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 248 REFORMATION wholesale slaughter of the Huguenots, Aug. 24, 1572, the leaders of the party having been expressly invited to Paris to attend the mar- riage of Prince Henry of Navarre with a sister of Charles IX. as a general feast of reconcilia- tion. (See BARTHOLOMEW, SAINT, MASSACRE OF, and HUGUENOTS.) But the party was only diminished in number, by no means annihila- ted. Other civil wars followed with varying fortune, and terminated at last in the victory of Prince Henry of Navarre, who, after the assassination of Henry III. in 1589 by a Do- minican monk, became king of France as Henry IV. This seemed to decide the tri- umph of Protestantism in France. But the Roman party, still more numerous and pow- erful, and supported by Spain and the pope, elected a rival head and threatened to plunge the country into new bloodshed. Then Henry, from political and patriotic motives, but appa- rently not from religious conviction, abjured the Protestant faith, in which he had been brought up, and professed the Roman Catho- lic religion (1593), saying that Paris and the peace of France were " worth a mass." At the same time, however, he secured to his for- mer associates, then numbering about 760 con- gregations throughout the kingdom, in spite of the remonstrance of the pope and the bishops, ft legal existence and the right of the free ex- ercise of religion, by the celebrated edict of Nantes in 1598, which closes the stormy pe- riod of the French reformation. But the Re- formed church in France, after flourishing for a time, was overwhelmed with new disasters under the despotism of Richelieu, and finally the revocation of the edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. in 1685 reduced it to a "church of the desert ;" yet it survived the most cruel per- secutions at home, and enriched by thousands of exiles the population of every Protestant country in Europe and America. IV. THE REFORMATION IN THE NETHERLANDS was kin- dled partly by Lutheran influences from Ger- many, but mostly by Reformed and Calvinistic influences from Switzerland and France. Its first martyrs, Esch and Voes, were burned at Antwerp in 1523. The despotic arm of Charles V. and his son Philip II. resorted to the seve- rest measures for crushing the rising spirit of religious and political liberty. The duke of Alva surpassed the persecuting heathen em- perors of Rome in cruelty, and, according to Grotius, destroyed the lives of 100,000 Dutch Protestants during the six years of his regency (1567-'73). Finally the seven northern prov- inces formed a federal republic, first under the leadership of William of Orange, and after his assassination (1584) under his son Maurice, and after a long and heroic struggle accomplished their severance from the church of Rome and the Spanish crown. The southern provinces remained Roman Catholic and subject to Spain. The first Dutch Reformed synod was held at Dort in 1574, and in the next year the univer- sity of Leyden was founded. The Protestant- ism of Holland is predominantly Calvinistic, and adopts as its doctrinal and disciplinary standards the Heidelberg catechism as pub- lished (in Latin and German) in 1563, the Bel- gic confession of 1561, and the articles of the synod of Dort of 1618-'19. This important synod was held in consequence of the Armin- ian controversy, which violently agitated the country at that time. The Arminians or Re- monstrants, differing in five points from the Calvinists, arid holding to the freedom of the will and a conditional predestination, were con- demned by the synod of Dort, but continued as a tolerated sect, and exerted, through the writings of their distinguished scholars and divines, Arminius, Hugo Grotius, Episcopius, Limborch, and Le Clerc (Clericus), consid- erable influence upon Protestant theology in England, France, and Germany during the 18th century. The orthodox church of Hol- land has been represented in the United States since 1609 by the Reformed Protestant Dutch church (now the "Reformed church in Ameri- ca "), the oldest save one of the denominations in the United States. V. THE REFORMATION IN HUNGARY. This country was first brought into contact with the reform movement by dis- ciples of Luther and Melanchthon, who had studied at Wittenberg, after 1524. Ferdinand I. granted to some magnates and cities liberty of worship, and Maximilian II. (1564-'76) in- creased it. The synod of Erdod in 1545 or- ganized the Lutheran, and the synod of Csen- ger in 1557 the Reformed church. The Ger- man settlers mostly adopted the Augsburg confession, the national Magyars the Helvetic. Rudolph II. having suppressed religious liber- ty, Prince Stephen Bocskay of Transylvania, strengthened by his alliance with the Turks, reconquered by force of arms (1606) full toler- ation for the Lutherans and Calvinists in Hun- gary and Transylvania, which, under his suc- cessors Bethlen Gabor and George Rak6czy I., was confirmed by the treaties of Nikolsburg (1622) and Linz (1645). In Transylvania So- cinianism also found a refuge, and has main- tained itself to this day. VI. THE REFORMA- TION IN POLAND. Fugitive Bohemian Breth- ren or Hussites and the writings of the Ger- man reformers started the movement in Po- land. King Sigismund Augustus (1548-'72) fa- vored it and corresponded with Calvin. The most distinguished Protestant of that coun- try was Jan Laski, or John a Lasco, a Cal- vinist, who fled from Poland for his faith, was called back by the Protestant nobility, aided by several friends translated the Bible, and labored for the union of the Reformed and Lutherans (died 1560). A compromise between the two parties was effected by the general synod of Sandomir (Consentus Sandomiriensis) in 1570 ; but subsequently internal dissensions, the increase of Socinianism, and the efforts of the Jesuits greatly interfered with the prosper- ity of Protestantism in that country. The German provinces now belonging to Russia,