REFORMATION
703
REFORMATION
tirely different. Here the sensual and tyrannical
Henry VHI, with the support of Thomas Cranmer,
whom the king had made Archbishop of Canterbury,
severed his country from ecclesiastical unity because
the pope, as the true guardian of the Divine law, re-
fused to recognize the invalid marriage of the king
with Anne Boleyn during the lifetime of his lawful
wife. Renouncing obedience to the pope, the des-
potic monarch constituted himself supreme judge
even in ecclesiastical affairs; the opposition of such
good men as Thomas More and John Fisher was over-
come in blood. The king wished, however, to re-
tain unchanged both the doctrines of the Church and
the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and caused a series of
doctrines and institutions rejected by Luther and his
followers to be strictly prescribed by Act of Parlia-
ment (Six Articles) under pain of death. In England
also the civil power constituted itself supreme judge
in matters of faith, and laid the foundation for further
arbitrary religious innovations. Under the following
sovereign, Edward VI (1547-53), the Protestant
party gained the upper hand, and thenceforth began
to promote the Reformation in England according
to the principles of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin.
Here also force was employed to spread the new
doctrines. This last effort of the Reformation move-
ment was practically confined to England (see
Anglicanism).
III. Method of Spreading the Reformation. — In the choice of means for extending the Reforma- tion its founders and supporters were not fastidious, availing themselves of any factor which could further their movement.
A. Denunciation of real and supposed abuses in religious and ecclesiastical life was, especially at the beginning, one of the chief methods employed by the reformers to promote their designs. By this means they won over many who were dissatisfied with exist- ing conditions, and were ready to support any move- ment that promised a change. But it was especially the widespread hatred of Rome and of the members of the hierarchy, fostered by the incessantly repeated and only too often justifiable complaints about abuses, that most efficiently favoured the reformers, who very soon violently attacked the i)apal authority, recognizing in it the supreme guardian of the Catholic Faith. Hence the multitude of lampoons, often most vulgar, against the pope, the bishops, and in general against all representatives of ecclesiastical authority. These pamphlets were circulated everywhere among the people, and thereby respect for authority was still more violently shaken. Painters prepared shameless and degrading caricatures of the pope, the clergy, and the monks, to illustrate the text of hostile pamphlets. Waged with every possible weapon (even the most reprehensible), this warfare against the representatives of the Church, as the supposed originators of all ecclesiastical abuses, pre- pared the way for the reception of the Reformation. A distinction was no longer drawn between temporary and corrigible abuses and fundamental supernatural Christian truths; together with the abuses, impor- tant ecclesiastical institutions, resting on Divine foundation, were simultaneously abolished.
B. Advantage was also taken of the divisions ex- isting in many places between the ecclesiastical and civil authorities. The development of the State, in its modern form, among the Christian peoples of the West gave rise to many disputes between the clergy and laity, between bishops and the cities, between monasteries and the territorial lords. When the Reformers withdrew from the clergy all authority, e.specially all influence in civil affairs, they enabled the princes and municipal authorities to end these long-pending strifes to their own advantage by ar- bitrarily arrogating to themselves all disputed rights, banishing the hierarchy whose rights they usurped.
and then establishing by their own authority a com-
pletely new ecclesiastical organization. The Re-
formed clergy thus possessed from the beginning
only such rights as the civil authorities were pleased
to assign them. Consequently the Reformed na-
tional Churches were completely subject to the civil
authorities, and the Reformers, who had entrusted
to the civil jjower the actual execution of their prin-
ciples, had now no means of ridding themselves of
this servitude.
C. In the course of centuries an immense number of foundations had been made for religious, charit- able, and educational objects, and had been provided with rich material resources. Churches, monas- teries, hospitals, and schools had often great incomes and extensive possessions, which aroused the envy of secular rulers. The Reformation enabled the latter to secularize this vast ecclesiastical wealth, since the leaders of the Reformation constantly inveighed against the centralization of such riches in the hands of the clergy. The princes and munic- ipal authorities were thus invited to seize ecclesias- tical property, and employ it for their own purposes. Ecclesiastical principalities, which were entrusted to the incumbents only as ecclesiastical persons for administration and usufruct, were, in defiance of actual law, by exclusion of the incumbents, trans- formed into secular principalities. In this way the Reformers succeeded in depriving the Church of the temporal wealth provided for its many needs, and in diverting the same to their own advantage.
D. Human passions, to which the Reformers ap- pealed in the most various ways, were another means of spreading the Reformation. The very ideas which these innovators defended — Christian freedom, license of thought, the right and capacity of each individual to found his own faith on the Bible, and other similar principles — were very seductive for many. The abolition of religious institutions which acted as a curb on sinful human nature (confession, penance, fasting, abstinence, vows) attracted the lascivious and frivolous. The warfare against the religious orders, against virginity and celibacy, against the practices of a higher Christian life, won for the Ref- ormation a great number of those who, without a serious vocation, had embraced the religious life from purely human and worldly motives, and who wished to be rid of obligations towards God which had grown burdensome, and to be free to gratify their sensual cravings. This they could do the more easily, as the confiscation of the property of the churches and monasteries rendered it possible to provide for the material advancement of ex-monks and ex-nuns, and of priests who apostatized. In the innumerable WTitings and pamphlets intended for the people the Reformers made it their fre- quent endeavour to excite the basest human in- stincts. Against the pope, the Roman Curia, and the bishops, priests, monks, and nuns who had re- mained true to their Catholic convictions, the most incredible lampoons and libels were disseminated. In language of the utmost coarseness Catholic doc- trines and institutions were distorted and ridiculed. Among the lower, mostly uneducated, and aban- doned elements of the population, the baser passions and instincts were stimulated and pressed into the service of the Reformation.
E. At first many bishops displayed great apathy towards the Reformers, attaching to the new move- ment no importance; its chiefs were thus given a longer time to spread their doctrines. Even later, many worldly -inclmed bishops, though remaining true to the Church, were very lax in combating heresy and in employing the proper means to prevent its further advance. The same might be said of the parochial clergy, who were to a great extent ignorant and indifferent, and looked on idly at the defection
