l'Église le requiert, ils ne puissent être changés. Mais il ne sera pas au pouvoir d'un particulier de le faire, sans l'avis et le consentement du Concile général. No. 330. The Report of the Venetian Ambassador in France, 1561. Unless it otherwise pleases the Almighty, religious affairs will soon be in an evil case in France, because there is not one single province uncontaminated. Indeed in some provinces, such as Normandy, almost the whole of Brittany, Touraine, Poitou, Gascony, and a great part of Languedoc, of Dauphiny, and of Provence, comprising three-fourths of the kingdom, congregations and meetings, which they call assemblies, are held; and in these assemblies they read and preach, according to the rites and usages of Geneva, without any respect either for the ministers of the king or the commandments of the king himself. This contagion has penetrated so deeply that it affects every class of persons, and, what appears more strange, even the ecclesiastical body itself. I do not mean only priests, friars, and nuns, for there are but few monasteries that are not corrupted, but even bishops and many of the principal prelates, who hitherto had not shown any such disposition; and it is only on account of the rigorous execution of the law that other persons besides the populace have not disclosed themselves, because they have restrained themselves for the time being, from fear of the loss of their property and lives. But your Serenity must learn that while the people and the populace show fervent devotion by frequenting the churches and observing the Catholic rites, all other classes are supposed to be disaffected, and the nobility perhaps more than any other class, and, particularly, persons of forty years of age and under." If these disaffected individuals continue to attend Mass and the Divine Offices, and externally to practise Catholic rites, they do so for show and from fear; because when they either are, or believe themselves to be, unobserved, they avoid and even fly from the Mass above all things, and also from the churches as far as they are able, and more so since it became known that by imprisonment, chastisement, and burnings, no remedy was found. It has now been determined not to proceed against any disaffected 1 The Doge of Venice. 2 The wars with the Empire were over by, 3 April 1559, the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. They had nothing to do, and were often in debt. persons, unless they venture to preach, persuade, and to take part publicly in congregations and assemblies. All other such persons are allowed to live, and some have been set at liberty, and released from the prisons of Paris and of other parts of the kingdom. A great number of these last have still remained in the kingdom, preaching and speaking publicly, and boasting that they have gained their cause against the Papists, as they delight to style their adversaries; so that, now, every one of them is assured against the fear of being questioned; and there exists thus a silent truce, because whilst formerly all suspected persons had to quit the kingdom, and to retire some to Geneva, some to Germany, and some to England, now they not only do not leave the country, but a large number of those who had already emigrated have returned. It was told me, whilst passing through Geneva on my way to Italy, that, after the death of the king, a great number of gentlemen who had fled thither after the conspiracy of Amboise, had come back to France, and, in particular, M. de Mombrun, who was the author of the late disturbances in Provence and in Dauphiny, and who had been burnt in effigy; besides these, more than fifty others, who are called ministers, were summoned from various parts of France to travel, and teach and preach the 'Word', for thus they term the Gospels, and their own doctrine. Your Serenity will hardly believe the influence and the great power which the principal minister of Geneva, by name Calvin, a Frenchman, and a native of Picardy, possesses in this kingdom; he is a man of extraordinary authority, who by his mode of life, his doctrines, and his writings, rises superior to all the rest; and it is almost impossible to believe the enormous sums of money which are secretly sent to him from France to maintain his power. It is sufficient to add that if God does not interfere, there is great and imminent danger that one of two things will happen in this kingdom: either that the truce, which is desired and sought publicly, will end by the heretics having churches wherein they can preach, read, and perform their rites, according to their doctrine, without hindrance, and in like manner as they obtained churches by command of the late king, given at Fontainebleau, at the end of August, in compliance with a petition presented to him by the Admiral; or, else, that we shall see an obedience to the 2 To remove the Guises, 15 March 1560. 3 Edict of Fontainebleau, 26 Aug. 1560. Pope and to the Catholic rites enforced, and shall have resort to violence and imbrue our hands in noble blood. For these reasons I foresee a manifest and certain division in the kingdom, and civil war as a consequence; and this will be the cause of the ruin both of the kingdom and of religion, because upon a change in religion a change in the State necessarily follows. § 3. THE NETHERLANDS XXI THE DUTCH REFORMED, 1559-62 On 26 October 1555 Charles V resigned the crown of the Netherlands to his son Philip II of Spain, 1556–†98. The Emperor left him his debts, his policy of putting down heresy by Edicts and Inquisition, and his scheme for cementing the ecclesiastical unity of the Seventeen Provinces1 by an enlarged and reconstituted hierarchy everything, in fact, but his personal popularity. In 1559 [No. 331] the Venetian Ambassador wrote that Philip was a foreigner to the Netherlands (Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, 1558-80, No. 274). He felt himself so: and at last the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, 3 April, set him free to sail, 26 Aug., for Spain. He left the government of the Netherlands in the hands of a Regent and a Minister-his half-sister Margaret Duchess of Parma, a native-born princess, 1521-+86, and the Burgundian Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, 1517-+86, Bishop of Arras 1538-61. Both were regarded as the representatives of a foreign Sovereign, and both were dependent wholly on his favour. Before his departure, Philip, 24 May, had secured the consent of Paul IV to [No. 332] the increase of Bishoprics (ibid. No. 75): and by a Bull of 18 Aug. (Raynaldus, Ann. Eccl. xv. 40 sqq.) the hierarchy was raised from four to seventeen sees, with Granvelle at its head (Calendar, No. 244) as Cardinal-Archbishop of Mechlin, 1561. There was much to be said for this project as designed to replace a chaos of four dioceses-Utrecht, Arras, Tournai, and Cambrai-which were subject to the foreign metropolitans of Köln and Rheims, by a national hierarchy. But it was resented, and so was the repression. Discontent was of slow growth: but the 2 1 These were, in 1543, (a) four duchies: Brabant, Limburg, Luxemburg, Gelderland; (b) seven counties: Flanders, Artois, Hainault, Namur, Zeeland, Holland, Zütphen ; (c) five lordships: Friesland, Groningen, Overyssel, Utrecht, Mechlin; and (d) one marquisate: Antwerp. These were (a) under Cambrai (Ábp.), Arras, Tournai, St. Omer, Namur; (b) under Mechlin (Abp.), Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, Hertogenbosch, Roermond; under (c) Utrecht (Abp.), Haarlem, Deventer, Leeuwarden, and Middelburg. Calvinists, who now felt the pressure of the Edicts in common with Lutherans, Sacramentaries, and Anabaptists against whom they were originally directed, sought to disarm the hostility of the government by presenting their [No. 333] Confession de Foi des Églises Réformées Wallonnes et Flamandes, 1561 (Schaff, Creeds of Evang. Prot. Churches, 383 sqq.) or Confessio Belgica (Niemeyer, 360 sqq.) in which the Anabaptists were specially repudiated. Originally drawn up in French by Guido de Brès, 1522-+67, a Walloon minister, on the basis of the Confessio Gallicana, it was sent, in 1562, to Philip for authorization, as the belief of a hundred thousand of his subjects who were never found in arms or plotting against their sovereign'. It made no impression on Philip, but it was at once taken into use by the Netherlanders in place of the formularies which they had borrowed from the Walloon congregation in London, 1550, and their Superintendent John Laski, 1499– +1560 (Forma ac Ratio tota ecclesiastici Ministerii in peregrinorum Ecclesia instituta Londini anno 1550, auctore Io. à Lasco [1555]: cf. Richter, Kirchenordnungen, ii. 99 sqq. and Dixon, History of the Church of England, iii. 234 sqq., 424 sq.). When, at last, the Confession was adopted, May 1566, in synod at Antwerp (Brandt, History of the Reformation in the Low Countries, i. 142) Calvinistic principles won the day. It was supplemented by the adoption at the Synod of Emden, 4-14 Oct. 1571 (Richter, Kirchenordnungen, ii. 339 sqq.) of a polity on the Genevan model as best suited for 'churches under the cross' and of the Heidelberg Catechism, 1574 (Brandt, i. 311). In 1577, by certain Canons drawn up and published in the name of the Prince of Orange as Stadtholder and of the States of Holland and Zeeland and their Confederates' (q. v. in ibid. 318 sqq.), Calvinism made terms with the State. By this time the whole people had been roused against the tyranny of Spain. The seven northern provinces-Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland, Overyssel, Friesland, and Groningenwithdrew in 1579, and eventually won their independence, 1609, as the United Netherlands. They were Calvinist to a man. The remaining ten were reduced to obedience by Alexander Farnese, 1546-192, Duke of Parma, in a war, 1578-92, which was conducted 'with full consciousness and fixed design as a war of religion'. In every town as it was conquered the Jesuits were settled: and they 'transformed Belgium, which had previously been halfprotestant, into one of the most decidedly [Roman] Catholic countries in the world' (Ranke, Popes, i. 475). No. 331. The Venetian Ambassador on Philip II, 1559. The Catholic king was born in Spain in the month of May 1527. He passed his early days and the greater part of his youth in that kingdom, where either from the custom of the country or by the will of his mother, who was a Portuguese, he was educated with all the care and respect which could become the son of the greatest Emperor who ever reigned in Christendom and the heir of possessions of such vast magnitude. Having been brought up after this manner, his Majesty, when he first quitted Spain, passed through Italy and Germany to Flanders, and conveyed a universal impression that he was of a severe and intractable disposition, and therefore he was not much liked by the Italians, thoroughly disliked by the Flemings, and hated by the Germans. Consequently he was first warned by the Cardinal of Trent, then by Queen Mary, and even more effectually by his father, that a character for severity did not become the ruler of various nations and people of various habits and customs. . . . His efforts are directed not to increase his possessions by war, but to preserve them by peace; for at the commencement of his reign he made a truce with the king of France, notwithstanding that the Emperor refused his consent, and that the Bishop of Arras publicly condemned it. He regulated the disorders of the ministers of his realms; he restored the courts of law; he expedited the grants of favours and the decrees of justice, which the Emperor was accustomed to delay; he showed liberality towards all persons, and never permitted any one to leave his presence dissatisfied. But when the Emperor, who had by his great reputation for prudence and experience maintained the authority of his son, departed for Spain, his Majesty was too weak to support so great a burden, and soon found himself involved in serious difficulties, which might have overthrown him had he not been aided by fortune, and the imprudence of his enemies. Then, if he had desired to imitate the Emperor, he might have done so by the strength of his power and the prosperity of his fortune, which are most formidable to the world: but although he resembles his father in his features, in his mode of speech, in his observance of religion, and in his kindness and good faith, he is dissimilar in many other respects which constitute the crowning-point of the greatness of Princes. The Emperor delighted in all that pertained to war, but his Majesty has neither knowledge of warlike matters, nor delight in them. The Emperor undertook great expeditions, but these the king avoids. The Emperor planned great designs, and conducted them with dexterity, and to his great benefit; but the king thinks less of increasing his own power, than of obstructing the power of others. The |