Whose "music of mystic serenity" captured the conservative quality of the catholic reformation?

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Protest and Reform: The Waning of the Old Order ca. 1400–1600

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Figure 19.1 ALBRECHT DÜRER, Knight, Death, and the Devil, 1513. Engraving, 95⁄8 � 71⁄2 in. Dürer’s engraving is remarkable for its wealth of microscopic detail. Objects in the real world— the horse, the dog, and the lizard—are depicted as precisely as those imagined: the devil and the horned demon.

“Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his part, until the manager waves them off the stage?” Erasmus

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L O O K I N G A H E A D

The Temper of Reform

Science and Technology

CHAPTER 19 Protest and Reform: The Waning of the Old Order 1

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1450, in the city of Mainz, the German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg (ca. 1400–ca. 1468) perfected a printing press that made it possible to fabricate books more cheaply, more rapidly, and in greater numbers than ever before (Figure 19.2). As information became a commodity for mass pro- duction, vast areas of knowledge—heretofore the exclusive domain of the monastery, the Church, and the universi- ty—became available to the public. The printing press facilitated the rise of popular education and encouraged individuals to form their own opinions by reading for themselves. It accelerated the growing interest in vernacu- lar literature, which in turn enhanced national and indi- vidual self-consciousness. Print technology proved to be the single most important factor in the success of the Protestant Reformation, as it brought the complaints of Church reformers to the attention of all literate folk.

By the sixteenth century, the old medieval order was crumbling.

Classical humanism and the influence of Italian Renaissance

artist–scientists were spreading throughout Northern Europe (Map

19.1). European exploration and expansion were promoting a

broader world-view and new markets for trade. The rise of a glob-

al economy with vast opportunities for material wealth was

inevitable. Europe’s population grew from 69 million in 1500 to 188

million in 1600. As European nation-states tried to strengthen their

international influence, political rivalry intensified. The “super-

powers”—Spain, under the Hapsburg ruler Philip II (1527–1598)

and England, under Elizabeth I (1533–1603)—contended for

advantage in Atlantic shipping and trade. In order to resist the

encroachment of Europe’s stronger nation-states, the weaker ones

formed balance-of-power alliances that often provoked war. The

new order took Europe on an irreversibly modern course.

While political and commercial factors worked to transform

the West, the event that most effectively destroyed the old

medieval order was the Protestant Reformation. In the wake of

Protestantism, the unity of European Christendom would disap-

pear forever. Beginning in the fifteenth century, the Northern

Renaissance, endorsed by middle-class patrons and Christian

humanists, assumed a religious direction that set it apart from

Italy’s Classical revival. Its literary giants, from Erasmus to

Shakespeare, and its visual artists, Flemish and German, shared

little of the idealism of their Italian Renaissance counterparts.

Their concern for the realities of human folly and for the fate

of the Christian soul launched a message of protest and a plea

for church reform expedited by way of the newly perfected

printing press.

The Impact of Technology In the transition from medieval to early modern times, technology played a crucial role. Gunpowder, the light cannon, and other military devices made warfare more impersonal and ultimately more deadly. At the same time, Western advances in navigation, shipbuilding, and mar- itime instrumentation propelled Europe into a dominant position in the world.

Just as the musket and the cannon transformed the his- tory of European warfare, so the technology of mechanical printing revolutionized learning and communication. Block printing originated in China in the ninth century and movable type in the eleventh, but print technology did not reach Western Europe until the fifteenth century. By

1320 paper adopted for use in Europe (having long been in use in China)

1450 the Dutch devise the first firearm small enough to be carried by a single person

1451 Nicolas of Cusa (German) uses concave lenses to amend nearsightedness

1454 Johannes Gutenberg (German) prints the Bible with movable metal type

Figure 19.2 An early sixteenth-century woodcut of a printer at work.

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Oxford Amsterdam

Antwerp Brussels

Bruges

Rotterdam London

Hamburg Wittenberg

ErfurtCologne

Worms Mainz

Heidelberg

Prague Nuremberg

Posen

Augsburg Vienna

Paris

Tours Bourges

Sens

Rouen Caen

Dijon Basel Constance

Orleans

Toulouse

Saragossa

Avignon

Madrid

Toledo

Seville

Milan

Parma

Genoa Modena

Padua

Pest

Venice

Florence

UrbinoPisa Siena

Lucca

Rome

Naples

Bremen

Canterbury

Zürich

SCOTLAND

ENGLAND

POLAND

HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

HUNGARY

SICILY

SARDINIA

CORSICA

FRANCE

SPAIN

PO RT

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AL

IRELAND

WALES

SWISS CONFEDERATION

PAPAL STATES

VENETIAN REPUBLIC

NAVARRE

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Geneva

OTTOMAN EMPIRE

KINGDOM OF NAPLES

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O C E A N

M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A

N O R T H S E A

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BAY OF BISCAY

ENGLISH CHANNEL

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Christian Humanism and the Northern Renaissance The new print technology broadcast an old message of reli- gious protest and reform. For two centuries, critics had attacked the wealth, worldliness, and unchecked corrup- tion of the Church of Rome. During the early fifteenth century, the rekindled sparks of lay piety and anticlerical- ism spread throughout the Netherlands, where religious leaders launched the movement known as the devotio moderna (“modern devotion”). Lay Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life, as they were called, organized houses in which they studied and taught Scripture. Living in the manner of Christian monks and nuns, but taking no monastic vows, these lay Christians cultivated a devotion- al lifestyle that fulfilled the ideals of the apostles and the church fathers. They followed the mandate of Thomas a Kempis (1380–1471), himself a Brother of the Common Life and author of the Imitatio Christi (Imitation of Christ), to put the message of Jesus into daily practice. After the Bible, the Imitatio Christi was the most frequently published book in the Christian West well into modern times.

The devotio moderna spread quickly throughout Northern Europe, harnessing the dominant strains of anti- clericalism, lay piety, and mysticism, even as it coincided with the revival of Classical studies in the newly estab- lished universities of Germany. Although Northern humanists, like their Italian Renaissance counterparts, encouraged learning in Greek and Latin, they were more concerned with the study and translation of Early Christian manuscripts than with the Classical and largely

secular texts that pre- occupied the Italian humanists. This criti- cal reappraisal of reli- gious texts is known as Christian humanism. Christian humanists

studied the Bible and the writings of the church fathers with the same intellectual fervor that the Italian humanists had brought to their examination of Plato and Cicero. The efforts of these Northern scholars gave rise to a rebirth (or renaissance) that focused on the late Classical world and, specifically, on the revival of church life and doctrine as gleaned from Early Christian literature. The Northern Renaissance put Christian humanism at the service of evangelical Christianity.

The leading Christian humanist of the sixteenth centu- ry—often called “the Prince of Humanists”—was Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536; Figure 19.3). Schooled among the Brothers of the Common Life and learned in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, Erasmus was a superb scholar and a prolific writer (see Reading 19.2). The first humanist to make extensive use of the printing press, he once dared a famous publisher to print his words as fast as he could write them. Erasmus was a fervent Neoclassicist— he held that almost everything worth knowing was set forth in Greek and Latin. He was also a devout Christian. Advocating a return to the basic teachings of Christ, he criticized the Church and all Christians whose faith had been jaded by slavish adherence to dogma and ritual. Using four different Greek manuscripts of the Gospels, he pro- duced a critical edition of the New Testament that correct- ed Jerome’s mistranslations of key passages. Erasmus’ New Testament became the source of most sixteenth-century German and English vernacular translations of this central text of Christian humanism.

Map 19.1 Renaissance Europe, ca. 1500.

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priesthood. Inspired by the words of Saint Paul, “the just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17), Luther argued that sal- vation could be attained only by faith in the validity of Christ’s sacrifice: human beings were saved by the unearned gift of God’s grace, not by their good works on earth. The purchase of indulgences, the veneration of relics, making pilgrimages, and seeking the intercession of the saints were useless, because only the grace of God could save the Christian soul. Justified by faith alone, Christians should assume full responsibility for their own actions and intentions.

In 1517, in pointed criticism of Church abuses, Luther posted on the door of the collegiate church at Wittenberg a list of ninety-five issues he intended for dispute with the leaders of the Church of Rome. The Ninety-Five Theses, which took the confrontational tone of the sample below, were put to press and circulated throughout Europe:

27 They are wrong who say that the soul flies out of Purgatory as soon as the money thrown into the chest rattles. 32 Those who believe that, through letters of pardon [indulgences], they are made sure of their own salvation will be eternally damned along with their teachers. 37 Every true Christian, whether living or dead, has a share in all the benefits of Christ and of the Church, given by God, even without letters of pardon. 43 Christians should be taught that he who gives to a poor man, or lends to a needy man, does better than if he bought pardons. 44 Because by works of charity, charity increases,

During the sixteenth century, papal extravagance and immorality reached new heights, and Church reform became an urgent public issue. In the territories of Germany, loosely united under the leadership of the Holy Roman emperor Charles V (1500–1558), the voices of protest were more strident than anywhere else in Europe. Across Germany, the sale of indulgences (see chapter 15) for the benefit of the Church of Rome—specifically for the rebuilding of Saint Peter’s Cathedral—provoked harsh criticism, especially by those who saw the luxuries of the papacy as a betrayal of apostolic ideals. As with most movements of religious reform, it fell to one individual to galvanize popular sentiment. In 1505, Martin Luther (1483–1546), the son of a rural coal miner, abandoned his legal studies to become an Augustinian monk (Figure 19.4). Thereafter, as a doctor of theology at the University of Wittenberg, he spoke out against the Church. His inflammatory sermons and essays offered radical remedies to what he called “the misery and wretchedness of Christendom.”

Luther was convinced of the inherent sinfulness of humankind, but he took issue with the traditional medieval view—as promulgated, for instance, in Everyman —that salvation was earned through the performance of good works and grace mediated by the Church and its

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Figure 19.3 ALBRECHT DÜRER, Erasmus of Rotterdam, 1526. Engraving, 93⁄4 � 71⁄2 in. The Latin inscription at the top of the engraving reports that Dürer executed the portrait from life. The Greek inscription below reads, “The better image [is found] in his writings.” The artist wrote to his friend that he felt the portrait was not a striking likeness.

Figure 19.4 LUCAS CRANACH THE ELDER, Portrait of Martin Luther, 1533. Panel, 8 � 53⁄4 in.

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and the man becomes better; while by means of pardons, he does not become better, but only freer from punishment. 45 Christians should be taught that he who sees any one in need, and, passing him by, gives money for pardons, is not purchasing for himself the indulgences of the Pope but the anger of God. 49 Christians should be taught that the Pope’s pardons are useful if they do not put their trust in them, but most hurtful if through them they lose the fear of God. 50 Christians should be taught that if the Pope were acquainted with the exactions of the Preachers of pardons, he would prefer that the Basilica of St. Peter should be burnt to ashes rather than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep. 54 Wrong is done to the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or longer time is spent on pardons than on it. 62 The true treasure of the Church is the Holy Gospel of the glory and grace of God. 66 The treasures of indulgences are nets, wherewith they now fish for the riches of men. 67 Those indulgences which the preachers loudly proclaim to be the greatest graces, are seen to be truly such as regards the promotion of gain. 68 Yet they are in reality most insignificant when compared to the grace of God and the piety of the cross. 86 . . . why does not the Pope, whose riches are at this day more ample than those of the wealthiest of the wealthy, build the single Basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with that of poor believers? . . .

Luther did not set out to destroy Catholicism, but rather, to reform it. Gradually he extended his criticism of Church abuses to criticism of church doctrine. For instance, because he found justification in Scripture for only two Roman Catholic sacraments—baptism and Holy Communion—he rejected the other five. He attacked monasticism and clerical celibacy. (Luther himself married and fathered six children.) Luther’s boldest challenge to the old medieval order, however, was his unwillingness to accept the pope as the ultimate source of religious author- ity. Denying that the pope was the spiritual heir to Saint Peter, he claimed that the head of the Church, like any other human being, was subject to error and correction. Christians, argued Luther, were collectively a priesthood of believers; they were “consecrated as priests by baptism.” The ultimate source of authority in matters of faith and doctrine was Scripture, as interpreted by the individual Christian. To encourage the reading of the Bible among his followers, Luther translated the Old and New Testaments into German.

Luther’s assertions were revolutionary because they defied both church dogma and the authority of the Church

of Rome. In 1520, Pope Leo X issued an edict excommuni- cating the outspoken reformer. Luther promptly burned the edict in the presence of his students at the University of Wittenberg. The following year, he was summoned to the city of Worms in order to appear before the Diet—the German parliamentary council. Charged with heresy, Luther stubbornly refused to back down, concluding, “I cannot and will not recant anything, for to act against our conscience is neither safe for us, nor open to us. On this I take my stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.” Luther’s confrontational temperament and down-to-earth style are captured in this excerpt from his Address to the German Nobility, a call for religious reform written shortly before the Diet of Worms and circulated widely in a print- ed edition.

From Luther’s Address to the German Nobility (1520)

It has been devised that the Pope, bishops, priests, and 1 monks are called the spiritual estate; princes, lords, artificers, and peasants are the temporal estate. This is an artful lie and hypocritical device, but let no one be made afraid by it, and that for this reason: that all Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them, save of office alone. As St. Paul says (1 Cor.: 12), we are all one body, though each member does its own work, to serve the others. This is because we have one baptism, one Gospel, one faith, and 10 are all Christians alike; for baptism, Gospel, and faith, these alone make spiritual and Christian people.