ked out, with some care, the thought that "the Reformation was a
re-action of old-fashioned minds, against the Italian Renaissance." One
might suppose that this furious Antichrist, as he wished to be, would
have thought well of Luther because of his opinion that the Saxon first
taught the Germans to be unchristian, and because "Luther's merit is
greater in nothing than that he had the courage of his sensuality--then
called, gently enough, 'evangelic liberty.'" But no! With frantic
passion Nietzsche charged: "The Reformation, a duplication {731} of the
medieval spirit at a time when this spirit no longer had a good
conscience, pullulated sects, and superstitions like the witchcraft
craze." German culture was just ready to burst into full bloom, only one
night more was needed, but that night brought the storm that ruined all.
The Reformation was the peasants' revolt of the human spirit, a rising
full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing. It was "the rage of the
simple against the complex, a rough, honest misunderstanding, in which
(to speak mildly) much must be forgiven." Luther unraveled and tore
apart a culture he did not appreciate and an authority he did not relish.
Behind the formula "every man his own priest" lurked nothing but the
abysmal hatred of the low for the higher; the truly plebeian spirit at
its worst.

[Sidenote: Acceptance of Nietzsche's opinion]

Quite slowly but surely Nietzsche's opinion gained ground until one may
say that it was, not long ago, generally accepted. "Our sympathies are
more in unison, our reason less shocked by the arguments and doctrines of
Sadolet than by those of Calvin," wrote R. C. Christie. Andrew D.
White's popular study of _The Warfare of Science and Theology_ proved
that Protestant churches had been no less hostile to intellectual
progress than had the Catholic church. "The Reformation, in fact,"
opined J. M. Robertson, "speedily overclouded with fanaticism what new
light of free thought had been glimmering before, turning into
Bibliolaters those who had rationally doubted some of the Catholic
mysteries and forcing back into Catholic bigotry those more refined
spirits who, like Sir Thomas More, had been in advance of their age."
"Before the Lutheran revolt," said Henry C. Lea, "much freedom of thought
and speech was allowed in Catholic Europe, but not after." Similar
opinions might be collected in large number; I {732} mention only the
works of Bezold and the b