an

nations. Italy was, in truth, a part of the | Rome, made themselves masters of the empire of Charles the Fifth; and the empire and of the treasures of Montecourt of Rome was, on many important zuma. Thus Catholicism which, in occasions, his tool. He had not, there- the public mind of Northern Europe, fore, like the distant princes of the was associated with spoliation and opNorth, a strong selfish motive for at- pression, was in the public mind of tacking the Papacy. In fact, the very Spain associated with liberty, victory, measures which provoked the Sove- dominion, wealth, and glory. reign of England to renounce all con- It is not, therefore, strange that the nection with Rome were dictated by effect of the great outbreak of Prothe Sovereign of Spain. The feeling testantism in one part of Christendom of the Spanish people concurred with should have been to produce the interest of the Spanish govern- equally violent outbreak of Catholic ment. The attachment of the Casti- zeal in another. Two reformations lian to the faith of his ancestors was were pushed on at once with equal peculiarly strong and ardent. With energy and effect, a reformation of that faith were inseparably bound up doctrine in the North, a reformation of the institutions, the independence, and manners and discipline in the South. the glory of his country. Between the In the course of a single generation, day when the last Gothic king was the whole spirit of the Church of vanquished on the banks of the Xeres, Rome underwent a change. From the and the day when Ferdinand and halls of the Vatican to the most seIsabella entered Granada in triumph, cluded hermitage of the Apennines, near eight hundred years had elapsed; the great revival was every where felt and during those years the Spanish and seen. All the institutions annation had been engaged in a des- ciently devised for the propagation and perate struggle against misbelievers. defence of the faith were furbished up The Crusades had been merely an and made efficient. Fresh engines of episode in the history of other nations. still more formidable power were conThe existence of Spain had been one structed. Every where old religious long Crusade. After fighting Mussul- communities were remodelled and new mans in the Old World, she began to religious communities called into exfight heathens in the New. It was istence. Within a year after the death under the authority of a Papal bull of Leo, the order of Camaldoli was that her children steered into unknown purified. The Capuchins restored the seas. It was under the standard of old Franciscan discipline, the midnight the cross that they marched fearlessly prayer and the life of silence. into the heart of great kingdoms. It Barnabites and the society of Somasca was with the cry of "St. James for devoted themselves to the relief and Spain," that they charged armies education of the poor. To the Theawhich outnumbered them a hundred-tine order a still higher interest befold. And men said that the Saint longs. Its great object was the same had heard the call, and had himself, with that of our early Methodists, in arms, on a grey war-horse, led the namely to supply the deficiencies of onset before which the worshippers of false gods had given way. After the battle, every excess of rapacity or cruelty was sufficiently vindicated by the plea that the sufferers were unbaptized. Avarice stimulated zeal. Zeal consecrated avarice. Proselytes and gold mines were sought with equal ardour. In the very year in which the Saxons, maddened by the exactions of Rome, broke loose from her yoke, the Spaniards, under the authority of

The

the parochial clergy. The Church of Rome, wiser than the Church of England, gave every countenance to the good work. The members of the new brotherhood preached to great multitudes in the streets and in the fields, prayed by the beds of the sick, and administered the last sacraments to the dying. Foremost among them in zeal and devotion was Gian Pietro Caraffa, afterwards Pope Paul the Fourth. In the convent of the Theatines at Venice,

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the Holy Sepulchre. Thence he wandered back to the farthest West, and astonished the convents of Spain and the schools of France by his penances and vigils. The same lively imagination which had been employed in picturing the tumult of unreal battles, and

under the eye of Caraffa, a Spanish | dage. His restless spirit led him to gentleman took up his abode, tended the Syrian deserts, and to the chapel of the poor in the hospitals, went about in rags, starved himself almost to death, and often sallied into the streets, mounted on stones, and, waving his hat to invite the passers-by, began to preach in a strange jargon of mingled Castilian and Tuscan. The Theatines were among the most zealous and the charms of unreal queens, now rigid of men; but to this enthusiastic peopled his solitude with saints and neophyte their discipline seemed lax, angels. The Holy Virgin descended and their movements sluggish; for to commune with him. He saw the his own mind, naturally passionate Saviour face to face with the eye of and imaginative, had passed through flesh. Even those mysteries of religion a training which had given to all its which are the hardest trial of faith peculiarities a morbid intensity and were in his case palpable to sight. It energy. In his early life he had been is difficult to relate without a pitying the very prototype of the hero of Cer-smile that, in the sacrifice of the mass, vantes. The single study of the young he saw transubstantiation take place, Hidalgo had been chivalrous romance; and that, as he stood praying on the and his existence had been one gor- steps of the Church of St. Dominic, he geous day-dream of princesses rescued saw the Trinity in Unity, and wept and infidels subdued. He had chosen aloud with joy and wonder. Such was a Dulcinea, "no countess, no duchess," the celebrated Ignatius Loyola, who, these are his own words,-"but one in the great Catholic reaction, bore the of far higher station;" and he flat- same part which Luther bore in the tered himself with the hope of laying great Protestant movement. at her feet the keys of Moorish castles and the jewelled turbans of Asiatic kings. In the midst of these visions of martial glory and prosperous love, a severe wound stretched him on a bed of sickness. His constitution was shattered and he was doomed to be a cripple for life. The palm of strength, grace, and skill in knightly exercises, was no longer for him. He could no longer hope to strike down gigantic soldans, or to find favour in the sight of beautiful women. A new vision then arose in his mind, and mingled itself with his old delusions in a manner which to most Englishmen must seem singular, but which those who know how close was the union between religion and chivalry in Spain will be at no loss to understand. He would still be a soldier; he would still be a knight errant; but the soldier and knight errant of the spouse of Christ. He would smite the Great Red Dragon. He would be the champion of the Woman clothed with the Sun. He would break the charm under which false prophets held the souls of men in bon

Dissatisfied with the system of the Theatines, the enthusiastic Spaniard turned his face towards Rome. Poor, obscure, without a patron, without recommendations, he entered the city where now two princely temples, rich with painting and many-coloured marble, commemorate his great services to the Church; where his form stands sculptured in massive silver; where his bones, enshrined amidst jewels, are placed beneath the altar of God. His activity and zeal bore down all opposition; and under his rule the order of Jesuits began to exist, and grew rapidly to the full measure of his gigantic powers. With what vehemence, with what policy, with what exact discipline, with what dauntless courage, with what self-denial, with what forgetfulness of the dearest private ties, with what intense and stubborn devotion to a single end, with what unscrupulous laxity and versatility in the choice of means, the Jesuits fought the battle of their church, is written in every page of the annals of Europe during several generations. In the

order of Jesus was concentrated the self to the subject of Philip or to the quintessence of the Catholic spirit; subject of Elizabeth. Some described and the history of the order of Jesus these divines as the most rigid, others is the history of the great Catholic re- as the most indulgent of spiritual diaction. That order possessed itself at rectors; and both descriptions were once of all the strongholds which com- correct. The truly devout listened mand the public mind, of the pulpit, with awe to the high and saintly moof the press, of the confessional, of rality of the Jesuit. The gay cavalier the academies. Wherever the Jesuit who had run his rival through the preached, the church was too small body, the frail beauty who had forfor the audience. The name of Jesuit gotten her marriage-vow, found in the on a title-page secured the circulation Jesuit an easy well-bred man of the of a book. It was in the ears of the world, who knew how to make allowJesuit that the powerful, the noble, ance for the little irregularities of peoand the beautiful, breathed the secret ple of fashion. The confessor was history of their lives. It was at the strict or lax, according to the temper feet of the Jesuit that the youth of the of the penitent. The first object was higher and middle classes were brought to drive no person out of the pale of up from childhood to manhood, from the Church. Since there were bad the first rudiments to the courses of people, it was better that they should rhetoric and philosophy. Literature be bad Catholics than bad Protestants. and science, lately associated with in- If a person was so unfortunate as to fidelity or with heresy, now became be a bravo, a libertine, or a gambler, the allies of orthodoxy. Dominant in that was no reason for making him a the South of Europe, the great order heretic too. soon went forth conquering and to conquer. In spite of oceans and deserts, of hunger and pestilence, of spies and penal laws, of dungeons and racks, of gibbets and quartering-blocks, Jesuits were to be found under every disguise, and in every country; scholars, physicians, merchants, servingmen; in the hostile court of Sweden, in the old manor-houses of Cheshire, among the hovels of Connaught; arguing, instructing, consoling, stealing away the hearts of the young, animating the courage of the timid, holding up the crucifix before the eyes of the dying. Nor was it less their office to plot against the thrones and lives of apostate kings, to spread evil rumours, to raise tumults, to inflame civil wars, to arm the hand of the assassin. Inflexible in nothing but in their fidelity to the Church, they were equally ready to appeal in her cause to the spirit of loyalty and to the spirit of freedom. Extreme doctrines of obedience and extreme doctrines of liberty, the right of rulers to misgovern the people, the right of every one of the people to plunge his knife in the heart of a bad ruler, were inculcated by the same man, according as he addressed him

The Old World was not wide enough for this strange activity. The Jesuits invaded all the countries which the great maritime discoveries of the preceding age had laid open to European enterprise. They were to be found in the depths of the Peruvian mines, at the marts of the African slave-caravans, on the shores of the Spice Islands, in the observatories of China. They made converts in regions which neither avarice nor curiosity had tempted any of their countrymen to enter; and preached and disputed in tongues of which no other native of the West understood a word.

The spirit which appeared so eminently in this order animated the whole Catholic world. The Court of Rome itself was purified. During the generation which preceded the Reformation, that court had been a scandal to the Christian name. Its annals are black with treason, murder, and incest. Even its more respectable members were utterly unfit to be ministers of religion. They were men like Leo the Tenth; men who, with the Latinity of the Augustan age, had acquired its atheistical and scoffing spirit. They regarded those Christian mysteries, of

which they were stewards, just as the head of processions, found, even in the Augur Cicero and the high Pontiff midst of his most pressing avocations, Cæsar regarded the Sibylline books time for private prayer, often regretted and the pecking of the sacred chickens. that the public duties of his station Among themselves, they spoke of the were unfavourable to growth in holiIncarnation, the Eucharist, and the ness, and edified his flock by innuTrinity, in the same tone in which merable instances of humility, charity, Cotta and Velleius talked of the oracle and forgiveness of personal injuries, of Delphi or the voice of Faunus in while, at the same time, he upheld the the mountains. Their years glided by authority of his see, and the unadulin a soft dream of sensual and intel- terated doctrines of his Church, with all lectual voluptuousness. Choice cook- the stubbornness and vehemence of ery, delicious wines, lovely women, Hildebrand. Gregory the Thirteenth hounds, falcons, horses, newly dis- exerted himself not only to imitate but covered manuscripts of the classics, to surpass Pius in the severe virtues of sonnets, and burlesque romances in his sacred profession. As was the the sweetest Tuscan, just as licen- head, such were the members. The tious as a fine sense of the graceful change in the spirit of the Catholic would permit, plate from the hand of world may be traced in every walk of Benvenuto, designs for palaces by literature and of art. It will be at Michael Angelo, frescoes by Raphael, once perceived by every person who busts, mosaics, and gems just dug up compares the poem of Tasso with that from among the ruins of ancient temples of Ariosto, or the monuments of Sixand villas, these things were the de- tus the Fifth with those of Leo the light and even the serious business Tenth. of their lives. Letters and the fine But it was not on moral influence arts undoubtedly owe much to this not alone that the Catholic Church relied, inelegant sloth. But when the great The civil sword in Spain and Italy was stirring of the mind of Europe began, unsparingly employed in her support. when doctrine after doctrine was as- The Inquisition was armed with new sailed, when nation after nation with-powers and inspired with a new energy. drew from communion with the suc- If Protestantism, or the semblance of cessor of St. Peter, it was felt that the Protestantism, showed itself in any Church could not be safely confided to quarter, it was instantly met, not by chiefs whose highest praise was that petty, teasing persecution, but by perthey were good judges of Latin com- secution of that sort which bows down positions, of paintings, and of statues, and crushes all but a very few select whose severest studies had a pagan spirits. Whoever was suspected of character, and who were suspected of heresy, whatever his rank, his learning, laughing in secret at the sacraments or his reputation, knew that he must which they administered, and of be- purge himself to the satisfaction of a lieving no more of the Gospel than severe and vigilant tribunal, or die by of the Morgante Maggiore. Men of a fire. Heretical books were sought out very different class now rose to the and destroyed with similar rigour. direction of ecclesiastical affairs, men Works which were once in every house whose spirit resembled that of Dunstan were so effectually suppressed that no and of Becket. The Roman Pontiffs copy of them is now to be found in the exhibited in their own persons all the most extensive libraries. One book in austerity of the early anchorites of particular, entitled "Of the Benefits of Syria. Paul the Fourth brought to the Death of Christ," had this fate. It the Papal throne the same fervent zeal was written in Tuscan, was many times which had carried him into the Thea- reprinted, and was eagerly read in tine convent. Pius the Fifth, under every part of Italy. But the inquisihis gorgeous vestments, wore day and tors detected in it the Lutheran docnight the hair shirt of a simple friar, trine of justification by faith alone. walked barefoot in the streets at the They proscribed it; and it is now as

we overleap another half century, we find her victorious and dominant in France, Belgium, Bavaria, Bohemia, Austria, Poland, and Hungary. Nor has Protestantism, in the course of two hundred years been able to reconquer any portion of what was then lost.

hopelessly lost as the second decade of doubtful territory which lay between. Livy. All the weapons of carnal and of Thus, while the Protestant reforma- | spiritual warfare were employed. Both tion proceeded rapidly at one extremity sides may boast of great talents and of of Europe, the Catholic revival went great virtues. Both have to blush for on as rapidly at the other. About half many follies and crimes. At first, the a century after the great separation, chances seemed to be decidedly in fathere were, throughout the North, Pro-vour of Protestantism; but the victory testant governments and Protestant remained with the Church of Rome. nations. In the South were govern- On every point she was successful. If ments and nations actuated by the most intense zeal for the ancient Church. Between these two hostile regions lay, morally as well as geographically, a great debatable land. In France, Belgium, Southern Germany, Hungary, and Poland, the contest was still undecided. The governments of those countries had not re- It is, moreover, not to be dissembled nounced their connection with Rome; that this triumph of the Papacy is to but the Protestants were numerous, be chiefly attributed, not to the force of powerful, bold, and active. In France, arms, but to a great reflux in public they formed a commonwealth within opinion. During the first half centhe realm, held fortresses, were able to tury after the commencement of the bring great armies into the field, and Reformation, the current of feeling, in had treated with their sovereign on the countries on this side of the Alps terms of equality. In Poland, the and of the Pyrenees ran impetuously King was still a Catholic; but the towards the new doctrines. Then the Protestants had the upper hand in the tide turned, and rushed as fiercely in Diet, filled the chief offices in the ad- the opposite direction. Neither during ministration, and, in the large towns, the one period, nor during the other, took possession of the parish churches. did much depend upon the event of "It appeared," says the Papal nuncio, battles or sieges. The Protestant move"that in Poland, Protestantism would ment was hardly checked for an incompletely supersede Catholicism." In stant by the defeat at Muhlberg. The Bavaria, the state of things was nearly Catholic reaction went on at full speed the same. The Protestants had a ma- in spite of the destruction of the Arjority in the Assembly of the States, mada. It is difficult to say whether and demanded from the duke conces- the violence of the first blow or of the sions in favour of their religion, as the recoil was the greater. Fifty years price of their subsidies. In Transyl- after the Lutheran separation, Cathovania, the House of Austria was un-licism could scarcely maintain itself able to prevent the Diet from confis- on the shores of the Mediterranean. cating, by one sweeping decree, the A hundred years after the separation, estates of the Church. In Austria Protestantism could scarcely maintain Proper it was generally said that only itself on the shores of the Baltic. The one thirtieth part of the population causes of this memorable turn in hucould be counted on as good Catho- man affairs well deserve to be investilics. In Belgium the adherents of the gated. new opinions were reckoned by hundreds of thousands.

The history of the two succeeding generations is the history of the struggle between Protestantism possessed of the North of Europe, and Catholicism possessed of the South, for the

The contest between the two parties bore some resemblance to the fencing-match in Shakspeare; “Laertes wounds Hamlet; then, in scuffling, they change rapiers, and Hamlet wounds Laertes." The war between Luther and Leo was a war between firm faith