[74] Gussoni: ‘Abonda con molta superfluità cosi per il numero d’ offiziali et ministri d’ ogni qualità, come per le assignationi del piatto quotidiano che si da lauto e splendido anche eccedentemente.’
[75] Gachet, Lettres de Rubens. Guhl, Kunstlerbriefe ii. 189.
[76] Old Parliamentary History xix. 83; Waagen, Kunstwerke und Kunstler in England, i. 450.
CHAPTER IV.
CONFLICTING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE AND WITHIN THE KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN.
If we adhere to the view that the Latin and Teutonic nations, in the development which they have reached under the influence of the Western Church, make up a great indivisible community which furthermore appears as an unit in the world; and if we further look for the characteristic features by which this system of nations is distinguished from all other growths of worldwide historical importance, we find that they are principally two; the close connexion between Church and State involving a constant struggle between these two principles; and next the mixture of monarchical with representative institutions in each single country and the internal conflicts thence arising. At times republican formations made their appearance; yet they were hardly able to emancipate themselves from aristocratic and even from monarchical forms. At times absolute monarchy obtained the upper hand; but, if we consider the governments which are most conspicuous in this respect, we find that the supreme will of the sovereign was hardly ever able to prevail over the great obstacles presented by provinces and individuals. So there have been centuries in which the great monarchies appear to have been broken up or oppressed by the hierarchy: but even the Papacy met with opposition; the authority of those self-same popular bodies, which were perhaps originally allied with it, in later times was opposed to it. The characteristic life of the West, the continuity of its development, and its ascendancy in the world, are due to this conflict between ecclesiastical and political influences, between the tendencies A.D. 1637. towards monarchical and those towards representative government, and to the mutual action of independent nationalities, within an unity which embraced all, but yet was never complete, and was rather ideal than actually realised.
The great secession from Rome which came to pass in the sixteenth century did not break up this system of nations. The more remote were brought at times into closer relations with one another by the universal opposition and struggle, which in turn very materially affected the shapes into which the domestic relations of the individual states were thrown.
If Protestantism contributed to strengthen the power of the sovereigns under whose lead it was carried out, yet the temporal estates also shared the gain which accrued from the defeat and curtailment of ecclesiastical interests; for by this means their own power became more firmly established. The restoration of Catholicism at a later period had a very different effect. The concessions which the Papacy voluntarily made to secure it, redounded mainly to the advantage of the sovereigns. The Popes themselves, in order to revive their ecclesiastical authority in every country, employed all the pecuniary resources which could in any way be raised in their newly conquered state, which now for the first time was entirely reduced to obedience. In Italy they created for themselves a new Grand Duchy, by the erection of which the rights of the municipalities comprised within it were entirely destroyed. The Spanish monarchy, which in this epoch played the most important part, had not, it is true, annihilated, but had kept down the independence of the provinces in the Italian as well as in the Spanish peninsula, which in earlier times had been so powerful; and as by the aid of American gold it had obtained a power independent of the good will of the Estates, the authority of the sovereign was asserted far and wide. These two agencies reacted most powerfully upon Germany. Even before the Thirty Years’ War the territories of the ecclesiastical and Catholic princes followed the example of Rome. During the war, and by means of it, the house of Austria brought into subjection the representative constitution of the kingdoms and countries belonging to it which had attached themselves to the principles A.D. 1637. of Protestantism. Frederick Elector Palatine stood at the head of these independent bodies, but they did not understand how to support him effectively. They fell with him. The same thing then happened in the central districts of Germany, where the combinations between sovereigns and estates were so weak from their rivalry with one another that they went to ruin.
In France Catholicism had once helped the Estates in their struggle against the monarch, but this alliance could not be maintained. After the hereditary sovereign had reached throne by the going over to Catholicism, he still based his authority upon the maintenance of an equilibrium between the two religious parties. But for his successors this policy was no longer necessary. The Catholic portion of their subjects attached themselves to them without any regard to a title conferred by the Estates; and though the magnates then sought for safety principally in an alliance with Protestant interests, the result was that ecclesiastical and political independence sustained a common defeat at the hands of the sovereign and of the Catholic party. The power of the state assumed a deeper Catholic colour the more it aimed at absolutism.
The principle of monarchy combined with Catholicism now appeared in different forms in three great kingdoms. In that of Spain it was intolerant of Protestantism, but was surrounded by provincial assemblies of estates, whose action, although subdued, was not altogether annihilated: in the French monarchy it appeared more tolerant of the Protestants even on its own ground, but was master of the Estates, which just at this period were completely subdued: in the Austrian monarchy it was intolerant both towards the Protestants who were persecuted and ejected, and towards the Estates which had just been conquered. The struggle which had broken out between France on the one side, and Spain combined with Austria on the other, caused the two latter kingdoms to adopt, or at least to try to adopt, the principle of unity under an absolute monarch which had been carried out in the former. There is a very peculiar difference in the relations of the three powers with the German Protestants, who were saved from utter ruin by the intervention of the King A.D. 1637. of Sweden. The French sought to make the Protestant Estates of the Empire as independent as possible of Austria: Spain at that time was willing to tolerate their faith, but wished to bring them back under the control of the Emperor: at the Imperial court itself there was a tendency prevailing, at least for a time, to suppress both their belief and their independence.
Thus the Western world at this epoch was pervaded by a threefold hostility: by the religious dispute between the two great parties, in which the Catholic party had obtained an immeasurable superiority: by the great opposition in regard to foreign policy between France and the Austro-Spanish power; and by a third antagonism in regard to domestic affairs. The monarchical had become more than ever supreme over the constitutional principle.