[Sidenote: France]
In France, the concordat of 1516 between pope and king had peacefully
secured for the French monarch appointment of bishops and control of
benefices within his country,--powers which the German princes and the
English sovereigns secured by revolutionary change. Moreover, French
Protestantism, by its political activities in behalf of effective
checks upon the royal power, drove the king into Catholic arms: the
cause of absolutism in France became the cause of Catholicism, and the
latter was bound up with French patriotism to quite the same extent as
English patriotism became linked with the fortunes of Anglicanism.
[Sidenote: Spain and Portugal]
In Spain and Portugal, the monarchs obtained concessions from the pope
like those accorded the French sovereigns. They gained control of the
Catholic Church within their countries and found it a most valuable
ally in forwarding their absolutist tendencies. Moreover, the
centuries-long struggle with Mohammedanism had endeared Catholic
Christianity alike to Spaniards and to Portuguese and rendered it an
integral part of their national life.
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