Discussion

Lecture 6: Europe in the Age of

Religious Wars, 1560-1715

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 (see Lecture 1). 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 (see Lecture 3). 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 (see Lecture 5).

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 (1618-1648), 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

(see Lecture 7) 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 (see Lecture 9).

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

(see Lecture 10). In 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 two reasons why

this 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.