REFORMATION. The reformation denotes the great spiritual and ecclesiastical movement which took place in Europe in the 16th c., and as the result of which the national churches of Britain, of Denmark, Sweden, Norway. and Holland, and of many parts of Germany and Switzerland, became separated from the church of Rome. In other countries, such as Hungary and France, the same movement detached large per tions of the population front the Roman Catholic faith, vet without leading to a national disruption with the papacy.
The causes of this movement were manifold; but, as may be supposed, they present themselves in very different lights to members of the different religious communions.
To Protestants, the reformation appears as the natural result of causes which had long been at work, and which it needed but a fitting occasion to call into active opera• tion. The church of Rome had gradually, from the 0th c., or the time of Gregory the great, extended not merely its influence; but its direct control and government, over all the countries of western Europe—in many places, as in Ireland, Scotland, and part of England, displacing the old national churches, which had been planted in earlier times, and which had survived under comparatively simple forms of government. Although some uncertainty may exist as to the exact constitution, doctrine, and discipline of the old Scoto-Irish church, there can be no doubt that it did not acknowledge the direct superintendence of Rome, and that it was only after a long and varying strug...gle„not terminating till the 12th c., that the popes fully established their authority, and set up over this ancient church a completed hierarchy connected with Rome. It is only by keeping this in view that some features of the reformation can be clearly understood and appreciated.
The natural result of the wide-spread supremacy of the Roman church was, that the spiritual aspects of the church became gradually more and more merged in its mere machinery of external government. Everything that could give power and efficiency to it as an institute was carefully watched and nursed; but when, iu the course of the 15th c., and even earlier, Spiritual life began to die out in the center of this vast system of ecclesiastical government in Rome itself, the baleful effects of such spiritual decay speedily began to tell through all its borders. The growing corruption showed itself in
many forms—in a prevailing ignorance among the monks and higher clergy; in the per version of ecclesiastical offices, and especially in the grossly materialistic abuse of spirit ual privileges and censures. The ignorance of the monks is depicted in strong colors in the satires of Erasmus and Buchanan, and, in such books as the Epistok Obseurorum Virorum. The great impetus which the friars had given to the papal power in the 13th c. had died out. They had sunk, from being zealous and active preachers, into bigots and mendicants, cumbering the ground. The secular clergy were hardly less corrupted; in many cases the higher dignitaries of the church had no interest in the spiritual duties of their office, and gave themselves up entirely to the pleasures of a worldly life, or, at best, to the duties of political or military activity. The revival of the old classical lit erature in Italy—the spirit of what is called the renaissance—accelerated this movement of spiritual decay. The papacy itself became half-pagan. The church was little cared for even as an organ of government; it was used as au engine of self-agk,mandizement and the most extravagant luxury.
These general causes, however. might have proved inefficient to produce any such radical change as the reformation; they had been long felt and deplored. Wycliffe in England, and Huss and Jerome of Prague had denounced, in the most vigorous manlier, the prevalent abuses; they had excited a widespread popular interest, and even to some extent secured royal favor. But the overbearing power of the church proved too strong for the reforming spirit in its earlier manifestations. In the midst of his evangelical activity, Huss was betrayed, through the promise of a safe-conduct, into making his appearance at the council of Constance in 1414. No sooner was lie fairly in the power of time council, than he was confronted with certain articles of abjuration; and refusing to submit, without being convinced, be was, in defiance of the promise made to him, condemned to be burned as a heretic. The rising spirit of reformation was temporary' emeached in time flames which consumed the intrepid martyr of Bohemia. The coupa did nothing effectual to repair the abuses which he had denounced. The church remained apparently strong after a temporary excitement and alarm.