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]"
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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