CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE SPELL OF GRAND MONARCHY

It is atheism and blasphemy to dispute what
God can do; ... so it is presumption and high
contempt in a subject to dispute what a king.
,can do, or say that a King cannot do this or that.

—JAMES I STUART

The religious struggle in Europe which we traced in the
last chapter was brought to a close by the Thirty Years' War
which terminated with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648,
Though religious intolerance continued in the countries of
Europe for a long time after this, the middle of the sixteenth
century constituted a turning point in history, since the main
interest of people thereafter was centred in matters other than
religious.

The unity of Christendom had long been lost: Europe was
no longer united either in religion or in politics. Out of the
disruption of the Roman Empire, as we have seen, had emerg-
ed a new order. At first there was the chaos of the Dark
Age. The successors of Charlemagne and Otto the Great
having failed to hold Europe together, it was left to the Pope
and the Church to provide the only bonds of union possible
in the Middle Ages. But with the Renaissance Europe came
to be once again divided, and this division was to be per-
manent. Hence we might truly begin the history of Modem
Europe, that is, Europe as we find her to-day, with the dose
of the Reformation. However, to understand some of its out-