The rise of Protestantism accelerated the decline and final ruin of the monasteries.  The enthusiasm of the Mendicants and the culture of the Jesuits failed to convince the governments of Europe that monasticism was worthy to survive the destruction awaiting so many medieval institutions.  The spread of reformatory opinions resulted in a determined and largely successful attack upon the monasteries, which were rightly believed to constitute the bulwark of papal power.  So imperative were the popular demands for a change, that popes and councils hastened to urge the members of religious orders to abolish existing abuses by enforcing primitive rules.  But while Rome practically failed in her attempted reformations, the Protestant reformers in church and state were widely successful in either curtailing the privileges and revenues of the monks or in annihilating the monasteries.

Since the sixteenth century the leading governments of Europe, even including those in Catholic countries, have given tangible expression to popular and political antagonism to monasticism, by the abolition of convents, or the withdrawal of immunities and favors, for a long time a source of monastic revenue and power.  The results of this hostility have been so disastrous, that monasticism has never regained its former prestige and influence.  Several of the older orders have risen from the ruins, and a few new communities have appeared, some of which are distinguished by their most laudable ministrations to the poor and the sick, or by their educational services.  Yet notwithstanding the modifications of the system to suit the exigencies of modern times, it seems altogether improbable that the monks will ever again wield the power they possessed before the Reformation,

In the present chapter attention will be confined to the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII., in England.  The suppression in that country was occasioned partly by peculiar, local conditions, and was more radical and permanent than the reforms in other lands, yet it is entirely consistent with our general purpose to restrict this narrative to English history.  Penetrating beneath the varying externalities attending the ruin of the monasteries in Germany, Spain, France, Switzerland, Italy, and other countries, it will be found that the underlying cause of the destruction of the monasteries was that the monastic ideal conflicted with the spirit of the modern era.  A conspicuous and dramatic example of this struggle between medievalism, as embodied in the monastic institution, and modern political, social and religious ideals, is to be found in the dissolution of the English monasteries.  The narrative of the suppression in England also conveys some idea of the struggle that was carried on throughout Europe, with varying intensity and results.