Link to Chronology
The religious aspect of the Reformation
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Nine
The Renaissance and the Reformation
Chapter II
The Reformation
1. Lutheranism
p550 Henceforth [after the failed Holy War of 1463], the Papacy was a political power only in Italy, and even there it was greatly inferior to Venice, the King of Naples, the Medici, and the Sforza... The prince often seemed to take precedence of the Pope in the person of the sovereign pontiff, the more so as the tiara was now conferred only upon Italians: Adrian VI (1521-1523) was to be the last of the ultramontane Popes... Each Pope profited by his elevation to assure the future of his family, and of his policy, by introducing... the greatest possible number of his kinsmen into the Sacred College... Imagine what an impression a believer must have carried away from the capital of the Christian world at a time (1490) when there were 6,800 courtesans in Rome, when the Popes and cardinals consorted publicly with their mistresses, acknowledged their bastards, and enriched them at the cost of the Church!...
p551 ...The higher clergy, almost entirely recruited from among the proteges of the Curia or the courts of the princes, were complete worldlings... Only the Dominicans [of the monastics] still displayed a certain activity. But since Scholasticism had done its work, there was nothing left for them but their inquisitorial duties, and for lack of heresies to cope with they devoted themselves to the study of demonology. In 1487 two of them published, at Strasbourg, the Malleus Maleficarum, [From Wiki, "It endorses extermination of witches and for this purpose develops a detailed legal and theological theory.[9][10][11][12][13][14][15] It was a bestseller, second only to the Bible in terms of sales for almost 200 years.[16]"] an abominable treatise on the crimes of witches.
...
p552 However, the faith was still intact. Since the 12th century, it would really seem that there had never been so few heretics as during the fifty years that preceded the outbreak of Protestantism. Wycliffism in England and Hussitism in Bohemia were almost extinct... No one deserted the Church, or dreamed of doing so; but religion had become little more than a habit, a rule of life for those who observed the letter rather than the spirit. Hence the success of the indulgences, of which the Papacy, always short of money, was continually authorizing new emissions on all sorts of pretexts...
p553 ...They [the humanists] hoped... without a crisis, merely by the influence of intellectual progress, common sense, and learning, and thanks to the support of the social authorities, to bring about a religious reformation full of moderation, breadth, and tolerance.
This pleasing dream lasted only for a moment. It was... impossible of realization, for the anti-ascetic Christianity of the humanist had nothing in common with that of the Church... The theologians who made common cause against Erasmus saw this plainly enough... The higher clergy paid court to the Erasmians much as the French nobility paid court to the "philosophers" at the end of the 18th century. The former no more expected a religious revolution than the latter anticipated a political revolution. There was nothing... that could have enabled anyone to foresee the sudden explosion of Lutheranism... In their [the northern humanists] writings, and above all in those of Ulrich von Hutten, [What an interesting life] we find for the first time... an opposition of Germanism and Romanism at which we should be tempted to smile if the political passions of the 19th century had not exploited it, with such blind fury, to the detriment of civilization... Whether in its pagan or in its Catholic form, Rome was thus regarded as the perpetual enemy of the German people.
p555 ...It would be incorrect to suppose that Germany was devoured by a spiritual thirst which the Church was no longer able to assuage -- that it felt itself cabined and confined in Catholicism, and was seeking to unite itself more intimately with God. It is only too easy to point to a religious opposition between the Germanic and the Latin soul. Reality shows us nothing of the kind. Although Protestantism was born in Germany, and while the form which it first assumed, and its early progress, can only be explained by the German environment in which it was born, this is no proof whatever of its alleged Germanic character. It would be only too easy to oppose the Frenchman, Calvin, to the German Luther. The Reformation was a religious phenomenon; it was not a national phenomenon, and while it is true that it was more widely diffused among those peoples that spoke Germanic tongues, this was not because it found in these countries minds which were specifically qualified to understand it, but because it was there favored by political and social conditions which it did not encounter elsewhere.
This is an excellent point. I hadn't realized, before reading Pirenne, how similar the situation of the German princes was to that of Henry VIII. Now the Puritan Commonwealth was a different matter.
Luther belonged to the number of those who, in all countries and in all ages, are troubled in the most secret places of their hearts by religious problems which are more readily felt than defined. [The religious whack-a-doodles.] ...terrified by the idea of death, which had nearly taken him during a thunderstorm, he renounced his career and assumed the robe of a monk in an Augustinian monastery. Like so many others, he failed to find spiritual peace in the ascetic life, and in 1508 he was relieved at being chosen by the general of the order to fill a chair in the faculty of theology in the University of Wittenberg. There, in 1517, his famous thesis against the sale of indulgences made him suddenly emerge from his obscurity, and inaugurated the Reformation.
p556 ...Like Wycliffe and Huss, he wanted to address the nation, and it was in the national tongue that he wrote... The printing-press of his little University of Wittenberg sent his mighty words all over Germany... For the first time a religious question was debated in the hearing of the people, was brought within its competence and submitted to its judgment... Lutheranism was propagated by means of letterpress, and in the rapidity of its diffusion we see the first manifestation of the power of the Press.
I have to admit I've always thought "journalism" when I've read "press" but I suppose that isn't necessarily accurate.
...In 1518 the question was merely whether an appeal should be made from the Pope to the Council. But no later than the following year the Papacy was proclaimed an institution of purely human origin; the Council itself was said to be capable of error, and Scripture alone was infallible. In 1520 the decisive step was taken: the Christian was justified by his faith, not by his works; faith in Christ made every Christian a priest; the Mass, and all the sacraments excepting Baptism, the Eucharist, and Penitence, were rejected; the clergy had no privileges that were not possessed by lay society; both were subject to the power of the secular sword, whose authority was extended to the Church as well as to the State.
p557 ...His [Luther's] theology was a continuation of the dissident theology of the Middle Ages [Wycliffe and Huss]; his ancestors were the great heretics of the 14th century; he was absolutely untouched by the spirit of the Renaissance. His doctrine of justification by faith was related to the doctrines of the mystics, and although... he condemned celibacy and the ascetic life, he was in absolute opposition to... [the humanists] in his complete sacrifice of free-will and reason to faith.
...the religious ideas of the reformer were understood only by a very small number of genuinely pious souls. The enthusiasm of the masses was excited mainly by the attacks upon the clergy and upon Rome. The doctrine of justification by faith was beyond their comprehension... Already numbers of monks were deserting the cloisters; and priests, preaching from the pulpit, proclaimed their adhesion to the movement. People were beginning to read and interpret the Bible. They were filled with naive indignation against the clergy who had so long deceived them by concealing from them the true religion contained in the Holy Book... Meanwhile, the princes were pondering the situation. What seductive prospects were offered by the hope of secularizing the ecclesiastical estates!... among the very great majority of its first adherents Lutheranism was far more a revolt against the Papacy than a genuine religious awakening.
p558 The Emperor Maximilian died on January 12th, 1519, at the very moment when the crisis was about to assume its gravest aspect...[the Electors choose Charles V of Spain who becomes the defender of the Church.]
...
Continued next time
Sikh Festival
One of the reasons I've been able to be a greening engineer for over a decade is my ability to forget how bad events (or the people at events) were from one year to the next. I try to remember practical details -- like the problem with wind at this event, which I reminded my boss of without it making the slightest difference and she's worked it the past two years.
Somewhere during the lunch rush, after the main group of marchers had streamed into Civic Center Plaza, hungry after marching through downtown, I remembered that, while at first this seems to be a colorful, vegetarian event with perhaps a few too many references to anti-Sikh Indian genocide (considering the recent history of Sikh assassination of Indian leaders), at the end of the day these people are pretty annoying.
It's hard to even define how they are more annoying than our other crowds. God knows the other crowds are just as oblivious and arrogant. And this time (as opposed to Himalayan Festival) there weren't latex gloves in all the compost bags... if fact I never saw any latex gloves, which makes me wonder what they were doing in those food preparation tents, and also thankful that I only ate one small plate of free, veggie food.
The biggest hit this year were the new playgrounds at Civic Center, that have finally opened since last festival. (A single image won't do these playgrounds justice. Google "San Francisco Civic Center Playground".) This event is very much a family affair with everyone dressed in traditional costume and it was entertaining to see the new playgrounds crowded with little Sikhs and the benches filled with their mothers and aunties. I don't know that this is better for the future of Sikh identity in America, but at least the younger demographic will be eager to attend next year.
Not only was Mary, my boss, Crew Chiefing the event yesterday, but because they skimped on the debris box rental (they ordered the minimum dumpster space they thought they could get away with, which turned out to be insufficient, so we had to smash down both the compost and the landfill to make room for it all) she spent most of the end of the event up on top of the compost. This was because she had used up all her experienced people to run the four or five other events this day (and not climbing into dumpsters is the one concession I make to being a senior citizen.) Almost all of our crew were new... and not all of them will last. Mary and I ran around all day putting out fires created by the inexperience (cluelessness) of the rest of the crew.
I had claimed the busiest eco-station (in the food area we had double stations they were so busy) and had it running smoothly when Mary pulled me to do roving sorting (my usual thing) because the person she replaced me with had been doing my least favorite thing -- visiting the eco-stations, giving them a nice massage (sorting), but then leaving without removing anything so that they were all filling up.
I hit all the peripheral stations removing all the compost, found there were a couple other people seemingly doing the same thing, returned to the busy food area in time to catch a first-time crew member in a sort of meltdown. (To be fair, this really is something of a trial by fire as, not only is it spectacularly busy, but the routine has to change numerous times as we react to the volume of business and the fact that it gets so crowded that you can't cart away full bags but just pile them up until the crowd thins out. It's knowing how to react to these changes that takes the most time to learn.) For a while, both Mary and I were working together getting the station back into order, then I moved on to help the next overwhelmed station.
Still, it was a beautiful day. A shorter than usual shift (seven hours, for some reason?) And the food was good.
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