crimes of the clergy and freed some peoples from the yoke
of the papacy; he would have freed all, save for the false politics of
the kings who, feeling instinctively that religious liberty would bring
political enfranchisement, banded together against the {714} revolt.
He adds that the epoch brought added strength to the government and to
political science and that it purified morals by abolishing sacerdotal
celibacy; but that it was (like the Revolution, one reads between the
lines) soiled by great atrocities.

In the year 1802, the Institute of France announced as the subject for
a prize competition, "What has been the influence of the Reformation of
Luther on the political situation of the several states of Europe and
on the progress of enlightenment?" The prize was won by Charles de
Villers [Sidenote: Villers] in an essay maintaining elaborately the
thesis that the gradual improvement of the human species has been
effected by a series of revolutions, partly silent, partly violent, and
that the object of all these risings has been the attainment of either
religious or of civil liberty. After arguing his position in respect
to the Reformation, the author eulogizes it for having established
religious freedom, promoted civil liberty, and for having endowed
Europe with a variety of blessings, including almost everything he
liked. Thus, in his opinion, the Reformation made Protestant countries
more wealthy by keeping the papal tax-gatherers aloof; it started "that
grand idea the balance of power," and it prepared the way for a general
philosophical enlightenment.

[Sidenote: Guizot]

The thesis of Villers is exactly that maintained, with more learning
and caution, by Guizot. According to him:

The Reformation was a vast effort made by the human
race to secure its freedom; it was a new-born desire to
think and judge freely and independently of all ideas
and opinions, which until then Europe had received or
been bound to receive from the hands of antiquity. It
was a great endeavor to emancipate the human reason
and to call things by their right names. It was an
insurrection of the human mind against the absolute power
of the spiritual estate.

{715} [Sidenote: Romantic Movement]

But there was more than politics to draw the sympathies of the
nineteenth century to the sixteenth. A large anthology of poetical,
artistic and musical tributes to Luther and the Reformation might be
made to sho