MATTEO CIVITALE, FAITH (BARGELLO)
CHAPTER V
THE REFORMERS
During the last quarter of Columbus' Century, Europe was very seriously disturbed and the minds of men very much occupied with the movement which has come to be called in English-speaking countries at least the "reformation," though many historians now prefer to speak of it as the religious revolt in Germany during the sixteenth century. There is no doubt that this movement was due to the unrest--political, social and religious--which came over men at this time. The conquests in scholarship through the study of the Greek and Latin classics had awakened men's minds. The great achievements in art and architecture had still further aroused them to a sense of their own power. The introduction of Greek ideas into the modern world had brought about great developments in science. Columbus, largely influenced by classical studies, had initiated a movement that revolutionized men's thinking with regard to the earth on which they live. Copernicus, taught by men who were making commentaries on Ptolemy, saw farther than his masters and gave the world a new universe at this time. Physical science was developing and biological science, especially in all that relates to anatomy and physiology, was receiving a marvellous impetus. No wonder men felt ready for change.
Above all, a complete change in the basis of education influenced men deeply. For centuries education had occupied itself with science, and particularly the ethical sciences. Philosophy in its various aspects constituted the curriculum of the old universities. Metaphysics, logic, rhetoric, grammar, the ethical philosophies or, as we would say, sciences of the world, of thought, of speech, and of political and moral science, though of course also mathematics, music and astronomy, had been the subjects of special attention. Now men [{244}] were trained by means of the classics, the New Learning, as it was called. Quite naturally they came to know so much more about these than their fathers had ever had the opportunity to learn and, above all, they had come to think these so much more important than anything that had been taught their fathers, that the rising generation were quite sure that they knew ever so much more than preceding generations had known. A corresponding state of mind developed in our own time when, as a consequence of the gradual replacement of the classics in university curricula by science, another generation arose educated very differently from its forefathers. What has come to be called modernism, which may be best defined as the feeling that we in the modern time know so much more than our forefathers did that we can scarcely be expected to accept complacently the philosophy and religion that satisfied them, is really an intellectual movement very similar to that which can be noted nearly everywhere during Columbus' Century.
The picture of it as drawn by Janssen, in his "History of the German People" (Vol. III, p. 17), can scarcely fail to attract attention, because of its anticipation of what are usually considered to be quite modern ideas. There was the same lack of respect for the older time, the same feeling that until their precious time men really did not know enough to be able to take any serious thought about the Church and Christianity, and the same tendency to make fun of practices of the older time simply because of failure to understand the spirit behind them. The passage is all the more interesting when it is recalled that nearly every one of the men who thus in his younger years was so sure of the failure of the Church in its mission came back in later life and recognized that without Christian unity, and even the dogmatism which earlier he had so contemned, there could be no real church. Janssen said:
"Erasmus did, however, seriously propose a revision of the doctrines laid down by the early Church. He was inclined to look upon the transactions, the controversies, and the doctrinal decisions of the christological period as the first step in the continuous deterioration of the Church. The Church [{245}] had since then, he considered, departed from her 'ancient evangelical simplicity'; theology had become subservient to a casuistical philosophy, which in its turn had degenerated into the scholastic methods by which the actual ruin of Christian doctrine and Christian life had been brought about. During the whole of his literary career he waged war against this barren scholasticism with an acrimony that had no parallel, and its representatives were a butt for his ridicule and contempt. Ever since the domination of this scholasticism had set in, the whole Western world, he declared, had been subject to a spirit of Judaism and Pharisaism which had crushed the true life of Christianity and theology and perverted it to mere monastic sanctity and empty ceremonialism.
"The contempt for the Middle Ages as for a period of darkness and spiritual bondage, of sophistry in learning, and mere outwardness in life and conduct, originated with Erasmus and his school, and was transmitted by them to the later so-called reformers. Thanks to the high esteem in which Erasmus was held for his culture and scholarship, his ironical and calumnious writings against the mediaeval culture, and against the influence of the Church and the traditions of Christian schools, passed for a long time unchallenged."
No wonder that a great many people felt that the religion and philosophy of life that had been quite good enough for their forefathers was not good enough for them, because they thought that they were so far above their forbears in all intellectual attainments. As a consequence, a great religious revolution that has disturbed Western Christianity ever since took place. Writers have viewed it from many and varying standpoints and have agreed to differ about its significance. The place accorded this revolutionary movement in history depends entirely on the writer about it. For some historians it was a great movement in human freedom and the origin of practically all the blessings of modern civilization. For others it was mainly a political reaction brought about by ambitious monarchs tempted by the idea of ruling Church as well as State and, above all, of enriching themselves by the confiscation of Church property. These two contradictory views are gradually being brought into some harmony. It has taken [{246}] all the power of modern scientific and critical history, with the consultation of original and contemporary documents and the critical appreciation of these, to bring us a little nearer the truth. We are not yet in a position to see this clearly. But we are much nearer than ever before, and the future is most promising.
In the meantime, the only way that the reform movement can be treated concretely and objectively in its place in Columbus' Century is to consider it, as we have every other important phase of the period's activity, through the lives of the men who are the acknowledged leaders and prime movers in it. There are three who, though utterly out of sympathy with each other, are more responsible for the division of Western Christianity than any others. These are Luther in Germany, Calvin in France and Switzerland, and through Knox in Scotland, and finally Henry VIII in England. Undoubtedly all three of these men were of great force of character, possessed of a personality that enabled them to dominate others. Luther and Calvin were besides the masters of a vigorous style in the vernacular when that mode of expression was rare enough to make them a power over the masses of the people in their respective countries. Scholars had always used Latin for learned discussions of religious subjects up to this time, but now these were brought into the forum of popular debate through the use of the vernacular. Above all, every man was told that all he needed to do was read the Scriptures, interpret them for himself and make out his own religion without the necessity for submitting to any authority. Hallam declares that "it cannot be denied that the reform was brought about by stimulating the most ignorant to reject the authority of their Church," though he adds in comment that "it instantly withdrew this liberty of judgment and devoted all who presumed to swerve from the line drawn by law to virulent obloquy and sometimes to bonds and death."
Lord Acton once declared that the most difficult problem in historical writing would be to have a confirmed Catholic and a confirmed Protestant agree in the writing of the lives of the reformers, and especially of Luther. Very many lives of the three men we have mentioned have been written, and Lord [{247}] Acton's suggestion might well be repeated with regard to nearly all of them. In recent years, however, owing to the publication of contemporary documents consequent upon the opening of archives and the scientific development of history, it has been possible to get actual facts rather than opinions with regard to them and we are now probably in a better position to judge them and the movement with which their names and activities are so intimately connected than any generation since their time. As the editors of the "Cambridge Modern History" declared in their preface, "the long conspiracy against the revelation of truth has gradually given way." "In view of changes and of gains such as these (the printing of archives), it has become impossible for the historical writer of the present age to trust without reserve even to the most respected secondary authorities. While we cannot obtain ultimate history in this generation, conventional history can be discarded and the point can be shown that has been reached on the road from one to the other." These expressions are more true with regard to the history of the Reformation and the reformers than any other period and men.