of scientific studies. There is no doubt, that from this cause, the ranks of the literati, both among Catholics and Protestants, were much thinned; and that in consequence the ardor for literary pursuits was greatly abated. Had the world continued in religious unity, and had no acrimonious controversies arisen, such men as Luther, Bucer, Melancthon, Eck, Emser, and Bellarmine, might have been able to contribute their full share to the progress of letters.

To show how this cause practically operated to the detriment of literature, we will furnish a few facts, selected almost at random from many of the same kind. We have seen how the fanaticism of the Anabaptists destroyed manuscripts and burnt an extensive library in the city of Munster. It is curious to trace the beginning of this fanaticism, and to mark its influence on literature in that city. Before the appearance of Luther, Munster enjoyed peace and tranquillity, and cultivated learning with great success. Shortly after the commencement of the Reformation, the scene changed altogether. Says Audin:

"It suddenly became a city of trouble and disorder-was restless and uneasy under its obscurity, and aspired to be the rival of Wittenberg. It was a rich and commercial city, and had cultivated literature with success. Its university had merited the attention of the literary world. It loved antiquity, especially Greece, whose poets it published and elucidated. This was the passion until the disciples of Luther entered its gates, when this demi-classic city-half Greek and half Latin, by its morals and instincts— involved itself in theological disputes, and abandoned the study of Cicero and Homer, to become interpreter of the sacred volume. It is needless to say, that it found in these inspired writings many things that our fathers never dreamed of. Then all the classic divinities abandoned Munster, as the swallows fly away in winter, only that they did not intend to return. In their place, an acrimonious and punctilious theology destroyed the peace of scholars, masters, and people. The revolutionary progress of sectarians is always the same."*

Whoever will read attentively the history of the Reformation, will be struck with the truth of this last remark. In

* Audin, "Life of Luther," p. 458.

almost every city in Germany where the reformers made their appearance, they produced, to a greater or less extent, the same disastrous revolution in literary taste, which they effected in Munster. Even Charles Villers, one of the most unscrupulous advocates of the Reformation, admits that "the attention of the literary world was turned away, for more than a century (after the Reformation) unto miserable disputes about dogmas, and confessions of faith."* Controversy was not only carried on between the champions of Catholicity and of Protestantism, but it raged violently in the bosom of the reform party itself. Men, who might have been of immense service to the republic of letters, thus wasted their energies in sectarian contentions. For more than six years a violent dispute was carried on between the Lutherans and Calvinists on the subject of the Eucharist, and at the close of it, they were more widely separated than ever. Leibnitz tells us, that a single controversy between two Protestant divines of Leipsic, on the peremptory period of repentance, gave rise to more than fifty treatises in Latin and German.t

The eagerness for religious controversy among the earlier Protestants of Germany, forcibly reminds us of the picture which St. Gregory of Nyssa draws of a similar rage of disputation on the subject of the Trinity, among the sectarians of Constantinople under the Emperor Theodosius the Great. "If you wish to change a piece of money," says he, "you are first entertained with a long discourse on the difference of the Son who is born, and of the Son who is not born. If you ask the price of bread, you are answered, 'that the Father is greater, and that the Son is less;' and if you ask, when will the bath be warm? you are seriously assured, 'that the Son was created. "‡

It is a singular fact, that notwithstanding the invectives of Luther against the philosophy of Aristotle, it was still retained

* Essai sur l'Influence, etc., ut sup., p. 276.

+ Commercii Epist. Leibnitziana, Selecta Specimina-Hanoveræ.

Epist. xcv.

1805,

Apud Robelot, p. 390, sup. cit.

VOL. I.-35

in most of the Protestant universities of Germany, and even made the standard of disputation. Melancthon published commentaries on the writings of the Stagirite, and the authority of the latter was greatly respected by the German Protestant universities, as late as the close of the eighteenth century. Ramus was refused a professorship at Geneva, because he would not adopt the philosophy of Aristotle, which was still taught in this cradle of Calvinism.* While Protestant Germany was thus sternly upholding the system of philosophy which Luther had decried and endeavored to banish from Christendom, the new school of the Platonic philosophy was established in Italy, under the auspices of the Medici. All the invectives of the reformers against the subtle disputations of the schoolmen, who had adopted the Aristotelian philosophy, thus recoiled on the heads of their own party. The mutual distrust and suspicion, which the Reformation sowed in the minds of men, constituted another serious ob stacle to the progress of letters. Competition and emulation often elicit talent and promote improvement; but when this feeling degenerates into a suspicious jealousy and mutual hatred, it greatly retards advancement in learning. Whatsoever new systems of literature or of philosophy were broached by one religious party, were often rejected, through a mere spirit of opposition, by the other. When mankind were united in religious faith, they worked in unison for the promotion of learning: when they were split up into religious parties, they often mutually thwarted and hindered one another. The endless variations and vagaries of Protestantism, on the one hand, led to a skepticism, which sneered at every system which savored of antiquity, no matter how well grounded; and the cautious dread of innovation by the Catholic Church, on the other, caused her sometimes to view with suspicion, at least for a time, new systems of philosophy which were sustained by respectable, if not conclusive arguments.

*Beza, Epist. xxxvi, p. 202. Apud Robelot, p. 362.

An example of the former feeling-of skepticism-is given by the French philosopher Maupertuis, who tells us that it required a half century to satisfy the learned as to the truth of the principle of attraction, which was at first viewed as reviving a feature of the odious occult sciences, so extensively cultivated in previous centuries.* A remarkable instance of the dread of innovation on the part of the Catholic Church, is presented by the well known case of Galileo. The wanton abuse of the Scriptures, for the support of a thousand conflicting opinions, by the disciples of the Reformation, had rendered every species of innovation, which was attempted to be proved by their authority, an object of apprehension on the part of Rome. It may be confidently asserted, that, but for the distrust sowed by the Reformation, and for the attempt made by Galileo to prove his system, not merely as a specious theory but as incontestably true, by the authority of the written word, he would never have been molested.

Some time before the days of Galileo, Cardinal Nicholas de Cusa had openly defended the system of Philolaus and Pythagoras, on the motion of the earth; and no one then thought of opposing the theory on religious grounds. Nearly a century before Galileo, Nicholas Copernicus, a Catholic priest, had openly advocated the same theory: and he was not only not opposed, but Pope Paul III.† approved of the dedication to himself of his great work on the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. How are we then to explain that a system, which was thus openly maintained for nearly a century by cardinals and prelates at Rome itself, where Copernicus had been professor of astronomy-and all this, without

* Apud Robelot, p. 355.

A copy of the original work of Copernicus is preserved in the British Museum. It was printed at Nürenberg by John Petreius, at the expense of Nicholas Schomberg, the cardinal of Capua. In the beginning of the volume is printed a laudatory letter of the cardinal to Copernicus, dated Rome, 1st of November, 1536.

"De Orbium Coelestium Revolutionibus." Folio--1543, p. 196.