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III. THE REFORMATION AND COUNTER-REFORMATION
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Dictionary of the History of Ideas | ||
III. THE REFORMATION AND
COUNTER-REFORMATION
1. The Pre-Reformation Church.
The Church at the
beginning of the sixteenth century confronts us
with
the variety which we should expect to find when we
look at the
manifold life of a whole continent. There
were abuses and
disorders—indeed an unusual number
of grave scandals at certain
levels—but also in many
places even deep piety and reforming
zeal. The
Renaissance itself could bring attempts to enrich the
Christian outlook with the new humanism, projects
for a further alliance
between Platonism and religion,
and a fresh interest in the ancient
texts—the Scriptures
and the Fathers of the Church. Even in
Italy there
were many localities that had their religious revivals,
some of them medieval in character, popular and even
perhaps superstitious,
though the one associated with
Savonarola in Florence captured some of the
famous
figures of the Renaissance. The monastic system, from
its very
nature, was subject to ups-and-downs, espe-
cially as its rules took for granted a certain intensity
of
spiritual life. But if in some regions monasteries had
sunk into
immorality, there had been a number of
reforming movements, some of them
emerging from
within and arising spontaneously. There had been edu-
cational developments—the
religious schools under the
Brethren of the Common Life in the Netherlands,
for
example, and the founding in fifteenth-century
Germany of
universities under the patronage of the
clergy or the pope. Many of these
movements were
local in character, arising from below. Even a wicked
pope would normally have no reason for checking
them, or for discouraging
piety as such.
On the other hand, the leading officers of the Church
could be too remote
from these things and ordinarily
too indifferent in respect to them. It is
doubtful
whether the directors of the Catholic system took even
the
minimum measures that were required to maintain
their guidance over
religious life or ensure the survival
of the system as a whole. In some
regions the state
of the priesthood and the work of the pulpit had
sunk
so low that a prince who wished to plunder the Church
had only to
open the door to the missionaries of
Protestantism, who might bring an
awakening or a
revolt without meeting with an adequate reply. Too
much
of the burden of the Church had come to be
borne by a lower clergy who
seemed sometimes hardly
trained to realize the nature of their own
religion, and
had every reason to be discontented with their lot. A
surprising number of them (and particularly of those
who belonged to the
minor and mendicant orders) were
to become Protestants, and some of those
who had been
unsatisfactory before their conversion were by no
means
contemptible after it. It would appear that there
was often too much of what might be called paganism
or
superstition still mixed into the popular Christianity
of the
period—too great a readiness on the part of the
authorities to
exploit the willingness of ignorant people
to rely on wonders that were
mechanically operated,
salvation-devices that had lost their connection
with
the inner man.
Apart from the more technical controversies at a
higher level the Reformers
were to attack in the world
at large the attitude which the lowest classes
were
encouraged to take towards images, relics, indulgences,
the
invocation of saints, and the like. There were now
too many people who were
coming to be too mature
for this; and the Reformation (which could
have
achieved nothing without the success of its preaching)
came in
one aspect as a religious revival, a call to a
more personal faith, a
demand for a more genuine
“Christian society.” The
Reformation was to have its
dark sides but it was to secure its successes
because
so many people were ready to be earnest, ready (when
called
upon) to bring religion home to themselves and
to feel that they had some
responsibility in the matter.
In a sense the Reformation occurred because
(on a
long-term view) the medieval Church had done its
work so well,
producing out of barbarian beginnings
a laity now capable of a certain
self-help, a certain
awareness of responsibility. And as the Church of
Rome, once it had been provoked into reexamining
itself, was to recover its
hold on people by its own
preaching and its spiritual intensity, the
opening cen-
turies of modern times see the
reassertion of religion
both in the individual and in society.
The Reformation was to be helped at the same time
by what on the one hand
was a colossal envy and
covetousness, and on the other hand a great resent-
ment. The abuses in the ecclesiastical
organization
itself were sufficient to provoke a revolt, and if they
offered an opening for zealous reformers they pre-
sented too great a temptation to monarchs and mag-
nates. In the Middle Ages there had been serious oppo-
sition to the development of the power of
the papacy
in particular—the capture of the spiritual
prerogatives
into a single center and the insertion of papal authority
into every corner of the European system. At a certain
stage in the story
the process had been understandable;
the papacy had often stood as the most
beneficial
agency on the continent; abuses, disorders, and lapses
into
superstition had tended to occur in the regions
which the hand of the pope
could not reach.
But the centralization did not prevent benefices,
offices, indulgences,
dispensations, etc., being used as
a means of making money, and new offices
being cre-
ated in order that they could be
sold—the Church, and
particularly Rome, being saddled with
dignitaries who
initial outlay. Early in the sixteenth century the posi-
tion of the papal states was so difficult that the pope,
as the ruler of a principality, had a desperate need
for money; and he used his spiritual prerogatives in
order to procure it—an evil that was liable to show
its consequences throughout the length and breadth of
Western Christendom. A higher clergy who were too
often like the sharers in a colossal spoils system did
too little for the earnest people, though they seemed
to stamp very quickly on any enterprise that might
threaten their own profits. The Church lost much,
therefore, through the nature of its entanglement with
the world; and its vested interests—the mundane pos-
sessions that were supposed to guarantee its position—
became in fact a terrible weakness, an abuse to some
people, and, to others, the primary object of cupidity.
2. The Reformation in Germany.
The Reformation
is to be regarded as essentially a religious
movement
and all our history becomes distorted unless we see
it as
arising primarily out of the spiritual needs and
aspirations of earnest
men. Social conditions might
place certain sections of the population in a
favorable
position for hearing propaganda or for welcoming
it—rather in the way that townsmen may be more
ready than
peasants to open their minds to a new
thing—and such factors
might have an effect on the
social or geographical distribution of a new
religious
system. The current forms and the current needs of
society
might affect that fringe of ethical ideas and
practical precepts in which a
new form of faith works
out some of its more mundane implications.
In history, everything is so entangled with every-
thing else that for many students the political or eco-
nomic consequences of the Reformation might
appear
more momentous than any other aspect of the move-
ment. But religion is the stone that is thrown into
the
pool, the agency that starts all the ripples. In the
Reformation
itself we are dealing with people for
whom religion was not merely a matter
of opinion or
speculation, leaving an opening for alternatives. They
were people who superstitiously feared the powers of
hell, and reckoned the
afterlife as clear a vested interest
as anything in the
world—people, also, who believed
that only one form of religion
could be right, and
regarded it as a matter of eternal moment that God
should be served and propitiated in the proper way.
Martin Luther, while still a young man, and a mem-
ber of the Augustinian order which was to produce
so many supporters
of the Reformation, became re-
markable
through the intensity of his inner experience
and his exaggerated attempts
to secure the salvation
of his soul by his own works and religious
exercises.
In this whole endeavor he would seem to have over
looked certain aspects of theological teaching that had
not been
lost in the Middle Ages, and he was brought
into the predicament of Saint
Paul—powerless to
achieve the good that he so greatly wanted to
achieve.
After a distressing time, the help of his own superior
and
the study of the Epistle to the Romans brought
him further light, and he
came to the view that man
is justified by faith alone, but that the
Catholicism of
his time was preaching salvation by
“works,” even by
religious exercises.
In reality historical Christianity had always excluded
as Pelagianism any
idea that a man could save himself
by his own efforts; and Luther, though
he had seized
on something that had been part of the Church's tradi-
tion—going back to certain
aspects of Saint Augustine
and Saint Paul—went to the opposite
extreme, insisting
on the corruptness of man and his inability to have
a part in his own salvation, so that he ran to predes-
tinarian ideas which were later systematized by
Calvin,
and which gave the Reformation an antihumanist
aspect. The
later Middle Ages had seen a concentration
on the problem of both freedom
and the will in both
man and God; and it seems clear that unfortunate
consequences followed from too intent a consideration
of the power and
sovereignty of God, if these were
regarded as separate from His love.
In a sense Luther's views sprang from the intensity
of his own spiritual
experience and his feeling about
what had happened in his own case; and
they answered
to what many people throughout the ages had felt to
be
their own experience—the sense of being drawn
by a power greater
than themselves, pulled into salva-
tion by
forces which they tried in vain to resist. Luther
therefore had been open
to the criticism that he in-
ferred too much of
his theology from his personal
experience.
In Wittenberg he was one of those people who
promoted a local religious
revival, and his immediate
superiors were encouraging him in his work,
advancing
him to a professorship so that his influence would be
enlarged. He was a mountain of a man, capable of great
profundities and
giant angers, but possessing a vein of
poetry, and, at times, the heart of
a little child. But
he was liable to be intellectually erratic, and when
in
1517 the abuses of indulgence-selling led him to offer
his
ninety-five theses as a debating-challenge, he en-
larged the issue by his theological assertions and pro-
vided his enemies with a basis for attack.
Instead of
calmly reasoning with him, they too set out to enlarge
the
issue, driving him from one logical conclusion to
another and into
positions that he had not anticipated.
And he—incited by the
wave of feeling that he had
aroused in Germany as well as by his own
mighty
passions—was glad to be provoked, moving forward
and denounced the condition of the whole Church.
Carefully measuring his power, he enlarged the
whole campaign in 1520,
setting out to undermine the
sacramental system of the Church which
contributed
to the power of priests. He called in the secular au-
thority to carry out the work of reform
which the
Church seemed unable to achieve for itself. Against
the
power of a vast organization that had long had
the governments of Europe
behind it, he asserted what
he called “the liberty of a
Christian man.” Soon he
was attacking the monastic system to
which he had
once been devoted. And he convinced himself that the
pope
was Anti-Christ.
He was helped by a certain religious dissatisfaction
and by the anger,
particularly in Germany, against
ecclesiastical abuses that were associated
with Italy.
He was enabled by the printing press, and by his own
prodigious energy, to conduct what was perhaps the
first really large-scale
publicity campaign of the kind
that makes its appeal to general readers.
An enormous factor in the case was the weakness
in Germany of the Emperor
Charles V, who was dis-
tracted by the
problems of the many countries over
which he ruled, and by the princes of
the separate
states in Germany who sought to aggrandize their
authority and were sometimes ready to see the advan-
tage of an alliance with Lutheranism. The Emperor
was to be held
up still further by the advance of the
Turks, which made it necessary for
him to postpone
the solution of his German problems. When the cause
of
the Reformation came to be preached—in the cities
of South
Germany for example—it found an eager
reception; and for a
considerable time even regions
like Bavaria and Austria—regions
that later became
renowned for their Catholicism—seemed to be
moving
over to Protestantism.
In reality Luther seems to have been a man of con-
servative and perhaps authoritarian disposition. He had
been
moved to action because he could not bear the
manner in which the Church
was tolerating both prac-
tical abuses and
misrepresentations of the faith. But
in the period of the great revolt he
put forward certain
theses which were to be remembered as the great
Reformation principles, and were to have a broader
historical influence
than even his theology. They as-
serted the
right of the individual to interpret the
Scriptures; the priesthood of all
believers; and the
“liberty of a Christian man.” When
others took these
theses according to their obvious meaning but at the
same time came to conclusions that were different from
his, he made it
plain that he could not tolerate their
individualism, and that indeed he
had no use for rebels.
There was one interpretation of Scripture, and that
the true one; and only sheer perversity could induce
a man to
read anything else into the text. Neither the
Roman Catholics nor the
Zwinglians nor the Ana-
baptists were free
to interpret the Scriptures for them-
selves.
And when Luther came to the construction of
his own system, he showed
himself in many respects
a conservative at heart. Clearly it had not been
his
desire to divide the Church, but his theological
teaching—and his persistence in it after it had been
condemned—was almost bound to produce that result.
The general
historian of Europe would have to say that
the most momentous consequences
of the Lutheran
revolt were things of which Luther would have
disapproved.
Lutheranism itself remained essentially Teutonic,
and, outside Germany, it
established itself at the time
only in Scandinavia. There was a moment when
it
seemed likely to sweep over Germany, a politico-
religious unheaval of the kind that can create a
nation.
Once it failed to carry the whole country however,
it was
bound to have the opposite effect, creating a
new, confessional division,
in some respects more bitter
than any of the others, more difficult to
overcome. It
resulted in one important contribution to the German
nation, however—Luther's translation of the Bible into
a
language which was to prevail over local dialects
and to have a unifying
effect. But, though Luther, when
he called for the aid of princes, thought
of them as
servants of the Church, bound by duty to serve the
lofty
cause, he produced a situation in which princes
had the power to choose
between competing systems
and so acquired great authority in religious
matters.
His pessimistic ideas about man and the world may
have had
the effect of diminishing the role and the
influence of religion in the
political realm, making
Lutheranism too uncritical an ally of monarchy.
In the period immediately after his condemnation
at the Diet of Worms (April
1521), Luther was in
hiding at the Wartburg castle, and during his
absence
more radical developments began to take place. In
Wittenberg
itself, Andrew Karlstadt (or Carlstadt)
promoted a further movement against
the Mass and,
on the strength of the Old Testament attacked images
and
called for a stricter sabbatarianism, so that signs
of the later Puritanism
were already visible. This, in
March 1522, provoked Luther's return to
Wittenberg,
for he did not give the same authority to Old Testament
law, and, in regard to the things that the populace
loved, he deprecated a
destructive policy conducted
without sufficient previous explanation. In
the mean-
time the reform movement had been
establishing itself
in towns where the social conflict had made the situa-
tion almost revolutionary; and by the
spring of 1521
Thomas Müntzer had combined the religious cause
end of the year he had proclaimed in an apocalyptic
manner the downfall of the Church; he insisted that
a scriptural religion was not enough since the voice
of God spoke directly within the believer, and he
threatened the opposition with punishment at the
hands of the Turk. Also some of the other “prophets”
of Zwickau moved in 1522 to Wittenberg, where they
produced trouble for the Lutherans. Soon the objec-
tions to infant baptism became significant.
Forms of apocalypticism and mysticism had made
their appearance in various
regions in the later Middle
Ages, and in Germany not only the peasantry but
the
lower classes in the towns provided promising soil for
these
movements. Now, as so often in history, religious
radicalism could quickly
lead to political extremism
and to the feeling that the time had come for
the
destruction of the godless. Thomas Müntzer came to
be
connected with the Peasants' Revolt in 1525, and,
when speaking to the
rebels about the enemy, could
say: “They will beg you, will
whine and cry like chil-
dren. But you are to
have no mercy, as God com-
manded through
Moses.” Yet he is deeply moving when
he writes of his spiritual
experience and the voice of
God in the believer: “Scripture
cannot make men live,
as does the living Word which an empty soul
hears.”
The sects for which Luther so unwillingly opened
the
way did not know how to apply the brake, and when
they captured
Münster in 1534 they established polyg-
amy, while in Moravia they experimented in commu-
nism. It was they who carried the seeds that were
to
be so important to the far future—the insistence that
God regarded men as equal, that Christ had made them
free and that there
was an Inner Light which men had
to obey. The twentieth century has shown
that even
the apocalypticism can be deeply ingrained in man and
admits
of being secularized. It goes back to biblical
times, but (at least when
the pattern has once been
established) it can exist without a supernatural
religion.
3. Calvin.
In the Swiss Reformation the city-state
made its last contribution to
history; for it communi-
cated to a nascent
church something of the pattern
of its own organization (and particularly
government
by councils) as well as something of its spirit, so that
the secular and the spiritual seemed to have kinship
with one another, just
as the development of the Cath-
olic hierarchy
had fitted neatly into the feudal world.
Here, moreover, the transformation
that occurred was
more radical—organized Christianity reshaped
itself,
producing a palpably different landscape.
Signs of this are apparent in the case of Zwingli,
the original leader of
the revolt within the Swiss Con-
federation. The initial breach occurred on matters of
discipline,
but the changes in doctrine and thought
were more radical, more rationalistic than in the case
of the
Lutheran Revolt. Here, however, the identifica-
tion of the movement with the political ambitions of
Zürich turned the Reformation into a politico-religious
affair—a patriotic cause—Zwingli meeting his death
in
battle.
What we might regard as the international Refor-
mation is associated with John Calvin and with
Geneva—a city which was not yet part of the Con-
federation, and which belonged to no country, though
it stood at the point where France, Germany, Italy
and Switzerland came
together. After trying to estab-
lish himself
in the city from 1536 and being driven
out in 1538, Calvin from 1541 gained
the mastery, and
held it till 1564, though this involved the expulsion
of many of the ancient families and the granting of
citizenship to hosts of
refugees from abroad. At the
beginning of this period, the Reformation
itself had
arrived at a critical stage. Many people had become
weary
of the conflict, and there were distinguished
intellects as well as
political leaders who had come
to desire ecclesiastical reunion. Under
Melanchthon,
the Lutherans seemed to be trying to discover how
far
they could go towards a reconciliation with
Catholicism. After the
Peasants' Revolt in Germany
in 1525 there had been the spectacle of the
revolu-
tionized city of
Münster in 1534, and this had shown
what could happen if religious
rebellion was not re-
strained. Calvin
represented a new generation, and an
important part of his work was the
stabilizing of the
Reformation—conceiving it as an international
affair,
and erecting it if possible into an international order
comparable to the Catholic one of the Middle Ages.
In 1536, by the first version of his Institutes of the
Christian Religion (which was to prove the best-seller
of the
sixteenth century), and then, in the following
year, by his part in the
“reunion” discussions in
Germany, he had been
qualifying himself to become
an international leader. In 1539 his Letter to Cardinal
Sadoleto had proved to be the
most successful of the
popular defences of the Reformation. The wheel
had
come into full cycle, and he saw that what was needed
was the
reestablishment of ecclesiastical authority. He
realized that the situation
called for three important
things: a confession of faith, a doctrine of the
Church,
and an ecclesiastical discipline. His originality lay not
in
the generation of new doctrines but in the better
coordination of received
ones, and their adaptation to
the purpose of achieving a coherent system.
Difficulties
concerning the question of the “real
presence” in the
Eucharist prevented a union with the Lutherans,
who
preserved something of the Catholic point of view, and,
for a long
time, also, with the Zwinglians, who treated
the sacrament as rather a
symbol and a remembrance
from 1549.
It is in Calvinism that the Reformation, at least in
externals, begins to
wear the aspect of almost a new
type of religion—like a new
style in art or, as some
would think (perhaps unfairly) a change from
poetry
to prose, if not a reaction against aestheticism itself.
It
becomes clear now that religion is a very serious
matter; the preaching
holds a great importance; and,
under the tighter authority that is possible
in the city-
states, there arises a severer
control of private life.
Calvin was ready (as Zwingli had been) to follow
the
Bible more consistently than Luther, and this was
bound to give an
increased importance to the Old
Testament. He put the idea of the
sovereignty of God
at the center of his whole system, whereas Luther
might be said to have been preoccupied by the idea
of Grace. The emphasis
on sovereignty had its
counterpart in the demand for obedience from
the
human side. Here was the basis for a firm authoritar-
ianism—an insistence that the Christian
life should be
a severe discipline.
It has been said that Catholicism is the religion of
priests, Lutheranism
the religion of theologians, and
Calvinism the religion of the believing
congregation.
In spite of its inaccuracies, this comparison throws
light
on the Calvinist system in which, theoretically at least,
the
Church was the congregation of believing Chris-
tians, independent of mystery and ceremony and ex-
ternal paraphernalia. The system governed through
assemblies, synods, consistories; pastors were elected
by congregations;
and all pastors were equal, just as
all churches were equal. The layman was
given a part
to play in ecclesiastical affairs; and the ministers were
to have no special immunities, no territorial lordships,
and they were to
pay taxes like anybody else. The
ecclesiastical system was to have no
prisons, no instru-
ments of mundane power;
their sole weapon against
the offender was to be exclusion from the Lord's
Sup-
per. In other words, sacerdotalism was
at an end; and
it was Calvin rather than Luther who broke the power
of
priests. It was all congenial to the pattern of a
city-state, and suggests
a Christianity that is being
reshaped in the context of a more modern
world.
Yet it was authoritarian, and only with the greatest
difficulty did Calvin
impose it on an unwilling city.
Coming later than Luther, and having a more
re-
morselessly logical mind, he did
not pretend that the
individual might interpret Scripture for himself.
If
congregations elected their ministers the qualifications
of these
had to be approved, and their ordination
carried out, by other ministers,
and in Calvin's time
the congregation would be provided with a
nominee;
all it could do was to give or refuse its consent. In
reality, the system was governed by an oligarchy which
recruited itself by cooptation and closely superintended
its members,
entering private houses, and exercising
control over private life. It was
even something like
a police-state, with spies, informers, and occult
agents,
and with neighbors and members of families betraying
one
another—the culprit being handed over to the civil
magistrate,
who carried out the requirements of the
Church. If the influx of foreign
exiles enabled Calvin
to clinch his mastery of Geneva, it also provided
him
with the means of extending his influence abroad. The
city became
like a modern nest of international revo-
lution, where the foreign guests received their training,
and then
departed to continue the work in their home
country.
Though he repressed freedom of conscience and
personal liberty, and, like
Martin Luther, gave the
individual no right to rebel, he did allow
disobedience
to rulers who commanded what was contrary to the
word of
God, and he gave currency to a theory of
resistance to monarchy which was
to be of great im-
portance in the subsequent
period. Individuals had no
right to rebel but representative institutions
(the
States-General in France, the Parliament in England,
for example)
were justified in fighting the king. The
doctrine was quoted from Calvin by
the early Whigs
and debated by the nascent Tories in seventeenth-
century England and it
had already been significant
in other countries. It inaugurates the modern
theory—
the modern paradox—of
“constitutional revolution”
where the organ of revolt
(as in France in 1789) is
the representative system itself.
It happened that, in various countries, Calvinism
spread originally in
opposition to government, and its
leader approved of these movements and
guided them.
Calvinism, in fact, often emerged in the attitude of
rebellion, and Calvin's warnings against this were not
always heeded, if
indeed he himself was quite consis-
tent
about the matter. It is not an accident that liberty
extends itself in the
modern world via Holland, Great
Britain and the United
States—countries where politi-
cal
rebellion was allied to Calvinism.
4. The Counter-Reformation.
The Catholic revival
of the sixteenth century has two aspects. On the
one
hand, like the Protestant Reformation itself, it can be
regarded
as a religious revival, a reaction against the
ecclesiastical abuses that
had been accumulating, and
a protest against the secularization of Church
and
society. In this sense, if it ran parallel to the Lutheran
movement, it had in fact begun at an earlier date. And
one of its important
features had been a purification
of the Church in Spain—a
remarkable reform of
monasteries for example—before the end of
the fif-
teenth century, that is to say, under
Ferdinand and
One result of this was the fact that even the “Renais-
sance” in Spain had a peculiar character—it was
largely a regeneration of ecclesiastical scholarship, and
for a time it gave Erasmus a considerable influence
on the religious life of that country. In their program
for the New World the Spaniards gave a high place
to the idea of transplanting Christianity and a Christian
civilization to the other side of the Atlantic. Spanish
monks, using the Bible, canon law, and scholastic writ-
ings, assisted the transition to modern international law
by their works on the laws of war and the rights of
the native population, as they related to the overseas
empire. At the same time, the fanaticism and intoler-
ance of the Spaniards seems to have been an acquired
characteristic, a product of history. At an earlier date
they had been reproached by other Christians for their
laxity, their resort to infidel doctors, their visits to
Moorish courts, so long as the Muhammadans remained
in the peninsula. The enduring conflict with the infidel,
and the religious propaganda connected with it, helped
to make Spain more firmly Catholic, more intolerantly
orthodox, than any other country.
On the other hand there was a Counter-Reformation
in a stricter
sense—the reaction against the Protestant
movement, which, to a
Catholic was the greatest of
the disorders of the time. There was a moment
when
some men were able to feel that the Catholic revival
might
combine with the Lutheran movement, espe-
cially when more radical revolts had broken out and
a section of the
Lutherans had taken a conservative
turn. A group of important Catholics
were even sym-
pathetic to a certain form of
the doctrine of justifica-
tion by faith;
and when the accession of Pope Paul
III brought something of a turn towards
a reformation
at Rome itself, the appointment of a number of cardi-
nals in the year 1534 was significant in
the story, for
a handful of these belonged to this more liberalizing
group, including Cardinal Contarini and the English-
man, Cardinal Pole. The years 1537-41 saw the failure
of reunion
negotiations which had been promoted in
France as well as Germany, and,
from that time, the
men who had seemed prepared to broaden the basis
of the Church were in disrepute—indeed, more than
one of the
Cardinals involved in this aspect of the
reforming movement was himself in
danger from the
Inquisition.
The years 1540-43 have special importance in the
history of the
Counter-Reformation. In 1540 the Soci-
ety of
Jesus was formed, and quickly attained an influ-
ence, though its widespread results were only to be
apparent in the
second generation. In 1541 came the
failure of conferences between
Catholics and Lutherans
at Ratisbon, so that the movement for comprehension
and reunion was now virtually at an end. And though
at this
time there were disturbing manifestations of
Protestantism in a number of
localities even in Italy,
effective action was now taken against the
movement.
In 1542, Cardinal Contarini, the leader of the reformist
group died, and at about this time the stronger mem-
bers of that party passed off the stage, leaving Cardinal
Pole—a less effective personality—in the leading posi-
tion. In 1542, moreover, a General Council
of the
Church was summoned; and, by this time, it had be-
come apparent that it would not represent an opposi-
tion to Rome in the way that the
conciliar movement
of the fifteenth century had done. It would itself
be
under the leadership of Rome.
Some controversy has been caused by the question
how far the leadership of
Spain was responsible for
the turn which the Counter-Reformation took.
Every-
where—in the peninsula
itself, in Africa, in the Medi-
terranean
and in America—Spain's enemy seemed to
be the infidel and the
championship of orthodoxy had
become a major part of the national
tradition. The
Jesuit Order was founded and organized by Spaniards
and
its first generals were Spaniards. The new form
of papal Inquisition was
influenced by the more pow-
erful and modern
form of Inquisition that had been
established in Spain. The pope's chief
assistants and
advisers at the Council of Trent, particularly on theo-
logical questions, were Spaniards. In
the latter half of
the sixteenth century the Catholic party in the
French
Wars of Religion and the supporters of Mary Tudor
in England
looked to Spain, and the Counter-Reforma-
tion came to be identified with the aggressive policies
of
Philip II.
At the same time one must not overlook the deter-
mined manner in which the popes set out to hold the
leadership
in the Counter-Reformation. They were not
Spaniards; they were often
anti-Spaniards, and now,
as in the past, they tended to be hostile to the
Spanish
preponderance in Italy. The severest of the anti-
Protestant popes, Paul IV (Caraffa)
had been a Domin-
ican and his religion may
have been affected by his
residence in Spain at an earlier period in his
life. But
even as Pope he found himself at war with Philip II,
and
Spanish troops besieged him in Rome, where he
was defended by Lutheran
mercenaries. The popes
were even a little hostile and jealous in their
attitude
to the Jesuit Order at first, and this was partly because
that order seemed so closely connected with Spain. The
popes indeed would
have liked to see the reform of
the Church carried out through committees
and com-
missions in Rome, where in 1552
Julius III established
a Congregation of Reform.
Important sections of the Catholic world, headed by
the Emperor Charles V,
had long wanted the summon-
abuses, particularly the abuses in Rome. On various
occasions—in Germany early in the 1520's and in
France early in the 1550's—there had been threats of
a National Council of the Church to bring about eccle-
siastical reform within a single country. When the
Council met at Trent it made sure that its decrees
should reserve the rights of the pope, and should be
subject to his confirmation; also that he should have
the sole right of interpreting them. Throughout the
proceedings (which took place in three sessions be-
tween 1545 and 1563) papal diplomacy proved to be
remarkably effective. Perhaps the great dynamic fea-
tures of Protestantism, as it developed in later cen-
turies, lay in the way in which it confronted a man
with the Bible and allowed him to seize upon the things
which he internally ratified, the things which in his
spiritual experience he grasped as living and true; the
way also in which it could cut its way to the original
sources, and, by returning to the fountain of the faith,
disengage Christianity from the accidents of a long
period of intervening history.
Perhaps the great stabilizing feature of Catholicism
has been that it sought
rather to preserve a tradition
of doctrine, so that a man did not just
think out the
things he was to believe—he sought to discover
the
teaching which had united Christians throughout the
centuries. On
this system, at least one did not persecute
on behalf of doctrines that one
had only recently
worked out for oneself. The impressive feature of
the
Council of Trent is the way in which doctrine, instead
of issuing
from some brilliant book by an individual
theologian, was threshed out by
commissions that
sought to discover what had really been the tradition
of the centuries. On questions of dogma, a conservative
position was
maintained. Against Luther's teaching
about the interpretation of the Bible
it was agreed that
the Bible must be interpreted by the tradition and
conscience of the Church. And the authoritative ver-
sion was the Vulgate, which had been related to the
development
of Church doctrine through so many
centuries. The Bible in the original
languages was
available for academic work, but the decision of the
Church's doctrines was not to be transferred in a spirit
of literalism to
the experts in philology.
Luther's doctrine of justification by faith was con-
demned at the first session of the Council in 1545, but
an
opening was still left for the resurgence of the
tradition of Saint
Augustine in the Jansenism of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The
doctrine of
predestination was condemned, but the Church had
never
tolerated Pelagianism, and there was still room
in Catholicism for long
quarrels between the Jesuits
and the Dominicans about the proportion to be attrib
uted to Divine Grace and to a man's free will in the
work of
salvation. And though transubstantiation was
confirmed there was still room
for controversy within
Catholicism about the interpretation of even this
doc-
trine. In regard to an important
dispute concerning
the question whether bishops held their power
direct
from God or only through the pope—a controversy
in
which the Spanish bishops were hostile to the
papacy—the Council
failed to come to a clear decision.
In order to have a picture of the Counter-Reforma-
tion, however, it is not sufficient to see
what was
happening at headquarters and in the central institu-
tions of Catholicism—one
must have some impression
of what was taking place in the world at large.
One
thing that was involved was the revival of preaching,
and in this
connection some of the Observantine section
of the Franciscans, who
reformed themselves in 1525
and became known as the Capuchins, become impor-
tant amongst the common people in Italy,
France, and
Germany. During the numerous outbreaks of plague
that
occurred in Italy, their fidelity and courage made
a great impression.
The Jesuits attacked the problem at a different level
and became important
at first through their teaching
and influence in universities, though later
they became
powerful at royal courts. Even in Spain where they
gained
most adherents, and in France, where the sup-
porters of Gallican claims and particularly the Parle-
ment of Paris had special reasons for jealousy,
they
suffered some opposition at first. When they went to
Cologne in
1544, some said that the urgent need was
rather for good bishops and parish
priests. Just after
the mid-century, not only were many of the German
bishops still worldly-minded and indifferent to the
religious cause, but
there were regions where it was
impossible for good Catholics to be served
except by
priests who were actually married or living with con-
cubines, and preaching semi-Lutheran
ideas. In the
1550's, however, the famous Jesuit, Canisius, began the
important work which saved the city and university
of Vienna from the
Protestants who had come to ac-
quire almost
absolute control. His influence extended
to Prague as well as to
Ingolstadt, which became the
great Catholic educational center in the next
genera-
tion. The same Canisius was
responsible for the issue
of a catechism which was to be of great
importance
in Catholic teaching. At the humblest level of all,
moreover, great efforts were made to inspire and nour-
ish popular piety.
Even so, it is difficult to see how the new influences
could have found a
footing if they had not been
patronized by princes, particularly the
Wittelsbachs
in Bavaria and the Habsburgs in Austria. The papacy
was
wise enough now to make concessions to princes
spoils; and the Bavarian princes were to acquire a good
deal of revenue from ecclesiastical sources on which
they were now permitted to draw. For a few years
from about 1563 the Duke of Bavaria sought to bring
his principality back to Catholicism but this imposed
upon him a difficult conflict with his parliamentary
estates and with the nobility. He succeeded in restoring
the Church only by high-handed measures and by
making encroachments on ecclesiastical jurisdiction
himself. In general, the restoration of the clergy and
the care for the educational work were calculated in
themselves to have a great effect, and even in Bohemia,
a traditional home of heresy, Catholic preaching and
Catholic saintliness began to exercise their influence
again.
5. The Results of the Reformation.
It is more clear
to the twentieth century than it was to the
sixteenth
that a great deal of the evil and the suffering which
arose
from the Reformation—a great many of the wars,
atrocities and
crimes that came to be associated with
it—arose from the beliefs
that the various parties had
in common. The world had changed greatly since
New
Testament days, and all were agreed that religion was
not a matter
for the Individual only; that the uniform
“Christian
Society” was the important thing; and that
only one form of
faith could be true, the rest standing
not merely as errors but as
diabolical perversions. It
was the duty of rulers to support the true faith
and
there were precedents for the view that when all else
failed—when the ecclesiastical system was too deca-
dent to rectify itself—the secular arm should
reform
the Church. Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and the Ana-
baptists sought to capture the government—if
only the
government of a city-state. And this only highlighted
the
fact that the papacy needed the support of the
secular authority too.
Many of the results of the Reformation—particularly
the more
paradoxical results—sprang from the fact that
neither the
papacy, on the one hand, nor Luther (or
any other Protestant leader) on the
other, was able to
secure a total victory that would have
reestablished
unity in the West. This itself contributed to the power
of princes, for it left them the choice in matters of
religion, so that
they tended to become masters rather
than servants at the most crucial
point of all. A mon-
arch like Henry VIII of
England could evade the alter-
natives
before him, simply setting up a system of his
own.
Furthermore, besides confiscating much of the prop-
erty of the Church, they became accustomed to con-
trolling religious affairs—even (in the case of
Lutheran
princes and Henry VIII, for example) replacing the
pope as
the superior over bishops. Each state tended
to become its own “Christian Society,” and
authority—
being now closer at hand—was liable to
become more
tyrannical than before. Although the tendencies were
already in existence and may have contributed to the
growth of an antipapal
movement, the Reformation
gave a fresh stimulus to the rising power of
kings, and
the development of nationalism. It was a great blow
to such
international order as had previously existed.
A revival of religion had occurred, and both pub-
lished works and private letters bear evidence of in-
spiring thought and deep
sincerity—a tremendous re-
exploring of Christianity. But it was also a revival of
religious
passions, religious hatreds and religious wars,
and it showed what a
scourge a supernatural religion
could be to the world if it were not
tempered by the
constant remembrance of the dominating importance
of
charity. In sixteenth-century Europe the rivalry
between one set of
doctrines and another, and even
the negotiations between the
parties—indeed all the
transactions which related to doctrinal
tests—inaugu-
rated a period
in which the confessional issue was too
momentous, and there was too hard
an attitude toward
intellectual statements of belief.
In the long run, the very conflict of authorities was
bound to leave a
greater opening for individ-
ualism—even a tendency to see all the religious parties
with relativity. But the process to this was slower than
one would have
imagined and for nearly two centuries
the conflict had a politico-religious
character. In a
given country the Reformation, particularly in its
Calvinist form, was likely to arise in the first place
amongst a minority;
and there were signs of it even
in countries that were to remain
Catholic—signs in
Italy and even Spain, and a formidable
movement in
France. The irrepressibility of these nonconformists,
even
when they failed to capture the government,
added a dynamic quality to the
history of a number
of states, particularly England. Yet for the most
part
it was due to their predicament rather than to their
theology
that the dissenters made their great contri-
bution to the modern world. They wished to capture
the whole
body politic; and because they failed they
were in the mood for opposition
to the Establishment,
both Church and State; and they could better
afford
to judge society and government by reference to
Christian
principles and fundamental ideas.
The elevation of the Bible by the Protestants, and
particularly the
Calvinists—what has been called the
bibliolatry of the sixteenth
century—was to have im-
portant and
widespread consequences. Even the trans-
lation of the book had a wide general significance,
especially in
France and Germany. In an age when
everything is being thrown into the
melting pot, it
becomes more easy to note the equality of men before
communism in the New Testament. One of the effects
of the concentration on the Bible was the unprece-
dented importance which the Old Testament acquired
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In some
respects it replaced the volumes of canon law which
Luther had burned, and it proved less flexible than the
canon law, to which Luther objected, partly because
of the development that had taken place in it; he
objected not to its prohibition of usury but to the
loopholes which it had come to admit. Now, economic
regulations, political theories, ethical ideas—and even
science, even one's views about the physical universe—
would be taken from the Old Testament, which was
more relevant for these mundane purposes than the
New. Monarchy itself found its justification there and
Luther's view of what we should call the state was
Old Testament rather than medieval—the king having
the power while being expected to listen to the prophet
(the Reformation leader) at his side. And over and over
again the early Protestants would refer to their mon-
arch as the King Josiah, who had reformed the Church
after discovering the books of the Law.
The conception of the covenant, which was so fa-
miliar amongst the ancient Hebrews, was now revived
and seems to
have played its part in the development
of the Social Contract theory. When
the Pilgram Fa-
thers went to America, they
signed what they called
a “covenant,” in which they
constituted themselves as
a body politic. Amongst the Puritans the
prohibition
of images may have tended to the discouragement of
the
visual arts. In England, Sundays (which had at first
been deprecated, along
with the excessive number of
saints' days) came to be equated with the
Jewish
Sabbath. The Old Testament provided textual bases for
witch-burnings, which multiplied at this period, as well
as for religious
intolerance and severe theories of per-
secution, including the view that heretics should be
destroyed as
blasphemers.
It has been held by Max Weber and others that
something in the nature of
Protestantism itself played
an important part in the rise of capitalism,
and the
advance of England and Holland (together with a
decline in
Belgium and a backwardness in Spain and
Italy) has lent plausibility to
this view. But capitalism
and the spirit of capitalism were highly advanced
in
Italy and the Netherlands before the Reformation, and
the famous
Fugger family in Germany was Catholic.
Luther, joining in the hostility
that had already arisen
against it—said that the greatest
misfortune of the
German nation was the traffic in usury, and he
blamed
the pope for having sanctioned the evil. Calvin, coming
at a
later date, recognized the changed condition of
the world and attacked the
Aristotelian view that
money is “barren” but he was a little troubled
lest this
should assist the capitalists and encourage usury. He
would
have liked to drive the latter out of the world,
but since this was
impossible, he said that one must
give way to the general utility. He
sought to prevent
the evil which explained the antipathy of
agricultural
societies to usury—namely, the practices which
took
advantage of the misfortunes of the poor—and to him
Venice and Antwerp were an exposure of the mam-
monism of the Catholics.
In fact the traditional medieval policy was pursued
in Geneva in Calvin's
day; and, after his time, the
prejudice against usury continued in that
city, where,
indeed, business life proceeded as formerly, without
receiving any great impetus from the religious move-
ment, and in 1568 the influences of the Calvinist parties
prevented the formation of a bank. In Amsterdam the
biggest capitalists
belonged to families that were
working on a large scale before the
Reformation and
it was the poor who became the most fanatical Calvin-
ists. It was preached that everything
beyond a reasona-
ble subsistence should be
set aside for the poor, and
disciplinary action was taken against
bankers—the old
prejudices continuing until the middle of the
seven-
teenth century. So long as a
religious revival retains
its character, it is not in its nature to
encourage mam-
monism, a point which even the
Puritans of seven-
teenth-century
England illustrate.
The view that a believer should praise and serve God
in his daily avocations
should not be strange in any
religion; and the Middle Ages (as well as the
Jesuits
later) began wisely to adjust their ethical
precepts—
their views on commerce and man's daily
tasks—to
the needs of a changing world. It is surprising
that
anybody should hold the view that capitalism was
encouraged
because the Reformers separated salvation
from
“works”; for the Puritans were far from repre-
senting an easy view of Christian
conduct, though they
held that a man did not win salvation by the
effort.
When Baron von Hügel read Bunyan he said that the
book was “curiously Catholic in its ideas... certainly
very
strong about the necessity of good works.” Puri-
tanism encouraged work, reprobated waste of time in
idle talk and mere sociability, and held that leisure was
equivalent to
lasciviousness. It also reprobated luxury
and promoted virtues like thrift,
no doubt giving reli-
gious sanction to
qualities that were particularly useful
in the capitalistic world that had
been developing. It
is therefore open to the charge of regarding the
making
of money as laudable while the spending of it was a
vice.
John Wesley, when he drew up his first printed rules
for Methodists in the
eighteenth century, condemned
usury on biblical grounds and had to be made
to see
retreated and prescribed only a moderate rate. He
sketched out the view that the very virtues of Chris-
tians might lead to prosperity and thence to a decline
of religion. But it is only very late in the day that
Puritanism is in any sense the ally of mammonism.
Apart from the fact that Protestantism could spread
more easily in town than
in country, it provided an
example of a new movement in religion which, in
its
formative period, when so many things were malleable,
confronted
what men were recognizing to be a new
economic world. Besides its
theological doctrine, it was
bound to acquire an attendant social
outlook—a fringe
of more mundane prejudices and
associations—and
these showed it in the first place bitterly
hostile to
capitalism. But, as time went on, it was almost bound
to
give the support of religion to the ethical ideas
which corresponded to the
needs of the new social
world. Catholicism had fixed many of its principles
in
a different state of society, and was likely to be less
malleable,
though it, too, made its adjustments (perhaps
more slowly) as society
changed. Late in the day, and
almost as ratifying a fait accompli, Puritanism did
perhaps become the support of
a capitalist society; and,
even so, it was a Protestantism that had changed
its
character; in a sense it was not religion but a decline
in
religion, or an injection of secularism which had this
result.
Protestantism, more than Catholicism, tended to
change its general character
as the centuries passed;
it moved from its initial sixteenth-century form
and
preoccupations, and at least presented a different
spectacle and
assumed a different role. It was at a later
stage that it became
consciously and avowedly the ally
of individualism, liberty, rationalism,
capitalism, and
the modern kind of state.
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