READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

A HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE : A.D. 1453-1900

CHAPTER XVII

RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION. DECLINE OF ITALY

The progress of the Reformation had hitherto been peaceful; in the next epoch its path was marked by wars, foreseen and dreaded by Luther, but which he was spared from beholding. For a period of near a century, our attention will be chiefly arrested by religious wars, which however are often combined with a great political movement that had already been initiated,—the struggle for supremacy between France and the House of Austria. Before we enter upon these narratives it is necessary to inquire into the causes of Luther’s success; and why a reformation which had before been fruitlessly attempted in England, in Bohemia, in Italy, should have succeeded in Germany and Switzerland.

The same political causes which afterwards produced the religious wars of Germany, undoubtedly contributed to establish the Reformation in that country. In the Empire the civil power was twofold—literally an imperium in imperio; and thus the German Electors and other Princes, being sheltered under a supreme head, were enabled to give reins to the feelings inspired by Papal abuses and extortions, without incurring the responsibility which attached to the Emperor. He, not they, was in immediate connection with Rome; a bond which the natural bigotry both of Charles V and his brother Ferdinand was not inclined to sever. Had Charles been as absolute in Germany as in Spain, or as Francis I was in France, and Henry VIII in England, the Reformation could not have taken place without his consent; while, having been established against his will in the dominions of some of the Princes of the Empire, he was induced, when political events enabled him to do so, to attempt to crush it by force. It is curious moreover to observe how the infancy of the German Reformation was protected from the power of Charles, not only by the peculiar constitution of the Empire, but also by the very enemies of Germany—the Turks, the French, nay, the Pope himself. Had not the safety of the Empire been threatened by Solyman, had not Francis menaced the Emperor’s Italian possessions, and Pope Clement VII shown a disposition to assist his plans, Lutheranism might probably have been crushed in the bud. In the Swiss Cantons, free and republican constitutions contributed still more directly and rapidly to the success of the Reformation. The appeal was made immediately to the people; there was no bigoted or self-interested Sovereign to step in between them and Rome.

Another and indispensable element of success was the bold character both of Luther and of Zwingli. Others have, perhaps, devised more thorough and more consistent plans of reform than Luther; but they either confined them to their studies, or failed in the assertion of them from timidity, like Erasmus. The circumstances in which Zwingli was placed did not call for so great a display of moral courage as was exhibited by Luther; but there can be no doubt that he possessed it, though he had not, like the Saxon reformer, to struggle against the menaces of a government; and he at last laid down his life in the field for the sake of his principles.

Neither Luther nor Zwingli, however, could have effected anything had they not obtained the adhesion of the people; and their success in this respect was not perhaps so much owing to the better prepared state of the public mind for the reception of their doctrines, as to the gradual nature of their attack upon the Roman Church. They began with one abuse, but one which came immediately home to the bosoms of the people,—the doctrine of Indulgences. It mattered little to the great body of the population how much the Archbishops of Mainz or Cologne paid for their palliums, or whether the Pope or the Emperor should present to benefices; but it was of the utmost importance to them to know whether the Pope alone could open the gates of Heaven, and whether he was justified in demanding a fee for that purpose. The wedge once introduced, the rent became gradually larger, till all that was unsound in the Church was severed. The German nation had long presented in vain their list of a hundred grievances; Rome was at last opposed and overturned upon a single one. Another element of success was the prudence and moderation with which, however violent might be his language, Luther proceeded in carrying out the substantial parts of his enterprise; never were so much energy and so fiery a zeal tempered with so much discretion. As a doctrinal reformer he was even too timid, and cannot be said to have left the Reformation complete.

The Papal key being broken, it was necessary to provide another method of unlocking the portal of Heaven; and this the Reformers found in the doctrine of justification by faith. The theory of indulgences was founded on a spiritual treasury of good works, so ample and so efficacious that they could be transferred with infallible effect to every repentant sinner, even the greatest, who could afford to purchase a share of these merits; and the same principle lay at the root of other superstitions which served to fill the coffers of the Church; such as pilgrimages, jubilees, etc. Luther combated these doctrines in the only way in which they could be combated—by transferring the custody of Heaven from the Vicar of Christ, who had abused his trust, to Christ Himself. “By faith alone shall ye be saved”.

That the doctrine of justification by faith alone was capable of perversion, Luther himself saw and lamented. “This doctrine”, he observes in one of his discourses, “should be heard with great joy, and received with heartfelt thankfulness, and we should become all the better and more pious for it. But alas! this is reversed, and the longer it is heard, the wickeder, the more reckless, and more sinful, doth the world become. Yet it is no fault of the doctrine, but of the hearers”. Perceiving these results, Luther, in his later popular discourses, avoided giving the doctrine too much prominence, though he still reserved it in his armory, as an indispensable weapon against Rome.

Calvin at Geneva

The establishment of the Lutheran and Zwinglian reformations has been described in preceding chapters. Before the end of the period which they comprise, a third, and perhaps, in some respects, a greater reformer, had appeared upon the scene. In the autumn of 1539 John Calvin succeeded in finally establishing himself at Geneva, which city he may be said to have ruled with all the authority of a Pope and all the power of a despot down to his death in 1564. It is well known that grace and predestination form the foundation of his doctrine, which he carried out more boldly, and perhaps more consistently, than Luther; and that in all respects he made so thorough a clearance of every remnant of Popery that the Genevese Church and other Churches founded on its model have claimed exclusively the name of Reformed Churches. Nothing, to some minds, can be more convincing than his logic; nothing, to others, more repulsive than his system; yet all must agree in admiring the language and method in which he unfolds it. It was perhaps in part owing to the vigor and excellence of his literary style that Calvin’s influence as a reformer was much more widely felt than that of Luther or Zwingli. The Lutheran reformation travelled but little out of Germany and the neighboring Scandinavian kingdoms; while Calvinism obtained a European character, and was adopted in all the countries where men sought a reformation from without; as France, the Netherlands, Scotland, even England; for the Early English Reformation under Edward VI was Zwinglian and Calvinistic, and Calvin was incontestably the father of our Puritans and Dissenters. Thus, under his rule, Geneva may be said to have become the capital of European reform. The superior catholicity of Calvinism, if such a term be not paradoxical, will also appear from the fact, that while that creed penetrated into Lutheran countries, Lutheranism made little way where the religion was Calvinistic. This result was perhaps aided by Calvin’s French style.

Although at this period the political effects of the Reformation had not yet developed themselves, yet it may he as well to point out its tendency. That the movement was favorable to civil liberty, can admit of no doubt; it is almost exclusively among Protestant nations that a free government has been able to maintain itself. In this respect, however, a striking difference is observable between the Swiss and German reformations. The latter, as we have shown, was the reverse of democratic, and the Genevese reformer alone can be connected with the progress of civil freedom in Europe. Yet the cause of this distinction is not very obvious. It cannot well be ascribed to the more democratical constitution of the Genevese Church, or the substitution of Presbyterianism for episcopacy; and, with regard to politics, Calvin inculcated as strongly as Luther the duty of unconditional submission to the civil power. He lays down in his Institutes that spiritual liberty is not inconsistent with political servitude; while of the three chief forms of government he gives, abstractedly, the preference to monarchy, and in practice prefers an aristocracy only from the difficulty of always finding a good and virtuous King; whence it appears that he must have contemplated an absolute monarchy. In another passage, he maintains the divine right of Kings, and the duty of passive obedience. In conformity with these principles, his own government at Geneva was narrowly oligarchical. In short, a priest is still a priest, whether at Rome or at Geneva, and the political principles of whatever Church, when allowed an uncontrolled sway, will always be those of absolute submission. The resistance to the civil power among Calvin’s disciples did not spring from what he taught, but from that freedom of inquiry and independence of thought which are the very spirit of the Reformation. With the respective liberality of Luther and Calvin, in matters regarding religious opinion, we are not here concerned; yet it may be stated that the German was far more tolerant, or, at all events, far less cruelly persecuting, than the Frenchman. Luther always maintained that to burn heretics is a sin against the Holy Ghost, and so also did Calvin, till, irritated by the opposition of Servetus, he committed him to the flames: an act approved by Melanchthon, who has obtained the surname of “the Mild”, apparently from the absence of those more robust and manly qualities which characterized Luther.

The Reformation a Teutonic reaction.

It has been observed that the Reformation was a reaction of the Teutonic mind against the Roman, and it is indeed a remarkable fact, that it has met but little success except among populations of Teutonic origin. With these, religion is more an affair of reason than with the southern, or Romance, nations, with whom it is a matter of feeling and imagination. Hence the latter have ever been prone to superstition and idolatry, and to the pomp of the Romish service, which appeals so directly to the senses; while the religion of the northern nations is more subject to degenerate into rationalism. A French historian has remarked that the Jesus of the south is either the infant Jesus in his Mother’s arms, or Christ on the Cross; while the Jesus of the north is Christ teaching, the Saviour bringing the Word. The former images are an appeal to our sympathy, the latter to our understanding.

The resistance of Henry VIII, in England, to the Papal power, cannot yet be called a reformation, though it may be questioned whether Henry would have proceeded to such an extremity had he not had the example of Luther’s success before his eyes. England, however, was ripe for a reformation. The doctrines of Wycliffe were far from being extinct in that country. Since the beginning of the century, the records of the episcopal courts abound with prosecutions for heresy. In 1525 we read of an “Association of Christian Brethren” in London, who employed themselves in distributing testaments and tracts. In 1527 a union of those holding Lutheran doctrines, for Calvin was not yet much known, was formed at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which may be regarded as a seminary of the new opinions.

The movement of reform was not felt exclusively without the pale of the Church: it penetrated into the Church itself. Even in Rome, amid the skeptical Court of Leo X, a reaction took place. In that pontificate was established the Oratory of Divine Love, a sort of spiritual society, which numbered nearly sixty members, several of whom became Cardinals, as Contarini, Sadoleti, Giberto, Gianpietro Caraffa, afterwards Pope Paul IV, and others. Their tenets, and especially that of justification by faith, bore some resemblance to Lutheranism. They held their meetings in the church of S. Silvestro and St. Dorotea in the Trastevere, not far from the spot where St. Peter is supposed to have lived. After the sack of Rome by Bourbon’s army, many of this society proceeded to Venice, at that time the only city of refuge in Italy for men of compromised opinions; for Florence was a despotism, and Milan the constant theatre of war. Among other exiles, Venice gave shelter to Cardinal Pole, who had quitted England to escape the anger of Henry VIII, incurred by declaring against him in the matters of his first divorce and his religious supremacy.

Several religious orders were either founded or reformed. That of the Camaldolese having become much corrupted, a new congregation of the same order, called Monte Corona, from the mountain on which its principal monastery was situated, was founded in 1522 by Paolo Giustiniani. The Franciscans were once more allowed to reform themselves, and produced what were called the Cappuccini, or Capucins (1528), who became celebrated as preachers. Remarkable among the new congregations was that of the Theatines, founded about 1524 by two members of the Oratory of Divine Love, Caraffa and Gaetano da Thiene, the latter afterwards canonized. The Theatines were secular priests, not monks, though they observed a monastic rule. The congregation became in time peculiar to the nobility—a nursery of bishops. The Barnabites, another clerical congregation, founded in 1530 by Zaccaria Ferrari and Giacomo Antonio Morigia at Milan, were designed principally for preaching, missions, and the education of the young. But of all these new institutions that of the Jesuits was by far the most remarkable and important.

The Jesuits

Don Iñigo Lopez de Recalde, the youngest son of the noble, house of Loyola, born in 1491 in the castle of that name in Guipuzcoa, was destined to the profession of arms, and was bred at the Court of King Ferdinand, and in the suite of the Duke of Najara. Spanish chivalry had imbibed a strong religious color from the Moorish wars, and Iñigo, or Ignatius Loyola, whose temperament naturally inclined him to devotion, had composed in early youth a romance, of which the hero was the Apostle Peter. Loyola’s wound at Pamplona, in 1521, and the course of religious reading on which he entered during his convalescence, have been already related. When his strength was recruited he left home and journeyed to Montserrat, where, after making a vigil of arms in the monastery church, he hung up his sword and shield before the image of the Virgin, after the fashion of the secular knight-errant, putting off his knightly accoutrements, clothing himself in the coarse raiment of the hermits of those mountains, and taking in his hand the pilgrim’s staff. After some wanderings, he retired to a Dominican convent at Manresa, where his conduct resembled the delusions of insanity, being marked by temptations to suicide and by imaginary revelations of the most extraordinary kind. He was conscious that his zeal would be useless without learning; he felt his deficiency in philosophical and theological attainments; and at the mature age of thirty-seven he entered the University of Paris, the last stronghold of Scholasticism, to devote himself to the seven years’ course of study necessary to graduate in theology (1528-1535). Here he met his first two disciples, Peter Faber, a Savoyard, and Francis Xavier, a Navarrese; and their little society was afterwards joined by three other Spaniards : Salmeron, Lainez, and Bobadilla, and by a Portuguese, Rodriguez. In 1537 we find Loyola and his band at Venice, where they were ordained priests, and where he attached himself to Cardinal Caraffa, who had founded there a house of Theatines. But so mild a religious rule did not satisfy Loyola’s burning zeal, who was still influenced by his early military ideas, and pleased himself with the thoughts of making war upon Satan. He and his companions enrolled themselves, like soldiers, in a company, which they called the Company of Jesus; and as obedience is one of the first of military duties, they added a special vow of obedience to those which they had already taken of poverty, chastity, and ordinary obedience, and bound themselves unhesitatingly to go wherever and do whatever the Pope should command. With these views they proceeded to Rome to offer their services to the Pontiff, and in 1540 obtained a complete sanction to their institution and to its name.

As the dress of the regular orders, and the singularity of their whole existence, which had made so strong an impression in the middle ages, had now lost all their charm and influence, except with the lowest and most ignorant classes, and had, indeed, often become objects of repulsion and ridicule, the Jesuits resolved to adapt themselves to this new state of feeling, and to spread their influence in the world by becoming its instructors. With this view they rejected all monastic habits, and devoted themselves to the pulpit, the confessional, and the education of youth. Thus, out of the visionary dreams of Loyola, arose an institution eminently practical, and one of the main supports of the Papacy since the Reformation. In 1542 Loyola assisted Cardinal Caraffa in establishing the Inquisition at Rome, where the ancient Dominican Inquisition had long fallen into decay. Rules of remarkable severity were drawn up for the guidance of this tribunal, and the principle of unreasoning submission, to which Loyola had subjected his Society, was also established in this court. Thus the main object of the institution was to break down and subdue all resistance, and the Inquisition became an instrument, not of justice, but of conquest and domination over the human soul.

The necessity of some concession to the new ideas had penetrated the mind of the Pope himself. In 1537 Paul III, in anticipation of the assembly of the promised General Council, issued a bull for the reformation of the City of Rome and of the Papal Court; a measure opposed by Schomberg, a German, and Cardinal of S. Sisto, on the ground that it would afford a handle to the enemies of the Church, and be quoted by them in justification of their own reform. It was, however, supported by Caraffa. A commission of nine Cardinals was appointed, with Contarini at their head and Pole among their number. In their report, of which Luther published a translation with biting marginal notes, abuses are candidly exposed, and liberal propositions made for their amendment. The commission recommended the gradual extinction of the older sort of Franciscan friars, called Conventuals, and also proposed other useful measures of ecclesiastical reform; but no practical effect followed from their recommendations.

Spain and Scholasticism.

Latin Christianity was however effete : care might preserve its remnants, but could never restore its pristine glory. The old political ideas which it had once inspired were dying out, even in countries which still remained Roman Catholic; of the truth of which there cannot be a stronger instance than the alliance of Francis I with the Turk. The same progress which had destroyed feudalism destroyed also the prestige of Rome. To this general observation, however, Spain affords a remarkable exception. While light was arising in other countries, Spain retrograded in darkness. The Scholastic philosophy was first domiciled there, when it was being fast expelled from the rest of Europe. With the view of rendering the schools of Paris not indispensable to Spaniards, Alfonso de Cordova introduced the Nominalist doctrine at Salamanca, and at the same time Francisco de Vitoria the Realist, as something new. The latter found the greater number of disciples, and from his school proceeded the most famous theologians. Both in Spanish theology and literature, the exclusive doctrines of the Latin Church continued to flourish. Although Erasmus enjoyed the favor of the Court, Diego Lopez Zuñiga made it the business of his life to attack the innovations of that author; and in 1627, two Dominicans having formally indicted the writings of Erasmus of heresy before the Spanish Inquisition, his Colloquies, Praise of Folly, and Paraphrase of the New Testament were condemned.

As the spiritual authority of the Popes was broken by Luther and the Reformation, so also their temporal power received a great blow under Clement VII through Bourbon’s capture of Rome and Clement’s consequent subjection to the Emperor. After this period, the Popes pretty well abandoned their pretension of deposing Kings, of which but very few instances subsequently occur. The same causes acted on the material prosperity of Rome. The city flourished in the profuse and splendid reign of Leo X, who, by a liberal commercial policy, the abrogation of monopolies and encouragement of free trade, made it the resort of Italian merchants; while his patronage of art and letters rendered it the capital of the polite and learned of all nations. After the sack of the City and its other calamities in the pontificate of Clement VII, its inhabitants were reduced, when Paulus Jovius wrote, from 85,000 to 32,000. The glory of that brilliant literature and art, which obtained for the pontificate of Leo X the distinction of an Epoch, it lies not within our plan to describe.

First voyage around the globe

In resuming the progress of maritime discovery, we may notice that Columbus’s idea of a passage to India by western navigation was realized in 1520, but by a much more circuitous route than he anticipated. In that year Fernando Magellan, or Magelhaens, a Portuguese in the service of Castile, coasted the continent of South America, doubled its southern extremity, and gained the Chinese and Indian seas by traversing the Pacific Ocean. Magellan was slain at the Philippine Isles, but his companions continued the voyage. At the Moluccas, they fell in with the astonished Portuguese; and returning to Spain by the Cape of Good Hope, they completed the first circumnavigation of the globe. The Papal boundary between the Spanish and Portuguese possessions now fell into jeopardy; but there was verge enough in the unexplored countries of America to employ all the strength of Spain without quarrelling about the Indies. Juan de Grijalva had discovered, in 1518, the existence of a civilized Empire in the North American continent, and in the following year Hernan Cortes undertook with a few hundred men the conquest of Mexico. The Mexicans, although much superior in courage as well as civilization to the tribes of Hayti and Cuba, or even to the ferocious Caribs, yet wanted, like them, the three most terrible and effective instruments of war—iron, gunpowder, and horses. In three years the conquest was completed, and Mexico became New Spain. A few years later one of the companions of Balboa, Francisco Pizarro, together with his brothers, subdued the still richer and more important Empire of Peru (1525-1534). The subjugation of Quito, Chili, Terra Firma, and New Granada, followed in quick succession (1529­1535). The wealth of these countries exceeded the most sanguine hopes. Pizarro, who had been a swineherd lad, and was unable to read, became the Governor and almost the King of an immense realm; and adventurers who had carried nothing with them but their swords suddenly acquired enormous fortunes. Meanwhile, on the eastern side of South America, the Portuguese had founded the Dominion of Brazil, fallen to them by the treaty of Tordesillas, and destined one day to rival the possessions of the Spaniards in that continent. The Portuguese also went on extending their conquests and settlements in Asia, and their possessions in that quarter ultimately embraced Muscat and Ormuz, the Deccan, Cambray, and Guzerat, with many places on the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel, as well as in Bengal, and also took in Macassar and Malacca, and the important islands of Ceylon, the Moluccas and others. They had also a considerable intercourse with China; and in 1517 a Portuguese ambassador went by land from Canton to Pekin.

The Only attempt at colonization by any other European power about this time was that of the French in the northern parts of America. It was not till 1524 that the French Government aided private enterprise in the New World. In that year Verazzano, a Florentine, sailed to North America under the auspices of Francis I, and reconnoitered the coast which had previously been discovered by Cabot, from Cape Breton down to Florida. In 1534 Jacques Cartier, a native of St. Malo, ascertained that Newfoundland was an island, and entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the mouth of the river of that name. In the following year he ascended the St. Lawrence river, and discovered Canada as far as the spot where Quebec subsequently rose. North America now received the name of New France. In 1540 Cartier made his third voyage to America, but under command of a Picard gentleman named Roberval, whom Francis had appointed Viceroy of Canada. But though a colony was established at Cape Breton, the severity of the climate, the want of resources, and the neglect of the government caused the enterprise to fail, and it was not renewed till the reign of Henry IV.

The most important consideration resulting from these discoveries and conquests is their effect upon commerce. The Portuguese, who came directly into contact with large and populous nations far advanced in civilization and possessing valuable products and manufactures fitted to become at once the objects of trade, reaped immediate benefit from their enterprises. Hence Portugal became wealthy and prosperous in an incredibly short space of time, and at the beginning of the second quarter of the sixteenth century had reached the greatest height of its prosperity; which it continued to enjoy till the defeat and death of its romantic King, Dom Sebastian, in 1578, and the subsequent transfer of Portugal to the Spanish Crown. The Spaniards, on the contrary, in their first discoveries found a simple uncivilized race, who, having only the commonest wants of life, so easily satisfied in those climates, could offer little but a few natural products in the way of trade and barter. The value of the West Indies as plantations has principally arisen from the culture of articles introduced by Europeans, and especially the sugar cane brought from the Canaries, or by extending the growth of indigenous products, as tobacco, indigo, cochineal, cotton, ginger, cocoa, pimento, and other articles. The profitable development of such plantations was, however, necessarily a work of time, and in this dearth of the materials of commerce the attention of the Spanish settlers was naturally directed to procure the precious metals. The avidity of Columbus in this search is the chief blot upon his character; nor was the auri sacra fames rendered any better by being covered over with the mantle of religion. His system of repartimientos, or assignments of large tracts of land to his followers, and with them the unfortunate natives as slaves, led to the greatest cruelties. The wretched inhabitants were at once baptized and enslaved. The miseries of the American Indians awakened especially the compassion of a Spanish Dominican, the humane Bartolomeo de las Casas, but it seems to be a groundless assertion that he initiated their labors and sufferings by originating in those parts the importation of Negro slaves.

The cruelty of the Spanish settlers in their search after gold had the most disastrous effects on the population of the New World. The natives of the Antilles soon disappeared altogether. Hayti, which is said to have numbered 100,000 inhabitants, was depopulated in fifteen years. Many escaped by suicide from the hands of their cruel taskmasters. In Mexico and Peru, whole populations were torn from their native valleys to work the mines in cold and sterile mountain-tracts, where they perished by thousands. In these two countries, however, as in some others of Spanish America, the original inhabitants were not entirely exterminated, but formed, in process of time, the bulk and basis of the Spanish-American population.

Returns of gold

From the contradictory nature of the accounts, it is very difficult to estimate the first effects of the discovery of the West Indies on the prosperity of Spain. Zuñiga says that the returns of gold were so large before the close of the fifteenth century as to affect currency and prices. Bernaldez, on the other hand, says, that so little gold had been brought from Hispaniola at the same date as to lead to the belief that there was scarcely any in the island, and some writers assert that the expenses of the colonies ate up the profits. It is stated, however, that the ordinary revenue of Castile, which in 1474 was only 885,000 reals, had risen in 1504 to upwards of 26,000,000 reals, being an increase of more than thirtyfold. But this increase must not be entirely ascribed to the discovery of America. In this period the rich kingdom of Granada had been annexed to the Spanish Crown; and through the instrumentality of the Inquisition much had been extorted from the unfortunate Jews and Moriscoes. The home manufactures and productions of Spain had also increased. The first flowing in of the precious metals was of course favorable to industry and served to develop Spanish trade and manufactures. In 1438 a breed of English sheep had been obtained for Castile; the Spanish wool soon became famous, and supplied material for the home manufacture of cloth. During the reigns of Charles and his successor, Segovia was celebrated for fine cloth and arms, Granada and Valencia for silks and velvets, Toledo for woolen and silken fabrics, Valladolid for plate, Barcelona for glass and fine cutlery; Spanish ships were to be seen in all the ports of the Mediterranean and Baltic.

The effect of the importation of the precious metals was not much felt in Europe generally till the second half of the sixteenth century, at which time it is thought that the circulating gold and medium had been doubled, and the price of commodities, of course, rose in proportion. The Spanish government in vain endeavored to keep the precious metals at home. Commerce was ill understood in that age. Gold and silver, instead of being regarded as commodities merely of relative value in exchange, were considered as constituting absolute wealth. This view was not peculiar to Spain, but was shared by all the rest of Europe. Archbishop Morton, the Chancellor of Henry VII, in addressing the English Parliament in 1487, advised them to provide that all merchandise brought from beyond sea should be exchanged for the commodities of the country, in order that the King’s treasure might not be diminished. Thus the sole end of trade was thought to be to export products and manufactures, and to keep all the gold that paid for them in the country. On the same principle, Spain, in order to retain her treasure, prohibited foreign commerce, and laid exorbitant duties even on raw materials imported and manufactured articles exported.

The sudden and accidental increase of wealth, or rather of its conventional signs, in Spain, involved individuals as well as the government in the most fatal illusions. The reigns of Charles and his son Philip II were the era of a baseless and short-lived prosperity, which was displayed in the manner of life of the Spaniards. Sumptuous palaces and superb public buildings arose, with all the accompaniments of fountains, aqueducts, and gardens; the style of architecture was improved and a school of painting and sculpture founded; even literature participated in the general movement. There were at that period more printing-presses in Spain than are to be found at the present day, while the Universities of Barcelona, Salamanca, and Alcala swarmed with students. But at the root of all this prosperity was the national indolence, which bigotry, monachism, pride, and partly, perhaps, the climate, combined to foster. This idleness, together with wrong principles of trade, ruined the manufactures of Spain, and rendered her dependent for them on other countries. The absence of foreign competition, and the establishment of monopolies, helped to injure commerce. The gold which Spain had purchased with so many crimes passed gradually from her hands, and already before the end of the sixteenth century the process of ruin and depopulation had commenced.

Trade of Barcelona, Venice, Genoa, and Florence.

The maritime discoveries of the Spaniards and Portuguese diverted the course of European trade, which had previously centered in the Mediterranean. The Eastern Saracens had, as early as the twelfth century, established a great maritime commerce at Barcelona, which they carried on in vessels called cogs. Traces of it are still observable in the Catalan dialect, from the many Arab words relating to it. The Barcelonese are remarkable for the improvements which they introduced into commerce. It was they who first made laws for the regulation of marine insurance, and established, in 1401, a bank of exchange and deposit, called Tabla de Cambio, or table of exchange. The bank of Venice had indeed been established before this date, but on quite a different principle. The Bank of Genoa, or chamber of St. George, dates from 1407, and was, like that of Venice, originally designed to manage the capital of the public debt, though it afterwards became also a trading company. The bank of Barcelona soon rose to be a great commercial authority, and in 1404 we find it appealed to by the magistrates of Bruges, respecting the usage of bills of exchange. Venice and Genoa were the principal trading cities of the Mediterranean besides Barcelona. After the Florentines had acquired the port of Leghorn in 1425, they also began to compete with the Venetians in the Eastern trade carried on overland through Alexandria, in which the Medici were deeply concerned. But of all these cities, Venice, by the extent of its traffic, stood conspicuously at the head. One of the chief articles of Venetian export was the cloth of Florence, which they distributed to the rest of Italy and to the East; while the Florentines took in return the goods imported by the Venetians. But their principal trade was with the East; and as the overland transit of Indian and Persian commodities not only involved great expense in itself, but was also further burdened by the customs demanded by the rulers of Egypt, it is easy to see how great a blow the discovery of the maritime passage must have inflicted on Venetian commerce. After the conquest of Egypt by Selim I, in 1517, the Venetians hastened to conclude with him a commercial treaty, the principal object of which was to ruin the Portuguese by laying heavy duties on their commodities, while the privileges of the Venetians were extended. This method, however, availed but little against the advantages enjoyed by the Portuguese, and the Venetians endeavored to effect a compromise by offering King Emanuel of Portugal, in 1521, to buy at a fixed price all the spices over and above what was required for the home consumption of that Kingdom; but the Portuguese government was too prudent to sacrifice the advantage which it had acquired. The Portuguese were able to sell the commodities of Persia and India at half the price required by the Venetians; a state of things which was necessarily followed by a decline of the Venetian trade. Their settlements also in India and the Persian Gulf enabled them to command the local markets, and thus to forestall the Venetians.

The decline of Venice was in some respects to be lamented. At the close of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century that Republic was the centre of liberal ideas, which there found their best home. The liberality of Venice was also displayed in the encouragement of the press. Printing had not been invented many years, when, in 1469, the Venetians invited to their city the printers Windelin of Spires, John of Cologne, and Nicholas Jenson. Twenty-five years later, Aldus Manutius began his labors, and effected a revolution in the book trade by discarding the pedantic folio for the more convenient octavo, of which only few had been printed before, and thus rendering literature more popular. He was, moreover, the inventor of the characters we call italics. Venetian books soon became an article of trade, but before the end of the fifteenth century English printers had begun to compete with them, as appears from the following colophon to a Latin translation of the Epistles of Phalaris, published at Oxford, in 1485:

Celatos, Veneti, nobis transmittere libros

Cedite ; nos aliis vendimus, O Veneti.

North German Trade

In Germany the great rise of prices observed between the years 1516 and 1522 excited universal discontent. This rise was mainly owing to the depreciation in the value of money consequent on the importation of gold and silver from America; but it was also attributed to the monopolies by which the trade of Germany was principally conducted. In 1522 the Diet passed a resolution forbidding associations with a larger capital than 50,000 florins.

The North German commercial Hansa League continued to exist, though in a declining state, through the whole of the sixteenth century, till it was at last virtually demolished, in 1630, by the Thirty Years’ War. In the middle of the sixteenth century it still comprehended between sixty and seventy towns. The Hansa was divided into four quarters or groups, at the head of which stood Lübeck, Cologne, Brunswick, and Danzig. Lübeck was the head of the League, which, in the early part of the century, was still vigorous enough to make war on neighboring states. In 1509 some of its towns engaged in hostilities with John, King of Denmark, captured his fleet at Helsingor, and carried off his bells, which they hung in their churches. In 1511 the Lübeck fleet returned into harbour with eighteen Dutch ships which they had captured. The Hansa had factories in foreign countries, of which the principal were London, Bruges, Novgorod in Russia, and Bergen in Norway. After the Thirty Years’ War, only Lübeck, Hamburg, and Bremen again united. Such a league could be necessary only in the infancy of commerce; but it answered a good purpose in its time, and it may be remarked that in Germany, as elsewhere, the commercial towns, and especially Nuremberg, were the great centers of liberal opinions, as well as of literature and art. The Austrian possessions in the Netherlands opened an outlet for German maritime trade, carried on by the great commercial houses in Augsburg and Nuremberg, which engaged in the East India, and afterwards in the West India trade. Hence, also, in part, the rise of Antwerp. But the Netherlands had owed their first prosperity chiefly to manufactures, drawing the raw materials from other countries—silk from Italy, wool from England—and dispersing through Europe their manufactured goods. Bruges, though smaller than Ghent, was more splendid and the seat of a greater trade. During the Middle Ages the great manufacturing and trading cities of Flanders often acted as independent communities, and sometimes entered into treaties for themselves, as for instance Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres, with King Edward II in 1325; while the Count of Flanders frequently required them to be parties to treaties which he made with other Sovereigns. In the course of the fifteenth century Amsterdam had also risen to considerable importance, chiefly through the herring fishery; but its great transmarine commerce did not commence till the following century. William Beukels, or Beukelens, of Biervliet, in Flanders, who died about 1447, has enjoyed the reputation of having first cured herrings; and Charles V and his sister Mary are said to have paid a visit to his tomb, and to have offered up prayers for his soul as a benefactor of his country. It is certain, however, that the curing of herrings was known centuries before the time of Beukelens, though he may perhaps have introduced some improvements into the process. But, though industrious and enterprising, the Flemings were also sensual and luxurious. They delighted in banquets and festivals, and an extreme licentiousness prevailed among them; but at the same time the fine arts were not neglected, and music, architecture, and painting flourished. Thus Flemish life presented a strange contrast of magnificence and grossness, and has been not unaptly compared to the pictures of Rubens besides those of the Italian school, rivaling them in vigor of drawing and coloring, but deficient in grace and form.

French Commerce

France could offer nothing to match the opulence and splendor of Flemish life. Machiavelli has observed the want of money in that Kingdom and Louis XI, himself the plainest, of Kings in his way of life, restrained by foolish sumptuary laws the finery of his subjects. Yet in the first half of the fifteenth century, French commerce had received a wonderful impulse from the genius and energy of Jacques Coeur. The son of a skinner at Bourges, who gave him but little education, Coeur farmed, in 1427, the royal mint of his native town; and was, in 1429, accused of issuing a depreciated coinage, but dismissed on payment of a heavy fine. Coeur now directed his attention to foreign trade. He visited Italy, Greece, Syria, and Egypt, and determined to vie with the Italians in the commerce of the Levant. He established his counting-house at Montpellier, which city had received from Pope Urban V permission to trade with the Infidels, and whence there was a communication by canal to the port of Lattes. He also established a subsidiary house at Marseilles. His business, which included banking operations, was conducted by 300 factors, and his establishments were planted over the coasts of the Mediterranean, whose trade he disputed with the Venetians, the Genoese, the Florentines, and the Catalans. No commercial operations have been seen in France on such a scale, before or since. Louis XI patronized trade, which, under the paternal government of Louis XII also made considerable progress. Lyons first began to be known as a manufacturing town in the fourteenth century, though it had long before been famed for its commerce and for its August fairs: and at the beginning of the sixteenth century it was still the centre of traffic between Italy, France, England, Flanders, and Germany. The Emperor Charles V, in his war with Henry II, gave its prosperity a great blow by forbidding his subjects to visit its fair, and at the same time by opening the fair of Augsburg. The manufacture of silk was introduced at Lyons about 1521, workmen being brought from Milan for the purpose.

English Commerce

The English do not appear to have paid much attention to commerce till towards the close of the fifteenth century. All the great commercial operations seem in early times to have been carried on in that country by foreigners. Thus in 1329 the English customs were farmed by the Bardi of Florence for £20 a day; and London, with regard to foreign trade, was little more than a staple of the Hansa, and had a Teutonic Guildhall. Even so late as 1518 we find a riot in London because all the trade was monopolized by foreigners. Some progress, however, began to be made under Richard III, and out of fifteen acts passed by the only Parliament of that reign (1484) no fewer than seven relate to commerce. In 1485 we find an English consul appointed at Pisa,—a fact which betokens some Mediterranean trade. There appears to have been some commerce between England and the Levant as early as 1511, and in 1513 Henry VIII appointed a consul at Scio. But on the whole, England, at the period which we are contemplating, though destined ultimately so far to outstrip the other European nations in a commercial career, seems to have been far behind most of them.

In medieval times, maritime commerce was much infested by pirates; nor was piracy exercised by professional robbers alone. The temptation of opportunity, and the facility of escape in the then comparative solitude of the seas, were inducements to which even the regular trader frequently yielded when he found himself the stronger. The records that can be collected respecting maritime commerce in the Middle Ages display a succession of piracies and murders committed by the sailors of almost every country. The seamen of different ports often made war upon one another, although the States to which they respectively belonged were at profound peace. In 1309, two judges were appointed to assess the damages committed on one another at sea by the citizens of Bayonne, the subjects of King Edward II, and the Castilians, and to punish the offenders. In 1315 we find the people of Calais committing piracy near Margate. It must be confessed that England was not among the least offenders in this way. In 1311, the piracies and murders committed by the sailors of Lynn on the coast of Norway provoked retaliations on the part of King Hacon. The Cinque ports seem to have acted together as an independent maritime confederacy, and were often at war with the Flemings, when England and the Netherlands were at peace. In 1470, some Spanish merchants complained to King Edward IV of piracies committed by the men of Sandwich, Dartmouth, Southampton, and Fowey. The extent of these disorders is manifest from the frequency of the treaties respecting them. Thus, for instance, we find in 1498 a treaty between Louis XII and Henry VII, the ratification of a previous one, by which ship-owners were to give security in double the value of their ships and cargo that they would not commit piracy; also a stipulation of the same kind in the treaty with Ferdinand the Catholic in 1500, for the marriage of Prince Arthur and the Infanta Catharine; another agreement to the like effect between Henry VIII and Francis I, in 1518.

Codes of maritime law

Barcelona has the credit of having promulgated the first generally received code for the regulation of the seas, the Consolato del Mare, supposed to have been published in the latter part of the fourteenth century. According to Pardessus, it is not, however, an authoritative code so much as a collection or record declaring the customs of the maritime lands which surrounded the Mediterranean, in the same way as the Jugemens or Rôles d'Oleron became the rule for the nations situated on the Atlantic. The Mediterranean regions of France and Spain appear to have possessed codes of maritime jurisprudence before the Consolato was published; but being written in Latin, they were for the most part a dead letter to those seafaring and commercial classes for which they were intended. The compilers of the Consolato were deeply versed in Roman and modern maritime law, and as the Consolato was composed in a familiar and practical manner, and in a Romance dialect universally understood in those parts, it soon acquired general adoption. It was long thought to be of Italian origin, but Pardessus has shown that it originated in Catalonia, the earliest manuscripts of it being in Romance or vernacular language. Embracing not only the elements of civil contracts relating to trade and navigation, but also the leading principles of belligerent and neutral rights in time of war, it came to form the basis of French maritime jurisprudence, and especially of the great marine ordinance of Louis XIV in 1681. The general code of the usages, or customary laws of Barcelona (Código de los usages Barceloneses), published in the reign of Raymundo Berenguer I, Count of Barcelona, in 1068, and therefore three centuries before the probable date of the Consolato, contained, however, some ordinances relating to navigation. The maritime laws of Oleron consist of some fifty or sixty articles regulating average, salvage, wreck, crews, etc. By some they have been ascribed to King Richard I (1197), but there is no sufficient authority for this assertion, and they were probably taken from the laws of Barcelona. Cleirac, however, an advocate of Bordeaux, in his Us et Coûtumes de la Mer, ascribes them, in their present shape, to the year 1266.

Thus it appears that codes of maritime law were, from the necessity of the case, promulgated centuries before any system of international law to be observed on land had been framed. The need of the latter was not much felt till the modern European system had made considerable progress. It appears to have had its origin among the Spanish casuists, who were led to inquire more deeply into the principles of natural justice by questions arising from the relations of the Spaniards to the conquered natives of the New World. No tolerably consistent system on this subject was, however, promulgated till the latter half of the sixteenth century.

Decline of Italy

We cannot close this chapter without adverting to the decay of Italy, amid the remarkable progress of most of the other countries of Europe. Italy, which from the close of the fifteenth century to the pontificate of Clement VII had been the centre of European politics, seemed to have fulfilled her destined course, and after spreading her religion and her civilization over the rest of Europe, to be about to vanish from her former prominence. We have beheld both the spiritual and the temporal power of the Popes abridged by the Reformation and by the capture of Rome; Venice sinking at once under the burden of her wars and the loss of her trade; Milan become a mere dependency of the Empire, and Florence submitting irrecoverably to the yoke of the Medici. An acute observer of his own times has attributed the ruin of Italy to the condottieri, who, in order to husband their resources, conducted their wars in a manner which extinguished all martial spirit. They discouraged infantry, which formed only a tenth part of their forces; they spared one another’s lives, and contented themselves with making prisoners; they avoided winter campaigns; and hence, when the Spaniards, French, and Swiss appeared in Italy, the troops which had been accustomed to such child’s play were unable to endure the stem realities of war. The fall of Italy is, no doubt, partly attributable to this cause, but it was chiefly owing to the number of small States into which that peninsula was divided, all filled with hostile rivalries and jealousy of one another, and which could never have withstood the attacks of great and powerful realms, such as Spain, France, and the Empire. On the other hand, many small Italian States contributed to foster and spread civilization. Every capital was adorned with churches and palaces of great architectural beauty; every Prince had his library, and his little circle of literary men, who lived on his bounty. The same capitals, however, were the scene of every vice and crime that can disgrace humanity—of petty, yet unholy ambition; of domestic treason, poison, and assassination; of revenge the most unrelenting and cruel against external enemies.

Among the Italian States grew up that subtle and unprincipled policy, the worst legacy which they bequeathed along with their civilization to the rest of Europe. To this policy the Florentine Machiavelli has given his name, by having reduced it into a system in his book entitled The Prince. A needy man of genius, he was eccentric in his life as well as in his principles. He spent his days in low company in mean taverns. Towards evening he would dress for good society, by which he meant the reading of the best Latin authors. Banished from Florence as one of the Piagnoni, or followers of Savonarola, Machiavelli, under the pressure of necessity, ended by dedicating his manual of political slavery to one of that very family of Medici which Savonarola had helped to expel! The well-known atrocity of its principles has led some to consider it as a disguised satire upon Princes; a view which seems to have been first suggested by Gentili, in his treatise De Legationibus, but in which there is little probability. The model of The Prince—the pattern of a perfect ruler—is no other than Caesar Borgia, one of the greatest monsters of crime that ever disgraced the human form. For two centuries before, the art of politics had been in Italy the art of ambitious adventurers how to seize and retain power, and in this school Machiavelli was educated. He had no idea of a State as States are now constituted, nor of a Prince as a magistrate. A strong government was to be a ruler’s sole object, and as Machiavelli believed that all men were bad, he inculcated the necessity of meeting them with their own weapons. He had neither gratitude for his patrons nor love for anybody; yet in spite of the craftiness of his principles, he does not appear to have been guilty of any base deed. His high authority was probably in great measure due to his incomparable Tuscan style. It has been remarked that Machiavelli has given a different character of his hero in his Legations from that which we find in The Prince. Borgia admitted Machiavelli only partially into his confidence, and that writer was consequently obliged to complete his portrait from imagination. In the Legations, Machiavelli paints Borgia as brilliant and ingenious during prosperity, but losing his self-possession in reverses, and venting his despair in vain complaints of destiny. His description of his hero’s end already related, unconsciously conveys the most bitter satire on the vanity of all human counsels.

Some of the actions of Ferdinand, Francis, and other rulers, recorded in the preceding pages, show that the spirit of Machiavellian policy had passed the Alps. Nothing can equal the duplicity of European statesmanship in the sixteenth century. The example of a more honorable, and at the same time bolder and abler diplomacy was first given by the English statesmen of the reign of Elizabeth.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE SMALKALDIC WAR