Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

Christian II of Denmark (r. 1513-23) was as colorful a character

as the Gustavus Vasa who defeated him in Sweden. Forced by the

barons to sign humiliating "capitulations" as the price of his

election, he surrounded himself with middle-class advisers, ignored

the Rigsraad of highborn magnates, and took as his chief counselor the

mother of his beautiful Dutch mistress. This privy council must have

had some ability and spirit, for Christian's domestic policy was as

constructive as his foreign adventures were futile. He labored

assiduously in administration, reformed the government of the

cities, revised the laws, put down piracy, improved the roads, began a

public postal system, abolished the worst evils of serfdom, ended

the death penalty for witchcraft, organized poor relief, opened

schools for the poor, made education compulsory, and developed the

University of Copenhagen into a light and haven of learning. He

incurred the enmity of Lubeck by restricting the power of the Hanse;

he encouraged and protected Danish trade; and he put an end to the

barbarous custom by which maritime villagers had been privileged to

plunder all ships wrecked on their shores.

In 1517 Leo X sent Giovanni Arcimboldo to Denmark to offer

indulgences. Paul Helgesen, a Carmelite monk, denounced what seemed to

him the sale of these indulgences; and in this he anticipated Luther's

Theses. `06285 Legate and King quarreled over the division of the

proceeds; Arcimboldo decamped to Lubeck with a part, Christian

confiscated the rest. Finding excellent reasons for Protestantism in

the real abuses and available wealth of the Church, Christian

brought Helgesen to a post in the University of Copenhagen, where, for

a time, this eloquent Danish Erasmus led the movement for reform. When

Helgesen turned cautious, Christian asked Elector Frederick the Wise

of Saxony to send him Luther himself, or at least some theologian of

Luther's school. Carlstadt came, but did not stay long. Christian

issued some reform legislation: no one was to be ordained without

having studied sufficiently to expound the Gospel in Danish; the

clergy could not legally own property or receive bequests unless

they married; bishops were bidden to moderate their luxury;

ecclesiastical courts lost jurisdiction where property was involved;

and a supreme court appointed by the King was to have final

authority over ecclesiastical as well as civil affairs. However,

when the Diet of Worms placed Luther under the Imperial ban

Christian suspended his reforms, and Helgesen advised reconciliation

with the Church.

While these domestic policies were exciting his people, Christian

lost the reins by his failures in foreign affairs. His cruelty in

Sweden turned many Danes against him. Lubeck declared war on him for

his attacks upon Hanseatic shipping. Nobles and clergy, alienated by

high taxation and hostile legislation, ignored his summons to a

national assembly, and proclaimed his uncle, Duke Frederick of

Schleswig-Holstein, as the new king of Denmark. Christian fled to

Flanders with his queen, the Protestant sister of Charles V; he made

his peace with the Church, hoping to get a kingdom for a Mass; he

was captured in a futile attempt to regain his throne, and for

twenty-seven years he lived in the dungeons of Sonderborg with no

companion but a half-wit Norwegian dwarf. The paths of glory led him

with leisurely ignominy to the grave (1559).

Frederick I found no happiness under his challenged crown. Nobles

and clergy had accepted him on many conditions, one of which was

that he would never allow a heretic to preach in Denmark. Helgesen,

while continuing to criticize the shortcomings of the Church, now

turned most of his passionate polemics against the Protestants, urging

that gradual reform was better than turbulent revolution. But he could

not stem the tide. Frederick's son, Duke Christian, was already a

Lutheran, and the King's daughter, with his consent, had married

Albrecht of Brandenburg, the Lutheran ex-head of the Teutonic Knights.

In 1526 Frederick veered with the wind, and appointed as his

chaplain Hans Tausen, who had studied under Luther. Tausen left his

monastery, married, and openly advocated Lutheran ideas. Frederick

found it convenient to order that episcopal confirmation fees should

be paid to him, not to the pope. Lutheran preachers took courage and

multiplied; the bishops asked for their expulsion; Frederick

answered that he had no lordship over men's souls. and was resolved to

leave faith free- a most unusual proceeding. In 1524 a Danish

translation of the New Testament appeared; in 1529 a much better

version was published by Christian Pedersen, which immensely

advanced the Protestant development. The people, eager to end tithe

payments to the clergy, readily accepted the new theology; by 1530 the

Lutherans dominated Copenhagen and Viborg. In that year, at the Diet

of Copenhagen, a public debate was held between Catholic and

Protestant leaders; both King and people gave the victory to the

Protestants; and the Confession of Faith presented there by Hans

Tausen remained for a decade the official creed of the Danish

Lutherans.

Frederick's death (1533) ushered in the final act of the Danish

Reformation. The merchant princes of Denmark joined with their old

enemies in Lubeck in an attempt to restore Christian II; Count

Christopher of Oldenburg led the Lubeck forces and gave his name to

the "Count's War"; Copenhagen fell to him, and Lubeck dreamed of

ruling all Denmark. But the burghers and peasants rallied to the

standard of Frederick's son Christian; their army defeated

Oldenburg, and captured Copenhagen after a year's siege (July 1536).

All bishops were arrested, and were released only on promising to

abide by the Protestant regime. The national assembly, in October

1536, formally established the Lutheran State Church, with Christian

III as its supreme head. All episcopal and monastic properties were

confiscated to the King, and the bishops lost all voice in the

government. Norway and Iceland accepted Christian III and his

legislation, and the triumph of Lutheranism in Scandinavia was

complete (1554).

===========================================================

==========

IV. PROTESTANTISM IN EASTERN EUROPE

-

Poland had her Golden Age under Sigismund I (1506-48) and his son

Sigismund II (1548-72). Both were men of culture and spirit,

discerning patrons of literature and art, and both gave to religious

thought and worship a freedom which, though imperfect, made most other

nations of Europe seem medieval by comparison. Sigismund I married the

gay and talented Bona Sforza (1518), daughter of Duke Giangaleazzo

of Milan; she brought to Cracow a retinue of Italian courtiers and

scholars, and the King, instead of resenting them, welcomed them as

a bridge to the Renaissance. A taste for luxury in ornate dress and

rich furnishings took hold of the aristocracy, language and manners

became more refined, letters and arts flourished, and Erasmus wrote

(1523): "I congratulate this nation... which now, in sciences,

jurisprudence, morals, and religion, and in all that separates us from

barbarism, is so flourishing that it can rival the first and most

glorious of nations." `06286 Dominating her husband by her beauty,

grace, and craft, Bona became queen in fact as well as in fashion. Her

son Sigismund II was a humanist, linguist, orator, and

transvestite. `06287 Wars marred these brilliant reigns, for Poland

was involved with Sweden, Denmark, and Russia in a contest for control

of the Baltic Sea and its ports. Poland lost Prussia, but she absorbed

Mazovia, including Warsaw (1529), and Livonia, including Riga

(1561). Poland was in this age a major European state.

-

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

++++++++++

Meanwhile the Reformation filtered in from Germany and

Switzerland. The freedom of worship guaranteed by the Polish Crown

to its Greek Catholic subjects had habituated the nation to

religious tolerance, and the century-long rebellion of Hussites and

Utraquists in neighboring Bohemia had made Poland somewhat careless of

distant papal authority. The bishops, nominated by the Kings, were

cultured patriots, favoring Church reform with Erasmian caution, and

generously supporting the humanist movement. This, however, did not

allay the envy with which nobles and townsmen looked upon their

property and revenues. Complaints grew of national wealth being

drained off to Rome, of indulgences expensively absurd, of

ecclesiastical simony, of costly litigation in episcopal courts. The

szlachta, or lesser nobility, took particular offense at the

exemption of the clergy from taxation, and the clerical collection

of tithes from the nobles themselves. Probably for economic reasons

some influential barons listened with sympathy to Lutheran criticism

of the Church; and the semi-sovereignty of the individual feudal lords

provided protection to local Protestant movements, much as the

independence of the German princes made possible the revolt and

shielding of Luther. In Danzig a monk championed Luther's Theses,

called for ecclesiastical reforms, and married an heiress (1518);

another preacher followed the Lutheran vein so effectively that

several congregations removed all religious images from their churches

(1522); the city council released monks and nuns from their vows,

and closed the monasteries (1525); by 1540 all Danzig pulpits were

in Protestant hands. When some clergymen in Polish-Prussian Braunsberg

introduced the Lutheran ritual, and the cathedral canons complained to

their bishop, he replied that Luther based his views on the Bible, and

that whoever felt able to refute them might undertake the task

(1520). `06288 Sigismund I was prevailed upon to censor the press

and forbid the importation of Lutheran literature; but his own

secretary and Bona's Franciscan confessor were secretly won to the

forbidden creed; and in 1539 Calvin dedicated his Commentary on the

Mass to the Crown Prince.

When the Prince became Sigismund II both Lutheranism and Calvinism

advanced rapidly. The Bible was translated into Polish, and the

vernacular began to replace Latin in religious services. Prominent

priests like Jan Laski announced their conversion to Protestantism. In

1548 the Bohemian Brethren, exiled from their own country, moved

into Poland, and soon there were thirty conventicles of their sect

in the land. The attempt of the Catholic clergy to indict some members

of the szlachta for heresy, and to confiscate their property, led

many minor nobles to rebel against the Church (1552). The national

Diet of 1555 voted religious freedom for all faiths based on "the pure

Word of God," and legalized clerical marriage and communion in bread

and wine. The Reform in Poland was now at its crest.

The situation was complicated by the development, in Poland, of

the strongest Unitarian movement in sixteenth-century Europe. As early

as 1546 the antitrinitarian tentatives of Servetus were discussed in

this Far East of Latin Christianity. Laelius Socinus visited Poland in

1551, and left a ferment of radical ideas; Giorgio Blandrata continued

the campaign; and in 1561 the new group issued its confession of

faith. Continuing the confusion of Servetus's theology, they

restricted full divinity to God the Father, but professed belief in

the supernatural birth of Christ, His divine inspiration, miracles,

resurrection, and ascension. They rejected the ideas of original sin

and Christ's atonement; they admitted baptism and communion as symbols

only; and they taught that salvation depended above all upon a

conscientious practice of Christ's teachings. When the Calvinist synod

of Cracow (1563) condemned these doctrines, the Unitarians formed

their own separate church. The full flourishing of the sect came only

with Laelius's nephew Faustus Socinus, who reached Poland in 1579.

The Catholic Church fought these developments with persecution,

literature, and diplomacy. In 1539 the bishop of Cracow sent to the

stake an eighty-year-old woman on the charge that she refused to

worship the consecrated Host. `06289 Stanislaus Hosius, Bishop of Kulm

in Prussia, later Cardinal, carried on the counteroffensive with

ability and zeal. He labored for ecclesiastical reform, but had no

sympathy with Protestant theology or ritual. At his suggestion

Lodovico Lippomano, Bishop of Verona, was sent to Poland as papal

legate, and Giovanni Commendone, Bishop of Zante, was made papal

nuncio at Cracow. They won Sigismund II to active support of the

Church by stressing the divisions among the Protestants, and

magnifying the difficulty of organizing the moral life of the nation

on such inimical and fluctuating creeds. In 1564 Hosius and Commendone

brought the Jesuits into Poland. These trained and devoted men secured

strategic places in the educational system, caught the ear of

pivotal personalities, and turned the Polish people back to the

traditional faith.

-

The Bohemians had been Protestants before Luther, and found little

to terrify them in his ideas. A large German element on the border

readily accepted the Reform; the Bohemian Brethren, numbering some

10 per cent of the 400,000 population, were more Protestant than

Luther; 60 per cent were Utraquists-Catholics who took the Eucharist

in wine as well as bread, and ignored the protests of the

popes. `062810 By 1560 Bohemia was two thirds Protestant; but in

1561 Ferdinand introduced the Jesuits, and the tide turned back to the

orthodox Catholic creed.

The Reformation came to Hungary through German immigrants bearing

the news of Luther- that one could defy the Church and the Empire

and yet live. Hungarian peasants oppressed by a Church-supported

feudalism viewed with some favor a Protestantism that might end

ecclesiastical tithes and dues; feudal barons looked with grasping

eyes upon vast Church properties whose products competed with their

own; town laborers, infected with Utopia, saw in the Church the

chief obstacle to their dream, and indulged in image-breaking

ecstasies. The Church co-operated by persuading the government to make

Protestantism a capital crime. In western Hungary King Ferdinand

labored for a compromise, and wished to allow clerical marriage and

communion in both forms. In eastern Hungary Protestantism spread

freely under a Turkish rule scornfully indifferent to varieties of

Christian belief. By 1550 it seemed that all Hungary would become

Protestant. But Calvinism began then to compete with Lutheranism in

Hungary; the Magyars, constitutionally anti-German, supported the

Swiss style of Reform; and by 1558 the Calvinists were numerous enough

to hold an impressive synod at Czenger. The rival focuses of reform

tore the movement in two. Many officials or converts, seeking social

stability or mental peace, returned to Catholicism; and in the

seventeenth century the Jesuits, led by the son of a Calvinist,

restored Hungary to the Catholic fold.

===========================================================

==========

V. CHARLES V AND THE NETHERLANDS

-

In the Flanders of Charles's maturity a thriving commerce was more

than making up for sporadic industrial decline. Bruges and Ghent

were depressed, but Brussels survived by being the Flemish capital,

Louvain was brewing theology and beer, and Antwerp was becoming- would

be by 1550- the richest, busiest city in Europe. To that hectic port

on the broad and navigable Scheldt international trade and finance

were drawn by low import and export dues, by the political

connection with Spain, and by a bourse dedicated, its inscription

said, ad usum mercatorum cuiusque gentis ac linguae - "to the use

of merchants of every land and tongue." `062811 Business enterprise

was here free from the guild restrictions and municipal

protectionism that had kept medieval industry happily unprogressive.

Here Italian bankers opened agencies, English "merchant adventurers"

established a depot, the Fuggers centered their commercial activities,

the Hanse built its lordly House of the Easterlings (1564). The harbor

saw 500 ships enter or leave on any day, and 5,000 traders

trafficked on the exchange. A bill on Antwerp was now the commonest

form of international currency. In this period Antwerp gradually

replaced Lisbon as the chief European port for the spice trade;

cargoes sailing into Lisbon were bought afloat by Flemish agents

there, and were sailed directly to Antwerp for distribution through

northern Europe. "I was sad at the sight of Antwerp," wrote a Venetian

ambassador, "for I saw Venice surpassed"; `062812 he was witnessing

the historic transfer of commercial hegemony from the Mediterranean to

the North Atlantic. Spurred on by this commerce, Flemish industry

revived, even in Ghent; and the Lowlands provided Charles V with

1,500,000 livres ($37,500,000?) a year, half his total

revenue. `062813

He responded by giving Flanders and Holland reasonably good

government except in religious liberty- a boon hardly conceived by his

friends or his foes. His authority was constitutionally limited by his

sworn pledge to observe the charters and local laws of the cities

and provinces; by personal and domiciliary rights stoutly maintained

by the burghers; by councils of state and finance, and a court of

appeal, established as part of the central administration. Generally

Charles ruled the Netherlands by indirection, through regents

acceptable to the citizens: first his aunt, nurse, and tutor, Margaret

of Austria, then his sister Mary, ex-queen of Hungary, both women of

competence, humanity, and tact. But Charles became more imperious with

more Empire. He stationed Spanish garrisons in the proud cities, and

suppressed with severity any serious contravention of his

international policies. When Ghent refused to vote the military

funds demanded by him and granted by the other cities, Charles put

down the revolt by a show of indisputable force, exacted the subsidy

and an indemnity, abolished the traditional liberties of the

municipality, and substituted Imperial appointees for the locally

chosen government (1540). `062814 But this was hardly typical. Despite

such occasional harshness Charles remained popular with his Lowland

subjects; he received credit for the political stability and social

order that supported the economic prosperity; and when he announced

his abdication nearly all citizens mourned. `062815

Accepting the current theory that national peace and strength

required unity of religious belief, and fearing that Protestantism

in the Netherlands would endanger his flank in his strife with

France and Lutheran Germany, Charles fully supported the Church in

prosecuting heresy in Flanders and Holland. The reform movement

there was mild before Luther; after 1517 it entered as Lutheranism and

Anabaptism from Germany, as Zwinglianism and Calvinism from

Switzerland, Alsace, and France. Luther's writings were soon

translated into Dutch, and were expounded by ardent preachers in

Antwerp, Ghent, Dordrecht, Utrecht, Zwolle, and The Hague. Dominican

friars led a vivacious rebuttal; one said he wished he could fasten

his teeth on Luther's throat, and would not hesitate to go to the

Lord's Supper with that blood on his mouth. `062816 The Emperor, still

young, thought to stop the agitation by publishing (1521), at the

Pope's request, a "placard" forbidding the printing or reading of

Luther's works. In the same year he ordered the secular courts to

enforce throughout the Netherlands the Edict of Worms against all

proponents of Lutheran ideas. On July 1, 1523, Henry Voes and Johann

Eck, two Augustinian friars, were sent to the stake at Brussels as the

first Protestant martyrs in the Lowlands. Henry of Zutphen, friend and

pupil of Luther's, and prior of the Augustinian monastery at

Antwerp, was imprisoned, escaped, was caught in Holstein, and was

there burned (1524). These executions advertised the Reformers' ideas.

Despite censorship Luther's translation of the New Testament was

widely circulated, more fervently in Holland than in rich Flanders.

A longing for the restoration of Christianity to its pristine

simplicity generated a millenarian hope for the early return of Christ

and the establishment of a New Jerusalem in which there would be no

government, no marriage, and no property; and with these notions

were mingled communistic theories of equality, mutual aid, and even

"free love." `062817 Anabaptist groups formed at Antwerp,

Maastricht, and Amsterdam. Melchior Hofmann came from Emden to

Amsterdam in 1531, and in 1534 John of Leyden returned the visit by

carrying the Anabaptist creed from Haarlem to Munster. In some Dutch

towns it was estimated that two thirds of the population were

Anabaptists; in Deventer even the burgomaster was converted to the

cause. Fanned by famine, the movement became a social revolt. "In

these provinces," wrote a friend to Erasmus in 1534, "we are made

extremely anxious by the Anabaptist conflagration, for it is

mounting up like flames. There is hardly a spot or town where the

torch of insurrection does not secretly glow." `062818 Mary of

Hungary, then Regent, warned the Emperor that the rebels planned to

plunder all forms of property among the nobility, clergy, and

mercantile aristocracy, and to distribute the spoils to every man

according to his need. `062819 In 1535 John of Leyden sent

emissaries to arrange a simultaneous uprising of Anabaptists at

several Dutch centers. The rebels made heroic efforts; one group

captured and fortified a monastery in West Friesland; the governor

besieged them with heavy artillery; 800 died in a hopeless defense

(1535). On May 11 some armed Anabaptists stormed and captured the city

hall of Amsterdam; the burghers dislodged them, and wreaked upon the

leaders the frightful vengeance of frightened men: tongues and

hearts were torn from living bodies and flung into the faces of the

dying or dead. `062820

Thinking the whole social structure challenged by a communistic

revolution, Charles imported the Inquisition into the Netherlands, and

gave its officials power to stamp out the movement, and all other

heresies, at whatever cost to local liberties. Between 1521 and 1555

he issued placard after placard against social or religious dissent.

The most violent of these (September 25, 1550) revealed the

deterioration of the Emperor, and laid the foundations for the

revolt of the Netherlands against his son.

-

No one shall print, write, copy, keep, conceal, sell, buy, or

give, in churches, streets, or other places, any book or writing

made by Martin Luther, John Oecolampadius, Ulrich Zwingli, Martin

Bucer, John Calvin, or other heretics reprobated by the Holy Church...

nor break or otherwise injure the images of the Holy Virgin or

canonized saints... nor hold conventicles, or illegal gatherings, or

be present at any such in which the adherents of the above-mentioned

heretics teach, baptize, and form conspiracies against the Holy Church

and the general welfare.... We forbid all lay persons to converse or

dispute concerning the Holy Scriptures, openly or secretly... or to

read, teach, or expound the Scriptures, unless they have duly

studied theology, or have been approved by some renowned university...

or to entertain any of the opinions of the above-mentioned heretics...

on pain of being... punished as follows... the men [to be beheaded]

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.