In Western Europe, the Roman Catholic Church re- tained her unity until the KJth centurj'. The leaders of that reformatory party which controlled the councils of Pisa, Constance, and Hasle were anxious not to dis- turb the unity of the Church, and co-operated in the condemnation of men like Wycliffe and lluss, who wanted first of all a scriptural reformation of the doc- trine, and who showed no concern about external unity if it stood in the way of a doctrinal reformation. At the beginning of the IGth century, the stified clamors for a radical revision of the doctrine of the corrupt Church and the restoration of a pure scriptural doctrine burst irresistibly forth in the German and Swiss reformation. Sec RiiFOUMATioN. The whole of England, Scotland, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and large portions of Germany and Switzerland, permanently severed their connection with the Roman Catholic Church. The Church rallied, from a sense of self-preservation, for extraordinary conservative, and recuperative efforts. Although the Council of Trent (1545-63) did not suc- ceed in bringing back the seceders, it exerted an im- portant normative intiuence u|jon the subsequent his- tory of the Roman Church. While it reasserted, in op- position to the Protestants, those doctrines which had been developed by the mediasval theologians, and pro- mulgated them as parts of the Church doctrine, and thus made a return of those who regarded many Roman Catholic doctrines as an apostasy from pure Biblical Christianity impossible, it issued, on the other hand, decrees for the reformation of the constitution and dis- cipline of the Church, which retained within its pale large numbers who, though favoring a purification of the Church, laid also great stress upon the preservation of its unity and its unbroken historical connection with the apostolic age. For the vast territories lost in Eu- rope, the Church received some compensation in the New World, where the monastic orders, conjointly with the Spanish government, sulijected the larger portion of the native population to the Church, and fully se- cured the permanent ascendency of Roman Catholicism. The desire to concentrate the energy of the ablest men within the Church for an effectual arrest of a further advance of Protestantism led to the peculiar organiza- tion of the Older of the Jesuits, which plays a promi-
nent part in the subsequent history of the Church. By dint of its extraordinary efforts, it not only checked the further progress of Protestantism in a number of coun- tries, but recovered some that already appeared to be lost. Within tlie Church its influence was no less re- markable, and it succeeded, like no other community of men before, in strengthening and enlarging, in opposi- tion to the adherents of the ejiiscopalian system, and especially to the Galileans, the absolute authority of the popes. The rejection by the popes of doctrinal opin- ions designated as heretical repeatedly called forth very exciting dogmatical controversies, which in one case led to the organization of a separate ecclesiastical communi- ty, the so-called Jansenists, or Old Catholics of Holland, who recognised the authority of the |)ope as the head of the Church, but denied the infallibility of his dog- matical decisions, and consequently their obligation to yield to them an unconditional submission. In the sec- i>iulhalfof the 18th century, extraordinary tempests came down upon the Church. In France and other countries of Southern Europe, an antichristian literal ure under- mined, in the educated classes of the ]iopulation, not only the attachment to the Church, but a belief in Chris- tianity. The Bourbons of S[)ain, Portugal, and France, under the intiuence of freethinking statesmen, forced a pliant pope who had been elected bj' their influence to abolish the Order of the Jesuits, in their opinion the strongest bulwark of the Church against the advance of a new, freethinking ajra. In Germany, the episcopal electors of the empire united with the emperor Joseph II on a plan to establish a National German Catholic Church, which was to be almost independent of Rome. The French Revolution took from the pope his tempo- ral possessions, confiscated the property of the Church, and for a time decreed the abolition of Christianity. Napoleon desired to secure the co-operation of the Church for the execution of his ambitious schemes and the confirmation of his ])ower and his dynasty. He concluded in 1801 with the pope a concordat, which was to restore to the pope his temporal possessions and his ecclesiastical powers; but as a complete agreement was not arrived at. Napoleon once more (1808) occupied the States of the Church, and declared the " donation of his predecessor Charlemagne" revoked. When he was thereupon excommunicated, he imprisoned the pope, and for several years deprived the Church of her head. In 1814 the allied princes of Europe restored the tempo- ral power of the pope, and Pius VII was enabled to re- sume the full functions of the papacy as they were exer- cised before the French Revolution. An agreement, how- ever, between the pope and the princes assembled at the Congress of Vienna was not attained, and the pope en- tered through his legate a protest against the work of the congress. In 1816 the Order of tiie Jesuits was re- stored for the whole Church, and soon displiiyed again, as in former times, an extraordinary activity for strength- ening and enlarging the papal authority in opposition to episcopal and liberal tendencies still manifesting themselves within the Church, as well as to the legis- lation of the secular governments. The growth of the liberal and revolutionary party in most of the European countries, which aimed at either curtailing or wholly abolishing the power of the princes, vvas not only very distasteful to the Roman Catholic Church, but led in most countries to vehement conflicts, especially in re- gard to the ])ublic schools. In Italy, the national ten- dencies for a political union led to the establishment of a united kingdom of Italy, to which the larger portion of the States of the Cliurch was annexed in 1800, and the remainder, including the city of Rome, in 1870. Though not a few Catholics, including even some of the most prominent members of the Order of the Jesuits, were inclined to look upon the destruction of the tem- poral power of the popes as favorable to the spiritual in- terests of the Church, the pope (Pius IX) jironounced an excommunication against the king of Italy and all i statesmen who had aided in the conquest of the Papal