In Scotland, though there the priesthood had fewer friends than almost anywhere else, the act of Reformation was mainly one of pure and simple plunder of Church property by the needy nobility, in conscious imitation of the policy of Henry VIII, at a time when the throne was vacant; and there too Protestant doctrine was only gradually established by the new race of preachers, trained in the school of Calvin. In Ireland, on the other hand, Protestantism became identified with the cause of the oppressor, just as for England Romanism was the cause of the enemy-in-chief. “Race” and “national character,” whatever they may be understood to mean, had nothing whatever to do with the course of events, and doctrinal enlightenment had just as little.[144] In the words of a distinguished clerical historian: “No truth is more certain than this, that the real motives of religious action do not work on men in masses; and that the enthusiasm which creates Crusaders, Inquisitors, Hussites, Puritans, is not the result of conviction, but of passion provoked by oppression or resistance, maintained by self-will, or stimulated by the mere desire of victory.”[145] To this it need only be added that the desire of gain is also a factor, and that accordingly the anti-papal movement succeeded where the balance of political forces could be turned against the clerical interest, and failed where the latter predominated.
[1] Who, however, was no rationalist, but an orientalizing mystic. Cp. Carriere, Die philos. Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit, 1846, pp. 36–38. [↑]
[2] Cp. Ranke, Hist. of the Ref. in Germany, bk. ii, ch. i (Eng. tr. Routledge’s 1-vol. ed. 1905, p. 129). The point is fairly put by Audin in the introduction to his Histoire de Luther. Compare Green: “The awakening of a rational Christianity, whether in England or in the Teutonic world at large, begins with the Florentine studies of Sir John Colet” (Short Hist. ch. vi, § iv). Colet, however, was strictly orthodox. Ulrich von Hutten spent five of the formative years of his life in Italy. [↑]
[3] Hamilton, Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, 1852, p. 205. [↑]
[4] As to the general resentment of the money drain cp. Strauss, Gespräche von Ulrich von Hutten, 1860, Vorrede, p. xiv, and the dialogues, pp. 159. 363. Cp. Ranke, bk. ii, ch. i (Eng. tr. as cited, pp. 123–26). [↑]
[5] See Ullmann, Reformers before the Reformation, passim. Even the Peasants’ Rising was adumbrated in the movement of Hans Böheim of Nikleshausen (fl. 1476), whose doctrine was both democratic and anti-clerical. (Work cited, ii, 380–81; cp. Bezold, Gesch. der deutschen Reform. 1890, ch. vii.) [↑]
[6] See Guicciardini’s analysis of the parties, cited by E. Armstrong in the “Cambridge Modern History,” vol. i, The Renaissance, p. 170. [↑]
[7] Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Eng. tr. pp. 476–77. [↑]
[8] See the sympathetic analysis of the book by Villari, Life of Savonarola, Eng. tr. pp. 582–94, where it is much overrated. [↑]