CHAPTER XII
[1] Up to this time the only Latin Bible had been the Vulgate (p. 131), translated by Jerome in the fourth century. Erasmus went back to and edited the original Greek manuscripts, and then prepared a new parallel Latin translation, the two being printed side by side. He also added many explanations of his own which mercilessly exposed the mistakes of the theologians and the Church, and pointed out the errors in translation which were embodied in the Vulgate. This work passed through numerous editions and sold in thousands of copies all over Europe.
So dangerous was this comparative method that "Greek was judged a heretical tongue. No one should lecture on the New Testament, it was declared, without a previous theological examination. It was held to be heresy to say that the Greek or Hebrew text read thus, or that a knowledge of the original language is necessary to interpret the Scriptures correctly."
[2] This was accomplished between 1382 and 1384. Wycliffe translated only a part of the Old Testament, and the Gospels of Saint Matthew and Saint Mark of the New. The remainder was done under his direction by others. The translation was from the Latin Vulgate, and was crude and imperfect. The large number of copies of parts of this translation which have survived, in manuscript form, to the present time show that it must have awakened much interest, and been widely copied and recopied during the century before the invention of printing.
[3] The heretic, it should be remembered, was the anarchist of the Middle Ages. The Church regarded heresy as a crime, worthy of the most severe punishments. The Church and the civil governments proceeded against the heretic as against an enemy of society and order. Heretics could not give evidence in a civil court, were prohibited from marrying or from giving a son or daughter in marriage, and even to speak with a heretic was an offense. Even torture and death were regarded as justified to stamp out heresy.
[4] "What would have been the result had the Council of Constance succeeded where it failed? It seems certain that one result would have been the formation of a government for the Church like that which was taking shape at the same time in England—a limited monarchy with a legislature gradually gaining more and more the real control of affairs. It seems almost equally certain that with this the churches of each nationality would have gained a large degree of local independence, and the general government of the Church have assumed by degrees the character of a great federal and constitutional State. If this had been the case, it is hard to see why all the results which were accomplished by the reformation of Luther might not have been attained as completely without the violent disruption of the Church." (Adams, G. B., Civilisation during the Middle Ages, p. 403.)
[5] In 1302 the first "Estates-General" of France supported the King, and denied the right of the Pope to any supremacy over the State in France. In England, about the same time, the right of the Pope to levy taxation on the English was disputed by King and Parliament. In 1446 William III of Saxony limited the powers of ecclesiastical courts, and forbade appeals from Saxon decisions to any foreign court.
[6] The London Academy, 1893, p. 197, published evidence to show that there was a widespread demand among the bishops of Spain for church reformation, during the fifteenth century, and along the same lines that Luther advocated later.
[7] "But all these attempts at reformation in the Church, large and small, had failed, as had those of the early fifteenth century to reform its government, leaving the Church as thoroughly mediaeval in doctrine and in practical religion as it was in polity. It was the one power, therefore, belonging to the Middle Ages which still stood unaffected by the new forces and opposed to them. In other directions the changes had been many; here nothing had been changed. And its resisting power was very great. Endowed with large wealth, strong in numbers in every State, with no lack of able and thoroughly trained minds, its interests, as it regarded them, in maintaining the old were enormous, and its power of defending itself seemed scarcely to be broken….
"The Church had remained unaffected by the new forces which had transformed everything else. It was still thoroughly mediaeval. In government, in doctrine, and in life it still placed the greatest emphasis upon those additions which the peculiar conditions of the Middle Ages had built upon the foundations of the primitive Christianity, and it was determined to remain unchanged." (Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle Ages, pp. 406, 412.)
[8] Every reform movement produces two kinds of reformers, each seeking the same ultimate goal, but differing materially as to methods of work. In the religious conflict these two types are well represented by Erasmus and Luther. Erasmus was as deeply interested in religious reform as Luther and devoted the energies of a lifetime to trying to secure reform, but he believed that reformation should come from within, and that the way to obtain it was to remain within the old organization and work to reform it. Luther represented the other type, the type which feels that things are too bad for mere reform to be effective, and that what is wanted is rebellion against the old. The two types seldom agree as to means, and usually part company. One is content to be known as a conservative or a conformer; the other delights in being classed as a progressive or even as a radical.
[9] "The early Protestant theory was that an individual's Christian religious life, convictions, and salvation were to be worked out through a direct study of the Scriptures, acceptance of the obvious teachings of Christ as there presented, and direct appeal to God through prayer for help in leading a Christian life. The Catholic position, on the other hand, came to be that the individual's religious life was to be achieved through the intervention of the Church, which claimed on historical grounds to have been founded by Christ, and to be his official representative and mediator in the world. It was through the teachings of this Church that the individual was to receive his ideas of the Christian religion, to be stimulated to believe these, to be kept in the path of righteousness, and to obtain salvation." (Parker, S. C., History of Modern Elementary Education, p. 35.)
[10] Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle Ages, p. 413.
[11] A good illustration of the way parts of Germany and German Switzerland were divided by religious differences is to be found in the Canton of Appenzell, in northeastern Switzerland. As each small governmental division had to follow the religion of the ruling prince in Germany, so in Switzerland the cantons divided on religious lines. To compromise matters in Appenzell the canton was divided into two half cantons, following the religious wars of 1597—Inner Rhoden, of sixty- three square miles, exclusively Roman Catholic, and Outer Rhoden, of ninety-six square miles, entirely under the Swiss Reformed Church.
[12] Calvinism is also a product of the northern humanism, Calvin's difficulties with the Church arising out of his study of the Greek texts. Calvin had received an excellent theological and legal education, and used the knowledge and training derived from both to help him formulate a comprehensive system of belief.
[13] Like the famous Sentences of Peter Lombard (p. 171), it formed a splendid textbook of the new faith. Calvin based his work on the infallibility of the Bible, as against that of the Church and Pope, and presented, in a remarkably clear and logical manner, the principles of Calvinistic doctrine. Before 1630, as many as seventy-four full editions and fourteen partial editions of the Institutes had been printed, and in nine different languages.
[14] This went through seventy-seven editions (fourteen in English) before 1630, and in nearly all the languages of Europe, and was one of four Catechisms, one of which was required of all Oxford undergraduates in 1578. It was adopted by the Scotch, Huguenot, French-Swiss, and Walloon (Dutch) churches, and was widely used in Holland, England, and America. (See "Calvin and Calvinism," in Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education, vol. I.)
[15] By 1560 the Calvinists had two thousand houses for religious worship in France, and demanded religious freedom. In 1562 the persecutions began in earnest, and for the next thirty-six years religious warfare ruled in France. In 1598 the Edict of Nantes established religious freedom, though this was revoked in 1685.
[16] Even the celebrated Peace of Augsburg (1555) which left to each German prince and each town and knight the liberty to choose between the beliefs of the Roman Church and the Lutheran, provided only for religious freedom for the rulers, and only one alternative. Calvinists, for example, hated equally by Catholic and Lutheran, were not included. So deeply was the idea of Church and State as inseparable embedded in the minds of men that no provision was made for the religious freedom of subjects. This was a much later evolution, coming first in America.
[17] In the proposals for the League of Nations Covenant, made at the conclusion of the World War, in 1919, religious freedom for all persons in any State in the League was finally decided to be a necessary principle for any world league.
[18] Paulsen, Fr., German Education, Past and Present, pp. 96-97.
[19] The terms atheist and atheism now arose, as the modern substitutes for excommunication and imprisonment, and during the next two centuries these were applied, by the churchmen of the time, to almost every prominent philosopher and scientist and independent thinker.
[20] Very severe measures were enacted to prevent the spread of the contagion of heresy. All Protestant literature was forbidden circulation in Catholic lands. The printing-press, as a disseminator of heresy, was placed under strict license. Certain books were ordered burned. Perhaps the most extreme and ruthless measure was the prohibition, under penalty of death, of the reading of the Bible. That this harsh act was carried out the record of martyrs shows. As one example may be mentioned the sister of the Flemish artist Matsys and her husband, he being decapitated and she buried alive in the square fronting the cathedral at Louvain, in 1543, for having been caught reading the sacred Book.