F THE TIMES . . . . . . . . . 641

1. Tolerance and Intolerance. Effect of the Renaissance and
Reformation.

2. Witchcraft. Causes of the mania. Protests against it.

3. Education. Schools. Effect of the Reformation. Universities.

4. Art. The ideals expressed. Painting. Architecture. Music.
Effect of the Reformation and Counter-reformation.

5. Reading. Number of books. Typical themes. Greatness of the
Sixteenth Century.

CHAPTER XIV. THE REFORMATION INTERPRETED . . . . . . . 699

1. The Religious and Political Interpretations. Burnet, Bossuet,
Sleidan, Sarpi.

2. The Rationalist Critique. Montesquieu, Voltaire, Robertson, Hume,
Gibbon, Goethe, Lessing.

3. The Liberal-Romantic Appreciation. Heine, Michelet, Froude, Hegel,
Ranke, Buckle.

4. The Economic and Evolutionary Interpretations. Marx, Lamprecht,
Berger, Weber, Nietzsche, Troeltsch, Santayana, Harnack, Beard,
Janssen, Pastor, Acton.

5. Concluding Estimate.

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 751

INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 819

{3}

THE AGE OF THE REFORMATION

CHAPTER I

THE OLD AND THE NEW

SECTION 1. THE WORLD.

Though in some sense every age is one of transition and every
generation sees the world remodelled, there sometimes comes a change so
startling and profound that it seems like the beginning of a new season
in the world's great year. The snows of winter melt for weeks, the
cold winds blow and the cool rains fall, and we see no change until,
almost within a few days, the leaves and blossoms put forth their
verdure, and the spring has come.

Such a change in man's environment and habits as the world has rarely
seen, took place in the generation that reached early manhood in the
year 1500. [Sidenote: 1483-1546] In the span of a single life--for
convenience let us take that of Luther for our measure--men discovered,
not in metaphor but in sober fact, a new heaven and a new earth. In
those days masses of men began to read many books, multiplied by the
new art of printing. In those days immortal artists shot the world
through with a matchless radiance of color and of meaning. In those
days Vasco da Gama and Columbus and Magellan opened the watery ways to
new lands beyond the seven seas. In those days Copernicus established
the momentous truth that the earth was but a tiny planet spinning
around a vastly greater sun. In those da