The worst thing about these distressing controversies was that they seemed to absorb the whole energies of the nation. No period is less productive in modern German history than the age immediately following the triumph of the Reformation. The movement, which had begun so liberally and hopefully, became, temporarily at least, narrower and more bigoted than Catholicism. It seemed as if Erasmus had been quite right when he said that where Lutheranism reigned culture perished. Of these men it has been said--and the epigram is not a bad one--that they made an intellectual desert and called it religious peace. And yet we should be cautious in history of assuming _post hoc propter hoc_. That there was nothing {135} necessarily blighting in Protestantism is shown by the examples of England and Poland, where the Reform was followed by the most brilliant literary age in the annals of these peoples. [Sidenote: 16th century literature] The latter part of the sixteenth century was also the great period of the literature of Spain and Portugal, which remained Catholic, whereas Italy, equally Catholic, notably declined in artistic production and somewhat also in letters. The causes of the alterations, in various peoples, of periods of productivity and of comparative sterility, are in part inscrutable. In the present case, it seems that when a relaxation of intellectual activity is visible, it was not due to any special quality in Protestantism, but was rather caused by the heat of controversy. SECTION 7. NOTE ON SCANDINAVIA, POLAND, AND HUNGARY [Transcriber's note: The above section number is what appears in the original book, but it is a case of misnumbering, and is actually the chapter's sixth section.] A few small countries bordering on the Empire, neither fully in the central stream of European culture, nor wholly outside of it, may be treated briefly. All of them were affected by the Protestant revolution, the Teutonic peoples permanently, the others transiently.