Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650

914 Pages·2016·66.591 MB·English

by  Carlos M. N. Eire

Reformations
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Reformations
The Early Modern World, 1450–1650
Carlos M. N. Eire
new haven and london
Published with assistance from the Kingsley Trust Association Publication Fund established by the Scroll
and Key Society of Yale College, from the Ronald and Betty Miller Turner Publication Fund, from the
Frederick W. Hilles Publication Fund of Yale University, and from the foundation established in memory
of Oliver Baty Cunningham of the Class of 1917, Yale College.
Copyright © 2016 by Yale University.
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Contents
Preface vii
part one. On the Edge 1
prelude: Rome, 1450 1
one. An Age of Breakthroughs 3
two. Religion in Late Medieval Christendom 19
three. Reform and Dissent in the Late Middle Ages 43
four. Italian Humanism 64
five. Humanism Beyond Italy 86
six. Forerunners of the Catholic Reformation 114
part two. Protestants 131
prelude: Rome, 1510 131
seven. Luther: From Student to Monk 133
eight. Luther: From Rebel to Heretic 158
nine. Luther: The Reactionary 185
ten. The Swiss Reformation 218
eleven. The Radical Reformation 248
twelve. Calvin and Calvinism 286
thirteen. England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, 1521–1603 318
vi contents
part three. Catholics 367
prelude: Rome, 1564 367
fourteen. Catholic Reform: Facing the Challenge 369
fifteen. Catholic Reform: Healing the Body of Christ 389
sixteen. Catholic Reform: Fashioning a New Clergy 414
seventeen. Catholic Reform: The Society of Jesus 442
eighteen. Missions to the New World 466
nineteen. Missions to the East Indies 498
part four. Consequences 523
prelude: Rome, 1626 523
twenty. The Age of Religious Wars 525
twenty-one. The Age of Orthodoxy 562
twenty-two. The Confessional Age 586
twenty-three. The Age of Devils 618
twenty-four. The Age of Reasonable Doubt 660
twenty-five. The Age of Outcomes 691
twenty-six. The Spirit of the Age 719
epilogue. Assessing the Reformations 741
Notes 759
Bibliography 783
Illustration Credits 857
Index 867
Preface
S
ometimes, the course of history can change instantly, in the blink of an eye,
and everyone notices. Sometimes, however, change is imperceptible. Either
way, it is always left up to historians to argue about how, when, and why
things changed, how much change took place, how long its effects lasted,
what to call that span of time, and what significance should be attached to it.
Despite much wrangling, most historians have agreed for five centuries about
when and where one such epochal shift took place. The time was late October 1517. The
place was the University of Wittenberg in Saxony, a new and undistinguished school. The
man involved was an obscure monk named Martin Luther. The event was a simple act
of defiance: Luther’s public questioning of widely accepted teachings concerning the for-
giveness of sins. The era supposedly initiated then and there was called the Reformation.
Should so much change be ascribed to one person and one event?
Like many such turning points in history, the controversy sparked by this monk
was long in coming. In fact, the way had been prepared for Martin Luther over several
generations, by countless individuals and impersonal forces, and he was as much a prod-
uct of change as an agent of it. What he did—so to speak—was spark a colossal explosion
with a powder keg not of his own making. The volatile elements were there already,
everywhere, in plain view. Only an obtuse observer could have failed to notice their
presence, for discontent and cries for reform were endemic. What no one could tell at the
time, not even Luther, was how much of a punch those explosive elements really packed.
Luther’s outburst in late October 1517 was couched in scholarly terms and os-
tensibly addressed to a learned audience. It should have caused only a few ripples, but
instead it set off a chain reaction, much to everyone’s surprise, and the end result was
a conflagration of epic proportions. History does not always follow a predictable path,
especially when religion is involved. Nor are deviations in history’s path easy to sum
up. To say that Luther changed his world single-handedly or that 1517 was the absolute
beginning of a new epoch would be wrong, but to say that nothing was ever the same
viii preface
after Luther’s act of defiance is to settle for understatement. What he set in motion in
1517 not only changed the world as it was then; it still continues to shape our world today
and to define who we are in the West.
What drove and defined this great transformation was religion. No doubt about
it. But to assert this is also to acknowledge that religion played a different role in Western
civilization back then than it does now. Religion was so deeply intertwined with all social,
political, economic, and cultural structures as to be inseparable from nearly every aspect
of daily life. Religious defiance, then, was much more than what we might call “religious”
in our own day: it was, in fact, the most potent sort of defiance, for to redefine religion
was to redefine the world.
This book deals with an epochal change, and with the role played in that change
by religion. It is above all a narrative, a retelling of a story that has been told many times
before, but that takes into account the latest findings of those who study this segment
of the past, with an eye firmly fixed on present-day concerns. It also analyzes what oc-
curred, and its significance for us five centuries later. One of its chief assumptions is
that no Westerner can ever hope to know him- or herself, or the world he or she lives in,
without first understanding this crucial turning point in history. And the same goes for
any non-Westerner who wants to understand Western civilization. Naturally, this book
also assumes that the ancient Greek aphorism “know thyself” is still valid, and a key to
survival and continual progress in our increasingly amnesiac global village. Given that
those who are ignorant of the past can be more easily fooled and controlled in the present
by power-hungry ideologues, or by their own worst impulses, this book has been written
with a sense of urgency.
This book also assumes that to understand this crucial period in Western history,
one must take religion seriously as a real factor in human events, as something that gave
shape to that age and to our own in ways that we now find difficult to imagine or com-
prehend. This is not to say that religion was some monolithic, isolated sphere of human
activity back then, or that it could ever be the sole concern for any individual or society.
Much less is it to say that religion is the most significant sphere of human activity, or that
theology and beliefs are the sole lens through which to view this epochal shift. What is
assumed in this book is something that nearly all experts on this period agree on: that
religion permeated all of life, even though not everyone was equally religious or pious.
Religion was a language of sorts at the turn of the sixteenth century, a way of
conceiving and of expressing, and a way of interacting with one’s neighbors, near and
far. It was also the very marrow of all social, economic, political, and cultural exchanges.
Even the minutest details of daily life could be inseparable from religion, shaped by it to
some extent, in various ways. Some sociologists and anthropologists speak of religion as a
“social glue,” a cultural reality that binds society together. Religion was more than a social
glue back then: because it linked everyone in every village and kingdom, it also allowed
them to transcend seemingly insurmountable social, political, cultural, linguistic, and
ethnic boundaries. From Portugal in the southwest to Lithuania in the northeast, and
preface ix
from Sicily in the far south to Scandinavia in the extreme north, a common set of myths,
rituals, symbols, and ethical norms linked all Westerners, and so did one ancient and
complex institution that mediated this religion: the Catholic Church, led by the pope in
Rome. To break with this church was to turn it from an adhesive into an explosive, to
change it into social dynamite.
The name for this transitional moment in history has changed over the years. In
the English-speaking world, as in several other European cultures, this era came to be
known as the Reformation. Implicit in this designation is the judgment that something
corrupt had been reformed or improved. More than that, the singular capitalized name
given to this historical period implied that this event was the ultimate, definitive step in
the right direction: it was not a reformation, but the Reformation. Such a perspective on
the past stemmed from certain religious convictions and from the fact that English culture
itself was shaped by a break with the Catholic Church. In other words, English culture
was Protestant, the name by which all who broke with the Roman Catholic Church
came to be known. In England and all of its colonies, as in all other Protestant cultures,
the only true Reformation—with a capital R—was that brought about by Protestants. All
narratives shaped by this Protestant consciousness shared an unquestioned assumption
and a common plot line: some time after the fourth century, the true Christian Church
founded by Christ and his apostles fell into gross corruption for a thousand years, a
defilement so deep and thorough that the only way to restore the genuine Christian faith
on this earth was to reject the church led by the pope in Rome and to replace it with one
that had nothing to do with “Romishness” or “popery.” This plot line made it necessary
for the history of the Reformation to be approached in terms of a pathology, that is, as a
diagnosis of what ailed the post-fourth-century church, and a description of the cure that
saved it and brought it back to health in the sixteenth century.
Oddly, even though Protestants were not always of one mind and actually created
a number of distinct competing Reformations and churches, each of which claimed to be
the genuine article, they nonetheless took to speaking of the Reformation in the singular
rather than the plural, and to assigning it capital letters. The term stuck, despite its obvious
inadequacy, because Protestants were willing and eager to accept the notion that their break
with Rome defined all of Christian history. As Protestant historians saw it, that break put
all of their competing, bickering churches on the same side of a titanic struggle and on the
right side of history, over and against the corrupt and “false” Catholic Church. As a result,
this simple duality that distinguished only two camps—Protestant and Catholic—made
the singular capitalized noun Reformation seem perfectly appropriate.
Catholics never agreed with any of this. Even back then, in the sixteenth cen-
tury, they mocked the presumption behind the term Reformed. In France, for instance,
Catholics referred to their Protestant countrymen as “heretics” and to their faith as “the
so-called reformed religion” (la religion prétendue réformée). Moreover, as the number of
competing Protestant churches increased, Catholics grew ever fonder of pointing out that
this splintering in the camp of the “heretics” proved the falsehood of all Protestant claims,