A great deal that was not much biassed by creed was written on the Reformation during this period. It all goes to show how completely men of the most liberal tendencies were under the influence of their environment, for their comments were almost identical with those of the most convinced partisans. For the most part secular historians neglected ecclesiastical history as a separate discipline. Edward Hall, the typical Protestant chronicler, barely mentions religion. Camden apologizes for touching lightly on church history and not confining himself to politics and war, which he considers the proper subject of the annalist. Buchanan ignores the Reformation; De Thou passes over it with the fewest words, fearing to give offence to either papists or Huguenots. Jovius has only a page or two on it in all his works. In one place he finds the chief cause of the Reformation in a malignant conjunction of the stars; in another he speaks of it as a revival of one of the old heresies condemned at Constance. Polydore Vergil pays small attention to a schism, the cause of which he found in the weakness of men's minds and their propensity to novelty.
The one valuable explanation of the rise of Protestantism contributed by the secular historians of this age was the theory that it was largely a political phenomenon. That there was much truth in this is evident; the danger of the theory was in its over-statement, and in its too superficial application. How deeply the Reformation appealed to the political needs {704} of that age has only been shown in the nineteenth century; how subtly, how unconsciously the two revolutions often worked together was beyond the comprehension of even the best minds of that time. The political explanation that they offered was simply that religion was a hypocritical pretext for the attainment of the selfish ends of monarchs or of a faction. Even in this there was some truth, but it was far from being the larger part.
[Sidenote: 1527]
Vettori in his History of Italy mentions Luther merely to show how the emperor used him as a lever against the pope. Guicciardini [Sidenote: Guicciardini] accounts for the Reformation by the indignation of the Germans at paying money for indulgences. From this beginning, honest or at least excusable in itself, he says, Luther, carried away with ambition and popular applause, nourished a party. The pope might easily have allowed the revolt to die had he neglected it, but he took the wrong course and blew the tiny spark into a great flame by opposing it.
A number of French writers took up the parable. Brantôme says that he leaves the religious issue to those who know more than he does about it, but he considers a change perilous, "for a new religion among a people demands afterwards a change of government." He thought Luther won over a good many of the clergy by allowing them to marry. Martin Du Bellay found the cause of the English schism in Henry's divorce and the small respect the pope had for his majesty. Davila, de Mézeray and Daniel, writing the history of the French civil wars, treated the Huguenots merely as a political party. So they were, but they were something more. Even Hugo Grotius could not sound the deeper causes of the Dutch revolt and of the religious revolution.
[Sidenote: Sleidan]
The first of all the histories of the German Reformation {705} was also, for at least two centuries, the best. Though surpassed in some particulars by others, Sleidan united more of the qualities of a great historian than anyone else who wrote extensively on church history in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries: fairness, accuracy, learning, skill in presentation. In words that recall Ranke's motto he declared that, though a Protestant, he would be impartial and set forth simply "rem totam, sicut est acta." "In describing religious affairs," he continues, "I was not able to omit politics, for, as I said before, they almost always interact, and in our age least of all can they be separated." Withal, he regards the Reformation as a great victory for God's word, and Luther as a notable champion of the true religion. In plain, straightforward narrative, without much philosophic reflection, he sets forth,—none better,—the diplomatic and theological side of the movement without probing its causes or inquiring into the popular support on which all the rest was based.
[Sidenote: Sarpi]
Greater art and deeper psychological penetration than Sleidan compassed is found in the writings of Paul Sarpi, "the great unmasker of the Tridentine Council," as Milton aptly called him. This friar whose book could only be published on Protestant soil, this historian admired by Macaulay as the best of modern times and denounced by Acton as fit for Newgate prison, has furnished students with one of the most curious of psychological puzzles. Omitting discussion of his learning and accuracy, which have recently been severely attacked and perhaps discredited, let us ask what was his attitude in regard to his subject? It is difficult to place him as either a Protestant, a Catholic apologist or a rationalist. The most probable explanation of his attacks on the creed in which he believed and of his favorable presentation of the acts of the {706} heretics he must have anathematized, is that he was a Catholic reformer, one who ardently desired to purify the church, but who disliked her political entanglements. It is not unnatural to compare him with Adrian VI and Contarini who, in a freer age, had written scathing indictments of their own church; one may also find in Döllinger a parallel to him. Whatever his bias, his limitations are obviously those of his age; his explanations of the Protestant revolt, of which he gave a full history as introductory to his main subject, were exactly those that had been advanced by his predecessors: it was a divine dispensation, it was caused by the abuses of the church and by the jealousy of Augustinian and Dominican friars.
[Sidenote: Harrington]