Early European History Part 115

BURNING OF THE PAPAL BULL, 1520 A.D.

The scholarly critic of indulgences soon pa.s.sed into an open foe of the Papacy. Luther found that his theological views bore a close resemblance to those of Wycliffe and John Huss, yet he refused to give them up as heretical. Instead, he wrote three bold pamphlets, in one of which he appealed to the "Christian n.o.bility of the German nation" to rally together against Rome. The pope, at first, had paid little attention to the controversy about indulgences, declaring it "a mere squabble of monks," but he now issued a bull against Luther, ordering him to recant within sixty days or be excommunicated. The papal bull did not frighten Luther or withdraw from him popular support. He burnt it in the market square of Wittenberg, in the presence of a concourse of students and townsfolk. This dramatic answer to the pope deeply stirred all Germany.

DIET OF WORMS, 1521 A.D.

The next scene of the Reformation was staged at Worms, at an important a.s.sembly, or Diet, of the Holy Roman Empire. The Diet summoned Luther to appear before it for examination, and the emperor, Charles V, gave him a safe conduct. Luther's friends, remembering the treatment of Huss, advised him not to accept the summons, but he declared that he would enter Worms "in the face of the gates of h.e.l.l and the powers of the air." In the great hall of the Diet Luther bravely faced the princes, n.o.bles, and clergy of Germany. He refused to retract anything he had written, unless his statements could be shown to contradict the Bible. "It is neither right nor safe to act against conscience," Luther said. "G.o.d help me. Amen."

LUTHER AT THE WARTBURG, 1521-1522 A.D.

Only one thing remained to do with Luther. He was ordered to return to Wittenberg and there await the imperial edict declaring him a heretic and outlaw. But the elector of Saxony, who feared for Luther's safety, had him carried off secretly to the castle of Wartburg. Here Luther remained for nearly a year, engaged in translating the New Testament into German. There had been many earlier translations into German, but Luther's was the first from the Greek original. His version, simple, forcible, and easy to understand, enjoyed wide popularity and helped to fix for Germans the form of their literary language. Luther afterwards completed a translation of the entire Bible, which the printing press multiplied in thousands of copies throughout Germany.

LUTHER'S LEADERSHIP

Though still under the ban of the empire, Luther left the Wartburg in 1522 A.D. and returned to Wittenberg. He lived here, unmolested, until his death, twenty-four years later. During this time he flooded the country with pamphlets, wrote innumerable letters, composed many fine hymns, [15]

and prepared a catechism, "a right Bible," said he, "for the laity." Thus Luther became the guide and patron of the reformatory movement which he had started.

231. CHARLES V AND THE SPREAD OF THE GERMAN REFORMATION, 1519-1556 A.D.

CHARLES V, EMPEROR, 1519-1556 A.D.

The young man who as Holy Roman Emperor presided at the Diet of Worms had a.s.sumed the imperial crown only two years previously. A namesake of Charlemagne, Charles V held sway over dominions even more extensive than those which had belonged to the Frankish king. Through his mother, a daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, [16] he inherited Spain, Naples, Sicily, and the Spanish possessions in the New World. Through his father, a son of the emperor Maximilian I, he became ruler of Burgundy and the Netherlands and also succeeded to the Austrian territories of the Hapsburgs. Charles was thus the most powerful monarch in Europe.

CHARLES V AND THE LUTHERANS

Charles, as a devout Roman Catholic, had no sympathy for the Reformation.

At Worms, on the day following Luther's refusal to recant, the emperor had expressed his determination to stake "all his dominions, his friends, his body and blood, his life and soul" upon the extinction of the Lutheran heresy. This might have been an easy task, had Charles undertaken it at once. But a revolt in Spain, wars with the French king, Francis I, and conflicts with the Ottoman Turks led to his long absence from Germany and kept him from proceeding effectively against the Lutherans, until it was too late.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map, EUROPE at the Beginning of the Reformation, 1519 A.D.]

THE "REFORMED RELIGION"

The Reformation in Germany appealed to many cla.s.ses. To patriotic Germans it seemed a revolt against a foreign power--the Italian Papacy. To men of pious mind it offered the attractions of a simple faith which took the Bible as the rule of life. Worldly-minded princes saw in it an opportunity to despoil the Church of lands and revenues. For these reasons Luther's teachings found ready acceptance. Priests married, Luther himself setting the example, monks left their monasteries, and the "Reformed Religion"

took the place of Roman Catholicism in most parts of northern and central Germany. South Germany, however, did not fall away from the pope and has remained Roman Catholic to the present time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES V A portrait of the emperor at the age of 48, by the Venetian painter t.i.tian.]

THE PROTESTANTS, 1529 A.D.

Though Germany had now divided into two religious parties, the legal position of Lutheranism remained for a long time in doubt. A Diet held in 1526 A.D. tried to shelve the question by allowing each German state to conduct its religious affairs as it saw fit. But at the next Diet, three years later, a majority of the a.s.sembled princes decided that the Edict of Worms against Luther and his followers should be enforced. The Lutheran princes at once issued a vigorous protest against such action. Because of this protest those who separated from the Roman Church came to be called Protestants.

PEACE OF AUGSBURG, 1555 A.D.

It was not till 1546 A.D., the year of Luther's death, that Charles V felt his hands free to suppress the rising tide of Protestantism. By this time the Lutheran princes had formed a league for mutual protection. Charles brought Spanish troops into Germany and tried to break up the league by force. Civil war raged till 1555 A.D., when both sides agreed to the Peace of Augsburg. It was a compromise. The ruler of each state--Germany then contained over three hundred states--was to decide whether his subjects should be Lutherans or Catholics. Thus the peace by no means established religious toleration, since all Germans had to believe as their prince believed. However, it recognized Lutheranism as a legal religion and ended the attempts to crush the German Reformation.

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA

Meanwhile Luther's doctrines spread into Scandinavian lands. The rulers of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden closed the monasteries and compelled the Roman Catholic bishops to surrender ecclesiastical property to the crown.

Lutheranism became henceforth the official religion of these three countries.

232. THE REFORMATION IN SWITZERLAND; ZWINGLI AND CALVIN

HULDREICH ZWINGLI, 1484-1531 A.D.

The Reformation in Switzerland began with the work of Zwingli. He was the contemporary but not the disciple of Luther. From his pulpit in the cathedral of Zurich, Zwingli proclaimed the Scriptures as the sole guide of faith and denied the supremacy of the pope. Many of the Swiss cantons accepted his teaching and broke away from obedience to Rome. Civil war soon followed between Protestants and Roman Catholics, and Zwingli fell in the struggle. After his death the two parties made a peace which allowed each canton to determine its own religion. Switzerland has continued to this day to be part Roman Catholic and part Protestant.

JOHN CALVIN 1509-1564 A.D.

The Protestants in Switzerland did not remain long without a leader. To Geneva came in 1536 A.D. a young Frenchman named Calvin. He had just published his _Inst.i.tutes of the Christian Religion_, a work which set forth in an orderly, logical manner the main principles of Protestant theology. Calvin also translated the Bible into French and wrote valuable commentaries on nearly all the Scriptural books.

CALVIN AT GENEVA

Calvin at Geneva was sometimes called the Protestant pope. During his long residence there he governed the people with a rod of iron. There were no more festivals, no more theaters, no more dancing, music, and masquerades.

All the citizens had to attend two sermons on Sunday and to yield at least a lip-a.s.sent to the reformer's doctrines. On a few occasions Calvin proceeded to terrible extremities, as when he caused the Spanish physician, Michael Servetus, to be burned to death, because of heretical views concerning the Trinity. Nevertheless, Geneva prospered under Calvin's rule and became a Christian commonwealth, sober and industrious.

The city still reveres the memory of the man who founded her university and made her, as it were, the sanctuary of the Reformation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN CALVIN, after an old print.]

DIFFUSION OF CALVINISM

Calvin's influence was not confined to Geneva or even to Switzerland. The men whom he trained and on whom he set the stamp of his stern, earnest, G.o.d-fearing character spread Calvinism over a great part of Europe. In Holland and Scotland it became the prevailing type of Protestantism, and in France and England it deeply affected the national life. During the seventeenth century the Puritans carried Calvinism across the sea to New England, where it formed the dominant faith in colonial times.

233. THE ENGLISH REFORMATION, 1533-1658 A.D.

HENRY VIII, KING, 1509-1547 A.D.

The Reformation in Germany and Switzerland started as a national and popular movement; in England it began as the act of a despotic sovereign, Henry VIII. This second Tudor [17] was handsome, athletic, finely educated, and very able, but he was also selfish, sensual, and cruel. His father had created a strong monarchy in England by humbling both Parliament and the n.o.bles. When Henry VIII came to the throne, the only serious obstacle in the way of royal absolutism was the Roman Church.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HENRY VIII After a portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger.]

HENRY'S EARLY LOYALTY TO THE PAPACY

Henry showed himself at first a devoted Catholic. He took an amateur's interest in theology and wrote with his own royal pen a book attacking Luther. The pope rewarded him with the t.i.tle of "Defender of the Faith," a t.i.tle which English sovereigns still bear. Henry at this time did not question the authority of the Papacy. He even made his chief adviser Cardinal Wolsey, the most conspicuous churchman in the kingdom.

PREPARATION FOR THE ENGLISH REFORMATION

At the beginning of Henry's reign the Church was still strong in England.

Probably most of the people were sincerely attached to it. Still, the labors of Wycliffe and the Lollards had weakened the hold of the Church upon the ma.s.ses, while Erasmus and the Oxford scholars who worked with him, by their criticism of ecclesiastical abuses, had done much to undermine its influence with the intellectual cla.s.ses. In England, as on the Continent, the worldliness of the Church prepared the way for the Reformation.

HENRY AND CATHERINE OF ARAGON

The actual separation from Rome arose out of Henry's matrimonial difficulties. He had married a Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon, the aunt of the emperor Charles V and widow of Henry's older brother. The marriage required a dispensation [18] from the pope, because canon law forbade a man to wed his brother's widow. After living happily with Catherine for eighteen years, Henry suddenly announced his conviction that the union was sinful. This, of course, formed simply a pretext for the divorce which Henry desired. Of his children by Catherine only a daughter survived, but Henry wished to have a son succeed him on the throne.

Moreover, he had grown tired of Catherine and had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, a pretty maid-in-waiting at the court.

THE DIVORCE, 1533 A.D.

At first Henry tried to secure the pope's consent to the divorce. The pope did not like to set aside the dispensation granted by his predecessor, nor did he wish to offend the mighty emperor Charles V. Failing to get the papal sanction, Henry obtained his divorce from an English court presided over by Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury. Anne Boleyn was then proclaimed queen, in defiance of the papal bull of excommunication.