The Protestant Reformation indeed increased the number of sources of transcendent credibility in Europe from one could say, one to three. Whereby each of the sources began with God, but rival methods of linking the authority of the ruler to God’s credibility emerged in the uproar against the Catholic Church. The purpose of this part is to describe the theoretical arguments that produced such a change, to explain how rulers and other political practitioners implemented these new theories, and to show the effects this had on the distinctiveness of the boundaries between political units. The Reformation’s crucial change politically was the introduction of the doctrine that all Christians were priests and had direct access to God. This tenet drove three reformations (Lutheran, Calvinist, and Catholic), which produced three relatively successful competing sources of transcendent credibility. In turn, it also created the incentives for some rulers to invest in more distinctive boundaries against political units that relied on a different source of transcendent credibility.

 

A Priesthood of All Believers

Neither the Protestant nor the Catholic Reformers of the sixteenth century would have argued that the ideal outcome was the proliferation of new sources of transcendent credibility. “Reform” was seen as just that: purification of the existing structure, not schism. Since each party believed they represented the “True” Church, any recognition of another source’s legitimacy produced charges of betrayal of Christ and heresy. The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s tacit recognitions of Lutheran territories in the Religious Peace of Nuremberg in 1532 and the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 drew just such criticisms from many of his fellow Catholics. Charles’s attempts at compromise in the Interim of Augsburg in 1548 were met with derision from both Catholics and Protestants. What was so different between Protestantism and Catholicism that produced vigorous opposition in Early Modern Europe?

Put simply, the Protestant theorists envisioned an alternative theory of how man interacted with God. The structure of the Church and the personal salvation of the individual believer were the real targets of these reformers, but their resultant theories also had numerous implications on how rulers related to the ruled and how rulers appropriated credibility from God. In the Holy Roman Empire especially, the traditional role of the Emperor became exposed. Historian C. Scott Dixon argues that “the Reformation introduced a new understanding of princely sovereignty, and this shift of ideas in turn gave rise to a reach and intensity of rule without precedent in German history.”332 The reformers had no intention (in the beginning) of dividing up Christendom, but adopting these new religious ideas also meant changing one’s idea of how God interacted with political authority.

At the heart of the Protestant argument was I Peter 2:9: “You, however, are ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people He claims for His own to proclaim the glorious works’ of the One who called you from darkness into His marvelous light.”333 The intent of the Reformers was to use this verse to demonstrate that the clergy, and therefore the Church, did not possess any special “powers” or have any better access to God than the ordinary believer. In Martin Luther’s words: “All of us who are Christian are also priests.”334 This statement of belief held two ideas that directly affected political theory among Protestants. First, the notion that “Christians are also priests” in effect removed the middle man — the clergy — between man and God. Authority and accountability came directly from God, allowing the believer to shed the necessity of hierarchy: “When a bishop consecrates, he simply acts on behalf of the whole congregation, all of whom have the same authority.”335 This weakened the supports of hierarchy in the political sphere as well. Second, the phrase “all of us who are Christian” placed new emphasis on the proper recipient of a believer’s primary allegiance. As the elect of God, Christians were substantially different from those who had not received the grace of God. The first idea is explored in Martin Luther’s writings, while John Calvin’s texts are used to explore the second.336

Martin Luther’s central theological argument was that Christians are justified by faith. He was reacting to several Church practices, especially the sale of indulgences, in which a believer could earn salvation through actions, or “works.” His reading of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans led him to believe there was nothing a person could do to gain salvation unless God first sent his grace to do the work. Once infused with this “prevenient” grace, the believer possessed faith and would, as a result, do good works. This reversed the basic position of the Church, in which doing good works (e.g., penance) produced salvation through the mediation of the Church. Virtually every other item of Lutheran reform stemmed from this one basic argument. For example, if works were unimportant as a means to salvation, then the Church and the clergy lost much of their centrality to the believer. Contrary to Catholic teaching, Luther argued that the clergy could not absolve the sinner, only the direct gift of God’s grace could. The only difference between clergy and layman was a call to preach. Thus, Luther labeled five of the seven sacraments of the Church as “works” and therefore not sacred at all, again minimizing the necessity of the Church — and potentially depriving it of much needed sources of income.

Most importantly for the argument under consideration, the Lutheranism largely removed the Church as mediator between God and man. For Luther, salvation came only through the direct interaction of God and the person. The Church could neither add to nor subtract from that basic relationship. The believer could and should read the Scriptures rather than allow the Church to be the sole interpreter of the words of God. This undermined the structure of the medieval Church – authority was not passed down through a hierarchy, but now passed directly from the top (God) to the individual at the bottom. Some of Luther’s successors took this further and argued for a church structure in which each local congregation was an entity unto itself, accountable only to God rather than a General Council or higher authority.

The best statement of this position may be found in Luther’s An Appeal to the Ruling Class of German Nobility (1520). Here he stated that believers chose their spiritual leaders. He wrote of a hypothetical scenario where a group of believers are taken prisoner. They could choose one of their number and “endow him with the office[s]” of a priest.337 According to Luther, this person “would be as truly a priest as if he had been ordained by all the bishops and the popes.” Since all who have received the grace of God are considered priests, there is nothing special in officially holding the title of priest. “In former days, Christians used to choose their bishops and priests from their own members,” but now the institution of the Catholic Church had usurped that right. This right belonged to the community of believers, not an institution: “Only by the consent and command of the community should any individual person claim for himself what belongs equally to all.”338

Luther’s intent was almost certainly not to transform the secular political hierarchy. The next passages in the Appeal to the Ruling Class depended on Romans 12, which was the basis of the traditional medieval Christian argument regarding the necessity of hierarchy in society.339 According to this argument, all the parts of a body have different functions and each is necessary to the health of the whole. For Luther, every believer in society may be a priest, but each also had his or her social function – the shoemaker may be a priest, but his role in society was still the making of shoes.

Likewise, the secular authorities’ role in society was “to punish evil-doers and to protect the law-abiding.” Since the Christian authority was also a priest, the command found in Romans 13 gained a new significance for Luther: “For this is what St. Paul says to all Christians, ‘Let every soul (I hold that this includes the pope’s) be subject to the higher powers.’”340 Rather than attempting to undermine secular authority, Luther favored the subordination of ecclesiastical authorities to temporal ones in most areas.

In fact, Luther appeared very concerned about his doctrines being misinterpreted by political and social radicals. The printing press allowed Luther to get his ideas out to the public, but it also allowed many other authors to use those ideas in their own pamphlets.341 The enormous proliferation of his writings in the later years of his life  has been attributed to a conscious effort to prevent what one historian has called “slippage” between his written words and his true intent.342

However, his vigilance could not prevent this slippage from occurring. In fact, allowing believers to interpret Scripture for themselves actually encouraged slippage. The “naturalness” of the secular “right order” of earlier centuries began to lose its foundational assumptions.343 Political hierarchy in the Middle Ages mirrored the hierarchical structure of the Church, which in turn was seen as imitating that of Heaven.344 Since Luther’s theology changed the image of the hierarchical relationship of God and man and of the Church, it was inevitable that these ideas would likewise seep into the political arenas and, over time, overwhlem them.Luther’s ideas emerged in a political environment that proved particularly receptive. Erasmus had made Humanism fashionable among the intellectuals of northern Europe. Luther, an adherent of Humanist ideals himself, adopted many of these principles in his interpretation of Scriptural doctrine.345 The German historian Peter Blickle provides another cause for Luther’s success, insisting that the common people of northern Europe already saw themselves in terms of “community” prior to the introduction of Lutheranism.346 Thus, Luther’s ideas, falling on such fertile soil (and emerging from them), received “unparalleled support” from the population.347

Luther’s conception of the community of believers choosing their priest also already existed politically in the cities as the citizens chose those who sat on city councils. In such an environment, Luther’s ideas did not seem far-fetched. To this must be added the traditional argument that the German territorial princes were receptive to an ideology that provided them greater freedom from the Holy Roman Emperor and the Roman ecclesia. The appeal of Lutheranism thereby cut across social and economic barriers.

However, this agglomeration of motives also meant that different groups would emphasize aspects of Luther’s writings that mirrored their own interests. Thus, for example, the German peasants in 1525 attached a political meaning to “The Freedom of a Christian” that Luther never intended. The adaptability of Luther’s doctrines, while a source of frustration to Luther, enabled them to survive and thrive among various classes of Northern German society. Historian Miriam Usher Chrisman has analyzed most of the available Lutheran pamphlets written during the 1520s and has found that the doctrinal emphases depended in large part on the social status of the author and the pamphlet’s intended audience. 348 City secretaries, for example, who wrote Lutheran pamphlets played a crucial role in legitimating Lutheranism among the elite of the cities. Following Luther’s suggestion in An Appeal to the Ruling Class, they passed legislation enabling secular authorities to intervene in ecclesiastical affairs within the city. As a result, however, the city secretaries, not the reform clergy, became “the architects of the Reformation.” Such an outcome seems inevitable given Luther’s assertion that “all who are Christian are also priests.” Luther did not begrudge the city leaders the new powers his doctrines bestowed on them, but he did find it much more difficult to prevent the slippage of his doctrines.

Intellectually, the political ramifications of Lutheran doctrine began to emerge. The first target was the idea that hierarchy was natural and, therefore, God-ordained. In 1533, the Lutheran preacher Johannes Eisermann wrote what may be considered “the first detailed social contract theory of the Christian commonwealth to emerge” from Germany.349 Eisermann equated life in the Garden of Eden before the Fall as “the perfect state of nature.” After the Fall, every person became sinful, though God allowed each to retain small “inborn sparks” of honesty, virtue, and community. What emerged from this Lutheran interpretation of the foundation of societies is the complete absence of natural hierarchy (excluding God), producing the conclusion that, as the legal historian John Witte, Jr. has summarized it, “there is no single person, far less a single dynasty, in a commonwealth that should naturally rule.”350 This was still a far cry from modern democracy, but it demonstrated that the doctrine the every  believer was also a priest would fundamentally change the nature of political authority where it was the dominant confession.

 

John Calvin: All of Us Who Are Christian

In many ways, John Calvin’s writings on political theory resembled those of Luther. He also began with “justification by faith,” which, as has been demonstrated above, implies several conclusions relevant to the political life. He and Luther each relied on an Augustinian construction of two cities as well. In fact, the largest difference between Lutheran and Calvinist political theories lay in the directions their respective successors would take their ideas rather than in the writings of the founders themselves. However, there was at least one relevant matter in which the two differed: Calvin placed a much heavier emphasis on the “double doctrine of predestination” and this had important implications on his overall political theory.

Calvin began his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1545) with the fundamental principle that man is accursed and degenerate. At the Fall in the Garden of Eden, original sin entered the human race and, thus, our “whole nature is, as it were, a seed-bed of sin, and therefore cannot but be odious and abominable to God.”351

Despite this, “there is some room for divine grace.”352 In his mercy, Calvin argued, God did not leave the whole human race in its deplorable condition, but gave his grace to some.353 The double doctrine of predestination argued that God chose who would receive this grace and salvation and God also chose who would not receive His grace.

This doctrine took “justification by faith” to its logical conclusion: if man had the capacity to choose to accept or reject salvation, this would amount to works. Thus, the choice must belong to God, not man. To Calvin, only the double doctrine of predestination truly allowed God to be omnipotent. Thus, God divided everyone in the world into two groups: the elect who received grace and the reprobate who did not. While this obviously had theological implications, it also had important political consequences. To best understand them, we must turn aside momentarily and examine the political theory of the Frenchman Guillaume Bude. Bude’s Catholic credentials were impeccable, having served as the French ambassador to the Papal court of Leo X. As royal librarian to the humanist King Francis I, Bude has historically been given much of the credit in founding what would become the College de France in Paris and introducing the Renaissance-style study of the classics into French culture. In 1518, Bude published The Institution of the Prince, dedicating it to the young Francis I.

In this treatise, Bude argued that the prince’s power was absolute, in part because it came directly from God. In addition to this, no less authorities than Plato and Aristotle had pointed out that there are some persons who are so superior to the rest of mankind that the only appropriate place for them in society is in full control over the rest. According to Bude, the kings of France, and especially the current incarnation of Francis, fit easily into this construction. “Kings are so perfect in prudence and nobility and equity that they have no need of rule or written form to constrain them by fear and by the necessity of obedience, as others do, except for the divine law that takes its authority from God and not from men.”354 Because “the heart of the king moves by instinct and by impulsion of God,” his every action will be for the good of his people.355 For Bude, any constitutional restraints on the power of the king (or what the French minister Claude de Seyssel called “bridles”) would either be harmful or superfluous. A wise king would also take advantage of philosophers who would instruct him in reason and provide advice; however, in the end, the king was a being that sat above society, not just by virtue of his office, but by the virtue God had instilled in him. It would be hard to imagine that Calvin had not read or was at least familiar with Bude’s Institution. John Calvin attended school in Paris throughout the 1520s obtaining a humanist education. He returned to Paris for further study in 1531, a year after Bude established the College de France. It was during this formative period in the humanist-infused atmosphere of Paris that, while writing a study on Seneca’s De clementia, Calvin converted to Protestantism. Bude’s effect on Calvin’s later political theory can be clearly seen as he ultimately granted the same qualities and privileges to God’s elect that Bude imparted to the king.

According to Calvin, if everyone were elect, then civil government would be “superfluous.”356 Just as Bude’s king was “perfect in prudence and nobility and equity” and had no need for the laws, so Calvin claimed the elect were perfect and had no need of civil government. This idea gained further support from Colossians 2:20- 23, which argued that the main effect of human laws and doctrines was “that they indulge men’s pride.”357 On the other hand, “if with Christ you have died,” then the laws were useless. According to Calvin, everything civil laws were meant to do, the elect already did because they had received the grace of God.358 However, Calvin’s double doctrine of predestination emphasized that not everyone was among the elect. As long as the reprobate lived among us, civil government remained necessary. The insolence of the reprobate “can scarcely be curbed by any severity of laws.”359 Still, without the civil government, the reprobates’ behavior would cause society to collapse into anarchy and the elect would find it difficult to worship God. Calvin was not content to label civil government a “necessary evil,” as Augustine had. Civil government could aid the elect in maintaining the external worship of God, defending sound doctrine, and defending the Church. With a proper civil government “a public form of religion may exist among Christian, and humanity among men. Let no one be surprised that I now attribute the task of constituting religion aright to human polity.”360 Like Bude, Calvin argued that the “best” in society should control everyone. For Calvin, however, the best were the community of the elect, meaning the Church. The Church was the “matrix” where the divine-human relationship took place and, therefore, served as the crucial institution for every aspect of life.361 In 1541, the city council of Geneva invited Calvin to implement this theocratic form of government.

For those who lacked this “city on a hill,” the best form of government for a people was whatever form God chose for them. This paralleled the doctrine of predestination: God chose to elect some and not others and the reasons for his choices were so unfathomable to humans that to even question them amounted to sin.

Likewise, God imparted some peoples with good governors and some received harsh ones, even tyrants. Romans 13 clearly stated that all rulers received their power from God. For Calvin, “An impious king is a mark of the Lord’s anger.”362 God could choose to punish an evil ruler, but “let us not suppose that that vengeance is committed to us, to whom no command has been given but to obey and suffer.”363

Instead, “The first duty of subjects towards their rulers, is to entertain the most honorable views of their office . . . receiving and reverencing them as the ministers and ambassadors of God.”364 Still, Calvin left a two-sentence “loophole” that later generations seized on to justify resistance to a tyrant. He stated that “when popular magistrates have been appointed to curb the tyranny of kings,” they must fulfill their roles since they also receive their positions “by the ordinance of God.”365 This addendum to Romans 13 depended on a country possessing specific institutions that could curb the power of the king. However, in no way did his language suggest that these magistrates could remove or kill a tyrant, as later Huguenot theorists would argue.

Overall, Calvin’s theory must be classed among other absolutist theories. This makes sense if we consider that he wrote the Institutes as a means of justifying and perpetuating the civil government structure he erected in Geneva. By 1545, it was still unclear whether Calvin’s party would hold onto its power in the city’s political structures or if other rival groups would reclaim dominance in the Council.366 At the same time, Calvin’s theory was oligarchic rather than monarchic. Calvin tweaked the absolutist theory of Bude and demonstrated that, if the best persons were in control, this would amount to an oligarchy of the elect. However, in all other government structures, the elect were not “subjects” in a true sense of the word. God’s grace had freed them from a need for civil laws. They were still admonished to obey the rulers, but Calvin’s new conception amounted to a loosening of the bond between ruler and ruled. Kings retained the power of God, but if they were not among the elect, they lacked the authority of God.

These two Protestant ideas, all believers are priests and only those who are believers are priests, immediately began to shake the traditional political foundations in Europe. The primary target of the Reformers was the Roman Church, yet the same cannot be said of others in Europe who saw the potential of using these new doctrines to subvert the medieval structures of political power. This is not to argue that the religious ideas were adopted only because they were useful in a practical sense. It is more than likely that the political practitioners of Protestantism were both true believers in the basic doctrines of Luther or Calvin and that they placed greater emphasis on those doctrines that also furthered their interests politically, socially, and economically. After all, if every believer was a priest, the religious ideas that had greater applicability in a person’s everyday life carried greater weight in that person’s (“priest’s”) overall theology. As these new theological doctrines took hold in sixteenth century Europe, the medieval monopoly of Catholicism as the only source of transcendent credibility came under attack.

 

The Establishment of Lutheranism as a Source of Transcendent Credibility

The Protestant Reformation increased the number of sources of transcendent credibility in sixteenth century Europe. In the period from 1520, when Luther wrote his most virulent pieces attacking the Church until 1555, when Lutheranism was tentatively recognized by the Holy Roman Emperor, political practitioners transferred the ideas of Luther and other Protestant reformers into workable methods of government. This was a gradual process and one that was hotly contested among the reformers themselves. However, events in Europe provided this movement just enough breathing space to solidify its position within a portion of the Empire and successfully resist attempts to eradicate it. As a result, by 1555 Europe began to invest in much more distinctive political borders, particularly between political units of different confessions.

Of course, it was not just one Reformation, but a series of several Reformations that shared numerous ideas, but also differed in a few as well.367 Three are of particular importance for this discussion. The first Reformation was that of Luther occurring primarily in Northern Germany. With the return of John Calvin to Geneva in 1541, a second Reformation began. Finally, the closing of the Council of Trent in 1563 formalized a gradual Catholic Reformation in which the doctrines of the Church were reaffirmed. Where each of these movements took root, more distinctive borders emerged separating them.

Martin Luther was certainly not the first person to suggest a radical reform of Christian theology and Church structure. The advantage he had over earlier, less successful reformers (such as John Wyclif and John Hus) was the patronage of Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony, one of the Holy Roman Empire’s more influential territorial princes. At least initially, Frederick neither embraced nor rejected the reforms suggested by Luther. Instead, Frederick’s contribution was to prevent the arrest and execution of Luther unless the monk received a hearing. The Elector possessed enormous power within the traditional institutions of the Empire and the Emperor, Charles V, could not afford to disregard his wishes. Luther’s survival also depended on a distracted Emperor. Charles V succeeded his grandfather, Maximilian I, as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, two years after Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses Against Indulgences on the door of the Wittenberg church. Up until this point, the issue had been an ecclesiastical matter that the Pope and the clergy were to handle. Charles therefore focused his attention on what he perceived to be much more important matters.368 As both King of Spain and Emperor, Charles controlled more territory than any other European ruler had since the days of Charlemagne. The dream of Europe as a single “Christendom” looked to be on the cusp of fulfillment. Strategically and philosophically, this meant Charles had to keep Northern Italy out of the hands of the French. Further, it meant defending Christendom from the surging power of the Ottoman Turks. The new leader of the Turks, Suleyman I, had captured Belgrade in 1521 and would continue to threaten Habsburg lands in Eastern Europe for the rest of Charles’ life. Charles saw these as his real threats, not a solitary preacher in a distant part of the Empire.

It must be remembered that no one at this point knew that the “Reformation” would be so epochal. If anything, in the first decade of Charles’ reign, schism seemed a more remote possibility than the unification of Christendom politically. After all, Charles’ childhood tutor, the famous humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam, had made many of the same suggestions regarding reform of the Church as Luther had.369

At least initially, Luther merely asked for reform, not separation from the Catholic Church. Charles, of course, had a stake in any reforms in the Church and would not have sat idly by as key doctrines were undermined. On the other hand, Charles could not have foreseen that Lutheranism would survive with the vigor it did after his condemnation of it at the 1521 Diet of Worms.

Under the urging of Elector Frederick, Charles agreed to give Luther his day in court and summoned a Diet in the city of Worms. As Charles heard the testimony and defense of Luther, he could not help but be struck by Luther’s insistence that “unless I am convicted by the testimony of Sacred Scripture or by evident reason, my conscience is captive to the Word of God.”370 The political implication was clear: if each individual conscience could contradict the Church, the same argument could soon be applied to the political authority. As a result of this hearing, Charles confessed he had waited too long to silence such talk and had Luther declared a heretic. Charles granted him safe passage back to Saxony, but then told him to leave the Empire. The Edict of Worms, issued in May of that year, condemned Luther, his teaching, and all of his followers. Two days later, as an added benefit for Charles’ actions against Luther, the Pope broke off his support for the French and gave the blessing of the Church of Rome to Charles. This in turn allowed Charles to recapture Milan and force the French to withdraw from Northern Italy.

Of course, the label heretic did not diminish the support Luther received from all levels of society.371 Many German nobles found the ideas of Luther and their political implications compelling. Frederick, for example, stood to gain much politically by supporting this new movement. His political rival, Cardinal Albrecht von Hohenzollern, was the primary supporter of indulgences in Saxony. By eliminating indulgences, he could deal a strong financial blow to the Cardinal. Further, Saxony lacked religious shrines and each year pilgrims took money outside his territory primarily to Rome. Pilgrimages and shrines did not fit in a “justification by faith” theology. The traditional view is that the German princes pounced on the Reformation as an opportunity to continue to assert their independence vis-à-vis the Emperor. While there is some truth to this, it cannot be taken too far. Once the Emperor declared Lutheranism a heresy, overtly supporting him (and in the case of Frederick harboring and protecting Luther) would have been an extremely risky gamble. Certainly, Charles was distracted but there was no guarantee this would continue. A short lull in his other ventures would be all it took to punish heretical nobles who took independence a step too far.

German knights and peasants also saw glimpses of greater independence in accepting Lutheranism.372 The Emperor was not the only person to recognize the political implications of Luther’s theology. In 1522, a pamphlet entitled The Great Lutheran Fool warned of the growing likelihood of social revolution as Lutheranism would “turn the world upside down.”373 For several years, this was exactly what happened. In the Knights’ War (1522-23), knights who were self-professed Lutherans unsuccessfully rose up against the Elector of Trier. Rebel knights claimed the same independence from the nobles that Protestant nobles claimed from the Emperor.

Likewise, a group of peasants made the same argument in the so-called Peasants’ War of 1524-26.374 Catholic and Protestant princes alike put down the two rebellions. Still, these radical ideas spread throughout Germany. In his account of the Reformation in the province of Ansbach, C. Scott Dixon points out that in 1528 rural peasants demanded to directly hear the Word of God because the Margrave, Georg the Pious, said “it was their right as subjects.”375 It was becoming increasingly clear that there were severe and potentially revolutionary consequences of Lutheran theology in the political realm.

Luther’s response was incredibly pragmatic. The survival of this reform movement depended on the safe harbor a handful of sympathetic princes provided. To encourage social disruptions in the lower strata of society would necessarily invoke the wrath of these nobles. Thus, Luther clarified the infamous words he had written in 1520: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.”376 This phrase, taken out of the context it was presented, had become the rallying cry for the rebels. In response, Luther wrote extended treatises emphasizing the ignored context. On Secular Authority (1523), written in response to the Knights’ War, and Against the Murderous and Thieving Hordes of Peasants (1525), made clear that although the conscience of a man is free, outward obedience always belonged to the secular authority. Luther did not intend his theological reform to also become a political reform, yet it was clear that the genie was out of the bottle and could not be put back.

The Anabaptists were another example of the political use made of Lutheran theology.377 These groups carried Luther’s doctrines to their extreme conclusions and combined them with a belief in an imminent apocalypse. Many of these groups believed that the return of Christ would not occur until a pure society had been set up.378 Through an electoral strategy of immigration, the Anabaptists won control of the city of Munster and set up their “heavenly city” in 1534.379 In response, local princes besieged and took the city in 1535. The event proved instructive for the rulers of Europe, both Catholic and Protestant: the ideas of Lutheranism, if not properly controlled, could have immense social and political implications. Lutheran authors scrambled to dissociate their movement from that of the Anabaptists.380 In fact, the late 1530s and 1540s became a period of doctrinal dissension within the German Lutheran movement as it tried to more precisely define what Lutheranism was in order to avoid the “unnatural” social consequences it seemed to be able to encourage.

On the other hand, Lutheranism also began to spread beyond the edges of the Empire. In 1536 the Swedish Lutheran Church was established and in the following year, the Danish Lutheran Church was founded. Many of the leaders and churchmen in these two countries had received a humanist education at the University of Wittenberg. In terms of distance and shared culture, the draw of Wittenberg proved much more compelling than that of distant Rome. The conversions also enabled the rulers of Sweden and Denmark to formally institute a new church structure and gain much more control over ecclesial matters. Both countries requested and received Lutheran scholars from Germany to assist in the formulation of doctrine. Lutheran conversion also occurred in England at the same time, but there was greater hesitance on the part of the Germans to send assistance. Henry VIII requested the great theologian Philip Melanchthon himself be sent, but the German Lutherans refused.381

However, the rulers of northern Europe now had a choice in their source of transcendent credibility. It had proved to be effective in a number of political ways in northern Germany and became a viable option for a ruler seeking greater independence from the Church in Rome.

By the late 1520s, events began to demonstrate the potential threat of allowing Lutheranism to continue to exist in the Empire. At the Diet of Speyer in 1526, the  right for each principality to “so live, rule, and bear itself as it thought it could answer to God and the Emperor.”382 Thanks to distractions in Italy and Hungary, Charles and his brother Ferdinand were unable to resist this outcome. This, in turn, encouraged Protestant princes to increase efforts to assume authority over all matters, including the church, within their respective territories.383 By 1529, however, Charles had reconciled with the Pope, retaken Milan, and could now focus on the increasingly worrisome situation in Northern Germany. Charles reconvened the Diet of Speyer and ushed through a repeal of the agreement made in that city in 1526. The Lutherans responded with a “Protest” in which they asserted they would continue to operate nder the 1526 agreement, no matter what.384

Turk victories in Hungary made it impossible for Charles to accept a divided mpire. Thus, he sought reconciliation between the two positions and called a new iet at Augsburg in 1530. Each side had their moderate and extreme factions. The xtreme Catholics, led by Johann Eck, demanded that the Protestants be forced to bandon their heretical doctrines, while more moderate factions recognized the ractical necessity of compromise in order to mount a sufficient force to beat back the dvancing Turks. The Protestants were riddled with faction, which is understandable iven that they doctrinally allowed for wider interpretations of Scripture. For xample, on the crucial issue of the Eucharist, the extreme wing of the Protestants utherans succeeded in getting those assembled to agree to a tacit recognition of the followed Zwingli’s assertion that the bread and wine of communion was only that: read and wine.385

The moderates, led by Philip Melanchthon, sought a middle round between Zwingli and the doctrine of transubstantiation of the Catholics.386 elanchthon submitted a very toned-down version of Lutheran doctrine, a document the invariata) that would become the official creed for Lutherans. Eck responded with the Confutation, which rejected all parts of Lutheran doctrine.387 Sensing the irection the winds were blowing, the Protestants at the Diet began to head home.

Charles adopted the arguments of the Confutation, but generously gave the Protestant rinces in the Empire a six-month grace period to return to Roman Catholic doctrines nd practices. hough Charles must have elieved this general clemency would permit rebel rinces return to the Catholic fold, he was greatly mistaken. In preparation for the end f the six-month grace period, several princes formed a Catholic League that would estore the faith. In response, Protestant princes and cities organized the Schmalkaldic League. The lines were drawn and Germany was poised for all-out civil war in April of 1531. However, Charles’ international situation continued to worsen and so he uspended his ruling from Augsburg and requested the help of the Lutheran princes gainst the Turks. In the Peace of Nuremberg (1532), Lutheran and Catholic princes greed to join against the common Ottoman menace in Hungary and to accept mutual toleration until a general church council could be held.388 The force that marched to war under the leadership of Ferdinand, Charles’ brother whom he had placed in charge of his eastern territories, was so large that the Turks agreed to partition Hungary and withdraw its army without fighting a major engagement.

The Lutheran princes recognized that Ferdinand’s victory would not have been possible without their assistance and used this new leverage to go on the offensive diplomatically. In 1534, Lutheran Philip of Hesse removed Ferdinand’s governors from the duchy of Wurtemburg and returned that land to his friend, the formerly deposed Duke Ulrich. This territory not only became Lutheran, it also joined the Schmalkaldic League. Although this diplomatic maneuver amounted to an open declaration of war, both Ferdinand and Charles were so preoccupied that there was no response. This diplomatic success without subsequent punishment encouraged other Protestant princes and cities in the Empire to join the Schmalkaldic League, causing its leadership to become even bolder. Papal envoys expressed a desire to hold a general church council as called for in the 1532 Peace of Nuremburg, but the Protestants, relishing their strengthened bargaining position, sabotaged this effort by adding new conditions to such a meeting. In addition, some Lutheran princes declared the property of the Catholic Church in their lands forfeit and passed laws against Catholic forms of worship. These actions prompted a recreation of the Catholic League.

Throughout the 1530s, events continued to go the Protestants’ way, while Charles and Ferdinand remained convinced that their most significant threat still lay outside the Empire rather than inside.389 In 1539, the Elector of Brandenburg set up a Protestant Church in Berlin semi-independent of both Rome and ittenberg.390 In 1542, the duchy of Cleves, the bishopric of Naumburg, and the See of Halle all became Protestant as well. Even the Archbishop-Elector of Cologne converted his city to Lutheranism.391 To these conversions were significant in the context of an international reformation that saw Sweden and Denmark set up national Lutheran churches.392 Success bred confidence. Luther and Melanchthon abandoned their earlier willingness to meet the Catholics halfway and declared that peace would only exist when the Emperor and the clergy abandoned their heresy.

Although the 1530s found Charles still beset with multiple crises – renewed war in Italy over the Milanese succession, threats in the Mediterranean from the Turks, and a revolt in Ghent all vied for Charles’ attention – by the end of the decade, he was emerging victorious in each of these spheres. Yet, he still wished for a peaceful resolution to the situation in Northern Germany. Charles’ uncertainty in how to respond to the Lutherans seems somewhat reasonable considering the Catholic Church itself was unsure of how to respond. The leading clergy in Rome belonged to one of two camps.393 The indecision produced by this debate continued until 1542, when Cardinal Caraffa succeeded in getting the Church to reestablish the Roman Inquisition, with himself as Chief Inquisitor. Caraffa immediately used this newfound independence and authority to target supporters of compromise with the Protestants, who either recanted their heretical views or were executed. The debate was over, as was the Roman Church’s indecision. The Pope had summoned a new Church Council (which would eventually become the famous Council of Trent), but following the Inquisitorial purging, it was clear to all what the outcome of this Council would be.

Seeing the writing on the wall, the Protestant princes and clergy declared they would not attend. Though the Protestant Church had been a separate institution de facto, by the commencement of the Council of Trent in 1545, it was clear there would be no return to the pre-Luther status quo.

Charles changed his strategy and secretly attempted to make separate agreements with each of the Lutheran princes in the Schmalkaldic League. Approached princes refused to accept extremely generous terms if it meant abandoning what they considered the True Church.394 The Schmalkaldic League responded by capturing the last Catholic territory in the North.395 As before, Charles and Ferdinand’s armies were fighting elsewhere. However, in 1545, as Catholic representatives began to gather in Trent to reassert the Church’s dominance in Europe, Charles signed truces with both France and the Turks. Looking to score a public relations victory at Trent, Charles finally turned his military might against the Schmalkaldic League.

Although the Schmalkaldic League gathered a larger force than the Emperor, they were much more disorganized.396 The Imperial troops had one commander, while the Protestant troops had many. At the outbreak of the war, Protestant troops were brought to the increasingly militarized border between Lutheran and Catholic territories. Poised and ready to invade both Bavaria and Bohemia, the Schmalkaldic League suffered a setback as one of their members, Maurice of Misnia, betrayed them, invading and conquering Saxony as its Lutheran prince, John Frederick was away.

John Frederick turned back and recaptured his lands, but this left the path open for Charles to move into Northern Germany. The other Schmalkaldic League leader of significance, Philip of Hesse, also retreated with his army to prevent an invasion by Charles. Thus separated, Charles’ smaller army stood a much better chance. At the Battle of Muhlberg in 1547, the Emperor defeated the army of John Frederick and took him prisoner. His lands and his Electorship were both given to Maurice as reward. Recognizing defeat, Philip also surrendered and the war ended.

Arranging a peace proved to be more difficult than winning the war. In the Interim of Augsburg (1548), the Emperor presented a temporary religious settlement that included elements of both Catholicism and Protestantism that would be settled in the Council of Trent. Both Catholics and Protestants rejected this compromise arrangement. John Frederick and Philip of Hesse, both imprisoned by the Emperor, refused to accept the Interim, as did the Pope. In response, a new league of Protestant princes quietly formed around one-time traitor Maurice, now of Saxony. Charles still considered Maurice to be his man and asked him to raise an army to put down a rebellion. Maurice raised an army all right, but turned it against Charles. In 1552, his army caught the Imperial Court by surprise and Charles was forced to flee across the mountains. This renewed fighting coupled with the humiliation of running from Maurice “broke Charles’ spirit.”397 Charles turned over all the affairs in the Empire to his brother Ferdinand, returned to Spain, and, three years later, abdicated his throne.

Ferdinand met with Maurice in Passau and signed a truce in 1552. Ferdinand remained more concerned with the Turks and needed the assistance of the Protestant forces.398 In 1555, a more permanent treaty was arranged in Augsburg between Ferdinand and the Lutheran princes. This move sent shock waves through the Catholic Church. Pope Paul III agreed to the terms as he lay dying in Rome, but it was no coincidence that in this same year the hard-line Cardinal Caraffa was elected Pope Paul IV. Although the new Pope stopped short of excommunication, he was clearly disgusted with the actions of Ferdinand.399 Imperial-papal relations were almost non-existent until the election of Pope Pius IV in 1559. Nor was it a coincidence that the participants of the Council of Trent, who had fled following rumors that the Protestant armies would target Trent, did not return to conclude their business until 1562.

The Augsburg settlement hinged on the formula cuius regio, eius religio (he who rules a territory determines its religion). In no way was this agreement construed as freedom of religion: within each territory only one confession was permitted. Princes had the right (and duty) to exclude persons from the other confession. Such an agreement was possible only because many who found themselves in the religious minority opted to migrate to more favorable locations. Those who chose to emigrate received specific economic protections in order to encourage geographical separation of the confessions. Thus, territories became increasingly concentrated, which solidified the political situation. The overall effect was to cement a division of the territory of the Empire into two separate blocs: Lutheran and Catholic.

Though far from perfect, this policy permitted the Empire to live free of fullscale civil war until 1618. Still, diplomatic skirmishes continued unabated. The treaty encouraged some instability since either confession could achieve a diplomatic coup by converting a prince or “arranging” for a territory to be inherited by someone adhering to the same source of transcendent credibility. Princes generally avoided tampering with the lower classes in rival territories, since such activity could backfire and lead to popular revolutions throughout all the territories. The clergy, however, were less constrained. Jesuits clandestinely entered Lutheran territories trying to win converts, just as Lutheran preachers (and laymen) also pursued missionary work in the south. In short, the Augsburg settlement resulted in a relatively stable situation in the Empire, but it would only take a death or conversion to upset this equilibrium.

Another deficiency in the Peace of Augsburg was that it gave princes only two choices: Roman Catholicism or Lutheran Protestantism. “All such as do not belong to the two above-mentioned religions shall not be included in the present peace but be  totally excluded from it.”400 What could not have been foreseen, even in 1555, was the looming international success of John Calvin’s Reformed Church.

 

The Establishment of Calvinism as a Source of Transcendent Credibility

In 1541, the City Council of Geneva asked John Calvin to come and repair the disorderly church in the city. Geneva would subsequently serve as a laboratory for Calvin’s institutional design for the church. From this city, Calvinism’s doctrines and institutions would eventually spread throughout Europe. Thus, it is important to focus more closely on the programs implemented by Calvin’s supporters and gain a better understanding of the mutually supportive roles of the church and the state in Geneva.401

The City Council assigned Calvin with the task of developing a code of regulations for the Reformed Church. In 1542 the Council ratified what Calvin came up with. The focus of these Ecclesiastical Ordinances was discipline, a trait that had been lacking in the city’s church in the years before Calvin’s return. The concept of “discipline” fit neatly into Calvin’s theology and political theory.402 Those who were among the elect would, by the intervention of God’s grace, already act with discipline and self-control. Momentary lapses could be set right by the enforcement of discipline. Although the reprobate would not act with self-discipline, the Christian duty was to assist these damned persons to at least live an orderly life as prescribed in the Bible. Thus, disciplinary rules interpreted by the church and enforced by the state created order and allowed the elect to pursue their heavenly calling free from fear.

To this end, the clergy received a much higher status in the local church, but becoming a pastor also became a much more rigorous process that was constantly supervised by Calvin and other church leaders. The Ordinances established the Consistory (or Presbytery), which served as a standing council of the top clergy who would maintain a watchful eye over the clergy and any laymen who required greater supervision. Anyone could be called before the Consistory and it could involve itself in every aspect of civic life. For example, it aggressively reformed Geneva’s educational system and, as a result, molded subsequent generations’ worldviews.403 It also held the power of excommunication and could assign other punishments, which would be carried out by the city government. John Calvin headed the Consistory until his death in 1564.

In addition, the Ordinances proclaimed that the fundamental law of the state would be the Bible and the interpreters of this law would be the highest of the clergy. The City Council agreed to enforce the law as interpreted by Calvin and the other clergy, submitting all civil power to the directions of the church. Heresy became explicitly equated with treason and Catholicism labeled heresy. Those who chose not to abide by the doctrines of Calvin and the Reformed Church were welcome to leave the city, but all who stayed would be held to the same rigorous standard. Again, it must be remembered that although this theocratic structure appeared incredibly restrictive, it was based on the theory that the elect would experience no restraint at all. In fact, by holding back the natural passions of the reprobate, this structure allowed the elect to finally experience real freedom.

Calvin’s position was far from assured, however.404 The doctrine developed in the Consistory and applied to Geneva’s Reformed Church was continuously challenged by Lutheran ideas infiltrating from the north, the ideas of the “Radicals” and Anabaptists who roamed Europe searching for a place that would accept them, and clergy from within Calvin’s own ranks who differed on one or two crucial points. Many Lutherans disagreed with Calvin’s position on the Eucharist. He responded to these attacks so effectively that several principalities in the Empire ultimately adopted Calvinism: Brandenburg, the Palatinate, and parts of Hesse, Bremen, Anhalt, and Baden.405 The more “Radical” ideas that entered Geneva were easily snuffed out by the swift actions of the Consistory.

In the early years, Calvin was most concerned with ensuring that there was at least one “city of god” in the world and concentrated his efforts on protecting the Genevan experiment. Although the Consistory pushed many non-Calvinists to migrate, Geneva also became a beacon for co-religionists. Thus, Calvin’s position grew more stable in the city over time. By 1554, he could begin to assist those who shared his views in France. There is no evidence of a centrally-propelled missionary program prior to this, yet Calvinists had moved throughout Europe on business matters. In many places, Southern France for example, they found fertile soil for their beliefs to take root. Thus, Europe possessed isolated and relatively unorganized pockets of Calvinists. Still, the numbers converting in France had exploded to the extent that, in 1559, King Henri II sought peace with Spain, in part because he wanted to focus on the growing internal dissension among the Huguenots.406

This need to address the Huguenots became a critical issue as Calvin began to support the French sister churches institutionally and doctrinally. The Geneva structure could not work in France since the Calvinists there lacked access to state power. However, Calvin could and did send trusted pastors to these congregations, on the one hand giving them encouragement to stay in France and practice their faith, and on the other hand ensuring that their doctrine was orthodox. In 1559, when Henri II died in a freak jousting accident, the Huguenots believed their persecution was over and began to practice more overtly. By 1562 it was estimated that there were 1,785 Calvinist congregations in France, each dreaming of the day when they too could convert their locality into a “city of God” on the scale of Geneva.407

The cities of the Low Countries were also particularly receptive to Calvinist doctrine. Calvinism appealed to merchants and the cities possessed plenty of these. The congregations here were much less reliant on Geneva and largely pursued their own course, though they stuck close to Calvin’s major doctrines.408 The Dutch Reformed Church embraced the principle of discipline as a means of ensuring orthodoxy and keeping out Anabaptist ideas, in particular. Buoyed by these advances, the Consistory established the Geneva mission in 1559 with the primary goal of converting rulers to Calvinist doctrines. As mentioned above, many aspects of Calvinism had already begun to spread in several German principalities. In particular, Calvin’s view that the Eucharist did not contain the Real Presence of Christ mirrored the Zwinglian view that had been popular in several areas.

Elector Frederick of the Palatinate became the political leader of the German Calvinists after his conversion in 1561. It is difficult to understand what motivated German princes to shift to Calvinism besides true belief, especially considering the second-class status it received among the more dominant Lutheran princes and its even lower regard from Catholics. The real advances in international Calvinism came in Eastern Europe, however.409 Poland was a particularly receptive territory and Geneva focused much of its missionary effort there. Calvinists also took advantage of the uncertainty in Hungary generated by the tenuous boundaries drawn between the Catholic Habsburgs and the Ottoman Turks. With the assistance of the princes of Transylvania, Calvinists were allowed to convert the people, which enabled Transylvania to maintain its independent status. By the early 1600s, Calvinists began making headway into other portions of Hungary, a situation the Transylvanian princes exploited to their political advantage.

In sum, by the last half of the sixteenth century, it was clear that a third religion would be competing for the hearts and minds of the population. It remained unclear at this point whether it would be a natural ally of their fellow Protestants, the Lutherans, or compete with them for the same believers. At least initially it was a love-hate relationship. In Germany, in particular, Lutherans saw Calvinism as a threat to their already tenuous position under the terms of the Peace of Augsburg. Yet at the same time, Lutherans recognized that Calvinism was successfully weakening the power of the Emperor in Hungary and the Netherlands. Calvinism introduced a third source of transcendent credibility into the European system. The effect was to further increase the distinctiveness of boundaries between political units.

 

Why Two Sources (Calvinism and Lutheranism) and not One (Protestantism)?

In the early stages of the Reformation, Lutheranism presented the only other source of transcendent credibility to rival the Catholic Church. There were several variations of Luther’s doctrines that, if adopted by a ruler, would have to be considered entirely different sources of transcendent credibility. However, besides the occasional city that followed such a course (i.e. Munster in 1534), Lutheranism as expressed by Luther and Melancthon was the only rival source to Roman Catholicism considered by Christian rulers. To the outside world, Calvinist Geneva must have looked very similar to these small and short-lived civic experiments. Yet, Calvinism not only had a long successful tenure in the Swiss city, it also expanded into numerous parts of Europe. Its success among several rulers in Early Modern Europe forces the question of whether Calvinism should be seen as a separate source of transcendent credibility from Lutheranism or whether both should be lumped into a more general category of Protestantism.

The crucial variable must be how these two theologies link the authority of the clergy (and hence the ruler) to God. In other words, if the two see the interaction of God and man in radically different ways, this is a good indication that the two theologies are different sources of transcendent credibility. The stance of Luther has been presented above, so only a brief recap will be necessary here. Since every believer was also a priest, and therefore had direct access to God, there was only one difference between the layman and the priest: the call to preach. That earned the priest some respect in the community, but as far as the powers the Roman Catholic Church believed the clergy had, there were none. For Luther, the clergy should be allowed to marry – after all, they were just ordinary people. Thus, the preacher acted as a mouthpiece, offering guidance on holy liv ng and performing some of the religious rituals, but it was the believer’s responsibility to test the preacher’s words and interpret Scripture for himself. As Luther repeatedly warned, on the Day of Judgment, the believer would stand alone before God and have to answer for his actions and beliefs.

John Calvin placed a much heavier emphasis on the Church as a mediator between God and man. The Church, for Calvin, was the community of believers, not the professionals of the institution (i.e. the Roman clergy). Everyone who was among the elect was also a priest. Yet, there was a lot of uncertainty in this statement. How could a person be sure they were elected? How could they be sure their neighbor was among the elect? Even Calvin was often beset with doubts about whether he was among the elect. Only God could be sure and He wasn’t telling. Under such circumstances, a person could neither rely on himself nor could he rely on the clergy, whose salvation status was also uncertain. In addition to this, Calvin did not agree with Luther that election meant perfection. To be elected was only the first step in a lifelong process that required discipline, edification, and constant correction. The solution was to depend on the community of believers, the Church, to fulfill these roles. Using the imagery of Church as “Mother,” he asserted that there is no way to be saved “unless she conceive us in the womb and give us birth, unless she nourish us at her breasts, and, in short, keep us under her charge and government, until, divested of mortal flesh, we become like the angels.”410 God chose to use the community – the Church – to achieve salvation.

Like Luther, Calvin believed that the selection of the clergy depended on the consent of the whole Church. Again, Calvin’s implication was very different from the Pope’s here. Calvin argued that, in the early church, “none were admitted to the number of the clergy without the consent of the whole people.”411 After a time, the people were content to allow the bishop select persons for lesser clerical offices. This practice then became institutionalized in the Catholic Church, resulting in the struggles in Middle Ages between Pope and Emperor over who had the right to investiture. For Calvin, both positions in the investiture crisis were evil, since the right of election belonged only to the people. This right came directly from God and any who took it away from the people stole from God. The power and authority of God rested in the community directly and in the clergy only indirectly through the election of the people.

The clergy were not mere employees of the congregation, however. Once ordained, the clergy belonged to God, who “is pleased to instruct us in the present day by human means.”412 The believer is thus placed “under this modest yoke,” and instructed to listen “with docility to the ministers whom God appoints.”413 Fallen man, even the elect, was incapable of acting on that grace without the assistance of the Church and its ministers. The Calvinist believer may need to test the things of the world against his faith, but this independent thinking must be curtailed within the community of believers and the clergy they have selected.

In short, the Calvinist position must be seen to fall somewhere in between that of the Catholics and the Lutherans. For the Catholics, God interacted with man through the priests. For the Lutherans, God interacted with man directly. The Calvinists saw God interacting with man through the community of the elect, of which the believer was a part. Of course, this brief synopsis vastly simplifies the theologies of these three religions, yet it was the simpler messages and contrasts that were most easily communicated to and understood by the congregations.

This different emphasis between Lutheran and Calvinist had fairly large political implications. Both challenged the Catholic custom of, as Calvin put it, “Hereditary right, wherever bishops have been uniformly succeeded by bishops.”414The difference in political implications between Lutheranism and Calvinism was similar to the difference between liberalism and communitarianism today and the different means of generating political authority each implies. Like communitarianism, the controlling discipline of the Calvinist Church placed a barrier between the Lutheran’s direct connect with God. The Calvinist worried over the potential schisms that would be wrought as every ignorant, lazy, and vain person (in other words, every human being) interpreted Scripture without the gentle yoke of the Church. In short, Lutheranism and Calvinism must be treated as two distinct and competing sources of transcendent credibility.

The Catholic Church and the secular rulers associated with it fully recognized that their future depended on a reinvigoration. These rulers were thus faced with a double dilemma: protecting their authority from the rising popularity of Protestantism in its various forms and injecting new vitality into the flagging source of transcendent credibility that had served so well for over a thousand years. For many of the rulers of Europe, including especially the Holy Roman Emperor and the papacy, abandonment of Catholic doctrines was tantamount to suicide. Adaptations of centuries-old traditions were considered necessary – the readiness of all levels of European society to convert to Protestantism had demonstrated this fact. And yet, the core beliefs of the Catholic Church could not be jettisoned even as the Church modernized. This was the debate at the center of the General Council of Trent.

The action emerging from the Council of Trent was a strategic response to the growing threat Protestantism posed. The Church recognized that the introduction of alternate sources of transcendent credibility in Europe changed the political dynamics. In particular, the Church could no longer build its institutions around the idea that it was the only source of transcendent credibility. New sources of transcendent credibility meant that Europe was no longer a single “Christendom” with porous boundaries in which Catholic ideas flowed freely. Political units with different confessions needed to protect their borders from the dangerous ideas espoused by their neighbors. For Catholic ideas to penetrate some territories and to be perpetuated in others, the Church recognized that its institutions would have to be altered to cope with the changing conditions. Thus, not only did the Council of Trent reaffirm important points of Catholic doctrine that were vital to the maintenance of traditional forms of ecclesiastical and political authority, it also reconstructed its institutions in order to best re-extend its influence throughout the “heretical” regions of Europe.

Pope Pius IV reconvened the Council of Trent in 1561 with the goal of reinvigorating the Catholic Church. The core theoretical debate at the heart of this last session of the Council concerned the authority of the bishops of the Church.415 The outcome of this debate had enormous political implications and was closely watched (and influenced) by temporal rulers as much as by the ecclesia. The theological and historical question turned on whether Jesus himself instituted the office of the bishop. If so, then the bishops had significant authority vis-à-vis the Pope and the authority of the Church could be found in general church councils rather than the hierarchy of the papacy.416 However, if Jesus directly instituted the position of Pope only, then the  authority of the Church flowed from that position trickling down through the institution’s hierarchy.417 The outcome at Trent remained ambiguous. Neither the papal party nor the bishops could convince the other of either extreme. The wording of the final declaration attempted to find an acceptable middle ground. However, in combination with other centralizing reforms of the Council, it amounted to a reaffirmation that divine authority in the Catholic Church was located in the office of the Pope. In particular, interpretation of the decrees of Trent fell to the Pope and his staff. This, in turn, had the effect of reaffirming the notion that political authority was located at the top of the hierarchy and flowed down from that position.

While Trent left the doctrines of the Catholic Church largely unchanged, it radically reformed the institutions of the Church. Participants generally agreed that the cause of the Protestant Reformation was rooted in the declining quality of the clergy. Priests had grown more concerned with the income from their seat than the souls entrusted to them. In many cases, a priest or a bishop would not even live in his assigned diocese. Increasingly, persons joined the clergy to find a career path rather than respond to a calling. Thus, the Council of Trent sought to reform the Church first and foremost by reforming the clergy.418

Three very important clerical reforms highlight the Church’s growing sense that Catholicism faced rival sources of transcendent credibility. First, Trent encouraged the development of religious orders. The Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, formed in the 1540s by St. Ignatius of Loyola, was the most important of these new orders. This group formed with the intent of raising the level of piety and the level of theological education among Catholics with the goal of reconverting heretics in Europe and converting the heathen elsewhere.419 The Jesuits often portrayed themselves as a spiritual army going to battle in enemy territories.420 The Jesuits, like other religious orders, were not tied to particular dioceses and were therefore free to serve the Church in areas hostile to Catholic ideas. In addition, the colleges of the Jesuits quickly became the most respected centers of learning in the Catholic parts of Europe, thereby serving as a means of reinforcing Catholic doctrines among the elite and clergy alike.

A second crucial institutional reform of Trent was a stronger emphasis on the theological education of priests. Even parish priests at the bottom of ecclesial hierarchy could now receive deeper education. This not only increased the priests’ ability to impart Catholic doctrines to the people, it also enabled the clergy to combat Protestantism and other heresies where they found them in the towns and villages. Indoctrination of the clergy meant indoctrination of the people. The dangerous competition Protestantism presented compelled the Church to return its attention to the quality of persons it sent into the midst of the people. The influence of humanism in this era also produced the corollary conclusion that more educated priests would also be more virtuous. Many Europeans had begun to lose respect for local priests that took advantage of their position to extort sex and money from their parishioners. The sale of indulgences, the “poster child” of the depravity of the Church, was merely the most overt of the many cracks in the respectability of the clergy. The Council of Trent eliminated this practice, but its predominant focus was on improving the quality of its clergy and thereby the people’s perception of the Church itself.

A third reform imposed penalties on bishops and priests who did not live or work in the diocese the Church assigned them. The members of the Council argued that one reason Protestantism had spread unchecked was because the shepherds of the local flocks were too often absent. How could a bishop prevent the spread of heresy in a see he had abandoned? The clergy’s physical presence in the towns and villages put an immediate halt to the decline of Catholicism throughout Europe. These new-and improved priests returned to the traditional responsibilities of the Church in terms of teaching and poverty relief, which bolstered the image of the Catholic Church among believers.

The institutions of the Catholic Church prior to Trent were lax in terms of keeping a close eye on the doctrines and practices of believers across Europe. The incentives of investing vast resources in such a program did not exist where the Catholic Church lacked a rival, as it largely had throughout the Middle Ages. The arrival of Protestantism changed the Catholic Church’s incentives and, at Trent, its institutions. The Church needed to have personnel on the ground, perpetuating Catholic teachings in the remaining Catholic areas and fighting against the heretical enemy elsewhere.

These reforms demonstrate that the Catholic Church and Catholic rulers sought to gain greater control over the flow of ideas territorially. Heretical ideas would be expunged and repelled from Catholic territories. Catholic believers were expected to adopt “orthodox” beliefs and would be closely instructed, watched, and cajoled to do so. Rulers and clergy united to “purify” their lands. Inasmuch as Catholics and Jesuits were kept out of Protestant political units, the Catholic territories invested heavily in making sure their lands were Protestant-free.

Some evidence has already been presented that suggests that the increase in the number of sources of transcendent credibility in sixteenth century Europe created incentives the led rulers to increase the relative distinctiveness of their boundaries. Because increased investment in boundary control is a function of perceived threat, changes in distinctiveness should be localized to boundaries between political units that rely on different sources. An examination of the proxy variables reveals that, in fact, boundaries did become more distinctive between Lutheran, Calvinist, and Catholic political units.

In effect, the Protestant Reformation cut the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire in half. After the Peace of Augsburg, rulers began investing heavily in ensuring that their borders were controlled in order to keep out rival religious ideas and personnel. While all of these lands continued to nominally recognize the Emperor as their suzerain, the authority he held in the southern Catholic lands far exceeded that in the northern Lutheran areas. Obtaining obedience from Lutheran princes now became a matter of negotiation rather than obligation.421 The threat to German princes on both sides consisted in ensuring that missionaries and ideas from the other confession remained outside the boundaries of the territory. Thus, more and more resources were invested in controlling the boundaries, producing more distinctive borders.

One piece of evidence of increased distinctiveness was the increased ability of territorial German princes to demand hegemonic membership from their citizens. In some cases, this involved changing the population through transfers, rather than changing their hearts and minds. Following the Peace of Augsburg, many Catholics left territories governed by Lutheran princes, and vice versa. A similar process occurred in the Spanish Netherlands in the 1580s as many migrated to the Protestant United Provinces.422 The mass migration of Huguenots out of France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has been credited as one of the reasons for the economic success of countries in the Protestant north. A greater percentage of the remaining population believed in the particular source of transcendent credibility espoused by the ruler.

A consequence of this was that rulers were increasingly able to centralize some aspects of government. An examination of the condition of the Holy Roman Empire in 1500 demonstrates that “[t]here was no central power, and no one grouping to which [the Emperor] could look for consistent support.”423 In 1527, in response to the emergence of Lutheranism, Charles V convinced the Imperial princes to create new centralized institutions of government, the most important being the Privy Council.424 In addition, Emperors also centralized the Imperial judiciary and military. Although the degree of Imperial centralization by 1600 did not compare with the successes of the rulers of France, Spain, and England, sixteenth century Emperors had far more authority than their earlier counterparts.

Toward the end of the sixteenth century, rulers possessed even greater abilities to secure hegemonic loyalty from their subjects, thanks in large part to coercive measures. Backed by the Catholic Church and the stream of Jesuits flooding into central Europe, the Austrian Habsburgs combined the policies of a revitalization of Catholicism with the centralization of the machinery of state.425 In Calvinist territories, governments likewise combined the concepts of “discipline” in religious life with stronger central institutions capable of monitoring social behavior.426

Lutheran princes took a more direct approach, “becoming head of [their] own miniature church.”427 Governments in all three confessions transferred traditionally ecclesial responsibilities, such as education and charity, to new governmental institutions.428 Finally, by the latter half of the sixteenth century, nearly every political unit possessed at least one confessional university that was closely tied to support of the territorial ruler.429 The combination of these policies and institutions meant that the average subject tended to reserve his primary loyalty for his respective church and the territorial ruler who both supported and was supported by that religion.

With respect to the second proxy, imposed standardization of currency, there is little evidence. Rulers tended to mint their own coins, but they were largely unable to maintain their value.430 Circumstances in the sixteenth century made such a policy nearly impossible. The influx of gold and silver from outside Europe produced inflation, which created incentives for the devaluation of almost all currencies.431

Money itself became an object to be traded internationally, taking the valuation of coins further out of rulers’ hands. This is not to say that rulers did not try to gain control of their monetary policy.432 For example, many rulers made the export of bullion a capital offense.433 But, any clear examination of this proxy must wait until the end of the Price Revolution in the seventeenth century. There is more evidence, however, that rulers pursued more hierarchical judicial systems in their territories. In the mid-sixteenth century, Emperor Ferdinand I “revived the Imperial Aulic Council as the highest court of the Empire, under the direct control of the Emperor.”434 While the results for the Emperor of this move were mixed, it is significant that he possessed both the incentive and the capability to attempt modest judicial hierarchy. In Elizabethan England, it was evidence of “the decline of the great baronial and church households that private disputes were now brought frequently to Westminster.”435 The same was true, though on a smaller scale, for many other territorial rulers of the period.436

Rulers in the sixteenth century also demanded greater professionalization and standardization of the law throughout their territories. This was, in part, a response to humanist legal traditions sparked in the Renaissance who revived the Roman concept of the “common law” throughout Europe.437 However, it was also a result of the increased capability and willingness of rulers to make and enforce such demands. The French kings, for example, ordered the regional courts to “codify” their particular customs, giving the legal scholars associated with the King the ability to identify common elements of “France” and begin to formulate territory-wide law.438 This policy prepared the way for a judicial body, again associated with the royal court, which could serve as an appellate body for all French cases. In 1548, the Austrian Habsburgs ordered that any jurist on the Imperial Supreme Court must be trained.439

Such demands for educated legal scholars in the Empire, as in the rest of Europe, increased the importance of the universities associated with the rulers. Cases that were particularly difficult or politically troublesome were frequently referred to the faculty of the university.440 Thus, gradually, rulers in Europe successfully began to form a judicial hierarchy of which they dominated the top position. Rulers in the sixteenth century were also better able to generate efficient compliance generation than a century before. It has been frequently argued that the changing nature of war in the sixteenth century forced rulers to more efficiently and effectively raise revenues.441 However, it is more accurate to say that the nature of war and the ability to raise revenues increased together, each impacting the other: the reason a ruler deployed a larger army or built better fortifications was because he had access to more resources, whether through accumulating debt or by generating revenues more efficiently. In fact, both of these variables are the effects of a common cause: an increase in the incentive rulers had to increase the distinctiveness of their boundaries to protect against threats.

The economist Joseph Schumpeter has argued that the source of revenues for European rulers switched during the sixteenth century from feudal sources to direct taxation of subjects.442 Such a transformation required a larger and more centralized bureaucracy. The resources required to protect one’s territory from competing sources of transcendent credibility and to cope with inflation forced rulers to invest in a more expensive mode of raising revenues, but a mode that produced greater amounts of revenue as well. This new mode, direct taxation rather than indirect taxation via the landlords, was a distinctly territorial strategy. The most successful units “would be relatively centered and relatively territorial.”443 Physical control of territory and central government penetration into all areas constituted important characteristics of the direct taxation that emerged in the sixteenth century.

Finally, sixteenth century rulers made more credible commitments to defend territory distant from the center. The sixteenth century saw large changes in military technology and strategy, a phenomenon known in the literature as the “Military Revolution.”444 Improved guns led to improved fortifications. Fortifications necessitated more laborers to build them and more soldiers to be permanently garrisoned in them. This in turn required military organizations to become more centralized. As Michael Mann puts it, “The ‘permanent war state’ was arriving.”445

The “permanence” highlights the role “sunk costs” played in the credibility of ruler’s commitment to defend a particular territory. The expense of fortifications and troops along a territory’s boundaries suggested that the ruler would continue to be concerned with their security. Additionally, the desire of rulers to increase the distinctiveness of their boundaries created a situation in sixteenth century Europe where defensive strategies came to dominate. In particular, in Germany “[s]trategy tended to be reduced to a crude concern with territorial occupation or at least its denial to the enemy.”446 Together, these changes in strategy and technology suggest rulers’ claims to defend a territory came off as more believable than a century before.

Together, the proxies point to an increased distinctiveness in boundaries in the sixteenth century following the introduction of new sources of transcendent credibility in Europe. Still, the evidence is not overwhelming. At best, the proxies argue for an increase in relative boundary distinctiveness from the medieval era, but they do not suggest that the boundaries were very distinctive. One reason for this was that Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist missionaries were fairly successful in their conversion efforts in the mid-sixteenth century. For example, in the 1570s, Emperor Rudolph II essentially became a recluse and did very little to protect his territory from outside influences. As a result, five of the strongest noble families in the Austrian Habsburg lands became Protestant. It is only with the election of Ferdinand II as Emperor in 1617 that the Imperial policy returned to “unrelenting administrative centralization and religious repression.”447 However, the Thirty Years’ War began the following year, which destabilized boundaries and rulers in general. In short, this examination of the proxy variables requires a modest conclusion: the post-Reformation sixteenth century saw an increase in the relative distinctiveness of boundaries between political units; however, the degree of distinctiveness must remain an open question.

However the fact remains that by 1570, it was possible to say there was not a single Christendom in Europe but several Christendoms. Each saw itself as representing the True Church and each saw the others as heretical pretenders. The lines drawn between them were not merely figurative – overlapping political boundaries between political units of different confessions had to be avoided as best as possible. Not only was this agreed on in the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, but there was not a ruler in Europe that could allow the dangerous theological ideas freely infiltrating his or her territory.

 

Conclusion P.5

Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist theological differences produced important political differences from which no ruler could feel safe. Authority in the Catholic Church flowed from God to the Pope and then trickled down through a vast hierarchy. The Catholic ruler depended on an analogous path of divine authority that fell on him directly from God and from his royal person could pass to the bureaucrats and nobles in his lands. Authority in the Lutheran Church, on the other hand, was bestowed directly on the believer without the Catholic “middle man.” As a result, the authority of the pastor stemmed from the congregation of individual believers who selected him. The Lutheran ruler’s authority came from the people, whether through election or tacit consent. This freed the ruler from a political hierarchy in which he was not supreme, an important motivation among many of the German princes in the Holy Roman Empire. Finally, authority in the Calvinist Church flowed directly from God to the elect as a community of persons who had received grace. Politically, the elect should also rule. For a Calvinist ruler, this meant that he was selected by both God and the elect in the society. These theological and political ideas were anathema to each other. The dangers they posed provided the necessary incentives for rulers to invest significant resources in controlling their borders and in attempting to change the sources of transcendent credibility in each other’s territories. The next one hundred years was a period marked with internal crises as rival sources of transcendent credibility sought to take root (the Huguenots in France, for example), clandestine missionary enterprises infiltrated rival territories (the Jesuits and the Calvinists most famously), and outright confessional wars exploded (for example, the Thirty Years’ War).

The Protestant Reformation thus was more than just a mere theological dispute. Where the credibility of rulers depends on religion, as it clearly did in the European Middle Ages, theological disputes can have the explosive potential of changing the entire international system. The number of sources of transcendent credibility in sixteenth century Europe had increased from one a century before to three. As a result, the blurred boundaries between political units in the Middle Ages began to grow significantly more distinct as rulers responded to the increased threats to their credibility.

 

Bibliography

332 C Scott Dixon, The Reformation in Germany (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002): 117.

333 The verse itself quotes the words of God to Moses on Mt. Sinai from Exodus 19:6: “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.” Citing the I Peter verse, Christians claimed that this promise God made to the Israelites now applied to Christians.

334 Luther, Pagan Servitude of the Church (1520) in John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings (New York: Anchor Books, 1962): 345. Luther returned to this idea frequently. In An Appeal to the Ruling Class of German Nationality (1520), he called the Roman clergy’s exclusive claim as “the religious class” to be one of “three walls, which have protected them till now in such a way that no one could reform them.” Instead, “all Christians whatsoever really and truly belong to the religious class, and there is no difference among them except in so far as they do different work . . . . The fact is that our baptism consecrates us all without exception, and makes us all priests” (Dillenberger 406-408). In his Preface to Romans (1522), he argued that Paul “shows that all Christians are priests” (Dillenberger 33).

335 Martin Luther, An Appeal to the Ruling Class (1520) in Dillenberger (1962): 408.

336 It must be noted that both Luther and Calvin asserted each of these ideas, as each idea was seen as a logical conclusion of “justification by faith.” The discussion is split between the two reformers as followers of Luther tended to emphasize the first idea and followers of Calvin placed greater emphasis on the second. These different emphases also have important ramifications in terms of whether Lutheranism and Calvinism are different sources of transcendent credibility and will be discussed more in depth below.

337 Quoted in Dillenberger 408.

338 Ibid., 409.

339 Ibid., 409-412.

340 Ibid., 411.

341 RW Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Miriam Usher Chrisman (1996), Conflicting Visions of Reform: German Lay Propaganda Pamphlets, 1519-1530 (Studies in German Histories) (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996); Elizabeth L Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Vol. 1 and 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980): 303-452.

342 Mark U Edwards, Jr., Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

343 Gerd Tellenbach, Church, State, and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest (Studies in Medieval History) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1948).

344 Arthur O Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964 [1936]).

345 Humanism is a difficult term to define precisely. Historian Paul Kristeller suggested it should be seen as a research program rather than an ideology – a methodology that may be best described as anti-Scholasticism: Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanist Strains (New York: Harper and Row, 1961 [1955]): 3-23, 92-119. As a label, Humanism becomes tricky since what it meant constantly changed as did the ideas of those contemporaries considered the major Humanists. Thus, some of the “slippage” between what Luther meant and the political implications that resulted can be pinned on the slippage of Humanism and its chief adherents. On Humanism’s slipperiness (though the author does not use this term): Timothy A Dost, Renaissance Humanism in Support of the Gospel in Luther’s Early Correspondence: Taking All Things Captive (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001).

346 Peter Blickle, From the Communal Reformation to the Revolution of the Common Man (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought 65) (Leiden: Brill, 1998).

347 Ibid., 129.

348 Chrisman, Conflicting Visions of Reform (1996).

349 The tract was first published as On the Common Good and, due to the conversation it generated, extended and republished as On the Good Ordering of the Commonwealth: John Witte, Jr., Law and Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the Lutheran Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 153.

350 Ibid., 146.

351 Institutes II.1.

352 Institutes II.3.

353 Institutes III.21.

354 Nannerl O Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980): 60-61.

355 Ibid., 61.

356 Institutes IV.20.2.

357 Calvin’s perspective on this passage was likely inspired by Phillip Melantcthon’s commentaries on Colossians. Timothy J Wengert, Human Freedom, Christian Righteousness: Philip Melanchthon’s Exegitical Dispute with Erasmus of Rotterdam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Colossians 3:20-23 (NIV): “Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: ‘Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!’? These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.”

358 William Stevenson, Jr., Sovereign Grace: The Place and Significance of Christian Freedom in John Calvin’s Political Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

359 Institutes IV.20.2.

360 Institutes IV.20.3.

361 Philip Walker Butin, Revelation, Redemption, and Response (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

362 Institutes IV.20.25.

363 Institutes IV.20.31.

364 Institutes IV.20.22.

365 Institutes IV.20.31.

366 William G Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation (Manchester: Machester University Press, 1994).

367 On the variety of Reformations in this period, see James D Tracy, Europe’s Reformations, 1450-1650 (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1999).

368 The overarching goals of Charles regarding his Empire are disputed. Most traditional accounts argue that Charles’ primary desire was the realization of a single Christendom under one ruler.  Another argument that has gained currency is that Charles’ goals were much less lofty in that he “never forgot that his primary obligation was always to the dynastic interests of his family.” William Maltby, The Reign of Charles V (New York: Palgrave, 2002): 30. In either case, Charles’ early focus remained on the larger threats rather than Martin Luther.

369 Lisa Jardine, “Introduction,” in Erasmus: The Education of a Christian Prince (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997): x.

370 Quoted in John Dillenberger, “Introduction,” in Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther (1962): xxiii.

371 Miriam Usher Chrisman studied Lutheran pamphlets published between 1519 and 1530 in order to investigate of how and why Lutheran ideas appealed to all classes of society in very different ways, Conflicting Visions of Reform: German Lay Propaganda Pamphlets, 1519-1530 (Studies in German Histories) (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996).

372 Hillay Zmora, State and Nobility in Early Modern Germany: The Knightly Feud in Franconia, 1440-1567 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Peter Blickle, The Revolution of 1525: The German Peasants’ War from a New Perspective (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).

373 Quoted in Richard Bonney (1991), The European Dynastic States, 1494-1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 20.

374 James M Stayer, “The German Peasants’ War and the Rural Reformation,” in Andrew Pettegree, ed., The Reformation World (London: Routledge, 2000): 127-145. These rebels were stirred to action through the preaching of Lutheran Thomas Muntzer, who preached to them that if those in authority did not fight against the godless, they should be removed from power violently and without mercy: “It is impossible so long as they rule you to speak to you of God. Attack, attack, while it is still day! God goes before you, follow, follow!” Quoted in Gary K Waite, Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Society (Houndsmill, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2003): 63. See also Thomas Muntzer, “Sermon Before the Princes,” in George H Williams and Angel M Mergal, eds., Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers (Philadelphia, 1957): 47-70; Roland H Bainton, “Thomas Muntzer, Revolutionary Firebrand of the Reformation,” Sixteenth-Century Journal 1982 13(2): 3-15.

375 C Scott Dixon, The Reformation and Rural Society: The Parishes of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Kulmbach, 1528-1603 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

376 Luther, The Freedom of a Christian in John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings (New York: Anchor Books, 1962): 53.

377 See William R Estep, The Anabaptist Story: An Introduction to Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism (William B Eerdman’s Publishing, 1996): 177-200.

378 Waite, Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft, 67-70.

379 Non-believers were compelled to leave even as Anabaptists from all over Europe began to flock to the city. New laws abolishing private property and encouraging polygamy unnerved much of Europe.

380 Iren L Snavely, Jr., “Huldyrch Zwingli and the Preaching Office in German Switzerland,” Fides et Historia 1993 25(3): 33-45.

381 In fact, it can be argued that all Henry got from the German Lutheran establishment was a new wife, Anne of Cleves, who he singularly disliked, Rory McEntegart, Henry VIII, the League of Schmalkalden, and the English Reformation (Studies in History New Series) (Bury St. Edmunds: St.  Edmundsbury Press, 2002).

382 Quote is from the concluding Decree of the Diet of Speyer (1526), quoted in Will Durant, The Reformation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957): 442.

383 An excellent example of this can be found in the erastian Reformatio ecclesiarium Hassiae of 1526 and the impact that it had on other Protestant princes over the next six years: William J Wright, “The Homberg-Synod and Philip of Hesse’s Plan for a New Church-State Settlement,” Sixteenth Century Journal 1973 4(2): 23-46.

384 It was from the title of this document that Catholics began to describe the Lutherans as “Protestants,” a term that became associated with both religious and political rebels in the Empire.

385 Carter Lindberg, The European Reformations (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1996): 181-191.

386 See Leif Grane, The Augsburg Confession: A Commentary (Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1987): 113-126; Timothy J Wengert, “Luther and Melancthon on Consecrated Communion Wine,” Lutheran Quarterly 2001 15(1): 24-42.

387 See Robert Kolb and James A Nestingen, eds., Sources and Contexts of the Book of Concord (Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2001): 31-82, 105-139.

388 Abe J Dueck, “Religion and Temporal Authority in the Reformation: The Controversy Among the Protestants Prior to the Peace of Nuremberg, 1532,” Sixteenth Century Journal 1982 13(2): 55-74.

389 This was understandable since the Muslim Turks relied on a different source of transcendent credibility that had been in existence for a longer period of time. It was a clear alternative source, while in the 1530s Lutheranism merely had the potential to become one.

390 James M Estes, “Johannes Brenz and the German Reformation,” Lutheran Quarterly 2002 16(4): 373-414.

391 John R Tyson, “A Protestant City Handbook from the Mid-Sixteenth Century,” Sixteenth Century Journal 1993 24(1): 3-20.

392 Ole Peter Grell, ed., The Scandinavian Reformation: From Evangelical Movement to Institutionalisation of Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994): especially Martin Schwarz Lausten, “The Early Reformation in Denmark and Norway 1520-1559,” 12-41; and EI Kouri, “The Early Reformation in Sweden and Finland c. 1520-1560,” 42-69.

393 The humanist spirituali, of whom Cardinal Reginald Pole is perhaps the most prominent member, believed that the Protestants were correct in that the Church needed severe reform. They argued that if the Church admitted this and took real steps to reform, the Protestant movement would dissipate and people would return to the Catholic Church. The other party was the rejectionists, led by Cardinal Gian Pietro Caraffa, who would eventually become Pope Paul IV. They rejected any compromise whatsoever and believed that any admission of fault on the part of the Church would only make a bad situation worse. This typological bifurcation of the Catholic clergy is the traditional description in the literature, though it is clearly an oversimplification: Paul V Murphy, “Between Spirituali and Intransigenti: Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga and Patrician Reform in Sixteenth-Century Italy,” Catholic Historical Review 2002 88(3): 446-469. The point is the same, however: those who opposed reform systematically marginalized those willing to compromise with the Protestants.

394 This perhaps more than any other evidence demonstrates that the success of the Reformation in Germany rested on more than mere material or political gain.

395 The duchy of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel.

396 Charles Oman, A History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century (London: Greenhill Books, 1987 [1937]): 246-252.

397 Bonney, European Dynastic States: 121.

398 While Charles was Emperor, Ferdinand had been in charge of protecting the territory that bordered the Turks. Thus, having spent much of his life fending off Ottoman advances, it is likely that he considered the Muslim source of transcendent credibility a greater threat than the Lutheran source and was willing to work with the latter to defeat the former.

399 Paula Sutter Fichtner, “The Disobedience of the Obedient: Ferdinand I and the Papacy 1555-1564,” Sixteenth Century Journal 1980 11(2): 25-34.

400 “The Peace of Augsburg, 1555,” quoted in Henry Bettenson, ed., Documents of the Christian Church, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1966 [1943]): 301.

401 Much of this discussion is informed by Philip S Gorski, The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001): 1-38; and Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation.

402 So many of Max Weber’s arguments have come under attack, but the importance of “discipline” to Calvinist thought, and subsequently Capitalism, is one that has withstood the test of time: Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Routledge, 2001 [1904]).

403 Jeffrey R Watt, “Calvinism, Childhood, and Education: The Evidence from the Genevan Consistory,” Sixteenth Century Journal 2002 33(2): 439-456.

404 Within Geneva, however, there were understandably many who resented Calvin. Two groups in particular, the Patriotes and the Libertins, disagreed with Calvin in terms of doctrine, but also wanted to reclaim the civic power that they had lost. The Consistory allowed Calvin and his supporters to stay a step ahead of any subversive actions these groups intended. In 1547, armed members from these groups entered the City Council chambers and demanded an end to the Consistory. Calvin entered and insisted that, if they wanted to kill someone, he should be the first victim. No one struck and Calvin arranged a truce. The moment for the opposition passed and they split into factions, temporarily leaving Calvin in control again. Heretics, on the other hand, were dealt with without delay, as the case of the execution of Michael Servertus (1553) demonstrated. See, Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation (1994).

405 Durant, The Reformation: 478.

406 Bonney, The European Dynastic States: 128-129.

407 Ibid., 53.

408 Guido Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of the Reformation: Underground Protestantism in a Commercial Metropolis, 1550-1577 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Gorski, The Disciplinary Revolution (2003): 39-78.

409 Graeme Murdock, Calvinism on the Frontier, 1600-1660: International Calvinism and the Reformed Church in Hungary and Transylvania (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000); Maria Craciun, Ovidiu Ghitta, and Graeme Murdock, eds., Confessional Identity in East-Central Europe (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2002).

410 Institutes IV.1.4

411 Institutes IV.4.10

412 Institutes IV.1.5

413 Institutes IV.1.6

414 Institutes IV.2.3

415 Diarmaid MacCulloch (2003), Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, 1490-1700 (New York: Penguin Books): 303-306.

416 According to this position, each bishop inherited his authority from the bishop that came before him, all the way back to receiving the authority directly from Jesus. This gave every bishop an equal standing in terms of authority as the Pope. This was the position traditionally taken by the Orthodox Church.

417 Matthew 16:18-19 is the key passage here: Jesus said, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (New International Version).

418 See, in particular, the Council’s decisions in the seventh, thirteenth, fourteenth, twenty-first, twenty-second, twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth sessions.

419 Harro Hopfl (2004), Jesuit Political Thought: The Society of Jesus and the State, c. 1540-1630 (Ideas in Context 70) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 9.

420 Jonathan Wright (2004), God’s Soldiers: Adventure, Politics, Intrigue, and Power – A History of the Jesuits (New York: Doubleday): 13-42.

421 The Emperor’s method of dealing with princes now became “the confessionalization of patronage,” which according to historian Karin J MacHardy was not only unsuccessful in developing the Emperor’s authority, it also accentuated deep divisions between elites that culminated in the Thirty Years’ War: McHardy (2002), War, Religion, and Court Patronage in Habsburg Austria: The Social and Cultural Dimensions of Political Interaction, 1521-1622 (Palgrave MacMillen): 47-66.

422 “The amnesty of Antwerp lasted four years (1585-89) and 40,000 Protestants left for the north in these years, mostly going to Amsterdam and Middelburg,” Bonney (1991): 162-63.

423 Bonney (1991): 97.

424 Perry Anderson (1974), Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso): 304; Henry Frederick Schwarz (1943), The Imperial Privy Council in the Seventeenth Century (London: Oxford University Press): 57-60. Other significant new centralized institutions emerging from the 1527 Ordinance were the Court Chancellery (Hofkanzlei) and the Court Treasury (Hofkammer), VG Kiernan (1980), State and Society in Europe, 1560-1650 (New York: St. Martin’s Press): 183-84.

425 Kiernan 193.

426 Gorski (2003): 39-78.

427 Kiernan (1980): 171.

428 In particular, see Michael Braddick (2000), State Formation in Early Modern England, c. 1550-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 103-35; Brian Pullen (1976), “Catholics and the Poor in Early Modern Europe,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser.

429 In Lutheran areas, universities were important “partly because governments of petty states with limited physical force depended on the pedagogue as well as the preacher to instill habits of obedience,” Kiernan (1980): 172. In Habsburg lands, the Jesuits founded a university in Vienna in 1556. For a list of other Jesuit universities founded in Catholic German and Austrian lands, see Hajo Holborn (1982), A History of Modern Germany: The Reformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press): 279-81.

430 Arthur J Rolnick, Francois R Velde, and Warren E Weber (1996), “The Debasement Puzzle: An Essay on Medieval Monetary History,” Journal of Economic History 56(4): 789-808.  Most early modern rulers definitely saw the ideological value of minting their own coins and putting representations and slogans on them that enhanced their authority and credibility, Martha McCrory (1994), “Coins at the Courts of Innsbruck and Florence: The Numismatic Cabinets of Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol and Grand Duke Francesco I de’Medici,” Journal of the History of Collections 6(2): 153-72. For example, many German Lutheran princes commissioned their coinage minted in the 1540s and 1550s to carry the image of the three-headed dragon representing Lutheran resistance to the Empire’s Catholic laws, Oliver K Olson (1993), “The Three-Headed Dragon, Scourge of the Reformation,” Lutheran Quarterly 7(3): 293-314. As a means for promoting Lutheranism, most Lutheran coinage contained the slogan “Verbum Domini manet in Aeternum” (The Word of God flows into eternity), FJ Stopp (1987), “Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum: The Dissemination of a Reformation Slogan, 1522-1904,” Lutheran Quarterly 1(1): 54-71.

431 Douglas Fisher (1989), “The Price of Revolution: A Monetary Interpretation,” Journal of
Economic History 49(4): 883-902; Debra Glassman and Angela Redish (1988), “Currency Depreciation in Early Modern England and France,” Explorations in Economic History 25(1): 75-97.

432 It has been suggested, for example, that the French kings used the economic crisis to
enhance the royal authority with respect to monetary policy, specifically by issuing edicts designed to restore public confidence in the French currency, Jotham Parsons (2003), “Governing Sixteenth-Century France: The Monetary Reforms of 1577,” French Historical Studies 26(1): 1-30. English rulers used the financial crisis to shut down several competing ecclesiastical mints in England, CE Challis (1975), “The Ecclesiastical Mints of the Early Tudor Period: Their Organization and Possible Date of Closure,” Northern History 10: 88-101.

433 Bonney (1991): 423.

434 Anderson (1974): 304.

435 Michael Mann (1986), The Sources of Social Power, Vol. 1: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 460-61. See also, Krista Kesselring (1999), “Abjuration and Its Demise: The Changing Face of Royal Justice in the Tudor Period,” Canadian Journal of History 34(3): 345-58.

436 For example, Paul Warde (2002), “Law, the ‘Commune,’ and the Distribution of Resources in Early Modern German State Formation,” Continuity and Change 17(2): 183-211.

437 Peter Stein (1999), Roman Law in European History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 71-103; Manlio Bellomo (1995), The Common Legal Past of Europe, 1000-1800 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press): 203-35.

438 Stein (1999): 83.

439 Stein (1999): 91.

440 Stein (1999): 89-90.

441 Brian M Downing (1992), The Military Revolution and Political Change: Origins of Democracy and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press): 56; Clifford J Rogers, ed. (1995), The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Westview Press); David Eltis (1998), The Military Revolution in Sixteenth-Century Europe (IB Tauris); Martin van Creveld (1991), Technology and War: From 2000 BC to the Present (Free Press): 81-124; Edgar Kiser and April Linton (2001), “Determinants of the Growth of the State: War and Taxation in Early Modern France and England,” Social Forces 80(2): 411-48.

442 Joseph Schumpeter (1954), “The Crisis of the Tax State,” International Economic Papers 6: 5-38.

443 Mann (1986): 455.

444 See footnote 110.

445 Mann (1986): 453.

446 Bonney (1991): 348

447 Anderson (1974): 305.

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