An Introduction to the History of Western Europe

by James Harvey Robinson

THE PROTESTANT REVOLT IN SWITZERLAND AND ENGLAND

158. For at least a century after Luther's death the great issue between Catholics and Protestants dominates the history of all the countries with which we have to do, except Italy and Spain, where Protestantism never took permanent root. In Switzerland, England, France, and Holland the revolt against the mediæval Church produced profound changes, which must be understood in order to follow the later development of these countries.

Origin of the Swiss Confederation.

We turn first to Switzerland, lying in the midst of the great chain of the Alps which extends from the Mediterranean to Vienna. During the Middle Ages, the region destined to be included in the Swiss Confederation formed a part of the empire, and was scarcely distinguishable from the rest of southern Germany. As early as the thirteenth century the three "forest" cantons on the shores of the winding lake of Lucerne had formed a union to protect their liberties against the encroachments of their neighbors, the Hapsburgs. It was about this tiny nucleus that Switzerland gradually consolidated. In 1315 the cantons gained their first great victory over the Hapsburgs at Morgarten and thereupon solemnly renewed their league. This was soon joined by Lucerne and the free imperial towns of Zurich and Berne. By brave fighting the Swiss were able to frustrate the renewed efforts of the Hapsburgs to subjugate them. Later, when a still more formidable enemy, Charles the Bold, undertook to conquer them they put his armies to rout at Granson and Murten (1476).[291]

The Swiss Confederation

Switzerland becomes a separate country; mixed nationality of its people.

Various districts in the neighborhood successively joined the Swiss union, and even the region lying on the Italian slopes of the Alps was brought under its control. Gradually the bonds between the members of the union and the empire were broken. They were recognized as being no more than "relatives" of the empire; in 1499 they were finally freed from the jurisdiction of the emperor, and Switzerland became a practically independent country. Although the original union had been made up of German-speaking people, considerable districts had been annexed in which Italian or French was spoken.[292] The Swiss did not, therefore, form a compact, well-defined nation, and for some centuries their confederation was weak and ill-organized.

Zwingli (1484–1531) leads the revolt in Switzerland against the Church.

159. In Switzerland the leader of the revolt against the Church was Zwingli, who was a year younger than Luther and like him was the son of peasant parents. Zwingli's father was prosperous, however, and the boy had the best education which could be obtained, at Basel and Vienna. His later discontent with the old Church came not through spiritual wrestlings in the monastery, but from the study of the classics and of the Greek New Testament. Zwingli had become a priest and settled at the famous monastery of Einsiedeln near the lake of Zurich. This was the center of pilgrimages on account of a wonder-working image in the cell of St. Meinrad. "Here," he says, "I began to preach the Gospel of Christ in the year 1516, before any one in my locality had so much as heard the name of Luther."

Zwingli denounces the abuses in the Church and the traffic in soldiers.

Three years later he was called to an influential position as preacher in the cathedral of Zurich, and there his great work began. Through his efforts a Dominican who was preaching indulgences was expelled from the country. He then began to denounce the abuses in the Church as well as the shameless traffic in soldiers, which he had long regarded as a blot upon his country's honor.[293] The pope had found the help of the Swiss troops indispensable, and had granted annuities and lucrative positions in the Church to influential Swiss, who were expected to work in his interest. So, from the first, Zwingli was led to combine with his religious reform a political reform which should put the cantons on better terms with one another and prevent the destruction of their young men in wars in which they had no possible interest. A new demand of the pope for troops in 1521 led Zwingli to attack him and his commissioners. "How appropriate," he exclaims, "that they should have red hats and cloaks! If we shake them, crowns and ducats fall out. If we wring them, out runs the blood of your sons and brothers and fathers and good friends."[294]

Zurich, under the influence of Zwingli, begins a reform.

Such talk soon began to arouse comment, and the old forest cantons were for a violent suppression of the new teacher, but the town council of Zurich stanchly supported their priest. Zwingli then began to attack fasts and the celibacy of the clergy. In 1523 he prepared a complete statement of his belief, in the form of sixty-seven theses. In these he maintained that Christ was the only high priest and that the Gospel did not gain its sanction from the authority of the Church. He denied the existence of purgatory and rejected those practices of the Church which Luther had already set aside. Since no one presented himself to refute Zwingli, the town council ratified his conclusions and so withdrew from the Roman Catholic Church. The next year the Mass, processions, and the images of the saints were abolished; the shrines were opened and the relics buried.

Other towns follow Zurich's example.

Some other towns followed Zurich's example; but the original cantons about the lake of Lucerne, which feared that they might lose the great influence that, in spite of their small size, they had hitherto enjoyed, were ready to fight for the old faith. The first armed collision, half political and half religious, between the Swiss Protestants and Catholics took place at Kappel in 1531, and Zwingli fell in the battle. The various cantons and towns never came to an agreement in religious matters, and Switzerland is still part Catholic and part Protestant.

The chief importance for the rest of Europe of Zwingli's revolt was the influence of his conception of the Lord's Supper. He not only denied transubstantiation,[295] but also the "real presence" of Christ in the elements (in which Luther believed), and conceived the bread and wine to be mere symbols. Those in Germany and England who accepted Zwingli's idea added one more to the Protestant parties, and consequently increased the difficulty of reaching a general agreement among those who had revolted from the Church.[296]

Calvin (1509–1564) and the Presbyterian Church.

160. Far more important than Zwingli's teachings, especially for England and America, was the work of Calvin, which was carried on in the ancient city of Geneva on the very outskirts of the Swiss confederation. It was Calvin who organized the Presbyterian Church and formulated its beliefs. He was born in northern France in 1509; he belonged, therefore, to the second generation of Protestants. He was early influenced by the Lutheran teachings, which had already found their way into France. A persecution of the Protestants under Francis I drove him out of the country and he settled for a time in Basel.[297]

Calvin's Institutes of Christianity.

Here he issued the first edition of his great work, The Institutes of Christianity, which has been more widely discussed than any other Protestant theological treatise. It was the first orderly exposition of the principles of Christianity from a Protestant standpoint. Like Peter Lombard's Sentences, it formed a convenient manual for study and discussion. The Institutes are based upon the infallibility of the Bible and reject the infallibility of the Church and the pope. Calvin possessed a remarkably logical mind and a clear and admirable style. The French version of his great work is the first example of the successful use of that language in an argumentative treatise.

Calvin's reformation in Geneva.

Calvin was called to Geneva about 1540 and intrusted with the task of reforming the town, which had secured its independence of the duke of Savoy. He drew up a constitution and established an extraordinary government, in which the church and the civil government were as closely associated as they had ever been in any Catholic country.[298] The Protestantism which found its way into France was that of Calvin, not that of Luther, and the same may be said of Scotland.

The gradual revolt of England from the Church.

161. The revolt of England from the mediæval Church was very gradual and halting. Although there were some signs that Protestantism was gaining a foothold in the island not long after Luther's burning of the canon law, a generation at least passed away before the country definitely committed itself, upon the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1558, to the change in religion. It seems at first sight as if the revolution were due mainly to the irritation of Henry VIII against the pope, who refused to grant the king a divorce from his first wife in order that he might marry a younger and prettier woman. But a permanent change in the religious convictions of a whole people cannot fairly be attributed to the whim of even so despotic a ruler as Henry. There were changes taking place in England before the revolt similar to those which prepared the way in Germany for Luther's success.

John Colet.

English scholars began, in the latter part of the fifteenth century, to be affected by the new learning which came to them from Italy. Colet,[299] among others, strove to introduce the study of Greek in Oxford. Like Luther he found himself especially attracted by St. Paul, and had begun to teach the doctrine of justification by faith long before the German reformer was heard of.

Sir Thomas More and his 'Utopia.'

The most distinguished writer of the period was, perhaps, Sir Thomas More. The title of his famous little book, Utopia, i.e. "Nowhere," published about 1515, has become synonymous with ideal and impracticable schemes for bettering the world. He pictures the happy conditions in an undiscovered land where a perfect form of government has done away with all the evils which he observes about him in the England of his day. The Utopians, unlike the English, fought only to keep out invaders or to free others from tyranny, and never undertook wars of aggression such as Henry VIII was constantly contemplating. In Utopia no one was persecuted for his religion so long as he treated others fairly.[300]

The English admirers of Erasmus.

When Erasmus came to England about 1500 he was delighted with the society which he found, and we may assume that his views, which we have before described,[301] represented those of a considerable number of intelligent Englishmen. It was at the house of More that he finished the Praise of Folly, and he carried on his studies with such success in England and found such congenial companions there that it seemed to him that it was hardly worth while to go to Italy for intellectual inspiration. There is every reason to suppose that there were, in England, many who were quite conscious of the vices of the churchmen and who were ready to accept a system which would abolish those practices that had come to seem useless and pernicious.

Wolsey's policy of peace and his idea of the balance of power.

162. Henry VIII's minister, Cardinal Wolsey, deserves great credit for having constantly striven to discourage his sovereign's ambition to take part in the wars on the continent. The cardinal's argument that England could become great by peace better than by war was a momentous discovery. Peace he felt would be best secured by maintaining the balance of power on the continent so that no ruler should become dangerous by unduly extending his sway. For example, he thought it good policy to side with Charles when Francis was successful, and then with Francis after his terrible defeat at Pavia (1525) when he fell into the hands of Charles. This idea of the balance of power came to be recognized later by the European countries as a very important consideration in determining their policy. But Wolsey was not long to be permitted to put his enlightened ideas in practice. His fall and the progress of Protestantism in England are both closely associated with the notorious divorce case of Henry VIII.

Henry VIII of England

Henry VIII's divorce case.

It will be remembered that Henry had married Catherine of Aragon, the aunt of Charles V. Only one of their children, Mary, had survived to grow up. Henry was very anxious to have a son and heir, for he was fearful lest a woman might not be permitted to succeed to the throne. Moreover, Catherine, who was older than he, had become distasteful to him.

Catherine had first married Henry's older brother, who had died almost immediately after the marriage. Since it was a violation of the rule of the Church to marry a deceased brother's wife, Henry professed to fear that he was committing a sin by retaining Catherine as his wife and demanded to be divorced from her on the ground that his marriage had never been legal. His anxiety to rid himself of Catherine was greatly increased by the appearance at court of a black-eyed girl of sixteen, named Anne Boleyn, with whom the king fell in love.

Clement VII refuses to divorce Henry.

Fall of Wolsey.

Unfortunately for his case, his marriage with Catherine had been authorized by a dispensation from the pope, so that Clement VII, to whom the king appealed to annul the marriage, could not, even if he had been willing to alienate the queen's nephew, Charles V, have granted Henry's request. Wolsey's failure to induce the pope to permit the divorce excited the king's anger, and with rank ingratitude for his minister's great services, Henry drove him from office (1529) and seized his property. From a life of wealth which was fairly regal, Wolsey was precipitated into extreme poverty. An imprudent but innocent act of his soon gave his enemies a pretext for charging him with treason; but the unhappy man died on his way to London before his head could be brought to the block.

Henry forces the English clergy to recognize him as the supreme head of the Church of England.

163. The king's next move was to bring a preposterous charge against the whole English clergy by declaring that, in submitting to Wolsey's authority as papal legate, they had violated an ancient law forbidding papal representatives to appear in England without the king's permission. Yet Henry had approved Wolsey's appointment as papal legate. The clergy met at Canterbury and offered to buy pardon for their alleged offense by an enormous grant of money. But Henry refused to forgive them unless they would solemnly acknowledge him to be the supreme head of the English Church. This they accordingly did;[302] they agreed, moreover, to hold no general meetings or pass any rules without the king's sanction. The submission of the clergy ensured Henry against any future criticism on their part of the measures he proposed to take in the matter of his divorce.

Parliament forbids all appeals to the pope, 1533.

An English court declares Henry's marriage with Catherine void.

He now induced Parliament to threaten to cut off the income which the pope had been accustomed to receive from newly appointed bishops. The king hoped in this way to bring Clement VII to terms. He failed, however, in this design and, losing patience, married Anne Boleyn secretly without waiting for the divorce. Parliament was then persuaded to pass the Act of Appeals, declaring that lawsuits of all kinds should be finally and definitely decided within the realm, and that no appeal might be made to any one outside the kingdom. Catherine's appeal to the pope was thus rendered illegal. When, shortly after, her marriage was declared void by a Church court summoned by Henry, she had no remedy. Parliament also declared Henry's marriage with Catherine unlawful and that with Anne legal. Consequently it was decreed that Elizabeth, Anne's daughter, who was born in 1533, was to succeed her father on the throne, instead of Mary, the daughter of Catherine.

The Act of Supremacy and the denial of the pope's authority over England.

In 1534 the English Parliament completed the revolt of the English Church from the pope by assigning to the king the right to appoint all the English prelates and to enjoy all the income which had formerly found its way to Rome. In the Act of Supremacy, Parliament declared the king to be "the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England," and that he should enjoy all the powers which the title naturally carried with it. Two years later every officer in the kingdom, whether lay or ecclesiastical, was required to swear to renounce the authority of the Bishop of Rome. Refusal to take this oath was to be adjudged high treason. Many were unwilling to deny the pope's headship merely because king and Parliament renounced it, and this legislation led to a persecution in the name of treason which was even more horrible than that which had been carried on in the supposed interest of religion.

Henry VIII no Protestant.

The English Bible.

It must be carefully noted that Henry VIII was not a Protestant in the Lutheran sense of the word. He was led, it is true, by Clement VII's refusal to declare his first marriage illegal, to break the bond between the English and the Roman Church, and to induce the English clergy and Parliament to acknowledge him as supreme head in the religious as well as in the temporal interests of the country. No earlier English sovereign had ever ventured to go so far as this in the previous conflicts with Rome. He was ready, too, as we shall see, to appropriate the property of the monasteries on the ground that these institutions were so demoralized as to be worse than useless. Important as these acts were, they did not lead Henry to accept the teachings of Protestant leaders, like Luther, Zwingli, or Calvin. He shared the popular distrust of the new doctrines, and showed himself anxious to explain the old ones and free them from the objections which were beginning to be urged against them. A proclamation was made, under the authority of the king, in which the sacraments of baptism, penance, and the Mass were explained. Henry also authorized a new translation of the Bible into English. A fine edition of this was printed (1539), and every parish was ordered to obtain a copy and place it in the parish church, where all the people could readily make use of it.

Henry's anxiety to prove himself a good Catholic.

Henry was anxious to prove that he was orthodox, especially after he had seized the property of the monasteries and the gold and jewels which adorned the receptacles in which the relics of the saints were kept. He presided in person over the trial of one who accepted the opinion of Zwingli, that the body and blood of Christ were not present in the sacrament. He quoted Scripture to prove the contrary, and the prisoner was condemned and burned as a heretic.

The 'Six Articles.'

In 1539 Parliament passed a statute called the "Six Articles." These declared first that the body and blood of Christ were actually present in the bread and the wine of the Lord's Supper; whoever ventured publicly to question this was to be burned. For speaking against five other tenets[303] of the old Church, offenders were to suffer imprisonment and loss of goods for the first offense, and to be hanged for the second. Two bishops, who had ventured to go farther in the direction of Protestantism than Henry himself had done, were driven from office and some offenders were put to death under this act.

Henry's tyranny.

Execution of Sir Thomas More.

164. Henry was heartless and despotic. With a barbarity not uncommon in those days, he allowed his old friend and adviser, Sir Thomas More, to be beheaded for refusing to pronounce the marriage with Catherine void. He caused numbers of monks to be executed for refusing to swear that his first marriage was illegal and for denying his title to supremacy in the Church. Others he permitted to die of starvation and disease in the filthy prisons of the time. Many Englishmen would doubtless have agreed with one of the friars who said humbly: "I profess that it is not out of obstinate malice or a mind of rebellion that I do disobey the king, but only for the fear of God, that I offend not the Supreme Majesty; because our Holy Mother, the Church, hath decreed and appointed otherwise than the king and Parliament hath ordained."

Dissolution of the English monasteries.

Henry wanted money; some of the English abbeys were rich, and the monks were quite unable to defend themselves against the charges which were brought against them. The king sent commissioners about to inquire into the moral state of the monasteries. A large number of scandalous tales were easily collected, some of which were undoubtedly true. The monks were doubtless often indolent and sometimes wicked. Nevertheless, they were kind landlords, hospitable to the stranger, and good to the poor. The plundering of the smaller monasteries, with which the king began, led to a revolt, due to a rumor that the king would next proceed to despoil the parish churches as well. This gave Henry an excuse for attacking the larger monasteries. The abbots and priors who had taken part in the revolt were hanged and their monasteries confiscated. Other abbots, panic-stricken, confessed that they and their monks had been committing the most loathsome sins and asked to be permitted to give up their monasteries to the king. The royal commissioners then took possession, sold every article upon which they could lay hands, including the bells and the lead on the roofs. The picturesque remains of the great abbey churches are still among the chief objects of interest to the sight-seer in England. The monastery lands were, of course, appropriated by the king. They were sold for the benefit of the government or given to nobles whose favor the king wished to secure.

Destruction of shrines and images for the benefit of the king's treasury.

Along with the destruction of the monasteries went an attack upon the shrines and images in the churches, which were adorned with gold and jewels. The shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury was destroyed and the bones of the saint were burned. An old wooden figure revered in Wales was used to make a fire to burn an unfortunate friar who maintained that in things spiritual the pope rather than the king should be obeyed. These acts suggest the Protestant attacks on images which occurred in Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. The object of the king and his party was probably in the main a mercenary one, although the reason urged for the destruction was the superstitious veneration in which the relics and images were popularly held.

Henry's third marriage and the birth of Edward VI.

Henry's domestic troubles by no means came to an end with his marriage with Anne Boleyn. Of her, too, he soon tired, and three years after their marriage he had her executed on a series of monstrous charges. The next day he married his third wife, Jane Seymour, who was the mother of his son and successor, Edward VI. Jane died a few days after her son's birth, and later Henry married in succession three other women who are historically unimportant since they left no children as claimants for the crown. Henry took care that his three children, all of whom were destined to reign, should be given their due place by act of Parliament in the line of inheritance.[304] His death in 1547 left the great problem of Protestantism and Catholicism to be settled by his son and daughters.

Edward VI's ministers introduce Protestant practices.

165. While the revolt of England against the ancient Church was carried through by the government at a time when the greater part of the nation was still Catholic, there was undoubtedly, under Henry VIII, an ever-increasing number of aggressive and ardent Protestants who applauded the change. During the six years of the boy Edward's reign—he died in 1553 at the age of sixteen—those in charge of the government favored the Protestant party and did what they could to change the faith of all the people by bringing Protestant teachers from the Continent.

A general demolition of all the sacred images was ordered; even the beautiful stained glass, the glory of the cathedrals, was destroyed, because it often represented saints and angels. The king was to appoint bishops without troubling to observe the old forms of election, and Protestants began to be put into the high offices of the Church. Parliament turned over to the king the funds which had been established for the purpose of having masses chanted for the dead, and decreed that thereafter the clergy should be free to marry.

The prayer-book and the 'Thirty-Nine Articles.'

A prayer-book in English was prepared under the auspices of Parliament not very unlike that used in the Church of England to-day. Moreover, forty-two articles of faith were drawn up by the government, which were to be the standard of belief for the country. These, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, were revised and reduced to the famous "Thirty-Nine Articles," which still constitute the creed of the Church of England.[305]

Protestantism partially discredited by Edward's ministers.

The changes in the church services must have sadly shocked a great part of the English people, who had been accustomed to watch with awe and expectancy the various acts associated with the many church ceremonies and festivals.[306] Earnest men who watched the misrule of those who conducted Edward's government in the name of Protestantism, must have concluded that the reformers were chiefly intent upon advancing their own interests by plundering the Church. We get some idea of the desecrations of the time from the fact that Edward was forced to forbid "quarreling and shooting in churches" and "the bringing of horses and mules through the same, making God's house like a stable or common inn." Although many were heartily in favor of the recent changes it is no wonder that after Edward's death there was a revulsion in favor of the old religion.

Queen Mary, 1553–1558, and the Catholic reaction.

166. Edward VI was succeeded in 1553 by his half-sister Mary, who had been brought up in the Catholic faith and held firmly to it. Her ardent hope of bringing her kingdom back once more to her religion did not seem altogether ill-founded, for the majority of the people were still Catholics at heart, and many who were not disapproved of the policy of Edward's ministers, who had removed abuses "in the devil's own way, by breaking in pieces."

Mary's marriage with Philip II of Spain.

The Catholic cause appeared, moreover, to be strengthened by Mary's marriage with the Spanish prince, Philip II, the son of the orthodox Charles V. But although Philip later distinguished himself, as we shall see, by the merciless way in which he strove to put down heresy within his realms, he never gained any great influence in England. By his marriage with Mary he acquired the title of king, but the English took care that he should have no hand in the government, nor be permitted to succeed his wife on the English throne.

The 'Kneeling Parliament,' 1554.

Mary succeeded in bringing about a nominal reconciliation between England and the Roman Church. In 1554 the papal legate restored to the communion of the Catholic Church the "Kneeling Parliament," which theoretically, of course, represented the nation.

Persecution of the Protestants under Mary.

During the last four years of Mary's reign the most serious religious persecution in English history occurred. No less than 277 persons were put to death for denying the teachings of the Roman Church. The majority of the victims were humble artisans and husbandmen. The two most notable sufferers were Bishops Latimer and Ridley, who were burned in Oxford. Latimer cried to his fellow-martyr in the flames: "Be of good cheer and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle in England as shall never be put out!"

Mary's failure to restore the Catholic religion in England.

It was Mary's hope and belief that the heretics sent to the stake would furnish a terrible warning to the Protestants and check the spread of the new teachings, but it fell out as Latimer had prophesied. Catholicism was not promoted; on the contrary, doubters were only convinced of the earnestness of the Protestants who could die with such constancy.[307]

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