RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Reformation
the existing state of the Church. They were aided by Lorenz Anderson (q.v.). Gustavus Vasa, who delivered the country from the Danes in 1523, favored Protestantism; and the whole country, including the bishops, followed his example. In 1527 the Reformation was legalized ; and, in 1593, the Synod of Upsala confirmed and completed the work by adopting the original Augsburg Confession, to the exclusion of every other. Sweden retained the episcopal form of government in the closest union with the State. This country did great service to the cause of Protestantism in Europe through its gallant King Gustavus Adolphus, in the Thirty Years' War. In 1877 complete religious freedom was granted. Denmark became likewise an exclusively Lutheran country, with an episcopal form of State-church government, under Christian III. The new bishops received presbyterial ordination through Bugenhagen, and are therefore merely superintendents, like the bishops in the Evangelical Church of Prussia.* A diet at Copenhagen in 1536 destroyed the political power of the Roman clergy, and divided two-thirds of that church's property between the crown and the nobility. The remaining third was devoted to the new ecclesiastical organization. From Denmark, the Reformation passed over to Norway, in 1536. The archbishop of Drontheim fled with the treasures of the church to Holland; another bishop resigned; a third was imprisoned; and the lower clergy were left the choice between exile, and submission to the new order of things, which most of them preferred. Iceland, then subject to Danish rule, likewise submitted to the Danish reform. See Denmark; Norway; and Sweden.
9. England: The struggle between the old and the new religion lasted longer in England and Scotland than on the continent, and continued in successive shocks down to the end of the seventeenth century; but it left in the end a very strong impression upon the character of the nation, and affected deeply its political and social institutions. In theology, English Protestantism was dependent upon the continental reform, especially the ideas and principles of Calvin; but it displayed greater political energy and power of organization. It was~« from the start a political as well as a religious movement, and hence it afforded a wider scope to the corrupting influence of selfish ambition and violent passion than the Reformation in Germany and Switzerland; but it passed, also, through severer trials and persecutions. In the English Reformation five periods may be distinguished. The first, from 1527 to 1547, witnessed the abolition of the authority of the Roman papacy under Henry VIII., the culminating deed being the passing of the Act of Supremacy, 1534, making the king " the only head on earth of the church of God called the Anglicana ecclesia." Henry quarreled with the pope on purely persona!: and selfish grounds, because the latter refused consent to his divorce from Catharine of Ara-
* The Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States, after its separate organization, first sought episcopal ordination from Denmark; but, before the negotiations were completed an act of Parliament was passed, which empowered the Ar ihbishop of Canterbury to ordain bishops for a foreign countr '.
gon. " The defender of the faith," a title given him by the pope for his defense of the seven sacraments against Luther, remained in doctrine and religious sentiment a Roman Catholic to the end of his life; and at his death the so-called " bloody articles " — which enjoined under the severest penalties the dogma of transubstantiation, auricular confession, private masses, and the celibacy of the priesthood — were in full forcej He punished with equal severity Protestant as well as Roman-Catholic dissenters who dared to doubt his headship of the Church of England. But, while he thus destroyed the power of the pope and of monasticism in England, a far deeper and more important movement went on among the people, under the influence of the revived traditions of Wyclif and the Lollards, the writings of the continental Reformers, and chiefly of the English version of the Scriptures (see Bible Versions, B, IV., §§ 3-4)1 The second period embraces the reign of Edward VI., from 1547 to 1553, and marks the positive introduction of the Reformation. Its chief ecclesiastical agent, Cranmer, was assisted in the work by Ridley and Latimer (qq.v.), and by several Reformed divines from the continent whom he called to England, especially Butzer (q.v.) of Strasburg, who was elected professor at Cambridge, and Peter Martyr of Zurich, for some time professor at Oxford. The most important works of this period and in fact of the whole English Reformation, next to the English version of the Bible, are the Forty-two Articles of Religion (subsequently reduced to thirty-nine; see Thirty-nine Articles), and the Book of Common Prayer (see Common Prayer, Book of).
The third period is the reign of Queen Mary, from 1553 to 1558, and presents the unsuccessful attempt of that queen and Cardinal Pole, archbishop of Canterbury, to restore the Roman Catholic religion and the authority of the pope. The papal interim did more to consolidate the Reformation in England than Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth. Hundreds were martyred in this short reign. Others fled to the continent, especially to Geneva, Zurich, Basel, and Frankfort, where they were hospitably received and brought into closer contact with the Reformed churches of Switzerland and Germany. The fourth period is the restoration and permanent establishment of the Anglican Reformation, during the long reign of Elizabeth (1558-1603). The Roman Catholic hierarchy was replaced by a Protestant; and the Articles of Religion, and the Common Prayer Book of the reign of Edward, were introduced again, after revision. The ecclesiastical supremacy of the crown was likewise renewed, but in a modified form; the queen refusing the title " supreme head " of the Church of England, and choosing, in its place, the less objectionable title " supreme governor." The Anglican Church, as established by Elizabeth, was semi-Roman Catholic in its form of prelatical government and liturgical worship, a sort of via media between Rome and Geneva. It suited the policy of the court, but was offensive to the severe school of strict Calvinists who had returned from their continental exile. The result was the prolonged conflict between Anglicanism and Puritanism in the bosom of the English
Reformation Reformed Church