cclesiastical spirit of the time
opposed free inquiry. Giordano Bruno was burnt. The same movement is
visible in the change from Ariosto to Tasso. Religion had resumed her
empire. The quite excellent side of these changes is displayed in such
beautiful characters as Cardinal Borromeo and Filippo Neri.

_III.--The Counter Reformation: First Stage_

Ever since the Council of Trent closed in 1563, the Church had been
determined on making a re-conquest of the Protestant portion of
Christendom. In the Spanish and Italian peninsulas, Protestantism never
obtained a footing; everywhere else it had established itself in one of
the two forms into which it was divided--the Lutheran and the
Calvinistic. In Germany it greatly predominated among the populations,
mainly in the Lutheran form. In France, where Catholicism predominated,
the Huguenots were Calvinist. Calvinism prevailed throughout
Scandinavia, in the Northern Netherlands, in Scotland, and--differently
arrayed--in England.

In Germany, the Augsburg declaration, which made the religion of each
prince the religion also of his dominions, the arrangement was
favourable to a Catholic recovery; since princes were more likely to be
drawn back to the fold than populations, as happened notably in the case
of Albert of Bavaria, who re-imposed Catholicism on a country whose
sympathies were Protestant. In Germany, also, much was done by the wide
establishment of Jesuit schools, whither the excellence of the education
attracted Protestants as well as Catholics. The great ecclesiastical
principalities were also practically secured for Catholicism.

The Netherlands were under the dominion of Philip of Spain, the most
rigorous supporter of orthodoxy, who gave the Inquisition free play. His
severities induced revolt, which Alva was sent to suppress, acting
avowedly by terrorist methods. In France the Huguenots had received
legal recognition, and were headed by a powerful section of the
nobility; the Catholic section, with which Paris in particular was
entirely in sympathy, were dominant, but not at all securely so--a state
of rivalry which culminated in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, while
Alva was in the Netherlands.

Nevertheless, these events stirred the Protestants both in France and in
the Netherlands to a renewed and desperate resistance. On the other
hand, some of the German Catholic princes displayed a degree of
tolerance which permitted extensions of Protestantism withi