Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564
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spoke of it with deeper feeling than of anything else in his
experience. He had not favored the printing of the Discours, and
mourned when a Genevese pastor published it (1576). He ascribed the
composition to the generous spirit of youth, and predated it to the
age of sixteen. It was almost the voice of the French Revolution.
IX. RAMUS AND THE PHILOSOPHERS
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Quite as romantic was the life, and more violent the death, of
Petrus Ramus- Pierre de la Ramee- who undertook to overthrow the
tyranny of Aristotle. Here was a one-man rule that had lasted three
centuries and more, over not one nation only but many, and over not
the body but the mind, almost over the soul, for had not the pagan
thinker been made an official philosopher of the Church? The humanists
of the Renaissance had thought to displace him with Plato, but the
Reformation- or fear of it- was strangling humanism, and in Protestant
Germany as well as Catholic France Aristotelian Scholasticism was
still in the saddle when Luther, who had cursed it, died (1546). To
depose the Stagyrite from his throne seemed to intellectual youth
the most legitimate form of tyrannicide. Applying for the master's
degree at the University of Paris in 1536, Ramus, aged twenty-one,
took as his thesis- to be defended through a whole day against faculty
and all challengers- the unequivocal proposition, Quaecumque ab
Aristotele dicta essent commentitia esse - "Whatever was said by
Aristotle is false."
Ramus's career was an ode to education. Born near Calvin's Noyon
in Picardy, he twice tried to walk to Paris, hungry for its
colleges; twice he failed, and returned defeated to his village. In
1528, aged twelve, he succeeded by attaching himself as servant to a
rich student matriculating in the College de Navarre- the same that
Villon had robbed. Serving by day, studying by night, Pierre made
his way, for eight years, through the heavy curriculum in the
faculty of "arts." He almost lost his eyesight in the process, but
he found Plato.
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When I came to Paris, I fell among the subtleties of the sophists,
and they taught me the liberal arts through questions and
disputings, without showing me any other advantage or use. When I
had graduated... I decided that these disputes had brought me
nothing but loss of time. Dismayed by this thought, led by some good
angel, I chanced on Xenophon and then on Plato, and learned to know
the Socratic philosophy. `0637102
-
How many of us have made that same exhilarating discovery in youth
happy to meet in Plato a philosopher who had wine and poetry in his
blood, who heard philosophy in the very air of Athens, caught it on
the wing, and sent it down the centuries still bearing the breath of
life, all those voices of Socrates and his pupils still ringing with
the lust and ecstasy of debate about the most exciting subjects in the
world! What a relief after the prosy pages of Aristotle, after reams
of middle-of-the-road, and not-so-golden mean! Of course we- and
Ramus- were unfair to Aristotle, comparing his compact lecture notes
with the popular dialogues of his master; only white hairs can
appreciate the Stagyrite. The Aristotle that Ramus knew was chiefly
the logician of the Organon, the Aristotle of the schools, barely
surviving the ordeal of translation into Scholastic Latin, of
transmogrification into a good Christian orthodox Thomist. Three
years, said Ramus, he had spent studying Aristotle's logic, without
ever being shown a single use or application of it in science or in
life. `0637103
It is to the credit of the Paris faculty, as well as to the learning
and skill and courage of Ramus, that he was given his master's degree;
perhaps the professors too were weary of logic and moderation. But
some of them were scandalized, and felt that their stock-in-trade
had been damaged by that day's debate. Enmities began that pursued
Ramus to his death.
His degree entitled him to teach, and he began at once, at the
university, a course of lectures in which he mingled philosophy with
Greek and Latin literature. His classes grew, his earnings mounted,
and he was able to reimburse his widowed mother for the savings that
she had sacrificed to pay for his graduation fee. After seven years of
preparation he issued in 1543 (the annus Mirabilis of Copernicus and
Vesalius) two works that continued his campaign to overthrow the
Aristotelian logic. One- Aristotelicae animadversiones - was a
frontal assault, sometimes phrased in impetuous invective; the
other- Dialecticae partitiones ( Divisions of Logic )- offered a new
system to replace the old. It redefined logic as ars disserendi, the
art of discourse, and brought logic, literature, and oratory
together in a technique of persuasion. The university authorities
forgivably saw some dangers in this approach. Moreover they viewed
with suspicion certain propositions in Ramus that smelled of heresy,
such as, "Unbelief is the beginning of knowledge"- `0637104
Cartesian doubt before Descartes; or his plea to replace the tomes
of the Scholastics with more study of the Scriptures- this had a
Protestant ring; or his definition of theology as doctrina bene
vivendi - which threatened to reduce religion to morality. And there
were Ramus's irritating ways, his pride and pugnacity, his violent
controversial tone, his dogmatic superiority to dogma.
Soon after publication of these books the rector of the university
cited Ramus before the provost of Paris as an enemy of the faith, a
disturber of the public peace, a corrupter of youth with dangerous
novelties. The trial was held before a royal commission of five men-
two appointed by Ramus, two by his accusers, one by Francis I.
Dissatisfied with the procedure of the trial, Ramus withdrew his
appointees. The remaining three decided against him (1544), and a
royal mandate forbade him to lecture, or to publish, or to attack
Aristotle further. The condemnation notice was placarded throughout
the city, and was sent to other universities. Students staged
burlesques ridiculing Ramus, and Rabelais made heavenly fun of the
fracas.
After holding his peace for a while, Ramus opened a course of
lectures at the College Ave Maria, but he confined himself to rhetoric
and mathematics, and the government winked at his disobedience. In
1545 he became assistant rector of the College de Presles, and his
lecture room was soon crowded. When Henry II succeeded Francis I he
repealed the sentence against Ramus, left him "free in both tongue and
pen," and, a year later, appointed him to a chair in the College
Royale, where he would be exempt from university control.
Having reached his pinnacle as now the most famous teacher in Paris,
Ramus devoted much time and effort to reforming pedagogical methods.
If he stressed "rhetoric"- which then meant literature- it was not
only to revivify philosophy with poetry, but also to infuse a
vibrant humanism into courses grown dry and hard with abstractions and
scholastic rules. In five treatises on grammar he applied logic to
language; he begged French spelling to become phonetic, but it went
its reeling way; however, he succeeded in introducing into the
French alphabet the letters j and v to replace consonantal i and u.
Remembering his own penniless striving for an education, he encouraged
the establishment of scholarships for poor students, and condemned the
heavy fees required for graduation. At the same time he labored to
raise the remuneration of teachers.
In 1555 he published Dialectique, the first work on logic in
French. He argued now not merely about reasoning but for reason. He
was by temperament a foe to traditionalism and mere authority;
reason seemed to him the only authority; and he believed, with
Renaissance ardor, that if reason were left free it would bring all
the sciences close to perfection within a century. `0637105 "It was my
constant study," he wrote, "to remove from the path of the liberal
arts... all intellectual obstacles and retardations, and to make
even and straight the way, in order to arrive more easily not only
at intelligence but at the practice and use of the liberal
arts." `0637106
His character and philosophy inclined him to sympathize with the
Protestant revolt. When, for a time, the Huguenots won toleration from
the government, even participation in it, Ramus announced his
adherence to the Reformed faith (1561). Early in 1562 some of his
students tore down the religious images in the chapel of the College
de Presles. The government continued to pay his salary, but his
position was increasingly precarious. When civil war broke out
(1562) he left Paris, with a safe-conduct from Catherine de Medicis;
he returned a year later on the signing of peace. He politely
refused an invitation to a chair in the University of Bologna,
saying that he was too indebted to France to leave it.
The quarrel that led to his death came into the open when his
chief enemy, Jacques Charpentier, frankly confessing his ignorance
of mathematics, bought his way `0637107 into a professorship of
mathematics at the College Royale (1565). Ramus denounced the
appointment; Charpentier threatened him; Ramus appealed to the
courts for protection; Charpentier was jailed, but was soon
released. Two attempts were made on Ramus's life, and when the civil
war between Catholics and Protestants was resumed (1567) he left Paris
again. The government now ruled that only a Catholic might teach in
the university or the College Royale. Ramus, returning, retired to
private life, but Catherine continued and doubled his salary, and he
was free to devote himself to study and writing.
In July 1572, Montluc, Bishop of Valence, invited him to join an
embassy to Poland; perhaps the Bishop foresaw the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew, and thought to protect the aging philosopher. Ramus
refused, having no stomach for the enterprise of setting Prince
Henry of Anjou on the Polish throne. Montluc left on August 17; on the
twenty-fourth the Massacre began. On the twenty-sixth two armed men
invaded the College de Presles, and mounted to the fifth floor,
where Ramus had his study. They found him in prayer. One shot him in
the head, the other stabbed him; together they hurled him through
the window. Students or ragamuffins dragged the still living body to
the Seine and threw it in; others recovered it and hacked it to
pieces. `0637108 We do not know who hired the assassins; apparently
not the government, for both Charles IX and Catherine seem to have
continued their favor to Ramus till the end. `0637109 Charpentier
rejoiced over the Massacre and the murder: "This brilliant sun, which,
during the month of August, has brightened France.... The stuff and
nonsense have disappeared with its author. All good men are full of
joy." `0637110 Two years later Charpentier himself died, some say of
remorse; but perhaps this does him too much credit.
Ramus seemed defeated in life and influence. His enemies
triumphed; and though some "Ramists" were heard in the next generation
in France, Holland, and Germany, the Scholasticism that he had
fought regained its ascendancy, and French philosophy hung its head
until Descartes. But if philosophy had gained little in this period,
the advances of science had been epochal; modern science began with
Copernicus and Vesalius. The known earth had been doubled; the world
view had been changed as never before in recorded history. Knowledge
was growing rapidly in scope and spread; the use of the vernacular
in science and philosophy- as by Pare and Paracelsus in medicine, by
Ramus in philosophy- was extending to the middle classes instruction
and ideas formerly confined to tonsured scholars and priests. The
"cake of custom," the mold of belief, the hold of authority, had
been broken. Faith was loosed from its moorings, and flowed with new
freedom into a hundred forms.
Everything was in flux except the Church. Amid the revolution she
stood for a time bewildered, at first hardly realizing the gravity
of the events. Then she faced resolutely the vital question that
confronted her: Should she adjust her doctrine to the new climate
and fluidity of ideas, or stand unmoved amid all changes, and wait for
the pendulum of thought and feeling to bring men back, in humility and
hunger, to her consolations and her authority? Her answer decided
her modern history.
BOOK V: THE COUNTER REFORMATION: 1517-65
CHAPTER XXXVIII: The Church and Reform: 1517-65
I. ITALIAN PROTESTANT REFORMERS
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IN climatically pagan Italy, constitutionally polytheistic, favoring
a genial and artistic faith, populated with undying saints whose
awesome or beloved effigies moved annually through the streets, and
enriched by the gold that came to the Church from a dozen subject
lands, one should not have expected to find men and women dedicated,
sometimes at mortal risk, to the replacement of that picturesque and
hallowed faith by a somber creed whose political support was the
reluctance of northern nations to fatten Italy with the proceeds of
their piety. Yet everywhere in Italy there were people who felt,
even more keenly and intimately than the Germans, the Swiss, or the
English, the abuses that were demoralizing the Church. And in Italy,
more than anywhere else, the educated classes, though already enjoying
some freedom of teaching and thought, were demanding the liberation of
the intellect from even outward allegiance to the myths that so
charmed and disciplined the populace.
Some of Luther's writings appeared in the bookstalls of Milan in
1519, in Venice in 1520. In St. Mark's itself a friar dared to
preach the doctrines of Luther. Cardinal Caraffa reported to Pope
Clement VII (1532) that religion was at a low ebb in Venice, that very
few Venetians observed the fasts or went to confession, and that
heretical literature was popular there. Clement himself (1530)
described the Lutheran heresy as widely spread among both clergy and
laity in Italy; and in 1535 the German reformers claimed 30,000
adherents in the homeland of the Church. `06381
The highest lady in Ferrara was a fervent Protestant. Renee,
daughter of Louis XII, had imbibed the new ideas partly from
Marguerite of Navarre, partly from her own governess, Mme. Soubise.
The Princess brought this lady with her when she married (1528) Ercole
d'Este, who became (1534) the second duke of that name to rule
Ferrara. Calvin visited her there (1536), and intensified her
Protestant convictions. Clement Marot came to her, and, later,
Hubert Languet, the Huguenot publicist. Ercole accepted them all in
polite Renaissance fashion until one of them shouted Idolatria!
during the Adoration of the Cross on Holy Saturday (1536); then he let
the Inquisition question them. Calvin and Marot fled; the others
appear to have saved themselves by affirming their orthodoxy. But
after 1540 Renee gathered a new Protestant entourage, and ceased
attendance at Catholic worship. Ercole soothed the Pope by exiling her
to the ducal villa at Consandolo on the Po; but there too she
surrounded herself with Protestants, and brought up her daughters in
the Reformed faith. Ercole, fearing that Protestant daughters would be
worthless pawns in the game of political marriages, removed them to
a convent. Finally he allowed the Inquisition to indict Renee and
twenty-four of her household. She was convicted of heresy, and was
sentenced to life imprisonment (1554). She recanted, received the
Eucharist, and was restored to religious and political grace; `06382
but her real opinions were silently expressed by the melancholy
solitude of her remaining years. After Ercole's death (1559) she
returned to France, where she made her home at Montargis a refuge
for Huguenots.
Modena, also under Ercole, had a lively Protestant moment. Its
Accademia of scientists and philosophers allowed great freedom in
discussions, and some of its members, including Vesalius's pupil and
successor Gabriele Fallopio, were suspected of heresy. Paolo Ricci, an
ex-friar, preached openly against the papacy; Lutheran ideas were
debated in the shops, the squares, the churches. Ricci and others were
arrested. Cardinal Sadoleto protected the Academicians, claiming
that they were loyal to the Church, and that they should, as scholars,
enjoy freedom of inquiry; `06383 Paul III contented himself with their
signatures to a profession of faith, but Ercole disbanded the
Academy (1546), and one unrepentant Lutheran was executed at Ferrara
(1550). In 1568, as the Catholic reaction stiffened, thirteen men
and one woman were burned for heresy at Modena.
At Lucca, Pietro Martire Vermigli, Prior of the Austin Canons,
organized a learned academy, brought exceptional teachers to it,
encouraged freedom of discussion, and told his large congregation that
it might look upon the Eucharist as not a miraculous transformation
but a pious remembrance of the Passion of Christ; this out-Luthered
Luther. Summoned for questioning by the chapter of his order at Genoa,
he fled from Italy, denounced the errors and abuses of Catholicism,
and accepted a professorship of divinity at Oxford (1548). He took a
disputed part in formulating the Book of Common Prayer (1552), left
England when Catholicism returned to power, and died as professor of
Hebrew at Zurich in 1562. Eighteen canons of his priory at Lucca
followed him in abandoning their order and Italy.
Vermigli, Bishop Sorano of Bergamo, and many others had been
turned to the new ideas by Juan de Valdes. He and his brother Alfonso,
of high Castilian lineage, were perhaps the most talented twins in
history. Alfonso, a devotee of Erasmus, became Latin secretary to
Charles V, and wrote a Dialogo de Lactancio (1529) in which he
defended the Sack of Rome, and contended that Luther would never
have left the Church if, instead of condemning him, she had reformed
the abuses that he had justly denounced. Juan contributed to the
same volume a Dialogo de Mercurio y Caron, whose heresies were
political: the rich should be made to earn their living; the poor have
a right to share in the income of the rich; the wealth of a prince
belongs to the people, and should not be wasted in imperialistic or
religious wars. `06384 Clement VII naturally preferred Juan, and
made him a papal chamberlain at thirty. Juan, however, moved to
Naples, where he devoted himself to writing and teaching. He
remained loyal to the Church, but favored the Lutheran doctrine of
justification by faith, and rated a devout mysticism above any
external ritual of piety. Distinguished men and women gathered
around him and accepted his lead: Vermigli, Ochino, Marcantonio
Flaminio the poet, Pietro Carnesecchi, Vittoria Colonna, Costanza
d'Avalos, Duchess of Amalfi, Isabella Manriquez, sister of the Spanish
grand inquisitor, and Giulia Gonzaga, whose beauty we have already
acknowledged. After Juan Valdes's death (1541) his pupils scattered
through Europe. Some, like Vittoria Colonna, stayed in the Church;
some developed his teachings into open heresy. Three minor pupils were
beheaded and burned at Naples in 1564; Carnesecchi was beheaded and
burned at Rome in 1567. Giulia Gonzaga was saved by the death of the
merciless Paul IV; she entered a convent (1566), and with her the
Neapolitan party of reform came to an end.
Bernardino Ochino went through all the stages of religious
development. Born near the birthplace of St. Catherine in Siena, he
rivaled her piety. He joined the Franciscans, but finding their
discipline too lax for his mood, he transferred to the severer order
of the Capuchins. They marveled at his ascetic self-denial, his
passionate mortification of his flesh; and when they made him their
vicar-general they felt that they had chosen a saint. His sermons-
in Siena, Florence, Venice, Naples, Rome- resounded through Italy;
nothing like them in fervor or eloquence had been heard there since
Savonarola a century before. Charles V went to hear him; Vittoria
Colonna was deeply moved by him; Pietro Aretino, who had sampled
almost every sin, was stirred to passing piety by hearing him. No
church was large enough to hold his listeners. No one dreamed that
this man would die a heretic.
But at Naples he met Valdes, and through him became acquainted
with the works of Luther and Calvin. The doctrine of justification
suited his spirit; he began to hint at it in his sermons. In 1542 he
was cited before the papal nuncio at Venice, and was forbidden to
preach. Shortly afterward Paul III invited him to Rome to discuss
the religious views of some Capuchins. Ochino may have trusted the
enlightened Pope, but he feared the long arm of the Inquisition, and
Cardinal Contarini warned him of danger. Suddenly this saint and
idol of Italy, meeting Peter Vermigli in Florence, decided, like
him, to cross the Alps into Protestant terrain. A brother of
Vittoria Colonna gave him a horse; at Ferrara Renee gave him clothing.
He proceeded through the Grisons to Zurich, thence to Geneva. He
applauded the puritan discipline that Calvin was establishing there,
but, his German being better than his French, he moved on to Basel
to Strasbourg to Augsburg, trying to earn a living by tongue or pen.
In 1547 Charles V, having overwhelmed the Protestants at Muhlberg,
entered Augsburg as master of Germany. He learned that the Capuchin
whom he had heard in Naples was living there as a married man; he
ordered the magistrates to arrest him; they connived at Ochino's
escape. He fled to Zurich and Basel, and then, when he seemed at the
end of his food, he received a call from Archbishop Cranmer to come to
England. There, as a pensioned prebendary at Canterbury, he labored
for six years (1547-53); he wrote a book that strongly influenced
Milton's Paradise Lost; but when Mary Tudor came to the throne he
hurried back to Switzerland.
He secured appointment as pastor of a congregation in Zurich, but
his Unitarian views offended it, and he was dismissed when he
published a dialogue in which a defender of polygamy seemed to have
the better of the argument against a monogamist. Though it was
December (1563), he was ordered to leave the city within three
weeks. Basel refused to let him stay there; he was allowed a brief
sojourn in Nuremberg; soon he set out with his family for Poland, then
by comparison a haven for off-color thinkers. He preached at Cracow
for a while, but was expelled when the king banished all
non-Catholic foreigners (1564). On the way from Poland to Moravia
three of his four children succumbed to pestilence. He survived them
two months, dying at Schackau in December 1564. Almost his last
words were: "I wish to be neither a Bullingerite nor a Calvinist nor a
papist, but simply a Christian." `06385 Nothing could have been more
dangerous.
It was of course impossible that Italy should go Protestant. The
common people there, though anticlerical, were religious even when
they did not go to church. They loved the time-hallowed ceremonies,
the helping or consoling saints, the seldom-questioned creed that
lifted their lives from the poverty of their homes to the sublimity of
the greatest drama ever conceived- the redemption of fallen man by the
death of his God. The political domination of Italy by an intensely
religious Spain conspired to keep both peninsulas Catholic. The wealth