Christianity - The First Three Thousand Years Part 12

The Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts, self-consciously a protest against King Charles's Church, in turn experienced religious dissent. As early as 1635 an independent-minded Boston woman called Anne Hutchinson horrified the leadership by challenging the whole framework of Puritan piety established by covenant theology. An exponent of one version of antinomianism, that recurrent Protestant neurosis (see pp. 652-3), she criticized the way that Puritan theology constantly forced the elect to prove to themselves that they were growing in holiness. Worse still, she a.s.serted her authority by holding her own devotional meetings and claiming special revelations of the Holy Spirit. The ministers of Ma.s.sachusetts were split as to whether her charisma was from G.o.d or from the Devil, and all sorts of personal clashes became mixed up in the dispute.13 After two years' tense confrontation, Hutchinson was banished, and travelled south to join a scattered set of coastal communities called Rhode Island. This had been set up by Roger Williams, a strict separatist minister, who had himself fled Ma.s.sachusetts to escape arrest for his religious views in 1636; it soon became a haven for an intimidating variety of the discontented, and the fastidious G.o.dly of Boston looked on it as the 'latrina of New England'. As Williams struggled to create order out of chaos, any thoughts of a single Church of G.o.d quickly disappeared. He came to embrace complete religious toleration, even including Jews and 'Turks' in his envisaged freedom (Rhode Island was then likely to be short of Turks, but it was a striking rhetorical gesture). Calvinist that he still was, Williams believed that all the non-elect would go to h.e.l.l, but it was not his responsibility to make matters worse for them in this life. In 1647, his Rhode Island towns proclaimed that 'all men may walk as their consciences persuade them, every one in the name of his G.o.d'. After two years' tense confrontation, Hutchinson was banished, and travelled south to join a scattered set of coastal communities called Rhode Island. This had been set up by Roger Williams, a strict separatist minister, who had himself fled Ma.s.sachusetts to escape arrest for his religious views in 1636; it soon became a haven for an intimidating variety of the discontented, and the fastidious G.o.dly of Boston looked on it as the 'latrina of New England'. As Williams struggled to create order out of chaos, any thoughts of a single Church of G.o.d quickly disappeared. He came to embrace complete religious toleration, even including Jews and 'Turks' in his envisaged freedom (Rhode Island was then likely to be short of Turks, but it was a striking rhetorical gesture). Calvinist that he still was, Williams believed that all the non-elect would go to h.e.l.l, but it was not his responsibility to make matters worse for them in this life. In 1647, his Rhode Island towns proclaimed that 'all men may walk as their consciences persuade them, every one in the name of his G.o.d'.14 Ma.s.sachusetts still begged to differ. Its leaders were responsible in 1651 for whipping a Baptist who had organized private worship, and worse was to come.15 Quakers arrived in 1657, determined to spread their ecstatic message of freedom and inner light, apparently spoiling for martyrdom, and raising bitter memories of Anne Hutchinson as they encouraged women to preach. The Friends' wilful separation from secular life aroused even greater fears than in England; after all, the Commonwealth was still no more than a quarter-century old, and bound together socially as well as in religion by its covenants. Quakers were publicly flogged and had their ears cropped; then, between 1659 and 1661, four were hanged for missionary activities - one of the victims was a woman, Mary Dyer, who had deliberately returned from banishment to see her previous sentence fulfilled. This caused a sharp reaction of protest both in New England and in the home country. Charles II ordered the executions to stop, even though his government had little time for Quakers and was itself imprisoning them; it was ironical that a royal regime so like the one from which the Puritan settlers had fled should now restrain their zeal for persecution. The executions exercised many New Englanders as to whether even the religiously obnoxious ought so to be treated. Pointedly, Rhode Island respected the Quaker commitment to pacifism by exempting them from military service. This unprecedented concession survived even the dire crisis of native all-out war in 1676, while still allowing Quakers a say in the government of the colony, which included decisions about war. Quakers arrived in 1657, determined to spread their ecstatic message of freedom and inner light, apparently spoiling for martyrdom, and raising bitter memories of Anne Hutchinson as they encouraged women to preach. The Friends' wilful separation from secular life aroused even greater fears than in England; after all, the Commonwealth was still no more than a quarter-century old, and bound together socially as well as in religion by its covenants. Quakers were publicly flogged and had their ears cropped; then, between 1659 and 1661, four were hanged for missionary activities - one of the victims was a woman, Mary Dyer, who had deliberately returned from banishment to see her previous sentence fulfilled. This caused a sharp reaction of protest both in New England and in the home country. Charles II ordered the executions to stop, even though his government had little time for Quakers and was itself imprisoning them; it was ironical that a royal regime so like the one from which the Puritan settlers had fled should now restrain their zeal for persecution. The executions exercised many New Englanders as to whether even the religiously obnoxious ought so to be treated. Pointedly, Rhode Island respected the Quaker commitment to pacifism by exempting them from military service. This unprecedented concession survived even the dire crisis of native all-out war in 1676, while still allowing Quakers a say in the government of the colony, which included decisions about war.16 Roger Williams was one of the few early colonists to think of making an effort to spread Christianity among the Native American population, taking the trouble to learn and a.n.a.lyse their languages and publish a guide to them. However, he too came to let this part of his ministry lapse, and the work awaited the personal decision of one New England minister, John Eliot, before it was taken up again. The early English Protestant neglect of evangelizing among indigenous peoples makes a curious contrast with the precocious Spanish attention to converting native peoples in South and Central America, or French efforts to the north in New France. It cannot simply be accounted for by the early difficulties of the colonies in surviving at all, or the tensions and cultural incomprehensions between the two societies. Elizabethan writers who published propaganda for founding colonies, princ.i.p.ally George Peck-ham, Thomas Harriot and Richard Hakluyt the younger, had stressed the importance of bringing Christianity to the peoples of America.17 This makes it all the more surprising that actual colonists were so slow to take up the work, and undermines the message of the n.o.ble image on the first seal of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Company: a Native American pleading, in the words of Paul's missionary vision (Acts 16.9), 'Come over and help us.' This makes it all the more surprising that actual colonists were so slow to take up the work, and undermines the message of the n.o.ble image on the first seal of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Company: a Native American pleading, in the words of Paul's missionary vision (Acts 16.9), 'Come over and help us.'

The explanations are probably theological rather than the result of inertia or straightforward racism, both of which Iberian colonists had also exhibited in generous measure. The considerations of natural law which troubled Spanish consciences through the Thomism of Las Casas or Vitoria cut little ice with Reformed theologians, who would be more inclined to seek the will of G.o.d embodied in specific commands - one of which, the stark order to Adam to 'fill the earth and subdue it', was another echo of Eden. Puritan covenant theology may have inhibited the idea of mission: believers in covenant theology might well feel that natives should prove their status as part of G.o.d's elect by spontaneously showing an interest in and making an effort to imitate the Christian beliefs of their neighbours, without any artificial effort on the colonists' part. Roger Williams and John Cotton were also affected by their longing for the imminent arrival of the Last Days, because they both shared Oliver Cromwell's biblically based belief that this event must be heralded by the conversion of the Jews (see pp. 773-4). Logically, therefore, that should happen first, and any conversion of new Gentile peoples would form a later stage of G.o.d's plan.18 Like their counterparts to the south, North American natives died in horrific numbers from European diseases; equally, that suggested to some commentators that their bodies had been created inferior to Europeans by G.o.d, for reasons wrapped up in his inscrutable will, and their idleness when introduced to European farming suggested a connection to the failed farmer and first murderer Cain. Like their counterparts to the south, North American natives died in horrific numbers from European diseases; equally, that suggested to some commentators that their bodies had been created inferior to Europeans by G.o.d, for reasons wrapped up in his inscrutable will, and their idleness when introduced to European farming suggested a connection to the failed farmer and first murderer Cain.19 It took Eliot's generous imagination to overcome such theological or psychological barriers. Beginning work in 1646, by 1663 he had produced the first Bible of any language to be printed in America, in a dialect of the Native American Algonquin language now extinct, and composed a catechism in the main local language. His intensive work produced thousands of Indian converts, organized in 'prayer towns' next to English-cultivated territory, governed by the natives themselves, but imitating as far as possible English models of life. Few settlers displayed Eliot's spirit of openness. As the colonies expanded in numbers and territorial ambitions through the century, such settlements were generally destroyed by warfare and colonial betrayal: a beginning of a long-drawn-out and wretched story of suffering for the indigenous people of North America at the hands of Protestant Christians. English Anglicans formed a missionary society in 1701, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, but it was at first largely intended to rally to the established Church white settlers in America (and their slaves), despite a good deal of rhetoric presented to early subscribers.20 Slavery formed another problem for and a blot on English-speaking Christian mission. As the southern colonies and English islands in the Caribbean developed a plantation economy, particularly for tobacco and sugar (cotton came much later), they became deeply enmeshed in the system of importing African slaves which had already sustained the Iberian colonies for more than a century. The first record of enslaved people in Virginia is as early as 1619.21 It was ironic that in the 1640s and 1650s, as the English on both sides of the Atlantic were talking in unprecedented ways about their own freedom and rights to choose, especially in religion, slaves were being shipped into the English colonies in hundreds, then thousands. Christianity did not seem to alter this for Protestants any more than it had for Catholics. An act of the Virginia a.s.sembly in 1667 spelled out that 'the conferring of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or Freedome', which was only to restate the policy already adopted by the Portuguese in their slave trade, and to look back to the position of English serfs, formally enshrined in English common law (as it still is). It was ironic that in the 1640s and 1650s, as the English on both sides of the Atlantic were talking in unprecedented ways about their own freedom and rights to choose, especially in religion, slaves were being shipped into the English colonies in hundreds, then thousands. Christianity did not seem to alter this for Protestants any more than it had for Catholics. An act of the Virginia a.s.sembly in 1667 spelled out that 'the conferring of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or Freedome', which was only to restate the policy already adopted by the Portuguese in their slave trade, and to look back to the position of English serfs, formally enshrined in English common law (as it still is).22 It was a different position from that of the Reformed Protestant Dutch in their seventeenth-century colonial venture in the southern Cape of Africa - there, slaves who were baptized could not be sold again, and the Dutch were therefore careful to keep those baptized to a minimum. It was a different position from that of the Reformed Protestant Dutch in their seventeenth-century colonial venture in the southern Cape of Africa - there, slaves who were baptized could not be sold again, and the Dutch were therefore careful to keep those baptized to a minimum.23

21. North America in 1700

The double standard seemed to be ever more entrenched. The great exponent of toleration and liberty John Locke, in his Two Treatises of Government Two Treatises of Government, resoundingly declared to Englishmen that 'Slavery is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man . . . that 'tis hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less a Gentleman, should plead for 't'. But that is precisely what Locke himself had done when (as one of the first hereditary peers created in English North America) he helped first to draft and then to revise a const.i.tution for a vast new English colony in the south called Carolina, at much the same time in the 1680s as he was writing Two Treatises Two Treatises. Blacks were different.24 Slave numbers rocketed at the end of the seventeenth century: blacks outnumbered whites in South Carolina by the 1710s, and in Virginia the proportion of blacks to whites shot up from less than 10 per cent in 1680 to about a third in 1740. This is the context for the remarkable liturgical innovation of one South Carolina Anglican clergyman, Francis Le Jau, who added to the baptism service a requirement that slaves being baptized should repeat an oath 'that you do not ask for the holy baptism out of any design to free yourself from the Duty and Obedience you owe to your Master while you live'. This reflected a clerical dilemma in a Church so dominated by the laity: when masters were putting up much resistance to converting slaves, was it better to let souls perish or to accept the norms of the society in which the Church found itself? Slave numbers rocketed at the end of the seventeenth century: blacks outnumbered whites in South Carolina by the 1710s, and in Virginia the proportion of blacks to whites shot up from less than 10 per cent in 1680 to about a third in 1740. This is the context for the remarkable liturgical innovation of one South Carolina Anglican clergyman, Francis Le Jau, who added to the baptism service a requirement that slaves being baptized should repeat an oath 'that you do not ask for the holy baptism out of any design to free yourself from the Duty and Obedience you owe to your Master while you live'. This reflected a clerical dilemma in a Church so dominated by the laity: when masters were putting up much resistance to converting slaves, was it better to let souls perish or to accept the norms of the society in which the Church found itself?25 As early as the mid-seventeenth century, Virginia in the south and New England in the north had created two contrasting forms of English-speaking colony. Both were firmly committed to their different patterns of established Churches, just as in Europe, though Rhode Island remained as a thorn in the side of the New England establishments and was a model for their gradual loosening of official restrictions on other Protestant congregations. Between the two regions, a variety of 'Middle Colonies' was set up, not all initially English. Swedish Lutherans settled on the Delaware River, and the Protestant Dutch seized a spectacular natural harbour in the Hudson estuary which they named New Nether-land and which quickly emerged as the focus for European shipping along the North American coast. An English flotilla annexed this tempting prize during the Anglo-Dutch Wars in 1664, and its capital New Amsterdam on the Manhattan peninsula became New York, only briefly retaken by the Dutch in 1673.

Once more the aim of the Swedes and Dutch had been to reproduce the national Churches back home, but even before 1664 the religious cosmopolitanism of the northern Netherlands had already been reproduced in New Amsterdam, whether the Dutch Reformed Church liked it or not. That included pragmatic Dutch toleration of a wealthy Jewish community, since there were a significant number of Jewish shareholders in the Dutch West India Company, the colony's proprietor. English rule was the coup de grace to any thoughts of a Dutch Reformed monopoly. It was New York that first experienced the bewildering diversity of settlers which, during the eighteenth century, swelled into a flood, and made any effort to reproduce old Europe's compartmentalized and discrete confessional Churches seem ludicrous. Rather than the colonies of north and south which had been English from the beginning, this Dutch settlement pointed to the future diverse religious pattern of North America.26 Further religious experiments intersected with the crises of mid-seventeenth-century England in different ways from New England and Virginia. In 1632 Roman Catholic aristocrats friendly with Charles I sponsored a colony in a region known as the Chesapeake north of Virginia, and named it Maryland after the King's Catholic wife, Henrietta Maria. In fact the Royalists' defeat in the English civil wars meant that Catholics did not take the leading role in Maryland. Feeling that their already tenuous position was under threat, in 1649 they seized on a brief moment of local strength and sought to create a unique freedom to practise their religion by outmanoeuvring their Protestant opponents in a huge concession. They guaranteed complete toleration for all those who believed in Jesus Christ. They ordered fines and whipping for anyone using the normal religious insults of seventeenth-century England, elaborately specified in a list: 'heretic, schismatic, idolator, Puritan, Independent, Presbyterian, Popish priest, Jesuit, Jesuited Papist, Lutheran, Calvinist, Anabaptist, Brownist, Antinomian, Barrowist, Roundhead, Separatist'.27 This was an extraordinary effort to blot out the bitterness of the Reformation; it approached Rhode Island's universal toleration by a very different route. Maryland showed the limitations of its vision by still ordering property confiscation and execution for anyone denying the Trinity, and Anglicans seized control of the colony in the 1690s, doing their best to restrict Roman Catholic rights - an ironical outcome of the 'Glorious Revolution', which is seen in English history as a milestone in the development of public religious toleration (see pp. 733-6). Nevertheless, amid the steadily encroaching diversity of the whole colonial seaboard, the Maryland example was not forgotten. This was an extraordinary effort to blot out the bitterness of the Reformation; it approached Rhode Island's universal toleration by a very different route. Maryland showed the limitations of its vision by still ordering property confiscation and execution for anyone denying the Trinity, and Anglicans seized control of the colony in the 1690s, doing their best to restrict Roman Catholic rights - an ironical outcome of the 'Glorious Revolution', which is seen in English history as a milestone in the development of public religious toleration (see pp. 733-6). Nevertheless, amid the steadily encroaching diversity of the whole colonial seaboard, the Maryland example was not forgotten.

A new chance for the hard-pressed Quakers came when one of their number, William Penn, became interested in founding a refuge for them. He was the son of an English admiral, and friendly with the Catholic and nautically minded heir to the throne, the future James II. Drawing on these useful connections, he got a royal charter in 1682 for a colony to be called Pennsylvania, in territories lying between Maryland and New England. His plan was bold and imaginative: going further than the Catholic elite of Maryland, he renounced the use of coercion in religion, and granted free exercise of religion and political partic.i.p.ation to all monotheists of whatever views taking shelter in his colony. He also tried to maintain friendly relations with Native Americans. Soon Pennsylvania came to have a rich mix not simply of English Protestants, but also Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, Lutherans and the descendants of radical Reformation groups of mainland Europe who were fleeing from Roman Catholic intolerance in central Europe (see p. 647). Among the latter, the Old Order Amish from Switzerland have done their best ever since to freeze their communal way of life as it was when they first arrived in the early eighteenth century.28 All this diversity proved destructive for Penn's original vision of a community run according to the ideals of the Friends. Under pressure from the English government, Pennsylvania's a.s.sembly even disenfranchised Catholics, Jews and non-believers in 1705.29 Soon good relations with the native population were also badly compromised. Pennsylvania nevertheless fostered a consistent hatred of slavery among Friends, a development of great future significance for all Christians (see p. 869). It set another notable example: no one religious group could automatically claim exclusive status, unlike nearly all other colonies where a particular Church continued to claim official advantages even if it was a minority. This was the first colony to evolve the characteristic pattern of religion of the modern United States of America: a pattern of religious denominations, none claiming the exclusive status of Church, but making up slices in a Protestant 'cake' which together adds up to a Church. Anglicanism did manage to strengthen its position in the southern English American colonies after Charles II's restoration (even in cosmopolitan New York), gaining established status in six out of the eventual thirteen. However, the origins of so many colonies in religious protest against the Church of England back home guaranteed that Anglicanism would never fully replicate its full English privileges in North America. Soon good relations with the native population were also badly compromised. Pennsylvania nevertheless fostered a consistent hatred of slavery among Friends, a development of great future significance for all Christians (see p. 869). It set another notable example: no one religious group could automatically claim exclusive status, unlike nearly all other colonies where a particular Church continued to claim official advantages even if it was a minority. This was the first colony to evolve the characteristic pattern of religion of the modern United States of America: a pattern of religious denominations, none claiming the exclusive status of Church, but making up slices in a Protestant 'cake' which together adds up to a Church. Anglicanism did manage to strengthen its position in the southern English American colonies after Charles II's restoration (even in cosmopolitan New York), gaining established status in six out of the eventual thirteen. However, the origins of so many colonies in religious protest against the Church of England back home guaranteed that Anglicanism would never fully replicate its full English privileges in North America.

Established churches might have been able to resist the growing pluralism better if they had more effectively set up their structures of government, but virtually everywhere except Ma.s.sachusetts, the colonies suffered a shortage of clergy in the first formative century, and lay leaders of local religion were generally less inclined to take an exclusive view of what true religion might be than professionally trained clerics. In this they were aided by a strong consideration swaying many promoters of colonies: religious coercion discouraged settlement and was therefore economically bad for struggling colonial ventures. Reformation Europe had known religious toleration; now religious liberty was developing. Toleration is a grudging concession granted by one body from a position of strength; liberty provides a situation in which all religious groups compete on an equal basis. We have already seen precedents: first in the 1520s the pragmatism of the Graubunden in Switzerland, then the Hungarians and Transylvanians in the Declaration of Torda, soon followed by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's Confederation of Warsaw (see pp. 639-43). Just as the increasing confessional rigidity of old Europe was turning from these sixteenth-century ideals, a new European enterprise was taking up the challenge.

THE FIGHT FOR PROTESTANT SURVIVAL (1660-1800).

The growing success and stability of these new transatlantic Protestant polities (gained at the price for Native American societies of increasing disruption and exile westwards) contrasted with a long-drawn-out crisis for Protestants in late-seventeenth-century Europe. The Habsburgs began systematically dismantling a century and more of Protestant life in central Europe from Bohemia to Hungary, Catholic advance in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth continued apace, and France re-emerged under Louis XIV (reigned 1643-1715) as a major European power with an aggressively Catholic agenda. The Stuart dynasty restored in Britain in 1660 was from its return a client of Louis, seeking his financial support against its stridently but selectively loyal and inconveniently Anglican English Parliaments. Charles II and James II became p.a.w.ns in Louis's plans, which included improving, or better still reversing, the marginal position of Catholics in the Atlantic Isles.30 Louis XIV died an exhausted and defeated old man, but in his prime he directed an army of 400,000, supported by a taxable population of twenty million; he had increased the size of that army fivefold in four decades.31 Beyond his own borders, he spurred on the Duke of Savoy in murderous campaigns against Savoy's Protestant minority, and in 1685 he overturned his grandfather Henri IV's religious settlement for France by revoking the Edict of Nantes - 150,000 Protestants are estimated to have fled France as a result, the largest displacement of Christians in early modern Europe. Beyond his own borders, he spurred on the Duke of Savoy in murderous campaigns against Savoy's Protestant minority, and in 1685 he overturned his grandfather Henri IV's religious settlement for France by revoking the Edict of Nantes - 150,000 Protestants are estimated to have fled France as a result, the largest displacement of Christians in early modern Europe.32 Louis conquered largely Protestant lands of the Holy Roman Empire in Alsace, making a Catholic Strasbourg out of Lutheran Stra.s.sburg, which long before in Martin Bucer's time had been the prime candidate to lead the Protestant world (see pp. 629-30). In his military campaigns of 1672, Louis nearly succeeded where the Spanish monarchy had failed, in overwhelming the United Provinces of the Netherlands - and in that ambitious venture lay the seeds of his own failure. For the outrage of France's invasion provoked Prince Willem of Orange, appointed Stadhouder (the word which in French would be 'Lieutenant') by most provinces in the Netherlands, to take up arms against the Catholic Leviathan. His ancestor Willem 'the Silent', eventually murdered by a Catholic fanatic, had done the same a century before, but Prince Willem would more than avenge his fate. Louis conquered largely Protestant lands of the Holy Roman Empire in Alsace, making a Catholic Strasbourg out of Lutheran Stra.s.sburg, which long before in Martin Bucer's time had been the prime candidate to lead the Protestant world (see pp. 629-30). In his military campaigns of 1672, Louis nearly succeeded where the Spanish monarchy had failed, in overwhelming the United Provinces of the Netherlands - and in that ambitious venture lay the seeds of his own failure. For the outrage of France's invasion provoked Prince Willem of Orange, appointed Stadhouder (the word which in French would be 'Lieutenant') by most provinces in the Netherlands, to take up arms against the Catholic Leviathan. His ancestor Willem 'the Silent', eventually murdered by a Catholic fanatic, had done the same a century before, but Prince Willem would more than avenge his fate.

Willem made it his life's work to humble French Catholic power across Europe. His success exacted dynastic revenge not simply for Willem the Silent but for the disaster suffered by his great-uncle by marriage, the Elector Palatine Friedrich, back in 1618-19 (see pp. 646- 7). As a by-blow in the course of his relentless campaigns against Louis, Willem gained the three thrones of Britain in 1688 - but what a by-blow this proved! It was the culmination of a decade of political turmoil in the Atlantic Isles, and was provoked by the extraordinary stupidity of King James II, a sincere but inept convert to Roman Catholicism. While James was still Duke of York and heir to the throne, his wily brother King Charles II had saved him between 1679 and 1681 from a real prospect of being excluded from the succession in favour of James's daughters, Mary and Anne, by his first wife, Anne Hyde; unlike their father, both ladies had remained firm in their loyalty to the Church of England.

The King's strategy to save James from exclusion had been to strangle opposition from the 'Whig' group, which was promoting exclusion, through a royal alliance across the whole Atlantic archipelago with a rival political grouping within the Protestant establishment. They were christened 'Tories' by the more radical Protestant enemies, an insulting reference to Irish Catholic bandits (similarly the Whigs were nicknamed after Protestant Scots cattle thieves). Tories were Protestants who championed government by bishops in the established Protestant Churches of the three kingdoms, and they trumpeted their belief in the divine right of kings as well as bishops, in return for royal support in oppressing rival Protestants and (in Ireland) riding out resentment from dispossessed Catholics. King Charles died in 1685, leaving his brother in the best possible position, but King James II failed to see that Charles had bought success by becoming prisoner to a political party.33 When James's antics in promoting the interests of his fellow Catholics made Tories snarl, he promptly abandoned the Tories and tried to outflank them, courting Protestant Dissenters by offering the same emanc.i.p.ation he was promoting for Catholics.34 Dissenters were torn between pleasure at the end of their persecution and a very real fear of international Catholicism. James might have got away with his plans if the succession had remained with his Protestant daughters, but he now had a second wife, the Catholic Italian Mary of Modena. Their fatal mistake was to provide a half-brother for the Princesses Mary and Anne, James Francis: 'Francis', with its multiple Catholic resonances, was not a clever name to give a prospective English king. From that moment in 1688, James II was doomed, because the boy was bound to be brought up a Catholic. Grimly observing was Mary's husband, Stadhouder Willem, whose wife stood to lose her future thrones through this new arrival. Dissenters were torn between pleasure at the end of their persecution and a very real fear of international Catholicism. James might have got away with his plans if the succession had remained with his Protestant daughters, but he now had a second wife, the Catholic Italian Mary of Modena. Their fatal mistake was to provide a half-brother for the Princesses Mary and Anne, James Francis: 'Francis', with its multiple Catholic resonances, was not a clever name to give a prospective English king. From that moment in 1688, James II was doomed, because the boy was bound to be brought up a Catholic. Grimly observing was Mary's husband, Stadhouder Willem, whose wife stood to lose her future thrones through this new arrival.

It only needed an invitation from a few English notables for Willem to launch naval and military intervention against his father-in-law, who fled the country in a state of nervous collapse, and the throne was declared vacant. 'Dutch William' was as much a conqueror as his Norman namesake, though the fact that virtually no one in England lifted a finger to stop his invasion has mitigated the embarra.s.sment for the English national myth of a scepter'd isle perpetually preserved from invasion since 1066 (a rhetoric often still employed by those hostile to the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union). At least the Dutch were Protestant, and good at gardening. Indeed, to minimize the impropriety of William's landing of his forces at Torbay in Devon, November 1688 gained its own mythological status, as a 'Glorious Revolution' which saved the Protestant state at the cost of very little English blood, though more in Scotland, and still more in Ireland.

In the very last days of 1688, William summoned members of the English House of Lords and House of Commons to what they slightly awkwardly termed a 'Convention'. Acting as if it were Parliament, the Convention contrived an ingenious if unorthodox replacement for its missing monarch by recognizing a team, William (III) and Mary (II) - but it was nervously aware that the kingdom of Scotland might make a different choice, while the Catholic Irish mostly rallied behind King James and suffered three years of b.l.o.o.d.y warfare before being forced to change their minds. A trio of national 'Revolutions' now produced a contrasting trio of religious settlements. The episcopally structured Church of England, which did represent the overwhelming majority of English people, grudgingly agreed henceforth to tolerate Protestant Dissenting groups, albeit on rather less generous terms than James had offered. The English bishops turned uncomfortably aside while in 1690 Presbyterian activists were sweeping away episcopal government in the Church of Scotland, against the wishes of many Scots.35 English bishops' compensation was to see the Protestant Episcopal Church of Ireland confirmed in privilege and power, despite its ludicrously small proportion of adherents among a sea of Irish Catholics. In each kingdom, the deciding factor was who would best support the fragile new monarchy. English bishops' compensation was to see the Protestant Episcopal Church of Ireland confirmed in privilege and power, despite its ludicrously small proportion of adherents among a sea of Irish Catholics. In each kingdom, the deciding factor was who would best support the fragile new monarchy.

Tory High Churchpeople agonized about this untidy solution. Some left the Church of England, insistent that their duty to G.o.d meant that they could not break their oath to King James, however obnoxious he had proved. Among these 'Non-Jurors' was the then Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft (times had changed; at least he was not beheaded like Laud). Altogether, the Non-Jurors were a distinguished and conscientious grouping who were now free to think new thoughts about why they were still Anglicans when not part of an established Church. The long-term consequences of those musings were considerable (see pp. 840-41), even though the Non-Juring Church itself eventually faded away along with the Stuarts' chances of retaking the throne. It was not surprising that the leadership of the Church now shifted to those whom their more partisan colleagues had already angrily christened 'Lat.i.tudinarians' (see p. 654): those willing to allow a wide lat.i.tude of religious belief within a broadly tolerant Church, and to accommodate their allegiance to the new political realities. The triumphant Whigs also needed to justify the change of regime which now brought them to power in the state alongside Lat.i.tudinarians in the Church. The most clear-sighted Whig spokesman, although not at the time the most popular precisely because of his clear-sightedness, was John Locke.

Locke had first plunged into political controversy in order to formulate a Whig case for James, Duke of York's exclusion from the succession in 1679-81, and his arguments could equally well justify the 1688 revolution. He appealed to the Bible to demolish the idea that it provided a case for the divine right of kings. If seventeenth-century divine-right theorists like the Englishman Sir Robert Filmer turned to Genesis and claimed a hereditary succession from Adam, granted by G.o.d, to justify the divine character of royal succession in their own day, Locke denied that the idea of hereditary succession could be found in Genesis, and he used its stories to construct a different myth. Although Adam's fall had brought about the punishment that humans would have to labour in order to survive, this burden had engendered a natural right in all people to labour and to possess the land for labour. This preceded any authority to govern, which resulted from contracts freely made by humans in order to live more easily with each other. So the Bible provided the basis of Locke's distinctive ideology of a social contract, and justified his scheme of rights and duties. Locke's programme was not immediately attractive to the new Whig establishment, which did not want to endanger its fragile alliance with Anglican Tories, and which was therefore inclined to prefer providentialist arguments to defend King William's rule: Whigs saw him as G.o.d's agent in defending the English Church.36 Nevertheless, over the next century, Locke's language of rights and contract fermented in the political arguments of the anglophone world and then spread into Europe generally, decisively undermining the concept of sacred monarchy. Nevertheless, over the next century, Locke's language of rights and contract fermented in the political arguments of the anglophone world and then spread into Europe generally, decisively undermining the concept of sacred monarchy.

After William III's death in 1702, English-led armies continued to fight the French under his British successor and sister-in-law, Queen Anne, decisively blocking Louis's seemingly inexorable advance. Before John Churchill's victory at Blenheim in 1704, English armies had not won a major victory since Flodden in 1513, or in mainland Europe since Agincourt a century before that. Churchill gained his t.i.tle of Duke of Marlborough, and the money to build Blenheim Palace, one of Europe's most splendid houses, thanks to the grat.i.tude of British monarch and Parliament; his brilliant command of the armies had, in four major battles, permanently halted the Catholic tide from washing away all surviving Protestant power. It was not surprising that the people of northern Europe were still virulently anti-Catholic in 1700. They continued to read their sixteenth-century martyrologies - especially for the English the luridly detailed and luridly ill.u.s.trated folios of John Foxe's Book of Martyrs Book of Martyrs - but Protestants had no need merely to recycle pa.s.sions from the days of Reformation sufferings: the Catholic menace was a living reality. - but Protestants had no need merely to recycle pa.s.sions from the days of Reformation sufferings: the Catholic menace was a living reality.37 So there was no possibility of England countenancing a Catholic Stuart succession when Queen Anne died with no surviving children in 1714. The thrones of Ireland and Great Britain (from 1707 there had been a United Kingdom of England and Scotland) went to another descendant of the Elector Palatine Friedrich, the Elector Georg of Hanover. Now he was King George I of Great Britain and Ireland. His new British subjects never felt much affection for him as a person - charm was not his strong suit - but overwhelming numbers of them in England deeply valued him as a saviour of the Protestant Glorious Revolution and a bulwark against the return of the Stuarts. So there was no possibility of England countenancing a Catholic Stuart succession when Queen Anne died with no surviving children in 1714. The thrones of Ireland and Great Britain (from 1707 there had been a United Kingdom of England and Scotland) went to another descendant of the Elector Palatine Friedrich, the Elector Georg of Hanover. Now he was King George I of Great Britain and Ireland. His new British subjects never felt much affection for him as a person - charm was not his strong suit - but overwhelming numbers of them in England deeply valued him as a saviour of the Protestant Glorious Revolution and a bulwark against the return of the Stuarts.

The outworkings of the Reformation thus pulled England back into an intimate territorial involvement in the affairs of mainland Europe, from which the French had previously expelled it when they captured the last medieval English mainland enclave of Calais in 1558. From 1688 to 1702, and again from 1714 until 1832, when different laws of succession severed the thrones of Britain and Hanover, the British Isles were part of a joint European and vigorously Protestant state enterprise spanning the North Sea, while the British also built up a seaborne empire, first in North America and then in India. Initial British interests in Asia, to begin with in fierce compet.i.tion with their Protestant co-religionists the Dutch, were not to acquire territory but, like the Portuguese before them, to create small bases which would stabilize their trade in cottons and a swelling volume of other consumer goods.

The momentum of British prosperity sustained their enterprise where the penurious Portuguese had failed, and their markets seemed limitless; the Dutch proved unable to sustain the same momentum in political organization and financial resources, and so the United Provinces fell behind the United Kingdom in power and world reach. In the British Isles, the pace of manufacturing quickened until, with the aid of a new technology harnessing the power of steam for production, Britain developed Europe's first industrial revolution, resulting in huge wealth for some, and a great deal of modest prosperity and spending power for many - not to mention other equally profound changes, as we will see (see pp. 787-91). This was the basis for a British world empire, based improbably on a comparatively minor archipelago of Atlantic islands. Its self-image was based on a narrative of heroic struggle against popery and arbitrary tyranny (represented generally by the French), in which Protestant English and Protestant Scots had buried their differences in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, creating a common new home for their two peoples: Great Britain. A leading historian of this period has subt.i.tled her study of it with an appropriate play on words, speaking of the process as 'forging' a nation. British adventures across the world became, for the next century and more, an overwhelmingly Protestant story.38 In the eighteenth century, European politicians and generals began to realize that the Mughal Empire in India, which had seemed so formidable to Catholic European powers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was beginning to fail. By contrast, their own governmental and military organizations were growing ever more efficient and effectively financed, tested by the century of European confessional wars from 1618 onwards. India was only the centrepiece: everywhere, Spanish and Portuguese power was looking far more vulnerable. In the mid-eighteenth century, Great Britain and France contended for supremacy: a 'Seven Years War' drew in all the major European powers, the first war to be fought in continents circling the globe. American 'Indians' were enlisted on the borders of New France and the thirteen English American colonies; Africans were swept in; in armies of the Indian subcontinent, Muslims and Hindus found themselves fighting European quarrels, the beginning of two centuries during which the Christian West was to be the dominant force in world power struggles.

When the British fought the French to a standstill and concluded a peace treaty in Paris in 1763, they found themselves in charge of a land empire which needed defending across the world, and their armies were now carried by a navy with a near-universal range. Their victory was sealed in 1799, when British armies defeated Tipu Sultan, the last Indian ruler capable of seriously challenging them; in Tipu's defeat, they dashed the hopes of his French allies, now revolutionary Republicans spoiling to reverse the French monarchy's humiliation of 1763.39 The large British gains in India had been equalled in 1763 by Britain's acquisition of France's Northern American territories to the north and west of their own thirteen colonies. It was tempting to see Protestantism as the Christianity of the future. The large British gains in India had been equalled in 1763 by Britain's acquisition of France's Northern American territories to the north and west of their own thirteen colonies. It was tempting to see Protestantism as the Christianity of the future.

PIETISM AND THE MORAVIANS.

There was a force behind this expansion greater than British imperial power: the Protestant religious movements underpinning it were international. What is remarkable about these stories is their interconnection across Europe and the world, and the fact that they took both their immediate and their long-term origins from Protestant Germany.40 King George I came to England in 1714 from a Lutheran northern Europe very conscious of its own providential survival in the Thirty Years War, yet still not at ease. Battered by the armies of Louis XIV, it then suffered several further decades of calamities from the 1690s: a run of terrible weather producing famine, which nurtured epidemics, and from 1700 the Great Northern War, which, over twenty years, broke Swedish aspirations to great-power status in the Baltic and consolidated the imperial power of Peter the Great's Russia (see pp. 541-4). Such catastrophes placed a heavy pastoral burden on Lutheran clergy in Scandinavia and Germany, and made them look for Protestant spiritual resources beyond their own tradition. Although they would have not wished to admit it, they were also trying to find a subst.i.tute for something which the Reformation had destroyed: monastic life and spirituality. With certain formal exceptions in Germany, which owed a rather accidental survival to their convenience for the German n.o.bility, all monasteries, nunneries and friaries had disappeared from Protestant Europe, and all devotional life devolved to the parishes. Even there, parish gilds and confraternities had largely been dissolved or had concentrated on commercial purposes to avoid any hint of popish superst.i.tion. King George I came to England in 1714 from a Lutheran northern Europe very conscious of its own providential survival in the Thirty Years War, yet still not at ease. Battered by the armies of Louis XIV, it then suffered several further decades of calamities from the 1690s: a run of terrible weather producing famine, which nurtured epidemics, and from 1700 the Great Northern War, which, over twenty years, broke Swedish aspirations to great-power status in the Baltic and consolidated the imperial power of Peter the Great's Russia (see pp. 541-4). Such catastrophes placed a heavy pastoral burden on Lutheran clergy in Scandinavia and Germany, and made them look for Protestant spiritual resources beyond their own tradition. Although they would have not wished to admit it, they were also trying to find a subst.i.tute for something which the Reformation had destroyed: monastic life and spirituality. With certain formal exceptions in Germany, which owed a rather accidental survival to their convenience for the German n.o.bility, all monasteries, nunneries and friaries had disappeared from Protestant Europe, and all devotional life devolved to the parishes. Even there, parish gilds and confraternities had largely been dissolved or had concentrated on commercial purposes to avoid any hint of popish superst.i.tion.41 With the religious houses and gilds there had disappeared a host of Christian ministries and activities, from charitable work to itinerant preaching to contemplation, which the Reformation had done its best to replace, but with incomplete success. Now in compensation came a renewal of German and Scandinavian Protestantism, which has come to be known as Pietism. With the religious houses and gilds there had disappeared a host of Christian ministries and activities, from charitable work to itinerant preaching to contemplation, which the Reformation had done its best to replace, but with incomplete success. Now in compensation came a renewal of German and Scandinavian Protestantism, which has come to be known as Pietism.

Pietists liked to emphasize the novelty of what they were doing, and certainly they were impatient with conservative ('Orthodox') Lutheran civil authorities and clergy who obstructed them, but there was little in their activities that was actually new or without precedent in Lutheran life. What they initially sought was an enriched use of the existing parish system, pulling parish life out of a ma.s.s of surviving pre-Reformation habits of worship to a more heartfelt expression of Christian faith, which would be more robust in the face of Counter-Reformation Catholicism. Many deplored the divisions within Protestantism, which could plausibly be considered as contributing to the disasters of the seventeenth century. Lutherans ashamed of such schism paid more attention to their Reformed neighbours in the Netherlands and Germany, and they were impressed by the intense and personal piety they encountered, itself owing much to the preaching and writing of English Puritans who had become dissatisfied with or had been ejected from the Church of England. In many areas of Germany, particularly large cities, Lutherans were also confronted with an influx of French Huguenot refugees whose plight was directly the result of their steadfastness in Reformed religion back home.

From its earliest days, Pietism was intimately bound up with education. Thoughtful scholars and students - backbone of the parish clergy - were frustrated with the collection of northern universities which served the Protestant Churches. Protestantism in both its Lutheran and its Reformed ident.i.ties had rather quickly channelled its early bursts of energy into forms which could be taught to prospective ministers in the theology faculties of existing universities. Often these universities shaped their curriculum using the medieval scholastic methods which Martin Luther himself had come to scorn, and Pietists scorned them too. They did their best to recapture the initial excitement and urgency of the Reformation, the sense of personal and public conflict which had so galvanized popular Protestant enthusiasm in the 1520s and again in the 1560s. Yet these were orderly folk: they found themselves trying to cope with the strains of a Protestant European society which was in the middle of rapid change, and they sought ways of channelling and disciplining the enthusiasm which they themselves were inciting. It was a difficult balancing act, which bequeathed enduring tensions.

Crucial to Pietist formation were two Lutheran pastors, Philipp Jakob Spener and his younger contemporary August Hermann Francke. Spener, who left his native Alsace before its takeover by Louis XIV, and became successively pastor in Frankfurt am Main and the Hohenzollern capital Berlin, was alarmed by the rapid growth of such population centres and the strains that this placed on the parish clergy. His solution was to seek out the most energetic and serious layfolk in the parishes and treat them as partners in ministry, gathering people outside service-time to meet for Bible-reading, prayer and hymn-singing in what he called collegia pietatis collegia pietatis. Under his influence, in 1694 the Hohenzollern Elector Friedrich of Brandenburg founded a new university for his territories in the city of Halle, which was to prove a major source for disseminating a new spirit in Lutheranism. Spener's genius, and that of the other leaders of the movement, was for detailed organization, plus strategic alliances with sympathetic rulers and n.o.bility, and although Spener met opposition which eventually crushed his spirit, Francke consolidated his work in spectacular fashion. Pietism, with its varied Protestant roots and openness to crossing the Lutheran-Reformed divide, was always going to get a sympathetic hearing from the monarchs of the house of Hohenzollern, whose leading representatives in Brandenburg were Reformed princes stranded uncomfortably in a landscape of Lutherans.

From 1695, Francke created at Halle an extraordinary complex of orphanage, medical clinic, schools for both poor children and young n.o.blemen and a teacher-training college, complete with printing press, library and even a museum to demonstrate to the pupils the wonders of G.o.d's creation. The work was paid for by an enterprise useful in itself: the first commercial production in Europe of standardized medical remedies, complete with multilingual advertising brochures.42 All this was eventually housed in monumental buildings which have survived the twentieth-century disasters of Germany remarkably intact and available for their original functions. Franke's principle was that everyone, whatever their position in life, should come out of childhood education able to read the Bible and to take pride in at least one special skill. This was to link the profession of Christianity to personal self-confidence and practical achievement, in a fashion which had no exact precedent, and which has become characteristic of modern Evangelicalism. All this was eventually housed in monumental buildings which have survived the twentieth-century disasters of Germany remarkably intact and available for their original functions. Franke's principle was that everyone, whatever their position in life, should come out of childhood education able to read the Bible and to take pride in at least one special skill. This was to link the profession of Christianity to personal self-confidence and practical achievement, in a fashion which had no exact precedent, and which has become characteristic of modern Evangelicalism.

Halle set patterns in the Protestant world for inst.i.tutions created by private initiative, as Jesuits had done for Catholics a century and more before. The work of Halle extended throughout northern Europe and deep into Russia, as Francke sent out his pupils into government service or clerical ministry, printed innumerable devotional tracts and kept up a correspondence with a vast diaspora of the like-minded - around five thousand of them.43 In 1690-91, he wrote an autobiography which, although looking back to patterns set by Augustine and Luther as they described their conversion experiences, laid out the whole first thirty years of his life in terms of progressive and not instantaneous conversion: a continuous spiritual struggle marked by dramatic high points. It was hugely influential. Countless Evangelicals thereafter tried to shape their lives in the same way, and many of them turned their efforts into books. In 1690-91, he wrote an autobiography which, although looking back to patterns set by Augustine and Luther as they described their conversion experiences, laid out the whole first thirty years of his life in terms of progressive and not instantaneous conversion: a continuous spiritual struggle marked by dramatic high points. It was hugely influential. Countless Evangelicals thereafter tried to shape their lives in the same way, and many of them turned their efforts into books.44 All this busy activity had an urgent purpose: it was a preparation for the End Times, which would be heralded by the conversion of the Jews. Like Spener before him, Francke was very aware of the decades of excited speculation about the return of the Messiah which had agitated contemporary Judaism, along with the appearance of several Jewish candidates for the post. That was one of the reasons that Francke's eyes turned so much towards eastern Europe, with its vast spread of Jewish communities. Despite the enthusiasm which he inspired in others for the cause of conversion, leading to the foundation in Halle of the first Protestant inst.i.tution for Jewish mission, this effort proved one of the real failures of the Pietist movement (apart from the non-appearance of the Last Days). All this busy activity had an urgent purpose: it was a preparation for the End Times, which would be heralded by the conversion of the Jews. Like Spener before him, Francke was very aware of the decades of excited speculation about the return of the Messiah which had agitated contemporary Judaism, along with the appearance of several Jewish candidates for the post. That was one of the reasons that Francke's eyes turned so much towards eastern Europe, with its vast spread of Jewish communities. Despite the enthusiasm which he inspired in others for the cause of conversion, leading to the foundation in Halle of the first Protestant inst.i.tution for Jewish mission, this effort proved one of the real failures of the Pietist movement (apart from the non-appearance of the Last Days).45 Ringing through these varied inst.i.tutions, sounding through the little groups of layfolk and the churches where Pietist pastors managed to overcome the disapproval of more conventional Lutherans, was a new burst of hymnody. Here was the solvent of the tensions within the movement caused by its challenge to Lutheran tradition and its adventurous reaching out to the Reformed; here was cheer for the anxious faithful, mindful of the fragility of the war-damaged society round them. It was a warm renewal of a tradition which had distinguished precedents in the hymns of Luther and his successors in the Lutheran tradition. One of those best known in the English-speaking world as well as in Germany, thanks to its translation by Frances c.o.x, a Victorian enthusiast for German hymnody, was written in 1675 by Johann Jakob Schutz, a young lawyer who was an eager a.s.sociate of Spener in the activities of his collegia pietatis collegia pietatis in Frankfurt, but whose search for a religion of the heart led him on further to plan colonizing schemes in William Penn's Pennsylvania, and propelled him into an excitement about the Last Days exceptional even among Pietists. Schutz begins his hymn with an evocation of the power of G.o.d which is cla.s.sically Lutheran but has its own intensity. Since Pietism was so much the voice of eighteenth-century Germany in anguish and in joy, it is worth viewing Schutz's German text along with Miss c.o.x's English. The words 'G.o.d' and 'Good' ring through the original like a mantra, although the English turns them all into 'G.o.d': in Frankfurt, but whose search for a religion of the heart led him on further to plan colonizing schemes in William Penn's Pennsylvania, and propelled him into an excitement about the Last Days exceptional even among Pietists. Schutz begins his hymn with an evocation of the power of G.o.d which is cla.s.sically Lutheran but has its own intensity. Since Pietism was so much the voice of eighteenth-century Germany in anguish and in joy, it is worth viewing Schutz's German text along with Miss c.o.x's English. The words 'G.o.d' and 'Good' ring through the original like a mantra, although the English turns them all into 'G.o.d': Sei Lob und Ehr' dem hochsten Gut, Dem Vater aller Gute, Dem Gott, der alle Wunder tut, Dem Gott, der mein Gemute Mit seinem reichen Trost erfullt, Dem Gott, der allen Jammer stillt.

Gebt unserm Gott die Ehre!

Sing praise to G.o.d who reigns above, the G.o.d of all creation, the G.o.d of power, the G.o.d of love, the G.o.d of our salvation; with healing balm my soul he fills, and every faithless murmur stills: to G.o.d all praise and glory.

As the hymn progresses, its mood changes to speak of trouble and sorrow, but then Schutz brings back his same G.o.d as intimate, even maternal, a personal, private comfort to those crowding in from the streets of the city: Der Herr ist noch und nimmer nicht Von seinem Volk geschieden, Er bleibet ihre Zuversicht, Ihr Segen, Heil und Frieden.

Mit Mutterhanden leitet er Die Seinen stetig hin und her.

Gebt unserm Gott die Ehre!

The Lord is never far away, but through all grief distressing, an ever present help and stay, our peace and joy and blessing.

As with a mother's tender hand, G.o.d gently leads the chosen band: To G.o.d all praise and glory.

And all ends again in praise: 'Gebt unserm Gott die Ehre!' - 'Give our G.o.d the honour!'

Pietists who loved such hymns were generally not sympathetic to the continuing splendour and musical elaboration of well-financed Lutheran liturgy. Their preference for informality and the extrovert expression of emotion in worship contributed to a gradual abandoning of the continuing use of Latin in the Lutheran Ma.s.s and the jettisoning of much traditional ceremony in German and Scandinavian Lutheran worship. It was predictable, therefore, that Lutheranism's greatest musician, Johann Sebastian Bach, experienced a complicated relationship with the Pietist movement which spanned his career. Undoubtedly influenced in his own pa.s.sionate Christian commitment by Pietist themes and by Pietist books in his own extensive library, Bach was a man whose strenuous temperament was certainly conducive to spiritual struggle. Yet he eventually felt compelled to leave his post directing church music in the city of Muhlhausen, uneasy with the restrictions that its Pietist pastor placed on him (although also with an eye on a better-paid job at a ducal court).46 Later, based at the richly endowed parish church of St Thomas in Leipzig for the last quarter-century of his life, Bach found a conservative Latin-based liturgy which he was very ready not to supplant but to enhance, with an innovative outpouring of musical composition for organ, choir and orchestra. His cantatas - orchestral and choral commentaries in German on the preaching and liturgical themes set for the day, incorporating some of the great German hymns of the Reformation - are one of Lutheranism's greatest creative contributions to the Western cultural tradition. It is questionable whether many contemporary Pietists would have been enthusiastic for them. Later, based at the richly endowed parish church of St Thomas in Leipzig for the last quarter-century of his life, Bach found a conservative Latin-based liturgy which he was very ready not to supplant but to enhance, with an innovative outpouring of musical composition for organ, choir and orchestra. His cantatas - orchestral and choral commentaries in German on the preaching and liturgical themes set for the day, incorporating some of the great German hymns of the Reformation - are one of Lutheranism's greatest creative contributions to the Western cultural tradition. It is questionable whether many contemporary Pietists would have been enthusiastic for them.

Bach was never an easy man to employ or to live with, and the St Thomas congregation did not altogether appreciate what they were being offered in his barrage of musical composition - which in the end included five complete yearly cycles of cantatas (see Plate 36). When his St Matthew Pa.s.sion St Matthew Pa.s.sion was performed for the first time, influential members of the congregation became steadily more bewildered by the way that the music branched out from the chorales that they knew, and one elderly widow cried, 'G.o.d help us! 'tis surely an opera-comedy!' was performed for the first time, influential members of the congregation became steadily more bewildered by the way that the music branched out from the chorales that they knew, and one elderly widow cried, 'G.o.d help us! 'tis surely an opera-comedy!'47 In one sense, she was right: Bach had poured his choral creativity into his cantatas and, mysteriously, was the only major composer of his time never to write an opera. In later years he concentrated more and more of his talent on solo works for keyboard and other instruments, which had little to do with his official church duties, and that may reflect his growing impatience at the quarrels in which he had become involved at St Thomas's. His monumental late work, the Latin Ma.s.s in B minor, escape