740 Scientific Societies and Academies Societies created for the purpose of encouraging scientific investigation, and providing a common meeting-place for the interchange of ideas. The first society for the prosecution of physical science was established at Naples in 1560, under the name of Academia Secretorum Naturae, and under the presidency of Baptista Porta. In the course of the seventeenth century two of the Italian Academies which devoted themselves to science became famous. At Florence, a society, begun informally in 1651, under the patronage of Ferdinand II, was formally established in 1657, under the name of the Accademia del Cimento, by Prince Leopold, at whose palace it met, and who gave it unstinted help. It devoted itself mainly to mathematical and physical science; many, if not most, of the greater scientific men of the time were among its members; it discussed, devised and carried out experimental researches, and in 1667 published an account of its labours under the title of Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell' Accademia del Cimento. In 1667, however, Leopold's energies being withdrawn from it on his being created a Cardinal, and several of its active members, such as Borelli, having left Florence, the Academy came to an end. At Rome, at even an earlier date, in 1603, a similar society was founded by Prince Federigo Cesi under the name of the Accademia dei Lincei, which devoted itself mainly to the natural sciences. Like its sister at Florence, it authorised publications, and like its sister it had a short life only, coming to an end in 1630, upon the early death of its founder. Long afterwards-in 1784 - the name was revived in the present Reale Accademia dei Lincei. An Accademia fisico-matematica was founded at Rome by Giovanni Giustino Ciampini in 1677. The scientific Academy at Naples had been suppressed by Philip II, and was succeeded by another Academy of Sciences in 1695. In England a society, similar to the Italian Academies, was established in 1645 at London, meeting at Gresham College or elsewhere, under the private name of the "Invisible College." In 1648 the society was divided, some members continuing to meet, fitfully owing to the troubles of the time, in London, but most of them at Oxford. In 1660 the meetings in London were revived with success, and on July 15, 1662, the society was formally incorporated by charter as the "Royal Society of London," a second charter being granted in 1663. It is known how keen and useful an interest was taken by John Evelyn in the early progress of the Royal Society; his project of a Mathematical College, like his friend Abraham Cowley's Philosophical College, remained, however, unaccomplished. William Molyneux is regarded as the founder of the Dublin Philosophical Society (1684). In France, at Paris, a similar society, about the middle of the seventeenth century, met at the house of Melchisedec Thevenot, a man distinguished by his travels and his interest in science; it was before this society that Stensen gave his remarkable lecture on the brain, attacking the teaching of Descartes and others. And there seem to have been other like societies or Academies at Paris. In 1666 (the Académie Française having been founded earlier, in 1635), the place of these informal Academies was taken by the Académie des Sciences, established by Louis XIV, on the advice of Colbert. In 1699 it was reorganised and began to issue publications. In Germany, a society similar to the Italian Academies was established by Johann Lorenz Bausch, a physician of Schweinfurt, in 1662; it was familiarly known as "the Argonauts" but more formally as the Academia naturae curiosorum. Under this latter name it was, in 1687, definitely established under statutes, at Vienna, with privileges granted by the Emperor Leopold. Leibniz, who was a member of the Royal Society (from 1673) and of Ciampini's Roman Physical and Mathematical Academy, induced the Elector Frederick III (soon to become King Frederick I of Prussia) through the influence of his consort the Hanoverian Sophia Charlotte to establish a Society of Sciences, of which Leibniz himself was made the first president, and which in 1711 became the "Academy of Sciences." His efforts, however, to bring about the establishment of a general Academy of Sciences at Vienna were unsuccessful. At one time they had nearly approached realisation; and he put forth in both Latin and German schemes for the proposed Societas Imperialis Germanica, and drafted statutes for it. But the project was in the end defeated (about 1714) by Jesuit opposition and by lack of funds. In Russia, as has been seen in a previous chapter, an Academy of Sciences was founded at Moscow by the Tsar Theodore III so early as 1681. But this institution, into the foundation of which religious purposes largely entered, was superseded by the Academy of Sciences founded by Peter the Great at St Petersburg in 1724, designed as a general centre of education and learning. The Academies belonging to other European countries were founded at later dates. CHAPTER XXIV LATITUDINARIANISM AND PIETISM Two tendencies impeded the peaceful and progressive development of the Reformation in the latter half of the seventeenth century-the spirit of growing insubordination, or excessive use of the right of free enquiry, and the lapse, on the other hand, into a hardened dogmatism, limiting the area of free debate in utter contradiction of this principle, the right of private judgment, which is the raison d'être of Protestantism. The dialectical process involved in these antagonistic tendencies became a disintegrating force, threatening internal dissolution. In England, the strife of political parties, closely connected with the conflict between the sacerdotal theory of ecclesiasticism and the Puritanical theory of doctrinal exclusiveness, intensified religious passions. In Germany, the prostration which followed the Thirty Years' War together with the stifling effects of governmental repression-a strict application of the jus reformandi of the territorial sovereign (Landesherr) — often in league with clerical domination, retarded the progress of intellectual and spiritual religion. Two movements, both taking their rise in Holland, then the home of a virile and tolerant Protestantism, came into existence to counteract these two tendencies- Latitudinarianism in England, and Pietism in Germany. The former was an attempt to bring about agreement in essentials, while dealing gently with, or passing over, minor differences. The latter sought to rouse the religious world from lethargy and the torpor of formalism. Previous attempts of Roman Catholic and Protestant divines to define doctrine with a view to putting an end to controversy, at the Council of Trent and at the Synod of Dort, in the Formula Concordiae, and in the Thirty-nine Articles, conceived as "articles of peace," and in the Westminster and Helvetic Confessions of Faith, had failed in their object. It was then that a small number of divines and laymen, wearied and saddened by the deadening effects of the new scholasticism, tried to introduce "sweet reasonableness" into theological discussion; while others thought they had found a more excellent way in the ligion of the heart, and in the simplest and most primitive Attempts at Reunion. Intolerance 743 forms of faith, more or less independent of external ordinances and a "form of words." These, an inconsiderable body as to numbers, but conscious of the support of many inarticulate sympathisers, tried to lessen the virulence of the rabies theologorum-Lutherans and Reformers, Jansenists and Jesuits, Calvinists and Arminians, Puritans and Anglicans -all fiercely contending with one another. At the same time efforts were made by authority, as for example in the "Charitable Conference" at Thorn (1645), convened by Wladislaw, King of Poland, in the Synod of Charenton (1631), suggested by Louis XIV, and through the "Peace of the Church," brought about by Clement IX in order to put an end to the Jansenist trouble. Other, but equally futile, attempts at reunion were also made by eminent churchmen and statesmen such as Richelieu and Bossuet, or initiated by Princes such as Landgrave William VI of Hesse, who arranged for a friendly discussion between Lutherans and Reformers at Cassel (1661); or, earlier still, by James I, who attempted, through the instrumentality of Peter du Moulin, a divine renowned among the French Reformers, and at the Hampton Court Conference (1604), to bring about a compromise between Puritans and Episcopalians. The same fate attended the efforts of the broad-minded Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg, who granted full liberty of conscience to his subjects, and later by the Great Elector, who also tried to put an end to the mutual recriminations of Lutherans and Calvinists. Religious equality and the toleration of minorities were not fully secured by the Peace of Westphalia; and the rights acquired by the Protestants were often abridged by the arbitrary acts of Catholic Princes, who aided and abetted the efforts of the Jesuits to bring about conversions, often by methods of persuasion, which differed little from persecution. In the Palatinate, where a Catholic dynasty had succeeded, the persecution of the Protestants was only averted by threats of reprisals on the part of Prussia. In Electoral Saxony, where Frederick Augustus became a convert to Rome with a view to obtaining the Crown of Poland, it would have led to similar results, but for the determination of his Lutheran subjects. In Salzburg the Archbishop, Count Firmian, in 1729, attempted a forced reconversion of the body of loyal" Evangelical Catholics." Thereupon a hundred of their elders, at dawn one Sunday morning in a defile of the Schwarzach, took an oath on the Host and on consecrated salt, vowing in the name of the Holy Trinity that they would stand by each other in sorrow and misfortune and remain true to the Evangelical faith. In defiance of the Corpus Evangelicorum (the body of Protestant representatives at the permanent Diet of Ratisbon who were responsible for the upholding of Protestant rights and privileges) might often prevailed over right; and in this particular case the sufferers only escaped by a patent of emigration. In Hungary few of the magnates were able to resist the temptation of retaining their court and state appointments as the price of returning to the dominant religion, and 744 Jesuits and their converts. Calixtus the ordinary Protestant citizens were exposed to innumerable vexations; while in other parts of the Habsburg dominions the persecuted Protestants found it necessary to seek an asylum from persecution in Transylvania. Throughout the German Empire, moreover, many nobles and men of superior culture began to be captivated by the zeal and by the controversial skill of the Roman emissaries, to whom the progress of historical and patristic studies had given a temporary advantage. Some potentates, like Henry IV in France, would not lose a crown for a mass and became Catholics from wise policy, or cunning statecraft. Others again, like the accomplished Queen Christina of Sweden, the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, the patron and disciple of Descartes, the correspondent of Pascal and Spinoza, turned away from the narrow-minded bigotry of her Protestant court-preachers to seek refuge in the Roman communion, as the more flexible, if not the more liberal, system of religion. John Frederick of Hanover, intellectually the most distinguished of the Brunswick-Lüneburg Dukes, and the first among them to patronise Leibniz, was converted to Romanism through the enthusiasm of Count Rantzau, himself a distinguished convert. The conversion of his kinsman, Antony Ulric of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, belongs to a later date (1710), and followed on that of his niece, who became the consort of the future Emperor Charles VI. Not a few Princes were drawn towards Rome by the natural affinity between state absolutism and ecclesiastical concentration, agreeing with the Jesuits that obedience is the only remedy against dissidency and insubordination to authority in Church and State. The main cause of the defection of the mass of the people in Protestant countries was the moral decadence and mental decrepitude of the clergy, together with the repellent effect of their dry disquisitions in the pulpit, accom panied by frigid forms of worship. The primary object of the Pietists, therefore, was to infuse a fresh spirit of religious fervour, and to bring into use forms of faith and worship better calculated to satisfy the craving for Innerlichkeit (depth of soul) in devotion and the desire to face the profounder questions which gather round religion. Thus it was that mystic Pietism found its way from the Netherlands into Germany, its carriers being the German students frequenting the then famous Dutch Universities, while the University of Helmstedt, the solitary oasis of intellectual freedom in Germany at this time, produced in Calixtus (who died in 1656), the noble-minded precursor of a new era, whose effort, however, to liberalise theology only produced fierce opposition, though it paved the way for the work of later reformers. In England, also, the liberalising influence of the Dutch Remonstrants had its effect on the Latitudinarians. John Hales had heard with admiration the defence of Episcopius at the Synod of Dort. But the movement in England formed part of the general progress of thought, and was accompanied by a determined national resistance to the advances of |