A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1.

by Carlton J. H. Hayes

SUMMARY OF THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

By the year 1570 the profound religious and ecclesiastical changes which we have been sketching had been made. For seventy-five years more a series of wars was to be waged in which the religious element was distinctly to enter. In fact these wars have often been called the Religious Wars—the ones connected with the career of Philip II of Spain as well as the subsequent dismal civil war in the Germanies—but in each one the political and economic factors predominated. Nor did the series of wars materially affect the strength or extent of the religions implicated. It was prior to 1570 that the Protestant Revolt had been effected and the Catholic Reformation achieved.

[Sidenote: Geographical Extent of the Revolt]

In the year 1500, the Roman Catholic Church embraced central and western Europe; in the year 1600 nearly half of its former subjects— those throughout northern Europe—no longer recognized its authority or practiced its beliefs. There were left to the Roman Catholic Church at the close of the sixteenth century the Italian states, Spain, Portugal, most of France, the southern Netherlands, the forest cantons of Switzerland, the southern Germanies, Austria, Poland, Ireland, large followings in Bohemia and Hungary, and a straggling unimportant following in other countries.

Those who rejected the Roman Catholic Church in central and western Europe were collectively called Protestants, but they were divided into three major groups. Lutheranism was now the religion of the northern Germanies and the Scandinavian states of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Calvinism, under a bewildering variety of names, was the recognized faith of the majority of the cantons of Switzerland, of the northern Netherlands, and Scotland, and of important followings in Germany, Hungary, France, and England. Anglicanism was the established religion of England.

[Sidenote: Doctrines Held in Common by Catholics and Protestants]

The Protestants retained a large part of Catholic theology, so that all portions of western Christianity continued to have much in common. They still believed in the Trinity, in the divinity of Jesus Christ, in the sacredness of the Jewish scriptures and of the New Testament, the fall of man and his redemption through the sacrifice of the Cross, and in a future life of rewards and punishments. The Christian moralities and virtues continued to be inculcated by Protestants as well as by Catholics.

[Sidenote: Doctrines Held by all Protestants Apart from Catholics]

On the other hand, the Protestants held in common certain doctrines which separated all of them from Roman Catholicism. These were the distinguishing marks of Protestantism: (1) denial of the claims of the bishop of Rome and consequent rejection of the papal government and jurisdiction; (2) rejection of such doctrines as were supposed to have developed during the middle ages,—for example, purgatory, indulgences, invocation of saints, and veneration of relics,—together with important modifications in the sacramental system; (3) insistence upon the right of the individual to interpret the Bible, and recognition of the individual's ability to save himself without the interposition of ecclesiastics—hence to the Protestant, authority resided in individual interpretation of the Bible, while to the Catholic, it rested in a living institution or Church.

[Sidenote: Divisions among Protestants]

Now the Protestant idea of authority made it possible and essentially inevitable that its supporters should not agree on many things among themselves. There would be almost as many ways of interpreting the Scriptures as there were interested individuals. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the last Almanac some one hundred and sixty-four varieties or denominations of Protestants are listed in the United States alone. These divisions, however, are not so complex as at first might appear, because nearly all of them have come directly from the three main forms of Protestantism which appeared in the sixteenth century. Just how Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism differed from each other may be gathered from a short summary.

(1) The Calvinists taught justification by election—that God determines, or predestines, who is to be saved and who is to be lost. The Lutherans were inclined to reject such doctrine, and to assure salvation to the mere believer. The Anglicans appeared to accept the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith, although the Thirty- nine Articles might be likewise interpreted in harmony with the Calvinistic position.

(2) The Calvinists recognized only two sacraments—baptism and the Lord's Supper. Lutherans and Anglicans retained, in addition to the two sacraments, the rite of confirmation, and Anglicans also the rite of ordination. The official statement of Anglicanism that there are "two major sacraments" has made it possible for some Anglicans—the so- called High Church party—to hold the Catholic doctrine of seven sacraments.

(3) Various substitutes were made for the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, the idea that in the Lord's Supper the bread and wine by the word of the priest are actually changed into the Body and Blood of Christ. The Lutherans maintained what they called consubstantiation, that Christ was with and in the bread and wine, as fire is in a hot iron, to borrow the metaphor of Luther himself. The Calvinists, on the other hand, saw in the Eucharist, not the efficacious sacrifice of Christ, but a simple commemoration of the Last Supper; to them the bread and wine were mere symbols of the Body and Blood. As to the Anglicans, their position was ambiguous, for their official confession of faith declared at once that the Supper is the communion of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ but that the communicant receives Jesus Christ only spiritually: the present-day "Low Church" Anglicans incline to a Calvinistic interpretation, those of the "High Church" to the Catholic explanation.

(4) There were pronounced differences in ecclesiastical government. All the Protestants considerably modified the Catholic system of a divinely appointed clergy of bishops, priests, and deacons, under the supreme spiritual jurisdiction of the pope. The Anglicans rejected the papacy, although they retained the orders of bishop, priest, and deacon, and insisted that their hierarchy was the direct continuation of the medieval Church in England, and therefore that their organization was on the same footing as the Orthodox Church of eastern Europe. The Lutherans rejected the divinely ordained character of episcopacy, but retained bishops as convenient administrative officers. The Calvinists did away with bishops altogether and kept only one order of clergymen— the presbyters. Such Calvinistic churches as were governed by assemblies or synods of presbyters were called Presbyterian; those which subordinated the "minister" to the control of the people in each separate congregation were styled Independent, or Separatist, or Congregational. [Footnote: This latter type of church government was maintained also by the quasi-Calvinistic denomination of the Baptists.]

(5) In the ceremonies of public worship the Protestant churches differed. Anglicanism kept a good deal of the Catholic ritual although in the form of translation from Latin to English, together with several Catholic ceremonies, in some places even employing candles and incense. The Calvinists, on the other hand, worshiped with extreme simplicity: reading of the Bible, singing of hymns, extemporaneous prayer, and preaching constituted the usual service in church buildings that were without superfluous ornaments. Between Anglican formalism and Calvinistic austerity, the Lutherans presented a compromise: they devised no uniform liturgy, but showed some inclination to utilize forms and ceremonies.

[Sidenote: Significance of the Protestant Revolt]

Of the true significance of the great religious and ecclesiastical changes of the sixteenth century many estimates in the past have been made, varying with the point of view, or bias, of each author. Several results, however, now stand out clearly and are accepted generally by all scholars, regardless of religious affiliations. These results may be expressed as follows:

In the first place, the Catholic Church of the middle ages was disrupted and the medieval ideal of a universal theocracy under the bishop of Rome was rudely shocked.

In the second place, the Christian religion was largely nationalized. Protestantism was the religious aspect of nationalism; it naturally came into being as a protest against the cosmopolitan character of Catholicism; it received its support from nations; and it assumed everywhere a national form. The German states, the Scandinavian countries, Scotland, England, each had its established state religion. What remained to the Catholic Church, as we have seen, was essentially for national reasons and henceforth rested mainly on a national basis.

Thirdly, the whole movement tended to narrow the Catholic Church dogmatically. The exigencies of answering the Protestants called forth explicit definitions of belief. The Catholic Church was henceforth on the defensive, and among her members fewer differences of opinion were tolerated than formerly.

Fourthly, a great impetus to individual morality, as well as to theological study, was afforded by the reformation. Not only were many men's minds turned temporarily from other intellectual interests to religious controversy, but the individual faithful Catholic or Protestant was encouraged to vie with his neighbor in actually proving that his particular religion inculcated a higher moral standard than any other. It rendered the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries more earnest and serious and also more bigoted than the fifteenth.

Finally, the Protestant Revolution led immediately to important political and social changes. The power of secular rulers was immeasurably increased. By confiscation of church lands and control of the clergy, the Tudor sovereigns in England, the kings in Scandinavia, and the German princes were personally enriched and freed from fear of being hampered in absolutist tendencies by an independent ecclesiastical organization. Even in Catholic countries, the monarchs were able to wring such concessions from the pope as resulted in shackling the Church to the crown.

The wealth of the nobles was swelled, especially in Protestant countries, by seizure of the property of the Church either directly or by means of bribes tendered for aristocratic support of the royal confiscations. But despite such an access of wealth, the monarchs took pains to see that the nobility acquired no new political influence.

In order to prevent the nobles from recovering political power, the absolutist monarchs enlisted the services of the faithful middle class, which speedily attained an enviable position in the principal European states. It is safe to say that the Protestant Revolution was one of many elements assisting in the development of this middle class.

For the peasantry—still the bulk of European population—the religious and ecclesiastical changes seem to have been peculiarly unfortunate. What they gained through a diminution of ecclesiastical dues and taxes was more than lost through the growth of royal despotism and the exactions of hard-hearted lay proprietors. The peasants had changed the names of their oppressors and found themselves in a worse condition than before. There is little doubt that, at least so far as the Germanies and the Scandinavian countries are concerned, the lot of the peasants was less favorable immediately after, than immediately before, the rise of Protestantism.