87 86 spirit of peregrination, as well as knights, seamen, adventurers and soldiers. The obligation of every prelate to visit Rome, for the confirmation of his dignity; the general habit of appeals to the papal tribunal; and the necessity of those who sought church preferment, to seek it from the popes, who were monopolizing all presentations; in addition to the attractions of the universities of Padua, Pavia, and Bologna, filled the roads of Europe with travellers to Italy, who never returned the same beings they went. From the preceding facts it seems obvious, that linked as religion was to every class and path of society, it was impossible for that to remain stable and motionless amid these general fluctuations. Luthers or Calvins might or might not emerge to concentrate the ideas, and to direct the force of the myriad minds which were in discontented agitation; * Paracelsus is an instance of the migratory disposition of some, in pursuit of their favorite knowlege at that time. He was born 1493. He travelled to all the universities of Germany, Italy, France and Spain, to learn physic. After these he visited Prussia, Lithuania, Poland, Wallachia, Transylvania, Croatia, Portugal and Illyria. Still unsatisfied, he went to Russia; was taken prisoner by the Tartars, and accompanied the son of their Cham to Constantinople. He was also frequently retained as a medical man, in armies, battles and sieges, and at last died at Saltzburg in 1541. Boerhaave's Hist. Chem. v. 1. In the spirit of the antient philosophers, who travelled to Egypt for knowlege, Valerianus about 1500 went to Damascus to learn Arabic, and to study the genuine works of Avicenna; and Dogliono, another physician, visited Aleppo for two years, and from thence proceeded to Tripoli; stripped and wounded by the Bedouin robbers, he returned for three years to Aleppo, and died of the plague as returning to his country. Tirab. v. 6. p. 465. Our old school friend Lilly went to Jerusalem; and thence to Rhodes, to learn Greek. Lill. Elog. p. 89. 67 The humble blacksmith's son, who wandered an adventurer abroad, and who at last joined Bourbon's army in its sack of Rome, and then returned to England to rise gradually to be successor to Wolsey as prime minister, and to become Lord Cromwell, is an instance of the CHAP. I. BOOK II. but neither their absence or appearance could prevent or produce the revolutions in all the ideas and institutions that were connected with the church, which were evolving from these changes in the general society. Individuals could only affect the locality of the explosions, and a little their chronology; but somewhere or other new reasoning minds were sure to be formed, and no less to be governed by the animating circumstances by which all were surrounded. They would always be the creatures, not the causes, of what they would co-operate, and often without foresight or direct intention to promote. But new emanations of light and heat seemed to be darting every where on human nature; and as they actuated it, a new world of intellectual produce and of political mutability, with much disquiet and turbulence, as well as with rich beauties and permanent utilities, could not but arise in every part. The more generous spirits hailed the cheering prospect, as the evidence and the result of the never satisfied and insuppressible desire of the human soul for ampler knowlege and for superior felicity. 88 88 Ad imaginem Dei facta anima exsatiari nunquam cognoscendo valeat.' Gassendi, Orat. p. 196. CHAP. II. REVIEW OF THE STATE AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE CATHOLIC II. It was amid this general emotion and restlessness CHAP. of society, that in the sixteenth century, its moral and intellectual movements converged into that great result, which we call The Reformation; a conventional term, by which we generalize and abbreviate those numerous and extensive changes and improvements, which, in civil as well as in religious affairs, began then to interest the public thought, and to pervade human life. The mutation was the more interesting, because it was neither a random nor an useless perturbation. The Virgilian expression of the Mens agitat molem,' by which Anchises in his Elysium accounted to his illustrious son for the primeval production of all things,' may be reasonably applied to elucidate the pregnant incidents of the sixteenth century, and will most correctly designate their origin. A new spirit had descended upon Europe; while the rest of the globe, with one exception in Asia,2 and a petty but lasting Principio cœlum, ac terras, camposque liquentes, Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet. 2 One of the most important incidents in the Asiatic world at this period, was the foundation of the empire of the Great Moguls in 1498, by Mohammed Baber who has so picturesquely described himself in BOOK * II. 3 one in Africa, was subsiding into that stationary inertness in some parts, that retrogradation in others, and that subordinate inferiority in all, which makes modern history so great a contrast with that of Oriental antiquity. The change was the more striking to the imagination, from the comparative darkness and destitution of the middle ages which had preceded. These, however, were not intervals of torpid inutility, but that embryo state of new formations of the human character, which, as at many former periods, suspended its previous activity, in order to evolve from it greater strength and beauty, and richer produce. While the future giant is forming, the appearance is incoherent, confused and obscure; but from the fall of the Roman empire to the era of the Reformation, amid the absence of all literary splendor, and of the graces of civilization, a mightier and nobler Mind than human nature had ever known before, was brooding in the seeming confusion, and was secretly moulding and arranging the broken members and dilapidations of former ages, and the subsequent accessions, into figures and powers of an intellectual vigor and grandeur, which have never since diminished; and which are rapidly surpassing in their continued achievements, * The kingdom of Algiers under the active Barbarossa, was awhile distinguished by his exploits and by the expeditions of Charles V. against it, and has ever since been notorious for bearding all Europe by its piracies under the Dey, without any check, till lord Exmouth attacked it with equal intrepidity and good fortune. The recollections of antient Assyria, Troy, Egypt, Babylon, Lydia, Phenicia, the Medes and Persians, Ethiopia, India, Carthage, Parthia and Arabia, compared with the present state and subjection of these countries, seem more like the dreams of one's youth, than the realities of former things. II. whatever anterior Time has recorded, or can be CHAP. believed to have experienced. 5 The intellectual state of England, from the death of Henry VIII. to the end of his last child's reign, continued to exhibit these impressive features of general talent, never abating, with an occasional emerging of individual genius that soared above the general level, and advanced every art and science to a further progress. But in pursuing our course of English history, we need not dwell further upon a subject so comprehensive in its extent and so multifarious in its details, as would open before us, if we attempted to delineate the other social improvements which marked the Sixteenth century. It is sufficient to keep the amplitude of the prospect in our recollection, to avoid erroneous conclusions and arrowminded misconceptions. One branch only of this great theme is immediately connected with the reigns of Edward VI. Mary and Elizabeth; and to this our attention must now be circumscribed. The downfal of the papal supremacy, and of its great monastic wings and lordly power in England, has been already noticed, as far as this event was prosecuted by its royal antagonist and undismayed assailant. The next portion of our subject will exhibit the nature and causes of our great ecclesiastical change the continuation of the contest--the establishment of the new principles and institutions Erasmus has shewn us how highly he estimated the intellectual merit of England at this time, when he remarked, 'I do not think there is any region, I speak from my soul, which abounds more with men signally skilled in every sort of literature, altho but few publish their lucubrations.' Op. T. 10, p. 1486. His exception is less applicable now than the introductory encomium. |