Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/353

Rh REFORMATION 335 the country ; he accepted with expressions of favour the dedication to himself by Zwingli of the latter's treatise On True and False Religion. His sister corresponded with Melanchthon and was openly assailed by the Sorbonne as a favourer of heresy, while, as the mother of Jeanne d'Albret, her memory was always cherished with peculiar regard by the great Huguenot party. But the loss of prestige which Francis incurred by his defeat at Pavia and his subsequent captivity inspired the Ultramontane party with greater confidence, and, in spite of his efforts, Louis de Berquin, a leader of the Eeformers and one of the most eminent scholars in France, perished at the stake in 1529. The policy of Francis was indeed mainly dic- tated by one dominant motive that of personal hostility to the emperor and the apparent caprice with which he treated the Reformers was the result to no small extent of this feeling. It now became his aim to conciliate Pope Clement as an ally against his great rival, and with this view he took advantage of certain excesses committed by a few fanatics, after the example of Miinzer, to light the fires of persecution. At the same time, therefore, that he was supporting the League of Schmalkald he was burning heretics in his own dominions. On the death of Clement (September 1534), when he found the hopes which he had founded on an alliance with the Medici extinguished, since Paul III. proved less amenable to his plans, he again changed his tactics : he invited Melanchthon to come and take up his residence in France, and he set at liberty those who had been imprisoned for holding the Reformed doctrines. At the peace of Crespy (1544), again, he once more changed his policy, and sought to arrive at an agree- ment with Charles for the suppression of heresy and the restoration of discipline in the church. At the period at which we have now arrived the main influences which guided the later history of the Reforma- tion may be discerned in full activity. Largely political almost from the commencement of the movement, they continued more and more to partake of that character or became mingled with elements not less secular. Foremost among these latter must be placed the appeal made to baser motives both in Germany and in England, by the manner in which the nobility of both countries were bribed to acquiesce in the suppression of the religious orders, by being allowed to become large sharers in the property and revenues of the monastic and conventual foundations. Among the lower classes, on the other hand, who were often painfully reminded of the loss they had sustained in the withdrawal of that charity which, amid all the de- generacy of the monasteries, had still been one of their recognized functions, a certain genuine sympathy with Catholicism and traditional regard for its institutions long continued to survive. But even among these classes men could not but be conscious that a higher standard of belief and practice had been introduced by the Reformation, while the superior ability shown by those who preached its doc- trines, in adapting their discourse to the comprehension and spiritual needs of the poor, invested them with a highly effective influence. 'P' ambiguous, became complicated with new difficulties. Charles himself, from political motives, appears at this y, time to have been really desirous of bringing about a termination of the prevailing religious controversies, but his vice-chancellor, Held, on whom it devolved to carry out his intentions, pursued a singularly infelicitous line of action, which ultimately led to the formation of the League of Nuremberg (10th June 1538), whereby Ferdinand, the duke of Bavaria, Henry of Brunswick, Albert of Branden- burg, and George of Saxony entered into a combination for the purpose of opposing the League of Schmalkald. Dissatisfied with such a result, Charles next endeavoured to bring about an understanding by a series of conferences ; and Paul III. was induced to send his legate to attend a diet in Ratisbon (29th July 1541), where a project for reunion, known as the Ratisbon Interim, was brought under formal discussion. " It resulted," says Gieseler, " as before at Augsburg : they quickly came together on merely specu- lative formulas ; but as soon as they touched upon the ex- ternal constitution and ordinances relating to the authority of the church the division remained." It was the last, perhaps the only occasion, on which an influential section on both sides (the party that followed Paul III. and the party that followed Melanchthon) was animated by a genu- ine desire for reconciliation. Their design was defeated by the ignoble political aims of Francis on the one hand, and by the theological illiberality of Luther and the elector of Saxony on the other. In the meantime Protestantism continued to advance : Hermann von Wied, elector of Cologne, became a supporter of its doctrines ; and Pomer- ania, Anhalt, Mecklenburg, and the imperial cities were added to the territories in which it became the dominant faith. It was at this juncture, when the Reformation in Germany may be considered to have advanced to its high- est point, that Paul III. brought forward a proposal for assembling a general council, a proposition to which it was decided by the Protestant party at the diet of Worms (March 1545) not to accede, inasmuch as it would be a council convened by the pope. In the following December, however, the council (see TEENT, COUNCIL OF) assembled, thj publication, in the meantime, of Luther's pamphlet Against the Popedom at Rome, founded by the Devil, having further contributed to foster theological rancour. The deliberations of this famous assembly resulted, as is well known, in the enactment of a series of canons condemna- tory of Protestant doctrine ; and in this manner the hopes which down to this time had been cherished of bringing about a compromise with respect to those articles of faith on which agreement had before seemed not un- attainable were finally extinguished. Two months after the first assembling of the council of Trent Luther died. His latter days had been embittered by the defection (as he regarded it) of Melanchthon to a hostile camp, in the espousal by the latter of the tenets maintained by CEcolampadius and Bucer. The doctrine of the church having now been once more defined by the Tridentine decisions, the emperor, in the confident belief that theological divergence might be expected soon to cease, next turned his attention to the removal of those abuses in matters of discipline which he held to be the chief obstacle to the return of Protestants to the church. With this view he brought about the acceptance of the Augsburg Interim (15th May 1548) by the diet, a com- promise which, while it roused the susceptibilities of the pope, altogether failed to meet the conscientious scruples of the Protestant party. In its place Melanchthon and Duke Maurice of Saxony put forth the Leipsic Interim, a singular admixture of Lutheran doctrine and Roman ritual, which subsequently gave rise to the controversy with the Adiaphorists. The imperial design, of thus bringing about the extinction of Protestantism either by coercion or by conciliatory measures, may be held to have been finally defeated at the diet of Augsburg (1555), when it was decided not only that every ruler of a separate state should henceforth be at liberty to adopt either the Augsburg Confession (see supra] or the Catholic faith as his personal creed, but that his subjects should also be called upon to conform to the profession of their temporal head. The Pro- effects of this arrangement cannot be held to have been testant beneficial. Wherever, as was not seldom the case, th e yrsies" ruler of one principality embraced a different doctrine
 * rtsat In Germany the policy of the emperor, nearly always