The Reformation

by Will Durant

  III. THE DANISH REFORMATION

  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 Lübeck 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.5 Legate and King quarreled over the division of the proceeds; Arcimboldo decamped to Lübeck 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. Lübeck 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 Sönderborg 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 Darihï; 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 Lübeck in an attempt to restore Christian II; Count Christopher of Oldenburg led the Lübeck forces and gave his name to the “Count’s War”; Copenhagen fell to him, and Lübeck 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.” 6 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.7 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 provid
ed 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).8 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.9 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.10 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.” 11 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”;12 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.13

  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).14 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.15

  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.16 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.