The Reformation
The Reformation began in Germany with the posting of the 95 These
by Martin Luther in 1517. It spread throughout Germany in the following
decades. At the same time, Ulrich Zwingli and later John Calvin led another
form of Reformation based in Switzerland but then spreading to France,
Holland, England and Germany. Calvinism was the predominant form of what
is usually called Reformed Protestantism. We will be reading extensive
selections from Luther and Calvin that we will discuss in class.
England also saw a Reformation in the Sixteenth Century. By contrast
with the Continental Reformations in which secular governments only played
a role after an initial phase of popular support, the Royal Government
was the driving force behind the early Reformation in England. Occasioned
by Henry VIII's desire to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, who had
failed to provide him with a male heir, and to marry Anne Boleyn, who was
already pregnant (with a girl as matters turned out), Henry broke with
Rome when the Pope refused his request. Through the Act of Supremacy (1534),
the King, with the approval of Parliament, assumed the supreme headship
of the now independent national church of England, the Anglican Church.
Although Henry had broken with Rome, he had not rejected Catholic doctrine
or practice. His heirs would do that. However, Henry did feel free to plunder
the Church to pay for his wars and other expenses. The most lucrative spoil
were the monasteries, which he suppressed after royal commissioners "discovered"
grave abuses.
Henry's three children succeeded him in turn, each bringing abrupt
changes in religion. Under the young Edward VI protestant doctrine and
practice were legally imposed upon the national church. With the early
death of Edward and the Accession of Queen Mary, Catholicism was reestablished.
The Queen is known as "Bloody Mary" to English History because of the many
executions of Protestants during her reign. Her successor, Queen Elizabeth
I, reinstated Protestantism which remains the State religion to the present.
Elizabeth's main concern was to maintain peace and harmony in her realm,
something which religious dissent threatened. Facing both recalcitrant
Catholics and unsatisfied Protestants, she sought to control unauthorized
preaching. She and Parliament also imposed a uniform liturgy upon all the
churches in England.
Alongside of the officially sponsored confessions ["confession" is
the term historians use to distinguish between Lutherans, Calvinists, Catholics
etc. who "confessed" different forms of Christianity] there arose a more
Radical Reform movement. The most important branch of that tradition was
composed of the Anabaptists, the ancestors of the modern Mennonites and
Southern Baptists. They are called Anabaptists because they required adult
believers Baptism and rejected infant Baptism. Since all the earlier Anabaptists
had been baptized as infants, this entailed rebaptism. Unfortunately it
had been a capital offense to rebaptize since the fifth century. More than
50,000 Anabaptists were executed in Germany in the Sixteenth Century. Though
the Anabaptists never possessed a centralized governance nor universally
accepted exposition of doctrine, the Schleitheim Confession (1524) was
accepted by most Anabaptists, both in the Reformation and today.
The Catholic Church was slow to respond to the Protestant challenge.
All of Scandinavia, most of Germany, Austria, Holland and Poland, and large
parts of France all went Protestant before Rome was able to mount a counter-offensive:
the Counter-Reformation. An important part of that response was provided
by the Council of Trent (1545-1563), which passed reform decrees and formulated
the doctrinal position of the Catholic Church over against the new theology
of the Protestant Reformers. For the first time there was a coherent body
of authoritative teachings on salvation, scripture, the Church, the sacraments
etc., for both the clergy and the faithful. These dogmas were effectively
transmitted to the mass of the clergy and lay population through catechisms,
popular literature, preaching and school courses. To get a sense of what
constituted Catholic belief from 16th Century to the 1960's read the Tridentine
Creed 1564.
Neither the Catholic Church nor the new Protestant Churches relied
exclusively on the positive efforts to spread the Word. They also sought
to censor or exclude dissenting positions. The Council of Trent commissioned
the Roman Inquisition to publish a list of books which Catholics were forbidden
to own, possess or read. The Index of Prohibited Books remained in effect,
constantly updated, until the 1970s.
Along with Trent, the Index, and the Inquisition, there were new religious
orders like Jesuits produced a grassroots movement for reform. Like the
Reformation, the Counter-Reformation enjoyed wide popular support. When
taken together all these factors made the Catholic response to the Reformation
quite powerful. When one adds to that the use of the secular state to enforce
and defend the "true" religions, one has a recipe for disaster. Beginning
with the Schmalkaldic War in Germany in 1545-6 and continuing through the
30 Years War in Germany again (1618-48) Europe was rocked by vicious religious
wars. Perhaps the most destructive were the French Wars of Religion (1563-98).
Emblematic of the cruelty of religious conflict in the Age of Reformation
was the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (1572). During a period of peace
between bouts of open warfare, an attempt was made to bring a more permanent
settlement by marrying a leader of the Protestant party (Henri of Navarre,
later Henri IV) to the sister of the French King. With the Protestant leadership
in Paris under safe conduct guarantees, the leaders of the Catholic party
led by the Duke Guise plotted their destruction, and in particular the
death of the Admiral de Coligny. What started as a political coup ended
up as a popular pogrom resulting in the deaths of untold thousands of Protestants
in Paris and throughout France. As we see in our own day, there are no
more vicious conflicts than those fueled by religious differences.