der the Pyrenees lived in habits of courteous great European family. Rome, in the mean and profitable intercourse with the Moorish time, warned by that fearful danger from which kingdoms of Spain, and gave a hospitable wel- the exterminating swords of her crusaders had come to skilful teachers and mathematicians, narrowly saved her, proceeded to revise and who, in the schools of Cordova and Granada, to strengthen her whole system of polity. A had become versed in all the learning of the this period were instituted the order of Francis, Arabians. The Greek, still preserving, in the the order of Dominic, the tribunal of the Inqui midst of political degradation, the ready wit sition. The new spiritual police was every and the inquiring spirit of his fathers, still able where. No alley in a great city, no hamlet on to read the most perfect of human composi- a remote mountain, was unvisited by the beg tions, still speaking the most powerful and ging friar. The simple Catholic, who was flexible of human languages, brought to the content to be no wiser than his fathers, found, marts of Narbonne and Toulouse, together with wherever he turned, a friendly voice to encouthe drugs and silks of remote-climates, bold and rage him. The path of the heretic was beset subtle theories, long unknown to the ignorant by innumerable spies; and the Church, lately and credulous West. The Paulician theology in danger of utter subversion, now appeared -a theology in which, as it should seem, many to be impregnably fortified by the love, the of the doctrines of the modern Calvinists were reverence, and the terror of mankind. mingled with some doctrines derived from the A century and a half passed away, and then ancient Manichees,-spread rapidly through came the second great rising up of the human Provence and Languedoc. The clergy of the intellect against the spiritual domination of Catholic Church were regarded with loathing Rome. During the two generations which fol and contempt. "Viler than a priest,"-"Ilowed the Albigensian crusade, the power of the would as soon be a priest,"-became prover- Papacy had been at the height. Frederick II. bial expressions. The Papacy lost all autho-—the ablest and most accomplished of the long rity with all classes, from the great feudal princes down to the cultivators of the soil. line of German Cæsars--had in vain exhausted all the resources of military and political The danger to the hierarchy was indeed skill in the attempt to defend the rights of the formidable. Only one transalpine nation had civil power against the encroachments of the emerged from barbarism, and that nation had Church. The vengeance of the priesthood thrown off all respect for Rome. Only one of had pursued his house to the third generation. the vernacular languages of Europe had yet Manfred had perished on the field of battle; been extensively employed for literary pur- Conradin on the scaffold. Then a turn took poses, and that language was a machine in place. The secular authority, long unduly the hands of heretics. The geographical po-depressed, regained the ascendant with startsition of the sectaries made the danger pecu- ling rapidity. The change is doubtless to be liarly formidable. They occupied a central ascribed chiefly to the general disgust excited region communicating directly with France, by the way in which the Church had abused with Italy, and with Spain. The provinces its power and its success. which were still untainted were separated But something must be attributed to the from each other by this infected district. Un-character and situation of individuals. The der these circumstances, it seemed probable man who bore the chief part in effecting this that a single generation would suffice to spread revolution was Philip IV. of France, surnamed the reformed doctrine to Lisbon, to London, the Beautiful-a despot by position, a despot and to Naples. But this was not to be. Rome by temperament, stern, implacable, and un cried for help to the warriors of northern scrupulous, equally prepared for violence and France. She appealed at once to their super- for chicanery, and surrounded by a devoted stition and to their cupidity. To the devout band of men of the sword, and of men of law. believers she promised pardons as ample as The fiercest and most high-minded of the Rothose with which she had rewarded the deliver-man Pontiffs, while bestowing kingdoms, and ers of the holy Sepulchre. To the rapacious citing great princes to his judgment-seat, was and profligate she offered the plunder of fertile seized in his palace by armed men, and so plains and wealthy cities. Unhappily, the in- foully outraged that he died mad with rage genious and polished inhabitants of the Lan- and terror. "Thus," sang the great Florenguedocian provinces were far better qualified tine poet, "was Christ in the person of his to enrich and embellish their country than to vicar, a second time seized by ruffians, a sedefend it. Eminent in the arts of peace, un-cond time mocked, a second time drenched rivalled in the "gay science," elevated above with the vinegar and the gall."* The seat of many vulgar superstitions, they wanted that the Papal court was carried beyond the Alps, iron courage, and that skill in martial exer- and the Bishops of Rome became dependants cises, which distinguished the chivalry of the of France. Then came the great schism of region beyond the Loire, and were ill-fitted to the West. Two Popes, each with a doubtful face enemies, who, in every country from Ire- title, made all Europe ring with their mutual land to Palestine, had been victorious against invectives and anathemas. Rome cried out tenfold odds. A war, distinguished even among against the corruptions of Avignon; and Avig. wars of religion by its merciless atrocity, de-non, with equal justice, recriminated on Rome stroyed the Albigensian heresy; and with that heresy the prosperity, the civilization, the literature, the national existence, of what was once De most ovulent and enlightened part of the The plain Christian people, brought up in the belief that it was a sacred duty to be in com * Purgatorio, xx. 87. munion with the Head of the Church, were before. All ranks, all varieties of character, unable to discover, amidst conflicting testimo- joined the ranks of the innovators. Sovenies and conflicting arguments, to which of reigns impatient to appropriate to themselves the two worthless priests who were cursing the prerogatives of the Pope-nobles desirous an' reviling each other, the headship of the to share the plunder of abbeys-suitors exasChurch rightfully belonged. It was nearly at perated by the extortions of the Roman Camera this juncture that the voice of John Wickliffe -patriots impatient of a foreign rule-good began to make itself heard. The public mind men scandalized by the corruptions of the of England was soon stirred to its inmost Church-bad men desirous of the license indepths; and the influence of the new doctrines separable from great moral revolutions-wise was soon felt, even in the distant kingdom of men eager in the pursuit of truth-weak men Bohemia. In Bohemia, indeed, there had long allured by the glitter of novelty-all were been a predisposition to heresy. Merchants found on one side. Alone, among the northfrom the Lower Danube were often seen in the ern nations, the Irish adhered to the ancient fairs of Prague; and the Lower Danube was faith; and the cause of this seems to have peculiarly the seat of the Paulician theology. been, that the national feeling which, in hap The Church, torn by schism, and fiercely as- pier countries, was directed against Rome, was sailed at once in England and the German in Ireland directed against England. In fifty empire, was in a situation scarcely less peril-years from the day in which Luther publicly ous than at the crisis which preceded the Albigensian crusade. But this danger also passed by. The civil power gave its strenuous support to the Church; and the Church made some show of reforming itself. The council of Constance put an end to the schism. The whole Catholic world was again united under a single chief, and rules were laid down which seemed to make it improbable that the power of that chief would be grossly abused. The most distinguished teachers of the new doctrine were put to death. The English government put down the Lollards with merciless rigour; and, in the next generation, no trace of the second great revolt against the Papacy could be found, except among the rude population of the mountains of Bohemia. Another century went by; and then began the third and the most memorable struggle for spiritual freedom. The times were changed. The great remains of Athenian and Roman genius were studied by thousands. The Church had no longer a monopoly of learning. The powers of the modern languages had at length been developed. The invention of printing had given new facilities to the intercourse of mind with mind. With such auspices commenced the great Reformation. We will attempt to lay before our readers, in a short compass, what appears to us to be the real history of the contest, which began with the preaching of Luther against the indulgences, and which may, in one sense, be said to have been terminated, a hundred and thirty years later, by the treaty of Westphalia. In the northern parts of Europe, the victory of Protestantism was rapid and decisive. The dominion of the Papacy was felt by the nations of Teutonic blood as the dominion of Italians, of foreigners, of men alien in language, manners, and intellectual constitution. The large jurisdiction exercised by the spiritual tribunals of Rome seemed to be a degrading badge of servitude. The sums which, under a thousand pretexts, were exacted by a distant court, were regarded both as a humiliating and as a ruinous tribute. The character of that court excited the scorn and disgust of a grave, earnest, sincere, and devout people. The new the logy spread with a rapidity never known renounced communion with the Church of Rome, and burned the bull of Leo before the gates of Wittenberg, Protestantism attained its highest ascendency-an ascendency which it soon lost, and which it never regained. Hundreds, who could well remember Brother Martin a devout Catholic, lived to see the revolution of which he was the chief author, victo rious in half the states of Europe. In England, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, Livonia, Prussia, Saxony, Hesse, Würtemberg, the Palatinate, in several cantons of Switzerland, in the Northern Netherlands, the Reformation had completely triumphed; and in all the other countries on this side of the Alps and the Pyrenees, it seemed on the point of triumphing. But while this mighty work was proceeding in the north of Europe, a revolution of a very different kind had taken place in the south. The temper of Italy and Spain was widely different from that of Germany and England. As the national feeling of the Teutonic nations impelled them to throw off the Italian supremacy, so the national feeling of the Italians impelled them to resist any change which might deprive their country of the honour and advantage of being the seat of the government of the Universal Church. It was in Italy that the tributes were spent, of which foreign nations so bitterly complained. It was to adorn Italy that the traffic in indulgences had been carried to that scandalous excess which had roused the indignation of Luther. There was among the Italians both much piety and much impiety; but with very few exceptions, neither the piety nor the impiety took the turn of Protestantism. The religious Italians desired a reform of morals and discipline, but not a reform of doctrine, and least of all a schism. The irreligious Italians simply disbelieved Christianity, without hating it. They looked at it as artists, or as statesmen; and so looking at it, they liked it better in the established form than in any other. It was to them what the Pagan worship was to Trajan and Pliny. Neither the spirit of Savanarola, nor that of Machiavelli, had any thing in common with that of the religious or political Protestants of the north. Spain again was, with respect to the Catholic Church, in a situation very different from that The Church of Rome, wiser than the Church of England, gave every countenance to the good work. The members of the new brotherhood preached to great multitudes in the streets and in the fields, prayed by the beds of the sick, and administered the last sacraments to the dying. Foremost among them in zeal and de of the Teutonic nations. Italy was, in fact, a| ed. Everywhere old religious communities part of the empire of Charles V.; and the were remodelled, and new religious communi. court of Rome was, on many important occa- ties called into existence. Within a year after sions, his tool. He had not, therefore, like the the death of Leo, the order of Camaldoli was distant princes of the north, a strong selfish purified. The Capuchins restored the old motive for attacking the Papacy. In fact, the Franciscan discipline-the midnight prayer very measures which provoked the Sovereign and the life of silence. The Barnabites and of England to renounce all connection with the society of Somasca devoted themselves to Rome, were dictated by the Sovereign of Spain. the relief and education of the poor. To the The feelings of the Spanish people concurred Theatine order a still higher interest belongs. with the interest of the Spanish government. Its great object was the same with that of our The attachment of the Castilian to the faith of early Methodists-to supply the deficiencies his ancestors was peculiarly strong and ardent. of the parochial clergy. With that faith were inseparably bound up the institutions, the independence, and the glory of his country. Between the day when the last Gothic king was vanquished on the banks of the Xeres, and the day when Ferdinand and Isabella entered Granada in triumph, nearly eight hundred years had elapsed; and during those years the Spanish nation had been en-votion was Gian Pietro Caraffa, afterwards gaged in a desperate struggle against misbelievers. The crusades had been merely an episode in the history of other nations. The existence of Spain had been one long crusade. After fighting Mussulmans in the Old World, she began to fight heathens in the New. It was under the authority of a Papal bull that her children steered into unknown seas. It was under the standard of the cross that they marched fearlessly into the heart of great kingdoms. It was with the cry of "Saint James for Spain!" that they charged armies which outnumbered them a hundredfold. And men said that the Saint had heard the call, and had himself in arms, on a gray war-horse, led the onset before which the worshippers of false gods had given way. After the battle, every excess of rapacity or cruelty was sufficiently vindicated by the plea that the sufferers were unbaptized. Avarice stimulated zeal. Zeal consecrated avarice. Proselytes and gold mines were sought with equal ardour. In the very year in which the Saxons, maddened by the exactions--these are his own words-" but one of far of Rome, broke loose from her yoke, the Spaniards, under the authority of Rome, made themselves masters of the empire and of the treasures of Montezuma. Thus Catholicism, which, in the public mind of Northern Europe, was associated with spoliation and oppression, was, in the public mind of Spain, associated with liberty, victory, dominion, wealth, and glory. Pope Paul the Fourth. In the convent of the Theatines at Venice, under the eye of Caraffa, a Spanish gentleman took up his abode, tended the poor in the hospitals, went about in rags, starved himself almost to death, and often sallied into the streets, mounted on stones, and, waving his hat to invite the passers-by, began to preach in a strange jargon of mingled Castilian and Tuscan. The Theatines were among the most zealous and rigid of men ; but to this enthusiastic neophyte their discipline seemed lax, and their movements sluggish; for his own mind, naturally passionate and ima ginative, had passed through a training which had given to all his peculiarities a morbid intensity and energy. In his early life he had been the very prototype of the hero of Cer vantes. The single study of the young Hidalgo had been chivalrous romance; and his existence had been one gorgeous day-dream of princesses rescued and infidels subdued. He had chosen a Dulcinea, "no countess, no duchess" higher station ;" and he flattered himself with the hope of laying at her feet the keys of Moor. ish castles and the jewelled turbans of Asiatic kings. In the midst of these visions of martial glory and prosperous love, a severe wound stretched him on a bed of sickness. His constitution was shattered, and he was doomed to be a cripple for life. The palm of strength, grace, and skill in knightly exercises, was no It is not, therefore, strange that the effect of longer for him. He could no longer hope to the great outbreak of Protestantism in one part strike down gigantic soldans, or to find favour of Christendom should have been to produce in the sight of beautiful women. A new vision an equally violent outbreak of Catholic zeal in then arose in his mind, and mingled itself with another. Two reformations were pushed on his old delusions in a manner which, to most at once with equal energy and effect-a refor- Englishmen, must seem singular; but which mation of doctrine in the North-a reformation those who know how close was the union be. of manners and discipline in the South. In tween religion and chivalry in Spain, will be the course of a single generation, the whole at no loss to understand. He would still be a spirit of the Church of Rome underwent a soldier-he would still be a knight-errant; but change. From the halls of the Vatican to the the soldier and knight-errant of the spouse of most secluded hermitage of the Apennines, the Christ. He would smite the Great Red Dragon. great revival was everywhere felt and seen. He would be the champion of the Woman All the institutions anciently devised for the clothed with the Sun. He would break the propagation and defence of the faith, were fur- charm under which false prophets held the bished up and made efficient. New engines souls of men in bondage. His restless spirit of still more formidable power were construct-led him to the Syrian deserts, and to the chape Nor was it less their office to plot against the thrones and lives of apostate kings, to spread evil rumours, to raise tumults, to inflame civil the Holy Sepulchre. Thence he wandered | sicians, merchants, serving-men; in the hostile back to the farthest west, and astonished the court of Sweden, in the old manor-houses of convent of Spain and the schools of France by Cheshire, among the hovels of Connaught; has penance and vigils. The same lively ima- arguing, instructing, consoling, stealing away gination which had been employed in picturing the hearts of the young, animating the courage the tumult of unreal battles, and the charms of the timid, holding up the crucifix before the of unreal queens, now peopled his solitude eyes of the dying. with saints and angels. The Holy Virgin descended to commune with him. He saw the Saviour face to face with the eye of flesh. Even those mysteries of religion which are the hard-wars, to arm the hand of the assassin. Inflexiest trial of faith, were in his case palpable to sight. It is difficult to relate without a pitying smile, that, in the sacrifice of the mass, he saw transubstantiation take place; and that, as he stood praying on the steps of St. Dominic, he saw the Trinity in Unity, and wept aloud with joy and wonder. Such was the celebrated Ignatius Loyola, who in the great Catholic reaction, bore the same share which Luther bore in the great Protestant movement. Dissatisfied with the system of the Theatines, the enthusiastic Spaniard turned his face towards Rome. Poor, obscure, without a patron, without recommendations, he entered the city where now two princely temples, rich with paintings and many-coloured marble, commemorate his great services to the Church; where his form stands sculptured in massive silver; where his bones, enshrined amidst jewels, are placed beneath the altar of God. His activity and zeal bore down all opposition; and under his rule the order of Jesuits began to exist, and grew rapidly to the full measure of its gigantic powers. With what vehemence, with what policy, with what exact discipline, with what dauntless courage, with what self-denial, with what forgetfulness of the dearest private ties, with what intense and stubborn devotion to a single end, with what unscrupulous laxity and versatility in the choice of means, the Jesuits fought the battles of their church, is written in every page of the annals of Europe during several generations. In the order of Jesus was concentrated the quintessence of the Catholic spirit; and the history of the order of Jesus is the history of the great Catholic reaction. That order possessed itself at once of all the strongholds which command the public mind -of the pulpit, of the press, of the confessional, of the academies. Wherever the Jesuit preached the church was too small for the audience. The name of Jesuit on a title-page secured the circulation of a book. It was in the ears of the Jesuit that the powerful, the noble, and the beautiful breathed the secret history of their lives. It was at the feet of the Jesuit that the youth of the higher and middle classes were brought up from the first rudiments to the courses of rhetoric and philosophy. Literature and science, lately associated with infidelity or with heresy, now became the allies of orthodoxy. Dominant in the south of Europe, the great order soon went forth conquering and to conquer. In spite of oceans and deserts, of hunger and pestilence, of spies and penal laws, of dungeons and racks, of gibbets and quarteringblocks, Jesuits were to be found under every disguise, and in every country-scholars, phy ble in nothing but in their fidelity to the Church, they were equally ready to appeal in her cause to the spirit of loyalty and to the spirit of freedom. Extreme doctrines of obedience and extreme doctrines of liberty-the right of rulers to misgovern the people, the right of every one of the people to plunge his knife in the heart of a bad rulerwere inculcated by the same man according as he addressed himself to the subject of Philip or the subject of Elizabeth. Some described these men as the most rigid, others as the most indulgent of spiritual directors. And both descriptions were correct. The truly devout listened with awe to the high and saintly morality of the Jesuit. The gay cavalier who had run his rival through the body, the frail beauty who had forgotten her marriage-vow, found in the Jesuit an easy well-bred man of the world, tolerant of the little irregularities of people of fashion. The confessor was strict or lax, according to the temper of the penitent. His first object was to drive no person out of the pale of the Church. Since there were bad people, it was better that they should be bad Catholics than bad Protestants. If a person was so unfortunate as to be a bravo, a libertine, or a gambler, that was no reason for making him a heretic too. The Old World was not wide enough for this strange activity. The Jesuits invaded all the countries which the great maritime discoveries of the preceding age had laid open to European enterprise. In the depths of the Peruvian mines, at the marts of the African slave-caravans, on the shores of the Spice Islands, in the observatories of China, they were to be found. They made converts in regions which neither avarice nor curiosity had tempted any of their countrymen to enter; and preached and disputed in tongues of which no other native of the West understood a word. The spirit which appeared so eminently in this order, animated the whole Catholic world. The court of Rome itself was purified. During the generation which preceded the Reformation, that court had been a scandal to the Christian name. Its annals are black with treason, murder, and incest. Even its more respectable members were utterly unfit to be ministers of religion. They were men like Leo X.; men who, with the Latinity of the Augustan age, had acquired its atheistical and scoffing spirit. They regarded these Christian mysteries of which they were stewards, just as the Augur Cicero and the Pontifex Maximus Cæsar regarded the Sibylline books and the pecking of the sacred chickens. Among them. selves they spoke of the Incarnation, the Eucharist, and the Trinity, in the same tone in which Cotta and Velleius talked of the oracle lect spirits. Whoever was suspected of heresy of Delphi, or of the voice of Faunus in the whatever his rank, his learning, or his reputa mountains. Their years glided by in a soft tion, was to purge himself to the satisfaction dream of sensual and intellectual voluptuous- of a severe and vigilant tribunal, or to die by ness. Choice cookery, delicious wines, lovely fire. Heretical books were sought out and women, hounds, falcons, horses, newly-disco- destroyed with the same unsparing rigour. vered manuscripts of the classics, sonnets and Works which were once in every house were burlesque romances in the sweetest Tuscan- so effectually suppressed that no copy of them just as licentious as a fine sense of the grace- now is to be found in the most extensive libra ful would permit; plates from the hand of a ries. One book in particular, entitled "Of the Benvenuto, designs for palaces by Michel benefits of the death of Christ," had this fate. Angelo, frescoes by Raphael, busts, mosaics, It was written in Tuscan, was many times re and gems just dug up from among the ruins printed, and was eagerly read in every part of of ancient temples and villas;-these things Italy. But the Inquisitors detected in it the were the delight and even the serious business Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith of their lives. Letters and the fine arts un- alone. They proscribed it: and it is now as doubtedly owe much to this not inelegant sloth. utterly lost as the second decade of Livy. But when the great stirring of the mine of Europe Thus, while the Protestant Reformation probegan when doctrine after doctrine was as- ceeded rapidly at one extremity of Europe, the sailed-when nation after nation withdrew Catholic revival went on as rapidly at the from communion with the successor of St. other. About half a century after the great Peter, it was felt that the Church could not separation, there were throughout the north, be safely confided to chiefs whose highest Protestant governments and Protestant nations. praise was, that they were good judges of Latin In the south were governments and nations compositions, of paintings, and of statues, actuated by the most intense zeal for the anwhose severest studies had a Pagan character, cient church. Between these two hostile and who were suspected of laughing in secret regions lay, geographically as well as morally, at the sacraments which they administered, a great debatable land. In France, Belgium, and of believing no more of the Gospel than of Southern Germany, Hungary, and Poland, the the Morgante Maggiore. Men of a very different contest was still undecided. The governments class now rose to the direction of ecclesiastical of those countries had not renounced their affairs-men whose spirit resembled that of connection with Rome; but the Protestants Dunstan and of Becket. The Roman Pontiffs were numerous, powerful, bold, and active. In exhibited in their own persons all the austerity France they formed a commonwealth within of the early anchorites of Syria. Paul IV. the realm, held fortresses, were able to bring brought to the Papal throne the same fervent great armies into the field, and had treated zeal which had carried him into the Theatine with their sovereign on terms of equality. In convent. Pius V., under his gorgeous vest- Poland, the king was still a Catholic; but the ments, wore day and night the hair-shirt of a Protestants had the upper hand in the Diet, simple friar; walked barefoot in the streets at the filled the chief offices in the administration, and, head of processions; found, even in the midst in the large towns, took possession of the parish of his most pressing avocations, time for pri-churches. "It appeared," says the Papal vate prayer; often regretted that the public nuncio, "that in Poland, Protestantism would duties of his station were unfavourable to completely supersede Catholicism." In Ba growth in holiness; and edified his flock by in-varia, the state of things was nearly the same. numerable instances of humility, charity, and forgiveness of personal injuries; while, at the same time, he upheld the authority of his see, and the unadulterated doctrines of his church, with all the stubbornness and vehemence of Hildebrand. Gregory XIII. exerted himself not only to imitate but to surpass Pius in the severe virtues of his sacred profession. As was the head, such were the members. The change in the spirit of the Catholic world may be traced in every walk of literature and of art. It will be at once perceived by every person who compares the poem of Tasso with that of Ariosto, or the monuments of Sixtus V. with those of Leo X. But it was not on moral influence alone that the Catholic Church relied. The civil sword in Spain and Italy was unsparingly employed in her support. The Inquisition was armed with new powers and inspired with a new energy. If Protestantism, or the semblance of Protestantism, showed itself in any quarter, it was instantly met, not by petty, teasing persecution, but by persecution of that sort which bows down and crushes all but a very few se The Protestants had a majority in the Assem bly of the States, and demanded from the duke concessions in favour of their religion, as the price of their subsidies. In Transylvania, the house of Austria was unable to prevent the Diet from confiscating, by one sweeping de cree, the estates of the church. In Austria Proper it was generally said that only one thirteenth part of the population could be counted on as good Catholics. In Belgium the adherents of the new opinions were reckoned by hundreds of thousands. The history of the two succeeding genera tions is the history of the great struggle be tween Protestantism possessed of the north of Europe, and Catholicism possessed of the south, for the doubtful territory which lay be tween. All the weapons of carnal and of spi ritual warfare were employed. Both sides may boast of great talents and of great virtues. Both have to blush for many follies and crimes. At first, the chances seemed to be decidedly in favour of Protestantism; but the victory re mained with the Church of Rome. On every point she was successful. If we overleap |