Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/686

 EUROPE

612

EUROPE

gained from the Orient the best the East had to give and thus was greatly aided in its development.

A more lasting success, however, followed the at- tempts, patterned on the Crusades, to carry on wars of conversion and conquest in those territories of north- eastern Europe peopled by tribes that had lapsed from the Faith or that were still heathen; among such pagans were the Obotrites, Pomeranians, Wiltzi, Sorbs, Letts, Livonians, Finns, and Prussians. The preparatory work was done in the twelfth century by missionaries of the Premonstratensian and Cistercian Orders. They were aided with armed forces by Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony, Albert the Bear of Bran- denburg, Bolcslaw of Poland, and St. Erik IX of Sweden. From the beginning of the thirteenth cen- tury Crusailes were undertaken against Livonia, Sem- gall, a division of the present Courland, and Esthonia; the Teutonic Knights conquered Prussia after a strug- gle that lasted more than fifty years. In Lithuania

scribed elsewhere, and was facilitated by the violent procedure of the petty princes who had absolute sovereign power over their subjects. The first of the ruling princes to make the change was Albert of Brandenburg, Grand ilaster of the Teutonic Knights (1525); he was followed by the Elector John of Saxony, Philip, Landgrave of Hesse (1527), and at almost the same date by nearly all the German imperial cities. The movement soon gained the north- ern countries, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the Baltic provinces; these all gave their adherence (1530) to the so-called Augsburg Confession, while the upper German imperial cities, Strasburg, Constance, Lindau, Memmingen, held to the Tetrapolitan Confession of the so-called Reformed Church founded by ZwingU and especially strong in Switzerland. The Reformed Church also found adherents in the Palatinate, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century in Hesse- Cassel and Brandenburg. The Anglican Church was

RELIGIOUS STATISTICS FOR THE COUNTRIES OF EUROPE

THE FIGURES BELOW ARE BASED ON CENSUS REPORTS, D.^TES OF WHICH ARE GIVEN IN PARENTHESES

Country

Catholics (including Uniat

Evangelicals: including Anglicans, Methodists,

Oriental Christians: Orthodox- Greek, Gregorian

etc.

Jews

Moham- medans

Others: Ra- tionaUsts, Without a Confession.

Eastern Churches'

Unitarians, etc.

Non-Chris- tian

Russia, Finland, and Poland. (1897)

11,326,794

6,283,679

78,713.017

5,082,342

3,560,361

320,292

Austria -Hungary, with Bosnia and

Herzegovina (1900)

35,804,263

4,227,691

4,095,723

2,158.380

548,632

Germany (1900)

20,327,913

35,231,104

586,833

17,535

France (1900)

38,100,000

662,000

100,000

100.000

Spain (19001

nbout 18,500,000

(1887) 6,654

(1887) 402

(1887) 23,330

Sweden (1890)

1,436

4,779,867

3,402

276

Norway (1900)

2.065

2,204,989

642

13,770

Great Britain and Ireland (1901)

5,310,000

35,925.000

210,000

Italy (1901)

about 30,300,000

(1880)62.000

(1880)38.000

Turkish Empire (1900)

480,000

20,000

2,480,000

90,000

3,060,000

Denmark (1900)

5,479

2,436,012

3,476

4,573

Rumania (1S99)

149.667

22,749

5,408,743

269,015

43,740

16.148

Bulgaria (1900)

40,790

4,524

3,020.840

33,717

643.253

1,149

Portugal (1900)

5.425,500

500

2,000

Greece and Crete (1900)

34,710

2,172,048

6,518

57.446

740

SerWa (1S95)

10.948

1,002

2,281,018

5,102

14,414

Switzerland (1900)

1,283.135

1,918,197

12,551

The Netheriands (1S99)

1.790.161

3,085,899

45

103,988

115,179

Belgium (1900)

6,669.000

20,000

4,000

Montenegro (1S97)

12,934

201,067

13,840

The inhabitants of the Grand Duchj'

of Luxemburg, Republic of Andorra,

Principality of Lichtenstein, Republic

of San Marino, and the Principality of

Monaco, are almost entirely CathoUcs

about 280,000

176.055,796

96,872,067

98,372,501

8, .530.368

7,941,686

612,992

Christianity did not win the victory until 136S. After this only the Turks, in the south-eastern corner of the Continent, were a cause of alarm to Christian Europe for centuries. The decline of the power of the East- ern Empire drew the Turks over the Bosporus; in 1365 they had control of Adrianople; in the course of the fourtet^nth century the Serbs, Bulgars, Macedo- nians, and the inhabitants of Thessaly became their subjects. In H53 the Turks took Constantinople, in 1401 Trcbizond, in 14S0 even Otranto in Apulia; after 1547 tiiey owned lialf of Hungary. It was not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that theirpos- sessions were reduced to their present boundaries, thus limiting Mohammedanism to a small part of the population of Europe.

At the beginning of modern times a great change took place in the boundaries of the European .States. The cause was that ecclesiastical movement known as the Reformation, which placed in opposition to the unity of Catholicism in Western Europe the numerous religious associations that together form Protestant- ism. The apostasy of the various countries and cities, which began soon after Luther first appeared, was brought about by the most varied causes, de-

established in 1549 in Great Britain; in 1559 the French Reformed Church adopted the "Confessio Gallicana"; in 1560 the Scotch Reformed the "Con- fessio Scottica"; from 1592 the Reformation in Scot- land adopted a Presbyterian form of government. Since 1562 the Reformation in the Netherlands has held to the "Confessio Belgiea", and the Reformed Church in Hungary since 1567, to the " Confessio Hun- garica". Soon the Counter-Reformation, called into life by the Council of Trent (1545-63) to prevent the loss of the whole of middle Europe, appeared; its suc- cess was assured by the aid of the Society of Jesus. In this way various princes and bishops who were de- sirous of doing their duty were enabled to hold their countries to the Catholic Church, as the Duke of Cleves, the Electors of Mainz and Trier, the Bishops of Augsburg, WUrzburg, Bamberg, Minister, Constance, Basle, the Abbey of Fulda, but especially the Dukes of Bavaria and the Hapsburg dynasty witiiin their Aus- trian provinces. Soon the hostility between the two ecclesiastical parties grew so bitter that a trifling inci- dent sufficed to bring on a terrible religious confhct, the Thirty Years War (1616-48). Two religious con- fessional leagues confronted each other in Germany: