Describe and discuss the Reformation in Europe.

In the early sixteenth century a great crisis shook Western Christianity and destroyed forever the medieval unity of the faith and universal authority of the Church. This was the Reformation- complex and deep rooted in its origins, and varied and far reaching in its scope. It slighted, or at least called into question virtually every existing ecclesiastical institution. Almost incidentally it unleashed a whole new set of political forces, which transformed the face of Europe.

Men in the Middle Ages regarded the cosmos as a vast hierarchy, stretching down from God to the smallest blade of grass. They believed that harmony could be preserved only if every man fulfilled the duties assigned to him by God. In the sixteenth century, such notions of ‘an externally predetermined heavenly and earthly hierarchy ‘ were being undermined. The rise of capitalism meant greater social and economic mobility. There was a movement towards political centralization and concentration of power. The Reformation gave birth to Protestantism, which destroyed the hierarchical chain linking God and man by confronting man directly with God, denying the need for any intermediary.

According to V.H.H. Green, the Reformation occurred in the second and third decade of the sixteenth century because a certain set of circumstances created a situation which made its outbreak both possible and probable. The factors leading to the Reformation were not new, and there was no single causal factor. There was rather a conjunction of circumstances, a particular correlation of events which produced a response to the reformers’ teaching. The reformers were reacting to the widespread dissatisfaction with the church, which included both a discontent with the church as an institution and a desire for a simpler, more satisfying personal religion. These two aspects had, however, been present throughout the Middle Ages. The fourteenth century ‘heretics’ John Wycliffe and John Hus had vehemently criticized the clergy, the sins of the papacy, and the moral decline of the church. Erasmus spoke out frequently against the excesses of the church, but remained a Catholic. There must, therefore, have been other factors which made sixteenth century Germany prone to a ‘religious revolution’.

At no other point in European history had the church been so visibly corrupt. The Pope lived like any other Italian prince, and seemed more concerned with extending the temporal power of the papacy than in saving men’s souls. The church was marked by a lack of spirituality, simony, nepotism, neglect of duty, and extreme decadence of the clergy. It was also one of the largest land holders of feudal Europe. There was an increase in superstition among the laity. They viewed the present with pessimism, but held the hope of a brighter future. Religion as a whole became more mechanistic and materialistic.

The popularity of indulgences was growing. This practice had originated during the Crusades, when a man could gain the promised pardon for sins, in spite of his inability to go on Crusade, though a payment of money to the church. Theologically, this worked on the belief that the sacrifice of Christ represented more merit than was needed for the salvation of the entire human race. This excess merit was entrusted to the church, to be dispensed to the truly penitent. This practice had been corrupted, with less emphasis being laid on true repentance, and more on the mechanical pardon which payment of money secured. Throughout Europe, there was a general feeling of resentment against the sacramental and jurisdictional powers of the clergy. There was a widespread desire for a simple, spiritually fulfilling religion. It was a time of ferment within Christianity, heightened religious sensibilities and preoccupation with death, salvation and man’s future.

The Reformation was facilitated by various secular developments. This period saw the rise of strong national monarchies. The state would do whatever it could to lessen papal interference in its internal affairs, reduce papal control over church appointments and break church monopoly over education. The national monarch was also jealous of the wide range of sources of revenue of the church. In Spain and France, the kings made arrangements with Rome to suit their own interests. In England and Sweden, however, denial of papal authority was ‘almost a corollary of the maintenance and extension of their regal powers’. They also had the support of a growing middle class who disliked the mediatory authority of the church.

The Renaissance had led to certain changes, which favored the Reformation. Humanist thought was centered on man, on his dignity and privileged position. It fostered secular attitudes .Its emphasis on the study of the original Bible had led Erasmus to translate the New Testament into its original Greek. The scholastic, allegorical interpretations of the Bible that were popular during the Middle Ages were rejected. It was translated into vernacular languages. Although not a humanist, Luther made use of humanist tools such as the new editions of scripture. Melanchthon, Zwingli and Calvin were more influenced by humanist teaching. The invention of printing greatly helped the dissemination of Reformation ideas.

The ‘kind of life ‘lived by men in the sixteenth century is an important point in understanding the Reformation. Cast of mind as well as material comforts differed according to social position. Princes and nobles were decisively influential. The intellectuals were relatively small in number. The urban classes, though nascent, were rising in importance, and the peasants formed the vast majority. Although separate (self-consciously so), these classes were linked by their attitude to life-Christian, largely irrational and fearful. ‘The gap between the peasant and the educated was much less in the realm of thought than in the realities of power and style of life.’

‘Times were bad’ says Koenigsberger. Bad harvests caused price fluctuations in the last decades of the fifteenth century. The year 1500 saw a total crop failure in Germany. Looting and pillaging spread, and by 1501 it was necessary to have a paid police force. In addition, the plague was sweeping across Europe, and was regarded as chastisement for man’s sins. The feudal economy was dissolving, causing social upheaval and economic depression. The peasantry, newly emancipated from serfdom, was gradually becoming more prosperous, and resented the financial demands of the church. The church, as a powerful feudal institution, also aroused the envy of the princes and nobles. The middle and working classes opposed its privileged position. Commercial classes, which were becoming more powerful with the growth of mercantile activities, resented the church’s condemnation of usury.

In themselves, such economic factors created conditions for anti-clericalism rather than dissatisfaction with orthodox religion.

It was in such a situation that Martin Luther, on 31st October 1517, nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. The paper attacked the practice of selling indulgences. Though it did not embody doctrines that were necessarily revolutionary, the controversy it sparked off eventually led to the break down of the medieval church.

Martin Luther was born on 11th November 1483 in Eisleben. He entered the University of Erfurt at the age of 18. He joined the Augustinian monks in 1505. In 1508 he was appointed professor of theology at Wittenberg. He was deeply influenced by Occamist nominalism, which stressed the chasm between reason and revelation, between God and man. His was essentially a ‘peasant cast of mind’, with a belief in the existence of evil spirits, and their struggle against the good. He laid a humanist stress on education, the study of languages and history. His firm belief, however, was that the realm of faith was given by the grace of God alone, and that man’s learning and free will had nothing to do with it. His ideas revolved around the belief that man was essentially sinful, and could be saved, not by good works or indulgences, but by faith alone. Total and unquestioning faith in Christ was man’s only hope of salvation. This was his doctrine of justification by faith- that the chasm between man and God could be bridged by faith.

One of the driving forces of the Reformation was the view of the centrality of scripture as God’s holy word. For Luther the word of God was the only basis of faith. The Bible, as God’s direct message to man, must be accessible to all, in their own language. The supremacy of faith dictated the abolition of priests as a separate caste endowed with special mystical functions: ‘all Christians were priests’. Faith, trust and knowledge of scripture were attainable by all men. Religious service became a communal action in which the entire priesthood of believers participated. Luther rendered superfluous the whole apparatus of the church, which was designed to mediate between man and God. He also raised the issue of the sacraments, which he believed should be limited to Baptism, (reformed) Mass, and the Holy Eucharist.

Luther was a prolific writer. Three treatises, written in 1520, were the foundation of ‘his belief, his teaching, and his historic importance.’ In the ‘ Address to the Christian Nobilityof the German Nation’, he called upon the German ruling classes to repulse the pretensions of the Roman church, and to strip it of the worldly power and wealth which disguised the true faith. In ‘The Babylonish Captivity of the Church’, he declared that only three sacraments- baptism, penance and the eucharist- were scriptural. This altered the whole concept of a sacrament from a means of salvation created by an officiating priest to an occasion on which a believer can receive grace. The last, ‘The Liberty of a ChristianMan’ outlines the doctrines of justification by faith and the priesthood of all believers. Of these three, only the ‘Babylonish Captivity…’ is written in Latin. The other two sold in great numbers, to a wide public, and served to define Luther’s position and rally support.

On 2nd June 1520, the pope, Leo X, issued the bull of excommunication- Exsurge Domine. Luther was given sixty days grace to withdraw his blasphemies. At the end of the grace period, Luther burnt the papal bull, amidst much celebration by the people of Wittenberg. Luther’s excommunication was sealed on 3rd January 1521. The attitude taken by the secular authorities would now be crucial, as the papal bull would be ineffective without their support. The Elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise, supported Luther. Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, summoned the Imperial Diet of Worms in 1521,to consider, among other things, the Lutheran problem. On the 17th and 18th of April, Luther confronted the emperor, and refused to recant “unless I am proved wrong by the testimony of scripture or by evident reasoning; I cannot trust the decisions of councils or of popes.” On the 26th of May, the Imperial Edict placed him under the ban of the Empire- he was to be arrested as a heretic and handed over to the imperial authorities. Luther went to Wartburg.

It was Luther’s close associate, Philip Melanchthon, who wrote the first systematic statement of Protestant theology, the ‘Loci Communes’. Melanchthon was the diplomatic representative of Luther’s cause. Melanchthon’s own humanist outlook caused a few deviations with Luther’s teachings. He believed that man had the power to accept or reject God’s gift of salvation. After Luther’s departure for Wartburg, however, it was not Melanchthon who assumed charge of the Lutheran cause, but Andrew Carlstadt, Luther’s fellow professor. Carlstadt was a radical-he preached against the mass and celibacy, advocated iconoclasm and encouraged violence and disruption. He was joined by a group of men from the neighboring region of Zwickau. These radicals envisaged themselves not only as standing outside the establishment, but also in opposition to the present order, which they saw as the work of the Antichrist. Radicalism was the religion of the poor, of those who stood outside the establishment of the powerful, the priests and the learned. Radicalism was closer to the millenarianism of popular piety than to the ideals of the Lutheran Reformation. Radicalism believed in the existence of God’s elect few, whose task it was to carry out a ‘continuous revelation’. Adult baptism was, for them, the only meaningful sacrament, where the ‘Anabaptist’ confirmed his covenant with God.

The Peasant’s War of June 1524 was closely connected with the Radicals. Leadership of this movement came from the yeomanry and smaller urban craftsmen, and the following largely from the ‘more solid and propertied lower orders’. The immediate cause of the movement was economic pressure and extensive legal demands by the lesser lords. The rebels interpreted Luther’s attacks on the greed of the clergy as encouraging attack on other aspects of the (feudal) system. The radical reformers, especially Thomas Muntzer, were more directly influential. The 12 Articles of Memmingen, accepted as the program of the peasant bands, combined traditional and legitimate grievances (such as those regarding pasture and fishing rights and labour services) with evangelical desires for elected pastors. The revolt often got out of hand. On the whole, it was badly organized, with no capable leadership, and was easily crushed. The war had a profound consequence- an essential characteristic of late medieval Germany disappeared when the ‘rural commons and urban poor’ suddenly lost the power to influence events.

Luther had never meant to start a revolution or cause social upheaval. He feared that his real message would be swamped by the radicals’ perversion of it for temporal ends. The reformation threw in its lot with the princes. The moderates at Wittenberg looked to him

to come back and restore order. Luther was forced to do so, and to become, from a preacher and teacher, into an organizer. He did not accept the permanence of the split with Rome, but he did realize the need for a reformed church organization. According to Luther’s theology, God’s church was confined to those on whom God had bestowed His grace. A visible church however, was needed, for all those who called themselves Christians. This required uniformity, and Luther was forced to depend on the territorial ruler for ecclesiastical support.

Frederick of Saxony, although he supported Luther, remained a Catholic. Elector John, who was willing to follow Luther, succeeded him in 1525. The ‘Visitation’ was formed-this was a committee of two electoral councilors and two theologians, who took over the government of the church from the bishops. They ensured devotional uniformity, reformed the clergy, and looked after the spiritual welfare of the laity. The Lutheran Church of Saxony became, in effect, a state-Church. The same system, with regional modifications, was established in all the Reformed areas. Throughout the 1520’s the secularization of church lands and their resumption by territorial rulers added a very powerful element of self-interest to the genuine religious feeling which assisted the spread of Luther’s reform.

In 1525, Albrecht of Hohenzollern threw in his lot with the Lutherans. Several other territories soon officially adopted the Reformation- Hesse, Brandenburg-Ansbach, Schleswig, Brunswick and Mansfeld. The new order was imposed from above, on the Saxony model. Between 1528 and 1531, Two-thirds of the Imperial cities accepted the Reformation in some form or the other.

In 1524, the Catholic League of Regensburg was formed. This was an alliance between Ferdinand of Austria, Bavaria, and the southern German bishops, blessed by the pope. They tried to enforce the Edict of Worms (which denounced the Lutheran heresy) The Lutheran League of Torgau (1525) tried to prevent its enforcement. In 1526 the Imperial Diet assembled at Speyer. Charles was unable to attend, and in his absence a decree of tolerance was passed. Each city and ruler was allowed to follow the path of their choice, provided they could ‘answer it to God and his imperial majesty’. The Edict of Worms appeared to be forgotten, and Charles, fearing a Turkish threat, was reluctant to dictate to the princes. At the second Diet of Speyer, in 1529, however, the 1526 decree was repealed, and that of 1521 was once more made compulsory. No more church lands were to be secularized. In reply, the six Lutheran princes and 14 of the reformed cities signed a Protestation (hence the term ‘Protestant’) in which they affirmed their right to do as they pleased, and to answer to God alone for their actions.

Lutheranism was no longer the sole inspiration of reform. Under Huldrych Zwingli, the city of Zurich had become a rival focus of reform. Zwingli was born at Wildhaus in 1484. He was educated at the universities of Vienna and Basel. Although he asserted that his theology was independent of Luther’s, modern scholars believe otherwise. In 1518 he was appointed common preacher at the Zurich Cathedral, from where he initiated the Swiss Reformation. Like Luther, he laid stress on the direct relationship between man and God. He denied the validity of good works, and demanded purification of ceremonies and observances. Unlike Luther, he wanted a complete break with the immediate past. He encouraged idol breaking and denounced the mass. For Zwingli, sacraments and ceremonies played no part in salvation, which was a purely inner experience. In January 1523 there was a public disputation over the unrest caused by his preaching, and the occasion was turned into a triumphant demonstration by his followers. Between 1523 and 1525 he reformed the whole church at Zurich- abolishing the mass, introducing vernacular services, and embodying his interpretation of scripture in new forms of baptism and communion. Zwingli’s idea of the church was more exclusive than Luther’s, and anticipated the narrow and disciplined body of the Calvinist Church.

‘Calvinism crystallized the Reformation’ says Green. Luther and Zwingli had attacked and radically changed the old religion, but did not leave behind ‘precise authority, organized government and a logical philosophy’. These were supplied by John Calvin, in whose hands the Reformation became an instrument of political as well as theological change. Calvin was born in Noyon (France) in 1509,the son of a notary. He was 26 years younger than Luther, and belonged to the second generation of the Reformation. Elton stresses this fact- that Calvin, being only 8 years old when Luther published his Ninety-Five Theses, grew up in a world rent by religious strife, and never knew the alternative of a united Christendom. Calvin turned Protestant through intellectual conviction, not because of spiritual stress or revivalist passion. He studied theology and later law at the universities of Paris, Orleans and Bourges. His theological ideas had a distinctly legalist nature. The two primary influences on his ideas were Erasmus’ New Testament in Greek, and Luther’s sermons. The latter strengthened Calvin’s own ideas on the redemption of a sinful, guilty man by faith alone. By around 1534 he began the work which formed the textbook of the Protestant Reformation, the ‘Institutes of the Christian Religion’.

Will power, discipline and order were Calvin’s watchwords. While Luther and Zwingli were most concerned with man’s redemption, the focus of Calvinism was the sovereignty of God, His justice and mercy. Calvin’s chief contribution to the Reformation is a redirection of theological thinking from the human problem of salvation to the transcendental problem of the universe. According to Calvin, God had predestined some men to be saved (election) and others to be condemned (reprobation) and His means for dong so was the degree of man’s faith in Christ. This doctrine of predestination came to dominate later Calvinism. He agreed with Luther’s views on the church- the Invisible church that is the communion of saints, and the visible church on earth, which includes both the saved and the damned. He agreed with Zwingli on the non- hierarchical church organization, which must be relatively popular in order to be effective. His own stress was on the disciplinary powers of the church. It was the city of Geneva that became the seat of Calvin’s Church.

In the 1540’s Calvin came to be accepted by Protestants everywhere as one of the main leaders of reform. There were bitter quarrels with Luther’s heirs, which prevented the formation of a united front against the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Within the Protestant camp, especially in Germany, ‘evangelical’ (Lutheran) and ‘reformed’ (Calvinist) soon opposed each other ‘with a ferocity born of family resemblance’. Outside Germany and Scandinavia however, Calvin soon replaced Luther as the ‘guiding star of active reform’

Charles V, The Holy Roman Emperor, returned to Germany in 1530,to attend the Diet of Augsburg. He had three aims in mind- to secure his brother Ferdinand’s election as prospective emperor, to unite Germany by suppressing the Lutheran schism, and most importantly, to seek German aid against the Turks. The Augsburg Confession, formulated mainly by Melanchthon, was designed to lead to reconciliation. All the Lutheran tenets are clearly expressed, and the document reflects the close future union of ‘throne and altar’. The responsibility of maintaining order and uniformity fell to the secular authorities. The magistrate came to stand not only in loco parentis but also in loco Dei. The Diet of Augsburg, which had been called to bring peace, failed. The Edict of Worms was reconfirmed in November 1530. The Imperial Chamber was reorganized to prevent further secularization of church lands. The Protestants remained unrecognized and virtually outlawed. They were threatened with military action if they did not surrender within a few months. To defend themselves against the Imperial Council, 8 princes of the empire and 11 cities formed the Schmalkalden League in February 1531.The implications of this were huge- for the first time, a section of the Holy Roman Empire had consolidated itself in opposition to the emperor and the Diets.

In 1546 Charles commenced the use of force to overcome the Protestant princes. Although initially victorious, he was unable to accomplish his dual aim of re-establishing Catholicism and subjugating the German princes. In 1555 the peace of Augsburg was negotiated with the Protestant princes. Both Roman Catholic and Protestant churches were to be tolerated in Germany. Each region was to follow the religion of its prince- cuius regio,eius religio ( ‘as the ruler, so the religion’) Proselytizing was forbidden, and ecclesiastical princes who defected to Lutheranism were to abandon their territories and be replaced through canonical election. Toleration was expressly refused to any other form of the Christian religion. This was to assume serious implications with the spread of Calvinism.

Although referred to as revolutionary, the line taken by the Reformation was in some ways predictable. The situation in sixteenth century Germany was disturbed, yes, but that disturbance could have developed into anything. Considering the degree of spiritual upheaval caused by the Reformation, there was surprisingly little social revolution that accompanied it. The opposite, in fact, occurred. ‘The Reformation’s revival of theology as the foremost intellectual concern of men, scholars and others, was quite out of step with the growingly informal and merely ethical Christianity which had come in the wake of the Renaissance, as it was a break with the multifarious secular interests of the humanists’ says Elton. The new theology and new church did not bring in liberty of opinion, but ,on the contrary, ‘its uncompromising certainty put a term to the free speculation characteristic of the age of Erasmus, Ficino, Machiavelli, and the young Thomas More.’

The church itself took no timely steps to defend its unity. It had survived the Great Schism (1378-1417), disposed of Wycliffe and Hus’ heresies, absorbed the skepticism of both Occamism and humanism. ‘Such an institution could hardly take seriously the vapourings of an obscure German professor’.

According to Cameron, the unique quality of the Protestant Reformation lay in the fact that it took a single core idea, presented that idea to everyone, encouraged public discussion, and tore down the entire fabric of the church and built it again from scratch, including only what was consistent with, and required by, the basic religious message. It succeeded in legitimizing dissent.

Was the Reformation, asks Cameron, necessary, or fundamental in shaping western European culture and society? The Reformation was only one of the routes leaving the pre-industrial world for the modern. The Reformation gave large groups of people their first lesson in political commitment to a universal ideology. It was the first of the ideologies of mass politics.

Bibliography

 

V.H.H. Green : Renaissance and Reformation: A Survey of European History.

G.R. Elton : Reformation Europe.

H.G. Koenigsberger and G.L. Mosse : Europe in the Sixteenth Century.

Euan Cameron : The European Reformation.

John Hale : The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance.