RURAL CONDITIONS

Though the condition of the peasantry was very prosperous and agricultural methods had improved, the increase of large properties, due to the investment in land of the money acquired by trade and industry, favoured the development of a large class of agricultural labourers, whose situation contrasted unfavourably with that of the large tenant and the smaller farmer.

In every branch of economic activity, modern methods rapidly supplanted mediæval conditions. From the general point of view of the country's prosperity, the change was beneficial and the princes showed wisdom in supporting it. A return to the narrow regulations and guild monopolies of the fourteenth century would have proved as fatal, in the fifteenth, as a return to the feudal system in the thirteenth. The princes supported the rich merchants and employers in the Renaissance, as they supported the Communes in the twelfth century. The corporation system, which had proved a boon at that time, had become an obstacle to free activity and initiative and had therefore to be sacrificed. But, at the same time, the formation of a large class of unorganized rural workers, who had no means of defending themselves against the ruthless exploitation of their employers, was bound to prove a cause of social unrest. It was among these uneducated masses that the Anabaptists recruited most of their followers, and the industrial population around Hondschoote and Armentières provided the first bands of iconoclasts whose excesses contributed so much to confuse the issue of the revolution against Spain. Modern monarchy, which had upheld the new order of things, became the scapegoat of the discontented, and the suffering and exasperated people were no longer able to distinguish between the evil brought about by unrestrained capitalism and the good resulting from the organization of a strongly centralized State.

HUMANISM

Antwerp was not only the centre of economic activity for the Low Countries, it became, as early as 1518, the cradle of Lutheranism. It is needless to recall here how the doctrines of Martin Luther, born in the German Empire, had gradually spread through Northern Europe, and how his criticism of the morals of the clergy had originated a criticism of the dogmas of the Roman Catholic religion. Hitherto similar movements, such as those started in the Low Countries by Gérard de Brogne and the Beggards during the Middle Ages, and, during the last century, by Gérard de Groote, the founder of the Brothers of the Common Life, had confined themselves to fighting the excesses of the Church, remaining throughout orthodox, as far as the dogmas were concerned. Now the principle of free individualism was transplanted from the economic to the religious domain, and capitalistic initiative and freedom of trade found corresponding expression in free interpretation of the Bible. The movement had been prepared and, to a certain extent, favoured by the educative action of the Brothers of the Common Life, who, though remaining strictly faithful to the Church, had nevertheless substituted, in their schools, lay for clerical teaching. It is interesting to remark that both Humanism, as represented by its greatest master, Erasmus, and the art of printing, represented by Thierry Maertens and Jean Veldener, who were its originators at Alost and Louvain, were closely connected with the educational movement promoted by the Brothers. Erasmus had first studied at Deventer. The extraordinary success of his Adagia, published in 1500, and of his early works, influenced by Thomas More (with whom he had been brought into contact during his stay in England as a protégé of Lord Mountjoy), seems certainly strange in view of the unbending attitude taken by Charles V towards Lutheranism. But Humanism had become the fashion in high aristocratic and ecclesiastical circles, and neither the young emperor nor his gouvernante, Mary of Hungary, disguised their interest in the movement. It is true that Erasmus endeavoured to reconcile Christian dogmas with the new philosophy inspired by the Classics, but his attacks against asceticism, the celibacy of the priests and the superstition and ignorance of the monks would certainly not have been tolerated if they had influenced social life at large. The situation, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, among intellectuals and aristocrats was very much the same as that which prevailed at the courts of France, Prussia and Russia at the end of the eighteenth century. Princes and nobles extended to Voltaire similar favours, and for the same reasons. As long as their situation in the State was not threatened, they encouraged doctrines and intellectual pursuits which, besides providing them with fresh interests and distractions, justified to a certain extent the laxity of their morals. But, whatever their personal convictions might have been, their attitude had to change entirely as soon as the doctrine was adopted by the common people and when the privileges of Church and State, so closely bound together, began to be questioned by the masses. That Charles V's policy was not prompted only by his affection for the Church is shown by the fact that, a few years before, he had subjected the pope's Bull to his "placet," taken measures to restrict mortmain (which exempted Church property from taxation), and had obtained the right to designate bishops.

ANABAPTISTS

It must be acknowledged that, as the new doctrines spread from the aristocracy to the people, they assumed a more extreme character. The first step in this direction was taken by Lutheranism, whose attacks against dogmas were far more precise and categoric than those of the Humanists. In the Low Countries, however, Lutheranism, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, was still tolerant. It mainly affected a few nobles and a number of rich bourgeois. Church and State, according to them, were separate entities, and one could remain perfectly loyal to the prince while denying the authority of the pope. They professed, in other words, the principle of liberty of conscience, and, while preserving the right to separate themselves from the dominant Church, they did not make any attempt to enforce their theories on any unwilling converts. The first "placard" issued against them by the emperor was extremely severe in terms, since it condemned all heretics to death, but was very lightly applied. The men were to perish by the sword, the women to be buried alive and recanters to be burnt. But the Belgian bishops were unwilling to denounce the Lutherans and to deliver them to the secular arm. Influenced by his Spanish advisers, some of whom had initiated the Spanish Inquisition, Charles, in 1523, transferred the right of prosecution from the bishops to three special inquisitors enjoying full powers. The first executions were too rare to impress the public mind in an age when such spectacles were so frequent for other reasons, and the "placards," which had received the sanction of the States General, did not provoke much opposition. A new stage was reached in 1530 by the appearance of Anabaptism, which had spread from Münster into Holland and Gelder. Melchior Hoffmann, the leader of this movement, claimed to found the kingdom of heaven by the sword. He incensed the poor people by inflammatory speeches in which he invited them to install the new régime of brotherhood on the ruins of the old world. Their triumph would be the "day of vengeance." His success among the sailors and the agricultural labourers of the North, who endured great sufferings under the new economic conditions and owing to the war with Denmark, was very rapid, and ought to have been a warning to the governing classes. The Anabaptists did not make any distinction between Church and State, like the Lutherans, neither did they entertain the idea of freedom of conscience. They were as extremist in their views as the Spanish inquisitors. They intended to enforce their social and mystic doctrines on a reluctant population and appealed to open revolution. In fighting them, the Government was backed by the immense majority of the population, and, after the fall of Münster, this danger was for the time averted.

CALVINISTS

A few years later, however, Calvinism, spread by Swiss and French disguised predicants, began to make considerable progress among the rural population of the Western and Northern provinces. The Calvinists, like the Anabaptists, did not believe in freedom of conscience. They opposed the fanaticism of the Spanish inquisition with the fanaticism of the Reformers and opened the fight without any idea of conciliation. They distributed satiric pamphlets, secretly printed, in which the Church and the court were grossly caricatured, and their loathing for the worship of the Virgin and the Saints degenerated into blasphemy and sacrilege. They found very little favour among the educated classes, but made a number of converts among the discontented proletarians, who led a very miserable life in the neighbourhood of the most important industrial centres. To counteract this propaganda, Charles issued a new "placard," in 1550, which forbade the printing, selling or buying of reformist pamphlets, together with any public or private discussion on religious matters. Even to ask forgiveness for a heretic or to abstain from denouncing him was considered as a crime punishable by death and confiscation of property. Half of the fortune of the condemned went to the denunciator, the other half to the State. Only in one quarter, in the nominally independent bishopric of Liége, where Erard de la Marck issued similar decrees, was the repression successful. Everywhere else, the number of new proselytes increased with that of the executions, and when the emperor abdicated, it seemed evident that a war of religion could not be averted. This war was destined to break up Belgian unity, which had only just been entirely achieved. This might have been averted if Belgium had been allowed to cope with the Reformation crisis in all independence, according to the social conditions of the time, like other European States. A truly national prince and Government would, no doubt, have succeeded in keeping the country together, but Belgium no longer enjoyed the advantage of being ruled by national princes. Hapsburgian dynastic principles had conquered Burgundian traditions. Orders no longer emanated from Brussels but from Madrid, so that to the obstacles created by religious differences and class hatred was added the bitter conflict between patriots and foreign rulers.