The Age of the Reformation Part 59

[Sidenote: Monism]

The second great change made by Protestantism was more intellectual, that from a pluralistic to a monistic {747} standpoint. Far from the conception of natural law, the early Protestants did little or nothing to rationalize, or explain away, the creeds of the Catholics, but they had arrived at a sufficiently monistic philosophy to find scandal in the worship of the saints, with its attendant train of daily and trivial miracles. To sweep away the vast hierarchy of angels and canonized persons that made Catholicism quasi-polytheistic, and to preach pure monotheism was in the spirit of the time and is a phenomenon for which many parallels can be found. Instructive is the a.n.a.logy of the contemporary trend to absolutism; neither G.o.d nor king any longer needed intermediaries.

[Sidenote: Political and economic aspects]

(2) In two aspects the Reformation was the religious expression of the current political and economic change. In the first place it reflected and reacted upon the growing national self-consciousness, particularly of the Teutonic peoples. [Sidenote: Nationalism and Teutonism] The revolt from Rome was in the interests of the state church, and also of Germanic culture. The break-up of the Roman church at the hands of the Northern peoples is strikingly like the break-up of the Roman Empire under pressure from their ancestors. Indeed, the limits of the Roman church practically coincided with the boundaries of the Empire. The apparent exception of England proves the rule, for in Britain the Roman civilization was swept away by the German invasions of the fifth and following centuries.

That the Reformation strengthened the state was inevitable, for there was no practical alternative to putting the final authority in spiritual matters, after the pope had been ejected, into the hands of the civil government. Congregationalism was tried and failed as tending to anarchy. But how little the Reformation was really responsible for the new despotism and the divine right of kings, is clear from a comparison with {748} the Greek church and the Turkish Empire. In both, the same forces which produced the state churches of Western Europe operated in the same way. Selim I, a bigoted Sunnite, after putting down the Shi'ite heresy, induced the last caliph of the Abbasid dynasty to surrender the sword and mantle of the prophet; thereafter he and his successors were caliphs as well as sultans. In Russia Ivan the Terrible made himself, in 1547, head of the national church.

[Sidenote: Capitalism]

Protestantism also harmonized with the capitalistic revolution in that its ethics are, far more than those of Catholicism, oriented by a reference to this world. The old monastic ideal of celibacy, solitude, mortification of the flesh, prayer and meditation, melted under the sun of a new prosperity. In its light men began to realize the ethical value of this life, of marriage, of children, of daily labor and of success and prosperity. It was just in this work that Protestantism came to see its chance of serving G.o.d and one's neighbor best. The man at the plough, the maid with the broom, said Luther, are doing G.o.d better service than does the praying, self-tormenting monk.

Moreover, the accentuation of the virtues of thrift and industry, which made capitalism and Calvinism allies, but reflected the standards natural to the bourgeois cla.s.s. It was by the might of the merchants and their money that the Reformation triumphed; conversely they benefited both by the spoils of the church and by the abolition of a privileged cla.s.s. Luther stated that there was no difference between priest and layman; some men were called to preach, others to make shoes, but--and this is his own ill.u.s.tration--the one vocation is no more spiritual than the other. No longer necessary as a mediator and dispenser of sacramental grace, the Protestant clergyman sank inevitably to the same level as his neighbors.

{749} [Sidenote: Intellectual aspect]

(3) In its relation to the Renaissance and to modern thought the Reformation solved, in its way, two problems, or one problem, that of authority, in two forms. Though anything but consciously rational in their purpose, the innovating leaders did a.s.sert, at least for themselves, the right of private judgment. Appealing from indulgence-seller to pope, from pope to council, from council to the Bible and (in Luther's own words) from the Bible to Christ, [Sidenote: Individualism] the Reformers finally came to their own conscience as the supreme court. Trying to deny to others the very rights they had fought to secure for themselves, yet their example operated more powerfully than their arguments, even when these were made of ropes and of thumb-screws. The delicate balance of faith was overthrown and it was put into a condition of unstable equilibrium; the avalanche, started by ever so gentle a push, swept onward until it buried the men who tried to stop it half way. Dogma slowly narrowing down from precedent to precedent had its logical, though unintended, outcome in complete religious autonomy, yes, in infidelity and skepticism.

[Sidenote: Vulgarization of the Renaissance]

Protestantism has been represented now as the ally, now as the enemy of humanism. Consciously it was neither. Rather, it was the vulgarization of the Renaissance; it transformed, adapted, and popularized many of the ideas originated by its rival. It is easy to see now that the future lay rather outside of both churches than in either of them, if we look only for direct descent. Columbus burst the bounds of the world, Copernicus those of the universe; Luther only broke his vows. But the point is that the repudiation of religious vows was the hardest to do at that time, a feat infinitely more impressive to the ma.s.ses than either of the former. It was just here that the religious movement became a great solvent of conservatism; it made the ma.s.ses think, pa.s.sionately if not {750} deeply, on their own beliefs. It broke the cake of custom and made way for greater emanc.i.p.ations than its own. It was the logic of events that, whereas the Renaissance gave freedom of thought to the cultivated few, the Reformation finally resulted in tolerance for the ma.s.ses. Logically also, even while it feared and hated philosophy in the great thinkers and scientists, it advocated education, up to a certain point, for the ma.s.ses.

[Sidenote: The Reformation a step forward]

In summary, if the Reformation is judged with historical imagination, it docs not appear to be primarily a reaction. That it should be such is both _a priori_ improbable and unsupported by the facts. The Reformation did not give _our_ answer to the many problems it was called upon to face; nevertheless it gave the solution demanded and accepted by the time, and therefore historically the valid solution.

With all its limitations it was, fundamentally, a step forward and not the return to an earlier standpoint, either to that of primitive Christianity, as the Reformers themselves claimed, or to the dark ages, as has been latterly a.s.serted.

[1] S. Reinach: _Cultes, Mythes et Religions_, iv, 467.

{751}

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRELIMINARY

1. UNPUBLISHED SOURCES.

The amount of important unpublished doc.u.ments on the Reformation, though still large, is much smaller than that of printed sources, and the value of these ma.n.u.scripts is less than that of those which have been published. It is no purpose of this bibliography to furnish a guide to archives.

Though the quant.i.ty of unpublished material that I have used has been small, it has proved unexpectedly rich. In order to avoid repet.i.tion in each following chapter, I will here summarize ma.n.u.script material used (most of it for the first time), which is either still unpublished or is in course of publication by myself. See _Luther's Correspondence_, transl. and ed. by Preserved Smith and C. M. Jacobs, 1913 ff; _English Historical Review_, July 1919; _Scottish Historical Review_, Jan. 1919; _Harvard Theological Review_, April 1919; _The N.

Y. Nation_, various dates 1919.

From the Bodleian Library, I have secured a copy of an unpublished letter and other fragments of Luther, press mark, Montagu d. 20, fol.

225, and Auct. Z. ii, 2.

From the British Museum I have had diplomatic correspondence of Robert Barnes, Cotton MSS., Vitellius B XXI, foil. 120 ff.; a letter of Albinia.n.u.s Tretius to Luther, Add. MS. 19, 959, fol. 4b ff; and a portion of John Foxe's _Collection of Letters and Papers_, Harleian MS 419, fol. 125.

From the Pennsylvania Historical Society, Philadelphia, collection of autographs made by Ferdinand J. Dreer, unpublished and hitherto unused letters of Erasmus, James VI of Scotland (2), Leo X, Hedio, Farel to Calvin, Forster, Melanchthon, Charles V, Albrecht of Mansfeld, Henry VIII, Francis I (3), Catherine de' Medici, Grynaeus, Viglius van Zuichem, Alphonso d'Este, Philip Marnix, Camden, Ta.s.so, Machiavelli, Pius IV, Va.s.sari, Borromeo, Alesandro Ottavio de' Medici (afterwards Leo XI), Clement VIII, Sarpi, Emperor Ferdinand, William of Na.s.sau (1559), Maximilian III, Paul Eber (2), Rudolph II, Henry III, Philip II, Emanuel Philibert, Henry IV, Scaliger, Mary Queen of Scots, Robert Dudley (Leicester), Filippo Strozzi, and others.

From Wellesley College a patent of Charles V., dated Worms, March 6, 1521, granting mining rights to the Count of Belalcazar. Unpublished.

Prom the American Hispanic Society of New York unpublished letter of Henry IV of France to Du Font, on his conversion, and letter of Henry VII of England to Ferdinand of Aragon.

2. GENERAL WORKS

_Encyclopaedia Britannica_.[11] 1910-1. (Many valuable articles of a thoroughly scientific character).

_The New International Encyclopaedia_, 1915f. (Equally valuable).

_Realencyklopadie fur protestantische Theologie und Kirche_.[3] 24 vols. Leipzig. 1896-1913. (Indispensable to the student of Church History; The Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religions Knowledge, 12 vols., 1908 ff, though in part based on this, is far less valuable for the present subject).

Wetzer und Welte: _Kirchenlexikon oder Encyclopadie der katholischen Theologie und ihrer Hulfswissenschaften_. Zweite Auflage von J. Card.

Hergenrother und F. Kaulen. Freiburg im Breisgau. 1880-1901. 12 vols. (Valuable).

_Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart_, hg. von H. Gunkel, O.

Scheel, F. M. Schiele. 5 vols. 1909-13.

_The Cambridge Modern History_, planned by Lord Acton, edited by A. W.

Ward, G. W. Prothero, Stanley Leathes. London and New York. 1902 ff.

Vol. 1. _The Renaissance_. 1902. Vol. 2. _The Reformation_. 1904.

Vol. 3. _The Wars of Religion_. 1905. Vol. 13. _Tables and Index_.

1911. Vol. 14. _Maps_. 1912. (A standard co-operative work, with full bibliographies).

_Weltgeschichte, hg.v.J. von Pflugk-Harttung: Das Religiose Zeitalter_, 1500-1650. Berlin. 1907. (A co-operative work, written by masters of their subjects in popular style. Profusely ill.u.s.trated).

E. Lavisse et A. Rambaud: _Histoire generale du IVe siecle a nos jours.

Tome IV Renaissance et reforme, les nouveaux mondes 1492-1559_. 1894.

Tome V. _Les guerres de religion 1559-1648_. 1895.

R. L. Poole: _Historical Atlas of Modern Europe_. 1902.

W. R. Shepherd: _Historical Atlas_. 1911.

Ramsay Muir: _Hammond's New Historical Atlas for Students_. 1914.

A list of general histories of the Reformation will be found in the bibliography to the last chapter.

An excellent introduction to the bibliography of the public doc.u.ments of all countries will be found in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, s.v.

"Record."

CHAPTER I. THE OLD AND THE NEW