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CHAPTER IX.

THE REFORMATION IN THE NETHERLANDS.

THE Netherlands formed a most valuable portion of the inherited dominions of Charles V. The Dukes of Burgundy, the descendants of King John of France, taking advantage of the weakness of the French crown and of the wars between France and England, had built up by marriage, purchase, and conquest, or by more culpable means, a rich and powerful dominion. The Duchy of Burgundy gradually extended its confines, until, in the reign of Charles V., it comprised seventeen provinces, and was nearly coextensive with the territory included in the present kingdoms of Holland and Belgium. All of the old writers describe in glowing language the unequaled prosperity and thrift of the Low Countries, and the skill and intelligence of the people.1 Agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, were equally flourishing and lucrative. There were three hundred and fifty cities, some of them the largest and busiest in Europe. Antwerp, with a population of one hundred thousand inhabitants, at a time when London had only one hundred and fifty thousand, was the resort of merchants from every quarter, and had a trade surpassing that of any other European city. The people of the Netherlands were noted not less for their

1 Strada, De Bello-Belgico, tom. i. For a description of the state of the Low Countries, see Häusser, Gsch. d. Zeitalt. d. Ref., p. 328 seq. Prescott, Hist. of the Reign of Philip II., b. ii. ch. 1; Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, i. 81 seq. Th. Juste, Hist. de la Révol. des Pays-Bas, tom. 1. 1. v. Holzwarth, Der Abfall d. Niederländer (3 vols., 1866-72). The facts are drawn from Guicciardini, Belgica Descriptio (1652), Strada, Basnage, Annales des Provinces-Unis (1719), and other sources.

ingenuity shown in the invention of machines and implements, and for their proficiency in science and letters, than for their opulence and enterprise. It was their boast that common laborers, even the fishermen who dwelt in the huts of Friesland, could read and write, and discuss the interpretation of Scripture. Local self-government existed to a remarkable extent throughout the seventeen provinces. Each had its own chartered rights, privileges, and immunities, and its immemorial customs, which the sovereign was bound to keep inviolate. The people loved their freedom. Charles V., with all the advantages derived from his vast power, could not amalgamate the provinces, or fuse them under a common system, and was obliged to satisfy himself with being the head of a confederacy of little republics. But at the Diet of Augsburg, in 1518, he succeeded in legalizing the separation of the Netherlands into a distinct, united portion of the Empire, paying its own tax, in a gross amount, into the treasury; having certain special rights in the Diet; entitled to protection, but exempt from the jurisdiction of the imperial ' judiciary, to which other parts of the Empire were subject.

In such a population, among the countrymen of Erasmus, where, too, in previous ages, various forms of innovation and dissent had arisen, the doctrines of Luther must inevitably find an entrance. They were brought in by foreign merchants, "together with whose commodities," writes the old Jesuit historian Strada, "this plague often sails." They were introduced with the German and Swiss soldiers, whom Charles V. had occasion to bring into the country. Protestantism was also transplanted from England by numerous exiles who fled from the persecution of Mary. The contiguity of the country to Germany and France provided abundant avenues for the incoming of the new opinions. "Nor did the Rhine from Germany, or the Meuse from France," to quote the regretful

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language of Strada, "send more water into the Low Countries, than by the one the contagion of Luther, by the other of Calvin, was imported into the same Belgic provinces." The spirit and occupations of the people, the whole atmosphere of the country, were singularly propitious for the spread of the Protestant movement. The cities of Flanders and Brabant, especially Antwerp, very early furnished professors of the new faith. Charles V. issued, in 1521, from Worms, an edict, the first of a series of barbarous enactments or "placards," for the extinguishing of heresy in the Netherlands; and it did not remain a dead letter.2 In 1523, two Augustinian monks were burned at the stake in Brussels. After the fire was kindled, they repeated the Apostle's creed, and sang the Te Deum laudamus.3 This execution drew from Luther an inspiriting letter to the persecuted Christians of Holland and Brabant, and moved him to write a stirring hymn - beginning, "Ein neues Lied wir heben an," — of which the following is one of the stanzas:

"Quiet their ashes will not lie:

But scattered far and near,

Stream, dungeon, bolt, and grave defy,

Their foeman's shame and fear.

Those whom alive the tyrant's wrongs

To silence could subdue,

He must, when dead, let sing the songs
Which in all languages and tongues,
Resound the wide world through."4

1 Strada, Stapleton's translation (1667), p. 36. On the causes of the rapid spread of Protestantism in the Low Countries, see Th. Juste, i. 319, 320.

is a moderate Catholic, and writes with impartiality.

Juste

2 The main parts of the first “Placard " are given by Brandt, History of the Reformation in the Low Countries, i. 42.

4 "Die Aschen will nicht lassen ab,

Sie stäubt in aller Landen.

3 Ibid., p. 45.

Hie hilft kein Bach, Loch, Grub noch Grab;

Sie macht den Feind zu Schanden.

Die er im Leben durch den Mord
Zu schweigen hat gedrungen,

Die muss er todt an allem Ort

Mit aller Stimm', und Zungen

Gar fri hlich lassen singen." Gieseler, IV. i. 2, § 24.

The edicts against heresy were imperfectly executed. The Regent, Margaret of Savoy, was lukewarm in the business of persecution; and her successor, Maria, the Emperor's sister, the widowed Queen of Hungary, was still more leniently disposed. The Protestants rapidly increased in number. Calvinism, from the influence of France, and of Geneva where young men were sent to be educated, came to prevail among them. Anabaptists and other licentious or fanatical sectaries, such as appeared elsewhere in the wake of the Reformation, were numerous; and their excesses afforded a plausible pretext for violent measures of repression against all who departed from the old faith.1 In 1550, Charles V. issued a new Placard, in which the former persecuting edicts were confirmed, and in which a reference was made to Inquisitors of the faith, as well as to the ordinary judges of the bishops. This excited great alarm, since the Inquisition was an object of extreme aversion and dread. The foreign merchants prepared to leave Antwerp, prices fell, trade was to a great extent suspended; and such was the disaffection excited, that the Regent Maria interceded for some modification of the obnoxious decree. Verbal changes were made, but the fears of the people were not quieted; and it was published at Antwerp in connection with a protest of the magistrates in behalf of the liberties which were put in peril by a tribunal of the character threatened. 66 And," says the learned Arminian historian, " as this affair of the Inquisition and the oppression from Spain prevailed more and more, all men began to be convinced that they were destined to perpetual slavery." Although there was much persecution in the Netherlands during the long reign of

1 The Anabaptist offenses against decency and order are naturally dwelt upon by writers disposed to apologize for the persecutions in the Netherlands; as Leo, Universal Geschichte, iii. 327 seq.; and in his earlier work, Zwölf Bücher Niederländische Geschichte. But the facts and circumstances are also faithfully detailed by Brandt and other writers whose sympathies are on the other

SPIRIT AND POLICY OF PHILIP II.

289

Charles, yet the number of martyrs could not have been so great as fifty thousand, the number mentioned by one writer, much less one hundred thousand, the number given by Grotius.1

In 1555, Charles V., enfeebled by his life-long enemy, the gout, which was aggravated by reverses of fortunemindful, too, it is said, of a former saying of one of his commanders, that "between the business of life, and the day of death, a space ought to be interposed"-resigned his throne, and devolved upon his son, Philip II., the government of the Netherlands, together with the rest of his wide dominions in Spain, Italy, and the New World. Political and religious absolutism was the main article of Philip's creed. His ideas were few in number, but he clung to them with the more unyielding tenacity. The liberties of Spain had been destroyed at the beginning of Charles's reign; and the absolute system that was established there, Philip considered the only true or tolerable form of government. To rule, as far as possible, according to this method, wherever he had authority, was an established purpose in his mind. At the same time, he was resolved to stand forth as the champion of the Roman Catholic Church, and the unrelenting foe of heresy, wherever he could reach it. The Spanish monarchy had worn a religious character from the days of Ferdinand and Isabella. Its discoveries and conquests in the New World had been pushed in the spirit of religious propagandism. The crusade against the Moors had whetted. the fanatical zeal against heresy. In Spain, the Inquisition was an essential instrument of the civil administration. By nature, and by the influence of the circumstances in which he was placed, Philip was the implacable enemy of religious dissent. Moreover, he knew that if he granted liberty of conscience in one part of his

1 "Nam post carnificata hominum non minus centum millia," etc. — - Annales et Hist. de Rebus Belg., 1. i. p. 12.

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