ferred literary activity from the South to the North. Since that time the literary achievements on the Catholic side have been, in comparison with those of the Protestants, insignificant." And regarding Europe in general, we find that Catholic countries have fettered knowledge by a long index of prohibited books, while Protestant nations have, as a rule, left the press comparatively free. Again, the Reformation had a purifying effect upon morals. It abolished, in the countries which embraced the new creed, the monasteries, which, once the nurseries of Christian virtues, had now in many cases become the hot-beds of Epicurean vices. It did away with the celibacy of the clergy which had been the occasion of great immorality. And then the holy fervor enkindled in many souls, also tended to exalt and purify the life, as witness the Puritans of England, the Huguenots of France, and the Covenanters of Scotland. The Reformation, furthermore, has been favorable to material progress, which may be illustrated by a comparison of Protestant with Roman Catholic countries.2 The former have been characterized by enterprise and invention, by industrial and material progress; while the countries that have remained most completely under the yoke of the ecclesiastical dominion of Rome, as Spain and Italy, have been marked by a strange torpidity of national life, and an almost perfect paralysis of individual enterprise. But the effects of the Protestant Revolution are by no means to be sought for in Protestant countries alone. The movement produced what is called the Catholic Counter-Reformation; that is, a reformation within the Roman Church herself. She underwent a thorough purification in head and members, -instituted those moral reforms the long delay of which had resulted in the schism of the Church. "Had Protestantism," declares Draper in his Intellectual Development of Europe, "produced no other result than this, it would have been an unspeakable blessing to the world." 1 Fisher's History of the Reformation, p. 534. 'On this point, as well as the preceding ones, read Macaulay's well-known paragraph in his History of England, Vol. I. Chap. I. GENERAL results of the REFORMATION. 381 But unfortunately the Counter-Reformation was accompanied by a reaction towards despotism. The Roman Church purified itself, and then demanded of all a more implicit obedience than hitherto. Heresy was more sternly dealt with, and the civil power in those countries that still remained, as a whole, loyal to Rome, allying itself with the Church, executed more promptly and willingly than ever before the sentences of the ecclesiastical tribunals. "Henceforth, both in France and in Spain, the nation was more than ever enthralled under the double despotism of Crown and Church. The Inquisition may be taken as the symbol of the one kind of despotism, and the French Bastile of the other."1 1 Seebohm's The Era of the Protestant Revolution, p. 218. The above views of the general effects of the great religious movement of the sixteenth century are of course the views of those to whom the Protestant Reformation presents itself as a forward, and not a backward, step in the course of civilization. To these interpretations, the views of the friends of the Old Church, to whom the great schism presents itself only as a worlddisaster, are in every respect diametrically opposed. In classes composed of students of sufficiently mature minds to profit by the discussion, the opposing views of Protestants and Roman Catholics might reasonably be compared and made the subject of debate. Among authoritative and easily accessible works by English writers, or works in English translations, giving the Roman Catholic side of the question, reference may be made to the following: Balmes' European Civilization: Protestantism and Catholicity Compared in their Effects on the Civilization of Europe; Audin's Life of Luther; Alzog's Manual of Universal Church History; and Spalding's History of the Protestant Reformation. CHAPTER II. THE ASCENDENCY OF SPAIN. I. REIGN OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. (1519-1556). Charles's Dominions. - In the year 1500 there was born in the city of Ghent, in the Netherlands, a prince who was destined to play a great part in the history of the sixteenth century. This was Charles, son of Philip the Handsome, Archduke of Austria, and Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, -destined to be known to fame as Emperor Charles V. Charles was "the converging point and heir of four great royal lines, which had become united by a series of happy matrimonial alliances." These were the houses of Austria, Burgundy, Castile, and Aragon. Castile and Aragon were joined by the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile; Austria and Burgundy, by the marriage of Maximilian of Austria to Mary, the daughter and heir of Charles the Bold, the last Duke of Burgundy : then these double lines were brought together by the marriage of Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, to Philip, son of Maximilian and Mary. Before Charles had completed his nineteenth year, there were heaped upon his head, through the removal of his ancestors by death, the crowns of the four dynasties. In 1506, by the death of his father, Charles fell heir to the Netherlands; in 1516, the death of his grandfather Ferdinand transferred to him the crowns of Spain and Naples, and the sovereignty of vast, indefinite regions 1 The practice of the House of Austria to make conquests through politic marriages, is celebrated by Matthias Corvinus in the following lines, quoted by Stirling in his Cloister Life of Charles V., p. 3:— Bella gerant alii; tu felix Austria nube! Nam quæ Mars aliis dat tibi regna Venus. |