of the Catholic faith. The
Protestants, whom the pope invited to participate, absented themselves;
yet such was the number and renown of the Catholic bishops who
responded to the summons that the Council of Trent easily ranked with
the eighteen œcumenical councils which had preceded it. [Footnote: Its
decrees were signed at its close (1563) by 4 cardinal legates, 2
cardinals, 3 patriarchs, 25 archbishops, 167 bishops, 7 abbots, 7
generals of orders, and 19 proxies for 33 absent prelates.] The work of
the council was twofold--dogmatic and reformatory.

Dogmatically, the fathers at Trent offered no compromise to the
Protestants. They confirmed with inexorable frankness the main points
in Catholic theology which had been worked out in the thirteenth
century by Thomas Aquinas and which before the appearance of
Protestantism had been received everywhere in central and western
Europe. They declared that the tradition of the Church as well as the
Bible was to be taken as the basis of the Christian religion, and that
the interpretation of the Holy Scripture belonged only to the Church.
The Protestant teachings about grace and justification by faith were
condemned, and the seven sacraments were pronounced indispensable. The
miraculous and sacrificial character of the Lord's Supper (Mass) was
reaffirmed. Belief in the invocation of saints, in the veneration of
images and of relics, in purgatory and indulgences was explicitly
stated, but precautions were taken to clear some of the doctrines of
the pernicious practices which at times had been connected with them.
The spiritual authority of the Roman See was confirmed over all
Catholicism: the pope was recognized as supreme interpreter of the
canons and incontestable chief of bishops.

[Sidenote: Reformatory Canons of the Council of Trent ]

A volume of disciplinary statutes constituted the second achievement of
the Tridentine Council. The sale of church offices was condemned.
Bishops and other prelates were to reside in their respective dioceses,
abandon worldly pursuits, and give themselves entirely to spiritual
labors. Seminaries were to be established for the proper education and
training of priests.

While Latin was retained as the official and liturgical language,
frequent sermons were to be preached in the vernacular. Indulgences
were not to be issued for money, and no charge should be made for
conferring the sacraments.

[Sidenote: Index and inquisition ]

The seed sown by the council bore abundant fruit during several
succeeding pontificates. The central government was completely
reorganized. A definite catechism was prepared at Rome and every layman
instructed in the tenets and obligations of his religion. Revisions
were made in the service books of the Church, and a new standard
edition of the Latin Bible, the Vulgate, was issued. A list, called the
Index, was prepared of dangerous and heretical books, which good
Catholics were prohibited from reading. By these methods, discipline
was in fact confirmed, morals purified, and the scandal of the immense
riches and the worldly life of the clergy restrained. From an unusually
strict law of faith and conduct, lapses were to be punishable by the
ancient ecclesiastical court of the Inquisition, which now zealously
redoubled its activity, especially in Italy and in Spain.

A very important factor in the Catholic revival--not only in preserving
all southern Europe to the Church but also in preventing a complete
triumph of Protestantism in the North--was the formation of several new
religious orders, which sought to purify the life of the people and to
bulwark the position of the Church. The most celebrated of these
orders, both for its labors in the sixteenth century and for its
subsequent history, is the Society of Jesus, whose members are known
commonly as Jesuits. The society was founded by Ignatius Loyola
[Footnote: Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556).] in 1534 and its constitution
was formally approved by the pope six years later.

[Sidenote: Ignatius Loyola]

In his earlier years, Ignatius followed the profession of arms, and as
a patriotic Spaniard fought valiantly in the armies of Emperor Charles
V against the French. But while he was in a hospital, suffering from a
wound, he chanced to read a Life of Christ and biographies of several
saints, which, he tells us, worked a great change within him. From
being a soldier of an earthly king, he would now become a knight of
Christ and of the Church. Instead of fighting for the glory of Spain
and of himself, he would henceforth strive for the greater glory of
God. Thus in the very year in which the German monk, Martin Luther,
became the leading and avowed adversary of the Catholic Church, this
Spanish soldier was starting on that remarkable career which was to
make him Catholicism's chief champion.

After a few years' trial of his new life and several rather footless
efforts to serve the Church, Ignatius determined, at the age of thirty-
three, to perfect his scanty education. It was while he was studying
Latin, philosophy, and theology at the University of Paris that he made
the acquaintance of the group of scholarly and saintly men who became
the first members of the Society of Jesus. Intended at first primarily
for missionary labors among the Mohammedans, the order was speedily
turned to other and greater ends.

[Sidenote: The Jesuits]

The organization of the Jesuits showed the military instincts of their
founder. To the three usual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience,
was added a fourth vow of special allegiance to the pope. The members
were to be carefully trained during a long novitiate and were to be
under the personal direction of a general, resident in Rome. Authority
and obedience were stressed by the society. Then, too, St. Ignatius
Loyola understood that the Church was now confronted with conditions of
war rather than of peace: accordingly he directed that his brothers
should not content themselves with prayer and works of peace, with
charity and local benevolence, but should adapt themselves to new
circumstances and should strive in a multiplicity of ways to restore
all things in the Catholic Church.

Thus it happened that the Jesuits, from the very year of their
establishment, rushed to the front in the religious conflict of the
sixteenth century. In the first place, they sought to enlighten and
educate the young. As schoolmasters they had no equals in Europe for
many years. No less a scholar and scientist than Lord Francis Bacon
said of the Jesuit teaching that "nothing better has been put in
practice." Again, by their wide learning and culture, no less than by
the unimpeachable purity of their lives, they won back a considerable
respect for the Catholic clergy. As preachers, too, they earned a high
esteem by the clearness and simplicity of their sermons and
instruction.

It was in the mission field, however, that the Jesuits achieved the
most considerable results. They were mainly responsible for the
recovery of Poland after that country had almost become Lutheran. They
similarly conserved the Catholic faith in Bavaria and in the southern
Netherlands. They insured a respectable Catholic party in Bohemia and
in Hungary. They aided considerably in maintaining Catholicism in
Ireland. At the hourly risk of their lives, they ministered to their
fellow-Catholics in England under Elizabeth and the Stuarts. And what
the Catholic Church lost in numbers through the defection of the
greater part of northern Europe was compensated for by Jesuit missions
among the teeming millions in India and China, among the Huron and
Iroquois tribes of North America, and among the aborigines of Brazil
and Paraguay. No means of influence, no source of power, was neglected
that would win men to religion and to the authority of the bishop of
Rome. Politics and agriculture were utilized as well as literature and
science. The Jesuits were confessors of kings in Europe and apostles of
the faith in Asia and America.

[Sidenote: Political and Economic Factors in the Catholic Reformation]

It has been pointed out already that the rapid diffusion of
Protestantism was due to economic and political causes as well as to
those narrowly religious. It may be said with equal truth that
political and economic causes co-operated with the religious
developments that we have just noted in maintaining the supremacy of
the Catholic Church in at least half the countries over which she had
exercised her sway in 1500. For one thing, it is doubtful whether
financial abuses had flourished as long or as vigorously in southern as
in northern Europe. For another, the political conditions in the states
of southern Europe help to explain the interesting situation.

[Sidebar: Italy]

In Italy was the pope's residence and See. He had bestowed many favors
on important Italian families. He had often exploited foreign countries
in behalf of Italian patronage. He had taken advantage of the political
disunity of the peninsula to divide his local enemies and thereby to
assure the victory of his own cause. Two popes of the sixteenth century
belonged to the powerful Florentine family of the Medici--Florence
remained loyal. The hearty support of the Emperor Charles V preserved
the orthodoxy of Naples, and that of Philip II stamped out heresy in
the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

[Sidenote: France]

In France, the concordat of 1516 between pope and king had peacefully
secured for the French monarch appointment of bishops and control of
benefices within his country,--powers which the German princes and the
English sovereigns secured by revolutionary change. Moreover, French
Protestantism, by its political activities in behalf of effective
checks upon the royal power, drove the king into Catholic arms: the
cause of absolutism in France became the cause of Catholicism, and the
latter was bound up with French patriotism to quite the same extent as
English patriotism became linked with the fortunes of Anglicanism.

[Sidenote: Spain and Portugal]

In Spain and Portugal, the monarchs obtained concessions from the pope
like those accorded the French sovereigns. They gained control of the
Catholic Church within their countries and found it a most valuable
ally in forwarding their absolutist tendencies. Moreover, the
centuries-long struggle with Mohammedanism had endeared Catholic
Christianity alike to Spaniards and to Portuguese and rendered it an
integral part of their national life. Spain and Portugal now remained
fiercely Catholic.

[Sidenote: Austria]

Somewhat similar was the case of Austria. Terrifying fear of the
advancing Turk, joined with the political exigencies of the Habsburg
rulers, threw that duchy with most of its dependencies into the hands
of the pope. If the bishop of Rome, by favoring the Habsburgs, had lost
England, he had at least saved Austria.

[Sidenote: Poland and Ireland]

Ireland and Poland--those two extreme outposts of the Roman Catholic
Church in Europe--found their religion to be the most effectual
safeguard of their nationality, the most valuable weapon against
aggression or assimilation by powerful neighbors.


SUMMARY OF THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

By the year 1570 the profound religious and ecclesiastical changes
which we have been sketching had been made. For seventy-five years more
a series of wars was to be waged in which the religious element was
distinctly to enter. In fact these wars have often been called the
Religious Wars--the ones connected with the career of Philip II of
Spain as well as the subsequent dismal civil war in the Germanies--but
in each one the political and economic factors predominated. Nor did
the series of wars materially affect the strength or extent of the
religions implicated. It was prior to 1570 that the Protestant Revolt
had been effected and the Catholic Reformation achieved.

[Sidenote: Geographical Extent of the Revolt]

In the year 1500, the Roman Catholic Church embraced central and
western Europe; in the year 1600 nearly half of its former subjects--
those throughout northern Europe--no longer recognized its authority or
practiced its beliefs. There were left to the Roman Catholic Church at
the close of the sixteenth century the Italian states, Spain, Portugal,
most of France, the southern Netherlands, the forest cantons of
Switzerland, the southern Germanies, Austria, Poland, Ireland, large
followings in Bohemia and Hungary, and a straggling unimportant
following in other countries.

Those who rejected the Roman Catholic Church in central and western
Europe were collectively called Protestants, but they were divided into
three major groups. Lutheranism was now the religion of the northern
Germanies and the Scandinavian states of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
Calvinism, under a bewildering variety of names, was the recognized
faith of the majority of the cantons of Switzerland, of the northern
Netherlands, and Scotland, and of important followings in Germany,
Hungary, France, and England. Anglicanism was the established religion
of England.

[Sidenote: Doctrines Held in Common by Catholics and Protestants]

The Protestants retained a large part of Catholic theology, so that all
portions of western Christianity continued to have much in common. They
still believed in the Trinity, in the divinity of Jesus Christ, in the
sacredness of the Jewish scriptures and of the New Testament, the fall
of man and his redemption through the sacrifice of the Cross, and in a
future life of rewards and punishments. The Christian moralities and
virtues continued to be inculcated by Protestants as well as by
Catholics.

[Sidenote: Doctrines Held by all Protestants Apart from Catholics]

On the other hand, the Protestants held in common certain doctrines
which separated all of them from Roman Catholicism. These were the
distinguishing marks of Protestantism: (1) denial of the claims of the
bishop of Rome and consequent rejection of the papal government and
jurisdiction; (2) rejection of such doctrines as were supposed to have
developed during the middle ages,--for example, purgatory, indulgences,
invocation of saints, and veneration of relics,--together with
important modifications in the sacramental system; (3) insistence upon
the right of the individual to interpret the Bible, and recognition of
the individual's ability to save himself without the interposition of
ecclesiastics--hence to the Protestant, authority resided in individual
interpretation of the Bible, while to the Catholic, it rested in a
living institution or Church.

[Sidenote: Divisions among Protestants]

Now the Protestant idea of authority made it possible and essentially
inevitable that its supporters should not agree on many things among
themselves. There would be almost as many ways of interpreting the
Scriptures as there were interested individuals. It is not surprising,
therefore, that in the last Almanac some one hundred and sixty-four
varieties or denominations of Protestants are listed in the United
States alone. These divisions, however, are not so complex as at first
might appear, because nearly all of them have come directly from the
three main forms of Protestantism which appeared in the sixteenth
century. Just how Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism differed from
each other may be gathered from a short summary.

(1) The Calvinists taught justification by election--that God
determines, or _predestines_, who is to be saved and who is to be
lost. The Lutherans were inclined to reject such doctrine, and to
assure salvation to the mere believer. The Anglicans appeared to accept
the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith, although the Thirty-
nine Articles might be likewise interpreted in harmony with the
Calvinistic position.

(2) The Calvinists recognized only two sacraments--baptism and the
Lord's Supper. Lutherans and Anglicans retained, in addition to the two
sacraments, the rite of confirmation, and Anglicans also the rite of
ordination. The official statement of Anglicanism that there are "two
major sacraments" has made it possible for some Anglicans--the so-
called High Church party--to hold the Catholic doctrine of seven
sacraments.

(3) Various substitutes were made for the Catholic doctrine of
transubstantiation, the idea that in the Lord's Supper the bread and
wine by the word of the priest are actually changed into the Body and
Blood of Christ. The Lutherans maintained what they called
consubstantiation, that Christ was _with_ and _in_ the bread
and wine, as fire is in a hot iron, to borrow the metaphor of Luther
himself. The Calvinists, on the other hand, saw in the Eucharist, not
the efficacious sacrifice of Christ, but a simple commemoration of the
Last Supper; to them the bread and wine were mere symbols of the Body
and Blood. As to the Anglicans, their position was ambiguous, for their
official confession of faith declared at once that the Supper is the
communion of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ but that the
communicant receives Jesus Christ only spiritually: the present-day
"Low Church" Anglicans incline to a Calvinistic interpretation, those
of the "High Church" to the Catholic explanation.

(4) There were pronounced differences in ecclesiastical government. All
the Protestants considerably modified the Catholic system of a divinely
appointed clergy of bishops, priests, and deacons, under the supreme
spiritual jurisdiction of the pope. The Anglicans rejected the papacy,
although they retained the orders of bishop, priest, and deacon, and
insisted that their hierarchy was the direct continuation of the
medieval Church in England, and therefore that their organization was
on the same footing as the Orthodox Church of eastern Europe. The
Lutherans rejected the divinely ordained character of episcopacy, but
retained bishops as convenient administrative officers. The Calvinists
did away with bishops altogether and kept only one order of clergymen--
the presbyters. Such Calvinistic churches as were governed by
assemblies or synods of presbyters were called Presbyterian; those
which subordinated the "minister" to the control of the people in each
separate congregation were styled Independent, or Separatist, or
Congregational. [Footnote: This latter type of church government was
maintained also by the quasi-Calvinistic denomination of the Baptists.]

(5) In the ceremonies of public worship the Protestant churches
differed. Anglicanism kept a good deal of the Catholic ritual although
in the form of translation from Latin to English, together with several
Catholic ceremonies, in some places even employing candles and incense.
The Calvinists, on the other hand, worshiped with extreme simplicity:
reading of the Bible, singing of hymns, extemporaneous prayer, and
preaching constituted the usual service in church buildings that were
without superfluous ornaments. Between Anglican formalism and
Calvinistic austerity, the Lutherans presented a compromise: they
devised no uniform liturgy, but showed some inclination to utilize
forms and ceremonies.

[Sidenote: Significance of the Protestant Revolt]

Of the true significance of the great religious and ecclesiastical
changes of the sixteenth century many estimates in the past have been
made, varying with the point of view, or bias, of each author. Several
results, however, now stand out clearly and are accepted generally by
all scholars, regardless of religious affiliations. These results may
be expressed as follows:

In the first place, the Catholic Church of the middle ages was
disrupted and the medieval ideal of a universal theocracy under the
bishop of Rome was rudely shocked.

In the second place, the Christian religion was largely nationalized.
Protestantism was the religious aspect of nationalism; it naturally
came into being as a protest against the cosmopolitan character of
Catholicism; it received its support from _nations_; and it
assumed everywhere a national form. The German states, the Scandinavian
countries, Scotland, England, each had its established state religion.
What remained to the Catholic Church, as we have seen, was essentially
for national reasons and henceforth rested mainly on a national basis.

Thirdly, the whole movement tended to narrow the Catholic Church
dogmatically. The exigencies of answering the Protestants called forth
explicit definitions of belief. The Catholic Church was henceforth on
the defensive, and among her members fewer differences of opinion were
tolerated than formerly.

Fourthly, a great impetus to individual morality, as well as to
theological study, was afforded by the reformation. Not only were many
men's minds turned temporarily from other intellectual interests to
religious controversy, but the individual faithful Catholic or
Protestant was encouraged to vie with his neighbor in actually proving
that his particular religion inculcated a higher moral standard than
any other. It rendered the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries more
earnest and serious and also more bigoted than the fifteenth.

Finally, the Protestant Revolution led immediately to important
political and social changes. The power of secular rulers was
immeasurably increased. By confiscation of church lands and control of
the clergy, the Tudor sovereigns in England, the kings in Scandinavia,
and the German princes were personally enriched and freed from fear of
being hampered in absolutist tendencies by an independent
ecclesiastical organization. Even in Catholic countries, the monarchs
were able to wring such concessions from the pope as resulted in
shackling the Church to the crown.

The wealth of the nobles was swelled, especially in Protestant
countries, by seizure of the property of the Church either directly or
by means of bribes tendered for aristocratic support of the royal
confiscations. But despite such an access of wealth, the monarchs took
pains to see that the nobility acquired no new political influence.

In order to prevent the nobles from recovering political power, the
absolutist monarchs enlisted the services of the faithful middle class,
which speedily attained an enviable position in the principal European
states. It is safe to say that the Protestant Revolution was one of
many elements assisting in the development of this middle class.

For the peasantry--still the bulk of European population--the religious
and ecclesiastical changes seem to have been peculiarly unfortunate.
What they gained through a diminution of ecclesiastical dues and taxes
was more than lost through the growth of royal despotism and the
exactions of hard-hearted lay proprietors. The peasants had changed the
names of their oppressors and found themselves in a worse condition
than before. There is little doubt that, at least so far as the
Germanies and the Scandinavian countries are concerned, the lot of the
peasants was less favorable immediately after, than immediately before,
the rise of Protestantism.


ADDITIONAL READING


GENERAL. Good brief accounts of the whole religious revolution of the
sixteenth century: Frederic Seebohm, _The Era of the Protestant
Revolution,_ new ed. (1904); J. H. Robinson, _Reformation_, in
"Encyclopædia Britannica," 11th ed. (1911); A. H. Johnson, _Europe in
the Sixteenth Century_ (1897), ch. iii-v and pp. 272 ff.; E. M. Hulme,
_Renaissance and Reformation,_ 2d ed. (1915), ch. x-xviii, xxi-xxiii;
Victor Duruy, _History of Modern Times_, trans. and rev. by E. A.
Grosvenor (1894), ch. xiii, xiv. More detailed accounts are given in
the _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. II (1904), and in the _Histoire
generate_, Vol. IV, ch. x-xvii, and Vol. V, ch. i. All the standard
general histories of the Christian Church contain accounts of the rise
of Protestantism, naturally varying among themselves according to the
religious convictions of their authors. Among the best Protestant
histories may be cited: T. M. Lindsay, _A History of the Reformation,_
2 vols. (1906-1910); Wilhelm Moeller, _History of the Christian
Church_, trans. and condensed by J. H. Freese, 3 vols. (1893-1900);
Philip Schaff, _History of the Christian Church_, Vols. VI and VII; A.
H. Newman, A Manual of Church History, Vol. II (1903), Period V; G. P.
Fisher, _History of the Christian Church_ (1887), Period VIII, ch. i-
xii. From the Catholic standpoint the best ecclesiastical histories
are: John Alzog, _Manual of Universal Church History_, trans. from 9th
German edition (1903), Vol. II and Vol. Ill, Epoch I; and the histories
in German by Joseph (Cardinal) Hergen-rother [ed. by J. P. Kirsch, 2
vols. (1902-1904)], by Alois Knopfler (5th ed., 1910) [based on the
famous _Conciliengeschichte_ of K. J. (Bishop) von Hefele], and by F.
X. von Funk (5th ed., 1911); see, also, Alfred Baudrillart, _The
Catholic Church, the Renaissance and Protestantism_, Eng. trans. by
Mrs. Philip Gibbs (1908). Many pertinent articles are to be found in
the scholarly _Catholic Encyclopedia_, 15 vols. (1907-1912), in the
famous _Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche_, 3d
ed., 24 vols. (1896-1913), and in the (Non-Catholic) _Encyclopedia of
Religion and Ethics_, ed. by James Hastings and now (1916) in course of
publication. For the popes of the period, see Ludwig Pastor, _The
History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages_, the monumental
work of a distinguished Catholic historian, the twelfth volume of which
(coming down to 1549) was published in English translation in 1912; and
the older but still useful (Protestant) _History of the Papacy from the
Great Schism to the Sack of Rome_ by Mandell Creighton, new ed. in 6
vols. (1899-1901), and _History of the Popes_ by Leopold von Ranke, 3
vols. in the Bonn Library (1885). Heinrich Denziger, _Enchiridion
Symbolorum, Definitionum, et Declarationium de rebus fidei el morum,_
11nth ed. (1911), is a convenient collection of official pronouncements
in Latin on the Catholic Faith. Philip Schaff, _The Creeds of
Christendom,_ 3 vols. (1878), contains the chief Greek, Latin, and
Protestant creeds in the original and usually also in English
translation. Also useful is B. J. Kidd (editor), _Documents
Illustrative of the Continental Reformation_ (1911). For additional
details of the relation of the Reformation to sixteenth-century
politics, consult the bibliography appended to Chapter III, above.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY. In the _Cambridge
Modern History,_ Vol. I (1902), a severe indictment of the Church is
presented (ch. xix) by H. C. Lea, and a defense is offered (ch. xviii)
by William Barry. The former opinions are developed startlingly by H.
C. Lea in Vol. I, ch. i, of his _History of the Inquisition in the
Middle Ages._ An old-fashioned, though still interesting, Protestant
view is that of William Roscoe, _Life and Pontificate of Leo X,_ 4
vols. (first pub. 1805-1806, many subsequent editions). For an
excellent description of the organization of the Catholic Church, see
André Mater, _L'église catholique, sa constitution, son administration_
(1906). The best edition of the canon law is that of Friedberg, 2 vols.
(1881). On the social work of the Church: E. L. Cutts, _Parish Priests
and their People in the Middle Ages in England_ (1898), and G. A.
Prévost, _L'église et les campagnes au moyen âge_ (1892). The most
recent and comprehensive study of the Catholic Church on the eve of the
Protestant Revolt is that of Pierre Imbart de la Tour, _Les origines de
la Réforme,_ Vol. I, _La France moderne_ (1905), and Vol. II, _L'église
catholique, la crise et la renaissance_ (1909). For the Orthodox Church
of the East see Louis Duchesne, _The Churches Separated from Rome,_
trans. by A. H. Mathew (1908).

MOHAMMEDANISM. Sir William Muir, _Life of Mohammed,_ new and rev. ed.
by T. H. Weir (1912); Ameer Ali, _Life and Teachings of Mohammed_
(1891), and, by the same author, warmly sympathetic, Islam (1914); D.
S. Margoliouth, _Mohammed and the Rise of Islam_ (1905), in the "Heroes
of the Nations" Series, and, by the same author, _The Early Development
of Mohammedanism_ (1914); Arthur Gilman, _Story of the Saracens_
(1902), in the "Story of the Nations" Series. Edward Gibbon has two
famous chapters (1, li) on Mohammed and the Arabian conquests in his
masterpiece, _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire._ The _Koran,_ the
sacred book of Mohammedans, has been translated into English by E. H.
Palmer, 2 vols. (1880): entertaining extracts are given in Stanley
Lane-Poole, _Speeches and Table Talk of the Prophet Mohammad._

LUTHER AND LUTHERANISM. Of innumerable biographies of Luther the best
from sympathetic Protestant pens are: Julius Köstlin, _Life of Luther,_
trans. and abridged from the German (1900); T. M. Lindsay, _Luther and
the German Reformation_ (1900); A. C. McGiffert, _Martin Luther, the
Man and his Work_ (1911); Preserved Smith, _The Life and Letters of
Martin Luther_ (1911); Charles Beard, _Martin Luther and the
Reformation in Germany until the Close of the Diet of Worms_ (1889). A
remarkable arraignment of Luther is the work of the eminent Catholic
historian, F. H. S. Denifle, _Luther und Luthertum in der ersten
Entwickelung,_ 3 vols. (1904-1909), trans. into French by J. Pasquier
(1911-1912). The most available Catholic study of Luther's personality
and career is the scholarly work of Hartmann Grisar, _Luther,_ 3 vols.
(1911-1913), trans. from German into English by E. M. Lamond, 4 vols.
(1913-1915). _First Principles of the Reformation,_ ed. by Henry Wace
and C. A. Buchheim (1885), contains an English translation of Luther's
"Theses," and of his three pamphlets of 1520. The best edition of
Luther's complete works is the Weimar edition; English translations of
portions of his _Table Talk,_ by William Hazlitt, have appeared in the
Bonn Library; and _Luther's Correspondence and Other Contemporary
Letters_ is now (1916) in course of translation and publication by
Preserved Smith. J. W. Richard, _Philip Melanchthon_ (1898) is a brief
biography of one of the most famous friends and associates of Luther.
For the Protestant Revolt in Germany: E. F. Henderson, _A Short History
of Germany_ (1902), Vol. I, ch. x-xvi, a brief sketch of the political
and social background; Johannes Janssen, _History of the German
People,_ a monumental treatise on German social history just before and
during the revolt, scholarly and very favorable to the Catholic Church,
trans. into English by M. A. Mitchell and A. M. Christie, 16 vols.
(1896-1910); Gottlob Egelhaaf, _Deutsche Geschichte im sechzehnten
Jahrhundert bis zum Augsburger Religionsfrieden,_ 2 vols. (1889-1892),
a Protestant rejoinder to some of the Catholic Janssen's deductions;
Karl Lamprecht, _Deutsche Geschichte,_ Vol. V, Part I (1896),
suggestive philosophizing; Leopold von Ranke, _History of the
Reformation in Germany,_ Eng. trans., 3 vols., a careful study, coming
down in the original German to 1555, but stopping short in the English
form with the year 1534; Friedrich von Bezold, _Geschichte der
deutschen Reformation,_ 2 vols. (1886-1890), in the bulky Oncken
Series, voluminous and moderately Protestant in tone; J. J. I. von
Döllinger, _Die Reformation, ihre innere Entwicklung und ihre
Wirkungen,_ 3 vols. (1853-1854), pointing out the opposition of many
educated people of the sixteenth century to Luther; A. E. Berger, _Die
Kulturaufgaben der Reformation,_ 2d ed. (1908), a study of the cultural
aspects of the Lutheran movement, Protestant in tendency and opposed in
certain instances to the generalizations of Janssen and Döllinger; J.
S. Schapiro, _Social Reform and the Reformation_ (1909), a brief but
very suggestive treatment of some of the economic factors of the German
Reformation; H. C. Vedder, _The Reformation in Germany_ (1914),
likewise stressing economic factors, and sympathetic toward the
Anabaptists. For additional facts concerning the establishment of
Lutheranism in Scandinavia, see R. N. Bain, _Scandinavia, a Political
History of Denmark, Norway and Sweden from 1513 to 1900_ (1905), and
John Wordsworth (Bishop of Salisbury), _The National Church of Sweden_
(1911). Zwingli, Calvin, and Calvinism. The best biography of Zwingli
in English is that of S. M. Jackson (1901), who likewise has edited the
_Selected Works of Zwingli_; a more exhaustive biography in German is
Rudolf Stahelin, _Huldreich Zwingli: sein Leben und Wirken_, 2 vols.
(1895 1897). Biographies of Calvin: H. Y. Reyburn, _John Calvin: his
Life, Letters, and Work_ (1914); Williston Walker, John Calvin, the
Organizer of Reformed Protestantism (1906); Emile Doumergue, _Jean
Calvin: les hommes et les choses de son temps_, 4 vols. (1899-1910); L.
Penning, _Life and Times of Calvin_, trans. from Dutch by B. S.
Berrington (1912); William Barry, _Calvin_, in the "Catholic
Encyclopædia." Many of Calvin's writings have been published in English
translation by the "Presbyterian Board of Publication" in Philadelphia,
22 vols. in 52 (1844-1856), and his _Institutes of the Christian
Religion_ has several times been published in English. H. M. Baird,
_Theodore Beza_ (1899) is a popular biography of one of the best-known
friends and associates of Calvin. For Calvinism in Switzerland: W. D.
McCracken, _The Rise of the Swiss Republic_, 2d ed. (1901); F. W.
Kampschulte, _Johann Calvin, seine Kirche und sein Staat in Genf_, 2
vols. (1869-1899). For Calvinism in France: H. M. Baird, _History of
the Rise of the Huguenots of France_, 2 vols. (1879), and by the same
author, a warm partisan of Calvinism, _The Huguenots and Henry of
Navarre_, 2 vols. (1886); the brothers Haag, _France protestante_, 2d
ed., 10 vols. (1877-1895), an exhaustive history of Protestantism in
France; E. Lavisse (editor), _Histoire de France_, Vol. V, Livre IX, by
Henry Lemonnier (1904), most recent and best. For Calvinism in
Scotland: P. H. Brown, _John Knox, a Biography_, 2 vols. (1895); Andrew
Lang, _John Knox and the Reformation_ (1905); John Herkless and R. K.
Hannay, _The Archbishops of St. Andrews_, 4 vols. (1907-1913); D. H.
Fleming, _The Reformation in Scotland: its Causes, Characteristics, and
Consequences_ (1910); John Macpherson, _History of the Church in
Scotland_ (1901), ch. iii-v.

THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND. The eve of the revolution:
Frederic Seebohm, _The Oxford Reformers_, 3d ed. (1887), a sympathetic
treatment of Colet, Erasmus, and More; F. A. (Cardinal) Gasquet, _The
Eve of the Reformation in England_ (1899), and, by the same author, an
eminent Catholic scholar, _England under the Old Religion_ (1912).
General histories of the English Reformation: H. O. Wakeman, _An
Introduction to the History of the Church of England_, 8th ed. (1914),
ch. x-xiv, the best brief "High Church" survey; J. R. Green, _Short
History of the English People_, new illust. ed. by C. H. Firth (1913),
ch. vi, vii, a popular "Low Church" view; W. R. W. Stephens and William
Hunt (editors), _A History of the Church of England_, Vols. IV (1902)
and V (1904) by James Gairdner and W. H. Frere respectively; James
Gairdner, _Lollardy and the Reformation in England_, 4 vols. (1908-
1913), the last word of an eminent authority on the period, who was
convinced of the revolutionary character of the English Reformation;
John Lingard, _History of England to 1688_, Vols. IV-VI, the standard
Roman Catholic work; R. W. Dixon, _History of the Church of England
from the Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction_, 6 vols.  (1878-1902), a
thorough treatment from the High Anglican position; H. W. Clark,
_History of English Nonconformity_, Vol. I (1911), Book I, valuable for
the history of the radical Protestants; Henry Gee and W. J. Hardy,
_Documents Illustrative of English Church History_ (1896), an admirable
collection of official pronouncements. Valuable special works and
monographs: C. B. Lumsden, _The Dawn of Modern England, being a History
of the Reformation in England, 1509-1525_ (1910), pronouncedly Roman
Catholic in tone; Martin Hume, _The Wives of Henry VIII_ (1905); F. A.
(Cardinal) Gasquet, _Henry VIII and the English Monasteries_, 3d ed., 2
vols. (1888), popular ed. in 1 vol. (1902); R. B. Merriman, _Life and
Letters of Thomas Cromwell_, 2 vols. (1902), a standard work; Dom Bede
Camm, _Lives of the English Martyrs_ (1904), with special reference to
Roman Catholics under Henry VIII; A. F. Pollard, [Footnote: See also
other works of A. F. Pollard listed in bibliography appended to Chapter
III, p. 110, above.] _Life of Cranmer_ (1904), scholarly and
sympathetic, and, by the same author, _England under Protector
Somerset_ (1900), distinctly apologetic; Frances Rose-Troup, _The
Western Rebellion of 1549_ (1913), a study of an unsuccessful popular
uprising against religious innovations; M. J. Stone, _Mary I, Queen of
England_ (1901), an apology for Mary Tudor; John Foxe (1516-1587),
_Acts and Monuments of the Church_, popularly known as the _Book of
Martyrs_, the chief contemporary account of the Marian persecutions,
uncritical and naturally strongly biased; R. G. Usher, _The
Reconstruction of the English Church_, 2 vols. (1910), a popular
account of the changes under Elizabeth and James I; H. N. Birt, _The
Elizabethan Religious Settlement_ (1907), from the Roman Catholic
standpoint; G. E. Phillips, _The Extinction of the Ancient Hierarchy,
an Account of the Death in Prison of the Eleven Bishops Honored at Rome
amongst the Martyrs of the Elizabethan Persecution_ (1905), also Roman
Catholic; A. O. Meyer, _England und die katholische Kirche unter
Elisabeth und den Stuarts_, Vol. I (1911), Eng. trans. by J. R. McKee
(1915), based in part on use of source-material in the Vatican Library;
Martin Hume, _Treason and Plot_ (1901), deals with the struggles of the
Roman Catholics for supremacy in the reign of Elizabeth; E. L. Taunton,
_The History of the Jesuits in England_, 1580-1773 (1901); Richard
Simpson, _Life of Campion_ (1867), an account of a devoted Jesuit who
suffered martyrdom under Elizabeth; Champlin Burrage, _The Early
English Dissenters in the Light of Recent Research, 1550-1641_, 2 vols.
(1912).

THE REFORMATION WITHIN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. Brief narratives: William
Barry, _The Papacy and Modern Times_ (1911), in "Home University
Library," ch. i-iii; A. W. Ward, _The Counter Reformation_ (1889) in
"Epochs of Church History" Series; _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. Ill
(1905), ch. xiii by Ugo (Count) Balzani on "Rome under Sixtus V."
Longer accounts: G. V. Jourdan, _The Movement towards Catholic Reform
in the Early Sixteenth Century, 1496-1536_ (1914); K. W. Maurenbrecher,
_Geschichte der katholischen Reformation_, Vol. I (1880), excellent
down to 1534 but never completed; J. A. Symonds, _Renaissance in
Italy_, Vols. VI and VII, _The Catholic Reaction_, replete with
inaccuracy, bias, and prejudice. The _Canons and Decrees of the Council
of Trent_ have been translated by J. Waterworth, new ed. (1896), and
the _Catechism of the Council of Trent_, by J. Donovan (1829). Nicholas
Hilling, _Procedure at the Roman Curia_, 2d ed. (1909), contains a
concise account of the "congregations" and other reformed agencies of
administration introduced into church government in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The famous _Autobiography of St. Ignatius
Loyola_ has been trans. and ed. by J. F. X. O'Conor (1900), and the
text of his _Spiritual Exercises_, trans. from Spanish into English,
has been published by Joseph Rickaby (1915). See Stewart Rose (Lady
Buchan), _St. Ignatius Loyola and the Early Jesuits_, ed. by W. H. Eyre
(1891); Francis Thompson, _Life of Saint Ignatius_ (1910); T. A.
Hughes, _Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits_ (1892).
Monumental national histories of the Jesuits are now (1916) appearing
under the auspices of the Order: for Germany, by Bernhard Duhr, Vol. I
(1907), Vol. II (1913); for Italy, by Pietro Tacchi Venturi, Vol. I
(1910); for France, by Henri Fouqueray, Vol. I (1910), Vol. II (1913);
for Paraguay, by Pablo Pastells, Vol. I (1912); for North America, by
Thomas Hughes, 3 vols. (1907-1910); for Spain, by Antonio Astrain,
Vols. I-IV (1902-1913). Concerning the Index, see G. H. Putnam, _The
Censorship of the Church of Rome and its Influence upon the Production
and Distribution of Literature_, 2 vols. (1907). On the Inquisition,
see H. C. Lea, _A History of the Inquisition of Spain_, 4 vols. (1907),
and, by the same author, _The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies_
(1908), on the whole a dark picture; and, for a Catholic account,
Elphège Vacandard, _The Inquisition: a Critical and Historical Study of
the Coercive Power of the Church_, trans. by B. L. Conway (1908).

FOR THE OUTCOME OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLT AND THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION
FROM THE THEOLOGICAL STANDPOINT, see Adolph Harnack, _History of
Dogma_, Eng. trans., Vol. VII (1900). Charles Beard, _The Reformation
of the Sixteenth Century in its Relation to Modern Thought and
Knowledge_ (1883) is a strongly Protestant estimate of the significance
of the whole movement. J. Balmes, _European Civilization: Protestantism
and Catholicity Compared in their Effects on the Civilization of
Europe_ (1850), though old, is a suggestive résumé from the Catholic
standpoint.




CHAPTER V

THE CULTURE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY


[Sidenote: "Culture"]

"Culture" is a word generally used to denote learning and refinement in
manners and art. The development of culture--the acquisition of new
knowledge and the creation of beautiful things--is ordinarily the work
of a comparatively small number of scientists and artists. Now if in
any particular period or among any special people, we find a relatively
larger group of intellectual leaders who succeed in establishing an
important educated class and in making permanent contributions to the
civilization of posterity, then we say that it is a cultured century or
a cultured nation.

[Sidenote: Greek Culture]

All races and all generations have had some kind of culture, but within
the recorded history of humanity, certain peoples and certain centuries
stand out most distinctly as influencing its evolution. Thus, the
Greeks of the fourth and fifth centuries before Christ gathered
together and handed down to us all manner of speculation about the
nature of the universe, all manner of hypothetical answers to the
eternal questions--Whence do we come, What are we doing, Where do we
go?--and this was the foundation of modern philosophy and metaphysics.
From the same Greeks came our geometry and the rudiments of our
sciences of astronomy and medicine. It was they who gave us the model
for nearly every form of literature--dramatic, epic, and lyric poetry,
dialogues, oratory, history--and in their well-proportioned temples, in
their balanced columns and elaborate friezes, in their marble
chiselings of the perfect human form, they fashioned for us forever the
classical expression of art.

[Sidenote: Roman Culture]

Still in ancient times, the Romans developed classical architecture in
the great triumphal arches and in the high-domed public buildings which
strewed their empire. They adapted the fine forms of Greek literature
to their own more pompous, but less subtle, Latin language. They
devised a code of law and a legal system which made them in a real
sense the teachers of order and the founders of the modern study of
law.

[Sidenote: Mohammedan Culture]

The Mohammedans, too, at the very time when the Christians of western
Europe were neglecting much of the ancient heritage, kept alive the
traditions of Greek philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine.
From eastern Asia they borrowed algebra, the Arabic numerals, and the
compass, and, in their own great cities of Bagdad, Damascus, and
Cordova, they themselves developed the curiously woven curtains and
rugs, the strangely wrought blades and metallic ornaments, the
luxurious dwellings and graceful minarets which distinguish Arabic or
Mohammedan art.

[Sidenote: Medieval Culture]

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries--the height of the middle ages
--came a wonderful outburst of intellectual and artistic activity.
Under the immediate auspices of the Catholic Church it brought forth
abundantly a peculiarly Christian culture. Renewed acquaintance with
Greek philosophy, especially with that of Aristotle, was joined with a
lively religious faith to produce the so called scholastic philosophy
and theology. Great institutions of higher learning--the universities--
were now founded, in which centered the revived study not only of
philosophy but of law and medicine as well, and over which appeared the
first cloud-wrapped dawn of modern experimental science. And side by
side with the sonorous Latin tongue, which long continued to be used by
scholars, were formed the vernacular languages--German, English,
French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.--that gave a wealth of
variety to reviving popular literature. Majestic cathedrals with
pointed arch and flying buttress, with lofty spire and delicate
tracery, wonderful wood carvings, illuminated manuscripts, quaint
gargoyles, myriad statues of saints and martyrs, delicately colored
paintings of surpassing beauty--all betokened the great Christian, or
Gothic, art of the middle ages.

[Sidenote: New Elements in Culture of Sixteenth Century]

The educated person of the sixteenth century was heir to all these
cultural periods: intellectually and artistically he was descended from
Greeks, Romans, Mohammedans, and his medieval Christian forbears. But
the sixteenth century itself added cultural contributions to the
original store, which help to explain not only the social, political,
and ecclesiastical activities of that time but also many of our
present-day actions and ideas. The essentially new factors in
sixteenth-century culture may be reckoned as (1) the diffusion of
knowledge as a result of the invention of printing; (2) the development
of literary criticism by means of humanism; (3) a golden age of
painting and architecture; (4) the flowering of national literature;
(5) the beginnings of modern natural science.


THE INVENTION OF PRINTING

The present day is notably distinguished by the prevalence of enormous
numbers of printed books, periodicals, and newspapers. Yet this very
printing, which seems so commonplace to us now, has had, in all, but a
comparatively brief existence. From the earliest recorded history up to
less than five hundred years ago every book in Europe [Footnote: For an
account of early printing in China, Japan, and Korea, see the informing
article "Typography" in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 11th
edition, Vol. XXVII, p. 510.] was laboriously written by hand,
[Footnote: It is interesting to note the meaning of our present word
"manuscript," which is derived from the Latin--_manu scriptum_
("written by hand").] and, although copyists acquired an astonishing
swiftness in reproducing books, libraries of any size were the property
exclusively of rich institutions or wealthy individuals. It was at the
beginning of modern times that the invention of printing revolutionized
intellectual history.

Printing is an extremely complicated process, and it is small wonder
that centuries of human progress elapsed before its invention was
complete. Among the most essential elements of the perfected process
are _movable type_ with which the impression is made, and
_paper_, on which it is made. A few facts may be conveniently
culled from the long involved story of the development of each of these
elements.

[Sidenote: Development of paper]

For their manuscripts the Greeks and Romans had used papyrus, the
prepared fiber of a tough reed which grew in the valley of the Nile
River. This papyrus was very expensive and heavy, and not at all
suitable for printing. Parchment, the dressed skins of certain animals,
especially sheep, which became the standard material for the hand-
written documents of the middle ages, was extremely durable, but like
papyrus, it was costly, unwieldy, and ill adapted for printing.

The forerunner of modern European paper was probably that which the
Chinese made from silk as early as the second century before Christ.
For silk the Mohammedans at Mecca and Damascus in the middle of the
eighth century appear to have substituted cotton, and this so-called
Damascus paper was later imported into Greece and southern Italy and
into Spain. In the latter country the native-grown hemp and flax were
again substituted for cotton, and the resulting linen paper was used
considerably in Castile in the thirteenth century and thence penetrated
across the Pyrenees into France and gradually all over western and
central Europe. Parchment, however, for a long time kept its
preeminence over silk, cotton, or linen paper, because of its greater
firmness and durability, and notaries were long forbidden to use any
other substance in their official writings. Not until the second half
of the fifteenth century was assured the triumph of modern paper,
[Footnote: The word "paper" is derived from the ancient "papyrus."] as
distinct from papyrus or parchment, when printing, then on the
threshold of its career, demanded a substance of moderate price that
would easily receive the impression of movable type.

[Sidenote: Development of Movable Type]

The idea of movable type was derived from an older practice of carving
reverse letters or even whole inscriptions upon blocks of wood so that
when they were inked and applied to writing material they would leave a
clear impression. Medieval kings and princes frequently had their
signatures cut on these blocks of wood or metal, in order to impress
them on charters, and a kind of engraving was employed to reproduce
pictures or written pages as early as the twelfth century.

It was a natural but slow evolution from block-impressing to the
practice of casting individual letters in separate little pieces of
metal, all of the same height and thickness, and then arranging them in
any desired sequence for printing. The great advantage of movable type
over the blocks was the infinite variety of work which could be done by
simply setting and resetting the type.

The actual history of the transition from the use of blocks to movable
type--the real invention of modern printing--is shrouded in a good deal
of mystery and dispute. It now appears likely that by the year 1450, an
obscure Lourens Coster of the Dutch town of Haarlem had devised movable
type, that Coster's invention was being utilized by a certain Johan
Gutenberg in the German city of Mainz, and that improvements were being
added by various other contemporaries. Papal letters of indulgence and
a version of the Bible, both printed in 1454, are the earliest
monuments of the new art.

Slowly evolved, the marvelous art, once thoroughly developed, spread
with almost lightning rapidity from Mainz throughout the Germanics, the
Italian states, France, and England,--in fact, throughout all Christian
Europe. It was welcomed by scholars and applauded by popes. Printing
presses were erected at Rome in 1466, and book-publishing speedily
became an honorable and lucrative business in every large city. Thus,
at the opening of the sixteenth century, the scholarly Aldus Manutius
was operating in Venice the famous Aldine press, whose beautiful
editions of the Greek and Latin classics are still esteemed as
masterpieces of the printer's art.

The early printers fashioned the characters of their type after the
letters that the scribes had used in long-hand writing. Different kinds
of common hand-writing gave rise, therefore, to such varieties of type
as the heavy black-faced Gothic that prevailed in the Germanics or the
several adaptations of the clear, neat Roman characters which
predominated in southern Europe and in England. The compressed "italic"
type was devised in the Aldine press in Venice to enable the publisher
to crowd more words upon a page.

[Sidenote: Results of Invention of Printing]

A constant development of the new art characterized the sixteenth
century, and at least three remarkable results became evident. (1)
There was an almost incalculable increase in the supply of books. Under
earlier conditions, a skilled and conscientious copyist might, by
prodigious toil, produce two books in a year. Now, in a single year of
the sixteenth century, some 24,000 copies of one of Erasmus's books
were struck off by one printing press.

(2) This indirectly increased the demand for books. By lessening the
expense of books and enabling at least all members of the middle class,
as well as nobles and princes, to possess private libraries, printing
became the most powerful means of diffusing knowledge and broadening
education.

(3) A greater degree of accuracy was guaranteed by printing than by
manual copying. Before the invention of printing, it was well-nigh
impossible to secure two copies of any work that would be exactly
alike. Now, the constant proof-reading and the fact that an entire
edition was printed from the same type were securities against the
anciently recurring faults of forgery or of error.


HUMANISM

Printing, the invention of which has just been described, was the new
vehicle of expression for the ideas of the sixteenth century. These
ideas centered in something which commonly is called "humanism." To
appreciate precisely what humanism means--to understand the dominant
intellectual interests of the educated people of the sixteenth century
--it will be necessary first to turn back some two hundred years
earlier and say a few words about the first great humanist, Francesco
Petrarca, or, as he is known to us, Petrarch.

[Sidenote: Petrarch, "the Father of Humanism"]

The name of Petrarch, who flourished in the fourteenth century (1304-
1374), has been made familiar to most of us by sentimentalists or by
literary scholars who in the one case have pitied his loves and his
passions or in the other have admired the grace and form of his Italian
sonnets. But to the student of history Petrarch has seemed even more
important as the reflection, if not the source, of a brilliant
intellectual movement, which, taking rise in his century, was to grow
in brightness in the fifteenth and flood the sixteenth with resplendent
light.

In some respects Petrarch was a typical product of the fourteenth
century. He was in close touch with the great medieval Christian
culture of his day. He held papal office at Avignon in France. He was
pious and "old-fashioned" in many of his religious views, especially in
his dislike for heretics. Moreover, he wrote what he professed to be
his best work in Latin and expressed naught but contempt for the new
Italian language, which, under the immortal Dante, had already acquired
literary polish. [Footnote: Ironically enough, it was not his Latin
writings but his beautiful Italian sonnets, of which he confessed to be
ashamed, that have preserved the popular fame of Petrarch to the
present day.] He showed no interest in natural science or in the
physical world about him--no sympathy for any novelty.

Yet despite a good deal of natural conservatism, Petrarch added one
significant element to the former medieval culture. That was an
appreciation, amounting almost to worship, of the pagan Greek and Latin
literature. Nor was he interested in antique things because they
supported his theology or inculcated Christian morals; his fondness for
them was simply and solely because they were inherently interesting. In
a multitude of polished Latin letters and in many of his poems, as well
as by daily example and precept to his admiring contemporaries, he
preached the revival of the classics.

[Sidenote: Characteristics of Petrarch's Humanism]

This one obsessing idea of Petrarch carried with it several corollaries
which constituted the essence of humanism and profoundly affected
European thought for several generations after the Italian poet. They
may be enumerated as follows:

(1) Petrarch felt as no man had felt since pagan days the pleasure of
mere human life,--the "joy of living." This, he believed, was not in
opposition to the Christian religion, although it contradicted the
basis of ascetic life. He remained a Catholic Christian, but he
assailed the monks.

(2) Petrarch possessed a confidence in himself, which in the constant
repetition in his writings of first-person pronouns partook of
boastfulness. He replaced a reliance upon Divine Providence by a sense
of his own human ability and power.

(3) Petrarch entertained a clear notion of a living bond between
himself and men of like sort in the ancient world. Greek and Roman
civilization was to him no dead and buried antiquity, but its poets and
thinkers lived again as if they were his neighbors. His love for the
past amounted almost to an ecstatic enthusiasm.

(4) Petrarch tremendously influenced his contemporaries. He was no
local, or even national, figure. He was revered and respected as "the
scholar of Europe." Kings vied with each other in heaping benefits upon
him. The Venetian senate gave him the freedom of the city. Both the
University of Paris and the municipality of Rome crowned him with
laurel.

[Sidenote: "Humanism" and the "Humanities"; Definitions]

The admirers and disciples of Petrarch were attracted by the fresh and
original human ideas of life with which such classical writers as
Virgil, Horace, and Cicero overflowed. This new-found charm the
scholars called humanity (_Humanitas_) and themselves they styled
"humanists." Their studies, which comprised the Greek and Latin
languages and literatures, and, incidentally, profane history, were the
humanities or "letters" (_litterae humaniores_), and the pursuit
of them was humanism.

Petrarch himself was a serious Latin scholar but knew Greek quite
indifferently. About the close of his century, however, Greek teachers
came in considerable numbers from Constantinople and Greece across the
Adriatic to Italy, and a certain Chrysoloras set up an influential
Greek school at Florence. [Footnote: This was before the capture of
Constantinople by the Turks in 1453.] Thenceforth, the study of both
Latin and Greek went on apace. Monasteries were searched for old
manuscripts; libraries for the classics were established; many an
ancient masterpiece, long lost, was now recovered and treasured as fine
gold. [Footnote: It was during this time that long-lost writings of
Tacitus, Cicero, Quintilian, Plautus, Lucretius, etc., were
rediscovered.]

[Sidenote: Humanism and Christianity]

At first, humanism met with some opposition from ardent churchmen who
feared that the revival of pagan literature might exert an unwholesome
influence upon Christianity. But gradually the humanists came to be
tolerated and even encourage, until several popes, notably Julius II
and Leo X at the opening of the sixteenth century, themselves espoused
the cause of humanism. The father of Leo X was the celebrated Lorenzo
de' Medici, who subsidized humanists and established the great
Florentine library of Greek and Latin classics; and the pope proved
himself at once the patron and exemplar of the new learning: he enjoyed
music and the theater, art and poetry, the masterpieces of the ancients
and the creations of his humanistic contemporaries, the spiritual and
the witty--life in every form.

[Sidenote: Spread of Humanism]

The zeal for humanism reached its highest pitch in Italy in the
fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth, but it gradually
gained entrance into other countries and at length became the
intellectual spirit of sixteenth-century Europe. Greek was first taught
both in England and in France about the middle of the fifteenth
century. The Italian expeditions of the French kings Charles VIII,
Louis XII, and Francis I, 1494-1547, served to familiarize Frenchmen
with humanism. And the rise of important new German universities called
humanists to the Holy Roman Empire. As has been said, humanism
dominated all Christian Europe in the sixteenth century.

[Sidenote: Erasmus, Chief Humanist of the Sixteenth Century]

Towering above all his contemporaries was Erasmus, the foremost
humanist and the intellectual arbiter of the sixteenth century. Erasmus
(1466-1536) was a native of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, but
throughout a long and studious life he lived in Germany, France,
England, Italy, and Switzerland. He took holy orders in the Church and
secured the degree of doctor of sacred theology, but it was as a lover
of books and a prolific writer that he earned his title to fame.
Erasmus, to an even greater degree than Petrarch, became a great
international figure--the scholar of Europe. He corresponded with every
important writer of his generation, and he was on terms of personal
friendship with Aldus Manutius, the famous publisher of Venice, with
Sir Thomas More, the distinguished statesman and scholar of England,
with Pope Leo X, with Francis I of France, and with Henry VIII of
England. For a time he presided at Paris over the new College of
France.

A part of the work of Erasmus--his Greek edition of the New Testament
and his _Praise of Folly_--has already been mentioned. In a series
of satirical dialogues--the _Adages_ and the _Colloquies_--he
displayed a brilliant intellect and a sparkling wit. With quip and jest
he made light of the ignorance and credulity of many clergymen,
especially of the monks. He laughed at every one, himself included.
"Literary people," said he, "resemble the great figured tapestries of
Flanders, which produce effect only when seen from the distance."

[Sidenote: Humanism and Protestantism]

At first Erasmus was friendly with Luther, but as he strongly
disapproved of rebellion against the Church, he subsequently assailed
Luther and the whole Protestant movement. He remained outside the group
of radical reformers, to the end devoted to his favorite authors,
simply a lover of good Latin.

Perhaps the chief reason why Erasmus opposed Protestantism was because
he imagined that the theological tempest which Luther aroused all over
Catholic Europe would destroy fair-minded scholarship--the very essence
of humanism. Be that as it may, the leading humanists of Europe--More
in England, Helgesen in Denmark, and Erasmus himself--remained
Catholic. And while many of the sixteenth-century humanists of Italy
grew skeptical regarding all religion, their country, as we have seen,
did not become Protestant but adhered to the Roman Church.

[Sidenote: Decline of Humanism]

Gradually, as the sixteenth century advanced, many persons who in an
earlier generation would have applied their minds to the study of Latin
or Greek, now devoted themselves to theological discussion or moral
exposition. The religious differences between Catholics and
Protestants, to say nothing of the refinements of dispute between
Calvinists and Lutherans or Presbyterians and Congregationalists,
absorbed much of the mental energy of the time and seriously distracted
the humanists. In fact, we may say that, from the second half of the
sixteenth century, humanism as an independent intellectual interest
slowly but steadily declined. Nevertheless, it was not lost, for it was
merged with other interests, and with them has been preserved ever
since.

Humanism, whose seed was sown by Petrarch in the fourteenth century and
whose fruit was plucked by Erasmus in the sixteenth, still lives in
higher education throughout Europe and America. The historical
"humanities"--Latin, Greek, and history--are still taught in college
and in high school. They constitute the contribution of the dominant
intellectual interest of the sixteenth century.


ART IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

[Sidenote: Humanism and the Renaissance of Art]

The effect of the revived interest in Greek and Roman culture, which,
as we have seen, dominated European thought from the fourteenth to the
sixteenth century, was felt not only in literature and in the outward
life of its devotees--in ransacking monasteries for lost manuscripts
scripts, in critically studying ancient learning, and in consciously
imitating antique behavior--but likewise in a marvelous and many-sided
development of art.

The art of the middle ages had been essentially Christian--it sprang
from the doctrine and devotions of the Catholic Church and was
inextricably bound up with Christian life. The graceful Gothic
cathedrals, pointing their roofs and airy spires in heavenly
aspiration, the fantastic and mysterious carvings of wood or stone, the
imaginative portraiture of saintly heroes and heroines as well as of
the sublime story of the fall and redemption of the human race, the
richly stained glass, and the spiritual organ music--all betokened the
supreme thought of medieval Christianity. But humanism recalled to
men's minds the previous existence of an art simpler and more
restrained, if less ethereal. The reading of Greek and Latin writers
heightened an esteem for pagan culture in all its phases.

Therefore, European art underwent a transformation in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. While much of the distinctively medieval culture
remained, civilization was enriched by a revival of classical art. The
painters, the sculptors, and the architects now sought models not
exclusively in their own Christian masters but in many cases in pagan
Greek and Roman forms. Gradually the two lines of development were
brought together, and the resulting union--the adaptation of classical
art-forms to Christian uses--was marked by an unparalleled outburst of
artistic energy.

From that period of exuberant art-expression in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, our present-day love of beautiful things has come
down in unbroken succession. With no exaggeration it may be said that
the sixteenth century is as much the basis of our modern artistic life
as it is the foundation of modern Protestantism or of modern world
empire. The revolutions in commerce and religion synchronized with the
beginning of a new era in art. All arts were affected--architecture,
sculpture, painting, engraving, and music.

[Sidenote: Architecture]

In architecture, the severely straight and plain line of the ancient
Greek temples or the elegant gentle curve of the Roman dome was
substituted for the fanciful lofty Gothic. A rounded arch replaced the
pointed. And the ancient Greek orders--Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian--
were dragged from oblivion to embellish the simple symmetrical
buildings. The newer architecture was used for ecclesiastical and other
structures, reaching perhaps its highest expression in the vast
cathedral of St. Peter, which was erected at Rome in the sixteenth
century under the personal direction of great artists, among whom
Raphael and Michelangelo are numbered.

[Sidenote: In Italy]

The revival of Greek and Roman architecture, like humanism, had its
origin in Italy; and in the cities of the peninsula, under patronage of
wealthy princes and noble families, it attained its most general
acceptance. But, like humanism, it spread to other countries, which in
turn it deeply affected. The chronic wars, in which the petty Italian
states were engaged throughout the sixteenth century, were attended, as
we have seen, by perpetual foreign interference. But Italy, vanquished
in politics, became the victor in art. While her towns surrendered to
foreign armies, her architects and builders subdued Europe and brought
the Christian countries for a time under her artistic sway.

[Sidenote: In France]

Thus in France the revival was accelerated by the military campaigns of
Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I, which led to the revelation of
the architectural triumphs in Italy, the result being the importation
of great numbers of Italian designers and craftsmen. Architecture after
the Greek or Roman manner at once became fashionable. Long, horizontal
lines appeared in many public buildings, of which the celebrated palace
of the Louvre, begun in the last year of the reign of Francis I (1546),
and to-day the home of one of the world's greatest art collections, is
a conspicuous example.

[Sidenote: In Other Countries]

In the second half of the sixteenth century, the new architecture
similarly entered Spain and received encouragement from Philip II.
About the same time it manifested itself in the Netherlands and in the
Germanies. In England, its appearance hardly took place in the
sixteenth century. it was not until 1619 that a famous architect, Inigo
Jones (1573-1651), designed and reared the classical banqueting house
in Whitehall, and not until the second half of the seventeenth century
did Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723), by means of the majestic St.
Paul's cathedral in London, render the new architecture popular in
England.

[Sidenote: Sculpture]

Sculpture is usually an attendant of architecture, and it is not
surprising, therefore, that transformation of the one should be
connected with change in the other. The new movement snowed itself in
Italian sculpture as early as the fourteenth century, owing to the
influence of the ancient monuments which still abounded throughout the
peninsula and to which the humanists attracted attention. In the
fifteenth century archaeological discoveries were made and a special
interest fostered by the Florentine family of the Medici, who not only
became enthusiastic collectors of ancient works of art but promoted the
study of the antique figure. Sculpture followed more and more the Greek
and Roman traditions in form and often in subject as well. The plastic
art of Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was strikingly
akin to that of Athens in the fifth or fourth centuries before Christ.

The first great apostle of the new sculpture was Lorenzo Ghiberti
(1378-1455), whose marvelous doors on the baptistery at Florence
elicited the comment of Michelangelo that they were "worthy of being
placed at the entrance of paradise." Slightly younger than Ghiberti was
Donatello (1383-1466), who, among other triumphs, fashioned the
realistic statue of St. Mark in Venice. Luca della Robbia (1400-1482),
with a classic purity of style and simplicity of expression, founded a
whole dynasty of sculptors in glazed terra-cotta. Elaborate tomb-
monuments, the construction of which started in the fifteenth century,
reached their highest magnificence in the gorgeous sixteenth-century
tomb of Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti, the founder of the princely family
of Visconti in Milan. Michelangelo himself was as famous for his
sculpture as for his painting or his architecture; the heroic head of
his David at Florence is a work of unrivaled dignity. As the style of
classic sculpture became very popular in the sixteenth century, the
subjects were increasingly borrowed from pagan literature. Monuments
were erected to illustrious men of ancient Rome, and Greek mythology
was once more carved in stone.

The extension of the new sculpture beyond Italy was even more rapid
than the spread of the new architecture. Henry VII invited Italian
sculptors to England; Louis XII patronized the great Leonardo da Vinci,
and Francis I brought him to France. The tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella
in Spain was fashioned in classic form. The new sculpture was famous in
Germany before Luther; in fact, it was to be found everywhere in
sixteenth-century Europe.

[Sidenote: Painting]

Painting accompanied sculpture. Prior to the sixteenth century, most of
the pictures were painted directly upon the plaster walls of churches
or of sumptuous dwellings and were called frescoes, although a few were
executed on wooden panels. In the sixteenth century, however, easel
paintings--that is, detached pictures on canvas, wood, or other
material--became common. The progress in painting was not so much an
imitation of classical models as was the case with sculpture and
architecture, for the reason that painting, being one of the most
perishable of the arts, had preserved few of its ancient Greek or Roman
examples. But the artists who were interested in architecture and
sculpture were likewise naturally interested in painting; and painting,
bound by fewer antique traditions, reached a higher degree of
perfection in the sixteenth century than did any of its allied arts.

Modern painting was born in Italy. In Italy it found its four great
masters--Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian. The
first two acquired as great a fame in architecture and in sculpture as
in painting; the last two were primarily painters.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), a Florentine by birth and training, was
patronized in turn by the Sforza family of Milan, by the Medici of
Florence, and by the French royal line. His great paintings--the Holy
Supper and Madonna Lisa, usually called La Gioconda--carried to a high
degree the art of composition and the science of light and shade and
color. In fact, Leonardo was a scientific painter--he carefully studied
the laws of perspective and painstakingly carried them into practice.
He was also a remarkable sculptor, as is testified by his admirable
horses in relief. As an engineer, too, he built a canal in northern
Italy and constructed fortifications about Milan. He was a musician and
a natural philosopher as well. This many-sided man liked to toy with
mechanical devices. One day when Louis XII visited Milan, he was met by
a large mechanical lion that roared and then reared itself upon its
haunches, displaying upon its breast the coat-of-arms of France: it was
the work of Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo influenced his age perhaps more
than any other artist. He wrote extensively. He gathered about himself
a large group of disciples. And in his last years spent in France, as a
pensioner of Francis I, he encouraged painting in that country as well
as in Italy.

Michelangelo (1475-1564), Florentine like Leonardo, was probably the
most wonderful of all these artists because of his triumphs in a vast
variety of endeavors. It might almost be said of him that "jack of all
trades, he was master of all." He was a painter of the first rank, an
incomparable sculptor, a great architect, an eminent engineer, a
charming poet, and a profound scholar in anatomy and physiology.
Dividing his time between Florence and Rome, he served the Medici
family and a succession of art-loving popes. With his other qualities
of genius he combined austerity in morals, uprightness in character, a
lively patriotism for his native city and people, and a proud
independence. To give any idea of his achievements is impossible in a
book of this size. His tomb of Julius II in Rome and his colossal
statue of David in Florence are examples of his sculpture; the
cathedral of St. Peter, which he practically completed, is his most
enduring monument; the mural decorations in the Sistine Chapel at Rome,
telling on a grandiose scale the Biblical story from Creation to the
Flood, are marvels of design; and his grand fresco of the Last Judgment
is probably the most famous single painting in the world.

[Sidenote: Raphael]

Younger than Michelangelo and living only about half as long, Raphael
(1483-1520), nevertheless, surpassed him in the harmonious composition
and linear beauty of his painting. For ineffable charm of grace, "the
divine" Raphael has always stood without a peer. Raphael lived the
better part of his life at Rome under the patronage of Julius II and
Leo X, and spent several years in decorating the papal palace of the
Vatican. Although he was, for a time, architect of St. Peter's
cathedral, and displayed some aptitude for sculpture and for the
scholarly study of archæeology, it is as the greatest of modern
painters that he is now regarded. Raphael lived fortunately, always in
favor, and rich, and bearing himself like a prince.

[Sidenote: Titian]

Titian (c. 1477-1576) was the typical representative of the Venetian
school of painting which acquired great distinction in bright coloring.
Official painter for the city of Venice and patronized both by the
Emperor Charles V and by Philip II of Spain, he secured considerable
wealth and fame. He was not a man of universal genius like Leonardo da
Vinci or Michelangelo; his one great and supreme endowment was that of
oil painting. In harmony, light, and color, his work has never been
equaled. Titian's portrait of Philip II was sent to England and proved
a potent auxiliary in the suit of the Spanish king for the hand of Mary
Tudor. His celebrated picture of the Council of Trent was executed
after the aged artist's visit to the council about 1555.

From Italy as a center, great painting became the heritage of all
Europe. Italian painters were brought to France by Louis XII and
Francis I, and French painters were subsidized to imitate them. Philip
II proved himself a liberal patron of painting throughout his
dominions.

[Sidenote: Dürer]

In Germany, painting was developed by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), a
native of Nuremberg, who received a stimulus from Italian work and was
royally patronized by the Emperor Maximilian. The career of Dürer was
honored and fortunate: he was on terms of friendship with all the first
masters of his age; he even visited and painted Erasmus. But it is as
an etcher or engraver, rather than as a painter, that Dürer's
reputation was earned. His greatest engravings--such as the Knight and
Death, and St. Jerome in his Study--set a standard in a new art which
has never been reached by his successors. The first considerable
employment of engraving, one of the most useful of the arts,
synchronized with the invention of printing. Just as books were a means
of multiplying, cheapening, and disseminating ideas, so engravings on
copper or wood were the means of multiplying, cheapening, and
disseminating pictures which gave vividness to the ideas, or served in
place of books for those who could not read.

The impetus afforded by this extraordinary development of painting
continued to affect the sixteenth century and a greater part of the
seventeenth. The scene shifted, however, from Italy to the Spanish
possessions. And Spanish kings, the successors of Philip II, patronized
such men as Rubens (1577-1640) and Van Dyck (1599-1641) in the Belgian
Netherlands, or Velasquez (1590-1660) and Murillo (1617-1682) in Spain
itself.

[Sidenote: Rubens and Van Dyck]

If the work of Rubens displayed little of the earlier Italian grace and
refinement, it at any rate attained to distinction in the purely
fanciful pictures which he painted in bewildering numbers, many of
which, commissioned by Marie de' Medici and King Louis XIII of France,
are now to be seen in the Louvre galleries in Paris. And Van Dyck
raised portrait painting to unthought-of excellence: his portraits of
the English royal children and of King Charles I are world-famous.

[Sidenote: Velasquez]
[Sidenote: Murillo]

Within the last century, many connoisseurs of art have been led to
believe that Velasquez formerly has been much underrated and that he
deserves to rank with the foremost Italian masters. Certainly in all
his work there is a dignity, power, and charm, especially in that well-
known Maids of Honor, where a little Spanish princess is depicted
holding her court, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, her dwarfs and
her mastiff, while the artist himself stands at his easel. The last
feat of Velasquez was to superintend the elaborate decorations in honor
of the marriage of the Spanish Infanta with King Louis XIV of France.
Murillo, the youngest of all these great painters, did most of his work
for the Catholic Church and naturally dealt with ecclesiastical
subjects.

A somewhat different type of painter is found in the Dutchman,
Rembrandt (1606-1669), who lived a stormy and unhappy life in the towns
of Leyden and Amsterdam. It must be remembered that Holland, while
following her national career of independence, commerce, and colonial
undertaking, had become stanchly Protestant. Neither the immoral
paganism of antiquity nor the medieval legends of Catholicism would
longer appeal to the Dutch people as fit subjects of art. Rembrandt,
prototype of a new school, therefore painted the actual life of the
people among whom he lived and the things which concerned them--lively
portraits of contemporary burgomasters, happy pictures of popular
amusements, stern scenes from the Old Testament. His Lesson in Anatomy
and his Night Watch in their somber settings, are wonderfully realistic
products of Rembrandt's mastery of the brush.

[Sidenote: Rembrandt]
[Sidenote: Music]

Thus painting, like architecture and sculpture, was perfected in
sixteenth-century Italy and speedily became the common property of
Christian Europe. Music, too, the most primitive and universal of the
arts, owes in its modern form very much to the sixteenth century.
During that period the barbarous and uncouth instruments of the middle
ages were reformed. The rebeck, to whose loud and harsh strains the
medieval rustic had danced, [Footnote: The rebeck probably had been
borrowed from the Mohammedans.] by the addition of a fourth string and
a few changes in form, became the sweet-toned violin, the most
important and expressive instrument of the modern orchestra. As
immediate forerunner of our present-day pianoforte, the harpsichord was
invented with a keyboard carried to four octaves and the chords of each
note doubled or quadrupled to obtain prolonged tones.

[Sidenote: Palestrina]

In the person of the papal organist and choir-master, Palestrina (1524-
1594), appeared the first master-composer. He is justly esteemed as the
father of modern religious music and for four hundred years the
Catholic Church has repeated his inspired accents. A pope of the
twentieth century declared his music to be still unrivaled and directed
its universal use. Palestrina directly influenced much of the Italian
music of the seventeenth century and the classical German productions
of the eighteenth.


NATIONAL LITERATURE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

[Sidenote: Latin and the Vernaculars]

Latin had been the learned language of the middle ages: it was used in
the Church, in the universities, and in polite society. If a lecturer
taught a class or an author wrote a book, Latin was usually employed.
In those very middle ages, however, the nations of western Europe were
developing spoken languages quite at variance with the classical,
scholarly tongue. These so-called vernacular languages were not often
written and remained a long time the exclusive means of expression of
the lower classes--they consequently not only differed from each other
but tended in each case to fall into a number of petty local dialects.
So long as they were not largely written, they could achieve no fixity,
and it was not until after the invention of printing that the national
languages produced extensive national literatures.

Just when printing was invented, the humanists--the foremost scholars
of Europe--were diligently engaged in strengthening the position of
Latin by encouraging the study of the pagan classics. Virgil, Cicero,
Caesar, Tacitus, and the comedies of Plautus and Terence were again
read by educated people for their substance and for their style.
Petrarch imitated the manner of Latin classics in his letters; Erasmus
wrote his great works in Latin. The revival of Greek, which was also
due to the humanists, added to the learning and to the literature of
the cultured folk, but Greek, even more than Latin, was hardly
understood or appreciated by the bulk of the people.

Then came the sixteenth century, with its artistic developments, its
national rivalries, its far-away discoveries, its theological debates,
and its social and religious unrest. The common people, especially the
commercial middle class, clamored to understand: and the result was the
appearance of national literatures on a large scale. Alongside of
Latin, which was henceforth restricted to the liturgy of the Roman
Catholic Church and to particularly learned treatises, there now
emerged truly literary works in Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese,
German, English, etc. The printing of these works at once stereotyped
their respective languages, so that since the sixteenth century the
written forms of the vernacular tongues have been subject to relatively
minor change. Speaking generally, the sixteenth century witnessed the
fixing of our best known modern languages.

To review all the leading writers who employed the various vernaculars
in the sixteenth century would encroach too much upon the province of
professed histories of comparative literature, but a few references to
certain figures that tower head and shoulders above all others in their
respective countries may serve to call vividly to mind the importance
of the period for national literatures.

[Sidenote: Italian Literature]

At the very outset, one important exception must be made in favor of
Italy, whose poetry and prose had already been immortalized by Dante,
Petrarch, and Boccaccio a hundred years and more before the opening of
the sixteenth century. But that country, as we have already repeatedly
observed in many kinds of art, anticipated all others in modern times.
Italy, almost the last European land to be politically unified, was the
first to develop a great national literature.

But Italian literature was broadened and popularized by several
influential writers in the sixteenth century, among whom stand
preeminent the Florentine diplomat Machiavelli (1469-1527), whose
_Prince_ really founded the modern science of politics, and who
taught the dangerous doctrine that a ruler, bent on exercising a
benevolent despotism, is justified in employing any means to achieve
his purpose; Ariosto (1474-1533), whose great poem _Orlando
Furioso_ displayed a powerful imagination no less than a rare and
cultivated taste; and the unhappy mad Tasso (1544-1595), who in
_Jerusalem Delivered_ produced a bulky epic poem, adapting the
manner of Virgil to a crusading subject, and in Aminta gave to his
countrymen a delightful pastoral drama, the exquisite lyrics of which
were long sung in opera.

[Sidenote: French literature]

French literature, like other French art, was encouraged by Francis I.
He set up printing presses, established the College of France, and
pensioned native writers. The most famous French author of the time was
the sarcastic and clever Rabelais (c. 1490-1553), whose memorable
_Gargantua_ comprised a series of daring fanciful tales, told with
humor of a rather vulgar sort. The language of _Gargantua_ is
somewhat archaic--perhaps the French version of Calvin's
_Institutes_ would be a better example of the French of the
sixteenth century. But France, thus seriously beginning her national
literature, was to wait for its supremacy until the seventeenth
century--until the institution of the French Academy and the age of
Louis XIV.

[Sidenote: Spanish Literature]

Spanish literature flourished in the golden era when Velasquez and
Murillo were painting their masterpieces. The immortal _Don
Quixote_, which was published in 1604, entitles its author,
Cervantes (1547-1616), to rank with the greatest writers of all time.
Lope de Vega (1562-1635), far-famed poet, virtually founded the Spanish
theater and is said to have composed eighteen hundred dramatic pieces.
Calderon (1600-1681), although less effective in his numerous dramas,
wrote allegorical poems of unequaled merit. The printing of large cheap
editions of many of these works made Spanish literature immediately
popular.

[Sidenote: Portuguese Literature]

How closely the new vernacular literatures reflected significant
elements in the national life is particularly observable in the case of
Portugal. It was of the wonderful exploring voyages of Vasco da Gama
that Camoens (1524-1580), prince of Portuguese poets, sang his stirring
_Lusiads_.

[Sidenote: German Literature]

In the Germanies, the extraordinary influence of humanism at first
militated against the development of literature in the vernacular, but
the Protestant reformer, Martin Luther, in his desire to reach the ears
of the common people, turned from Latin to German. Luther's translation
of the Bible constitutes the greatest monument in the rise of modern
German.

To speak of what our own English language and literature owe to the
sixteenth century seems superfluous. The popular writings of Chaucer in
the fourteenth century were historically important, but the presence of
very many archaic words makes them now difficult to read. But in
England, from the appearance in 1551 of the English version of Sir
Thomas More's _Utopia_, [Footnote: Originally published in Latin
in 1516.] a representation of an ideal state, to the publication of
Milton's grandiose epic, _Paradise Lost_, in 1667, there was a
continuity of great literature. There were Cranmer's Book of Common
Prayer and the King James Version of the Bible; Edmund Spenser's
graceful _Faerie Queene_; [Footnote: For its scenery and mechanism, the
Orlando Furioso of Ariosto furnished the framework; and it similarly
shows the influence of Tasso.] the supreme Shakespeare; Ben Jonson and
Marlowe; Francis Bacon and Richard Hooker; Thomas Hobbes and Jeremy
Taylor; and the somber Milton himself.


BEGINNINGS OF MODERN NATURAL SCIENCE

[Sidenote: Two-fold Development of Culture, Science and Art]

Human civilization, or culture, always depends upon progress in two
directions--the reason, and the feelings or emotions. Art is the
expression of the latter, and science of the former. Every great period
in the world's history, therefore, is marked by a high appreciation of
aesthetics and an advance in knowledge. To this general rule, the
sixteenth century was no exception, for it was distinguished not only
by a wonderful development of architecture, sculpture, painting,
engraving, music, and literature,--whether Roman, Greek, or
vernacular,--but it is the most obvious starting point of our modern
ideas of natural and experimental science.

Nowadays, we believe that science is at once the legitimate means and
the proper goal of the progress of the race, and we fill our school
curricula with scientific studies. But this spirit is essentially
modern: it owes its chief stimulus to important achievements in the
sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth.

[Sidenote: Characteristics of the Sixteenth Century]

Five elements contributed to impress the period that we are now
reviewing with a scientific character. In the first place, the
humanists encouraged a critical spirit in comparing and contrasting
ancient manuscripts and in investigating the history of the distant
past; and their discovery and application of pagan writings served to
bring clearly and abruptly before the educated people of the sixteenth
century all that the Greeks and Romans had done in astronomy, physics,
mathematics, and medicine, as well as in philosophy, art, and
literature. Secondly, the invention of printing itself was a scientific
feat, and its extended use enabled scientists, no less than artists,
immediately to acquaint the whole civilized world with their ideas and
demonstrations.

Thirdly, the marvelous maritime discoveries of new routes to India and
of a new world, which revolutionized European commerce, added much to
geographical knowledge and led to the construction of scientific maps
of the earth's surface. Fourthly, the painstaking study of a small
group of scholars afforded us our first glimpse of the real character
of the vast universe about our own globe--the scientific basis of
modern astronomy. Lastly, two profound thinkers, early in the
seventeenth century,--Francis Bacon and Descartes,--pointed out new
ways of using the reason--the method of modern science.

In an earlier chapter, an account has been given of the maritime
discoveries of the sixteenth century and their immediate results in
broadening intellectual interests. In this chapter, some attention
already has been devoted to the rise of humanism and likewise to the
invention of printing. It remains, therefore, to say a few words about
the changes in astronomy and in scientific method that characterized
the beginning of modern times.

[Side Note: Astronomy]

In the year 1500 the average European knew something about the universe
of sun, moon, planets, and stars, but it was scarcely more than the
ancient Greeks had known, and its chief use was to foretell the future.
This practical aspect of astronomy was a curious ancient misconception,
which now passes under the name of astrology. It was popularly believed
prior to the sixteenth century that every heavenly body exerted a
direct and arbitrary influence upon human character and events,
[Footnote: Disease was attributed to planetary influence. This
connection between medicine and astrology survives in the sign of
Jupiter 4, which still heads medicinal prescriptions.] and that by
casting "horoscopes," showing just how the stars appeared at the birth
of any person, the subsequent career of such an one might be foreseen.
Many silly notions and superstitions grew up about astrology, yet the
practice persisted. Charles V and Francis I, great rivals in war, vied
with each other in securing the services of most eminent astrologers,
and Catherine de' Medici never tired of reading horoscopes.

[Sidenote: "The Ptolemaic System"]

Throughout the middle ages the foremost scholars had continued to
cherish the astronomical knowledge of the Greeks, which had been
conveniently collected and systematized by a celebrated mathematician
and scholar living in Egypt in the second century of the Christian era
--Ptolemy by name. Among other theories and ideas, Ptolemy taught that
the earth is the center of the universe, that revolving about it are
the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, the other planets, and the fixed
stars, and that the entire machine is turned with incredible velocity
completely around every twenty-four hours. This so-called Ptolemaic
system of astronomy fitted in very nicely with the language of the
Bible and with the popular prejudice that the earth remains stationary
while the heavenly bodies daily rise and set. It was natural that for
many centuries the Christians should accept the views of Ptolemy as
almost divinely inspired.

[Sidenote: "The Copernican System"]

However, a contradictory theory of the solar system was propounded and
upheld in the sixteenth century, quite supplanting the Ptolemaic theory
in the course of the seventeenth. The new system is called Copernican
after its first modern exponent--and its general acceptance went far to
annihilate astrology and to place astronomy upon a rational basis.

Copernicus [the Latin form of his real name, Koppernigk (1473-1543)]
was a native of Poland, who divided his time between official work for
the Catholic Church and private researches in astronomy. It was during
a ten-year sojourn in Italy (1496-1505), studying canon law and
medicine, and familiarizing himself, through humanistic teachers, with
ancient Greek astronomers, that Copernicus was led seriously to
question the Ptolemaic system and to cast about in search of a truthful
substitute. Thenceforth for many years he studied and reflected, but it
was not until the year of his death (1543) that his results were
published to the world. His book--_On the Revolutions of the
Celestial Bodies_, dedicated to Pope Paul III--offered the theory
that the earth is not the center of the universe but simply one of a
number of planets which revolve about the sun. The earth seemed much
less important in the Copernican universe than in the Ptolemaic.

The Copernican thesis was supported and developed by two distinguished
astronomers at the beginning of the next century--Kepler (1571-1630)
and Galileo (1564-1642), one a German, the other an Italian. Kepler
taught astronomy for a number of years at Gratz and subsequently made
his home in Prague, where he acquired a remarkable collection of
instruments [Footnote: From Tycho Brahe, whose assistant he was in
1600-1601.] that enabled him to conduct numerous interesting
experiments. While he entertained many fantastic and mystical theories
of the "harmony of the spheres" and was not above casting horoscopes
for the emperor and for Wallenstein, that soldier of fortune,
[Footnote: See below, pp. 223, 226.] he nevertheless established
several of the fundamental laws of modern astronomy, such as those
governing the form and magnitude of the planetary orbits. It was Kepler
who made clear that the planets revolve about the sun in elliptical
rather than in strictly circular paths.

Galileo popularized the Copernican theory. [Footnote: Another
"popularizer" was Giordano Bruno (c. 1548-1600).] His charming lectures
in the university of Padua, where he taught from 1592 to 1610, were so
largely attended that a hall seating 2000 had to be provided. In 1609
he perfected a telescope, which, although hardly more powerful than a
present-day opera glass, showed unmistakably that the sun was turning
on its axis, that Jupiter was attended by revolving moons, and that the
essential truth of the Copernican system was established. Unfortunately
for Galileo, his enthusiastic desire to convert the pope immediately to
his own ideas got him into trouble with the Roman Curia and brought
upon him a prohibition from further writing. Galileo submitted like a
loyal Catholic to the papal decree, but had he lived another hundred
years, he would have rejoiced that almost all men of learning--popes
included--had come to accept his own conclusions. Thus modern astronomy
was suggested by Copernicus, developed by Kepler, and popularized by
Galileo.

The acquisition of sound knowledge in astronomy and likewise in every
other science rests primarily upon the observation of natural facts or
phenomena and then upon deducing rational conclusions from such
observation. Yet this seemingly simple rule had not been continuously
and effectively applied in any period of history prior to the sixteenth
century. The scientific method of most of the medieval as well as of
the ancient scholars was essentially that of Aristotle. [Footnote:
Exception to this sweeping generalization must be made in favor of
several medieval scientists and philosophers, including--Roger Bacon, a
Franciscan friar of the thirteenth century.] This so-called deductive
method of Aristotle assumed as a starting-point some general of
principle as a premise or hypothesis and thence proceeded, by logical
reasoning, to deduce concrete applications or consequences. It had been
extremely valuable in stimulating the logical faculties and in showing
men how to draw accurate conclusions, but it had shown a woeful
inability to devise new general principles. It evolved an elaborate
theology and a remarkable philosophy, but natural experimental science
progressed relatively little until the deductive method of Aristotle
was supplemented by the inductive method of Francis Bacon.

[Sidenote: Modern Method of Science: Introduction. Francis Bacon]

Aristotle was partially discredited by radical humanists, who made fun
of the medieval scholars who had taken him most seriously, and by the
Protestant reformers, who assailed the Catholic theology which had been
carefully constructed by Aristotelian deduction. But it was reserved
for Francis Bacon, known as Lord Bacon (1561-1626), to point out all
the shortcomings of the ancient method and to propose a practicable
supplement. A famous lawyer, lord chancellor of England under James I,
a born scientist, a brilliant essayist, he wrote several philosophical
works of first-rate importance, of which the _Advancement of
Learning_ (1604) and the _Novum Organum_ (1620) are the most
famous. It is in these works that he summed up the faults which the
widening of knowledge in his own day was disclosing in ancient and
medieval thought and set forth the necessity of slow laborious
observation of facts as antecedent to the assumption of any general
principle.

[Sidenote: Descartes]

What of scientific method occurred to Lord Bacon appealed even more to
the intellectual genius of the Frenchman Descartes (1596-1660). A
curious combination of sincere practicing Catholic and of original
daring rationalist was this man, traveling all about Europe, serving as
a soldier in the Netherlands, in Bavaria, in Hungary, living in
Holland, dying in Sweden, with a mind as restless as his body. Now
interested in mathematics, now in philosophy, presently absorbed in
physics or in the proof of man's existence, throughout his whole career
he held fast to the faith that science depends not upon the authority
of books but upon the observation of facts. "Here are my books," he
told a visitor, as he pointed to a basket of rabbits that he was about
to dissect. The _Discourse on Method_ (1637) and the _Principles
of Philosophy_ (1644), taken in conjunction with Bacon's work,
ushered in a new scientific era, to some later phases of which we shall
have occasion to refer in subsequent chapters.


ADDITIONAL READING


THE RENAISSANCE. GENERAL. _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. I (1902),
ch. xvi, xvii; _Histoire générale_, Vol. IV, ch. vii, viii, Vol. V, ch.
x, xi; E. M. Hulme, _Renaissance and Reformation_, 2d ed. (1915), ch.
v-vii, xix, xxix, xxx. More detailed accounts: Jakob Burckhardt, _The
Civilization of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy_, trans. by S.
G. C. Middlemore, 2 vols. (1878), 1 vol. ed. (1898), scholarly and
profound; J. A. Symonds, _Renaissance in Italy_, 5 parts in 7 vols.
(1897-1898), interesting and suggestive but less reliable than
Burckhardt; Ludwig Geiger, _Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und
Deutschland_ (1882), in the great Oncken Series; F. X. Kraus,
_Geschichte der christlichen Kunst_, 2 vols. in 4 (1896-1908), a
monumental work of great interest and importance, by a German Catholic.

HUMANISM. The best description of the rise and spread of humanism is J.
E. Sandys, _A History of Classical Scholarship_, Vol. II (1908). For
the spirit of early humanism see H. C. Hollway-Calthrop, _Petrarch: his
Life and Times_ (1907); J. H. Robinson and H. W. Rolfe, _Petrarch, the
First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters_, 2d ed. (1914), a selection
from Petrarch's letters to Boccaccio and other contemporaries,
translated into English, with a valuable introduction; Pierre de
Nolhac, _Pétrarque et l'humanisme_, 2d ed., 2 vols. in 1 (1907). Of the
antecedents of humanism a convenient summary is presented by Louise
Loomis, _Mediæval Hellenism_ (1906). A popular biography of Erasmus is
that of Ephraim Emerton, _Desiderius Erasmus_ (1899); the Latin
_Letters of Erasmus_ are now (1916) in course of publication by P. S.
Allen; F. M. Nichols, _The Epistles of Erasmus_, 2 vols. (1901-1906),
an excellent translation of letters written prior to 1517; Erasmus's
_Praise of Folly_, in English translation, is obtainable in many
editions. D. F. Strauss, _Ulrich von Hutten, his Life and Times_,
trans. by Mrs. G. Sturge (1874), gives a good account of the whole
humanistic movement and treats Hutten very sympathetically; _The
Letters of Obscure Men_, to which Hutten contributed, were published,
with English translation, by F. G. Stokes in 1909. An excellent edition
of _The Utopia_ of Sir Thomas More, the famous English humanist, is
that of George Sampson (1910), containing also an English translation
and the charming contemporary _Biography_ by More's son-in-law, William
Roper. The standard summary of the work of the humanists is the German
writing of Georg Voigt, _Die Wiederbelebung des classischen
Alterthums_, 3d ed., 2 vols. (1893). Interesting extracts from the
writings of a considerable variety of humanists are translated by
Merrick Whitcomb in his _Literary Source Books_ of the Renaissance in
Germany and in Italy (1898-1899).

INVENTION OF PRINTING. T. L. De Vinne, _Invention of Printing_, 2d
ed. (1878), and, by the same author, _Notable Printers of Italy
during the Fifteenth Century_ (1910), two valuable works by an
eminent authority on the subject; G. H. Putnam, _Books and their
Makers during the Middle Ages_, 2 vols. (1896-1897), a useful
contribution of another experienced publisher; Johannes Janssen,
_History of the German People_, Vol. I, Book I, ch. i. There is an
interesting essay on "Publication before Printing" by R. K. Root in the
_Publications of the Modern Language Association_, Vol. XXVIII
(1913), pp. 417-431.

NATIONAL LITERATURES. Among the many extended bibliographies of
national literatures the student certainly should be familiar with the
_Cambridge History of English Literature_, ed. by A. W. Ward and
A. R. Waller, 12 vols. (1907-1916); and with G. Lanson, _Manuel
bibliographique de la littérature française moderne_, 1500-1900, 4
vols. (1909-1913). See also, as suggestive references, Pasquale
Villari, _The Life and Times of Machiavelli_, 2 vols. in i (1898);
A. A. Tilley, _The Literature of the French Renaissance_, 2 vols.
(1904); George Saintsbury, _A History of Elizabethan Literature_
(1887); and Sir Sidney Lee, _Life of Shakespeare_, new rev. ed.
(1915).

ART IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. Architecture: A. D. F. Hamlin, _A
Textbook of the History of Architecture_, 5th ed. (1902), a brief
general survey; _A History of Architecture_, Vols. I, II by Russell
Sturgis (1906), III, IV by A. L. Frothingham (1915); Banister Fletcher,
_A History of Architecture_, 5th ed. (1905); James Fergusson, _History
of Architecture in All Countries_, 3d rev. ed., 5 vols. (1891-1899).
Sculpture: Allan Marquand and A. L. Frothingham, _A Text-book of the
History of Sculpture_ (1896); Wilhelm von Lubke, _History of
Sculpture_, Eng. trans., 2 vols. (1872). Painting: J. C. Van Dyke, _A
Text-book of the History of Painting_, new rev. ed. (1915); Alfred von
Woltmann and Karl Woermann, _History of Painting_, Eng. trans., 2 vols.
(1894). Music: W. S. Pratt, _The History of Music_ (1907). See also the
_Lives of Seventy of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and
Architects_ by Giorgio Vasari (1512-1574), the contemporary and friend
of Michelangelo, trans. by Mrs. Foster in the Bohn Library; Osvald
Siren, _Leonardo da Vinci: the Artist and the Man_ (1915); and Romain
Rolland, _Michelangelo_ (1915).

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. _Cambridge Modem
History_, Vol. V (1908), ch. xxiii, Vol. IV (1906), ch. xxvii,
scholarly accounts of Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, and their
contemporaries. A veritable storehouse of scientific facts is H. S. and
E. H. Williams, _A History of Science_, 10 vols. (1904-1910).
Specifically, see Arthur Berry, _Short History of Astronomy_ (1899);
Karl von Gebler, _Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia_, Eng. trans. by
Mrs. George Sturge (1879); B. L. Conway, _The Condemnation of Galileo_
(1913); and Galileo, _Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences_, Eng.
trans. by Crew and Salvio (1914). _The Philosophical Works of Francis
Bacon_, ed. by J. M. Robertson (1905), is a convenient edition. On the
important thinkers from the time of Machiavelli to the middle of the
eighteenth century, see Harald Hoffding, _A History of Modern
Philosophy_, Vol. I (1900); W. A. Dunning, _A History of Political
Theories from Luther to Montesquieu_ (1905); Paul Janet, _Histoire de
la science politique dans ses rapports avec la morale_, 3d ed., Vol. II
(1887).




PART II

DYNASTIC AND COLONIAL RIVALRY


In the seventeenth century and in the greater part of the eighteenth,
public attention was directed chiefly toward dynastic and colonial
rivalries. In the European group of national states, France was the
most important. Politically the French evolved a form of absolutist
divine-right monarchy, which became the pattern of all European
monarchies, that of England alone excepted. In international affairs
the reigning family of France--the Bourbon dynasty after a long
struggle succeeded in humiliating the rulers of Spain and of Austria--
the Habsburg dynasty. The hegemony which, in the sixteenth century,
Spain had exercised in the newly established state-system of Europe was
now supplanted by that of France. Intellectually, too, Italian
leadership yielded to French, until France set the fashion alike in
manners, morals, and art. Only in the sphere of commerce and trade and
exploitation of lands beyond the seas was French supremacy questioned,
and there not by declining Portugal or Spain but by the vigorous
English nation. France, victorious in her struggle for dynastic
aggrandizement on the continent of Europe, was destined to suffer
defeat in her efforts to secure colonies in Asia and America.

This period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was marked
likewise by the constant decay of old political and social institutions
in Italy and in Germany, by the gradual decline of the might and
prestige of the Ottoman Turks, and by the extinction of the ancient
kingdom of Poland. In their place appeared as great world powers the
northern monarchies of Prussia and Russia, whose royal lines--
Hohenzollerns and Romanovs--were to vie in ambition and prowess, before
the close of the period, with Habsburgs and Bourbons.

Socially, the influence of nobles and clergy steadily declined. As
steadily arose the numbers, the ability, and the importance of the
traders and commercial magnates, the moneyed people, all those who were
identified with the new wealth that the Commercial Revolution was
creating, the lawyers, the doctors, the professors, the merchants,--the
so-called middle class, the _bourgeoisie_, who gradually grew
discontented with the restrictive institutions of their time. Within
the _bourgeoisie_ was the seed of revolution: they would one day in
their own interests overturn monarchy, nobility, the Church, the whole
social fabric. That was to be the death-knell of the old regime--the
annunciation of the nineteenth century.




CHAPTER VI

THE GROWTH OF ABSOLUTISM IN FRANCE AND THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN BOURBONS
AND HABSBURGS, 1589-1661


GROWTH OF ABSOLUTISM IN FRANCE: HENRY IV, RICHELIEU, AND MAZARIN

For the first time in many years France in 1598 was at peace. The Edict
of Nantes, which in that year accorded qualified religious toleration
to the Huguenots, removed the most serious danger to internal order,
and the treaty of Vervins, concluded in the same year with the king of
Spain, put an end to a long and exhausting foreign war. Henry IV was
now free to undertake the internal reformation of his country.

Sorry, indeed, was the plight of France at the close of the sixteenth
century. Protracted civil and foreign wars had produced their
inevitable consequences. The state was nearly bankrupt. Country
districts lay largely uncultivated. Towns were burned or abandoned.
Roads were rough and neglected, and bridges in ruins. Many of the
discharged soldiers turned highwaymen, pillaged farmhouses, and robbed
travelers. Trade was at a standstill and the artisans of the cities
were out of work. During the wars, moreover, great noblemen had taken
many rights into their own hands and had acquired a habit of not
obeying the king. The French crown seemed to be in danger of losing
what power it had gained in the fifteenth century.

That the seventeenth century was to witness not a diminution but a
pronounced increase of royal power, was due to the character of the
French king at this critical juncture. Henry IV (1589-1610) was strong
and vivacious. With his high forehead, sparkling eyes, smiling mouth,
and his neatly pointed beard (_Henri quatre_), he was
prepossessing in looks, while his affability, simplicity, and constant
expression of interest in the welfare of his subjects earned him the
appellation of "Good King Henry." His closest companions knew that he
was selfish and avaricious, but that his quick decisions were likely to
be good and certain to be put in force. Above all, Henry had soldierly
qualities and would brook no disloyalty or disobedience.

[Sidenote: Sully]

Throughout his reign, Henry IV was well served by his chief minister,
the duke of Sully, [Footnote: 1560-1641.] an able, loyal, upright
Huguenot, though avaricious like the king and subject to furious fits
of jealousy and temper. Appointed to the general oversight of financial
affairs, Sully made a tour of inspection throughout the country and
completely reformed the royal finances. He forbade provincial governors
to raise money on their own authority, removed many abuses of tax-
collecting, and by an honest, rigorous administration was able between
1600 and 1610 to save an average of a million livres a year. The king
zealously upheld Sully's policy of retrenchment: he reduced the
subsidies to artists and the grants to favorites, and retained only a
small part of his army, sufficient to overawe rebellious nobles and to
restore order and security throughout the realm. To promote and
preserve universal peace, he even proposed the formation of a World
Confederation--his so-called "Grand Design"--which, however, came to
naught through the mutual jealousies and rival ambitions of the various
European sovereigns. It proved to be much too early to talk
convincingly of general pacifism and disarmament.

[Sidenote: Agricultural Development]

While domestic peace was being established and provision was being made
for immediate financial contingencies, Henry IV and his great minister
were both laboring to increase the resources of their country and
thereby to promote the prosperity and contentment of the people. Sully
believed that the true wealth of the nation lay in farming pursuits,
and, therefore, agriculture should be encouraged even, if necessary, to
the neglect of trade and industry. While the king allowed Sully to
develop the farming interests, he himself encouraged the new commercial
classes.

In order to promote agriculture, Sully urged the abolition of interior
customs lines and the free circulation of grain, subsidized stock
raising, forbade the destruction of the forests, drained swamps,
rebuilt the roads and bridges, and planned a vast system of canals.

On his side, Henry IV was contributing to the wealth of the middle
class. It was he who introduced silkworms and the mulberry trees, on
which they feed, thereby giving an impetus to the industry which is now
one of the most important in France. The beginnings of the industrial
importance of Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles date from the reign of Henry
IV.

The king likewise encouraged commerce. A French merchant marine was
built up by means of royal bounties. A navy was started. Little by
little the French began to compete for trade on the high seas at first
with the Dutch, and subsequently with the English. French trading posts
were established in India; and Champlain was dispatched to the New
World to lay the foundations of a French empire in America. It was
fortunate for France that she had two men like Henry IV and Sully, each
supplementing the work of the other.

The assassination of Henry IV by a crazed fanatic in 1610 threatened
for a time to nullify the effects of his labors, for supreme power
passed to his widow, Marie de' Medici, an ambitious but incompetent
woman, who dismissed Sully and undertook to act as regent for her nine-
year-old son, Louis XIII. The queen-regent was surrounded by worthless
favorites and was hated by the Huguenots, who feared her rigid
Catholicism, and by the nobles, Catholic and Huguenot alike, who were
determined to maintain their privileges and power.

The hard savings of Henry IV were quickly exhausted, and France once
more faced a financial crisis. In this emergency the Estates-General
was again convened (1614). Since the accession of Louis XI (1461), the
French monarchs with their absolutist tendencies had endeavored to
remove this ancient check upon their authority: they had convoked it
only in times of public confusion or economic necessity. Had the
Estates-General really been an effective body in 1614, it might have
taken a position similar to that of the seventeenth-century Parliament
in England and established constitutional government in France, but its
organization and personnel militated against such heroic action. The
three estates--clergy, nobles, and commoners (bourgeois)--sat
separately in as many chambers; the clergy and nobles would neither tax
themselves nor cooperate with the Third Estate; the commoners, many of
whom were Huguenots, were disliked by the court, despised by the First
and Second Estates, and quite out of sympathy with the peasants, the
bulk of the French nation. It is not surprising, under the
circumstances, that the session of 1614 lasted but three weeks and
ended as a farce: the queen-regent locked up the halls and sent the
representatives home--she needed the room for a dance, she said. It was
not until the momentous year of 1789--after a lapse of 175 years--that
the Estates-General again assembled.

After the fiasco of 1614, affairs went from bad to worse. Nobles and
Huguenots contended between themselves, and both against the court
favorites. As many as five distinct uprisings occurred. Marie de'
Medici was forced to relinquish the government, but Louis XIII, on
reaching maturity, gave evidence of little executive ability. The king
was far more interested in music and hunting than in business of state.
No improvement appeared until Cardinal Richelieu assumed the guidance
of affairs of state in 1624. Henceforth, the royal power was exercised
not so much by Louis XIII as by his great minister.

[Sidenote: Cardinal Richelieu]

Born of a noble family of Poitou, Armand de Richelieu (1585-1642), at
the age of twenty-one had been appointed bishop of the small diocese of
Luçon. His eloquence and ability as spokesman for the clergy in the
fatuous Estates-General of 1614 attracted the notice of Marie de'
Medici, who invited him to court, gave him a seat in the royal council,
and secured his nomination as a cardinal of the Roman Church. From 1624
until his death in 1642, Richelieu was the most important man in
France.

With undoubted loyalty and imperious will, with the most delicate
diplomacy and all the blandishments of subtle court intrigue, sometimes
with sternest and most merciless cruelty, Richelieu maintained his
influence over the king and proceeded to destroy the enemies of the
French crown.

[Sidenote: Richelieu's Policies]

Richelieu's policies were quite simple: (1) To make the royal power
supreme in France; (2) to make France predominant in Europe. The first
involved the removal of checks upon royal authority and the triumph of
absolutism; the second meant a vigorous foreign policy, leading to the
humiliation of the rival Habsburgs. In both these policies Richelieu
was following the general traditio