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out. A few nunneries were to be retained; and the income of the confiscated estates was to be devoted especially to the salary of parish priests, the maintenance of a bishop (stripped of all temporal power), and the erection of a high school in each district. Though the power of the spiritual princes was too strong to permit such drastic measures, it was the Roman Catholics themselves, with Austria to set the example, who commenced the abolition of monasteries. All this was the tendency of the day, but Luther warned his adherents that the property of the Church must be administered in the interests of the Church, and that the conditions of country pastors must first of all be improved, after which the residue might be devoted to benevolent institutions and to general interests. It was in this spirit that the Saxon visitation was conducted and that Melanchthon advised the council of Strasburg in 1538. At the same time, many secular authorities grasped the opportunity to turn to private advantage the course advocated by Luther and Melanchthon, and failed to make proper provision for preachers and schools, the care of the poor, and the advancement of education, so that the Schmalkald Convention of 1540, at the instance of Melanchthon, formally demanded reformation of church property rather than secularization, even while advocating the secularization of spiritual domains. In many lands, as in Hesse, large institutions, such as the strongly Protestant University of Marburg, were endowed from suppressed monasteries, while in 1525 Prussia was changed from a spiritual state to a secular archduchy.

The estates of the Church in the various territories at the rise of Protestantism fell into three categories, each of which underwent a separate development: the property and income of individual

churches and benefices, the property 3. Condi- of religious corporations (property of tions under chapters, monasteries, etc.), and the

erty and income of individual parishes remained practically unchanged, although there were minor losses, as in the case of Stole Fees (q.v.) and certain cases of enforced contribution, while instances of deliberate violation of the spirit of the new regulations were not unknown. In W iirttemberg Duke Christopher sought to offset the attempts of Ulrich to secure complete secularization by a specially administered " general church fund " which should permanently apply ecclesiastical property to the benefit of Protestantism. This fund was to provide for the endowment of new pastorates, the repair of pastors' residences, the support of aged pastors, and the like; but the destruction of the multifarious local legal persons which the ecclesiastical properties formed under Roman, canon, and common Protestant church law were a peril to Christopher's scheme, which finally suffered incameration in 1806. In many districts the estates of ecclesiastical corporations were undiminished, although their objects were changed, only hospitals, poorhouses, etc., retaining their original purposes. Much of the confiscated property was devoted to educational ends; in other cases the corporations

survived, though they became benevolent institutions; while yet others, when their incumbents died or resigned, were given back to their patrons or founders. In Wtirttemberg the monasteries were retained as schools; and this transformation of monasteries, rather than entire secularization, was the course pursued by Duke Ernest the Confessor of Liineburg and Duchess Elizabeth of CalenburgG6ttingen, as well as by Duke Julius of Brunswick. The University of Helmstadt was endowed from suppressed monasteries, and educational and eleemosynary institutions were founded in similar fashion in Hanover, Hesse, Mecklenburg, and elsewhere.

The property and income of ecclesiastical dignitaries underwent a profound change with the rise of the new doctrine. Protestantism left no room for the union of temporal and spiritual

4. Effects lordship in the bishops which had on the hitherto prevailed, and some bishops,

Princes of like those of Samland and Pomerania, the Church. voluntarily resigned their secular powers when they embraced the tenets of Luther. More than this, the entire episcopate vanished with the extension of the consistorial system, and as bishops died, they were not replaced. Members of the secular nobility were elected or appointed to administer the vacant sees, and the episcopal estates gradually became incorporated with the secular domains. In many religious foundations immediately dependent on the Empire the Reformation was similarly carried out, and in this way Protestantism gained control of the dioceses of Magdeburg, Bremen, Verden, Lubeck, Osnabriick, Ratzeburg, Halberstadt, and Minden, while for a time the Roman Catholics were threatened with the loss of Munster, Paderborn, Hildesheim, and Cologne, although the Counter-Reformation ultimately enabled them to retain possession of these sees. The Protestantized dioceses, on the other hand, went their course to secularization, such being the fate of Bremen, Verden, and Magdeburg, which became secular duchies, of Halberstadt, Minden, Can-tin, Schwerin, and Ratzeburg, which were changed into principalities, and of many lesser foundations. By the provisions of Jan. 1, 1624, the only unsecularized imperial diocese in Protestant hands was Labeck, and the sole unsecularized monasteries were those of Gandersheim, Hervorden, and Quedlinburg; while the Protestants were now declared entitled to peaceful possession of all sequestrated and transformed ecclesiastical estates and foundations.

The suppression of the Jesuits in the eighteenth century gave secular lords wide pretexts for confiscation of church property, such sequestration following the banishment of the order from Portugal (1759), France (1764), Spain (1767), Naples, Malta, and Parma (1768). On the suppression of the order by Clement XIV. on July 21, 1773, the pope appointed a special congregation to decide concerning their property, and this congregation accordingly addressed a circular letter to the episcopate directing the bishops to take possession of Jesuit property and apply it to the purposes designated by the pope. Since, however, German law refused to recognize the papal supremacy which was thus implied,