[14] This went through seventy-seven editions (fourteen in English) before 1630, and in nearly all the languages of Europe, and was one of four Catechisms, one of which was required of all Oxford undergraduates in 1578. It was adopted by the Scotch, Huguenot, French-Swiss, and Walloon (Dutch) churches, and was widely used in Holland, England, and America. (See "Calvin and Calvinism," in Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education, vol. I.)
[15] By 1560 the Calvinists had two thousand houses for religious worship in France, and demanded religious freedom. In 1562 the persecutions began in earnest, and for the next thirty-six years religious warfare ruled in France. In 1598 the Edict of Nantes established religious freedom, though this was revoked in 1685.
[16] Even the celebrated Peace of Augsburg (1555) which left to each German prince and each town and knight the liberty to choose between the beliefs of the Roman Church and the Lutheran, provided only for religious freedom for the rulers, and only one alternative. Calvinists, for example, hated equally by Catholic and Lutheran, were not included. So deeply was the idea of Church and State as inseparable embedded in the minds of men that no provision was made for the religious freedom of subjects. This was a much later evolution, coming first in America.
[17] In the proposals for the League of Nations Covenant, made at the conclusion of the World War, in 1919, religious freedom for all persons in any State in the League was finally decided to be a necessary principle for any world league.
[18] Paulsen, Fr., German Education, Past and Present, pp. 96-97.
[19] The terms atheist and atheism now arose, as the modern substitutes for excommunication and imprisonment, and during the next two centuries these were applied, by the churchmen of the time, to almost every prominent philosopher and scientist and independent thinker.
[20] Very severe measures were enacted to prevent the spread of the contagion of heresy. All Protestant literature was forbidden circulation in Catholic lands. The printing-press, as a disseminator of heresy, was placed under strict license. Certain books were ordered burned. Perhaps the most extreme and ruthless measure was the prohibition, under penalty of death, of the reading of the Bible. That this harsh act was carried out the record of martyrs shows. As one example may be mentioned the sister of the Flemish artist Matsys and her husband, he being decapitated and she buried alive in the square fronting the cathedral at Louvain, in 1543, for having been caught reading the sacred Book.
CHAPTER XIII
[1] Dr. Philip Schaff, the Church historian, says: "Schleiermacher reduced the whole difference between Romanism and Protestantism to the formula, 'Romanism makes the relation of the individual to Christ depend on his relation to the Church: Protestantism, vice versa, makes the relation of the individual to the Church depend on his relation to Christ.'" (Quoted by G. B. Adams, from a pamphlet, Luther Symposiac, Union Seminary, 1883.)
[2] The importance of writing before the days of printing can readily be appreciated. Just as the monk was carefully trained to copy manuscript, so the clerk for a city or a business house needed to be carefully trained to read and write. Writing formed a distinct profession, there being the "city writer" (city clerk, we say), Latin and vernacular secretaries, traveling writers, writing teachers, etc. Writing masters sometimes taught reading also, but usually not. In some French cities the guild of writing masters was granted an official monopoly of the privilege of teaching writing in the city.