before the end of our period, the new methods had established themselves in
the field of science, to be first formulated early in the new century by
one who had already mastered and applied them, Francis Bacon. Essentially,
the modern Scientific Method was the product of the Tudor Age.

[Sidenote: The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation]

For many centuries, Christendom had in effect been undivided. There had
indeed been a time when it was uncertain whether the Arian heresy might not
prevail over orthodoxy, but that was a thousand years ago. The Byzantine
Church later had separated from the Roman on a subtle point of Theology;
but in spite of various dissensions, and efforts on the part of kings and
of Churches which may be called national to assert a degree of
independence, all Western Europe had acknowledged the supremacy of the
papacy; and though reformers had arisen, the movements they initiated had
either been absorbed by orthodoxy or crushed almost out of sight. The Tudor
period witnessed that vast schism which divided Europe into the two
religious camps, labelled--with the usual inaccuracy of party labels--
Catholic and Protestant: the latter, as time went on, failing into infinite
divisions, still however remaining agreed in their resistance to the common
foe. Roughly--very roughly--in place of the united Christendom of the
Middle Ages, the end of the period found the Northern, Scandinavian, and
Teutonic races ranged on one side, the Southern Latin races on the other;
and in both camps a very much more intelligent conception of religion, a
much more lively appreciation of its relation to morals. The intellectual
revolution had engendered a keen and independent spirit of inquiry, a
disregard of traditional authority, an iconoclastic zeal, a passion for
ascertaining Truth, which, applied to religion, crashed against received
systems and dogmas with a tremendous shock rending Christendom in twain.
But the Reformers were not all on one side; and those who held by the old