to purify them all and to reveal their connection with the supreme end of man's being. All this is comprised in the realization of the kingdom of God on earth. It involves the perfection of human nature on all sides. Thus Christianity came not to destroy, but to fulfill; not merely to carry out law to its ultimate statement, but to give full effect to every aspiration and tendency proper to Its law of self-denial was not a rule of asceticism, but of rational self-control.

man.

The corruption of ancient society, spreading its infection within the Church, in connection with judaical ideas of the separateness of religion and of religious persons, produced asceticism. A new wall was erected between things sacred and secular, between priest and layman, between religion and human life. The ascetic would escape from the contamination of evil by abjuring even innocent gratifications. His remedy is to stunt and dwarf his nature. He attaches a stigma to relations and employments into which the bulk of mankind must enter. Such was the error of the Middle Ages.

Protestantism cast away this error. It was a religion of the spirit and of liberty. Luther advised monks and nuns to marry, to engage in useful employments, to get from life all reasonable pleasures, and to do good in a practical way. Religion is not to divorce itself from science, art, industry, recreation, from anything that promotes the well-being of man on earth; but religion is to leaven all with a higher consecration. This is the real creed of Protestantism. It does not hold to a Hebraic isolation of the religious element, nor to a pagan self-indulgence. It steers midway between the false extremes of license and asceticism. There are popular writers at the present day who openly contend for the absolute control of impulse, or for a surrender to nature, such as characterized the Greeks of old, but which brought ruin

RELIGION AND CULTURE.

553

upon Greek civilization. They feel the error of asceticism so strongly as almost to loathe the Middle Ages.1 These writers strangely overlook the place of self-denial in a world where evil has so great a sway; and they strangely forget that the antique culture, with all its beautiful products, underwent a terrible shipwreck. The problem of the reconciliation of religion and culture, and of the harmonizing of the proper claims of this life and of the life to come, is one for the solution of which Protestantism has the key.

1 See the writings of Taine, passim.

APPENDIX I.

A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.1

1479. Union of Aragon and Castile under Ferdinand V. (the Catholic) and Isabella. (Conquest of Granada, 1492.)

1480. Establishment of the Spanish Inquisition.

1483. Birth of Luther, November 10.

1484. Birth of Zwingle, January 1.

1485. Accession of Henry VII. (the House of Tudor), in England; end of the Wars of the Roses.

1491. Birth of Ignatius Loyola.

1492. Discovery of America by Columbus.

1493. Accession of Maximilian I. as Emperor.

1494. Invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. Conquest of Naples by the French. Beginning of the Wars of Italy.

1495. Naples reconquered by Ferdinand II. Diet of Worms: establishment of the Imperial Chamber.

1497. Birth of Melancthon, February 6. Vasco da Gama doubles the Cape of Good Hope and sails to India.

1498. Death of Savonarola, May 23.

1500. Birth of Charles V., February 24.

1501. Louis XII. and Ferdinand V. (the Catholic), conquer and divide the kingdom of Naples. Contest between them.

1502. The University of Wittenberg is founded.

1503. Louis XII. finally deprived of Naples. Erasmus publishes the "Manual of a Christian Soldier." Death of Pope Alexander VI.; accession of Julius II.

1504. Death of Isabella of Castile. She is succeeded by her daughter Joanna, with her husband Philip I. of Austria, Duke of Burgundy.

1505. Peace between France and Spain; the kingdom of Naples is left wholly to Spain. Luther enters a monastery at Erfurt, August 17.

1 In preparing this Table, much aid has been derived from the Tables of Chronology in Alberi's edition of the Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti (Appendice), 1863.

1506. Death of Philip I. Joanna becomes demented. Charles I. succeeds them (in his minority). Julius I begins St. Peter's Church. He extends the papal dominion over Perugia and Bologna. Accession of Sigismund I. in Poland.

1508. League of Cambray against Venice, formed by Julius II., Ferdinand V., Louis XII., and Maximilian I. Luther is made

a professor at Wittenberg.

1509. Accession of Henry VIII. in England. His marriage with Catharine of Aragon, June 29. Luther is ordained a priest, May 2. Birth of Calvin, July 10.

1510. Conquest of Goa on the coast of Malabar; foundation of Por tuguese power in the East. Julius II. unites with Venice to drive the French out of Italy. Luther visits Rome.

1511. Ferdinand V. and Henry VIII. join the Holy League, ostensibly for the protection of the Church.

1512. Maximilian joins the Holy League. Maximilian of Sforza placed on the Ducal throne of Milan, from which the French are expelled. The Lateran Council (5th) opens, May 3. 1513. Death of Julius II., February 24. Accession of Leo X., March 11. Death of James IV. of Scotland. Accession of James

1514. Reuchlin's conflict with the Dominicans.

1515. Death of Louis XII.; accession of Francis I. He sets out to reconquer Milan. Battle of Marignano, September 13. Abolishment of the Pragmatic Sanction.

1516. Death of Ferdinand V., January 23. Charles of Austria becomes monarch of all Spain and its dependencies. Peace concluded between France, Spain, and Austria. Death of Ladislaus, king of Hungary and Bohemia; succeeded by Louis II. Zwingle a preacher in Einsiedeln. Erasmus publishes his New Testament. "Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum."

1517. Luther posts his Theses, October 31.

1518. Luther appears before Cajetan at Augsburg, October 7. Melancthon arrives at Wittenberg, August 25. Leo X. publishes a Bull on Indulgences, November 9. Mission of Miltitz into Saxony, December. Zwingle becomes pastor in Zurich.

1519. Death of Maximilian I., January 12. Charles, king of Spain, elected Emperor, June 28. Disputation at Leipsic, July 24. Birth of Catharine de Medici, April 13.

1520. Excommunication of Luther by Leo X., June 15. Luther burns the bull, December 10. Insurrection of the Spanish