Link to Chronology
Why stop at one heresy when you can have two
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
2. The Spread of the Reformation. Calvinism [But we will start with England]
Continued...
p577 A generation separated the birth of Calvin (1509) from that of Luther... Luther, like all his contemporaries, had been born into the world of scholastic theology. Calvin grew up in an environment which was passionately concerned with the questions of the authority of the Scriptures, grace, justification by faith, the validity of the Sacraments, the celibacy of the priesthood, and the primacy of the See of Rome... Calvin... had never belonged to... [the Church Luther left]. It cost him no effort to break with it; from the very first he had regarded it as a monument of error and imposture. He was spared the intimate tragedies of the conscience. He had no need to seek for God. He was positive that he had God's Word in the Bible, and that it was to be found only in the Bible. He was to devote his life to arriving at an understanding of the Bible, and imposing upon other men the teachings he discovered in it. His heart and his emotions played no part in his religion. In him there was no trace of Lutheran mysticism. Reflection, reasoning, logic -- these were his means of conviction.
p578 ...what the Reformation needed, after its first outbreak, was a definite, rigid and coherent doctrine; a body of dogma, so to speak, to oppose to the old dogma, and a Church to contend against the old Church. And it had all the more need of this inasmuch as Catholicism was healing its wounds, was drawing new energies from the Council of Trent, and was preparing a powerful counter-attack, which the Reformation could certainly never have resisted without the aid of Calvinism.
...Frances I felt for Erasmus, to whom he offereed a chair in the College de France, an esteem which disquieted and exasperated the theologians of the Sorbonne. Louis de Berquin, one of the disciples of Lefevre of Etaples, preached at his court. His sister, Marguerite, professed a very liberal Christianity, marked by Platonic tendencies, and an evangelical mysticism which was closely akin to Protestantism. She openly protected the innovators, and it was in her little Kingdom of Navarre that Lefevre peacefully spent the last years of his career... And it is certain that the king continued for some time to restrain the University and the Parlements from manifesting their zeal against heresy... The government had no reason to complain of the existing situation [regarding its status over the Church in France]. None of the motives which impelled the German princes, or Henry VIII, to break with Rome, and replace the Roman Church by national Churches, had any application to France... From 1530 or thereabouts he ceased to resist the demands of those who wished to persecute the heretics... he allowed the religious and civil authorities to deal with heresy as they thought fit, the result being a ferocious persecution.
p579 Calvin was twenty-five years of age when this persecution, in 1534, drove him into exile... he turned to Romansh Switzerland. For some years Geneva had been in a state of political and religious ferment. In order to resist their hereditary enemy, the Duke of Savoy, the burgesses had solicited and obtained the aid of Berne. In 1526 the Eiguenots (Eidgenossen) had driven the partisans of the Duke out of the city, [The House of Savoy, again. I find that they actually started in Saxony and worked (married?) their way over the Alps to Italy. It seems that by "Eiguenots" Pirenne means, not Huguenot Protestants influenced by Calvin, but specifically the followers of Besançon Hugues who, confusingly, was not a Protestant] but Berne was Protestant, and the alliance concluded with Berne quickly familiarized the Genevese with the Reformation... the new faith, favored by the love of autonomy and the hatred of Savoy, whose partisans were blockading the city (1534-1535), was quickly triumphant. On August 10th, 1535, the Mass was discontinued by order of the Council; the people began to break the religious images, and the greater part of the clergy took to flight. The victory won over Savoy in the following year made Geneva an independent Republic. Thus a new political regime was introduced simultaneously with a new religious faith, and thenceforth the two were to remain indissolubly united.
p580 It was while these things were happening that Calvin, on passing through Geneva, was detained by Farel... he had just published, in 1536, his Institution Chretienne. Here was an opportunity to apply its principles in this young republic, still thrilled by its victory. Covered in the rear by the Swiss cantons, protected by the policy of France against the repetition of the Savoyard offensive, Geneva had no reason to fear for its independence, and could safely institute within its walls the theocratic government which was to be the most intensive, or perhaps one should say the only, application of pure Calvinism, and which was to contribute powerfully to the diffusion of the latter in the outer world. For Calvinism Geneva was the "Holy City" which the Anabaptists ten years earlier, in their mystical dreams, had hoped for a moment to establish in Munster.
...Salvation depends solely upon the Divine will, and by that Divine will the elect are chosen from all eternity. The Church consists in the union of these elect. But as it is impossible to know if one had been elected by grace, it is each man's duty... to prove it to himself by devoting himself with all his energies to the service of God. The Calvinist predestination, instead of leading to quietism, accordingly incites to activity. It does this all the more so inasmuch as God is not conceived as a father but as a master, whose word, revealed by Scripture, is the supreme law. One's whole life must be subject to this law, and the State is legitimate only in so far as it respects the law... Calvin submitted all human actions to theology. He was as universal, as absolute as the Catholic Church. I would even say that he was more universal and absolute. For, after all, the Church acknowledged that the "temporal sword" had its own mission, above and beyond the mission which had devolved upon the "spiritual sword."... For Calvin, on the contrary, the State, being willed by God, had to be transformed into an instrument of the Divine will. It was not subordinated to the clergy... but it acted in conformity with the end for which it was created only by associating itself intimately with the clergy, in order that the mandates of the Most High should triumph here on earth, and in order to combat all that opposed these mandates or insulted His majesty: vice, heresy, idolatry, and more especially the Roman idolatry, the most abominable of all. Such a system of ideas, if it is fully applied, inevitably leads to theocracy, and under the inspiration of Calvin the government of Geneva did actually constitute a theocracy.
p581 The Consistory, an assembly of pastors and laymen, exercised... the moral superintendence of the Republic. It did not govern, but it supervised and controlled the councillors of the Commune, and kept them in the strait way... [Sounds like contemporary Iran.] The death-penalty, torture, banishment and imprisonment were imposed, according to the gravity of the offense, but always with exemplary severity, upon contraventions of the ecclesiastical or moral regulations. Attendance at the temple was obligatory; adultery was a capital crime; the singing of a profane song was punished by the imposition of public penitence. Each person's conduct was subject to a permanent inquisition which pursued him even into his dwelling, and extended to the most trivial actions of his private life...
And while it became the pattern of the Christian State, Geneva also became an ardent center for religious propaganda... In 1559 the Academy of Geneva was founded, whose essential purpose was the training of "ministers," or... of Calvinistic missionaries... For Calvin the Apostolate, which Luther completely neglected, was the indispensable condition of the propagation of the faith... In Germany only the Elector Palatine adopted Calvinism, and therefore imposed it upon his subjects. Outside Germany the Continental monarchs had everywhere declared for Rome... Therefore, in order to ensure that the Word of God should triumph, it was necessary to prepare for battle... [Pope] Paul III in 1542 revived the Inquisition, and in 1545 he convoked the Council of Trent. Already the young Society of Jesus was beginning to wage war upon heresy, to rouse men's souls from their lethargy, to stimulate Catholic piety, and to found the first Jesuit colleges... Calvin found... [his enemy] everywhere on the alert and fully armed...
p582 ...Now it was necessary to take sides in a debate in which the question of eternal salvation was at stake, and every man... had to enter one of the two opposing camps and prepare for battle...
Almost makes me envy the German Lutherans of the time.
p583 [Calvinism] ...was greatly helped by the social constitution of the 16th century. Capitalism, which was hampered by the restrictions imposed by the Church upon trafficking in money and speculation, must surely have benefited it by procuring the unconscious adhesion of great numbers of commercial adventurers and men of business. It must not be forgotten that Calvin acknowledged the lawfulness of lending money at interest, which Luther, faithful in this respect... to the traditional theology, had still condemned. The first resources placed at the disposal of the new Church to cover its costs of propaganda... were advanced by the successful merchants. In Antwerp, about 1550, there were already a considerable number of new converts among the frequenters of the Bourse... we can imagine the impression which the impassioned logic of... [Calvin's Institution Chretienne] must have produced upon minds [of the nobility] which were only too ready, thanks to the perusal of Rabelais, whose work had appeared almost at the same time, to deride the Church, and to regard it as an obsolete institution. Lastly, the industrial proletariat, cherishing a rancorous memory of the persecution which had not wholly stifled the Anabaptist faith, furnished predestined recruits to the new faith, though in the beginning, at all events, these recruits were more remarkable for their turbulence than for their sincerity.
From Wiki, "Calvin thought that agriculture and the traditional crafts were normal human activities. With regard to trade and the financial world he was more liberal than Luther, but both were strictly opposed to usury. Calvin allowed the charging of modest interest rates on loans. Like the other Reformers Calvin understood work as a means through which the believers expressed their gratitude to God for their redemption in Christ and as a service to their neighbors. Everybody was obliged to work; loafing and begging were rejected. The idea that economic success was a visible sign of God's grace played only a minor role in Calvin's thinking. It became more important in later, partly secularized forms of Calvinism and became the starting-point of Max Weber's theory about the rise of capitalism.[120]"
p584 ...In the 1540's... [Calvinists] were already to be met with in all parts of France, in the Low Countries, and in England. Trained at first in Geneva, but presently at Lausanne, Strasbourg and Heidelberg, they displayed all the characteristics of a regular clergy, but a clergy as active and as learned as the Catholic clergy was generally ignorant and apathetic...
p585 [Calvinism] ...did not ask for protection, nor did it avoid conflict. Wherever it appeared it loudly affirmed its dogma and boldly took the offensive, and its radicalism tolerated no compromise. Between it and the sectators of the "Roman idolatry," the followers of the "Whore of Babylon," no reconciliation was possible... The quarrel which it provoked assumed a personal character for every protagonist; it fomented hatred in men's hearts, and was finally to end in civil war.
So what was all this really about? The actions of the princes and kings I understand completely, but what made the bourgeoisie and proletariat suddenly so interested in theology? The sack of Rome, which we shall soon hear about, by the Imperial army, of all people, suggests that hatred of the Papacy was all but universal at this time. Was Protestantism -- outside Germany -- simply the obvious way to break with that institution? The docility of all the peoples converted by their princes, also suggests that faith and theology was not as central to all this as Luther and Calvin probably wanted to think.
And from the Catholic perspective this was not one heresy but at least two. I was going to say something about the differing views on predestination and justification by faith alone, but I really don't understand the distinctions of these respective faithful. And, I don't understand how the Faustian notion of selling your soul to the Devil could be popular at the same time as the notion of Predestination. Perhaps death and Judgment is the Protestant equivalent of the collapse of a quantum wave function?
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When faith turns into good business
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
Continued
p559 ...it was the weakness of the monarchical power [in Germany], and the backward and particularistic character of its institutions that saved Lutheranism, or at all events assured it of its rapid and easy diffusion, compared with the formidable conflicts in which Calvinism, in more advanced and powerful States, was involved from its very beginning.
p560 [Charles V is thwarted in Germany, unable to take on a German religious war at the same time he is at war with France.]...But what he could not do in the Empire he could do in the Low Countries... As early as 1520 he had promulgated a first "bill" against heresy... This was only a prelude to what he had in mind... to introduce the Spanish Inquisition into his Burgundian provinces... until the end of his reign, a series of more and more violent and merciless "bills" were promulgated, which even went to the length of compelling the lay courts to prosecute and sentence to death persons who, not being theologians, had discussed questions of faith, or who, being acquainted with heretics, did not denounce them.
...it was reserved for the Low Countries to furnish the Reformation with its first martyrs. On July 1st, 1523, two Augustinians of Antwerp, Henri Voes and Jan van Essen, were burned alive in the great market-place of Brussels...
p561 ...he [Luther] was a revolutionary only in religious matters, and his furious attacks upon the authority of Rome were in strange contrast with his docility in respect of the secular authorities. But when it reached the heart of the masses his propaganda was bound, before long, to awaken the confused emotions born of extreme poverty; a formidable force, which, once unleashed, escapes all guidance, obeying only itself.
Edmund Burke would understand what Pirenne is saying here. Also the government of China, which always has recollections of the Boxer Rebellion in mind.
p562 ...In the German art and literature of the 16th century the Bauer was treated with extraordinary disdain. He was apparently regarded merely as a disgusting or ridiculous brute; where he was concerned, anything was permissible... Against the feudal Burg which oppressed them the poor people of each seigneurie were quite defenseless... Religion was the most ancient and the most sacred of habits... the very foundation of existence, and they saw it attacked with impunity, derided and defied. Their dread of and respect for the clergy disappeared. How then should they continue to dread and respect their lords? [This sounds like Dostoevsky] The abuses of which the Church was accused were much less obvious to them than the injustice which they had to suffer at the hands of the nobles... Moved by the same passions, they became conscious of their strength, and in 1528 [this can't be right. Wiki says 1524-1525. Wiki also says the Anabaptists were behind this insurrection as well as the one in Holland.] the first riots suddenly revealed the magnitude of a peril which no one had foreseen because it had been so utterly disdained.
The movement rapidly spread through the whole of Southern Germany... Their demands, which were advanced in the "Twelve Articles of the Peasants," were far more social than religious. They called for a return to the Gospel, but above all they demanded liberty, liberty as they understood it, which meant the liberty to enjoy the free use of forest and field, and to rid themselves of the illegal corvees and the arbitrary tyranny of the landlords... the terror which they excited paralyzed all resistance... counts, princes, and Electors humbled themselves to the extent of negotiating with the insurgent masses and agreeing to the "Twelve Articles." But already these seemed insufficient to hopes excited and passions fired by success. Once more the old dreams of a mystical communism, which had lingered amongst the people ever since the Middle Ages, had taken possession of their minds. Thomas Munzer, in Thuringia, excited the fanaticism of the peasants by the promise of a world of love and justice, in conformity with the Divine will, whose realization demanded the massacre of the unrighteous. The effect of such preaching upon simple and violent souls was to transform the agrarian revolt into a sort of mystical Terror... The nobles united their forces against those of the peasants. The peasants accepted battle, and on May 15th, 1525, they were cut to pieces at Frankenhausen. The conquerors were pitiless in proportion to the terror they had suffered... The yoke imposed upon the peasants was heavier than ever, and henceforth they were to bear it with docile resignation, until the beginning of the 19th century.
p563 The crisis of Anabaptism was even greater proof of the religious confusion into which the too sudden disappearance of ecclesiastical authority had plunged the soul of the people. Accepting Luther's preaching literally, the first Anabaptists, who before 1525 had made their appearance in Switzerland, claimed that not only their faith, but society itself must be reformed in accordance with Holy Scripture. Since the Bible contained the Word of God they must conform to it strictly in all things. What need was there of a Church or State? Obedience to the Word of God should suffice to save men's souls as well as to regulate their mutual relations... The popular form of Manichaeism, based on the opposition of flesh and spirit, had never completely disappeared since the days of the Albigenses. Now it was revived, mingled with the apocalyptic visions and the mystical tendencies which had become so widespread since the 14th century. The religious believed that they were called upon to create a new world, in which all things would be fraternally held in common, wives as well as property. This notion found very ready acceptance in the lower classes of the urban populations, among the journeymen of the guilds and the wage-earning workers in the nascent capitalistic industries. Spreading by contagion among the manual workers, it soon reached the Low Countries, where industry... had prepared a most fertile soil for such a movement. It is not surprising that its adepts were savagely prosecuted by the public authorities. Catholics and Lutherans vied with one another in their ferocious suppression of this revolutionary heresy... Utopian though it had been in the beginning, Anabaptism now became a doctrine of hatred and conflict. The poor looked to it not only for deliverance, but for divergence... About 1530 a sort of mystico-social delirium seems to have seized upon Holland. Nearly all the lower classes of the cities became a prey to it... It was from Amsterdam and its suburbs that those prophets came, in 1534, who, taking advantage of the fact that the city of Munster had rebelled against its bishop, went thither to establish the "Kingdom of God." At no other moment of history, perhaps, has there been a more striking example of the lengths to which the masses may be driven by passion, religious illusion, and the hope of realizing social justice. For twelve months, blockaded by the troops of the neighboring princes, Protestant and Catholics, the Anabaptists of Munster organized... their "New Jerusalem." Polygamy and communism were instituted and practiced by the whole population. For a moment a mystical and socialistic Utopia became a reality. The city was taken by storm on June 24th, 1535, and this access of collective madness was quenched in blood. Not until our own days were the iron cages brought down from the tower of the cathedral in which the charred bones of the prophet John of Leyden and the Burgomaster Knipperdalling had so long swung in the wind... Until almost the close of the 16th century its [Anabaptism's] revolutionary ferment continued to work in the hearts of the people... But among the majority of its adherents it reverted to the evangelical simplicity of its beginnings, and it is in this form that it has been perpetuated down to our own days in the heart of the Protestant world of Europe and America.
p565 The Peasant War, and the tragedy of Anabaptism, resulted in turning the humanists and the Erasmians away from Luther; horrified by so much violence, they moved in the direction of the Church. Luther was no less dismayed. He violently attacked the rebels and pitilessly applauded their defeat. This was the end of the popular tendencies which he had revealed in the beginning. It seemed to him that the only means of saving the Reformation was to place it under the protection and control of the princes... With the exception of the Dukes of Bavaria, who were as firmly Catholic as the Habsburgs, they [the princes] were inclined to make their faith conform to their interests... by proclaiming themselves, in their own principalities, the heads of their territorial Churches, they acquired a twofold authority and influence over their subjects. Such were the wholly mundane considerations which determined the conduct of these defenders of the new faith. Of all religious confessions, Lutheranism is the only one which... offered itself to them as a profitable business transaction.
p566 The elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse first trod the path which others were soon to follow. In 1525 the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Albert of Brandenberg, supported the Reformation so that he might secularize the Order and transform it, to his own advantage, into a lay principality. The Dukes of Anhalt, Luneburg, and Friesland, and the Margraves of Brandenberg and Bayreuth, also declared for the Gospel. After its beginnings in the heart of the bourgeoisie in the South of Germany, Lutheranism thus became, through the adhesion of the princes, the religion of the North. For the confession of the princess determined that of their subjects, just as formerly, during the Great Schism, it had determined their obedience to the Pope of Rome or the Pope of Avignon. The question of conscience was therefore treated as a question of discipline. One would hardly have expected this of a religion that proclaimed justification by faith and saw a priest in every Christian. There is surely a contradiction here, which can only be explained by the necessity, of which Luther was becoming more and more conscious, of safeguarding the future of his followers by the protection of the temporal power. As for the people, they allowed their religion to be imposed upon them by the temporal authority with a docility which sufficiently proves the truth of the old literary cliche concerning Germanic individualism. The most sacred convictions of the individual were at stake, yet there was no rebellion, no resistance. The German Catholics seem to have adopted Lutheranism in obedience to the commands of their princes as readily as the Franks of the 5th century renounced their gods when Clovis was baptized. [Funny, I don't recall hearing about this in Lutheran Sunday school] We must conclude... that their faith was not very fervent, but another reason for their attitude may be found in the complete stagnation of political life in Germany. No one dreamed of contesting the rights of the princes. The people were accustomed to obeying their commands... They were... allowed, without protest, to put themselves in the place of the bishops, appoint superintendents of the clergy, suppress the ecclesiastical foundations, close the monasteries, secularizes their properties, and organize the schools: in short each of them, in his own principality, replaced the universal Church, subject to the Pope, by a territorial Church (Landeskirche) subject to the secular power.
So the princes achieved what the Empire had always failed to achieve?
p567 ... [Charles V's] war against Francis I kept him out of Germany and compelled him to bide his time. His brother Ferdinand, to whom he had ceded the hereditary domains of the House of Habsburg, and who represented him in his absence, was himself too occupied by the attacks of the Turks in the valley of the Danube, and the difficulty of getting the Hungarians to recognize him as the successor of their king Louis, who had perished in the battle of Mohacz (1526), to think of impeding the progress of the Reformation... In 1526 the Diet of Spire decreed that pending the arrival of the Emperor all could claim freedom of action in the matters judged by the Edict of Worms. When three years later Charles attempted to make it revoke this decision, five princes and certain of the cities immediately formulated a protest, and from that time onward the partisans of the new faith were known by the name of Protestants.
Again, I don't think our Sunday school teachers mentioned that we were protesting the rights of princes to control their local Churches.
I have to note here one of the most puzzling events of this confusing time. In 1527 an Imperial army -- commanded by Charles III, Duke of Bourbon, but fighting for the Emperor Charles V -- sacked Rome and took the Pope hostage because they had run out of funds.
p568 It was not until 1530, at the Diet which Charles had convoked at Augsburg after his coronation, that the inevitable break occurred. The theological debate, in the course of which Melanchthon read aloud the "Augsburg confession," could only have the result of confirming each party in its own belief. It was too late to hope for a reconciliation... The Protestant princes quitted the assembly, of which the majority, encouraged by the Emperor, solemnly ratified the Edict of Worms, condemned all religious innovations, and ordained a general return to the Church.
...In 1531... [the Protestant princes] formed a confederation at Smalkalde, in association with a certain number of the cities... In the following year... [Charles] proclaimed the Nuremburg Peace of Religion, forbidding any religious war until a Council, or the impending Diet, had assembled... Philip of Hesse, the most turbulent... [of the princes] profited by the situation to do his utmost to undermine the power of the House of Habsburg. Supported by the subsidies of the King of France, he restored the Duke of Wurttemberg to the possession of his Duchy, which Ferdinand had united with Austria, and Protestantism was immediately introduced into the Dutchy (1534)... Already [before 1542?] the Archbishop of Cologne had expressed his intention of going over to the Reformation. The archbishoprics of Magdeburg and Halberstadt were secularized.
At last, having concluded peace with France at Crespy (1544), Charles V was able to attend to affairs in Germany...
...nothing was easier than to secure the neutrality or even the co-operation of many of... [the Protestant princes] against their co-religionists by promises of aggrandizement. The Lutheran Maurice of Saxony won particular distinction as the ally of the Catholic sovereign in this war upon the Lutherans. The Spanish bands of the Duke of Alva did the rest. The battle of Muhlberg annihilated the League of Smalkalde (April 24th, 1547). The Electorate of Johann Friedrich of Saxony was given to Maurice. Philip of Hesse made his submission. In the same year Charles made the Diet of Augsburg accept an interim, which, pending the decision of the Council, established the religious position of the reformed estates.
p569 It was not the triumph of Catholicism, it was the triumph of the Emperor that terrified the vanquished. They were much more afraid of falling under the yoke of Charles, and losing their princely autonomy, than of once more submitting to the jurisdiction of Rome. [Now joined by Maurice, the German princes]...did not hesitate to buy the aid of the Catholic King of France, Henri II... By the Treaty of Chambord (1552) they recognized his right to annex the three Western bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun...
Once again, then, Lutheranism was saved by France. Charles, obliged to hasten to the Lorraine frontier, left it [Lutheranism] in possession of the field, and never, until his abdication, had he an opportunity of returning to the attack. As Catholic as himself, his brother and successor Ferdinand, still menaced by the Turks in Hungary, hastened to pacify Germany. The Peace of Religion concluded by the Diet of Augsburg on September 25th, 1555, settled the problem. It acknowledged the jus reformandi of the princes -- that is to say, their right to embrace the Reformation -- whether they had already done so, or whether they wished to do so in the future. Subjects were required to profess the religion of their princes, except that they were allowed to emigrate after selling their possessions. An exception was established in favor of the ecclesiastical principalities... There the prince's change of confession could only result in his abdication.
p570 Thus conceived, the Peace of Augsburg appeared to be much less a peace of religion than a mere political compromise. It would have been impossible to show more absolute disrespect for liberty of conscience... The privilege of a free profession of belief was admitted only in the case of crowned heads; the masses had no privilege but that of obedience... the new religion was no more inclined than the old to suffer dissidence in its midst...
...The majestic unity of Christendom was officially shattered. [he means Roman Christendom] The Church, because it had not reformed itself with sufficient promptitude, had to watch the erection of a rival Church. Hitherto it had mercilessly crushed heresy, and henceforth it would be forced to suffer its presence. The fact was that the secular power, ceasing to fight for the Church, had itself gone over to the heretics. Not only did it recognize heresy as the religious truth, but it even profited by the heretics' need of its protection in order to impose upon it an ecclesiastical organization of which it was the master. With Lutheranism... it was a State Church that made its appearance, rather than a State religion... Through the clergy it would obtain that control over education which had hitherto evaded it. From the 17th century onwards it would make education compulsory, and its functions would be extended -- we can divine with what benefit to itself -- to the formation and control of ideas.
p571 Obedience to the prince was inculcated as effectively by the pastors as obedience to the Pope by the Jesuits. The civil power benefited by the progress of the new faith in proportion as it gained empire over men's minds. Discipline, respect for authority, and belief in power were among the characteristics which were finally transmitted to modern Germany... it was the new faith that rendered possible such a State as Prussia: that is a State in which the virtues of the subject, the official, and the soldier coincide, but where we shall look in vain for the virtues of the citizen.
Juneteenth
I had to explain to one of our young workers what "Juneteenth" was about. This was the first time we had worked the event, and there was not much to do. They shut down Fillmore Street through what was the heart of the African-American section of the Western Addition, after the Japanese were shipped off to the camps and workers from the South were brought in to work in the shipyards. When I lived a few blocks to the north, back in the 1970s, this area was a mix of vacant blocks -- cleared by our version of Robert Moses back in the 1960s to improve the City by displacing the Blacks -- some Projects, and a few surviving buildings from the old days. This is where I would come -- only in daylight -- to buy the day-old bread and pastries that were the key component of my modest diet at that time. It was actually a good German bakery, but they always had lots left over at the end of the day.
Since then, very slowly, the promised urban development did occur, without really revitalizing the neighborhood. This little festival is an attempt to create a new neighborhood identity, but there is still no "there" there. Curiously, with that "there" quote in mind, we were all comparing Juneteenth (unfavorably) with the Art and Soul Festival in Oakland. There there is still enough of a local African-American community to support the event. And Oakland's downtown redevelopment is actually further along, and slightly more successful than the Western Addition.
We had a little more than three blocks to keep in order and I -- as usual -- had the comparatively busiest block on the north end, where all the food stands were located. And still it was ridiculously slow. A good day for me is when I can go through multiple rolls of compost bags. Yesterday I went through less than one and didn't fill my first bag until an hour or so into the event. Until near the end (when the vendors started surrendering their waste to us) I was going through more landfill bags than compost bags. Not because there was a huge amount of landfill, but because my boss has a dream... a dream that if we only put out little landfill containers, along with the larger compost and recycling containers, people will see what we are trying to do and put their waste in the correct place. It's kind of charming how she can still think this. But no. What actually happens is that we have to spend more time emptying out (and sorting the mix of stuff people continue to toss into) the little containers. Normally, with full size containers, I don't have to pull the landfill until the end of the day, but with the tiny containers I have to empty them every hour or so or they will start overflowing and the plastic and other junk will blow out into the street.
As it was, our large boxes for compost and recycling were blowing over and down the street unless they were maybe a third full. I was carefully pulling just enough to keep them functioning without making them too light, but then someone from another section (they were even more bored than we were) would wander in and pull the entire bag just to give them something to do. Which would be fine except for the wind.
I will NOT rage against the food vendors again.
Except to say that they were at least as bad as usual.
I mean, who would think a half full recycling container was the place to dump a huge amount of garlic? And less than an hour later, an even larger amount of noodles?
Because there was also a Juneteenth parade that ended at the festival, there were some horses riding around the event. Or it would be more accurate to say that one particular guy was riding a horse around the area showing off. Unfortunately, no one thought to provide us with shovels.
My favorite site all day was this ferocious, tiny dog who was barking and lunging at a horse.
Father's Day
Now it's Father's Day and I've come out to Lincoln Park to visit my dad's ashes. Turned out to be a beautiful day, which I wasn't expecting after listening carefully to the weather report this morning, while still in bed. I realized that my dad was my present age when he and my mother visited thirty years ago, when I was still working at the Apple Multimedia Lab and when I was interviewing for a job at Skywalker Ranch. At that time he had about ten years left to live.
I actually don't remember much about him at that time -- I remember more of some of the later visits when we spent more time together and his lack of mobility was a constant problem. It is interesting how my list of questions I would love to ask him grows over time. And only some of them are questions about ME.
Because I'm still dealing with a temporary crown, I avoided my favorite Burmese/Thai restaurant and their so tempting Tea Leaf Salad (with peanuts) for my favorite Thai restaurant (that always has brown rice). Strangely, I had the place to myself except for a massive party against the wall. Despite this being Father's Day, I was unsure of the nature of the group until this young woman joined the table who was something of a hottie while acting like a four year old. She may have been a teen -- she ended up sitting by herself in the un-insulated section of the restaurant overlooking the street. Only a family party would tolerate this kind of behavior.
Link to Chronology
Europe wakes up and then goes to hell
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
Introduction
p501 ...Before the Renaissance, the intellectual history of Europe was merely a chapter of the history of the Church... even those who contended against the Church were entirely dominated by it, and thought only of transforming it. They were not freethinkers but heretics. With the Renaissance... The Cleric no longer had the monopoly of learning. Spiritual life... became secularized; philosophy ceased to be the servant of theology, and art, like literature, emancipated itself from the tutelage which had been imposed upon it ever since the 8th century. The ascetic ideal was replaced by a purely human ideal, and of this ideal the highest expression was to be found in antiquity. The humanist replaced the cleric, as virtue (virtus) replaced piety... Not only for the Italian humanists, but also for Christians as convinced as Erasmus or Thomas More, the claim of the theologian to domineer over learning and letters, and even morality, was as ridiculous as it was harmful. They dreamed of reconciling religion with the world. They were tolerant, not unduly dogmatic, and extremely hostile to the secular studies which Scholasticism had superimposed upon the Bible. They were interested above all in moral questions. Their program, which we find in Miles Christianus [not sure what this is supposed to be. It seems to be a literary work and not THIS.] and the Utopia, is that of a broad, rational Christianity, entirely devoid of mysticism, which would make the Church, not the Bride of Christ and the source of salvation, but an institution for moralization and education in the highest sense of the word... they were optimists, and they hoped that it would be possible to induce... [the Church], by gentle pressure, to enter upon the new path [of reform].
p502 ...The Reformation, on the other hand, attacked the problem with passion, violence and intolerance, but also with profound faith, and the passionate longing to attain to God and to salvation which was destined to conquer and subjugate men's souls. There was nothing in common with it and the Renaissance. It was... the antithesis of the Renaissance. It replaced the human being by the Christian; it derided and humiliated the power of reason... Luther was much more akin to the Middle Ages than to the humanists... Erasmus and More very soon turned aside from this revolutionary... They divined the tragedy which was about to commence, and they shuddered at it, understanding that it meant the end of their hopes of reconciliation.
Yet it was not Lutheranism that provoked the catastrophe of the wars of religion. After a first popular effervescence, marked by the rising of the German peasants and the insurrection of the Anabaptists, it submitted with docility to the control of the princes. It abandoned the Church to the secular power so completely that when Charles V decided to take action against it he had to fight the princes, and the conflict that followed was far more political than religious...
p503 But then Calvin made his appearance, and with him the... comparitively peaceful course... was suddenly modified. An austere, exclusive, intolerant religion claimed the right to impose itself upon the government, and to force it, even by rebellion, to obey the Word of God. Calvinism was no longer satisfied with the national existence which had hitherto contented Protestantism. The Calvinist propaganda aspired to conquer the world. The faith which it inspired in its "elect" urged them to political action, and this action was the beginning of the tragic epoch of the wars of religion...
...the industrialists, capitalists and politicians were protesting and rebelling in their turn against the restrictive system of trade corporations, against the economic limitations, the traditions and prejudices that impeded the free expansion of their activities. Everything was undergoing transformation, the economic world no less than the intellectual; the birth of modern capitalism was almost contemporaneous with the appearance of the first scientific works, and it collaborated with science in the discovery of the East Indies and America... we should do wrong to restrict the application of the word "Renaissance" to the new orientation of thought and art; it should be extended to the whole field of human activity, as revealed in its manifold aspects from the middle of the 15th century...
90's Music
And by that I mean the Pop music I heard on the radio during the 1990s. I think people think I'm joking when I praise 90's music, which seems to lack even the ignore-the-hair popularity of 80's music. But I'm serious.
Like the Beatles -- and how often do you hear that comparison -- 90's Pop music has been so easy to hear on the radio that I've never bothered to buy it for my iPod. (Some artists, like the Indigo Girls, did not get much radio play so I do own them). Last night the YouTube algorithm offered me a Goo Goo Dolls hit, which lead to a little binge of their music and the music of some of their contemporaries. Lisa Loeb seemed as shocked as I was that she was performing her hit, "Stay," again twenty years later.
I know I've written about this before, but there's something disconcerting about being reminded that the artists of a much younger generation -- that you discovered and liked as you were on the verge of middle age -- are now middle aged themselves.
My fondness for the music of the '90s -- like my fondness for the music of the mid to late '60s -- may be at least in part because that was a good decade for me, over all. (Even Sid & Susie stopped their series of covers with the 1980s. Did they run out of gas as an act, or did they really think there was nothing worth covering in the next decade?)
