Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/743

EUROPE 713 Eunuchs, profess the wildest anti-scriptural doctrines, and are carried into excesses of practical fanaticism. The Protestant churches of Western Europe, which have so marvellously exemplified what naturalists call propaga tion by fission, may be doctrinally divided into two great groups, the " Lutheran," which maintain the platform of the great Reformer ; and the " lleformed," which have advanced further in their divergence from Roman Catho licism. Politically there are three great classes state churches, free churches enjoying state endowments, and free churches which either from necessity or choice are en tirely independent. To the Lutheran group belong the state churches of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, and that form prevails also in Prussia, Hanover, and the Baltic provinces of Russia ; the "Reformed" includes the Calvinistic churches of Holland and Scotland, and a great number of eccle siastical organizations in England, Scotland, Switzerland, Germany, and France. The established church of Eng land, though frequently classed with the Lutheran group, has so many points of contact in doctrine and ritual, both with Calvinism on the one hand and Roman Catholicism on the other, that it may be allowed to stand by itself. In Prussia, Baden, and a few of the smaller German states, the two parties are associated under the title of the United Lutheran Church, and have very close relations with the political administration. It is impossible to do more than mention the minor subdivisions of Moravians, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Independents, Quakers, Uni tarians, for which the reader may consult the separate articles, and such works as Stiiudliu s Kirchliche Geographic, Wagger s K. Staiistik, Dollinger s T/te Church and tlm Churches, and De Mestral s Tableau de I Eglise Chritienne. Mahometanism or Islam has comparatively few adherents in Europe, and has moreover ceased to be aggressive. If it still occupies in Constantinople one of the noblest of Christian churches, it is more than six hundred years since it surrendered in Cordova one of the noblest of its mosques. Its adherents are mainly Turks, Tatars, and Slavonians ; and outside of Turkey they are nowhere very numerous ex cept in southern Russia. Judaism, which at one time had no small proselytizing energy, has for a long period in Europe been nothing but the religion of the people of Jewish descent. It is divided into two great organizations, the so-called orthodox party representing traditionalism, and the reformed party representing freedom of thought. Even among the orthodox considerable laxity of observance is creeping in, and marriages with Christians are growing more and more frequent. Buddhism is still professed by the Calmucks of southern Russia; and the Tcheremisses, and several cognate tribes, and part of the Lapps, Finns, and Samoyedes, still preserve their pagan creeds and customs. The following table from Brachelli gives approximately the numerical strength of the various religions: Countries. Catholics. Greeks. Other Christians, chiefly 1 rotestants. Jews. Maho metans. Germany 14.8fi7.500 >7 <),i4 ;(}() 3.000 3 05 700 25,630.700 512.200 JOO 35,388 <oo 610 800 4!) 400 3 100 Great Britain ... fl.500.()iX) n 7.~>.~, ooo 25.900,000 4 157 000 40.000 . 077 (Kxj 26 750 000 35 000 40 (00 Switzerland Belgium Netliurlamls .... Luxembourg ... Denmark. 1.084.400 4.!ISO.OOO 1,313.000 197.000 1, JOO 600 1,577.700 15.000 2 I JS.OOO 400 1.865.000 4.203.800 7,000 1.500 08,000 (JOO 4.:;oo 1,800 350 1,704,800 25 10.500.000 I o: tugal 8,950,000 ID 000 1.442.000 3,500 2.600 Turkey 650.000 11,000,000 loo.ooo 4,500 000 Total (uv>- m-oxiiuate) j 145,850,000 69,500,000 71,400,000 4,5UO.OOO C,COt ,000 The political history of Europe begins with the Greeks ; but while they contributed more extensively than any people have done since to the theory of government, they have left practically 110 trace of their political organization in the present association of states. From first to last, in spite of religious and political confederations, and of the unifying influence of thj Macedonian hegemony, they re tained what in modern phraseology would be called their particularism, each city or state working out its owu political development and testing the value of the various forms of political life for itself. The Greeks were not a conquering people ; they felt nothing of the land-hunger of modern nations ; and even the great conquests to which they were led by the Asiatic genius of Alexander the Great did not present themselves as acquisitions of territory. They were great founders of cities, and their colonies were distributed along the coasts of Europe from Spain in the west to the Black Sea in the east; but if all the ground that they thus occupied were added together, it would form a comparatively small country. The city, wherever it was, continued an integral part of Hellas, but Hellas was. rather the name of a people and a civilization than of a country or a state. In this respect uo greater contrast could be found than that afforded by the next people of European history. The history of Rome is almost from its beginning to its close a history of conquest ; the limits of its territorial advance were no sooner fixed than the period of decadence set in. Where the Greeks had planted a city the Romans subjugated a region. And thus it is that to the present day the lines of Roman organization are as distinctly traceable on the political map as the lines of Roman roadway in local topographies. As the Greeks had been the great defenders of Europe from the encroachments of Persian ambition, so the Romans repulsed the Semitic power of the Carthaginians ; and as the defence against the Persians was the great determinat ing factor in later Greek development, so the repulse of the Carthaginians was the prime factor in the later Roman development. The Punic wars led to the conquest of Sicily and Spain ; ad the conquest of these gave at least a new emphasis to what was already perhaps a national tendency. In 227 B.C. proconsuls were appointed for the province of Sicily and the province of Sardinia and Corsica; the second Punic war left Rome master in 201 of the greater part of Spain and supreme in the western Mediterranean ; the capture of Numantia in 133 put the rest of Spain in its power ; the battle of Pydna secured the subjugation of Greece; the campaigns of Julius Caesar added the vast territory of Gaul to its domain ; and when Augustus effected the great change in the constitution which left its effete nomenclature to the 1 Jth century, he was able to- adopt the Danube, the Rhine, and the ocean as the north eastern boundary of the European part of his empire. His rule was paramount in all the region which now comprises Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, western Hol land, Rhenish Prussia, parts of Baden and Wiirtemberg, most of Bavaria, Switzerland, Italy, Tyrol, Austria Proper, Western Hungary, Croatia, Slavonia, Servia, Turkey in Europe, and Greece. The populations of many of these countries had already begun to be Romanized in language and customs, but most of them were still distinctly aliens. During the succeeding centuries of the empire a few comparatively unimportant oscillations of frontier took place, and a few additional elements were added to the motley conglomerate of Roman citizenship ; but the main features were still the same when Constantino intro duced his new administrative distribution, and fixed the seat of government in the city which still bears his name. Christianity, which now received the sanction of the civil power, had gradually changed from an organ or vi ir. -- 90 Changes of tel "-

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