Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/54



HE cause of the murderous war which, for thirty ycars of the seventeenth century, lacerated Central Europe is to be sought chiefly in the incompatibility of the religious views which prevailed among the peoples of the time. The discord, indeed, continues to this day, but utters itself no longer in bloody conflicts. The ground, however, of the pacific disposition which now obtains lies either in general indifference or in spreading skepticism. While Catholics and Protestants maintained their earlier zeal for their faith, their convictions of the truth of their opinions and the errors of their opponents were of a kind which, in our time, we seek in vain, even in men of most rigid beliefs, and which is now exemplified only among the national party leaders of a land where two languages are spoken, and there only, in a milder form. Is it then a matter of wonder that religious conflict then raged more wildly than does now the political, and that satisfaction was found, not in the subjugation, but in the