Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/300

 288 THE AGE OF HAPSBURG ASCENDENCY the English were permitted to make a small number of settlements on the coast, exclusively for trading purposes. Intellectual Progress. The great intellectual movement called the Renaissance began in Italy before the thirteenth century was ended, but the rest of Europe was only affected by it by slow degrees. But at the close of the fifteenth century it became vigorous everywhere, culminating in England a hundred years later with the group of great writers who are called collectively ( Elizabethans,' though much of their work belongs to the reign of James I. It was during the same period that the great advance of science began ; astronomy was revolutionised by the Dane Copernicus, and the principles of scientific inquiry were formulated by the Englishman Francis Bacon. The Reformation. Certain aspects of the Reformation require to be kept carefully distinguished, (i) It was a part of the general revolt against intellectual submission to the dogmatic pronouncements of authority. (2) It was a revolt against specific doctrines which interpose a priesthood as necessary intermediaries between the individual man and his Maker. (3) It was a revolt against the practice of attributing more value to the observance of ceremonial than to obedience to the moral law. (4) But all the reformed churches tended to substitute new authority, new intermediaries, and new observances, for the old. They continued to be intolerant, and to persecute. Acceptance of the principle of toleration was of much later date. (5) It was the logical conclusion of the contest for supreme authority between Church and state. In this aspect, as a matter of fact, the Church found itself compelled to accept subordina- tion even in the states which remained 'orthodox.' (6) It appealed to and was fostered by governments, as providing them with an excuse for seizing ecclesiastical property. (7) The clergy were frequently led to support it, by the desire to free themselves from subjection to an Italian bishop ; though many of them returned to the papal allegiance (like Gardiner and Bonner in England) when they found that the alternative was subjection to a lay authority.