285. Lutheranism

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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.