The continental Reformation
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The Protestant Reformation occurred against the background of long
developments and rich ferment in the Roman Catholic Church and the world of
the late Middle Ages. For two reasons it has been difficult to gain
perspective on those times. Catholic historians had an interest in showing
how much reform was occurring before and apart from the radical disrupters
of the 16th century, the Protestant reformers. Protestant historians, on the
other hand, portrayed the late medieval church in the most negative terms to
show the necessity of the Reformation, which consequently came to look like
a complete break with a corrupt past. | |
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The other reason for difficulty in understanding stems from the fact
that the 15th-century agents of change were not "Pre-Reformers";
they neither anticipated Protestantism nor acquired their importance only
from the subsequent Reformation. The events of that period were also not
"Pre-Reformation" happenings but had an identity and meaning of
their own. | |
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There has always been agreement on the fact that there were reform
developments and ferment in the 15th-century church all the way from Spain
and Italy northward through Germany, France, and England. Some of these were
directed against abuses by the papacy,
the clergy, and monks and
nuns. The pious, for example, abhorred Innocent VIII (1484-92), who
performed marriage ceremonies for his own illegitimate children in the
Vatican, and Alexander VI (1492-1503), who was and was seen to be depraved.
The public was also increasingly aware of and angered by luxurious papal
projects, for which funds were exacted. | |
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The distaste for the papacy increased at a time of rising nationalist
spirits. The popes, who had long intervened in the politics of Germany,
France, and England, faced setbacks when the monarchies in each country
acquired new power. The sovereigns found a need to assert this power against
the papacy and, in most cases, against local clerical representatives of the
church. | |
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At this time of rising national consciousness there appeared a
generation of theologians who remained entirely within the context of
medieval Roman Catholicism but who engaged in fundamental criticisms of it.
Thus William of Ockham (d. 1349?) spoke up as a reformer within the
Franciscan order. He wished to return this religious order to the ideal of
poverty, which it had in large part abandoned. As part of his reform he
maintained that Pope John XXII was heretical. Ockham saw the papacy and
empire as independent but related governments or realms. When the church was
in danger of heresy, lay people--princes and commoners alike--must come to
its rescue. This meant, in the present case, reform. (see also Index:
theology) | |
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In England, John Wycliffe
engaged in similar struggles, which weakened papal power and the hold of the
medieval church. Wycliffe also traded on national consciousness, which he
directed toward reform of the church. His instrument was the moral law of
the Bible. Wycliffe gave impetus to its translation, and in 1380 he helped
make it available to rulers and ruled alike, though he always granted
uncommon spiritual authority to the king. | |
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In Bohemia, Jan Hus,
who became rector of the University of Prague, used that school as his base
to criticize a luxury-minded clergy. He also exploited national feelings and
came to argue that the pope had no right to use the temporal sword. Hus's
bold accusations led to his death by burning at the Council of Constance in
1415. | |
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Alongside a piety that combined moral revulsion with national feelings,
Christian humanism was a further sign of stirring in the late medieval
church. In Italy, Lorenzo Valla (1407-57) used his sophisticated techniques
of historical inquiry to expose a number of forgeries that had given the
papacy many of its powers and much of its domain. In Germany, Johannes
Reuchlin (1455-1522) studied Greek and Hebrew, the biblical languages, and
fought for the rights of scholars to question traditional claims of the
church. In Holland, Desiderius Erasmus (1466/69-1536), who remained a Roman
Catholic, used his vast learning and his satiric pen to question the
practices of the church. | |
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Still another factor that disturbed a complacent late medieval church
was a flowering of mysticism in the spirit of Meister Eckehart (d. 1327/28)
or Johann Tauler (d. 1361). These people of profound devotion gained
followers who sought and claimed to have a direct access to God, bypassing
many of the church's rites and practices. Reformers like Martin Luther were
to speak well of some of these devotionalists and to translate their
writings. | |
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While the Reformers attacked people in high places, they also regarded
the Catholicism of ordinary people as being in need of reform. Devotion to
the Virgin Mary had come to look superstitious to them as well as to occur
at the expense of devotion to Christ. Such practices as pilgrims visiting
shrines or parishioners regarding relics of saints with awe seemed to
perpetuate a kind of paganism under a Christian veneer. The pestilences and
plagues of the 14th century had bred an inordinate fear of death, which led
to the exploitation of simple people by a church that was, in effect,
offering salvation for sale. By the turn of the 16th century much of Europe
was ripe for reforms that Catholicism could neither open itself up to nor
contain. | |
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(M.E.M.) | |
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Luther
said that what differentiated him from previous reformers was that they
attacked the life, he the doctrine of the church. Whereas they denounced the
sins of churchmen, he was disillusioned by the whole scholastic scheme of
redemption. The assumption was that man could erase his sins one by one
through confession and absolution
in the sacrament of penance. Luther discovered that he could not remember or
even recognize all of his sins, and the attempt to dispose of them one by
one was like trying to cure smallpox by picking off the scabs. Indeed, he
believed that the whole man was sick. The church, however, held that the
individual was not too sick to make up for bad deeds by some good deeds. God
gave to all a measure of grace. If human beings lay hold of it and did the
best they could, God would reward them with a further gift of grace with
which they could perform deeds of genuine merit, which would give them
credit before God. Human beings might even die with more than enough credits
for salvation. These extra
credits constituted a treasury of the merits of the saints, from which the
pope could make transfers to those whose accounts were in arrears. The
transfer was called an indulgence
and for this, in Luther's day, the grateful recipient made a contribution to
the church. (see also Index: Roman
Catholicism) | |
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This arrangement proved to be a popular way of raising money
particularly because, unlike tithes, it was voluntary and could provoke no
resentment. By this means crusades, cathedrals, hospitals, and even bridges
were financed. At first the indulgence, according to the Germanic law of
commutation of a physical punishment to a fine, applied only to penalties
imposed by the church on earth. Then it was extended to penalties imposed by
God in purgatory. In
Luther's day immediate release from purgatory was being offered, and the
remission not only of penalties but even of sins was assured. Thus the
indulgence encroached upon the sacrament of penance. | |
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Luther was desperately in earnest about his standing before God and
Christ. The woodcuts of Christ the Judge on a rainbow consigning the damned
to hell filled him with terror. He believed the monastic life to be the way
par excellence to acquire those extra merits that would more than balance
his account. He became a monk and subjected himself to rigorous asceticism,
but he could never reach the assurance that a sinful pygmy like himself
could ever stand before the inexorable justice and majesty of God. Continual
recourse to the confessional simply convinced him of the fundamental
sickness of the whole man. He began then to question the goodness of a God
who would make human beings so weak and then damn them for what they could
not help. Relief came through the study of the Psalms. Luther found the 22nd
Psalm particularly revealing because it contains the words quoted by Christ
upon the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
Evidently then, Christ, being without sin, so identified himself with sinful
humanity as to feel himself estranged from God. Christ the Judge seated upon
the rainbow had become Christ the Derelict upon the cross, and here the
wrath and the mercy of God could find their point of meeting so that God was
able to forgive those utterly devoid of merit. He could justify the unjust,
and this required of man only that he accept the gift of God in faith.
This was the doctrine of justification
by faith, which became the watchword of the Reformation. | |
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What this insight meant for the doctrine of indulgences is at once
apparent. The great offense was not the financial aspect but rather the very
notion that human beings dared to engage in bookkeeping with God. Luther by
now had become a professor at the University of Wittenberg and also a
pastor. His parishioners were obtaining the indulgences issued by Albert,
the new archbishop of Mainz, half of the proceeds to be retained by him as
reimbursement for his installation fee as archbishop, the other half to go
to the pope for the building of the Basilica of St. Peter's at Rome. For
this indulgence Albert
made unprecedented claims. If the indulgence were on behalf of the donor
himself, he would receive preferential treatment in case of future sin, if
for someone else already in purgatory, he need not be contrite for his own
sin. Remission was promised not only of penalties but also of sins, and the
vendor of the indulgences offered immediate release from purgatory. | |
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Against these instructions Luther launched his Ninety-five Theses on All
Saints' Day of the year 1517. In the theses he presented three main points.
The first concerned financial abuses; for example, if the pope realized the poverty of the German people, he would
rather that St. Peter's lay in ashes than that it should be built out of the
blood and hide of his sheep. The second focused attention on doctrinal
abuses; for example, the pope had
no jurisdiction over purgatory and if he did, he should empty the place free
of charge. The third attacked religious abuses; for example, the treasury of the merits of the saints was denied by implication
in the assertion that the treasury of the church was the gospel. This was
the crucial point. When the papacy pronounced Luther's position heretical,
he countered by denying the infallibility of popes and for good measure of
councils also. Scripture was declared to be the only basis of authority. | |
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Luther found support in many quarters. Already a widespread liberal
Catholic evangelical reform sought to correct the moral abuses such as
clerical concubinage, financial extortion, and pluralism (i.e., the holding of several benefices by one man) and ridiculed the
popular superstitions associated with the cult of the saints and their
relics, religious pilgrimages, and the like. This movement had
representatives in all lands, notably John Colet in England, Jacques Lefèvre
in France, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros in Spain, Juan de Valdés
in Naples, and, above all, Erasmus
of Rotterdam. Erasmus found nothing amiss in Luther's theses except that he
had been too tart as to purgatory, and when the cry of heresy was raised
against Luther, he wrote to the elector Frederick
III the Wise, Luther's prince, telling him that as a Christian ruler
he was obligated to see to it that his subject should have a fair hearing. | |
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Another party that rallied to Luther was that of the German nationalists
led by Ulrich von Hutten,
who aspired to convert the Holy Roman Empire into a German national state.
This program would entail the suppression of the whole system of
prince-bishops and could never be achieved without a war with the papacy.
Luther was hailed because of his attack on the papacy, though he would not
condone the program of violence. | |
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Yet despite the support from these parties, Luther would have been
speedily crushed had Pope Leo X
taken seriously the religious side of his office. The secularization of the
papacy saved Luther, and he destroyed the secularization of the papacy. At
the moment when Luther appeared to be foredoomed, an election for the office
of Holy Roman emperor was pending. It was elective and any European prince
was eligible, including Henry VIII of England, Francis I of France, Charles
I of Spain. The Pope wished none of them because the position entailed
control over Germany, and the augmentation of power to one of the three
would destroy the balance of power. His preference was for a minor prince,
and none fitted the role better than Luther's protector, Frederick the Wise
of Saxony. In consequence the Pope dallied in the case of Luther and even
after Charles was elected, the Pope was willing to play Frederick against
him. Not until June 1520, nearly three years after the Ninety-five Theses,
was Luther summoned to submit within 60 days. The time was reckoned from the
date of the actual delivery of the bull to the person named. So great was
the obstruction to Rome on the part even of German bishops that the bull was
not handed to Luther until October 10. | |
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He employed the summer of 1520 to bring out some of the great manifestos
of the Reformation. The Address to the Christian Nobility of the German
Nation called upon the ruling class in Germany, including
the emperor, in whom Luther had not yet lost confidence, to reform the
church in externals by returning to apostolic poverty and simplicity. This
appeal to the civil power to reform the church was a return to the earlier
practice of the Middle Ages when emperors more than once had deposed and
replaced unworthy popes. Luther argued that the papacy of his day was only
400 years old, meaning that it was the Gregorian reform that had given the
church its lead in matters political, encroaching thereby on the sphere of
the magistrate on the ground that the lowliest priest did more for mankind
than the loftiest king. Luther countered with the doctrine of the priesthood
of all believers, including Christian magistrates. Any layman was
spiritually a priest, though not vocationally a parson. The Christian ruler,
then, being himself a priest, could reform the church in externals, as the
church might excommunicate him in spirituals. The liberal Catholic reformers
could sympathize with this program except for the identification of the
papacy with Antichrist. This savoured of the medieval sects. | |
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Another tract dealt with the sacraments.
The title was The
Babylonian Captivitymeaning that the sacraments themselves had been taken captive by the
church. Luther reduced the number of the sacraments from seven to
practically two. The seven were baptism,
the Eucharist or mass,
penance, confirmation, ordination, marriage, and extreme unction. Luther
defined a sacrament as rite instituted by Christ himself. By this token only
baptism and the Eucharist were strictly sacraments and penance only as
confession. Extreme unction, that is anointing with oil those on the verge
of death, was dropped entirely. Confirmation went out for a time but was
later restored. Ordination continued as a rite of the church. Penance
included contrition, confession, and satisfaction. Luther felt that none
could be sure of genuine contrition, none could make satisfaction.
Confession was wholesome but should be voluntary and could be made to any
fellow Christian. Marriage was not a Christian sacrament, because it was not
instituted by Christ but by God in the garden of Eden, and valid not only
for Christians but also for Turks and Jews. Baptism was to be administered
but once only and to babies on the ground of their dormant faith. | |
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This left the mass, and at this point Luther gave the greatest offense.
The wine, he asserted, should be given to the laity as well as the bread, as
in the Hussite practice. No masses should be said for the dead by the priest
alone without communicants, because the Eucharist involved fellowship not
only with Christ but also with believers. The most drastic change was that
Luther denied the doctrine of transubstantiation,
according to which, at the pronouncement of the words of institution, the
elements of bread and wine, though retaining their accidents of colour,
shape, and taste, nevertheless lost their substance, which was replaced by
the substance of the body of Christ as God. This Luther denied, saying that
no change was wrought by the words of Christ. (see also Index: religious
symbolism) | |
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Luther, nevertheless, believed that the body of Christ was physically
present upon the altar because Christ said, "This is my body."
Therefore, in some inexplicable manner, his body must be "with, in, and
under" the elements. But if no change was wrought, how did his body
come to be on the altar? Because his body was everywhere. But if everywhere,
why especially there? Because in view of human limitations God had decreed
two modes of self-disclosure, the preaching of the Word and the
administration of the sacrament. There the eyes of the believer were opened.
This view undercut sacerdotalism,
since the words of the priest did not bring the body of Christ to the altar.
The undercutting of sacerdotalism destroyed the hierarchical structure of
society culminating in the papacy. (see also Index:
Real Presence) | |
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But what was to be done with Luther? On December 10, instead of
submitting, he defiantly burned the papal bull
together with a copy of the canon law. The normal course would then have
been to excommunicate him outright, but Frederick the Wise insisted that he
be given a fair hearing. The natural body to pass judgment would have been a
council of the church. But the popes were the greatest obstructionists when
it came to calling a council because they feared the revival of
conciliarism, which in the previous century bade fair to convert the church
into a constitutional monarchy. There would have been no Council of Trent
save for Luther. Only after another 20 years, when the spread of his
teaching left no other expedients, was a council convened. Consequently, his
hearing had to be before a secular tribunal, the Diet of the empire meeting
at Worms in the winter and spring of 1521. Since this was a secular tribunal
the attempt was made to prove that he was not simply a heretic but also a
rebel whose views were more subversive of the civil than of the
ecclesiastical order, because he was undermining the very principle of
authority. Luther was brought before the Diet and given an opportunity to
repudiate his books. Had he disclaimed the one on the sacraments, the other
points might have been negotiated. He acknowledged them all. Would he then
disclaim some of their teaching? Who was he to reject the teaching of the
ages? Let him give an answer without horns, to which he replied: "I
will answer without horns and without teeth. Unless I am convicted by
Scripture and plain reason--I do not accept the authority of popes and
councils, for they have contradicted each other--my conscience is captive to
the Word of God, I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against
conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen." The Emperor
then placed Luther under the imperial ban. The bull of excommunication by
the church was formally released only later. Frederick the Wise at this
point intervened and wafted Luther away to a place of hiding. | |
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Luther was concealed for a year at the castle of the Wartburg. During
this enforced withdrawal he made perhaps his greatest contribution in that
he translated the whole of the New Testament from the Greek text of Erasmus
into an idiomatic, pungent, powerful German. In many respects his German
helped to create the idiomatic. Nothing did so much to win popular adherence
to his teaching as the dissemination of this translation. (see also Index:
biblical translation, German
language) | |
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But some were not so convinced. Many of the liberal Catholic reformers,
like Erasmus, recoiled from Luther's paradoxes, from his confidence that his
interpretation of Scripture was correct, from his acceptance of the doctrine
of predestination, which makes of God a tyrant when he elects some and damns
others regardless of their behaviour. The German national movement
collapsed. Then in Luther's own circle variant forms of Protestantism arose,
which in the aggregate are variously described as the left wing of the
Reformation or as the radical Reformation. The terminology does not matter
so much as the recognition that no neat classification is possible. | |
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Two figures emerging in Luther's circle are significant by way of
anticipation. One was Karlstadt
(c. 1477/81-1541), who drew the
radical inference from the dualism of flesh and spirit that art and music
should be abolished as external aids to religion and the Presence of
Christ's body on the altar should be interpreted in a spiritual sense. His
program issued in iconoclastic riots. He extended Luther's doctrine of the
priesthood of all believers to mean that all laymen were pastors. If one
person was assigned the tasks of a parson, he should dress like others and,
like others, should work with his hands. The clergy not only might but must
marry. The sabbath should be strictly observed. This program anticipated the
Puritan movement. It entailed a blending of spiritualism and legalism. The
sensory aids to religion were to be discarded by those advanced in the
spiritual life and then snatched away by laws from those still weak. | |
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A much more disquieting figure than Karlstadt was Thomas
Müntzer (c.
1490-1525), a man of learning and a creative firebrand, who may be regarded
not as the progenitor but as the first formulator of the concept of the
Protestant Holy Commonwealth. He believed that the elect, those predestined
by God for salvation, could be sufficiently identified to compose a definite
group. Luther denied the possibility of distinguishing the elect from the
nonelect. Müntzer's test was the new birth in the spirit. The test was
not for him an absolute mark, and he recognized that among the wheat there
might be some weeds, yet he accepted it as an adequate test for the
formation of a community bound together by a covenant. The mission of this
group was to set up the Kingdom of God on Earth, the Holy Commonwealth, by
wiping out the ungodly. In the attempt they would have to endure suffering,
and here Müntzer drew from German mysticism the theme of walking in
Christ's steps toward the cross. But the trial would end in triumph, for the
Lord Jesus would speedily come to vindicate his saints and erect his
Kingdom. There are obviously incompatibles here, the way of suffering and
the infliction of suffering, the feverish activity of man to achieve that
which will be established by God. But logical incompatibles fuse at high
emotional temperatures. Müntzer appealed to the Saxon princes to
implement his program, but they banished him. He found a hearing among the
revolting peasants and led them at the Battle
of Frankenhausen, where they were butchered and he captured and
beheaded. Luther execrated his memory because he seized the sword in defense
of the gospel. The Marxists have exalted him as the prophet of social
revolution because he was the only one of the Reformers who had a deep
feeling for the sufferings of the socially oppressed. In grasping the sword
he did not essentially differ from Huldrych Zwingli, Gaspard de Coligny, or
Oliver Cromwell. | |
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Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531), the great figure in Swiss Protestantism,
was in fact if anything more committed to military action than Müntzer
because he fell as a combatant with sword and helmet on the field of battle.
He became a Reformer independently of Luther, with whom he was entirely in
accord as to justification by faith and predestination. At certain points
Zwingli drew from Erasmus and Karlstadt, notably with respect to the
disparagement of the sensory aids to religion. Zwingli, though an
accomplished musician, considered that the function of music was to put the
babies to sleep rather than to worship God. The organ was dismantled and the
images removed from the cathedral at Zürich. The Lord's Supper was
understood by Zwingli in his most extreme period simply as a memorial of
Christ's death and, on the part of the recipient, as a public declaration of
faith with more significance for the members of the congregation who saw him
take his stand than for his own spiritual life. Zwingli could the more
readily retain the baptism of infants because it was simply a recognition
that the child belongs to the people of God as the child in the Old
Testament belonged by circumcision to Israel. The analogy with Judaism
applied at many points, for Zwingli regarded the Christian congregation as
the new Israel of God, an elect people, reasonably identifiable, not as with
Müntzer by the new birth but by adherence to the faith. This company
could be called theocratic in the sense that it was under the rule of God,
whom church and state should alike serve in close collaboration. The
identification of the whole populace of Zürich with this elect people
was the more tenable because those not in accord with the ideal were
disposed to leave. Zwingli approved of even an aggressive war to forestall
interference from the Roman Catholic cantons. In the second war of Kappel he
fell in 1531. (see also Index: Switzerland,
theocracy) | |
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In Zwingli's circle arose the group who formed the mainstay of the
radical Reformation. They shared with Zwingli, and with all the reformers to
a degree, the desire to restore the church to the primitive pattern, but
they were more drastic in their restitution. Manifestly the early church had
not been allied with the state. Luther, Zwingli, and other Reformers saw no
sense in forcing the church back into the period when the state was hostile
and the Christians were persecuted. After the state became Christian, there
could very well be a close alliance, as indeed there had been in ancient
Israel. (see also Index: church
and state) | |
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The radicals restricted their biblicism to the New Testament and
espoused three tenets therefrom that have come to be axiomatic in the United
States: the separation of church and state, the voluntary church, and
religious liberty. They were called Anabaptists
on the ground that, having rejected infant baptism, they rebaptized adults
previously baptized. But they called themselves simply Baptists, denying
that they repeated baptism since the dipping of babies was no baptism at
all. Baptism, they held, did not itself regenerate but was only the outward
sign of an inner experience, the rebirth in the spirit, of which only an
adult was capable. The Anabaptists, so-called, also believed in the
possibility of a Christian society whose members were marked both by the
conversion experience and also by a highly disciplined deportment. In
obedience to the New Testament they repudiated swearing oaths and recourse
to violence, whether in war or at the hands of the magistrate. The saints
should withdraw from the wicked world. | |
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This whole program obviously had political and social aspects and was a
threat to that society or any other, for no society, save that of a small
sect, has ever renounced the use of the sword. The Anabaptists were marked
for extermination by Catholics and Protestants alike. One of their first
leaders, Felix Manz, was drowned in Zürich in 1527. The Diet
of Speyer in 1529, at which the Lutherans protested, subjected the
Anabaptists to the penalty of death with the concurrence of the Lutherans.
Persecution in the first decade eliminated the leaders, most of them
educated and moderate men. Less temperate spirits came to the fore,
sustaining their courage by setting dates for the speedy coming of the Lord.
One band, composed mainly of Anabaptists, took over the town of Münster
in Westphalia in 1534 and, contrary to the tenets of their fellows, seized
the sword and, in accord with Old Testament practice, restored polygamy. The
town was captured by Catholics and Lutherans conjoined and the leaders were
executed. Persecution everywhere intensified. (see also Index:
polygyny) | |
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In Holland Menno Simons
(c. 1496-1561), the founder of the
Mennonites, repudiated violence, polygamy, and the setting of dates for the
coming of the Lord and returned to the teaching of the early founders. The Mennonites
survived partly by reason of accommodation to military service in Holland,
partly by migration first to eastern Europe and then to the Americas.
Another group, named Hutterites
from Jakob Hutter (died 1536), was allowed to form communal colonies in
Moravia on the estates of tolerant feudal nobles who were willing to drop
the demand for military service in return for excellent craftsmanship in
field and shop. Because of subsequent persecution these groups also migrated
to the New World. The Swiss branch, which survives in the United States, is
called the Amish. The
entire pattern of ideas has reappeared in various combinations in subsequent
history, not only among the Church of the Brethren and the Quakers but among
all of the free churches disclaiming a state connection. | |
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Another form of Protestantism was Calvinism,
named for John Calvin
(1509-64), a Frenchman educated in humanist and legal studies, who in
consequence of a conversion to the Protestant reform had to flee France. In
Basel, at the age of 27, he brought out the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religionwhich in successive expansions became for centuries the manual of
Protestant theology. Calvin was in basic agreement with Luther as to
justification by faith and the sole authority of Scripture. On the sacrament
of the Lord's Supper he took a mediating position between the radical Swiss
and the Lutheran view. Thus he believed that the body of Christ was not
everywhere present, but that his spirit was universal and there was a
genuine communion with the risen Lord. Calvin took a middle view likewise
with respect to music and art. He favoured congregational singing of the
Psalms, and this became a characteristic mark of the Huguenots in France and
the Presbyterians in Scotland and the New World. As to art, he rejected the
images of saints and the crucifix (that is, the body of Christ upon the
cross), but allowed a plain cross. These modifications do not refute the
generalization that Calvinism was alien to art and music in the service of
religion but not in the secular sphere. | |
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As over against Luther, there was a shift of emphasis in Calvin, whose Institutes
did not begin with justification by faith but with the knowledge of God.
Luther found refuge from the terror of God's dispensations in the mercy of
Christ. Calvin could the more calmly contemplate the frightfulness of God's
judgments because they would not descend upon the elect. Luther, as noted,
saw no way of knowing who were the elect. He could not be sure of himself
and throughout his life had a continual struggle for faith and assurance.
Calvin had certain approximate and attainable tests. He did not require the
experience of the new birth, which is so inward and intangible, though to be
sure later Calvinism moved away from him on this point and agonized over the
marks of election. For Calvin there were three tests: the profession of
faith, as with Zwingli; a rigorously disciplined Christian deportment, as
with the Anabaptists; and a love of the sacraments, which meant the Lord's
Supper since infant baptism was not to be repeated. If a person could meet
these three tests let him assume his election and stop worrying. | |
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If one could achieve such assurance, what an enormous release of energy
to be directed to the glory of God and the erection on Earth of some
semblance of a holy commonwealth! The term became common in New England.
Calvin's own statement was that "the Church reformed is the kingdom of
God." Calvin saw more of a possibility of its realization through the
efforts of the elect because he muted the expectation of the imminent return
of the Lord. The service of the Kingdom did not require a particular
vocation. Any worthy occupation is a divine calling demanding unremitting
zeal. Luther had emphasized the secular callings as over against the
monastic, which in the Middle Ages alone had been called a vocation. With
Calvin the point was not so much that one should accept one's lot and
rejoice in the assigned task, however menial, as that the work would
contribute to the larger realization of the Christian society. | |
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Calvin had a concrete opportunity for the realization of his ideal,
albeit at first only on a small scale. The city of Geneva
had recently thrown off the authority of the bishop and of the duke of Savoy
and had not yet joined the Protestant Swiss Confederation, though aided in
the fight for liberation by the Protestant city of Bern. Through the
Bernese, Protestant preachers began to evangelize Geneva. The city was
threatened by civil war. The bellicose preacher Guillaume
Farel, unable himself to contain the violence he had helped to
unleash, laid hold of Calvin merely passing through the city and impressed
him into the unwelcome task of leadership. After turbulent years, a
banishment and a recall, he was able for the last two decades of his life to
direct the city that John Knox considered "the most godly since the
days of the apostles." There was actually scarcely a feature of Thomas
More's Utopia that Geneva did not
seek to realize. | |
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The program, despite all the turbulence, was the more attainable because
of a selective process with respect to the population. At the outset all the
Catholics who would not submit to the new regime had to leave. Among those
who remained, excommunication from the church, if not removed within six
months, meant banishment from the city. Control over excommunication, after
a long struggle, came to be entirely in the hands of the church. The state,
having long suffered from the abuse of excommunication for political
purposes, was loath to concede to the church exclusive control. Abortive
attempts to achieve independence had been made by the Protestant churches at
Basel and Strassburg. Calvin succeeded, with the result that one who was not
in the graces of the church could not for long be a member of the community.
A further factor ensuring a select constituency was the influx of 6,000
refugees from France, Italy, Spain, and, for a time, from England into a
city of 13,000. Thus in Geneva, church, state, and community came to be one.
The ministers and the magistrates with differentiated functions were alike
the servants of God in the erection of this new Israel; and the comparison
with ancient Israel was the more striking and the inner cohesion the more
intensified because Geneva also was begirt by foes, the duke of Savoy and
the duke of Alba, like the old Canaanites and Philistines. | |
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The situation in France
with respect to the Reformation was not altogether dissimilar to that in
Germany because, although the decentralization of government was not as
great, some of the French provinces enjoyed a considerable autonomy,
particularly in the south, and it was in the Midi and French Navarre that
the Protestant movement had its initial strength. Then, too, noble houses
were continually conspiring to manipulate or eviscerate the monarchy. The
religious issues came to be intertwined with the political ambitions. The
ruling houses, first the Valois from Francis I through Henry III and then
the Bourbon, beginning with Henry IV, sought to secure the stability of the
land and the throne by quelling religious strife either by the extermination
or toleration of minorities. | |
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The ground was better prepared for the reform of the church in France
than in Germany because of the efforts of liberal Catholics such as the
scholar Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and the bishop of Meaux,
Guillaume Briçonnet. King Francis I and his sister Margaret of Angoulême
not infrequently intervened to save humanist reformers from the menaces of
the obscurantists, and Margaret's daughter, Jeanne d'Albret, the queen of
Navarre, a feudatory of France, provided an asylum for the persecuted in her
domain, though she did not herself espouse the Huguenot
cause until 1560. When Lutheran teaching first began to infiltrate France,
Francis I, who would not abet heresy, fluctuated in his policy of
repression, depending on whether he desired a political alliance with the
pope, the Turk, or the German Lutherans. The year 1534 precipitated a crisis
when placards were posted in Paris savagely attacking the mass. Severe
repression followed. Bishop Briçonnet made his submission. Farel fled
to Geneva, Lefèvre to Strassburg, Calvin to Basel. Under Henry II,
the son of Francis, repression was intensified, particularly when in 1559
France and Spain made peace and thus each was free to devote attention to
the suppression of heresy at home. The persecution of the Huguenots, as the
Protestants came to be called in France, would have been intense save for
the death of the King in a tournament. | |
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At this point the rivalry of the noble houses injected itself more
overtly into the religious struggle. The crown, with its alternating policy
of eradication or recognition, was flanked by two extreme houses for whom
the religious issue was of intense concern. The House
of Guise was so Catholic as to be willing to call in Spanish aid, and
the family of Admiral Coligny so Huguenot as to be willing to court help
from England and even from Germany. Under Francis II the Guises were in the
ascendant because the queen, later queen of Scots, was of that house. Some
of the Huguenots, foreseeing the suppression in store, hatched the Conspiracy
of Amboise, an attempted assassination of the leaders of the Guise
party and transferral of power to the House of Bourbon. | |
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This was plainly rebellion and acutely raised a problem with which the
Protestants had long been wrestling. The Lutherans had had to face it
earlier when the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 gave them a year in which to
submit on pain of war. The Lutheran princes then had formed the Schmalkaldic
League to resist arms with arms. Luther was loath to condone any use
of the sword in defense of the Gospel and absolutely forbade any recourse to
violence on the part of a private citizen against the magistrates. This was
his reason for disapproval of the Peasants' War. But now the jurists pointed
out to Luther that the emperor was an elected ruler and that if he
transgressed against the true religion he might be brought to book by the
electors, who also were magistrates. Thus arose the doctrine of the right of
resistance of the lower magistrate against the higher. The concept lost its
pertinence in Germany after the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, which granted
toleration to the Lutherans in the territories where they were predominant.
Minorities in Lutheran and Catholic lands were granted the right of
migration without loss of goods. | |
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But the Calvinists were not included in the peace, and the problem of
armed resistance again became acute in France. Calvin would not condone the
Conspiracy of Amboise because it was not led by a lower magistrate. The term
was now applied to the princes of the blood in line for succession to the
throne. This meant the House of Bourbon. The Conspiracy of Amboise failed.
Francis II died, and was succeeded by his brother, the young Charles IX. The
queen mother, Catherine de Médicis,
took the lead and sought to avert religious war by granting the Huguenots
limited toleration in restricted areas in the edict of 1562. When François,
duc de Guise, discovered the Huguenots worshiping outside the prescribed
limits, as he claimed, he opened fire. The Massacre
of Vassy set off the wars. The Huguenots now were led by a prince of
the blood, Louis I, 1st
prince de Condé, of the House of Bourbon. Calvin approved. There
followed three inconclusive wars. Condé was killed in the first and
François, duc de Guise, was assassinated. His son, now Henri, duc de
Guise, believed in the complicity of Coligny, the new leader of the
Huguenots. At the end of 10 years of indecisive conflict, Catherine made
another effort at a settlement to be cemented by the marriage of Henry of
Navarre, a Bourbon, the son of Jeanne d'Albret and the hope of the
Huguenots, and her own daughter Margaret (Marguerite de Valois), a Catholic.
The leaders of all parties came to Paris for the wedding. The Duke of Guise
made an attempt on the life of Coligny, which failed. Then the Guise, with
the connivance of Catherine and her son Charles, who panicked, tried to wipe
out all of the leaders of the Huguenot party in the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew's Day in August 1572. Other massacres followed in the provinces.
(see also Index: Religion,
Wars of, Saint
Bartholomew's Day, Massacre of) | |
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Charles IX
was succeeded by his brother, Henry
III, two years later (1574). Such was the revulsion against the
massacre that the King could rule only by forming an alliance with the
Huguenot Henry of Navarre. A fanatical Catholic was thereby so outraged that
he assassinated the King. Both sides had abandoned the fiction of the
inferior magistrate and had gone in unabashedly for popular revolution.
Henry of Navarre then became Henry
IV, but he was unable to take Paris and rule France so long as he was
a Protestant. In order to pacify the land he made his submission to Rome and
promulgated an edict of toleration for the Huguenots, the Edict of Nantes, in 1598. It gave them liberty of
worship again in limited areas but full rights of participation in public
life. The edict remained in force until the revocation in 1685. | |
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