In 1534, Parliament completed the break of the Church of England with Rome by passing the Act of Supremacy, which declared that the king was “taken, accepted, and reputed the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England.” This meant that the English monarch now controlled the church in all matters of doctrine, clerical appointments, and discipline. In addition, Parliament passed the Treason Act, making it punishable by death to deny that the king was the supreme head of the church.
One who challenged the new order was Thomas More, the humanist and former lord chancellor, who saw clearly to the heart of the issue: loyalty to the pope in Rome was now treason in England. More refused to support the new laws and was duly tried for treason. At his trial, he asked, rhetorically, what the effect of the actions of the king and Parliament would be: “Therefore am I not bound … to conform my conscience to the Council of one realm [England] against the general Council of Christendom?”9 Because his conscience could not accept the victory of the national state over the church, nor would he, as a Christian, bow his head to a secular ruler in matters of faith, More was beheaded in London on July 6, 1535.
Recent research that emphasizes the strength of Catholicism in England suggests that Thomas More was not alone in his view of the new order. In fact, one historian has argued that Catholicism was vibrant in England in both the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; in his view, the English Reformation was alien to many English people.
THE NEW ORDER Thomas Cromwell worked out the details of the Tudor government’s new role in church affairs based on the centralized power exercised by the king and Parliament. Cromwell also came to his extravagant king’s financial rescue with a daring plan for the dissolution of the monasteries. About four hundred religious houses were closed in 1536, and their land and possessions were confiscated by the king. Many were sold to nobles, gentry, and some merchants. The king added enormously to his treasury and also to his ranks of supporters, who now had a stake in the new Tudor order.
Although Henry VIII had broken with the papacy, little change occurred in matters of doctrine, theology, and ceremony. Some of his supporters, such as Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, wished to have a religious reformation as well as an administrative one, but Henry was unyielding. Nevertheless, some clergymen ignored Henry on the matter of priestly celibacy and secretly married.
The final decade of Henry’s reign was preoccupied with foreign affairs, factional intrigue, and a continued effort to find the perfect wife. Henry soon tired of Anne Boleyn and had her beheaded in 1536 on a charge of adultery. His third wife, Jane Seymour, produced the long-awaited male heir but died twelve days later. His fourth marriage, to Anne of Cleves, a German princess, was arranged for political reasons. Henry relied on a painted portrait of Anne when he made the arrangements, but he was disappointed at her physical appearance when he saw her in person and soon divorced her. His fifth wife, Catherine Howard, was more attractive but less moral. When she committed adultery, Henry had her beheaded. His last wife was Catherine Parr, who married the king in 1543 and outlived him. Henry was succeeded by the underage and sickly Edward VI (1547–1553), the son of his third wife.
Since the new king was only nine years old at the time of his accession to the throne, real control of England passed to a council of regency. During Edward’s reign, Archbishop Cranmer and others inclined toward Protestant doctrines were able to move the Church of England in a more Protestant direction. New acts of Parliament instituted the right of the clergy to marry, the elimination of images, and the creation of a revised Protestant liturgy that was elaborated in a new prayer book and liturgical guide known as the Book of Common Prayer. These rapid changes in doctrine and liturgy aroused much opposition and prepared the way for the reaction that occurred when Mary, Henry’s first daughter by Catherine of Aragon, came to the throne.
REACTION UNDER MARY Mary (1553–1558) was a Catholic who fully intended to restore England to the Roman Catholic fold. But her restoration of Catholicism, achieved by joint action of the monarch and Parliament, aroused opposition. There was widespread antipathy to Mary’s unfortunate marriage to Philip II, son of Charles V and the future king of Spain. Philip was strongly disliked in England, and Mary’s foreign policy of alliance with Spain aroused further hostility, especially when her forces lost Calais, the last English possession in France after the Hundred Years’ War. The burning of more than three hundred Protestant heretics aroused further ire against “bloody Mary.” As a result of her policies, Mary managed to achieve the opposite of what she had intended: England was more Protestant by the end of her reign than it had been at the beginning. When she came to power, Protestantism had become identified with church destruction and religious anarchy. Now people identified it with English resistance to Spanish interference. Mary’s death in 1558 ended the restoration of Catholicism in England.
Henry VIII and His Successors. This allegorical painting of the Tudor succession, entitled The Family of Henry VIII, was done by an English artist about forty years after the death of Henry VIII. King Henry sits on his throne under the Tudor coat of arms. At the far left is the figure of a Roman soldier representing the god of war. Next is Philip II of Spain, the husband of Mary Tudor, who stands beside him. On the other side of Henry stand Edward, Elizabeth, and two female figures who represent peace and plenty.
© Yale Center for British Art//The Bridgeman Art Library
John Calvin and Calvinism
Of the second generation of Protestant reformers, one stands out as the systematic theologian and organizer of the Protestant movement—John Calvin (1509–1564). Calvin received a remarkably diverse education in humanistic studies and law in his native France. He was also influenced by Luther’s writings, which were being circulated and read by French intellectuals as early as 1523. In 1533, Calvin experienced a religious crisis that determined the rest of his life’s work. He described it in these words:
God, by a sudden conversion, subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame, which was more hardened in such matters than might have been expected from one at my early period of life. Having thus received some taste and knowledge of true godliness, I was immediately inflamed with so intense a desire to make progress therein, although I did not leave off other studies, I yet pursued them with less ardor.10
Calvin’s conversion was solemn and straightforward. He was so convinced of the inner guidance of God that he became the most determined of all the Protestant reformers.
After his conversion and newfound conviction, Calvin was no longer safe in Paris, since King Francis I periodically persecuted Protestants. Eventually, Calvin made his way to Basel, where in 1536 he published the first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, a masterful synthesis of Protestant thought that immediately secured his reputation as one of the new leaders of Protestantism.
CALVIN’S IDEAS On most important doctrines, Calvin stood very close to Luther. He adhered to the doctrine of justification by faith alone to explain how humans achieved salvation. Calvin also placed much emphasis on the absolute sovereignty of God or the “power, grace, and glory of God.” Thus, “God asserts his possession of omnipotence, and claims our acknowledgment of this attribute; not such as is imagined by sophists, vain, idle, and almost asleep, but vigilant, efficacious, operative and engaged in continual action.”11
One of the ideas derived from his emphasis on the absolute sovereignty of God—predestination—gave a unique cast to Calvin’s teachings, although Luther too believed in this principle. This “eternal decree,” as Calvin called it, meant that God had predestined some people to be saved (the elect) and others to be damned (the reprobate). According to Calvin, “He has once for all determined, both whom he would admit to salvation, and whom he would condemn to destruction.”12 Calvin identified three tests that might indicate possible salvation: an open profession of faith, a “decent and godly life,” and participation in the sacraments of baptism and communion. In no instance did Calvin ever suggest that worldly success
or material wealth was a sign of election. Significantly for the future of Calvinism, although Calvin himself stressed that there could be no absolute certainty of salvation, some of his followers did not always make this distinction. The practical psychological effect of predesti-nation was to give some later Calvinists an unshakable conviction that they were doing God’s work on earth. Thus, Calvinism became a dynamic and activist faith. It is no accident that Calvinism became the militant international form of Protestantism.
John Calvin. After a conversion experience, John Calvin abandoned his life as a humanist and became a reformer. In 1536, Calvin began working to reform the city of Geneva, where he remained until his death in 1564. This sixteenth-century portrait of Calvin pictures him near the end of his life.
© The Art Archive/University Library, Geneva/Gianni Dagli Orti
To Calvin, the church was a divine institution responsible for preaching the word of God and administering the sacraments. Calvin kept the same two sacraments as other Protestant reformers, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Baptism was a sign of the remission of sins. Calvin believed in the real presence of Jesus in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, but only in a spiritual sense. Jesus’s body is at the right hand of God and thus cannot be in the sacrament, but to the believer, Jesus is spiritually present in the Lord’s Supper.
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CHRONOLOGY New Reform Movements
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The Zwinglian Reformation
Zwingli made cathedral priest at Zürich
1518
Reform adopted in Zürich
1523
Marburg Colloquy
1529
Death of Zwingli on the battlefield
1531
The Anabaptists
Anabaptists expelled from Zürich
1523
New Jerusalem in Münster
1534–1535
The Reformation in England
Henry VIII
1509–1547
Act of Supremacy
1534
Execution of Thomas More
1535
Edward VI
1547–1553
Mary
1553–1558
Calvin and Calvinism
Institutes of the Christian Religion
1536
Calvin begins ministry in Geneva
1536
Ecclesiastical Ordinances
1541
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CALVIN’S GENEVA Before 1536, John Calvin had essentially been a scholar. But in that year, he took up a ministry in Geneva that lasted, except for a brief exile (1538–1541), until his death in 1564. Calvin achieved a major success in 1541 when the city council accepted his new church constitution, known as the Ecclesiastical Ordinances.
This document created a church government that used both clergy and laymen in the service of the church. The Consistory, a special body for enforcing moral discipline, was set up as a court to oversee the moral life and doctrinal purity of Genevans. As its power increased, the Consistory went from “fraternal corrections” to the use of public penance and excommunication. More serious cases could be turned over to the city council for punishments greater than excommunication. During Calvin’s last years, stricter laws against blasphemy were enacted and enforced with banishment and public whippings.
Calvin’s success in Geneva enabled the city to become a vibrant center of Protestantism. John Knox, the Calvinist reformer of Scotland, called it “the most perfect school of Christ on earth.” Following Calvin’s lead, missionaries trained in Geneva were sent to all parts of Europe. Calvinism became established in France, the Netherlands, Scotland, and central and eastern Europe. By the mid-sixteenth century, Calvinism had replaced Lutheranism as the international form of Protestantism, and Calvin’s Geneva stood as the fortress of the Reformation.
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The Role of Discipline in the “Most Perfect School of Christ on Earth”
John Calvin had emphasized in his reform movement that the church should have the ability to enforce proper behavior. Consequently, the Ecclesiastical Ordinances of 1541, the constitution of the church in Geneva, provided for an order of elders whose function was to cooperate with the pastors in maintaining discipline, “to have oversight of the life of everyone,” as Calvin expressed it. These selections from the official records of the Consis-tory show the nature of its work.
Reports of the Genevan Consistory
Donna Jane Peterman is questioned concerning her faith and why she does not receive communion and attend worship. She confesses her faith and believes in one God and wants to come to God and the holy Church and has no other faith. She recited the Lord’s Prayer in the vernacular. She said that she believes what the Church believes. Is questioned why she never participates in communion when it is celebrated in this town, but goes to other places. She answers that she goes where it seems good to her. Is placed outside the faith.
The sister of Sr. Curtet, Lucresse, to whom remonstrances have been made on account of her going with certain monies to have Masses said at Nessy by the monks of St. Claire. Questioned whether she has no scruples as to what she says. Replied that her father and mother have brought her up to obey a different law from the one now in force here. However, she does not desire the present law. Asked as to when was the festival of St. Felix, she replied that it was yesterday. Asked if she had not fasted, she replied that she fasted when it pleased her. Asked if she did not desire to pray to a single God; said that she did. Asked if she did not pray to St. Felix; said that she prayed to St. Felix and other saints who interceded for her. She is very obstinate. Decision that she be sent to some minister of her choice every sermon day and that the Lord’s Supper be withheld from her.
At about this time, by resolution of the Consistory … the marriage contracted between the widow of Jean Archard, aged more than 70, and a servant of hers, aged about 27 or 28, was dissolved because of the too great inequality of age. The Consistory resolved further that Messieurs should be requested to make a ruling on this matter for the future.
Based on the examples given here, what kinds of activities did the Consistory seek to root out and prevent? Why was Calvinism so determined to survey and control the personal lives of citizens?
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The Social Impact of the Protestant Reformation
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FOCUS QUESTION: What impact did the Protestant Reformation have on society in the sixteenth century?
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Because Christianity was such an integral part of European life, it was inevitable that the Reformation would have an impact on the family, education, and popular religious practices.
The Family
For centuries, Catholicism had praised the family and sanctified its existence by making marriage a sacrament. But the Catholic Church’s high regard for abstinence from sex as the surest way to holiness made the celibate state of the clergy preferable to marriage. Nevertheless, because not all men could remain chaste, marriage offered the best means to control sexual intercourse and give it a purpose, the procreation of children. To some extent, this attitude persisted among the Protestant reformers; Luther, for example, argued that sex in marriage allowed one to “make use of this sex in order to avoid sin,” and Calvin advised that every man should “abstain from marriage only so long as he is fit to observe celibacy.” If “his power to tame lust fails him,” then he must marry.
But the Reformation did bring some change to the conception of the family. Both Catholic and Protestant clergy preached sermons advocating a more positive side to family relationships. The Protestants were especially important in developing this new view of the family. Because Protestantism had eliminated any idea of special holiness for celibacy, abolishing both monasticism and a celibate clergy, the family could be placed at the center of human life, and a new stress on “mutual love between man and wife” could be extolled. But were doctrine and reality the same? For more radical religious groups, at times
they were. One Anabaptist wrote to his wife before his execution, “My faithful helper, my loyal friend. I praise God that he gave you to me, you who have sustained me in all my trial.”13 But more often reality reflected the traditional roles of husband as the ruler and wife as the obedient servant whose chief duty was to please her husband. Luther stated it clearly:
The rule remains with the husband, and the wife is compelled to obey him by God’s command. He rules the home and the state, wages war, defends his possessions, tills the soil, builds, plants, etc. The woman on the other hand is like a nail driven into the wall … so the wife should stay at home and look after the affairs of the household, as one who has been deprived of the ability of administering those affairs that are outside and that concern the state. She does not go beyond her most personal duties.14
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A Protestant Woman
In the initial zeal of the Protestant Reformation, women were frequently allowed to play unusual roles. Katherine Zell of Germany (c. 1497–1562) first preached beside her husband in 1527. After the deaths of her two children, she devoted the rest of her life to helping her husband and their reform faith. This selection is taken from one of her letters to a young Lutheran minister who had criticized her activities.
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