History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume II

Not without difficulty can we describe the convulsive struggles of nations so as to convey a clear idea of the forces acting upon them. I have now to devote many perhaps not uninteresting, certainly not uninstructive, pages to these events.

In this chapter I begin that task by relating the consequences of the state of things heretofore described--the earnestness of converted Germany and the immoralities of the popes.

[Sidenote: The Germans insist on a reform in the papacy.] The Germans insisted on a reformation among ecclesiastics, and that they should lead lives in accordance with religion. This moral attack was accompanied also by an intellectual one, arising from another source, and amounting to a mutiny in the Church itself. In the course of centuries, and particularly during the more recent evil times, a gradual