There was a common belief that the Reformation would blow over, writes Rory Rapple
Western Europe may be post-Christian, but the effects of its sectarian divide are everywhere to be seen. Ask almost any Bavarian what makes her different from a Saxon, or any Swede what marks him off from a Spaniard and each is likely to point to cultural differences based on his or her region’s religious heritage.
Because these differences are hardwired into attitudes and cultures it’s easy to think that this polarity between Protestant and Catholic was always fated to happen. And it’s tempting when analysing the past only to look for the clues that lead to this result. But, in fact, in the three decades after Luther’s commitment to defying papal authority many thought that the divisions could be patched up.
When we consider early 16th-Century predictions of those ‘in the know’ about the future of Western Christendom it is difficult not to see parallels with the spectrum of views to be found about Brexit.
Some believe that Brexit will never happen because a critical mass of clever people are opposed to it. Others think it’ll happen, but only temporarily, before a rational reconciliation on a new improved basis in the face of a hostile global environment. Still others think Brexit changes everything, but only by showing other countries what is possible, and that every country will have its own ‘Irexit’, ‘Frexit’ and ‘Grexit’.
In different ways all these views express a sort of faith in the capacity of Britain and the EU to self-regulate and return to a normal familiar equilibrium.
Tradition
Similarly, in the period following Martin Luther’s defiance some thought that Western Christendom wouldn’t splinter permanently, that whatever breach occurred would be temporary, and others believed that while Christianity in the West might shake off the trappings of tradition it would stand aloft renewed and reformed. All these conclusions at certain points appeared plausible. Many thought that the role of reforming the church so that it could survive into the future belonged to secular power – kings and emperors – not clergy.
Although Luther’s abrasive personality and high oratory captured the imagination, the tinder that he set ablaze had in large part been provided by Desiderius Erasmus, a man of very different temperament, best known to history as Erasmus of Rotterdam.
Erasmus, although ordained as a priest with the canons regular of St Augustine, had chosen in the late 15th Century to throw himself into an exhaustive academic life and became the best known scholar in Europe. Critical of both the Church’s scholastic intellectual tradition and its Augustinian moral theology, Erasmus believed that external signs and symbols of devotion mattered less to the Christian life than an individual’s interior disposition.
His scholarship in Greek-language works both Biblical and those written by the Church Fathers brought to light ancient resources that he used to vindicate his analysis. Early Church spirituality, Erasmus believed, reflected an ethos at odds with the carnal externalities of the world of pilgrimages, votive masses and relics that surrounded him.
Furthermore, he believed that the key to reforming things would likely lie outside the institutional Church. His tract on the education of a Christian Prince was optimistic about the fruits that might result from those in authority imbibing his ‘Christian philosophy’. This encouraged the view that heads of state, following the example of the Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicaea, were in a better position to secure the much-needed reform of the Church’s abuses at a national level, than the underpowered and, in many ways, tarnished papacy.
This type of thinking provided a model for proceeding followed by many in the prominent actors in the ‘Reformation Dramas’ of Western Europe from St Thomas More to the Lutheran, Phillip Melanchthon, and the father of Presbyterianism, John Calvin. Erasmus’s scepticism about the cosmic efficacy of many of the devotional practices of his time was easily extrapolated by others to cast doubt on the inherent value of the Sacramental system of the Church itself.
Justification
Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone even found some sympathy among prominent churchmen, most notably the group of Italian clerics beloved by Pope Paul IIII known as the Spirituali. Among the membership of this group could be found the creme de la creme of the Church’s intellectual elite, including figures like Cardinals Sadoleto, Contarini and Pole.
Pole, that is Reginald Pole (1500-1558), had been educated in Italy at the expense of his relative Henry VIII of England. Nevertheless, he strongly rejected King Henry’s schism by publishing a polemic against the supposed Royal Supremacy over the new Church of England. Yet, Pole proved something of a ‘Marmite’ cleric in Rome, either loved or hated. Despite the great favour of Paul III, others, notably Gian Pietro Carafa the future Pope Paul IV, hated the Spirituali and suspected that Pole’s sympathy for the doctrine of justification by faith was a sign of greater heresy.
Some Spirituali had gone too far. The most embarrassing example was when the vicar-general of the Capuchin Order Bernardino Ochino fled to Geneva and converted to Protestantism. Yet Pole was considered orthodox enough to be almost elected Pope at the conclave of 1549. Subsequently he returned to England to assist Queen Mary in her attempts to restore Catholicism and, perhaps ironically, assist her in the persecution of Protestants.
Pending the conclusion of the final sessions of the Council of Trent in 1562 and 1563, the hope was not infrequently expressed that the sectarian division could be patched up by a General Council of the Church that might be in some way responsive to the theological objections and arguments of the ‘reformers’, or, even better, by national councils, or in the Holy Roman Empire, imperial diets. Indeed, in the Holy Roman Empire, Emperor Charles V seemed to believe that he could facilitate a solution to the division of the Church in his territories by refereeing a colloquy between Catholic and Lutheran advocates on theological matters at Ratisbon in 1541.
Alongside this local strategy the Emperor tried to ensure that the sessions of the Council of Trent in the 1540s and 1550s concentrated on disciplinary matters rather than matters of dogma. He also exerted pressure to prevent the Council formally condemning Lutheranism as heretical.
While his effort at reconciliation at Ratisbon failed, despite some agreement on matters like original sin and justification by faith, in 1548 Charles attempted another resolution of the schism by trying to impose ’the Augsburg Interim’; a selection of edicts which strove to placate Protestants by permitting clerical marriage and reception of Communion under the appearances of both bread and wine.
The failure of these internal solutions ultimately led to the Peace of Augsburg of 1555 which decreed that individual Princes within the Empire had the power to determine the faith established by law within their own territories.
It is easy to forget that the Holy Roman Emperor and other princes in Central Europe in their anxiety to find a compromise were not just doing anything for a quiet life. The ongoing expansion of the Islamic Ottoman Empire on the Empire’s eastern borders terrified them and led them to hope for a restoration of the unity of Christendom.
In short, their attempts at top-down ecumenism were designed to bring about the preconditions for a Crusade against Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. It was frequently hoped that the clarion call of a Crusade would mean that all the wrangling between Catholic and Protestant would be cast aside.
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Similarly, in France in 1561, Catherine de Medici, the mother of the boy king, Charles IX, tried to pour oil on troubled waters. She organised a meeting between Catholic hierarchs and Calvinist theologians, known to history as the Colloquy of Poissy. This aimed to arrive at an internal French solution to national sectarian strife. Divergent teaching on the Eucharist became the sticking point, although great pressure was placed on participants to arrive at a workably vague compromise.
The French (or Gallican) Church had always been independent minded, and since the mid-15th Century, the Kings of France had placed limitations on papal authority within their territories, but, nevertheless, despite their encouragement neither the Calvinist not Catholic party could arrive at a solution.
The formal conclusion of the Council of Trent in 1563 and its cast-iron restatement of Catholic doctrine, especially on the Eucharist, short-circuited national attempts at compromise and rescued the papacy from being on the doctrinal back foot relative to national monarchs. Now, there could be no ambiguity about Catholic teaching and the time-worn ecumenical strategy of appealing to the likely outcome of a future council to justify heterodox views became much less feasible.
Nevertheless, some intellectuals, faced with the distasteful polarity between Catholicism and Protestantism and the mayhem it was causing across Europe, chose a type of internal exile. The great essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) is best remembered for this. Impeccably orthodox in his external observance and willing to fight for the defence of Catholicism when his King deemed it necessary, Montaigne, having immersed himself in the philosophical writings of the Stoics and Epicureans, believed that the range of things knowable to human reason was very finite. He expressed ongoing distaste in his many essays for the vehement passion which he saw being vented upon religious war.
His personal sympathy was towards a type of scepticism. He interrogated himself, holding as a motto, Que sais je? What do I know?
Montaigne was clever enough, however, to avoid getting into trouble with Church authorities and his essays were wildly popular in late-16th-Century France. In many ways he could easily pose as a type of mystic. His scepticism relativised all kinds of knowledge and could be seen as removing the dead hand of philosophy from religion and religious experience. So, as with Erasmus, in Montaigne the emphasis returned to internal dispositions and natural knowledge, rather than the importance of disputes between the philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.
France demonstrated in distilled form the nightmare that religious difference could cause, and the essential appeal of arriving at an agreed solution. Not only had she been convulsed by stop-start religious war since the 1560s, in 1589 following the assassination of Henry III the legitimate heir to the throne was Henry of Navarre, a committed Protestant.
This posed a dreadful dilemma. To many it was unthinkable that the ‘most Catholic’ king of France could be a Protestant and to others it was unthinkable that the legitimate heir, traditionally understood, could be excluded from his right. The nobility who attempted to exclude Henry of Navarre were supported by the King of Spain and, although in the minority, put up a fierce resistance, retaining control of Paris.
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Henry of Navarre (now Henry IV) in 1593 simplified matters by converting to Catholicism. Five years later, when secure on the throne, he promulgated the Edict of Nantes which provided for limited toleration of Calvinist worship in particular safe havens and, secretly, the protection of French Protestants when abroad from the workings of the Inquisition in other territories. This seemed to provide a template for future pragmatic attempts at religious toleration, but Henry IV himself was assassinated by a disaffected Catholic fanatic in 1610.
It is easy using the terminology of today to think that ‘toleration’ denoted mutual respect and affection. This was certainly not the case. ‘Toleration’ just meant that different sectarian groups were protected, certainly not loved. By the turn of the 17th Century the sectarian divisions across Western Europe had calcified and serious hope for a great reconciliation was difficult to find. In the Holy Roman Empire the old settlement arrived at by the Peace of Augsburg held in place until 1618 when the balance between Catholic and Protestant powers was disrupted leading to a horrible conflict that convulsed the entirety of Central Europe, known as the Thirty Years’ War.
The carnage that resulted tarnished the brand of Christianity, but was a world away from the quiet confidence of Erasmus of Rotterdam a hundred years before that a well-disposed humanity using its reason could arrive at a true Christian philosophy. This, instead, was the sectarian equivalent of a No-Deal Brexit.
Rory Rapple is an Associate Professor, in the Department of History, at the University of Notre Dame.
