Analyse the dominant features of reformation in France and England.

France and England both had different types of reformation which occurred in them. While Calvinism was the form of reformation in France, there was no singular leader in England. Rather the text of the bible in English was given the position. In this essay, I shall first deal with the reformation in France and then move on to England. Finally I shall deal with the various debates and views of the different historians regarding the reformation in England.

FRANCE

Reformation ideas were present in France by 1519 when a collection of Luther’s writings was printed by John Froben of Basle. This was followed by other works of Luther. The theologians in France were reading it, but not necessarily approving. A censorship of the books was initiated and soon martin Luther was called an enemy of the church. Until the 1520’s the reform movements were protected by the king Francis I, but with the radicals turning to iconoclasm and violence, the king soon became hostile to them. The king had a two pronged approach to the situation, one of persecution and the other of moderation. The king became hostile when the radicals resorted to violent measures and he adopted a policy of moderation when he needed the support of the German Lutheran princes to assist him against the emperor. Besides, the king held a favourable position with the monarchy and the church was also an important source of revenue and he didn’t want to damage it by introducing the new ideas.

An exception to this was Meaux, a small town near Paris, which provided a more favourable situation to early reformation. The bishop of Meaux engaged in efforts to try and reform religious life and teachings and he invited many others to join him. Soon evangelicals such as William Farel joined him and they focused on bible studies and spiritual and moral reform which was the Erasmian style of reform. The king’s sister, Margaret the Queen of Navarre took to reformist ideas and protected the Meaux circle. So the king was highly tolerant of them but when they put up posters criticising the holy Eucharist inside the king’s palace, it led to a series of persecutions in France.

 France being a huge country and at the time possessing no unity of language, national identity or customs could only be held together by religion and monarchy and it seemed that if one was changed the other would be affected. The monarchy, the church and the parlements were the three most important organisations in France and all three were involved in preserving Roman Catholicism and suppressing any dissent. The increasing number of prosecutions created a frustration among the people and in most cases of heresy; they adopted a policy of denunciation, while many others took to flight. So Protestants in France had to lead a covert life to a great extent as they were not supported by public authorities. Publication of printed material was concentrated and censored in two centres, Paris and Lyon. Heresy was seen as a cancer in society and it needed to be destroyed. But attacking it could either destroy it or could have the opposite effect and spread it further. Executions soon started to become a theatre for martyrdom. The cancer was soon too widespread for it to be contained by the death of a few individuals.

John Calvin at 26 years old, completed his first major treatise, and directed the preface to the French king Francis I. He wanted the king to know that the Protestants were not anti-social revolutionaries and that the persecution against them in the name of the king was unjust and unnecessary. French humanism had a great influence on him and around him; he saw the German, Scandinavian and English regimes breaking away from Rome. The experience of exile had a great influence on Calvin and during the last decade of his life 1554-1564, Geneva had a great influence on the French revolution and gave it its enduring shape. Calvin was however more cautious than Luther in expressing strong views. Calvin’s dream of a French monarchy however withered away in his own lifetime because it was difficult for the rulers to abandon its traditional religion, or because of the particular kind of reformation which emerged in France and lastly or finally because the right political circumstances never occurred to make it possible. For him, rulers were ordained and placed in power here on earth by god and therefore had to be obeyed. Calvinist followers expressed their dissent much more aggressively. They desecrated shrines and crucifixes, mocked the clergy in public and interrupted sermons.

Soon it became clear that for a reformation to take place they would need external support and this came from Geneva. By mid 1530’s the French evangelical organisation was shifted from Wittenberg to Geneva. By 1555, Calvin leadership was firmly established and along with other French exiles, they directed an effective attack against France. French towns and nobility began to request Calvin for pastors trained in Geneva. Calvinism was popularised through preaching as well as through its songs which were printed in large numbers in Geneva. In France Calvinism was organised into local assemblies and provincial and national synods and these operated in defiance of the Catholic Church.

Calvin’s ideas had now become more popular in France and so Calvin returned to France. The persecution aroused a feeling of martyrdom and it was felt that the blood of the faithful would nourish the church. The nobility played an important role for the reformation in France, especially the houses of Bourbon and Montmorency. As patrons of the church, they provided the influence and military strength and also representation at court. Pockets of immunity existed for Protestantism mainly in the big towns and among the nobility. French leadership however was not convinced that it wanted a reformation from below and so the reformation could never reach a full swing.

Francis I was followed by Henry II, who was even more severe than his father against the Protestants and issued harsher decrees of punishment. He created a special court for heresy cases and those who were found guilty of spreading heresy through books or preaching often had to die horrible deaths. However there was a time during the reign of Henry II in 1551, when Henry strengthened his ties with the German protestant princes because of disputes with the papacy over a number of issues. But Pope Julius III turned the situation around viewing this new alliance as a threat to the Catholic Church and within a year, their differences were a thing of the past.

After the death of Henry II, there was widespread religious and political conflict. The eighteen months in which Francis II, the eldest of the four Valois princes, reigned in 1559-1560, the ultra catholic party came to dominate. The repressive measure reached a new height and many of the nobility joined the reformation movements.

The colloquy of Poissy was one of the achievements of Protestantism in France where significant royal recognition was given to the growth and reality of protestant reformation. It was during the reign of Catherine who had issued decrees to dismantle the machinery for persecution. She had come into power after the death of Francis II. Catherine was assisted by chancellor, Michel de l’hopital who was also the one who engineered the Colloquy of Poissy which met in September-October 1561. Even though the colloquy of Poissy failed to create religious accommodation it paved for the first edict of toleration in 1562 by which Huguenot public worship was allowed in private homes and outside town walls. But within a month Catherine tilted towards the Catholics due to pressure on her from the guise family and the Spanish and it became clear that a civil war was inevitable. Also the ultra-catholic faction, one night in Paris, carried out a massacre of Protestants called St.Bartholomew’s and this led to Catherine vacating the throne again in favour of House of Guise-Lorraine. In addition the duke of guise killed 50 people in a barn where they had gathered to worship and the Huguenots reacted by taking up arms. But the Huguenots lost the image of a persecuted church with the taking up of arms and when they looked to the English Protestants for help, they lost their patriotic credibility. They were attacked at different occasions and hatred against protestants soon spread.

In 1589 the male heir of the house of bourbon came to power, but Henry IV soon had to convert to Catholicism. Henry IV attempted to win over France for four years by military force, but even with the support of Elizabeth I, the Swiss and German protestant princes, it was not possible and the king had no choice but to give up on his attempt.

England

Moving on to the reformation in England, historians have generally confined the dates of the reformation in England from 1529 and 1559. 1529 when Henry VIII summoned the parliament which would cut all ties with Rome and 1559 the year that the definitive protestant settlement was made by Elizabeth. But there are also those who support the views of a later reformation towards the end of the 16th century and the early 17th century. There were internal fractures within the church and reformation ran deep within the fabric of society. Churches and monasteries possessed large tracts of land and it covered one-third of England’s lands.

The protestant movement saw progress during the reign of Edward VI, 1547-1553. The Edwardian reformation was brought about by Edward VI, the son of Jane Seymour. Edward VI also removed the laws with regard to treason and heresy. In addition, parts of act 42 were passed during his reign, but he died before it could become a law. It was also during this time that Calvinist ideas were brought into England by Martin Bucer, a disciple of Calvin. But when Mary Tudor, daughter of Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII, came to the throne the reformation movement took a back seat. She rejected all that Henry VIII had done due to his divorce with her mother. Also, Charles V wanted Catholicism to be back in England and so married his son Philip II to Mary Tudor. Once again laws against treason and heresy and harsh treatment of prisoners were brought into effect and England saw a period of counter-reformation. Those who propagated heretical views were burnt alive and they were seen as martyrs. The nobility now found themselves alienated from Mary as she was now part of a foreign dynasty and because of her obsession with the Spanish alliance. Philip II later divorced her and by 1558, she was marginalised and died in isolation. Her means of reinstating Catholicism forcefully had actually made a way for the reinforcement of reformation.

Mary Tudor was followed by her sister Elizabeth I, 1558-1603. There was an overall religious stability during her reign as she appeased both Catholics and protestants. She established an Anglican church which was an assimilation of both catholic and protestant ideas. Protestantism was now a triangular belief in Lutheranism, Calvinism and Zwinglianism and her reign also saw the emergence of the puritans, the radical protestants who wanted purging of all catholic ideas.

When dealing with the historiography of the English reformation, we shall first look at the approach of Dickens and Foxe and then move on to the revisionists. Prof. A.G. Dickens says that the English reformation has stood unrivalled in its field for over 20 years. John Foxe and Dickens contrast the tyranny and superstition of the medieval catholic church with the honest piety of discontented protestants and the growing power of the protestant movement. Dickens interprets it as a reformation from below and one of conversion and not coercion. He says that a reformation from above was not likely due to the unsatisfactory cooperation from the authorities. He has sought links between Lollardism and Protestantism to explain advance of reformation at the popular level. Lollards were a heretic group in London who were influenced by the ideas of 14th century John Wycliffe. Dickens says that even thought the Lollards were considered to be heretics; they helped in the spread of Protestantism. Dickens supported the view of later feudalism as he points out the failures of Edwardian reforms and it was Elizabeth’s settlement of 1559 that made her the supreme governor of the church and this was when reformation came into England.

There is a new approach to the English reformation by the scholars known as revisionism and the revisionists attack the Foxe-Dickens approach. Revisionists raise the idea that because Protestant reformation happened does not mean that it was desirable and that there was popular demand for change. They counter the idea that there were a number of rises such as the rise of Protestantism, a new monarchy, Puritanism. They say rather that it was an era of conservatism and orthodoxy. Christopher Haigh talks of two horizontal matrices and two vertical matrices. The vertical ones are concerned with debates on whether the reformation occurred from above or below, while the horizontal ones are on debates regarding its pace. For Haigh, the reformation movement was initiated by Henry VIII and carried forward by Edward VI’s reforms and by 1553 most of England was fully protestant. Haigh concludes by saying that rapid reformation took place in areas where conditions were favourable to change and slow reformation occurred in those areas with poor communication and less effective governments.

G.R. Elton says that there was reformation from above as the process was initiated by the monarchy and printed material was used to spread the ideas of Protestantism. Peter Clark also supports the reformation from above view and says that Thomas crammer being the archbishop of Canterbury helped spread the ideas using his influential position. Christopher Haigh also goes with the idea of reformation from above although he says that it was not rapidly accepted by the people. Those advocating slow reformation from below like Patrick Collinson who say that the reformation took place mainly in the latter half of the 16th and early 17th centuries, have treated the Elizabethan Puritanism as the evangelical phase of the English reformation. Margaret Spufford says that protestant enthusiasm peaked only in the 1590’s. They say that it was not until late in the century that conservative interests were weakened and Protestantism had a widespread impact. Rural places like Yorkshire and Cheshire were areas where religious change hardly had any effect even when such changes were happening in the urban areas.

Another of the major factors of the English reformation was Anticentralism which was both a cause for religious change as well as a reason for its acceptance. There was a rising wave of discontent with the papacy which ultimately led to breaking ties with Rome, suppression of monasteries and attacks on superstitions of the Catholic Church. Haigh points out the various branches of Anticentralism as opposed to the general category they are all included in. It seems that the criticism sharply rose during Elizabeth’s reign and so it would seem that Anticentralism was a result of reformation.

Edward hall, an ally of Thomas Cromwell who was Henry VIII’s minister, in his work shows Anticentralism. His work is a narrative of how Henry VIII and the people threw off clerical oppression. Anticentralism was not a given, not at the popular level at least. But Thomas Cromwell in 1532 got the Commons Supplication against the Ordinances’ and the Annates Act passed with great difficulty. G.R. Elton believes that the supplication was in response to the anticlerical protests. The Annates bill was passed to further the king’s annulment of marriage by challenging the papal Annates. It has been suggested that the real reason that moved the commons to pass these bills fear of heresy prosecutions and the inability of the laymen to provide a convincing defence.

Preaching‘s from the 1530’s regarding a reformed religion and limitation in the powers of the church further weakened respect for it. Another reason for anti-papal sentiments was the church handing out harsh punishments to the poor for sexual irregularities. Also, the tithe imposed by the church is also seen as reason for resentment against it, but it does not seem to have been a major issue before the reformation. All these reasons combined, created strong anti-papal feelings which helped in the spread and popularity of the protestant reformation movement.

In conclusion we have seen that the reformation in France, due to lack of support from the higher authorities and due to the lack of conviction of the reformation leaders that they wanted a reformation from below never really took off. Calvinism spread to a great extent but the monarchy in France was a very powerful institution with strong ties to the church and this ultimately proved to be a major stumbling block for the reformation movement. On the other hand, we see that in England the reformation did take place, although there are ongoing debates among several scholars as to its timing and nature. Anti centralism was a major factor which helped in the spread and growing popularity of the protestant movement. There was growing dissent with the papacy and those frustrated with the church turned to Lollardism and Protestantism. Those who went against the established traditions and the church were often put to death and had to lead covert lives in both countries. In England with the support of the monarchy, reformation took place while on France, due to the lack of support from the monarchy as harsh measures of suppression of dissent and strong prosecution, the protestant reformation movement was suppressed.