An Introduction to the History of Western Europe Part 44

[Sidenote: Weaknesses of the Peace of Augsburg.]

There were two noteworthy weaknesses in the Peace of Augsburg which were destined to make trouble. In the first place, only one group of Protestants was included in it. The now numerous followers of the French reformer, Calvin, and of the Swiss reformer, Zwingli, who were hated alike by Catholic and Lutheran, were not recognized. Every German had to be either a Catholic or a Lutheran in order to be tolerated. In the second place, the clause which decreed that ecclesiastical princes converted to Protestantism should surrender their property could not be enforced, for there was no one to see to its execution.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE PROTESTANT REVOLT IN SWITZERLAND AND ENGLAND

158. For at least a century after Luther's death the great issue between Catholics and Protestants dominates the history of all the countries with which we have to do, except Italy and Spain, where Protestantism never took permanent root. In Switzerland, England, France, and Holland the revolt against the mediaeval Church produced profound changes, which must be understood in order to follow the later development of these countries.

[Sidenote: Origin of the Swiss Confederation.]

We turn first to Switzerland, lying in the midst of the great chain of the Alps which extends from the Mediterranean to Vienna. During the Middle Ages, the region destined to be included in the Swiss Confederation formed a part of the empire, and was scarcely distinguishable from the rest of southern Germany. As early as the thirteenth century the three "forest" cantons on the sh.o.r.es of the winding lake of Lucerne had formed a union to protect their liberties against the encroachments of their neighbors, the Hapsburgs. It was about this tiny nucleus that Switzerland gradually consolidated. In 1315 the cantons gained their first great victory over the Hapsburgs at Morgarten and thereupon solemnly renewed their league. This was soon joined by Lucerne and the free imperial towns of Zurich and Berne. By brave fighting the Swiss were able to frustrate the renewed efforts of the Hapsburgs to subjugate them. Later, when a still more formidable enemy, Charles the Bold, undertook to conquer them they put his armies to rout at Granson and Murten (1476).[291]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Swiss Confederation]

[Sidenote: Switzerland becomes a separate country; mixed nationality of its people.]

Various districts in the neighborhood successively joined the Swiss union, and even the region lying on the Italian slopes of the Alps was brought under its control. Gradually the bonds between the members of the union and the empire were broken. They were recognized as being no more than "relatives" of the empire; in 1499 they were finally freed from the jurisdiction of the emperor, and Switzerland became a practically independent country. Although the original union had been made up of German-speaking people, considerable districts had been annexed in which Italian or French was spoken.[292] The Swiss did not, therefore, form a compact, well-defined nation, and for some centuries their confederation was weak and ill-organized.

[Sidenote: Zwingli (1484-1531) leads the revolt in Switzerland against the Church.]

159. In Switzerland the leader of the revolt against the Church was Zwingli, who was a year younger than Luther and like him was the son of peasant parents. Zwingli's father was prosperous, however, and the boy had the best education which could be obtained, at Basel and Vienna. His later discontent with the old Church came not through spiritual wrestlings in the monastery, but from the study of the cla.s.sics and of the Greek New Testament. Zwingli had become a priest and settled at the famous monastery of Einsiedeln near the lake of Zurich. This was the center of pilgrimages on account of a wonder-working image in the cell of St. Meinrad. "Here," he says, "I began to preach the Gospel of Christ in the year 1516, before any one in my locality had so much as heard the name of Luther."

[Sidenote: Zwingli denounces the abuses in the Church and the traffic in soldiers.]

Three years later he was called to an influential position as preacher in the cathedral of Zurich, and there his great work began. Through his efforts a Dominican who was preaching indulgences was expelled from the country. He then began to denounce the abuses in the Church as well as the shameless traffic in soldiers, which he had long regarded as a blot upon his country's honor.[293] The pope had found the help of the Swiss troops indispensable, and had granted annuities and lucrative positions in the Church to influential Swiss, who were expected to work in his interest. So, from the first, Zwingli was led to combine with his religious reform a political reform which should put the cantons on better terms with one another and prevent the destruction of their young men in wars in which they had no possible interest. A new demand of the pope for troops in 1521 led Zwingli to attack him and his commissioners.

"How appropriate," he exclaims, "that they should have red hats and cloaks! If we shake them, crowns and ducats fall out. If we wring them, out runs the blood of your sons and brothers and fathers and good friends."[294]

[Sidenote: Zurich, under the influence of Zwingli, begins a reform.]

Such talk soon began to arouse comment, and the old forest cantons were for a violent suppression of the new teacher, but the town council of Zurich stanchly supported their priest. Zwingli then began to attack fasts and the celibacy of the clergy. In 1523 he prepared a complete statement of his belief, in the form of sixty-seven theses. In these he maintained that Christ was the only high priest and that the Gospel did not gain its sanction from the authority of the Church. He denied the existence of purgatory and rejected those practices of the Church which Luther had already set aside. Since no one presented himself to refute Zwingli, the town council ratified his conclusions and so withdrew from the Roman Catholic Church. The next year the Ma.s.s, processions, and the images of the saints were abolished; the shrines were opened and the relics buried.

[Sidenote: Other towns follow Zurich's example.]

Some other towns followed Zurich's example; but the original cantons about the lake of Lucerne, which feared that they might lose the great influence that, in spite of their small size, they had hitherto enjoyed, were ready to fight for the old faith. The first armed collision, half political and half religious, between the Swiss Protestants and Catholics took place at Kappel in 1531, and Zwingli fell in the battle.

The various cantons and towns never came to an agreement in religious matters, and Switzerland is still part Catholic and part Protestant.

The chief importance for the rest of Europe of Zwingli's revolt was the influence of his conception of the Lord's Supper. He not only denied transubstantiation,[295] but also the "real presence" of Christ in the elements (in which Luther believed), and conceived the bread and wine to be mere symbols. Those in Germany and England who accepted Zwingli's idea added one more to the Protestant parties, and consequently increased the difficulty of reaching a general agreement among those who had revolted from the Church.[296]

[Sidenote: Calvin (1509-1564) and the Presbyterian Church.]

160. Far more important than Zwingli's teachings, especially for England and America, was the work of Calvin, which was carried on in the ancient city of Geneva on the very outskirts of the Swiss confederation. It was Calvin who organized the Presbyterian Church and formulated its beliefs.

He was born in northern France in 1509; he belonged, therefore, to the second generation of Protestants. He was early influenced by the Lutheran teachings, which had already found their way into France. A persecution of the Protestants under Francis I drove him out of the country and he settled for a time in Basel.[297]

[Sidenote: Calvin's _Inst.i.tutes of Christianity_.]

Here he issued the first edition of his great work, _The Inst.i.tutes of Christianity_, which has been more widely discussed than any other Protestant theological treatise. It was the first orderly exposition of the principles of Christianity from a Protestant standpoint. Like Peter Lombard's _Sentences_, it formed a convenient manual for study and discussion. The _Inst.i.tutes_ are based upon the infallibility of the Bible and reject the infallibility of the Church and the pope. Calvin possessed a remarkably logical mind and a clear and admirable style. The French version of his great work is the first example of the successful use of that language in an argumentative treatise.

[Sidenote: Calvin's reformation in Geneva.]

Calvin was called to Geneva about 1540 and intrusted with the task of reforming the town, which had secured its independence of the duke of Savoy. He drew up a const.i.tution and established an extraordinary government, in which the church and the civil government were as closely a.s.sociated as they had ever been in any Catholic country.[298] The Protestantism which found its way into France was that of Calvin, not that of Luther, and the same may be said of Scotland.

[Sidenote: The gradual revolt of England from the Church.]

161. The revolt of England from the mediaeval Church was very gradual and halting. Although there were some signs that Protestantism was gaining a foothold in the island not long after Luther's burning of the canon law, a generation at least pa.s.sed away before the country definitely committed itself, upon the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1558, to the change in religion. It seems at first sight as if the revolution were due mainly to the irritation of Henry VIII against the pope, who refused to grant the king a divorce from his first wife in order that he might marry a younger and prettier woman. But a permanent change in the religious convictions of a whole people cannot fairly be attributed to the whim of even so despotic a ruler as Henry. There were changes taking place in England before the revolt similar to those which prepared the way in Germany for Luther's success.

[Sidenote: John Colet.]

English scholars began, in the latter part of the fifteenth century, to be affected by the new learning which came to them from Italy.

Colet,[299] among others, strove to introduce the study of Greek in Oxford. Like Luther he found himself especially attracted by St. Paul, and had begun to teach the doctrine of justification by faith long before the German reformer was heard of.

[Sidenote: Sir Thomas More and his 'Utopia.']

The most distinguished writer of the period was, perhaps, Sir Thomas More. The t.i.tle of his famous little book, _Utopia_, i.e. "Nowhere,"

published about 1515, has become synonymous with ideal and impracticable schemes for bettering the world. He pictures the happy conditions in an undiscovered land where a perfect form of government has done away with all the evils which he observes about him in the England of his day. The Utopians, unlike the English, fought only to keep out invaders or to free others from tyranny, and never undertook wars of aggression such as Henry VIII was constantly contemplating. In Utopia no one was persecuted for his religion so long as he treated others fairly.[300]

[Sidenote: The English admirers of Erasmus.]

When Erasmus came to England about 1500 he was delighted with the society which he found, and we may a.s.sume that his views, which we have before described,[301] represented those of a considerable number of intelligent Englishmen. It was at the house of More that he finished the _Praise of Folly_, and he carried on his studies with such success in England and found such congenial companions there that it seemed to him that it was hardly worth while to go to Italy for intellectual inspiration. There is every reason to suppose that there were, in England, many who were quite conscious of the vices of the churchmen and who were ready to accept a system which would abolish those practices that had come to seem useless and pernicious.

[Sidenote: Wolsey's policy of peace and his idea of the balance of power.]

162. Henry VIII's minister, Cardinal Wolsey, deserves great credit for having constantly striven to discourage his sovereign's ambition to take part in the wars on the continent. The cardinal's argument that England could become great by peace better than by war was a momentous discovery. Peace he felt would be best secured by maintaining the _balance of power_ on the continent so that no ruler should become dangerous by unduly extending his sway. For example, he thought it good policy to side with Charles when Francis was successful, and then with Francis after his terrible defeat at Pavia (1525) when he fell into the hands of Charles. This idea of the balance of power came to be recognized later by the European countries as a very important consideration in determining their policy. But Wolsey was not long to be permitted to put his enlightened ideas in practice. His fall and the progress of Protestantism in England are both closely a.s.sociated with the notorious divorce case of Henry VIII.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Henry VIII of England]

[Sidenote: Henry VIII's divorce case.]

It will be remembered that Henry had married Catherine of Aragon, the aunt of Charles V. Only one of their children, Mary, had survived to grow up. Henry was very anxious to have a son and heir, for he was fearful lest a woman might not be permitted to succeed to the throne.

Moreover, Catherine, who was older than he, had become distasteful to him.

Catherine had first married Henry's older brother, who had died almost immediately after the marriage. Since it was a violation of the rule of the Church to marry a deceased brother's wife, Henry professed to fear that he was committing a sin by retaining Catherine as his wife and demanded to be divorced from her on the ground that his marriage had never been legal. His anxiety to rid himself of Catherine was greatly increased by the appearance at court of a black-eyed girl of sixteen, named Anne Boleyn, with whom the king fell in love.

[Sidenote: Clement VII refuses to divorce Henry.]

[Sidenote: Fall of Wolsey.]

Unfortunately for his case, his marriage with Catherine had been authorized by a dispensation from the pope, so that Clement VII, to whom the king appealed to annul the marriage, could not, even if he had been willing to alienate the queen's nephew, Charles V, have granted Henry's request. Wolsey's failure to induce the pope to permit the divorce excited the king's anger, and with rank ingrat.i.tude for his minister's great services, Henry drove him from office (1529) and seized his property. From a life of wealth which was fairly regal, Wolsey was precipitated into extreme poverty. An imprudent but innocent act of his soon gave his enemies a pretext for charging him with treason; but the unhappy man died on his way to London before his head could be brought to the block.

[Sidenote: Henry forces the English clergy to recognize him as the supreme head of the Church of England.]

163. The king's next move was to bring a preposterous charge against the whole English clergy by declaring that, in submitting to Wolsey's authority as papal legate, they had violated an ancient law forbidding papal representatives to appear in England without the king's permission. Yet Henry had approved Wolsey's appointment as papal legate.

The clergy met at Canterbury and offered to buy pardon for their alleged offense by an enormous grant of money. But Henry refused to forgive them unless they would solemnly acknowledge him to be the supreme head of the English Church. This they accordingly did;[302] they agreed, moreover, to hold no general meetings or pa.s.s any rules without the king's sanction. The submission of the clergy ensured Henry against any future criticism on their part of the measures he proposed to take in the matter of his divorce.