The radicals represent one way that the ideas of early reformers were pushed further;
many of their ideas had social, economic, and political implications, which is
in part why they were seen as so dangerous. Groups that linked Protestant ideas directly
to various political and social programs were also threatening. In 1522–3, free
imperial knights, who controlled small territories in the Empire and numbered in the
thousands, revolted against larger territorial princes. Their grievances were primarily
economic and military – knights were becoming less valued because of the military
changes traced in chapter 3 , and their small estates could not support them adequately
because of infl ation – but they used Lutheran ideas to justify their movement. Armies
led by territorial princes quickly suppressed the revolt and burned a number of knights’
castles; the Knights’ Revolt thus succeeded only in making some princes more wary of
the new religious ideas.
The German Peasants’ War of 1524–6 had much more far-reaching consequences
than the Knights’ Revolt. Peasants in many parts of Germany objected to new laws limiting
hunting and fi shing rights, rising levels of taxation, and the imposition of labor
obligations; in 1524 what began as a protest about fi shing in a forbidden stream quickly
became a widespread rebellion, the largest mass uprising in Europe before the French
Revolution. Local groups of peasants formed regional revolutionary organizations
and military alliances in southwestern and then central and southeastern Germany.
In March 1525 a union of these groups issued the Twelve Articles of Memmingen, a
manifesto that called for the abolition of serfdom, hunting and fi shing rights, a reduction
in taxes and labor services, and the right of the community to elect and dismiss
pastors to ensure that the “pure gospel” would be preached. Most dramatically, the
Twelve Articles stated that any practice not in accordance with the gospels should be
rejected, thus linking the word of God, what was often termed “divine law,” with issues
of social justice. All of this was expressed in clear language, and the Articles were
published as a small pamphlet that was quickly reprinted many times. The demands of
the Twelve Articles were backed by military action, and peasant armies seized castles,
noble houses, abbeys, and a few cities; in other cities townspeople themselves revolted,
calling for civil rights and religious reform. Peasant and urban armies included former
mercenaries, so that they were not completely inexperienced, but they had almost no
cavalry or artillery and few fi rearms. Once experienced imperial mercenaries returned
from fi ghting in Italy, and the forces of territorial rulers organized to fi ght the revolt,
peasant armies were crushed with brutality and vengeance.
Though peasant grievances long predated the Reformation, the ideas of Luther and
Zwingli about Christian freedom and the reshaping of Christian life certainly infl uenced
the way peasant calls for change were expressed. The response by magisterial
reformers was uniformly hostile, however; as noted above, in Against the Robbing and
Murdering Hordes of Peasants (1525), Luther urged rulers “as God’s sword on earth to
knock down, strangle, and stab the insurgents as one would a mad dog.” He and other
reformers asserted that their message was not to be linked with economic, social, or
political grievances, and that peasants and poor city people owed their superiors obedience.
Spiritual reasons never gave individuals the right to oppose political authority
by force, an idea Zwingli also affi rmed in Whoever Causes Insurrection (1526). Not
surprisingly, the magisterial Reformation lost much of its popular appeal after 1525,
though peasants and urban rebels sometimes found a place for their social and religious
ideas within radical groups.
At the same time as they were reacting so harshly to radicals and peasants, Luther
and Zwingli decided to marry, Luther to a former nun, Katharina von Bora (1499–1552),
and Zwingli to a Zurich widow, Anna Reinhart (1491–1538); both women quickly had
several children. Most other Protestant reformers also married, and their wives had to
create a new and respectable role for themselves – that of pastor’s wife – to overcome
people viewing them as simply a new type of priest’s concubine. They were living demonstrations
of their husbands’ convictions about the superiority of marriage to celibacy,
and were expected to be models of wifely obedience and Christian charity.
Though they denied its sacramental nature, many Protestant reformers praised marriage
in formal treatises, commentaries on the Book of Genesis, household guides, and –
most importantly – wedding sermons. They stressed that it had been ordained by God
when he presented Eve to Adam, served as a “remedy” for the unavoidable sin of lust,
provided a site for the pious rearing of the next generation of God-fearing Christians,
and offered husbands and wives companionship and consolation. A proper marriage
was one that refl ected both the spiritual equality of men and women and the proper
social hierarchy of husbandly authority and wifely obedience. Protestants did not break
with medieval scholastic theologians in their idea that women were to be subject to men,
a subjection rooted in their original nature and made more pronounced by Eve’s primary
responsibility for the Fall. Women were advised to be cheerful rather than grudging
in their obedience, for in doing so they demonstrated their willingness to follow God’s
plan. Men were urged to treat their wives kindly and considerately, but also to enforce
their authority, through physical coercion, if necessary; both continental and English
marriage manuals use the metaphor of breaking a horse for teaching a wife obedience,
though laws did set limits on the husband’s power to do so. A few women took Luther’s
idea about the priesthood of all believers to heart and wrote religious pamphlets and
hymns, but no sixteenth-century Protestants offi cially allowed women to hold positions
of religious authority, though monarchs such as Elizabeth I and female territorial rulers
of the states of the Holy Roman Empire did determine religious policies.
Because, in Protestant eyes, marriage was created by God as a remedy for human
weakness, marriages in which spouses did not comfort or support one another
physically, materially, or emotionally endangered their own souls and the surrounding
community. The only solution might be divorce and remarriage, which most Protestants
came to allow. Protestant marital courts in Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia,
and later Scotland and France allowed divorce for adultery and impotence, and sometimes
for contracting a contagious disease, “malicious” desertion (meaning intentional
desertion, as opposed to unintentional desertion such as extended army service), conviction
for a capital crime, or deadly assault. Some of them allowed both parties to
marry again, and some only the innocent.
This was a dramatic change in marital law, as Catholic canon law had allowed only
separation from bed and board with no remarriage, but it had a less than dramatic impact.
Because marriage created a social and economic unit, divorce was a desperate last
resort, and in many Protestant jurisdictions the annual divorce rate hovered around
0.02 to 0.06 per thousand people. (By contrast, the 2000 US divorce rate was 4.1 per
thousand people.) This was still higher than the divorce rate in England and Ireland,
however, for the Anglican and Anglo-Irish churches rejected divorce and continued to
assert the indissolubility of marriage. This rejection led England later to adopt a totally
secular divorce process. Beginning in 1670, divorces for adultery were granted by Act
of Parliament, a procedure that remained the only avenue for divorce in England until
1857. These acts were very rare; there were only 325 in the entire period from 1670 to
1857, with only four of these fi led by women.
World History
