The Vaudois had been nearly exterminated, in the old fashion; but the massacre served to proclaim and spread their doctrine, which rapidly gained ground among the skilled artisan class as well as among the nobles, the Swiss printing-presses doing it signal service. Persecution, as usual, kept pace with propaganda; and in 1557 Pope Paul IV, with the king’s approval, decreed that the Inquisition should be set up in France, where it had never yet been established. The legal “parliament” of Paris, jealous for its privileges, successfully resisted; but the Sorbonne and the Church carried on the work of heretic-burning, till at length the Huguenots were driven to arms (1562). Their name had probably come from that of the German-speaking Eidgenossen (“oath-fellows”) of Switzerland; but their doctrine was that of Calvin, who, driven from France (1533), was now long established at Geneva; and their tenacity showed the value of his close-knit dogmatism as a political inspiration. Catholic fanaticism and treachery on the one hand, and Huguenot intemperance on the other, brought about eight furious civil wars in the period 1562–94. The high-water mark of wickedness in that generation was the abominable Massacre of St. Bartholomew (1572), which followed on the third truce, and roused a new intensity of hatred. So evenly balanced were the forces that only after more than twenty years of further convulsions was the strife ended by the politic decision of the Protestant Henry of Navarre to turn Catholic and so win the crown (1594), on the score that “Paris was well worth a Mass.” He thus secured for his Protestant supporters a perfect toleration, which he confirmed by the Edict of Nantes (1597).
In Poland and Bohemia, where also Protestantism went far, on bases laid by the old movements of the Hussites, the process was at first facilitated, as in Germany, by the political conditions; and the economic motive was clearly potent. The subsequent collapse and excision of Protestantism in those countries, as in France, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, completes the proof that for the modern as for the ancient world political and economic forces are the determinants of a creed’s success or failure, culture movements being, as it were, the force of variation which they condition.
§ 3. Social and Political Results
On the side of daily life, it fared with Protestantism as with the early Church: where it was warred upon it was socially circumspect; where it had easier course it was lax. Thus we have the express admissions of Luther and of Calvin that under Protestantism they found less spirituality around them than there had been under Romanism; and there is abundant evidence that the first effect of the new regimen in Germany was to promote what Catholic and Protestant teachers alike professed to think the most serious form of immorality—sexual licence. In point of fact, Luther’s own doctrines of predestination and grace were a species of unbought indulgences, sure to injure good morals, even apart from the effect of a free use of the Bible as a working code. Some of Luther’s fellow-preachers justified and practised bigamy; and he and his colleagues not only counselled Henry VIII to marry a second time without divorcing his first queen, but gave their official consent, albeit reluctantly, to such a proceeding on the part of the Landgrave of Hesse. Among the common people, the new sense of freedom quickly gave a religious impulse to the lamentable Peasants’ War, and later to the so-called Anabaptist movement, which, though it contained elements of sincerity and virtue that are not always acknowledged, amounted in the main to a movement of moral and social chaos.
Luther, during whose time of hiding in the Wartburg (1521–22) the new ferment began at Wittemberg, came thither to denounce it as a work of Satan; but it was a sequel of his own action. The new leaders, Storch and Münzer and Carlstadt, had turned as he had advised to the Bible, and there they found texts for whatever they were minded to try, from image-smashing to the plunder and burning of monasteries and castles, and a general effort at social revolution. In all they did, they declared and believed they were moved by the Spirit of God. Luther had done this service to Catholicism, that his course led to the practical proof that the Bible, put in the hands of the multitude as the sufficient guide to conduct, wrought far more harm than good. Peasant revolts, indeed, had repeatedly occurred in Germany before his time, the gross tyranny of the nobles provoking them; but the religious frenzy of Münzer gave to the rising of 1524–25 in Swabia and Franconia, though the formulated demands of the insurgents were just and reasonable, a character of wildness and violence seldom seen before. Luther, accordingly, to save his own position, vehemently denounced the rising, and hounded on the nobles to its bloody suppression, a work in which they needed no urging. His protector, the wise Frederick of Saxony, then on his deathbed, gave no such evil counsel, but advised moderation, and admitted the guilt of his order towards the common people. The end was, however, that at least 100,000 peasants were slain; and the lot of those left was worse than before. The later Anabaptist movement, which set up a short-lived republic (1535) in the city of Münster in Westphalia, and spread to Holland, was too destitute of political sanity to gain any but visionaries, and was everywhere put down with immense bloodshed.
Yet vaster social and political evils were to come from the Reformation. In 1526, at the Diet of Spires, the emperor Charles V called for strong measures against Lutheranism, but was firmly resisted by the new Elector of Saxony and the other Lutheran princes, whereupon the emperor waived his claim, not caring to raise a war in the pope’s interest; and it was agreed that each head of a State in the empire should take his own way in regard to religion, his subjects being at his disposal. It was at this stage that the German Reformation began its most decisive progress. In the next few years the papal party, backed by the Emperor, twice carried decrees rescinding that of 1526. First came the decree of the second Diet of Spires (1529). Against this a formal protest was made to the emperor by the Lutheran princes and a number of the free imperial cities of Germany and Switzerland, whence arose first the title of “Protestants.” In 1530 the emperor convened a fresh Diet at Augsburg, to which the Lutherans were required to bring a formal Confession of Faith. This was framed on conciliatory lines; but the emperor issued a fresh coercive decree, whereupon the Germans formed the defensive League of Smalkald, from which the Swiss were excluded on their refusal to sign the Augsburg Confession. At this stage the invasion of Austria by the Turks delayed civil war, so that Luther was able to die in peace (1546). Then war began, and the Protestant League was quickly and thoroughly overthrown by the emperor. After a few years, however, the imperial tyranny, exercised through Spanish troops, forced a revolt of the Protestant princes, who with the help of France defeated Charles (1552). Now was effected the Peace of Augsburg (signed 1555), which left the princes as before to determine at their own will whether their States should be Lutheran or Catholic, and entitled them to keep what Church lands they had confiscated before 1552. No protection whatever was decreed for Calvinists, with whom the Lutherans had long been at daggers drawn, and who had not yet gained much ground in Germany.
Such a peace failed to settle the vital question as to whether in future the Protestant princes could make further confiscations, on the plea of the conversion of Catholic bishops and abbots or otherwise. As the century wore on, accordingly, the princes “secularized” many more Church estates; and as Protestantism was all the while losing moral ground in Germany through the adoption of Calvinism by several princes, and the bitter quarrels of the sects and sub-sects, the Catholics held the more strongly to their view of the Augsburg treaty, which was that all bishoprics and abbeys held directly from the emperor were to remain Catholic. Friction grew from decade to decade, and, civic wisdom making no progress on either side, a number of the Lutherans and Calvinists at length formed (1608) a militant union, led by the Calvinist prince Christian of Anhalt, to defend their gains; and the Catholics, led by Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, formed another. The Calvinists were the chief firebrands; and Christian was bent on aggression, to the end of upsetting the power of the Catholic House of Austria.
The train, however, was fired from Bohemia, where the Protestant nobles were at odds with their two successive kings, Matthias and Ferdinand, both of that house, and both bent on putting down Protestantism on the crown lands. The nobles began a revolt in a brutally lawless fashion; and when, in a winter pause of the war, Ferdinand was elected emperor (1619), they deposed him from the throne of Bohemia, and elected in his place the Calvinist prince Frederick, Elector Palatine (son-in-law of James I of England), who foolishly accepted. The capable Maximilian, with Tilly for general, took the field on behalf of Ferdinand; the Lutheran princes stood aloof from Frederick, who for his own part had offended his Lutheran subjects by slighting their rites; his few allies could not sustain him, and he was easily defeated and put to headlong flight. At once the leading Protestant nobles of Bohemia were put to death; their lands were confiscated; the clergy of the chief Protestant body, the Bohemian Brethren, dating back to the time of Huss, were expelled in mass; and Protestantism in Bohemia was soon practically at an end. Many of both the Lutheran and Calvinist churches, in their resentment at the slackness of the German Protestant League, voluntarily went over to Catholicism. At the same period the Protestant Prince of Transylvania had been in alliance with the Turks to attack Vienna; and the Protestant faith was thus discredited on another side.
Meantime, however, the Thirty Years’ War had begun. Frederick’s general, Mansfeld, held out for him in the Palatinate; the dissolution of the army of the Protestant Union supplied him with fresh soldiers, content to live by plunder; English volunteers and new German allies joined; and the struggle went from bad to worse. The failure or defeat of the first Protestant combatants brought others upon the scene; James of England appealed to Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and Christian IV of Denmark to join him in recovering the Palatinate for his son-in-law, and, unable to subsidize Gustavus as he required, made terms with Christian, who at once entered the war. Thereupon the emperor employed Wallenstein, and the Protestants were defeated and hard pressed, till the great Gustavus came to their aid. Under his masterly leadership they regained their ground, but could not decisively triumph. After his death at the battle of Lützen (1632) new developments took place, France entering the imbroglio by way of weakening her enemies Austria and Spain, the two pillars of the empire; and one period of war passed into another without stay or respite.