ENGLAND AND THE PAPACY

1567-1576.

THE fall of Mary freed Elizabeth from the most terrible of her outer dangers. But it left her still struggling with ever-growing dangers at home. The religious peace for which she had fought so hard was drawing to an end. Sturdily as she might aver to her subjects that no change had really been made in English religion, that the old faith had only been purified, that the realm had only been freed from Papal usurpation, jealously as she might preserve the old episcopate, the old service, the old vestments and usages of public worship, her action abroad told too plainly its tale. The world was slowly drifting to a gigantic conflict between the tradition of the past and a faith that rejected the tradition of the past; and in this conflict men saw that England was ranging itself not on the side of the old belief but of the new. The real meaning of Elizabeth's attitude was revealed in her refusal to own the Council of Trent. From that moment the hold which she had retained on all who still clung strongly to Catholic doctrine was roughly shaken. Her system of conformity received a heavy blow from the decision of the Papacy that attendance at the common prayer was unlawful. Her religious compromise was almost destroyed by the victory of the Guises. In the Moment of peril she was driven on Protestant support, and Protestant support had to be bought by a Test Act which excluded every zealous Catholic from all share in the government Or administration of the realm, while the re-enactment of Edward's Articles by the Convocation of the clergy was in avowal of Protestantism which none could mistake. Whatever in fact might be Elizabeth's own predilections, even the most cautious of Englishmen could hardly doubt of the drift of her policy. The hopes which the party of moderation had founded on a marriage with Philip, or a marriage with the Austrian Archduke, or a marriage with Dudley, had all passed away. The conciliatory efforts of Pope Pius had been equally fruitless. The last hope of a quiet undoing of the religious changes lay in the succession of Mary Stuart. But with the fall of Mary a peaceful return to the older faith became impossible; and the consciousness of this could hardly fail to wake new dangers for Elizabeth, whether at home or abroad.

It was in fact at this moment of seeming triumph that the great struggle of her reign began. In 1565 a pontiff was chosen to fill the Papal chair whose policy was that of open war between England and Rome. At no moment in its history had the fortunes of the Roman See sunk so low as at the accession of Pius the Fifth. The Catholic revival had as yet done nothing to arrest the march of the Reformation. In less than half a century the new doctrines had spread from Iceland to the Pyrenees and from Finland to the Alps. When Pius mounted the throne Lutheranism was firmly established in Scandinavia and in Northern Germany. Along the eastern border of the Empire it had conquered Livonia and Old Prussia; its adherents formed a majority of the nobles of Poland; Hungary seemed drifting toward heresy; and in Transylvania the Diet had already confiscated all Church lands. In Central Germany the great prelates whose princedoms covered so large a part of Franconia opposed in vain the spread of Lutheran doctrine. It seemed as triumphant in Southern Germany, for the Duchy of Austria was for the most part Lutheran, and many of the Bavarian towns with a large part of the Bavarian nobles had espoused the cause of the Reformation. In Western Europe the fiercer doctrines of Calvinism took the place of the faith of Luther. At the death of Henry the Second Calvin's missionaries poured from Geneva over France, and in a few years every province of the realm was dotted with Calvinistic churches. The Huguenots rose into a great political and religious party which struggled openly for the mastery of the realm and wrested from the Crown a legal recognition of its existence and of freedom of worship. The influence of France told quickly on the regions about it. The Rhineland was fast losing its hold on Catholicism. In the Netherlands, where the persecutions of Charles the Fifth had failed to check the upgrowth of heresy, his successor saw Calvinism win state after state, and gird itself to a desperate struggle at once for religious and for civil independence. Still further west a sudden revolution had won Scotland for the faith of Geneva; and a revolution hardly less sudden, though marked with consummate subtlety, had in effect added England to the Churches of the Reformation. Christendom in fact was almost lost to the Papacy; for only two European countries owned its sway without dispute. "There remain firm to the Pope," wrote a Venetian ambassador to his State, "only Spain and Italy with some few islands, and those countries possessed by your Serenity in Dalmatia and Greece."

It was at this moment of defeat that Pius the Fifth mounted the Papal throne. His earlier life had been that of an Inquisitor; and he combined the ruthlessness of a persecutor with the ascetic devotion of a saint. Pius had but one end, that of re-conquering Christendom, of restoring the rebel nations to the fold of the Church, and of stamping out heresy by fire and sword. To his fiery faith every means of warfare seemed hallowed by the sanctity of his cause. The despotism of the prince, the passion of the populace, the sword of the mercenary, the very dagger of the assassin, were all seized without scruple as weapons in the warfare of God. The ruthlessness of the Inquisitor was turned into the world-wide policy of the Papacy. When Philip doubted how to deal with the troubles in the Netherlands, Pius bade him deal with them by force of arms. When the Pope sent soldiers of his own to join the Catholics in France he bade their leader "slay instantly whatever heretic fell into his hands." The massacres of Alva were rewarded by a gift of the consecrated hat and sword, as the massacre of St. Bartholomew was hailed by the successor of Pius with a solemn thanksgiving. The force of the Pope's effort lay in its concentration of every energy on a single aim. Rome drew in fact a new power from the ruin of her schemes of secular aggrandizement. The narrower hopes and dreads which had sprung from their position as Italian princes told no longer on the Popes. All hope of the building up of a wider princedom passed away. The hope of driving the stranger from Italy came equally to an end. But on the other hand Rome was screened from the general conflicts of the secular powers. It was enabled to be the friend of every Catholic State, and that at a moment when every Catholic State saw in the rise of Calvinism a new cause for seeking its friendship. Calvinism drew with it a thirst for political liberty, and religious revolution became the prelude to political revolution. From this moment therefore the cause of the Papacy became the cause of kings, and a craving for self-preservation rallied the Catholic princes round the Papal throne. The same dread of utter ruin rallied round it the Catholic Church. All strife, all controversy was hushed in the presence of the foe. With the close of the Council of Trent came a unity of feeling and of action such as had never been seen before. Faith was defined. The Papal authority stood higher than ever. The bishops owned themselves to be delegates of the Roman See. The clergy were drawn together into a disciplined body by the institution of seminaries. The new religious orders carried everywhere the watchword of implicit obedience. As the heresy of Calvin pressed on to one victory after another, the Catholic world drew closer and closer round the standard of Rome.

What raised the warfare of Pius into grandeur was the scale upon which he warred. His hand was everywhere throughout Christendom. Under him Rome became the political as well as the religious centre of Western Europe. The history of the Papacy widened again, as in the Middle Ages, into the history of the world. Every scheme of the Catholic resistance was devised or emboldened at Rome. While her Jesuit emissaries won a new hold in Bavaria and Southern Germany, rolled back the tide of Protestantism in the Rhine-land, and by school and pulpit labored to re-Catholicize the Empire, Rome spurred Mary Stuart to the Darnley marriage, urged Philip to march Alva on the Netherlands, broke up the religious truce which Catharine had won for France, and celebrated with solemn pomp the massacre of the Huguenots. England above all was the object of Papal attack. The realm of Elizabeth was too important for the general Papal scheme of re-conquering Christendom to be lightly let go. England alone could furnish a centre to the reformed communions of Western Europe. The Lutheran states of North Germany were too small. The Scandinavian kingdoms were too remote. Scotland hardly ranked as yet as a European power. Even if France joined the new movement her influence would long be neutralized by the strife of the religious parties within her pale. But England was to outer seeming a united realm. Her government held the country firmly in band. Whether as an island or from her neighborhood to the chief centres of the religious strife, she was so placed as to give an effective support to the new opinions. Protestant refugees found a safe shelter within her bounds. Her trading ships diffused heresy in every port they touched at. She could at little risk feed the Calvinistic revolution in France or the Netherlands. In the great battle of the old faith and the new England was thus the key of the reformed position. With England Protestant the fight against Protestantism could only be a slow and doubtful one. On the other hand a Catholic England would render religious revolution in the west all but hopeless. Hand in band with Philip religiously, as she already was politically, the great island might turn the tide of the mighty conflict which had so long gone against the Papacy.