At the beginning of the chapter on James I, Belloc states:
James I of England struck at the beginning of the seventeenth century the note which was henceforward to affect all modern life so profoundly. That note was the independence of nations — as lay societies — from the moral judgment of the Church. Henry IV of France, his con- temporary, was the symbol (as we saw in the last chapter) of the fact that the Reformation would not be successful in its attempt to overwhelm our civilization. In France, after a furious struggle in which the leaders of the nation had half of them gone Protestant and engaged in fierce civil wars against the other half, the nation as a whole had come down on the right side of the hedge, mainly through the energy of the city of Paris. But in France also the new nationalist spirit was rising, and we shall see later what a height it reached under Louis XIV, Henry IV's grandson, before the end of the century.
James I of England stands for that nationalist principle which, in the succeeding three hundred years, completely conquered.
Today, everyone, for the moment, accepts the principle that the nation is sovereign and lay, completely independent of every international control. The modern nation gives no obedience to any defined international moral authority — such as had been the Catholic Church with the Papacy for its supreme Judge during all the centuries when our European civilization was being built up. The modern nation is not only completely independent, but admits no religious definition. Any citizen who prefers his allegiance to a religious body to his allegiance to the nation is regarded as a traitor. Religions of all kinds are regarded as the private affair of individuals. When the citizens differ among themselves upon religion it is the duty of the State to keep the peace between them but not to affirm itself the guardian of any one set of doctrines. The sacred thing to which
everybody must adhere, the one doctrine against which no
one may protest on pain of heresy, is the doctrine of
patriotism and the right of the nation to its complete independence. There is, thus, no common law binding all
nations.
Belloc calls this "absolute nationalism". He notes that absolute nationalism and the Divine Right of Kings, which James I upheld so resolutely in both religious and secular matters, are the same thing--nothing has any authority over the State.
James I, like Henry VIII and Elizabeth I before him, had an adviser and counselor, who helped him rule England:
Now it was Robert Cecil's prime object to prevent a Catholic reaction. The whole policy of his family and tradition was the gradual imposition, by force and trickery, of the new religion upon the English people. They had so far succeeded that, when James thus came to the throne in 1603, quite half the English were opposed to their ancient Faith. Most of that half were, no doubt, indifferent to religion, as were many on the other side also; but in 1603 quite half England was, upon the whole, anti-Catholic; and it was Robert Cecil's business to make all England anti-Catholic in time; or, at any rate, if that should be impossible, to make so large a proportion of England anti-Catholic as to render the full return of the Faith out of the question.
Whether he invented the Gunpowder Plot or not will always
be disputed. There is no positive proof that he did; all
that we know for certain is that he knew all about it just
after it was started, and nursed it carefully. Gunpowder was
then a Government monopoly, and yet the conspirators
brought it openly across the Thames in large quantities,
and all their movements were known. Cecil exposed the
plot just at the right moment to produce the most effect;
and it is from that date (1606) that the tide turns and that
England tends to become more and more a Protestant
country.
Belloc credits James with the attempt, at least, of maintaining peace, but that his goal to uphold the Divine Right of Kings during his reign has had greater lasting influence:
Nationalism is also one of the themes in Belloc's chapter on Ferdinand II, the Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary, and King of Bohemia:
Everywhere in Christendom the particular interests of princes, cities, districts, nations and even of races or groups of culture, were at issue with the general interests of united Christendom. One main aspect of the Reformation, therefore, is the effort of the religious revolutionaries to assert local independence politically against authorities superior to themselves, and ultimately of course against the supreme moral authority of the Church throughout Europe.
Nevertheless, Ferdinand II, as a devout Catholic, did all he could re restore Catholicism throughout the kingdoms he ruled:
Ferdinand II is a character who, after a hundred years of religious division among Germans, undertakes to re- establish Catholicism everywhere in his dominions from the Alps to the Baltic, and from beyond the Rhine to the frontiers of Poland. He is the character who undertakes, as head of the German states, Emperor over them all, and individually the possessor of the largest amount of land as a private prince, to undo what the Reformation had done in nearly the whole of north Germany, and partly in the centre of Germany.
Had Ferdinand II triumphed the old religion would
probably have been re-established not only in Germany, but,
sooner or later, in most of Europe. Nothing would have
remained of the religious revolution save the small populations of Scandinavia, of England and of Scotland, and no
one can say how long these remnants could have stayed out ;
for there was a considerable Catholic minority in Scotland
and in Scandinavia, and a very large one in England, as
late as the beginning of Ferdinand's effort, that is from
1620-30. Even if England, Scotland and Scandinavia had
remained strongly independent Protestant Governments,
they would have counted little compared with the vastly
greater numbers and wealth of the German Empire, France,
Spain, Italy, Hungary, and Poland. The Protestants all
put together would not have commanded one tenth of the
men and money commanded by the Catholics, had Ferdinand succeeded in establishing a United Catholic German
Empire.
But in his effort to restore Catholicism universally, on the
Continent at least, Ferdinand II was also considering the
power of his hereditary house, the house of Hapsburg; and
it was this duality of aim which was at bottom the cause of
his partial failure.
Catholic France, France under King Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu, saw that if Ferdinand II succeeded in his aims, French power would be threatened. So the French joined forces with the Protestants in the Thirty Years War.
Belloc admires Ferdinand, saying that he had:
But the Thirty Years War devastated Germany, resulted in French hegemony and Europe, and left the Holy Roman Empire as divided between Protestant and Catholic as it was before it began.
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