Church History (Volumes 1-3)

by J. H. Kurtz

§ 139.12. The Netherlands.—By the marriage of Mary of Burgundy, the heiress of Charles the Bald, with Maximilian I., in A.D. 1478, the Netherlands passed over to the house of Hapsburg, and after Maximilian’s death, in A.D. 1519, went to his grandson Charles V. Even in the previous period the ground was broken in these regions for the introduction of the Reformation of the 16th century by means of the Brothers of the Common Life (§ [112, 9]) and the Dutch precursors of the Reformation (§ [119, 10]), working as they did among an intrepid and liberty loving people. The writings of Luther were introduced at a very early date into Holland, and the first martyrs from the Lutheran Confession (§ [128, 1]) were led to the stake at Antwerp, in A.D. 1523. The alliance with France and Switzerland, however, was the occasion of subsequently securing the triumph of the Reformed Confession (see § [160, 1]). But fanatical Anabaptists soon followed in the wake of the reform movement, and sent forth their emissaries into Germany and Switzerland. As the emperor had here an authority as absolute as his heart could desire, he proceeded to execute unrelentingly the edict of Worms, and multitudes of witnesses for the gospel as well as fanatical sectaries were put to death by the sword and at the stake. Still more dreadful was the havoc committed by the Inquisition after Charles’ abdication, in A.D. 1555, under his son and successor Philip II. of Spain, which had for its aim the overthrow alike of ecclesiastical and political liberty. In order the more successfully to withstand the Reformation, the four original bishoprics were increased by the addition of fourteen new bishoprics, and three were raised into archbishoprics, Utrecht, Mechlin, and Cambray. But even these measures failed in securing the end desired, because the Dutch, even those who hitherto had remained faithful to the Romish Church, saw in them simply an instrument for advancing Spanish despotism.—In A.D. 1523 Luther’s translation of the N.T. had already been rendered into Dutch and printed at Amsterdam. In A.D. 1545 Jacob van Liesfield translated the whole Bible, and was for this sent to the scaffold in A.D. 1545. A Calvinistic symbol was set forth in A.D. 1562 in the Belgic Confession. The league formed by the nobles, in A.D. 1566, to offer resistance to the tyranny of the Spaniards, to which their oppressors gave the contemptuous designation of the Beggars—a name which they themselves adopted as a title of honour—increased in strength and importance from day to day, and the people, thirsting for revenge, tore down churches, images, and altars. The prudent regent, however, Margaret of Parma, Philip’s half-sister, would have been more successful in preventing an outburst of rebellion by her conciliatory manœuvres, had her brother given her greater freedom of action. Instead of doing so he sent to her aid, in A.D. 1587, the terrible Duke of Alva, with a standing army of 10,000 Spaniards. The “Bloody Council” instituted by him for stamping out the revolt now began its horrible proceedings, sending thousands upon thousands to the rack and the scaffold. The regent, protesting against such acts, demanded her recall, and Alva was put in her place. The bloody tribunal moved now from city to city; all the leading throughfares were covered with victims hanging from gibbets, and when Alva at last, in A.D. 1573, was at his own request recalled, he could boast of having carried out in six years 18,600 executions. Meanwhile the great Prince of Orange, William the Silent, formerly royal governor of the Dutch Provinces, but since A.D. 1568 a fugitive under the ban, had now openly signified his adhesion to Protestantism, and in 1572 placed himself at the head of the revolt. After gaining several victories by land and by sea, he succeeded, in the so called Pacification of Ghent, of A.D. 1576, in uniting almost all the provinces, Protestant and Catholic, under a resolution to exercise toleration to one another and show resistance to the common foe. The new governor, Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, managed indeed to detach the southern Catholic provinces from the league, but all the more closely did the seven northern provinces bind themselves together in the Union of Utrecht of A.D. 1579, promising to fight to the end for their religious and political liberty. William’s truest friend, counsellor, and director of his political actions, since the formation of the league of A.D. 1566, was Philip van Marnix, Count of St. Aldegonde. He had drawn up the articles of the league, and was equally celebrated as a statesman and soldier, and as theologian, satirist, orator, and poet. He was pre-eminently an ardent patriot, and an enthusiastic adherent of Calvin’s Reformation. He had been himself a pupil of the great Genevan. Besides a spirited material version of the Psalter, his chief satirico-theological work was “The Beehive of the Holy Roman Church,” written in the Flemish dialect.—After William’s assassination by the hand of a Catholic, in A.D. 1584, he was succeeded by his son Maurice, who after long years of bloody conflict succeeded, in A.D. 1609, in completely freeing his country from the Spanish yoke.[391]

§ 139.13. France.—The Reformation in France had its beginning from Wittenberg, but subsequently the Genevan reformers obtained a dominating influence. Even in A.D. 1521, the Sorbonne issued a Determinatio super doctr. Luth., pronouncing Luther’s teaching and writings heretical, which Melanchthon in the same year answered with unusual vigour in his Apologia adv. furiosum Parisiensium theologastrorum decretum.Everything depended upon the attitude which the young king Francis I., A.D. 1515-1547, might assume in reference to the various religious parties. His love of humanist studies, now flourishing in France, whose zealous promoter and protector he was against the attacks of the scholastic Sorbonne (§ [120, 8]), as well as the traditional policy of his family in ecclesiastical matters since the time of St. Louis (§ [96, 21]), seemed to favour the hope that he would not prove altogether hostile to the ideas of the Reformation. But even as early as A.D. 1516 he had, in his concordat with the pope (§ [110, 14]), surrendered the acquisitions of the Basel Council by the revocation of the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII., and in this way, by the right given him to nominate all the bishops and abbots, he obtained a power over all the clergy of his realm which was too much in accordance with his dynastic ideas to allow of his sacrificing it in favour of the Lutheran autonomy in the management of the church, let alone the yet more radical demands of the Calvinistic constitution. Even in his antagonism to the emperor (§§ [126, 5], [6]; [133, 7]), which led him to befriend in a very decided manner the German Protestants, his interests crossed one another, inasmuch as he required to retain the goodwill of the pope. Suppression of Protestantism in his own land and the fostering of it in Germany were thus the aims of his crooked policy. He did indeed for a time entertain the idea of introducing a moderate Reformation into France after the Erasmian model, in order to secure closer attachment to and union with German Protestantism. He entered into negotiations with Philip the Magnanimous, and had Melanchthon invited in A.D. 1535 to attend a conference on these matters in France. Melanchthon was not indisposed to go, but was interdicted by his prince the elector, who feared lest he might make too great concessions. And just about this time fanatically violent pamphlets and placards were published, which were even thrown into the royal apartments, and thus the anger of the king was roused to the utmost pitch. The persecutions, which, from A.D. 1524, had already brought many isolated witnesses to the scaffold and the stake, now assumed a systematic and general character. In A.D. 1535, an Inquisition tribunal was set up, with members nominated by the pope, and as supplementary thereto there was instituted in the Parliament of Paris the so-called chambre ardente: the former drew up the process against the heretics, the latter pronounced and executed the sentence. Thousands of heroic confessors died under torture, on the gallows, by sword, or by fire.Under Henry II., A.D. 1547-1559, who continued his father’s crooked policy, the chambre ardente became more and more active, and the cruelty of the persecution increased. Among the sworn foes of the Reformation, Diana of Poitiers, an old love of his father’s, had for a time the greatest influence over the king. He raised her to the rank of duchess. With diabolic satisfaction she gloated upon the spectacle of autos-de-fé carried out at her request, and enriched herself with the confiscated goods of the victims. Side by side with her, inspired by a like hate of Protestantism, stood the great marshal and all-powerful minister of state, the Constable Montmorency. These two were further backed up by all the influence of the powerful ducal family of the Guises, a branch of a Lorraine house naturalized in France, consisting of six brothers, at their head the two eldest, the Cardinal Charles of Lorraine, Archbishop of Rheims, who died in A.D. 1574, and Francis, the conqueror of Calais. The least influential in the league at that time was the queen, Catharine de Medici.

§ 139.14. In spite of all persecutions, the Reformed church made rapid progress, especially in the southern districts.Its adherents came to be known by the name of Huguenots, meaning originally Leaguers, Covenanters, on account of their connection with Geneva. A popular etymology of the word derives it from the nightly assemblies in a locality haunted by the spirit of King Hugo. Calvin and Beza, as sons of France, assisted the young church with counsel and help. But even within the bounds of the kingdom it had very important political supporters. Certain members of the house of Bourbon, a powerful branch of the royal family, Anton, who married the brilliant heiress of Navarre, Jeanne d’Albret, and his brother Louis de Condé, had attached themselves to the Protestant cause. Also other distinguished personages, e.g. the noble Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, a nephew of Montmorency, and several prominent members of Parliament, were enthusiastically devoted to Protestantism, and, withdrawing from the frivolous and licentious court, gave to the profession of the reformed faith a wide reputation for strict morality and deep piety. The first general synod of the reformed church was held in Paris from 25th to 28th May, A.D. 1559. It adopted a Calvinistic symbol, the Confessio Gallicana, and, as a directory for the constitution and discipline of the church, forty articles, also inspired by the spirit of Calvin.—Henry II. was followed in succession by his three sons, Francis, Charles, and Henry, all of whom died without issue.Under Francis II., A.D. 1559, 1560, who ascended the throne in his sixteenth year, the two Guises, the uncles of his queen Mary Stuart, held unlimited sway and gave abundance of work to the chambre ardente. A conspiracy directed against them in A.D. 1560 led to the execution of 1,200 persons implicated in it. Even the two Bourbons were cast into prison, and the younger condemned to death. The king’s early death, however, prevented the execution of the sentence.The queen-mother, Catharine de Medici, now succeeded in breaking off the yoke of the Guises and securing to herself the regency during the minority of her son Charles IX., A.D. 1560-1574. But the attempts of the Guises to undermine her authority obliged her to seek supporters meanwhile among the Protestants. Coligny was able in A.D. 1560 to demand religious toleration of the imperial Parliament, and succeeded at last so far that in A.D. 1561 an edict was issued abolishing capital punishment for heresy. In order to bring about wherever that was possible an understanding between the two great religious parties, a five weeks’ religious conference was held in September of that same year in the Abbey of Poissy, near Paris, to which on the evangelical side Beza from Geneva and Peter Martyr from Zürich, besides many other theologians, were invited. On the Catholic side, the Cardinal of Lorraine represented the doctrine of his church, and subsequently also the general of the Jesuits, Lainez. The proceedings, in which Beza’s learning, eloquence, and praiseworthy courtesy toward his opponents had great weight, were concentrated on the doctrines of the Church and the Lord’s Supper, but yielded no result. In order that they might be able to inflame the Lutherans and the Reformed against one another, the Catholics endeavoured to bring forward supporters of the Augsburg Confession into the discussions on those points. Five German theologians were actually brought forward, among them Jac. Andreä of Württemberg, but too late to take part in the conference. On 17th January, A.D. 1562, the regent issued an edict, by which the Protestants were allowed to hold religious services outside of the towns, and also to have meetings of synod under the supervision of royal commissioners.

§ 139.15. The rage of the Guises and their fanatical party at this edict knew no bounds. Francis of Guise swore to cut it up with his sword, and on 1st March, A.D. 1562, at Passy in Champagne, he fell upon the Huguenots assembled there for worship in a barn, and slew them almost to a man. At Cahors, a Huguenot place of worship was surrounded by a Catholic mob and set on fire. None of those gathered together there survived, for those who escaped the flames were waylaid and murdered. At Toulouse, the oppressed Protestants, with wives and children, to the number of 4,000, had betaken themselves to the capitol. They were promised a free outlet, and were then slaughtered, because no one, it was said, should keep his word with a heretic (§ [200, 3]). Louis Condé summoned his fellow Protestants to take up arms in their own defence against such atrocities, entrenched himself in Orleans, and obtained, by the help of the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, German auxiliaries. The Guises, on the other hand, won over to their side the king and his mother. And now the strict legitimist Coligny placed himself at the head of the Huguenot movement. The battle of Dreux in Dec., A.D. 1562, resulted unfavourably to the Protestants, but during the siege of Orleans Francis of Guise was assassinated by a Huguenot nobleman. The regent now, in the peace edict of Amboise, of 19th Nov., A.D. 1563, allowed to the Protestants liberty of worship except in certain districts and cities, of which Paris was one. After securing emancipation from the yoke of the Guises, however, she soon began openly to show her old hatred of the Protestants. She joined in a league with Spain for the extirpating of heresy, restricted in A.D. 1564 by the Edict of Roussillon her previous concessions, and laid incessant plots in order to effect the capture or murder of the two great leaders of the Huguenot party. The threatening incursions of the Duke of Alva upon the neighbouring provinces of the Netherlands, in A.D. 1567, occasioned the outbreak of the second religious war. The projected removal of the court to Monceaux fell through indeed, in consequence of the hasty flight of the king to Paris, but the overthrow of the royal army in the battle of St. Denys, in Nov., A.D. 1567, in which Montmorency fell, as well as the reinforcement of the Huguenot army by an auxiliary corps under the leadership of John Casimir, the prince of the Palatinate, led Catharine to conclude the Peace of Longjumeau, of March, A.D. 1568, which guaranteed anew all previous concessions. But when the persecution of the Huguenots was continued in numberless executions, before the year was out they had again, for the third time, to have recourse to arms. England supported them with money and ammunition, and Protestant Germany gave them 11,000 auxiliaries; while Spain helped their opponents. Louis Condé fell by the hand of an assassin in A.D. 1569, but the Huguenots had so evidently the best of it, that the king and his mother found themselves obliged to grant them complete liberty of conscience and of worship in the peace treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, on 8th of Aug., A.D. 1570, excepting in Paris and in the immediate surroundings of the palace. As a guarantee for the treaty, four strongholds in southern France were surrendered to them. It was further stipulated, in order to confirm for ever the good undertaking, that Henry of Navarre, son of Jeanne d’Albret, should marry Margaret, the sister of Charles IX.

§ 139.16. At the marriage, consummated on 18th of August, A.D. 1572, subsequently known as the Bloody Marriage, the chiefs of the Huguenot party were gathered together at Paris. Jeanne d’Albret had died at the court, probably by poison, on 9th June, and Coligny had been fatally wounded by a shot on 22nd August. On the night of St. Bartholomew, between the 23rd and 24th August, the castle bell tolled. This was the concerted signal for the destruction of all the Huguenots present in Paris. For four days the carnage was unweariedly carried on by the city militia appointed for the purpose, the royal Swiss guards, and crowds of fanatical artisans. Coligny fell praying amid the blows of his murderers. No Huguenot was spared, neither children, nor women, nor the aged. Their princely chiefs, Henry of Navarre and Henry Condé, the son of Louis, were offered the choice between death and taking part in the celebration of mass. They decided for the latter. Meanwhile messengers had hasted into the provinces with the death-warrants, and there the slaughter began afresh. The whole number of victims is variously estimated at from 10,000 to 100,000; in Paris alone there fell from 1,000 to 10,000.—The death decree was not indeed so much the result of long planned and regularly conceived conspiracy, as a sudden resolve suggested by political circumstances. The queen-mother was at variance with her son with respect to his anti-Spanish policy, which had always inclined him favourably to Coligny; and so, in concert with her favourite son, Henry of Anjou, she succeeded in dealing a deadly stroke at the great admiral by the hand of an assassin. The king swore to take fearful vengeance on the unknown perpetrators of this crime. Catharine now made every effort to avert the threatened blow. She managed to convince the king, by means of her fellow conspirators, that the Huguenots regarded him as an accomplice in the perpetrating of the outrage, and that so his life was in danger because of them. He now swore by God’s death that not merely the chiefs, to whom Catharine and her auxiliaries had directed special attention, but all the Huguenots in France, should die, in order that not one should remain to bring this charge against him. On the other hand, it is all but certain that the thought of such a diabolical deed had previously suggested itself, if indeed expression had not been explicitly given to it. To the Spanish and Romish courts, the French government represented the deed as an acte prémédité, to the German court as an acte non prémédité. But even before this a letter from Rome to the Emperor Maximilian II. (§ [137, 8]) had contained the following: “At that hour (referring to the marriage festivities) when all the birds are in the cage, they can seize upon them altogether, and can have any one that they desire.” He was profoundly excited about the villany of the transaction, while Philip II. of Spain on hearing of it is said to have laughed for the first time in his life. Pope Gregory XIII. indeed feared the worst consequences, but soon changed his mind, and had Rome illuminated, all the bells rung, the cannons fired, a Te Deum performed, processions made, and a medal struck, with the inscription, Ugonottorum strages.He instructed the French ambassador to inform his king that this performance was a hundred times more grateful to him than fifty victories over the Turks.[392]

§ 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]