The century of Columbus

by James J. Walsh

Nearly a century ago Cobbett, in his "History of the English Reformation," had found it almost impossible to select words quite strong enough to express his feeling with regard to the people who brought about the English reformation. His expressions were considered at that time as grossly exaggerated and the result of his tendency to use strong language. In our time they still remain radical in mode, but most writers now agree as to the essential truth of the facts on which they are based. When it is recalled that millions of people have for centuries thought of the Reformation as one of the greatest blessings to mankind and the source of nearly every good that we have in the modern time, it is indeed startling to read Cobbett's words, yet Cobbett had made a special study of his subject, he was a great practical-minded investigator, who knew his historical sources well, who had gone directly to them and who had been shocked by the difference between ordinary impressions as fostered for religious and political purposes by historians and the realities that he found. No wonder that he burst forth in his strong way:

"The Reformation, as it is called, was (in England) engendered in beastly lust, brought forth in hypocrisy and [{258}] perfidy, and cherished and fed by plunder, devastation and rivers of innocent English and Irish blood."

Macaulay described the character of those who were most responsible for the change of religion, the so-called reformation in England, in words that are passing strange, considering that he himself would never think of submitting to "the yoke of Rome" and seems even to have felt that a great good had been accomplished, though by such vile means. He says, in his "Essay on Hallam's Constitutional History," that the reformers were:

"A king whose character may be described best by saying that he was despotism itself personified; unprincipled ministers; a rapacious aristocracy; a servile parliament. Such were the instruments by which England was delivered from the yoke of Rome. The work which had been begun by Henry, the murderer of his wives, was continued by Somerset, the murderer of his brother, and completed by Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest."

Some of the most unworthy motives and adjuvants were mixed up in the reform movement. Indeed, it is possible to collect from non-Catholic sources more bitter excoriations of the men who made the Reformation possible than with regard to almost any group of men who accomplished any other purpose in history. Frederic Harrison, for instance, said: "It is not to be denied that the origin of the (English) Establishment is mixed up with plunder, jobbery and intrigue, that stands out even in the tortuous annals of the sixteenth century; that the annals run black with red, along some of the blackest and reddest pages of royal tyranny and government corruption."

Andrew Lang quotes Professor F. York Powell in a description of how the reformation in Scotland was brought about in language that is, if possible, stronger than this of Frederic Harrison: "The whole story of Scottish Reformation, hatched in purchased treason and outrageous intolerance, carried on in open rebellion and ruthless persecution, justified only in its indirect results, is perhaps as sordid and disgusting a story as the annals of any European country can show."

Almost needless to say, though the Reformation was a [{259}] religious movement and therefore might be expected to be intimately associated with personal holiness on the part of its leaders, probably no one would think for a moment of suggesting the title of saint for any of those whose names are most prominent in the movement. To John Wesley, who came two centuries and a half later, the name saint might readily be attributed. He was one of those kindly characters, thoughtful for others, thoughtless of himself, thoughtful especially of the poor, whose personal winningness meant much for his cause. The reformers of the sixteenth century, however, were egoistic leaders of men, with the self-consciousness of a great purpose and determination to put that through regardless of the suffering of others involved in it. There was little that was sympathetic about them, though all of them had certain compelling qualities of mind but not of heart which won men to them. Saintliness of character, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, would scarcely be thought of even distantly in connection with them. All of them were fighters, and if others suffered in the conflict they cared little, for they felt that they were in the right and must do the work of the Lord cost what it might. It is no wonder that in our own time Professor Briggs of the Union Theological Seminary, New York, whose own religious experience must have been so illuminating for him, reviewing the Reformation period, has suggested that there were other and more saintly reformers alive at this time whose influence unfortunately was not strong enough to turn the tide of revolution once it had begun.

In an article in the Independent (New York) entitled "How May We Become More Truly Catholic," Professor Briggs said:

"There were other and in some respects greater reformers in the sixteenth century than the more popular heroes Luther, Zwingli and Calvin. Sir Thomas More, the greatest jurist of his time, Lord Chancellor of England, a chief leader of reform before Cranmer, resigned his exalted position and went to the block rather than recognize the supremacy of the King in ecclesiastical affairs; a true knight, a martyr to the separation of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Erasmus, [{260}] the greatest scholar of his age, regarded by many as the real father of the Reformation, the teacher of the Swiss reformers, was unwilling to submerge learning and morals in an ocean of human blood. He urged reformation, not revolution. He has been crucified for centuries in popular Protestant opinion as a political time-server, but undoubtedly he was the most comprehensive reformer of them all.
"John von Staupitz, doctor of theology, and Vicar-General of the German Augustinians, the teacher of Luther and his counsellor in the early stages of his reform, a man without a stain and above reproach, a Saint in the common estimation of Protestant and Catholic alike, the best exponent of the piety of his age, was an Apostle of Holy Love and good works, which he would not sacrifice in the interests of the Protestant dogma of justification by faith only. These three immortals who did not separate themselves from the Roman Catholic Church, who remained in the Church to patiently carry on the work of reform therein--these three were the irenic spirits, the heroic representatives of all that was truly Catholic, the beacons of the greater reformation that was impending."