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Our tutors never stop bawling into our ears, as though they were
pouring water into a funnel; and our task is only to repeat what has been told
us. I should like the tutor to correct this practice, and right from the
start, according to the capacity of the mind he has in hand, to begin putting
it through its paces, making it tastes things, choose them, and discern them
by itself; sometimes clearing the way for him, sometimes letting him clear
his own way. I don't want him to think and talk alone,
I want him to listen to his pupil speaking in his turn. Socrates, and later Arcesilaus, first had their disciples speak, and then
they spoke to them. The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle
to those who want to learn [Cicero].
Montaigne, Of
the education of children (1579)
By the beginning of the 16th century, the medieval Church and all that it represented
entered a period of profound crisis. By this time, the Church was nearly
fifteen centuries old. Throughout its history the Church always had to
confront problems both within its organization and from without. But by 1500,
these problems rose to the surface and the Church would shake at its very
foundation.
Political philosophers like Niccolo
Machiavelli (1469-1527) had already rejected the medieval idea that popes
were superior to kings’ .As a citizen of Renaissance Florence, Machiavelli
was a Christian, yet he distrusted and disliked the clergy. He saw no need to
reform the Church and Christianity because his secular theory of the state
was based on the notion that religion and faith was nothing more than the
cement which held society together. He would certainly have agreed with Karl
Marx who, more than three centuries later, would argue that:
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of
real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of
the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of
soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. [Contribution to a
Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 1844]
A second problem of the period concerned the merchants, bankers and
artisans of Europe's largest cities and towns who
resented the fact that local bishops of the Church controlled all of their
commercial and economic activities. Although capitalism as a form of economic
organization had not yet infiltrated Europe, these
producers and money-makers knew that more money and power was theirs if only
their lives were less regulated by the Church. Again, I think what we are
witnessing here is the development of a secular concept of work and
acquisition. Yet another problem facing the Church was that in the 16th
century there were numerous reformers who were openly criticizing the Church
for its numerous offenses. Priests married and then took mistresses, holy
offices were bought and sold for the highest price, incompetence among the
clergy became the rule, the congregation of more and more people in towns and
cities perhaps exposed the amorality and immorality of the clergy. In a word,
the problem was corruption.
Meanwhile, peasants in England,
Italy, France,
Germany and
elsewhere were also on the move. They began to revolt openly against both the
clergy and the aristocracy. Their grievances were the most complicated of all
-- their revolt was against political, economic, social and religious
authority. And despite the Inquisition,
the work of the Dominicans and Franciscans, and even a holy crusade, heretics
and heresies continue to grow more numerous and more vocal.
Along comes Martin
Luther (1483-1546), the son of a self-made copper miner from Saxony .As a
Renaissance scholar, humanist, Augustinian monk and Doctor of Philosophy,
Luther led an open attack on the issue of the sale of indulgences. While
struggling with his own sense of self-doubt, Luther could not accept that
salvation could be won by "good works" alone. Salvation for Luther
could be won, however, by one's personal relationship with God, through faith
("the just shall live by faith alone"). This was an important
development in the history of Christianity and the Church. The Christian had,
up to 1517, always found his or her faith by obeying the Church. Good works
were the only path to salvation -- in other words, there was nothing
specifically individual about this faith. With Luther, on the other hand,
faith was internalized -- it was a matter of heart and conscience. It was
"inner-directed," to borrow an expression from the American
sociologist David Reisman.
Luther's ideas appealed to those people who resented the worldliness,
arrogance, incompetence, immorality, cynicism and corruption of the clergy.
And, his message fell on ready ears -- in other words, the German people were
ready to listen to a man like Luther since he seemed to speak their language.
These people resented the wealth of the Church. The nobility resented the
land held by the Church, all free of taxes. And the peasants saw Luther as a
champion of social reform. Luther's confrontation with the Church, all
prompted by the Ninety-Five Theses, led to a violent conflict between
Catholic and Protestant. Such a conflict was not merely one of words but of
men fighting men. Outside Germany
and Scandinavia, the two places where Luther's ideas
had their greatest impact, the Reformation was guided by the troubled
conscience of John
Calvin (1509-1564). Unlike Luther, Calvin stressed man's legal
relationship with God. God's laws must be obeyed without question. For the Calvinist,
moral righteousness must be pursued, lusts must be restrained and controlled,
and social life and morality must be carefully regulated. Such an ethic of
self-control was predicated on the notion that we should all work hard at our
calling. By living such a life, one could be saved. However, for Calvin, 99
out of 100 men are damned. This is God's will and he must be obeyed.
Like Lutheranism, Calvinism had its greatest influence in northern Europe.
Geneva became a Calvinist
stronghold. In France,
the French Calvinists or Huguenots were numerous but strong Catholic
interests made sure that Catholicism would triumph. Surprisingly, there were
numerous Protestant sects in Italy
but as to be expected, Catholicism remained predominant. And in England,
a country which seemed at times unsure of its faith, the Reformation came
more as a result of political issues than religious or theological.
As we've seen, the medieval Church had to respond to the challenge of
Luther and Calvin and this challenge was met by the Catholic Reformation .The
Jesuits tried to combat Protestant heresy with education, preaching and
emotional appeal. The Inquisition enlarged its activities and heretical books
were confiscated, burned, and catalogued by the Index Forbidden
Books, which was adopted at the Fifth Lateran Council of
1515 and confirmed by the Council
of Trent in 1546. The Index was suppressed in 1966.
In the end, the Reformation smashed the medieval synthesis and destroyed
the unity of the Christian matrix. Any hope for religious unity was now
hopelessly impossible, as the events of the late 16th and 17th centuries will
demonstrate. The Church was shattered, witchcraft flourished, and
Protestantism itself fragmented into numerous sects. Meanwhile, the power of
monarchs increased and, according to Max Weber, the
Reformation justified the "spirit of capitalism. By 1560, a Protestant
Reformation had clearly been made, a reformation that was perhaps inevitable.
As an institution, the Church was controlled by men. As such, it was subject,
like any other institution, to greed, arrogance, cynicism and power. It was,
in the end, subject to human nature itself.
Between 1560 and 1715, Europe witnessed only thirty
years of international peace. The greatest "international" conflict
of the period was the Thirty Years' War (1618-164), a war that had its
origins in the complicated religious and political environment of the period.
In 1555, the Peace
of Augsburg brought an end to religious wars in Central Europe
by dividing the numerous German states between Catholic and Lutheran
authority. Although each prince had the right to determine the religion of
his subjects, it happened that Lutheranism continued
to spread into catholic-held lands. The spread of Calvinism not recognized at
Augsburg, also increased
tensions. By 1609, the Holy Roman Empire had
fragmented into two hostile alliances -- the Protestant Union and the
Catholic League.
The Thirty Years' War began in Bohemia,
an area in which Germans and Czechs, and Lutherans, Calvinists and Catholics
lived in relative peace. The peace was shattered when Ferdinand II
(1578-1637) became the king of Bohemia
in 1617. Ferdinand was a zealous Catholic and the Bohemian Protestants feared
he would recatholicize Bohemia.
In May 1618, the imperial governors were thrown from the windows of Prague
Castle. Ferdinand was deposed and
the crown was offered to Frederick V (1596-1632, also known as the Winter
King) of the Palatinate. This act extended the war
from Bohemia to the Holy
Roman Empire itself. The Protestant Union under Frederick
now faced the Catholic League behind Ferdinand, who was now emperor. The
Bohemian phase of the Thirty Years' War ended at the battle of the White
Mountain in November 1620. With Bohemia
in ruins, Ferdinand used the Jesuits to recatholicize
the territory. The Czech nobility lost everything, the economy lay in ruins
and half the population had been killed by war or plague.
The Battle of the White
Mountain and the ultimate collapse of Bohemian Protestantism was
a clear victory for Catholicism. With the Spanish Hapsburgs intervening in
the Protestant states of north Germany
and numerous Catholic League victories, Protestantism faced a grave
challenge. The king of Demark joined the Protestants in 1625 but he was more
interested in territory and within a year his forces had been repelled by the
military brilliance of Albrecht
von Wallenstein (1583-1634), and his army of
over 100,000 mercenaries. Although Wallenstein
tried to build a military power capable of wiping out Protestantism, it soon
became clear that his goals were of a more personal nature. Religion seemed
to take a back seat as the Thirty Years' War became a war between warring
states. In 1629, Denmark
withdrew from the war leaving Wallenstein and his
army in charge. Ferdinand issued the Edict of
Restitution that restored to Catholics all land confiscated by the
Protestants since 1552.
In 1630, the "Lion of the North," Gustavus Adolphus
(1594-1632) entered the war in order to protect Sweden's
interests in the Baltic which Wallenstein had
threatened. His greater aim was a federation of German Protestant states
under his authority. Although Wallenstein's armies
sacked the city of Magdeburg (May
1631), Gustavus won a crucial victory several
months later at Breitenfeld in Saxony
and marched to the Rhine. Meanwhile, Wallenstein was recalled by Ferdinand at the request of
the Catholic League. Gustavus defeated Wallenstein at Lützen but was
killed in the battle. Without the leadership of Gustavus, Sweden
could no longer maintain its presence in Germany.
It was at this time that France
entered the war. Cardinal
Richelieu (1585-1642) had been following the events of the Thirty Years'
War for some time. Aiming to crush the Austrian and Spanish Hapsburgs,
Richelieu accepted any allies regardless of their religion. In 1635, he
declared war on Spain
and formed an alliance with Sweden
and Germany.
The war was waged for another thirteen years but it was not until 1643 at the
battle of Rocroi in the Netherlands
that the Spanish Hapsburgs were finally defeated by France and its allies.
Peace negotiations were carried out between 1644 and 1648 at the Congress
of Westphalia. The Treaty
of Westphalia, signed October
24, 1648, allowed the fragmentation of the Holy Roman
Empire into more than three hundred sovereign states. Switzerland
and the Dutch Netherlands became independent states and France
acquired the rights to Alsace. Brandenburg
and Bavaria increased their
territory. In terms of religion, the Treaty confirmed the Peace of Augsburg
and added Calvinism to Lutheranism and Catholicism as a recognized faith. The
Thirty Years' War was a terrifying war whose destruction was only matched by
the First and Second World Wars. The land was destroyed and cattle
slaughtered -- all of which was mad worse by a revisitation
of the plague. The Holy Roman Empire lost one quarter of its inhabitants and
its fragmentation into hundreds of small states delayed economic recovery as
well as any hope for a unified Germany.
Between 1562 and 1598, there were numerous civil wars and outbreaks of
violence that were clearly motivated by religious differences. For example,
although Protestantism was illegal in France,
the Calvinist minority grew in numbers and organization. By the 1530s, it had
attracted the nobility, urban townspeople and women. By 1559, the French
Calvinists or Huguenots organized a  militant
campaign against Henry II (1519-1559) and the Guise (a powerful Catholic
family with ties to the Spanish crown). A Huguenot appeal for more liberal
treatment was ignored and in 1562, a civil conflict broke out between
Protestants and Catholics. An attempt at conciliation was made in 1572 -- the
marriage of the nominal head of French Protestantism, Henry of Navarre
(1553-1610), to Margaret
of Valois (1553-1615), a Catholic member of the
royal family. But this failed when Catherine de' Medici
(1519-1589) urged the Catholics to murder the Protestant wedding guests. Over
the next several days a popular protest against all Protestants left 3000
dead in the streets of Paris. The
massacres continued from late August into October reaching the provinces of Rouen,
Lyons, Bourges, Orleans,
and Bordeaux. It has been estimated
that 70,000 Protestants were killed that year. The SAINT BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY
MASSACRE forced the pope to respond with a Mass in which he celebrated a
Catholic victory, thus insuring the continued hatred between Catholic and
Protestant.
Henry of Navarre eventually became the king of France
as Henry IV (1589-1610), but only after his conversion to Catholicism. In
1598, he issued the EDICT OF NANTES which granted a small degree of religious
toleration to the French people (the first such document of its kind). His
successors in the 17th century consistently weakened the Edict until the REVOCATION
of the Edict was made official by Louis XIV on October 22, 1685.
In the 1560s, the Dutch revolted against Philip II (1527-1598, r.
1556-1598) of Spain,
the greatest power in 16th century Europe. Philip
understood the commercial greatness of the Dutch, but the influence of
Lutherans, Anabaptists and Calvinists in the Netherlands
led to a social revolt in which Philip was clearly the loser. The Protestants
were driven into rebellion which forced the Spanish government to maintain an
army by raising taxes in loyal provinces. By 1575, the Protestants were
united under William of
Orange (1533-1584) against the tyranny of Philip. Meanwhile, the Scottish
rebelled against Mary Queen of Scots
(1542-1587), a Catholic who was supported by Spain.
And then in 1588, the Spanish attempted an armed naval assault upon the
English. The Spanish
Armada was a failure for the Spanish government and spelled the ultimate
decline of Spain
as a dominant power on the Continent. The Thirty Years' War (see above) was
fought first in Bohemia over
the issue of religious differences but soon involved every European nation.
And during the English Civil War of 1640-1660, the English beheaded their
king in 1649. All of these conflicts were inspired by religious differences
owing to the Reformation, and all of these conflicts had political, economic
and social ramifications.
In general, the period between 1560 and 1715 is an interesting one. The
French became the dominant power on the Continent, taking over the position
held by Spain
since the end of the 16th century. With a monarch like Louis XIV, royal
absolutism became perfected. Louis was both father and king to the French
people. He ruled by divine right and as such, he made the laws and was above
the laws.
The period can also be defined by mercantilism, an
economic system based on the notion that the earth contained a fixed quantity
of gold and silver. Between 1521 and 1660, the Spanish imported 18,000 tons
of silver from Mexico
and Peru.
This figure represented three times the supply of silver in Europe
before 1520. At the same time, the gold reserves increased by twenty per
cent. More than half of what Spain
imported flooded Europe in the forty years between
1580 and 1620 alone. Needless to say, European merchants, bankers,
manufacturers, artisans and monarchs went money-mad. And all this bullion --
that is, gold and silver -- made it easy for the expansion of a capitalist
economy in the early modern period. A new class of men appeared -- the
bourgeoisie, the "men of the towns." These are men who made money
by saving and investing in the future. These men, especially the Dutch and
the English, would, in the 18th century, provide the commercial spirit,
technology and entrepreneurial initiative to set in motion an Industrial
Revolution which would change the landscape of Europe
and the world during the 19th century.
The 16th and 17th centuries are also remarkable for the exploration of the
New World. The goal was to find the Northwest
Passage to Cathay (China).
In 1534, the French sent Jacques
Cartier (c.1491-1557) to the New World -- he
traveled up the Saint Lawrence River as far as Montreal.
In 1682, René-Robert-Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle
(1643-1687) had journeyed down the Mississippi
River to the Gulf of Mexico. The English
were busy as well. In 1585, the English established a settlement on Roanoke
Island. There followed settlements at Jamestown (1607), and Plimoth Colony
(1620). In March 1630, John Winthrop
(1588-1649) and 900 Puritans founded the Massachusetts
Bay Colony. Other colonies followed in rapid succession: Maryland
(1634), Connecticut
(1638), New
Hampshire (1677) and Pennsylvania
(1681). Harvard College
was founded in 1636.
No account of this period of 150 years would be complete without mention
of the Scientific Revolution. The world of science, mathematics and
astronomy, the age produced Nicolaus Copernicus,
Giordano Bruno, Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, Edmund Halley, and Isaac Newton, in
whose mind the wisdom of centuries of scientific thinking and endeavor seemed
to find its ultimate expression. In philosophy, we have René Descartes, John
Locke, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Baruch
Spinoza. The Scientific Revolution forever changed the way men thought about
the world and the cosmos. Nature was ultimately demystified (a process begun
more than 2000 years earlier) and was now the object of scientific study.
By 1660, there was also a lengthy tradition of witchcraft in European
history. The practice of witchcraft always lay under heavy suspicion but it
was also an integral part of everyday life in Europe.
There were basically two kinds of witchcraft. The white variety involved
healing and fortune-telling, while the black variety concerned the conjuring
of evil powers by a curse or by manipulating objects. The Church interpreted
witchcraft in its own way. Witches entered a bond with Satan in order to work
against God. Witches held secret meetings and had sexual relations with
Satan. By the 13th century, bishops and popes prosecuted witches for heresy,
which is not really that surprising since the 12th and 13th centuries
constituted the great age of heresy. I imagine the point is this -- witchcraft
became an issue because the Church made it so. The number and availability of
printed books helped feed the Church's hysteria that witchcraft was part of a
diabolical plot to overthrow God.
In 1486, there appeared the The Malleus Maleficarum
(The Witch Hammer) of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger.
Both men were Dominican friars who claimed to show that what witches did at
the request of Satan. Kramer and Sprenger tried
fifty people for witchcraft (all but two were women). By the 16th century,
the link between women and witchcraft was both unmistakable and complete. Men
could be accused of witchcraft, but in general, and no matter what country we
look at, accusations against women outnumber those of men three to one. As
many as 100,000 men and women were tried for witchcraft -- perhaps 10,000
were hanged or burned at the stake. In southwest Germany
for the period 1561-1670, there were 3300 executions. In Switzerland
(1470-1700), there were 9000 cases tried with 5400 executions. Why were women
more prone to be singled out as witches? It was commonly believed that women
were perceived to be the "weaker vessel," that is, they were weaker
individuals and more quick to give in to temptation, especially of a lustful
kind.
By 1700, the witchcraft craze died down in England,
the Netherlands
and in Spain.
There are perhaps two reasons why this might have happened. The Reformation
triggered an intellectual backlash that led some people to argue that there
was too much religious fanaticism or enthusiasm. The intellectual
developments of the 16th and 17th centuries produced an atmosphere which
implied that Human Reason was capable of understanding the world and man's
place in it. By the time of the 18th century Enlightenment, the goal was not
so much to do away with religion or faith, but to bring it into accordance
with reason. In other words, whatever could not stand the
test of reason ought to be abandoned. But there is perhaps a more
important reason why witchcraft became less popular. By 1700, the elite
groups of European society began to regard astrology, witchcraft and any
other form of magic, as the sole property of the common people. In other
words, the 17th century witnessed a division in culture and tradition. Whereas
in an earlier period, wealthy and poor shared similar beliefs, by 1700 two
distinct cultures had made their appearance -- one called high or elite, the
other low or popular.
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