§ 139.17. The dreadful deed, however, completely failed in accomplishing the end in view. Even after 100,000 had been slaughtered there still remained more than ten times that number of Huguenots, who, in possession of their strongholds, occupied positions of great strategical importance. After a brief breathing time of peace, therefore, they were able, on five occasions, in A.D. 1573, 1576, 1577, 1580, to renew the religious civil war,when once and again the truce had been broken by the Catholics. Charles IX. was succeeded by Catharine’s favourite son, Henry III., A.D. 1574-1589, who, joining the most shameless immorality to the narrowest bigotry and asceticism (§ [149, 17]), was no way behind his brother in dissoluteness, and was still more conspicuous for dastardliness and cowardice. Henry Condé had, just immediately after Charles’s death, abjured again the Catholic confession, and put himself at the head of the Huguenot revolt. Henry of Navarre rejoined his old friends two years later, after having in the meantime vied with his brother-in-law and his incestuous wife in frivolity and immorality. He was able to take part successfully in the fifth religious war, in which the Huguenots, supported once more by the German auxiliaries under the Count-palatine John Casimir, secured such advantages, that the court, in the Treaty of Beaulieu, of A.D. 1576, were obliged to grant them complete religious freedom and a larger number of strongholds. But now Henry of Guise, in concert with his brothers Louis, cardinal and Archbishop of Rheims, and Charles, Duke of Mayenne, formed the Holy League, which he compelled the king to join, and renewed the war with increased vigour. In the eighth war since A.D. 1584, which on the part of the Guises was really as much directed against the king’s Huguenot policy as against the Huguenots themselves, Henry was obliged, by the Treaty of Nemours, of A.D. 1585, to declare that the Protestants were deprived of all rights and privileges. In the battle of Coutras, however, in A.D. 1587, Henry of Navarre annihilated the opposing forces. But as he failed to follow up the advantages then secured, the Guises again recruited their strength to such a degree that they were able openly to work for the dethronement of the king. Henry could save himself only by the murder of both the elder Guises at the Diet of Blois. There was now no alternative left him but to cast himself into the arms of the Huguenots, and on this account, at the siege of the capital, he was murdered by the Dominican Clement.Henry of Navarre, as the only legitimate heir, now ascended the throne as Henry IV., A.D. 1589-1610. After a hard struggle, lasting for four years, in which he was supported by England and Germany, while his opponents, headed by the Duke of Mayenne, were aided with money and men by Spain, Savoy, and the pope, he at last decided, in A.D. 1593, to pass over to Catholicism, because, as he said, “Paris is well worth a mass.”He secured, however, for his former co-religionists, by the Edict of Nantes, of 13th April, A.D. 1598, complete liberty of holding religious services in all the cities where previously there had been reformed congregations, as well as thorough equality with the Catholics in all civil rights and privileges, especially in regard to eligibility for all civil and military offices. The fortresses and strongholds hitherto held by them were to be left with them for eight years, and in the Parliament a special “Chamber of the Edict” was instituted, with eight Catholic and eight Protestant members. But, on the other hand, they continued to be under the Catholic marriage laws, were obliged to cease from work on the Catholic festivals, and to pay tithes to the Catholic clergy. After a stubborn resistance on the part of the Parliament of Paris, the university, and the Sorbonne, as well as on that of the bishops, the king, in February, A.D. 1599, secured the incorporation of the edict among the laws of France. On 14th May, A.D. 1610, he was struck down by the dagger of the Feuillant Ravaillac, a fanatical Jesuit. Notwithstanding his many moral shortcomings, France has rightly celebrated him as one of the greatest and best of her kings. With wisdom, prudence, and humanity he wrought unweariedly for the advancement of a commonwealth that had been reduced to the lowest depths. He protected the Protestants in the enjoyment of privileges guaranteed to them, and though he did indeed put upon his old Huguenot friends some gentle pressure to get them to follow his example, he yet honoured those who steadfastly refused. His minister Sully, although it is supposed that he had felt obliged to advise the king to go over to Catholicism, stood himself unhesitatingly true to his profession of the Huguenot faith, while he retained the king’s confidence, and proved his most faithful adviser and administrator during all the negotiations of peace and war.Philip du Plessis Mornay, on the other hand, distinguished even more as a statesman, diplomatist, and field marshal than as a theologian and author,[393] but above all as a Christian and a man in the noblest sense of the word, who, in the belief that evangelical truth would, even in the Catholic church, assert its conquering power, had agreed with the Catholic League to instruct the king in the Catholic faith, and had thus made the act of apostasy appear to him less offensive. But just because the mere presence of a friend of high moral character and true religious principles acted as too sharp a sting to the king’s conscience, he had to submit to be relegated to an honorary post as governor of Saumur, where he became founder of the famous academy which Louis XIV. suppressed in A.D. 1685. Theodore Agrippa d’Aubigné, too, distinguished as a brave warrior in the army of the Huguenots, as well as a historian, poet, and satirist, stood high in favour with the king, though Henry, often roused by his unbending pride, repeatedly expelled him from the court.After Henry’s death D’Aubigné returned to Geneva, where he died in A.D. 1630.[394]
§ 139.18. Poland.—The Reformation had been introduced into Poland first of all by the exiled Bohemian Brethren, and Luther’s writings soon after their appearance were eagerly read in that region. Sigismund I., A.D. 1506-1548, opposed it with all his might. It met with most success in Prussian Poland. Dantzig, in A.D. 1525, drove out the Catholic council. Sigismund went down there himself, had several citizens executed, and restored the old mode of worship in A.D. 1526. But scarcely had he left the town when it again went back to the profession of the Lutheran faith. Elbing and Thorn followed its example. In Poland proper also the new doctrines made way. In spite of all prohibitions many young Poles flocked to Wittenberg, and brought away from it to their native country a glowing enthusiasm for Luther and his teaching. The Swiss Confession had already found entrance there, and the persecutions which Ferdinand of Austria carried on after the Schmalcald war in Bohemia and Moravia led great numbers of Bohemian Brethren to cross over into the Polish territories. Sigismund Augustus, A.D. 1548-1572, was personally favourable to the Reformation. He studied Calvin’s “Institutes,” received letters from him and from Melanchthon, and, in accordance with the decisions of a national assembly at Petrican in A.D. 1555 demanded of the pope a national council, as well as permission for the marriage of priests, the communion in both kinds, the celebration of mass in the vernacular, and abolition of annats. The pope naturally refused to yield, but in A.D. 1556 sent into the country a legate of a despotic and violent temper, called Aloysius Lippomanus, who was replaced in A.D. 1563 by the bland and eloquent Commendone. Both were powerfully supported in their struggle against heresy by the fanatically Catholic cardinal Stanislaus Hosius, Bishop of Ermeland. The Protestant nobility then recalled, in A.D. 1556, their celebrated countryman John à Lasco, who twenty years before had, on account of his evangelical faith, resigned his office as provost of Gnesen and left his fatherland. He had meanwhile taken part in the Reformation of East Friesland, and had acted for several years as preacher at Emden. After that, he had gone, at the call of Cranmer, in A.D. 1550, to England; upon the death of Edward VI., along with a part of his London flock of foreign exiles, had sought refuge in Denmark, which, however, was refused on account of his attachment to Zwingli’s doctrine; and at last settled down at Frankfort-on-the-Maine as pastor to a congregation of French, English, and Dutch exiles. After his return home he endeavoured to bring about a union of the Lutherans and Reformed, in concert with several friends made a translation of the Bible, and died in A.D. 1560. At a general synod at Sendomir, in A.D. 1570, a union was at last effected between the three dissentient parties, by which the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord’s Supper was acknowledged, yet in so indefinite a form that Calvin’s view might also be entertained. The Lutheran opposition at the synod had been suppressed by urgent entreaty, but afterwards broke out again in a still more violent form. At the Synod of Thorn, in A.D. 1595, the Lutheran pastor Paul Gericke was the leader of it; but one of the nobles present held a dagger to his heart, and the synod suspended him from his office as a disturber of the peace. Sigismund Augustus had meanwhile died, in A.D. 1572. During the interregnum that followed, the Protestant nobles formed a confederation, which before the election of a new king succeeded in obtaining a comprehensive religious peace, the Pax dissidentium of A.D. 1573, by means of which Catholics and Protestants were for all time to live together in peace and enjoy equal civil rights. The newly elected king, Henry of Anjou, sought to avoid binding himself by oath to the observance of this peace, but the imperial marshal addressed him in firm and decided language, Si non jurabis, non regnabis. In the following year, however, the new king left Poland in order to mount the French throne as Henry III. Stephen Bathori, A.D. 1576-1586, swore without hesitation to observe the peace, and kept his oath.Under his successor, Sigismund III., a Swedish prince, A.D. 1587-1632, the Protestants had to complain of the infringement of many of their rights, which from this time down to the overthrow of the Polish kingdom, in A.D. 1772, they never again enjoyed.[395]—Continuation, § 164, 4.
§ 139.19. Bohemia and Moravia.—The numerous Bohemian and Moravian Brethren (§ [119, 8]), at whose head was the elder Luke of Prague, greeted the appearance of Luther with the most hopeful joy. By messages and writings, however, which in A.D. 1522-1524 were interchanged between them, some important diversities of view were discovered. Luke disliked Luther’s realistic theory of the Lord’s Supper, continued to hold by the seven sacraments, rejected the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and took special offence at Luther’s view of Christian freedom, which seemed to him to want the necessary rigour of the apostolic discipline of the life and to under-estimate the importance and worth of celibacy and virginity. Luther, on the other hand, charged them with a want of grasp of the doctrine and a Novatian over-estimation of mere outward exercises and discipline. And so these negotiations ended in mutual recrimination, and only after Luke’s death, in A.D. 1528, and the glorious Diet of Augsburg, in A.D. 1530, were they reopened. The Lutheranizing tendency, for which especially the two elders John Roh and John Augusta laboured, now gained the upper hand for two decades. In A.D. 1532 the Brethren presented to the Margrave George of Brandenburg an apology of the doctrine and customs, which was printed at Wittenberg, and had a preface by Luther, in which he expressed himself in very favourable terms about the doctrine of the “Picards,” and only objected to their spiritualizing tendency, of which their doctrine of the supper and of baptism was not altogether free, inasmuch as they, while practising infant baptism, required that each one should on reaching maturity take the vows upon himself and have baptism repeated. Still more favourably did he speak of their confession presented in A.D. 1535 to King Ferdinand, in which they had left out the rebaptizing, substituting for it the solemn imposition of hands as confirmation. When the Brethren at Luther’s request had modified the two articles at which he took offence, their unsatisfactory theory of justification, and that of the wholesomeness, though not necessity, of clerical celibacy, he declared himself thoroughly satisfied, and at their last personal conference, in A.D. 1542, he stretched his hand over the table to Augusta and his companions as the pledge of indissoluble brotherly fellowship, although not agreed in regard to various matters of constitution and discipline. The refusal of the Brethren to fight against their German fellow Protestants in the Schmalcald war led to their king Ferdinand upon its close issuing some penal statutes against them. Driven away into exile in A.D. 1548, many of them went to Poland, the larger number to Prussia, from whence they returned to their native land in A.D. 1574. Meantime matters had there in many respects taken an altogether new turn. In the later years of his reign Ferdinand had become more favourable to the evangelical movement in his hereditary dominions, and Maximilian II., A.D. 1564-1576, gave it an absolutely free course (§ [137, 8]). Thus the Brethren could not only go on from day to day increasing in numbers and in influence, but alongside of them there grew up a genuine Lutheran community and an independent Calvinist body. The Crypto-calvinism which was also at the same time gaining the victory in Saxony (§ [141, 10]) cast its shadow upon the Lutheranizing movement among the Brethren. And this movement told all the more against the Lutheran party there from the circumstance that at an earlier period there had been powerful influences at work, inspired by a national Bohemian spirit, to resist German interference in matters of religion. Since the death of the elder Luke the national party had succeeded more and more in working back to the genuine Bohemian constitution, discipline, and confession of their fathers. At the head of this movement stood John Blahoslaw, from A.D. 1553 deacon of Jungbunzlau, after Luke of Prague and before Amos Comenius (§ 167, 2) the most important champion of the Bohemian-Moravian Confession. To him chiefly are the Brethren indebted for the high development of literary and scientific activity which they manifested during the second half of the century, and his numerous writings, but pre-eminently his translation of the N.T., proved almost as influential and epoch-making for the Bohemian language as Luther’s translation of the Bible did for the written language of Germany. Himself one of the ablest among the very numerous writers of spiritual songs in Bohemian, he was the restorer of the simple and majestic Bohemian chorales. As he had himself, in A.D. 1568, translated the N.T. from the original Greek text, he also undertook, with the help of several younger men of noble gifts, a similar translation of the O.T. and a commentary on the whole Bible. But he died in A.D. 1571, in his forty-eighth year, before the issue of his great work, upon the inception of which he had expended so much thought and care. This great undertaking was completed and published in six volumes between A.D. 1579-1593. The strong spiritual affinity between the society of the Brethren and the Calvinistic church, especially in its doctrine of the supper and in its zeal for rigid church discipline, was meanwhile again brought into prominence, and had led to a more and more decided loosening of attachment to the Lutheran church, and, in spite of the antagonism of its episcopalianism to the Calvinistic presbyterianism, to the formation of closer ties with Calvinism. But now, on the other hand, the common danger that threatened them from Rudolph II., who had been king of Bohemia from A.D. 1575, at the instigation of Jesuits through the Spanish court, led all non-Catholics, of whatever special confession, to draw as closely together as possible. Thus a league came to be formed in the same year in which the Brethren were far outnumbered by Lutherans, Reformed, and Calixtines (§ [119, 7]), by means of which, in the Confessio Bohemica of A.D. 1575, a common symbol was drawn up, and all the four parties were placed under the management of a common consistory. But when, after Maximilian’s death, Rudolph II. proceeded more and more rigorously in his efforts to completely suppress all heresy, the Bohemians rose with one heart, and at last, in A.D. 1609, extorted from him the rescript which gave them absolute religious liberty according to the Bohemian Confession, a common consistory of their own, and an academy at Prague.Bohemia was now an almost completely evangelical country, and scarcely a tenth part of its inhabitants professed attachment to the Catholic faith.[396]—Continuation, §§ 153, 2; 167, 2.
§ 139.20. Hungary and Transylvania.—From A.D. 1524, Martin Cyriaci, a student of Wittenberg, wrought in Hungary for the spread of the true doctrine. King Louis II. threatened its adherents with all possible penalties. But in A.D. 1526 he fell in battle against the Turks at Mohacz. The election of a new king resulted in two claimants taking possession of the field; Ferdinand of Austria secured a footing in the western, and the Woiwode John Zapolya in the eastern provinces. Both sought to suppress the Reformation, in order to win over the clergy to support them. But it nevertheless gained the ascendency, favoured by the political confusions of the time. Matthias Devay, a scholar of Luther, and for a time a resident in his house, from A.D. 1521 preached the gospel at Ofen, having been called thither by several of the leading inhabitants on Melanchthon’s recommendation, and in A.D. 1533 had a Hungarian translation of the Pauline epistles printed at Cracow. In A.D. 1541 Erdösy issued the complete New Testament, which was also the first book printed in Hungary. At a synod at Erdöd, in A.D. 1545, twenty-nine ministers drew up a confession of faith in twelve articles, in agreement with the Augsburg Confession. But also the Swiss doctrine had now found entrance, and won more and more adherents from day to day. These adopted at a council at Czengar, in A.D. 1557, a Calvinistic confession, with decided repudiation of the Zwinglian as well as the Lutheran theory of the Lord’s Supper, describing the latter as an insania sarcophagica. The government of Maximilian II. did not interfere with the progress of the Reformation; but when Rudolph II. attempted to interfere with violent measures, the Protestants rose in revolt under Stephen Bocskai, and compelled the king to grant them complete religious liberty by the Vienna Peace of A.D. 1606. Among the native Hungarians the Reformed confession prevailed, but the German residents remained true to Lutheranism. (Continuation § 153, 3.)—As early as A.D. 1521 merchants had brought into Transylvania from Hermanstadt copies of Luther’s writings. King Louis II. of Hungary, however, carried his persecution of the evangelicals even into this territory, which was continued after his death by Zapolya. In A.D. 1529, however, Hermanstadt ventured to expel all adherents of the Romish church from within its walls. In Cronstadt, the work of the Reformation was carried on from A.D. 1533 by Jac. Honter, who had studied at Basel. Since Zapolya through an agreement with Ferdinand, in A.D. 1538, was assured of possession for his lifetime of Transylvania, he acted more mildly toward the Protestants. After his death the monk Martinuzzi, as Bishop of Grosswardein, assumed the helm of affairs for Zapolya’s son during his minority, oppressing the Protestants with bloody persecutions, while Isabella, Zapolya’s widow, was favourable to them. Martinuzzi therefore handed over the country to Ferdinand, but was assassinated in A.D. 1551. After some years Isabella returned with her son, and a national assembly at Clausenburg, in A.D. 1557, gave an organization to the country as an independent principality, and proclaimed universal religious liberty.The Saxon population continued attached to the Lutheran confession, and the Czecks and Magyars preferred to adopt the Reformed.[397]
§ 139.21. Spain.—The connection brought about between Spain and Germany through the election of Charles V. as emperor led to the very early introduction into the Peninsula of Luther’s doctrine and writings. Indeed many of the theologians and statesmen who went in Charles’ train into Germany returned with evangelical convictions in their hearts, as, e.g., the Benedictine Alphonso de Virves, the fiery Ponce de la Fuente, both court chaplains of the emperor, and his private secretary Alphonso Valdez. A layman, Roderigo de Valer, by earnest study of the Bible attained unto a knowledge of the gospel, and became the instrument of leading many others into the way of salvation. The Inquisition confiscated his goods and condemned him to wear the san benito (§ [117, 2]). Juan Gil, a friend of Valer, Bishop of Tortosa, founded a society for the study of the Bible. The Inquisition deposed him, and only Charles’ favour protected him from the stake; but subsequently his bones were dug up and burnt. Many other prelates also, such as Carranza of Toledo, Guerrero of Granada, Guesta of Leon, Carrubias of Ciudad Roderigo, Agostino of Lerida, Ayala of Segovia, etc., admitted the necessity for a thoroughgoing revision of doctrine, without detaching themselves from the pope and the Romish church; and in this direction they laboured with zeal and success amid the threatenings of the Inquisition. The first Protestant martyr in Spain was Francisco san Romano, a merchant who had become acquainted with Luther’s doctrine at Antwerp. He was led to the stake at Valladolid, in A.D. 1544. Francis Enzina, in A.D. 1543, translated the New Testament. He was cast into prison, and the book prohibited. A complete Spanish Bible was printed by Cassiod. de Reyna at Basel, in A.D. 1569. In Seville and Valladolid first of all, and at a later period also in many other Spanish cities, evangelical congregations held secret services. Even so soon as about A.D. 1550, the Reformation movement threatened to become so general and widespread, that a Spanish historian of that age, Ilesca, in his history of the popes, expresses the conviction that all Spain would have become overrun with heresy if the Inquisition had delayed for three months longer to put an end to the pestilence. But it now applied that remedy in the largest and strongest doses possible. The measures of the Inquisition were specially prompt and vigorous during the reign of Philip II., A.D. 1555-1598. Scarcely a year passed in which there were not at each of the twelve Inquisition courts one or more great autos-de-fé, in which crowds of heretics were burnt. And the remedy was effectual. After two decades the evangelical movement was stamped out. How determinedly the crusade was carried out is shown by the proceedings in the case of the Archbishop of Toledo, Barthol. Carranza. This prelate had published a “Commentary on the Catechism,” in which he expressed a wish to see “the ancient spirit of our forefathers and of the early church revived in its simplicity and purity.” The grand-inquisitor discerned therein Lutheran heresy, and though he bore one of the highest positions in the Spanish church, Carranza was kept close prisoner for eight years in the dungeons of the Inquisition, and after he had at last reached the pope with his appeal, he was kept for nine years in the castle of St. Angelo at Rome. There at last, upon his abjuring sixteen heretical propositions, especially about justification, saint and image worship, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in the Dominican cloister at Orvieto, but died some weeks after, in A.D. 1576, in his seventy-third year. At the Quemadero, the scene of the autos-de-fé of the Madrid Inquisition court, there were till quite recently discernible the traces of the human hecatombs that had there been offered up to the insatiable Moloch of religious fanaticism.The official newspaper of the capital of the 12th April, A.D. 1869, reports how on the removal of the soil for the purpose of lengthening a street, the grim geological archives of the burnings of the Inquisition were laid bare, while with horrifying minuteness it proceeds to describe the maximum reached, and the gradual diminution of these papal atrocities.[398]
§ 139.22. Italy.—The Reformation made progress in Italy in various directions. A large number of the humanists (§ [120, 1]) had in a self-sufficient paganism lost all interest in Christianity, and were just as indifferent toward the Reformation as toward the old church; but another section were inclined to favour a reformation after the style of Erasmus. Both remained in outward connection with the old church. But besides these there were many learned men of a more decided tendency, some of them attempting reforms at their own hand, and so not infrequently rejecting fundamental doctrines of Christianity, such as the various Anti-trinitarians of that age (§ [148]), some who attached themselves to the German, but more frequently to the Swiss reformers. Both brought the reforming ideas before the people by preaching and writing. Almost all the works of the German and Swiss reformers were immediately after their publication circulated in Italy in translations, and under the shield of anonymity scattered broadcast through the land, before the Inquisition laid hold upon them. Among the princely supporters of the Reformation movement, the most prominent was Renata of Este, Duchess of Ferrara, and sister-in-law of the French king Francis, distinguished as much for piety as for culture and learning. Her court was a place of refuge and a rallying point for French and Italian exiles. Calvin stayed some weeks with her in A.D. 1536, and confirmed her in her evangelical faith by personal conversation, and subsequently by epistolary correspondence. Her husband, Hercules of Ferrara, whom she married in A.D. 1534, at first let her do as she liked, but in A.D. 1536 expelled Calvin from his dominions, and had his wife confined, in A.D. 1554, as an obstinate Lutheran heretic, in the old castle of Este. Still she was allowed to return to her husband after she had brought herself to confess to a Romish priest. But when after his death, in A.D. 1560, Alphonso, her son, put before her the alternative of either recanting her faith or leaving the country, she returned to France, and there openly made profession of her faith and attached herself to the Huguenots. Francis of Guise was her son-in-law, and she was subjected on account of her Protestantism to the incessant persecutions of the Guises. She died in A.D. 1575.—We have seen already, in § [135, 3], that the idea had been mooted of a propaganda of Catholic Christians in Italy. With a strong and lively conviction of the importance of the doctrine of justification by faith they made it the central point of religious life and knowledge, and thus, without directly opposing it, they inspired new life into the Catholic church. The first germ of this movement appeared in the so-called Oratory of Divine Love, an association formed in the beginning of A.D. 1520 at Rome, after the apostolic model, for mutual religious edification, consisting of fifty or sixty young, eager men, mostly of the clerical order. One of the original founders was Jac. Sadolet, who in this spirit expounded the Epistle to the Romans. To it also belonged such men as the founder of the Theatine order (§ [149, 7]), Cajetan of Thiene, and John Pet. Caraffa, Bishop of Chieta, and afterwards Pope Paul IV., who sought the church’s salvation rather in the practice of a rigorous inquisitorial discipline. The sack of Rome (§ [132, 2]) broke up this association in A.D. 1527, but spread its efforts over all Italy. The fugitive English cardinal, Reginald Pole, attached himself in Venice to the party of Sadolet. In Ferrara there was Italy’s most famous poetess, Vittoria Colonna; at Modena the Bishop Morone, who, although as papal legate in Germany, a zealous defender of the papal claims (§§ [135, 2]; [137, 5]), yet in his own diocese even subsequently aided the evangelical tendencies of his companions with much ardour, and hence under Paul IV. was cast into the Inquisition, to come out only under Pius V., after undergoing a three years’ imprisonment. In Naples there was Juan Valdez, Alphonso’s brother, secretary of the Spanish viceroy of Naples, and author of the “One Hundred and Ten Divine Considerations,” as well as a book of Christian doctrine for the young in the Spanish language. In Siena there was Aonio Paleario, professor of classical literature, famous as poet and orator. In Rome there was the papal notary Carnesecchi, formerly the personal friend of Clement VII. In other places there were many more. The most conspicuous representative of the party was the Venetian Gasparo Contarini (§ [135, 3]), who died in A.D. 1542.
§ 139.23. The tendency of the thought of these men is most clearly and fully set forth in the little work, “The Benefit of Christ’s Death.” At Venice, where it first appeared in A.D. 1542, within six years 60,000 copies of this tract were issued, and afterwards innumerable reprints and translations of it were circulated. Since Aonio Paleario had written, according to his own statement, a tract of a similar character, he came to be generally regarded as its author, until Ranke discovered a notice among the acts of the Inquisition, according to which the heretical jewel was to be assigned to a monk of San Severino in Naples, a disciple of Juan Valdez, and afterwards Benrath succeeded in proving his name to be Don Benedetto of Mantŏva. The conciliatory spirit of these friends of moderate reform gave grounds for large expectation, all the more that Paul III. seemed all through his life to favour the movement. He nominated Contarini, Sadolet, Pole, and Caraffa cardinals, instituted in A.D. 1536 a congregatio præparatoria, and made Contarini the representative of the curia at the religious Conference of Regensburg in A.D. 1541 (§ [135, 3]), which sought to bring about the conciliation of the German Protestants. But just about this time, probably not without the co-operation of the Jesuit order founded in A.D. 1540, a split occurred which utterly blasted all these grand expectations. The zeal of Caraffa set himself at the head of the opposition, and Paul III., in accordance with his proposal in his bull Licet ab initio of A.D. 1542, reorganized the defunct Roman Inquisition after the Spanish model as the central institution for the uprooting of the Protestant heresy. This “Holy Office” henceforth pursued its violent career under the pontificate of Caraffa himself, who mounted the papal throne in A.D. 1555 as Paul IV. Subsequently, too, under the obstinate, fanatical, and hence canonized monkish pope Pius V., from A.D. 1566 every suspicion of Protestantism was rigorously and mercilessly punished with imprisonment, torture, the galleys, the scaffold, and the stake. So energetically was the persecution carried out against the adherents and the patrons of the Reformation, that by the end of the century no trace of its presence was any longer to be found within the bounds of Italy. One of the last victims of this persecution was Aonio Paleario. After he had been for three years in the prisons of the Inquisition, he was strangled and then burnt. A similar fate had previously befallen Carnesecchi. How thoroughgoing and successful the Holy Office was in the suppression of books suspected of a heretical taint appears from the war of extermination carried on against that liber perniciosissimus, “On the Benefit of Christ’s Death.” In spite of the hundred thousand copies of the book that had been in circulation, the Inquisition so carefully and consistently pursued its task of extirpation, that thirty years after its appearance it was no longer to be found in the original and after a hundred no translation even was supposed to exist. In Rome alone a pile of copies were burnt which reached to the height of a house.In A.D. 1853 a copy of the original was found in Cambridge, and was published in London, 1855, with an English translation made by the Duke of Devonshire in A.D. 1548.[399]
§ 139.24. Among the Italian reformers who shook themselves entirely free from the papacy, and only by flight into foreign lands escaped prison, torture, and the stake, the following are the most important.
- Bernardino Ochino, from A.D. 1538 general of the Capuchins, became by his glowing eloquence one of the most popular of Italian preachers. The study of the Bible had led him to accept the doctrine of justification when, in A.D. 1536, he was called to Naples as Lenten preacher. He was there brought into close contact with Juan Valdez, who confirmed him in his evangelical tendencies, and made him acquainted with the writings of the German reformers. In order to escape arrest and the Inquisition, he fled in A.D. 1542 to Geneva, and wrought successively at Basel, Augsburg, Strassburg, and London. After the death of Edward VI. he was obliged to make his escape from England, went as preacher to Zürich, adopted Socinian views, and even justified polygamy.He was consequently deposed from his office, fled to Poland, and died in Moravia in A.D. 1565.[400]
- Peter Martyr Vermilius, an Augustinian monk and popular preacher. The study of the writings of Erasmus, Zwingli, and Bucer led him to quit the Catholic church. He fled to Zürich, became professor in Strassburg, and on Cranmer’s invitation came to England, where he was made professor in Oxford. When Mary came to the throne, he returned to Strassburg, and died as professor at Zürich in A.D. 1562.
- Peter Paul Vergerius in A.D. 1530 accompanied Campegius to the Diet of Augsburg as papal legate (§ [132, 6]); was sent again, in A.D. 1535, to Germany by Paul III., in order to get the German princes to agree to the holding of the council at Mantua (§ [134, 1]), and on this point he conferred personally but unsuccessfully with Luther. On his return home, in A.D. 1536 the pope conferred upon him, in recognition of his faithful service, the bishopric of his native city, Capo d’Istria. In A.D. 1540 we find him again present during the religious conference at Worms (§ [135, 2]), where his conciliatory efforts called down on him the displeasure of the pope and the suspicion of his enemies as a secret adherent of Luther. In order to clear himself of suspicion he studied Luther’s writings with the intention of controverting them, but had his heart opened to gospel truths, and was obliged to betake himself to flight. At Padua the dreadful end of the jurist Speira, who had abjured his evangelical convictions, and feeling that he had committed the unpardonable sin died amid the most fearful agonies of conscience, made an indelible impression upon him. He now, in A.D. 1548, formally joined the evangelical church, wrought for a long time in the country of the Grisons, not as a member of the Reformed but of the Lutheran church, and died as professor at Tübingen in A.D. 1565.
- The Piedmontese Cœlius Secundus Curio was the youngest of a family of twenty-three, and was early left an orphan. He studied at Turin, where an Augustinian monk, Jerome Niger, made him acquainted with the writings of Luther and others. Unweariedly devoted to spreading the gospel in the various cities of Italy, he was repeatedly subjected by the persecution of the Inquisition to severe imprisonment, but always managed to escape in almost a miraculous way. At last he found, in A.D. 1542, on the recommendation of the Duchess Renata, an asylum in Switzerland, first of all in Bern; then he taught in Lausanne for four years, and in Basel for twenty-two. He died at Basel in A.D. 1569. His latitudinarian theology gave no offence among the liberal-minded folk of Basel, but he was looked upon with much displeasure by the theologians of Geneva, whose prosecutions of heretics he had condemned; and even from Tübingen, Vergerius, who had been his intimate friend, brought the charge of Pelagianism against him.
- Galeazzo Carraccioli, Marquis of Vico, on his mother’s side a nephew of Paul IV., was led by intercourse with Juan Valdez and the preaching of Peter Martyr to abandon the gay, worldly life of the Neapolitan court for one of religious earnestness and devotion, and by means of a visit to Germany in company with the emperor he was confirmed in his evangelical convictions. In order to be able to live in the undisturbed profession of his faith, he fled, in A.D. 1551, to Geneva. Neither the tears nor the curses of his aged father, who had hurried after him to that place, nor the promise of indulgence from his papal uncle, nor the complaining, the tears, and despair of his tenderly loved wife and children, whom at great risk he had visited at Vico in A.D. 1558, were able to shake the steadfastness of his faith. But equally in vain were his incessant entreaties and tears to induce his wife and children to come and join him on some neutral territory, where he might be allowed to follow the evangelical and they the Catholic confession. On the ground of this obstinate and persistent refusal, the Genevan consistory, with Calvin at its head, at last granted him the divorce that he claimed, and in A.D. 1560 Carraccioli entered into a second marriage. Down to his death, in A.D. 1586, by his active and industrious life he afforded a pattern, and by his successful labours he proved a powerful support to the Italian congregation in Geneva, whose pastor, Balbani, raised to him a well deserved memorial in the history of his life, which he published in Geneva in A.D. 1587.
- To the sketch of these noble reformers we may now add the name of a woman who is well deserving of a place alongside of them for her singular classical culture, her rich poetic endowment, and her noble and beautiful life. Fulvia Olympia Morata, of Ferrara, in her sixteenth year began to deliver public lectures in her native city, where she enjoyed the friendship and favour of the Duchess Renata. She married a German physician, Andrew Grunthler, went with him to his home at Schweinfurt, and there attached herself to the Protestant church. When that city was plundered by the Margrave Albert in A.D. 1553 (§ [137, 4]), they lost all their property.She died in A.D. 1555 at Heidelberg, where Grunthler had been appointed professor of medicine.[401]
§ 139.25. The Protestantizing of the Waldensians (§ [108, 10]).—The news of the Reformation caused great excitement among the Waldensians. Even as early as A.D. 1520 the Piedmontese barba, or minister, Martin of Lucerne, undertook a journey to Germany, and brought back with him several works of the reformers. In A.D. 1530 the French Waldensians sent two delegates, George Morel and Peter Masson, who conferred verbally and in writing with Œcolampadius at Basel, and with Bucer and Capito at Strassburg. The result was, that in A.D. 1532 a synod was held in the Piedmontese village of Chauvoran, in the valley of Angrogna, at which the two Genevan theologians Farel and Saunier were present. A number of narrow-minded prejudices that prevailed among the old Waldensians were now abandoned, such as the prohibition against taking oaths, the holding of magisterial offices, the taking of interest, etc.; and several Catholic notions to which they had formerly adhered, such as auricular confession, the reckoning of the sacraments as seven, the injunction of fasts, compulsory celibacy, the doctrine of merits, etc., were abandoned as unevangelical, while the Reformed doctrine of predestination was adopted. On this foundation the complete Protestantizing of the whole Waldensian community now made rapid progress, but called down upon them from every side bloody persecutions. In Provence and Dauphiné there were, in A.D. 1545, four thousand murdered, and twenty-two districts devastated with fire. Their remnants got mixed up with the French Reformed. When the Waldensian colonies in Calabria were told of the Protestantizing of their Piedmontese brethren, they sent, in A.D. 1559, a delegate to seek a pastor for them from Geneva. Ludovico Pascale, by birth a Piedmontese Catholic, who had studied theology at Geneva, was selected for this mission; but soon after his arrival he was thrown into prison at Naples, and from thence carried off to Rome, where in A.D. 1560 he went with all the martyr’s joy and faith to the stake erected for him by the Inquisition. In the trials of this man Rome for the first time came to understand the significance and the attitude of the Calabrian colonies, and now the grand-inquisitor, Alexandrini, with some Dominicans, was sent for their conversion or extermination. The flourishing churches were in A.D. 1561 completely rooted out, amid scenes of almost incredible atrocity. The men who escaped the stake were made to toil in the Spanish galleys, while their wives and children were sold as slaves. In Piedmont, the duke, after vain military expeditions for their conversion, which the Waldensians, driven to arms had successfully withstood, was obliged to allow them, in the Peace of Cavour of A.D. 1561, a restricted measure of religious liberty. But when the violent attempts to secure conversions did not cease, they bound themselves together, in A.D. 1571, in the so-called “Union of the Valleys,” by which they undertook to defend one another in the exercise of their evangelical worship.—Continuation, § 153, 5.