Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

BREACH OF CHARLES WITH ROME.—The emperor's assuming to regulate the affairs of religion was regarded with disfavor at Rome. There had been a constant call for a general council to adjust the religious controversies. Rome, from fear of imperial influence, and for other reasons, had opposed the measure. At length, in 1545, the famous Council of Trent assembled. The emperor wanted that body to begin with measures for the reformation of abuses. He looked for co-operation in his scheme for uniting the parties in Germany. But the council took another path: it began with anathemas against the heretical doctrines. Charles found himself at variance with the policy of Rome, at the moment when he was trying to bring Germany to submission.

DISAFFECTION OF MAURICE.—The emperor's course in Germany produced general alarm. He separated the Netherlands from the jurisdiction of the empire, but settled the succession in the government in the house of Hapsburg. He drove the Diet into other measures which looked towards the acquiring of military supremacy for himself in Germany. He violated his pledges respecting the two captive princes. Philip of Hesse, the father-in-law of Maurice, he treated with great severity and indignity. Threats were thrown out by the counselors of Charles against the other princes, and even against Maurice, who complained of the treatment of Philip, and was sore under the load of unpopularity that rested on him on account of his warfare against his co-religionists, by whom he was considered another Judas.

THE PEACE OF AUGSBURG.—Maurice laid his plans with secrecy and with masterly skill. He secured the coöperation of other German princes. He concluded an alliance with Henry II. of France. He arranged with Magdeburg, which he had been besieging, to make it a place of refuge if there should be need of an asylum. When all was ready, without having excited any suspicion on the part of Charles, he suddenly took the field, marched southward with an army that increased as he advanced, crossed the Alps, and forced the emperor, tormented with the gout, to fly hastily from Innsbruck (1552). The captive princes were released. It was decided that Germany was not to be ruled by Spanish soldiery. The dream of imperial domination vanished. The Protestants were promised by Ferdinand of Austria, in the name of his brother, toleration, and equality of rights. At the Diet of Augsburg in 1555, the Religious Peace was concluded. Every prince was to be allowed to choose between the Catholic religion and the Augsburg Confession, and the religion of the prince was to be that of the land over which he reigned: that is, each government was to choose the creed for its subjects. Ferdinand put in the "ecclesiastical reservation," which provided that if the head of an ecclesiastical state should become a Lutheran, he should resign his benefice. He also declared that the Lutheran subjects of ecclesiastical princes were not to be disturbed. The "reservation" was to please the Catholics: the additional provision was to meet the wishes of the Protestants. Neither stood on the same basis as the other part of the treaty.

From Maurice the electoral dignity descended in the Albertine line of Saxon princes. The Ernestine line retained Weimar, Gotha, etc.

CHAPTER IV. CALVINISM IN GENEVA: BEGINNING OF THE CATHOLIC COUNTER-REFORMATION.

CALVIN.—Second in reputation to Luther only, among the founders of Protestantism, is John Calvin. He was a Frenchman, born in 1509, and was consequently a child when the Saxon Reformation began. He was keen and logical in his mental habit, with a great organizing capacity, naturally of a retiring temper, yet fearless, and endued with extraordinary intensity and firmness of will. A more finished scholar than Luther, he lacked his geniality and tenderness, and his imaginative power. Calvin first studied for the priesthood at Paris; but when his father determined to make him a jurist, he studied law at Orleans and Bourges. Espousing the Protestant doctrines, he was obliged to fly from Paris, and, when still young, published his Institutes of the Christian Religion, in which he expounded the Protestant creed in a systematic although fervid way. In his type of theology, he laid much stress on the sovereignty of God, and predestination; and taught a view of the Lord's Supper not so far from that of the old Church as the doctrine of Zwingli, but farther removed from it than was the doctrine of Luther.

THE GENEVAN GOVERNMENT.—In 1536, reluctantly yielding to the exhortations of Farel, a French preacher of the Protestant doctrine at Geneva, Calvin established himself in that city. Geneva was a fragment of the old kingdom of Burgundy. The dukes of Savoy claimed a temporal authority in the city, which was subject to its bishop. The authority of the dukes was overthrown by a revolution, and power passed from the bishop into the hands of the people (1533). The change was effected with the aid of Berne and Freiburg. There had been two parties in Geneva,—the party of the "Confederates," who were for striking hands with the Swiss, and the party of the "Mamelukes," adherents of the dukes. The civil was followed by an ecclesiastical revolution. Protestantism, with the aid of Berne, was legally established (1535). Geneva was a prosperous, gay, and dissolute city. Farel, a popular orator of striking power, unsparing in denunciation, found the people impatient of the restraints that the new religious system which they had adopted laid upon them. The regulations as to doctrine, worship, and discipline, which Calvin and his associates proceeded to introduce, were so distasteful, that the preachers were expelled by the Council and by the Assembly of Citizens from the place. After he had been absent three years, Calvin, in consequence of the increase of disorder and vice, and the distraction occasioned by contending factions, was recalled, and remained in Geneva until his death. He became the virtual lawgiver of the city. He framed a system of ecclesiastical and civil government. It was an ecclesiastical state, in which orthodoxy of belief, and purity of conduct, were not only inculcated by systematic teaching, but enforced by stringent enactments. Offenses comparatively trivial were punished by strict and severe penalties. To the system of church discipline, stretching over the life of every individual, and carried out by the civil magistrates in alliance with the pastors, there was much opposition, which led to outbreakings of violent resistance. But the supporters of Calvin were reinforced by numerous Protestant refugees from France. The improvement of the city in morals and in public order was signal. In the end, Calvin, who was as firm as a rock, triumphed over all opposition. Geneva became a place of resort for exiles and students from various countries. By his writings and correspondence, Calvin's influence spread far and wide. In the affairs of the French Protestants, in particular, his influence was predominant.

SERVETUS.—The Reformers were not, any more than their adversaries, advocates of liberty in religious beliefs and professions. A melancholy example of the prevailing idea, that it was the duty of the civil authority to inflict penalties upon heresy, is the case of Michael Servetus. A Spaniard by birth, with a remarkable aptitude for natural science and medicine, adventurous and fickle, he had published books in which doctrines received by both the great divisions of the Church, especially the doctrine of the Trinity, were assailed. He escaped out of the hands of the Catholics, and came to Geneva. There he was tried for heresy and blasphemy, and was burned at the stake (1553). This was at a time when Calvin was in the midst of his contest with the "Libertines," the party actuated by hostility to him. They appear to have stood behind Servetus in his defiant attitude towards the Genevan authorities.

INFLUENCE OF CALVINISM.—The personal influence of Calvin was directly exerted upon the more cultured and educated. His religious system has wielded a great power, not only on this class, but also over the common people in different countries. Calvinism was never awed by monarchical authority. Like the Church of Rome, it always refused to subordinate the Church and religion to the civil power. It numbered among its votaries many men of dauntless courage and of unbending fidelity to their principles.

THE CATHOLIC REACTION.—The first effectual resistance to the spread of Protestant opinions was made in Italy. In that country, there was opposition to the papacy from those who saw in it an instrument of political disunion, and also from some who were aggrieved by ecclesiastical abuses. The prevailing feeling, however, was that of pride in the papacy, which, in other countries, was attacked as an Italian institution. The humanist learning had done much to undermine belief in the old religious system. In the train of the new studies, came much indifference and infidelity. The books of the Protestant leaders, however, were widely circulated. There were not a few sincere converts to the new doctrine in the cities; but they were chiefly confined to the educated class, and to persons in high station. It took no root among the common people. After the time of the Medici popes, a new spirit of faith and devotion awoke in circles earnestly devoted to the papacy and to the Church. There was at Rome an "Oratory of Divine Love,"—a group of persons who met together for mutual edification. In this class were some, like Contarini, afterwards a cardinal, who were not wholly without sympathy with the Lutheran doctrine as to faith and justification; but out of the same class came others who led in the great Catholic Reaction, which, while it aimed at a rigid reform in morals, was inflexibly hostile to all innovations in doctrine, and was bent on regaining for the Church the ground that had been lost.