The printing press has been credited with helping to spread the teachings of Martin Luther, and so securing the success of the Protestant Reformation. But even before Luther's critiques were published, reformers were using the new technology to disseminate images that attacked the corruption of the Church.
After Luther rose to prominence, both his supporters and detractors vied with one another in disseminating propaganda that appealed, visually, to a lay audience and that could be understood even by those who were unable to read.
The first pair of images below is really a single printed artifact datable to around 1500: an early example of a "pop-up" card. It shows Pope Alexander VI (r. 1492-1503) as stately pontiff (image A) whose true identity is concealed by a flap. When the flap is raised (image B), he is revealed as a devil. The Latin texts read: "Alexander VI, pontifex maximus" (image A) and "I am the pope" (image B).
The other two examples represent two sides of the debate as it had developed by 1530, and both do so with reference to the same image: the seven-headed
A. Alexander as pontiff.
B. Alexander as a devil.
Beast mentioned in the Bible's Book of Revelation. On the left (image C), a Lutheran engraving shows the papacy as the beast, with seven heads representing seven orders of Catholic clergy. The sign on the cross (referring to the sign hung over the head of the crucified Christ) reads, in German: "For money, a sack full of indulgences." The Latin words on either side say "Reign of the Devil." On the right (image D), a Catholic engraving produced in Germany shows Luther as Revelation's beast, with its seven heads labeled: "Doctor-Martin-Luther-Heretic-Hypocrite-Fanatic-Barabbas," the last alluding to the thief who should have been executed instead of Jesus, according to the Gospels.
Questions for Analysis
1. Given that this attack on Pope Alexander VI precedes Martin Luther's critique of the Church by nearly two decades, what can you conclude about its intended audience? To what extent can it be read as a barometer of popular disapproval? What might have been the reason(s) for the use of the concealing flap?
2. What do you make of the fact that both Catholic and Protestant propagandists were using the same imagery? What do you make of key differences: for example, the fact that the seven-headed beast representing the papacy sprouts out of an altar in which a Eucharistic chalice is displayed, while the seven-headed Martin Luther is reading a book?
3. All of these printed images also make use of words. Would the message of each image be clear without the use of texts? Why or why not?
C. The seven-headed papal beast.
D. The seven-headed Martin Luther.
Proposed to abolish the entire ecclesiastical hierarchy from popes to bishops on down. Finally, on the principle that no spiritual distinction existed between clergy and laity, Luther argued that ministers could and should marry. In 1525, he himself took a wife, Katharina von Bora, one of a dozen nuns he had helped escape from a Cistercian convent.
Widely disseminated by means of the printing press, Luther’s polemical pamphlets of 1520 electrified much of Germany, gaining him passionate popular support and touching off a national religious revolt against the papacy. In highly colloquial German, Luther declared that “if the pope’s court were reduced ninety-nine percent it would still be large enough to give decisions on matters of faith”; that “the cardinals have sucked Italy dry and now turn to Germany”; and that, given Rome’s corruption, “the reign of Antichrist could not be worse.” As word of Luther’s defiance spread, his pamphlets became a publishing sensation. Whereas the average press run of a printed book before 1520 had been 1,000 copies, the first run of To the Christian Nobility (1520) was 4,000—and it sold out in a few days. Many thousands of copies quickly followed. Even more popular were woodcut illustrations mocking the papacy and exalting Luther. These sold in the tens of thousands and could be readily understood even by those who could not read. (See Interpreting Visual Evidence on pages 428-29.)
Luther’s denunciations reflected widespread public dissatisfaction with the conduct and corruption of the papacy Pope Alexander VI (r. 1492-1503) had bribed cardinals to gain his office and had then used the money raised from the papal jubilee of 1500 to support the military campaigns of his illegitimate son. Julius II (r. 1503-13) devoted his reign to enlarging the Papal States in a series of wars; a contemporary remarked that he would have deserved the glory he won— if only he had been a secular prince. Leo X (r. 1513-21), Luther’s opponent, was a member of the Medici family of Florence. Although an able administrator, he was also a selfindulgent aesthete. In The Praise of Folly, first published in 1511 and frequently reprinted (see Chapter 12), Erasmus had declared that if the popes of his day were ever forced to lead Christlike lives, as their office surely required, they would be incapable of it. In Julius Excluded, published anonymously in 1517, he went even further, imagining a conversation at the gates of heaven between Saint Peter and Julius II, in which Peter refuses to admit the pope because he cannot believe that this armored, vainglorious figure could possibly be his own earthly representative.
In Germany, resentment of the papacy ran especially high because there were no special agreements (concordats) limiting papal authority in its principalities, as there were in Spain, France, and England (see Chapter 12). As a result, German princes complained that papal taxes were so high that the country was drained of its wealth. And yet Germans had almost no influence over papal policy Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians dominated the College of Cardinals and the papal bureaucracy, and the popes were almost invariably Italian—as they would continue to be until 1978 and the election of Pope John Paul II. As a result, graduates from the rapidly growing German universities almost never found employment in Rome. Instead, many joined the throngs of Luther’s supporters to become leaders of the new religious movement.
Emperor Charles V and the Condemnation at Worms
In the year 1520, Pope Leo X issued a papal edict condemning Luther’s publications as heretical and threatening him with excommunication if he did not recant. This edict was of the most solemn kind, known as a bulla, or “bull,” from the lead seal it bore. Luther’s reponse was flagrantly defiant: rather than acquiescing to the pope’s demand, he staged a public burning of the document. Thereafter, his heresy confirmed, he was formally given over for punishment to his lay overlord, Frederick III “the Wise” of Saxony. Frederick, however, proved a supporter of Luther and a critic of the papacy. Rather than burning Luther at the stake for heresy, Frederick declared that Luther had not yet received a fair hearing. Early in 1521, he therefore brought him to the city of Worms to be examined by a select representative assembly known as a “diet.”
At Worms, the diet’s presiding officer was the newly elected Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. As a member of the Habsburg family, he had been born and bred in his ancestral holding of Flanders, then part of the Netherlands. By 1521, however, through the unpredictable workings of dynastic inheritance, marriage, election, and luck, he had become not only the ruler of the Netherlands but also king of Germany and Holy Roman emperor, duke of Austria, duke of Milan, and ruler of the Franche-Comte. And as the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella on his mother’s side, he was also king of Spain; king of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia; and ruler of all the Spanish possessions in the New World. Governing such an extraordinary combination
THE EUROPEAN EMPIRE OF CHARLES V, c. 1526. Charles V ruled a vast variety of widely dispersed territories in Europe and the New World, and as Holy Roman emperor he was also the titular ruler of Germany. ¦ What were the main countries and kingdoms under his control? ¦ Which regions would have been most threatened by Charles's extraordinary power, and where might the rulers of these regions turn for allies? ¦ How might the expansion of the Ottoman Empire have complicated political and religious struggles within Christian Europe?
Of territories posed enormous challenges. Charles’s empire had no capital and no centralized administrative institutions; it shared no common language, no common culture, and no geographically contiguous borders. It thus stood completely apart from the growing nationalism that was shaping late medieval states.
Charles recognized the diversity of his empire and tried wherever possible to rule it through local officials and institutions. But he could not tolerate threats to the two fundamental forces that held his empire together: himself as emperor and Catholicism—as the religion of Rome was coming to be called. Beyond such political calculations,
THE WARTBURG, EISENACH (GERMANY). This medieval stronghold became the refuge of Martin Luther after his condemnation at the Diet of Worms in 1520. His room in the castle has since been preserved.
However, Charles was also a faithful and committed servant of the Church, and he was deeply disturbed by the prospect of heresy within his empire. There was therefore little doubt that the Diet of Worms would condemn Martin Luther for heresy. And when Luther refused to back down, thereby endangering his life, his lord Frederick the Wise once more intervened, this time arranging for Luther to be “kidnapped” and hidden for a year at the elector’s castle of the Wartburg, where he was kept out of harm’s way.
Thereafter, Luther was never again in mortal danger. Although the Diet of Worms proclaimed him an outlaw, this edict was never enforced. Instead, Charles V left Germany in order to conduct a war with France, and in 1522 Luther returned in triumph to Wittenberg, to find that the changes he had called for had already been put into practice by his university supporters. When several German princes formally converted to Lutheranism, they brought their territories with them. In a little over a decade, a new form of Christianity had been established.
THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. This portrait by the Venetian painter Titian depicts Europe's most powerful ruler sitting quietly in a chair, dressed in simple clothing of the kind worn by judges or bureaucrats. ¦ Why might Charles have chosen to represent himself in this way-rather than in the regalia of his many royal, imperial, and princely offices?
The German Princes and the Lutheran Church
At this point, the last of our three major questions must be addressed: Why did some German princes, secure in their own powers, nonetheless establish Lutheran religious practices within their territories? This is a crucial development, because popular support for Luther would not have been enough to ensure the success of his teachings had they not been embraced by a number of powerful rulers and free cities. Indeed, it was only in those territories where Lutheranism was formally established that the new religion prevailed. Elsewhere in Germany, Luther’s sympathizers were forced to flee, face death, or conform to Catholicism.
The power of individual rulers to control the practice of religion in their own territories reflects developments we have noted in previous chapters. Rulers had long sought to control appointments to Church offices in their own realms, to restrict the flow of money to Rome and to limit the independence of ecclesiastical courts. The monarchs of Europe—primarily the kings of France and Spain—had already taken advantage of the continuing struggles between the papacy and the conciliarists to extract many concessions from the embattled popes during the fifteenth century (see Chapters 11 and 12). But in Germany, as noted above, neither the emperor nor the princes were strong enough to secure special treatment.
This changed as a result of Luther’s initiatives. As early as 1520, the papacy’s fiery challenger had recognized
CONFESSIONAL DIFFERENCES, c. 1560. The religious affiliations (confessions) of Europe's territories had become very complicated by the year 1560, roughly a generation after the adoption of Lutheranism in some areas. ¦ What major countries and kingdoms had embraced Protestantism by 1560? ¦ To what extent do these divisions conform to political boundaries, and to what extent would they have complicated the political situation? ¦ Why might Lutheranism have spread north into Scandinavia but not south into Bavaria or west across the Rhine?
That he could never hope to institute new religious practices without the strong arms of princes, so he explicitly encouraged them to confiscate the wealth of the Church as an incentive. At first the princes bided their time, but when they realized that Luther had enormous public support and that Charles V could not act swiftly enough, several moved to introduce Lutheranism into their territories. Personal piety surely played a role in
Individual cases, but political and economic considerations were generally more decisive. Protestant princes could consolidate authority by naming their own religious officials, cutting off fees to Rome, and curtailing the jurisdiction of Church courts. They could also guarantee that the political and religious boundaries of their territories would now coincide. No longer would a rival ecclesiastical prince (such as a bishop or archbishop)
THE ANABAPTISTS' CAGES, THEN AND NOW. After the three Anabaptist leaders of Munster were executed in 1535, their corpses were prominently displayed in cages hung from a tower of the marketplace church. As can be seen from the photo on the right, the bones are gone but the iron cages remain. ¦ What would be the purpose of keeping these cages on display? What different meanings might this sight convey?
Be able to use his spiritual position to undermine a neighboring secular prince’s sovereignty.
Similar considerations also moved a number of free cities to adopt Lutheranism. Acting independently of any prince, town councils could establish themselves as the supreme governing authorities within their jurisdictions, cutting out local bishops or powerful monasteries. Given the added fact that under Lutheranism monasteries and convents could be shut down and their lands appropriated by the newly sovereign secular authorities, the practical advantages of the new faith were overwhelming.
Once safely ensconced in Wittenberg under princely protection, Luther began to express ever more vehemently his own political and social views, which tended toward the strong support of the new political order. In a treatise of 1523, On Temporal Authority, he insisted that “godly” (Protestant) rulers must be obeyed in all things and that even “ungodly” ones should never be targets of dissent because tyranny “is not to be resisted but endured.” In 1525, when peasants throughout Germany rebelled against their landlords, Luther therefore responded with intense hostility. In his vituperative pamphlet of 1525, Against the Thievish, Murderous Hordes of Peasants, he urged readers to hunt the rebels down as though they were mad dogs: to “strike, strangle, stab secretly or in public, and remember that nothing can be more poisonous than a man in rebellion.” After the ruthless suppression of this revolt, which may have cost as many as 100,000 lives, the firm alliance of Lutheranism with state power helped preserve and sanction the existing social order.
In his later years, Luther concentrated on debating with younger, more radical religious reformers who challenged his political conservatism, while offering spiritual counsel to all who sought it. Never tiring in his amazingly prolific literary activity, he wrote an average of one treatise every two weeks for twenty-five years.
Originating as a term applied to Lutherans who “protested” the Catholic authority of Charles V, the word Protestant was soon applied to a much wider range of dissenting Christianities. Lutheranism itself struck lasting roots in northern Germany and Scandinavia, where it became the state religion of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden as soon as the 1520s. Other early Lutheran successes in southern Germany, Poland, and Hungary were eventually rolled back. Elsewhere in Europe, meanwhile, competing forms of Protestantism soon emerged from the seeds that Luther had sown. By the 1550s, Protestantism had become a truly international movement and also an increasingly diverse and divisive one.
In the early sixteenth century, Switzerland was ruled neither by kings nor by territorial princes; instead, prosperous Swiss cities were either independent or on the verge of becoming so. Hence, when the leading citizens of a Swiss municipality decided to adopt Protestant reforms, no one could stop them. Although religious arrangements varied from city to city, three main forms of Protestantism emerged in Switzerland between 1520 to 1550: Zwinglianism, Anabaptism, and Calvinism.
Zwinglianism, founded by Ulrich Zwingli (TSVING-lee, 1484-1531) in Zurich, was the most theologically moderate form of the three. Zwingli had just begun his career as a Catholic priest when his humanist-inspired study of the Bible convinced him that Catholic theology and practice conflicted with the Gospels. His biblical studies eventually led him to condemn religious images and hierarchical authority within the Church. Yet he did not speak out publicly until Luther set a precedent. In 1522, accordingly, Zwingli began attacking the authority of the Catholic Church in Zurich. Soon much of northern Switzerland had accepted his religious leadership.
Although Zwingli’s reforms closely resembled those of the Lutherans in Germany, Zwingli differed from Luther as to the theology of the Eucharist. Whereas Luther believed in the real presence of Christ’s body in the sacrament, for Zwingli the Eucharist conferred no grace at all; it was simply a reminder and celebration of Christ’s historical sacrifice on the cross. This fundamental disagreement prevented Lutherans and Zwinglians from uniting in a common Protestant front. When Zwingli died in battle against Catholic forces in 1531, his movement was absorbed by the more systematic Protestantism of John Calvin (see below).
Before Calvinism prevailed, however, an even more radical form of Protestantism arose in Switzerland and parts of Germany. The first Anabaptists were members of Zwingli’s circle in Zurich, but they broke with him around 1525 on the issue of infant baptism. Because Anabaptists were convinced that the sacrament of baptism was only effective if administered to willing adults who understood its significance, they required followers who had been baptized as infants to be baptized again as adults (the term Anabaptism means “rebaptism”). This doctrine reflected the Anabaptists’ fundamental belief that the true church was a small community of believers whose members had to make a deliberate, inspired decision to join it.
No other Protestant groups were prepared to go so far in rejecting the medieval Christian view of the Church as a single vast body to which all members of society belonged from birth. And in an age when almost everyone assumed that religious and secular authority were inextricably connected, Anabaptism was bound to be anathema to all established powers, both Protestant and Catholic. It was a movement that appealed to sincere religious piety in calling for pacifism, strict personal morality, and extreme simplicity of worship.
This changed when a group of Anabaptist extremists managed to gain control of the German city of Munster in 1534. These zealots were driven by millenarianism, the belief that God intends to institute a completely new order of justice and spirituality throughout the world before the end of time. Determined to help God bring about this goal, the extremists attempted to turn Munster into a new Jerusalem. A former tailor named John of Leyden assumed the title “king of the New Temple” and proclaimed himself the successor of the Hebrew king David. Under his leadership, Anabaptist religious practices were made obligatory, private property was abolished, and even polygamy was permitted on the grounds of Old Testament precedents. Such practices were deeply shocking to Protestants and Catholics alike. Accordingly, Munster was besieged and captured by Catholic forces little more than a year after the Anabaptist takeover. The new “David,” together with two of his lieutenants, was put to death by torture, and the three bodies were displayed in iron cases in the town square.
Thereafter, Anabaptists throughout Europe were ruthlessly persecuted on all sides. The few who survived banded together in the Mennonite sect, named for its founder, the Dutchman Menno Simons (c. 1496-1561). This sect, dedicated to pacifism and the simple “religion of the heart” of original Anabaptism, is still particularly strong in the central United States.
John Calvin's Reformed Theology
A year after the events in Munster, a twenty-six-year-old Frenchman named John Calvin (1509-1564), published the first version of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, the most influential formulation of Protestant theology ever written. Born in Noyon, in northern France, Calvin had originally trained for the law; but by 1533, he was studying the Greek and Latin classics while living off the income from a priestly benefice. As he later wrote, he was “obstinately devoted to the superstitions of popery” until he experienced a miraculous conversion. He became a Protestant theologian and propagandist, evenually fleeing the Swiss city of Basel to escape persecution.
Although some aspects of Calvin’s early career resemble those of Luther’s, the two men were very different. Luther was an emotionally volatile personality and a lover of controversy. He responded to theological problems as they arose or as the impulse struck him; he never attempted to systematize his beliefs. Calvin, however, was a coolly analytical legalist, who resolved in his Institutes to set forth all the principles of Protestantism comprehensively, logically, and systematically. As a result, after several revisions and enlargements (the definitive edition appeared in 1559), Calvin’s Institutes became the Protestant equivalent of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae (see Chapter 9).
JOHN CALVIN. This recently discovered portrait by an anonymous artist shows the young Protestant reformer as a serene and authoritative figure. It places the grotesque caricature of Calvin (right) in perspective.
CALVIN AS SEEN BY HIS ENEMIES. In this image, which circulated among Calvin's Catholic detractors, the reformer's facial features are a disturbing composite of fish, toad, and chicken.
Calvin’s austere and stoical theology started with the omnipotence of God. For Calvin, the entire universe depends utterly on the will of the Almighty, who created all things for his greater glory and who knows all things present and to come. Because of man’s original fall from grace, all human beings are sinners by nature, bound to an evil inheritance they cannot escape. Yet God (for reasons of his own) has predestined some for eternal salvation and damned all the rest to the torments of hell. Nothing that individual humans may do can alter fate; all souls are stamped with God’s blessing or curse before they are born. Nevertheless, Christians cannot be indifferent to their conduct on earth. If they are among the elect, God will implant in them the desire to live according to his laws. Upright conduct is thus a sign, though not an infallible one, that an individual has been chosen to sit at the throne of glory Membership in the Reformed Church (as Calvinist churches are more properly known) is another presumptive sign of election to salvation. But most of all, Calvin urged Christians to conceive of themselves as chosen instruments of God, charged to work actively to fulfill God’s purposes on earth. Because sin offends God, Christians should do all they can to prevent it, not because their actions will lead to anyone’s salvation (they will not), but simply because God’s glory is diminished if sin is allowed to flourish unchecked by the efforts of those whom he has chosen for salvation.
Calvin always acknowledged a great theological debt to Luther, but his religious teachings diverged from those of the Wittenberg reformer in several essentials. First of all, Luther’s attitude toward proper Christian conduct in the world was much more passive than Calvin’s. For Luther, a Christian should endure the trials of this life through suffering, whereas for Calvin the world was to be mastered in unceasing labor for God’s sake. Calvin’s religion was also more controlling than Luther’s. Luther, for example, insisted that his followers attend church on Sunday, but he did not demand that during the remainder of the day they refrain from all pleasure or work. Calvin, however, issued stern strictures against worldliness of any sort on the Sabbath and forbade all sorts of minor self-indulgences, even on nonSabbath days.
The two men also differed on fundamental matters of church governance and worship. Although Luther broke with the Catholic system of hierarchical church government, Lutheran district superintendents exercised some of the same powers as bishops, including supervision of parish clergy Luther also retained many features of traditional Christian worship, including altars, music, and ritual. Calvin, however, rejected everything that smacked to him of “popery” He argued for the elimination of all traces of hierarchy within any church. Instead, each congregation should elect its own ministers, and assemblies of ministers and “elders” (laymen responsible for maintaining proper religious conduct among the faithful) were to govern the Reformed Church as a whole. Calvin also insisted on the utmost simplicity in worship, prohibiting (among much else) vestments, processions, instrumental music, and religious images of any sort, including stained-glass windows. He also dispensed with all remaining vestiges of Catholic sacramental theology by making the sermon, rather than the Eucharist, the centerpiece of reformed worship.
Consistent with his theological convictions, Calvin was intent on putting his religious teachings into practice. Sensing an opportunity in the French-speaking Swiss city of Geneva—then in the throes of political and religious upheaval—he moved there late in 1536 and immediately began preaching and organizing. In 1538, his activities caused him to be expelled by the city council, but in 1541 he returned and brought the city under his sway.
With Calvin’s guidance, Geneva’s government became a theocracy. Supreme authority was vested in a “consistory” composed of twelve lay elders and between ten and twenty pastors, whose weekly meetings Calvin dominated. In addition to passing legislation proposed by a congregation of ministers, the consistory’s main function was to supervise morality, both public and private. To this end, Geneva was divided into districts, and a committee of the consistory visited every household, without prior warning, to check on the behavior of its members. Dancing, card playing, attending the theater, and working or playing on the Sabbath: all were outlawed as works of the devil. Innkeepers were forbidden to allow anyone to consume food or drink without first saying grace, or to permit any patron to stay up after nine o’clock. Adultery, witchcraft, blasphemy, and heresy all became capital crimes. Even penalties for lesser crimes were severe. During the first four years after Calvin gained control in Geneva, there were no fewer than fifty-eight executions in this city with a total population of only 16,000.
As rigid as such a regime may seem today, Calvin’s Geneva was a beacon of light to thousands of Protestants throughout Europe in the mid-sixteenth century Calvin’s disciple John Knox (c. 1514-1572), who brought the reformed religion to Scotland, declared Geneva “the most perfect school of Christ that ever was on earth since the days of the Apostles.” Converts such as Knox flocked to Geneva for refuge or instruction and then returned home to become ardent proselytizers for the new religion. Geneva thus became the center of an international movement dedicated to spreading reformed religion to France and the rest of Europe through organized missionary activity and propaganda.
These efforts were remarkably successful. By the end of the sixteenth century. Calvinists were a majority in Scotland (where they were known as Presbyterians) and Holland (where they founded the Dutch Reformed Church). They were also influential in England, although the Church of England adopted reformed theology but not reformed worship (Calvinists who sought further reforms in worship were known as Puritans). There were also substantial Calvinist minorities in France (where they were called Huguenots), Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, and Poland. By the end of the sixteenth century, Calvinism would spread to the New World.
The Beginnings of Religious Warfare
Less than a generation after Luther’s challenge to the Church, wars between Catholic and Protestant rulers began. In Germany, Charles V attempted to establish Catholic unity by launching a military campaign against several German princes who had instituted Lutheran worship in their territories. But despite several notable victories, his efforts to defeat the Protestant princes failed. In part, this was because Charles was also involved in wars against France; but primarily, it was because the Catholic princes of Germany worked against him, fearing that any suppression of Protestant princes might also diminish their own independence. As a result, the Catholic princes’ support for the foreign-born Charles was only lukewarm; at times, they even joined with Protestants in battle against him.
This regional warfare sputtered on and off until a compromise settlement was reached via the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. Its governing principle was cuius regia, eius reli-gio, “as the ruler, so the religion.” This meant that in those principalities where Lutherans ruled, Lutheranism would be the sole state religion; but where Catholic princes ruled, the people of their territories would also be Catholic. For better and for worse, the Peace of Augsburg was a historical milestone. For the first time since Luther had been excommunicated, Catholic rulers were forced to acknowledge the legality of Protestantism. Yet the peace also set a dangerous precedent because it established the principle that no sovereign state can tolerate religious diversity. Moreover, it excluded Calvinism entirely and thus spurred German Calvinists to become aggressive opponents of the status quo. As a result, Europe would be riven by religious warfare for another century and would export sectarian violence to the New World (see Chapter 14).
Within two decades, Protestantism had become a diverse revolutionary movement whose radical claims for the spiritual equality of all Christians had the potential to undermine the political, social, and even gender hierarchies on which European society rested. Luther himself did not anticipate that his ideas might have such implications, and he was genuinely shocked when the rebellious German peasants and the radical Anabaptists at Munster interpreted his teachings in this way. And Luther was by no means the only staunchly conservative Protestant. None of the prominent early Protestants were social or political radicals; most depended on the support of existing elites: territorial princes, of course, but also the ruling elites of towns. As a result, the Reformation movement was speedily “domesticated” in two senses. Its revolutionary potential was muffled—Luther himself rarely spoke about “the priesthood of all believers” after 1525— and there was an increasing emphasis on the patriarchal family as the central institution of reformed life.
People, because otherwise their evil deeds would anger God and destroy human society
Protestant godliness began with the discipline of children. Luther himself wrote two catechisms (instructional tracts) designed to teach children the tenets of their faith and the obligations—toward parents, masters, and rulers— that God imposed on them. Luther also insisted that all children, boys and girls alike, be taught to read the Bible in their own languages. Schooling thus became a characteristically Protestant preoccupation and rallying cry. Even the Protestant family was designated a “school of godliness,” in which fathers were expected to instruct and discipline their wives, their children, and their household servants.
But family life in the early sixteenth century still left much to be desired in the eyes of Protestant reformers. Drunkenness, domestic violence, illicit sexual relations, lewd dancing, and the blasphemous swearing of oaths were frequent topics of reforming discourse. Various methods of discipline were attempted, including private counseling, public confessions of wrongdoing, public penances and shamings, exclusion from church services, and even imprisonment. All these efforts met with varying, but generally modest, success. Creating godly Protestant families, and enforcing godly discipline on entire communities, was going to require the active cooperation of godly authorities.
As we have seen, injunctions to lead a more disciplined and godly life had been a frequent message of religious reform movements since the Black Death (see Chapter 11). Many of these efforts were actively promoted by princes and town councils, most famously perhaps in Florence, where the Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola led the city on an extraordinary but short-lived campaign of puritanism and moral reform between 1494 and 1498. And there are numerous other examples of rulers legislating against sin. When Desiderius Erasmus called on secular authorities to think of themselves as abbots and of their territories as giant monasteries, he was sounding an already-familiar theme.
Protestant rulers, however, took the need to enforce godly discipline with particular seriousness, because the depravity of human nature was a fundamental tenet of Protestant belief. Like Saint Augustine at the end of the fourth century (see Chapter 6), Protestants believed that people would inevitably turn out bad unless they were compelled to be good. It was therefore the responsibility of secular and religious leaders to control and punish the behavior of their
Protestantism, Government, and the Family
The domestication of the Reformation in this sense took place principally in the free towns of Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands—and from there spread westward to North America. Protestant attacks on monasticism and clerical celibacy found a receptive audience among townsmen who resented the immunity of monastic houses from taxation and regarded clerical celibacy as a subterfuge for the seduction of their own wives and daughters. Protestant emphasis on the depravity of the human will and the consequent need for that will to be disciplined by authority also resonated powerfully with guilds and town governments, which were anxious to maintain and increase the control exercised by urban elites (mainly merchants and master craftsmen) over the apprentices and journeymen who made up the majority of the male population. By eliminating the competing jurisdictional authority of the Catholic Church, Protestantism allowed town governments to consolidate all authority within the city into their own hands.
World History
