Response

Lecture 3: The Protestant

Reformation

Arise, O Lord, and judge Thy cause. A wild boar has

invaded Thy vineyard. Arise, O Peter, and consider the

case of the Holy Roman Church, the mother of all

churches, consecrated by thy blood. Arise, O Paul, who

by thy teaching and death hast illumined and dost

illumine the Church. Arise all ye saints, and the whole

universal Church, whose interpretations of Scripture has

been assailed. (papal bull of Pope Leo X, 1520)

It truly seems to me that if this fury of the Romanists

should continue, there is no remedy except that the

emperor, kings, and princes, girded with force and

arms, should resolve to attack this plague of all the

earth no longer with words but with the sword. . . . If we

punish thieves with the gallows, robbers with the sword,

and heretics with fire, why do we not all the more fling

ourselves with all our weapons upon these masters of

perdition, these cardinals, these popes, and all this sink

of Roman sodomy that ceaselessly corrupts the church

of God and wash our hands in their blood so that we

may free ourselves and all who belong to us from this

most dangerous fire? (Martin Luther, 1521)

Young people have lost that deference to their elders on

which the social order depends; they reject all

correction. Sexual offenses, rapes, adulteries, incests

and seductions are more common than ever before.

How monstrous that the world should have been

overthrown by such dense clouds for the last three or

four centuries, so that it could not see clearly how to

obey Christ's commandment to love our enemies.

Everything is in shameful confusion; everywhere I see

only cruelty, plots, frauds, violence, injustice,

shamelessness while the poor groan under the

oppression and the innocent are arrogantly and

outrageously harassed. God must be asleep. (John

Calvin)

The 16th century in Europe was a great century of

change on many fronts. The humanists and artists of

the Renaissance would help characterize the age as one

of individualism and self-creativity. Humanists such as

Petrarch helped restore the dignity of mankind while

men like Machiavelli injected humanism into politics.

When all is said and done, the Renaissance helped to

secularize European society. Man was now the creator of

his own destiny -- in a word, the Renaissance unleashed

the very powerful notion that man makes his own

history (on the Renaissance, see Lecture 1).

But the 16th century was more than just the story of the

Renaissance. The century witnessed the growth of royal

power, the appearance of centralized monarchies and

the discovery of new lands. During the great age of

exploration, massive quantities of gold and silver flood

Europe, an event which turned people, especially the

British, Dutch, Italians and Germans, money-mad. The

year 1543 can be said to have marked the origin of the

Scientific Revolution -- this was the year Copernicus

published his De Revolutionibus (see Lecture 10) and

set in motion a wave of scientific advance that would

culminate with Newton at the end of the 17th century.

In the meantime, urbanization continued unabated as

did the growth of universities. And lastly, the printing

press, perfected by the moveable type of Gutenberg in

1451, had created the ability to produce books cheaply

and in more quantities. And this was indeed important

since the Renaissance created a literate public eager for

whatever came off the presses.

Despite all of these things, and there are more things to

be considered, especially in the area of literature and

the arts, the greatest event of the 16th century --

indeed, the most revolutionary event -- was the

Protestant Reformation. It was the Reformation that

forced people to make a choice -- to be Catholic or

Protestant. This was an important choice, and a choice

had to be made. There was no real alternative. In the

context of the religious wars of the 16th and 17th

centuries, one could live or die based on such a choice.

We have to ask why something like the Reformation

took place when it did. In general, dissatisfaction with

the Church could be found at all levels of European

society. First, it can be said that many devout Christians

were finding the Church's growing emphasis on rituals

unhelpful in their quest for personal salvation. Indeed,

what we are witnessing is the shift from salvation of

whole groups of people, to something more personal

and individual. The sacraments had become forms of

ritualized behavior that no longer "spoke" to the people

of Europe. They had become devoid of meaning. And

since more people were congregating in towns and

cities, they could observe for themselves and more

important, discuss their concerns with others. Second,

the papacy had lost much of its spiritual influence over

its people because of the increasing tendency toward

secularization. In other words, popes and bishops were

acting more like kings and princes than they were the

spiritual guides of European men and women. And

again, because so many people were now crowding into

cities, the lavish homes and palaces of the Church were

noticed by more and more people from all walks of life.

The poor resented the wealth of the papacy and the

very rich were jealous of that wealth. At the same time,

the popes bought and sold high offices, and also sold

indulgences. All of this led to the increasing wealth of

the Church -- and this created new paths for abuses of

every sort. Finally, at the local level of the town and

village, the abuses continued. Some Church officials

held several offices at once and lived off their income.

The clergy had become lax, corrupt and immoral and

the people began to take notice that the sacraments

were shrouded in complacency and indifference.

Something was dreadfully wrong.

These abuses called for two major responses. On the

one hand, there was a general tendency toward anti-

clericalism, that is, a general but distinct distrust and

dislike of the clergy. Some people began to argue that

the layperson was just as good as the priest, an

argument already advanced by the Waldensians of the

12th century (see also my lecture, "Heretics, Heresies

and the Church"). On the other hand, there were calls

for reform. These two responses created fertile ground

for conflict of all kinds, and that conflict would be both

personal and social.

The deepest source of conflict was personal and

spiritual. The Church had grown more formal in its

organization, which is hardly unsurprising since it was

now sixteen centuries old. The Church had its own

elaborate canon law as well as a dogmatic theology. All

of this had been created at the Fourth Lateran Council

of 1215. That Council also established the importance of

the sacraments as well as the role of the priest in

administering the sacraments (see the Canons of the

Fourth Lateran Council). 1215 also marks the year that

the Church further elaborated its position on Purgatory

(see Purgatory: Fact or Fantasy). Above all, the Fourth

Lateran Council of 1215 established the important

doctrine that salvation could only be won through good

works -- fasting, chastity, abstinence and asceticism.

The common people, meanwhile, sought a more

personal, spiritual and immediate kind of religion --

something that would touch them directly, in the heart.

The rituals of the Church now meant very little to them -

- they needed some kind of guarantee that they were

doing the right thing – that they would indeed be

saved. The Church gave little thought to reforming

itself. People yearned for something more while the

Church seemed to promise less. What seemed to be

needed was a general reform of Christianity itself. Only

such a major transformation would effect the changes

reflected in the spiritual desires of the people.

Throughout the 14th and 15th centuries the Church was

faced with numerous direct challenges.

Heretics had been assaulting the Church since the

12th century. The heretics were Christians who

deviated from Christian dogma. Many did not

believe in Christian baptism -- the majority felt left

out of the Church.

There were also numerous mystics who desired a

direct and emotional divine illumination. They

claimed they had been illuminated by an inner light

that assured them of salvation.

There was an influential philosophical movement

called nominalism that stressed the reality of

anything concrete and real, thus doubting faith.

Renaissance humanism rejected the Christian

matrix almost completely and instead turned to the

Classical World, the true source of virtue and

wisdom.

The breakdown of feudalism and the discovery and

exploitation of the New World gave way to

commerce and trade, as well as an increasing

tendency to view life in the here and now as

something good.

The Church was also challenged by an increasing

awareness of ethnicity and nationalism, e.g. Joan of

Arc and the 100 Years' War.

Merchants and skilled workers living in cities were

growing wealthy and influential as they began to

supply Europe with more and more "stuff."

European kings consolidated their power over their

nobility.

There was an awareness, thanks to the age of

discovery, that there was a pagan world outside the

world of Europe that needed to be tamed.

The Reformation was dominated by the figure of

MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546). Luther was the son of

Hans Luther, a copper miner from the district of Saxony.

Hans was a self-made man. As a youth he worked

menial jobs in copper mines -- but by the time Martin

was born at Eisleben, he had risen to prominence and

owned several mines. Hans Luther wanted his son to do

even more with his life so while Martin was in his teens,

it was decided that he would study law. So, after his

preliminary education was complete, at the age of 17

young Martin Luther entered the University of Erfurt. At

the time, Erfurt was the most important university in

Germany (more on German universities). It was also the

center of a conflict between the Renaissance humanists

and those people known as the Scholastics, who were

adept at combining medieval philosophy and theology.

Luther enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy and studied

theology and law as well. It was at this time that he

read widely in the classical authors, especially Cicero

and Virgil. He obtained his Masters degree and finished

second in a class of seventeen students. In 1505, a

promising legal career seemed certain.

But at this point, Luther rejected the world. He was

twenty-one at the time. In 1505, Luther tells us that he

experienced the "first great event" of his life. In that

year he experienced some kind of conversion after

having been struck by a bolt of lightning. He cried out,

"Help, St. Anne, I will become a monk." He was struck

by the hand of God and felt that God was in everything.

He felt doubt within himself – he simply could not

reconcile his faith with his worldly ambitions. And so,

Luther was plagued by an overwhelming sense of guilt,

fear and terror. To relieve his anxiety he joined the

Order of the Hermits of St. Augustine. There he would

be shielded from worldly distractions. There he would

find the true path to heaven. He fasted, prayed and

scourged himself relentlessly. But he still felt doubts.

One day, as he sat in his cell, he threw his Bible on the

table and pointed at a passage at random. The passage

was from the Epistles of St. Paul: "For the justice of God

is revealed from faith to faith in that it is written, for the

just shall live by faith." (Romans 1:17)

By 1508, Luther was transferred from the monastery at

Erfurt to Wittenberg. At Wittenberg, Luther joined the

university faculty as professor of philosophy and quickly

became the leader in the fight to make Wittenberg a

center of humanism rather than Scholasticism. In the

end, Luther was more interested in preaching a religion

of piety than he was studying philosophy or theology. In

1510, he devoted himself to discovering God and during

a trip to Rome on official business he acted more the

part of a pilgrim than humanist scholar. He climbed the

steps of St. Peters, he knelt before the altars and

prayed. He was soon shocked by the apparent immoral

life of the priests and cardinals whom he found cynical

and indifferent toward Church rituals.

In 1512, he returned to Wittenberg to teach and preach.

He ignored the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages and

concentrated on the Psalms and Epistles of St. Paul. By

1517, there would be no reason to think that Luther was

a particularly dissatisfied member of the Church. But

1517 is a very important year. Albert of Hohenzollern

was offered the archbishopric of Mainz if he would pay

the required fee (Albert already held two bishoprics,

even though he had not yet reached the required age to

be a bishop!). Pope Leo X asked Albert to pay 12,000

ducats for the twelve apostles but Albert would only

offer 7,000 for the seven deadly sins. A compromise

was reached and Albert paid 10,000 ducats. Leo

proclaimed an indulgence in Albert's territories for eight

years with half of the money going to Albert and the

other half to construct the basilica of St. Peter's.

The storm broke on October 31, the eve of All Saints

Day. On that day Luther nailed a copy of the NINETY-

FIVE THESES to the door of the Castle Church at

Wittenberg. The Theses (actually 95 statements), all

related to the prevalence of indulgences and Luther

offered to dispute them all. The day chosen by Luther --

All Saints Day -- was important. All of Wittenberg was

crowded with peasants and pilgrims who had come to

the city to honor the consecration of the Church. Word

of Luther's Theses spread throughout the crowd and

spurred on by Luther's friends at the university, many

people called for the translation of the Theses into

German. A student copied Luther's Latin text and then

translated the document and sent it to the university

press and from there it spread throughout Germany. It

was the printing press itself, that allowed Luther's

message to spread so rapidly. [Note: Following the

research of Erwin Iserloh, Richard Marius has suggested

that perhaps Luther never posted the Ninety-Five

Theses. We know, for instance, that Luther wrote a

letter to his archbishop complaining about indulgences.

The story that Luther nailed the Theses to the church

door comes from Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), a

professor of Greek and one of Luther's colleagues.

However, Melanchthon did not arrive in Wittenberg until

August of the following year. Luther never mentioned

this incident in any of his table talk. See Marius, Martin

Luther: The Christian Between God and Death (Harvard,

1999), pp. 137-139.]

The particular indulgence which attracted Luther's

attention was being sold throughout Germany by Johann

Tetzel, a Dominican friar. Tetzel was trying to raise

money to pay for the new Church at St. Peters in Rome.

In general, an indulgence released the sinner from

punishment in Purgatory before going to Heaven. The

system was permitted by the Church (since 1215) but

had been abused by the clergy and their agents such as

Tetzel.

Luther also attacked indulgences in general, and he

voiced his objections to the sale of indulgences in his

LETTER to the Archbishop of Mainz in 1517. According

to the Church, indulgences took their existence from the

surplus grace that had accumulated through the lives of

Christ, the saints and martyrs. The purchase of an

indulgence put the buyer in touch with this grace and

freed him from the earthly penance of a particular sin,

but not the sin itself. But Tetzel's sales pitch implied that

the buyer was freed from the sin as well as the penance

attached to it. Tetzel also sold people on the idea that

an indulgence could be purchased for a relative in

Purgatory – this meant the relative's soul would now

fly to Heaven. For Tetzel: "As soon as pennies in the

money chest ring, the souls out of their Purgatory do

spring." Luther answered (Theses 28) in the following

way: "It is certain that when the money rattles in the

chest, avarice and gain may be increased, but the

Suffrage of the Church depends on the will of God

alone." (my emphasis).

Luther claimed that it was not only Tetzel but the

papacy itself which spread the false doctrine of the

indulgence. By attacking the issue of the indulgences,

Luther was really attacking the entire theology and

structure of the Church. By making salvation dependent

on the individual's faith, Luther abolished the need for

sacraments as well as a clergy to administer them. For

Luther, faith alone, without the necessity of good works,

would bring salvation. This was obviously heretical

thinking. Of course, Luther couched his notion of

"justification by faith alone" within a scheme of

predestination. That is, only God knows who will be

saved and will be damned. Good works did not

guarantee salvation. Faith did not guarantee salvation.

God alone grants salvation or damnation.

This discussion all begs the question: why did people

follow Luther? It is simply amazing that within a

relatively brief period of time, that so many people

turned their back on the Roman Church, and followed

Luther. For the wealthy, becoming a Lutheran was one

way to keep their wealth yet still be given a chance for

salvation without paying homage to Rome. In other

words, it can be said that the wealthy followed Luther

as a form of protest against the Church. For the very

poor, Luther offered individual dignity and respect. Not

good works or servitude to Rome could guarantee

salvation. Instead, faith held out the possibility of

salvation. For most Germans of the mid-16th century,

Lutheranism was a way to attack the Holy Roman

Empire and Charles V (1500-1558). Voltaire once wrote

that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor

Roman, nor truly an Empire. Therefore, Germany

became Lutheran for reasons other than religion or

theology. The bottom line is this: Luther told people

exactly what they want to hear. Luther appeared as an

alternative to the Roman Church. Whereas the Roman

Church appealed to men and women as members of a

group (i.e., members of the Church), Lutheranism

meant that faith was now something individual, and this

would have profound consequences..

JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564) represents the second wave

of the Protestant Reformation. Although Luther and

Calvin were more less contemporaries of one another,

Calvin was an entirely different man. John Calvin

acquired his early education in Paris -- here he learned

to develop a taste for humanism. In the mid-1520s he

studied law at the University of Paris and then left to

study law at Orleans and Greek art at Bourges. I

mention all this simply to show that Calvin was indeed a

humanist scholar in his own right. He studied Hebrew,

Greek, and Latin and thrived on the humanist texts of

the classical world and his own. By 1533, Calvin fell

under the influence of the New Testament translation by

Erasmus as well as certain writings of Martin Luther. So,

before Calvin became a Calvinist, he was clearly a

Lutheran.

On All Saints Day in 1533, Calvin delivered an address

at Paris which clearly defended the doctrine of

"justification by faith alone." Renouncing his

Catholicism, Calvin settled at Basel, in Switzerland, and

there wrote a draft for his book, the Institutes of the

Christian Religion, a book which contains more than 80

chapters and took him almost the rest of his life to

complete. The core of what became known as

Calvinism, was that man was a helpless being before an

all-powerful God. He concluded that there was no such

thing as free will, that man was predestined for either

Heaven or Hell. Man can do nothing to alter his fate. It

was Calvin, and not Luther, who gave to the Swiss and

French reformers of this time a rallying point for Church

reform. So, it was almost natural that when a few men

were trying to convert the town of Geneva to their

reformed doctrines that they called upon Calvin's help.

Calvin came to Geneva and immediately imposed a

social order of harsh discipline and order. The people of

Geneva groaned under his repressive measures but

they also felt that Calvin was good for them and their

children. Calvin was kicked out of the city for three

years but eventually returned -- those who objected to

his terms left the city or were jailed or executed.

Calvin urged -- actually forced -- all citizens of Geneva

to succumb to his rigorous ideals of a religious life. In

this way his career at Geneva is remarkably similar to

that of Girolamo Savonarola in Florence. Genevan men

and women were told to wake up early, work hard, be

forever concerned with good morals, be thrifty at all

times, abstain from worldly pleasures, be sober, and

above all, serious. There was, then, very little laughing

in Calvin's Geneva. What we're talking about here can

only be called a "worldly asceticism," that is, the denial

of all worldly pleasure while living in this world.

Of course, foundation of Calvinism was clearly the

doctrine of predestination, that is, the idea that all of

mankind is assigned to either Heaven or Hell at birth.

There is nothing you can do that would change your

destiny since it was in the hands of all-powerful God.

Such an opinion logically leads to anxiety -- after all, no

one knew just what to do. While Calvin would not argue,

as did the Church, that good works were one needed to

go to Heaven, he did admit that good works served a

purpose. Good works, then, became a divine sign, a

sign that the individual was making the best of their life

here on earth. It was, however, still no guarantee.

Calvin also introduced his concept of the "calling." Some

men and women seemed ill-fitted for life on earth. They

were avaricious, slothful, amoral. However, there were

others who seemed to work happily in their lifetime,

accomplishing much and in the right spirit. In other

words, they had been "called" to do a certain thing here

on earth.

Of course, if one wakes up early, works at their calling,

and are thrifty, sober and abstain from frivolity, there is

an unintended consequence. That consequence was the

acquisition of wealth. So, while Calvin did not invent

free enterprise, nor did he invent capitalism, or the

desire for wealth, he did rationalize that desire by

arguing that certain men are imbued with the spirit of

acquisition, the correct spirit. That spirit has often been

called the Protestant Work Ethic. In The Protestant Ethic

and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904), the German

sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) asked why it is that

the world's most wealthy men were of Protestant origin.

His answer was that it was these men who were also

Calvinists, men who had internalized the religious code

set down first by Calvin and then by the Puritans of 17th

century England. In other words, the ethic says to work

hard, save what you have made, and reinvest any profit

in order to increase wealth. That is capitalism in a

nutshell. Calvin does not invent this idea, he simply

rationalizes it by ascribing a certain spirit or calling to

certain men of his own age, all of whom just happened

to be Calvinists. Of course, such a scheme could and did

lead to tension, conflict and anxiety. How much of a

calling was a good thing? When did one know when

enough was enough? Anxiety and its sister guilt, then,

seemed to become one of the guiding principles of

Calvinism.

While Lutheranism spread widely in Germany and

Scandinavia, Calvinism made inroads across Europe. In

general, Calvin produced an organization unmatched by

any other Protestant faith at the time. The Institutes

spelled out faith and practice in fine detail. Tight

discipline within each cell, or synod, held the entire

system together. Calvinist ministers traveled throughout

Europe winning adherents and organizing them into

new cells. From the city of Geneva flowed an endless

wave of pamphlets, books and sermons whose purpose

was to educate the Calvinist congregation. By 1564, the

year of Calvin's death, there were more than a million

French Calvinists or Huguenots, Scotland had been won

over to Calvinism, and the religion also found a home in

England, the Low Countries and Hungary.