INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME IV AUTOBIOGRAPHY DURING THE RELIGIOUS WARS FROM THE SPANISH SAINT TERESA TO THE ENGLISH CAVALIERS 1550-1630 IN the first half of the sixteenth century the great Protestant Reformation was carried to a very wide success, though under very differing conditions, by Luther in Germany, by Calvin in France, by the despotic King Henry VIII in England, and by the people's chosen sovereign Gustavus Vasa in Scandinavia. The second half of the century saw a marked reaction in favor of the ancient Church of Rome. Then followed that most horrible of horrors, religious war. Massacre enforced in the name of God gives the dominant note to all this period, and its tragedy lends a pitiful yet passionate tone to the autobiographies of the time. These were not numerous. The age found no splendid soldier of fortune like Cellini, no earnest self-analyst like Cardan, to open to us the very heart of man. The reader will, however, encounter here three or four very noteworthy autobiographies; and he will discover in all the memoirs of this period an amazing and most enlightening variety of religious attitudes. The human conscience has lived through many phases, expressed itself in strangely variant forms. We start with the remarkable narrative of Sister Teresa, which may well be accepted as typical of the Spain of her day. Spain had remained among all countries the most firmly Roman Catholic. In that one land, at least, the power of the Emperor Charles had sufficed to stamp out every shadow of heresy; and it was to a monastery in Spain that he at length retired when he resigned his disastrous leadership of the world. The rearoused and passionately emotional faith of Spain bred mystic visionaries, monks and nuns so profoundly stirred |