Вовешили 45th 9. Huss. gitless. 1520 Luther secedes from church CHAPTER XXIV GERMANY BEFORE THE PROTESTANT REVOLT 133. By far the most important event in the sixteenth century and one of the most momentous in the history of the western world, was the revolt of a considerable portion of northern and western Europe from the mediæval Church. There had been but two serious rebellions earlier. The first of these was that of the Albigenses in southern France in the thirteenth century; this had been fearfully punished, and the Inquisition had been established to ferret out and bring to trial those who were disloyal to the Church. Then, some two centuries later, the Bohemians, under the inspiration of Wycliffe's writings, had attempted to introduce customs different from those which prevailed elsewhere in the Church. They, too, had been forced, after a terrific series of conflicts, oncé more to accept the old system. Finally, however, in spite of the great strength and the wonderful organization of the Church, it became apparent that it was no longer possible to keep all of western Europe under the sway of the pope. In the autumn of 1520, Professor Martin Luther called together the students of the University of Wittenberg, led them outside the town walls, and there burned the constitution and statutes of the mediæval Church, i.e., the canon law. In this way he publicly proclaimed and illustrated his purpose to repudiate the existing Church with many of its doctrines and practices. Its head he defied by destroying the papal bull directed against his teachings. Origin of the two great religious parties in western Europe,-the Catholics and Protestants. Revolt against the mediæval Church implied a general revolution. Other leaders, in Germany, Switzerland, England, and elsewhere, organized separate revolts; rulers decided to accept the teachings of the reformers, and used their power to promote the establishment of churches independent of the pope. In this way western Europe came to be divided into two great religious parties. The majority of its people continued to regard the pope as their religious head and to accept the institutions under which their forefathers had lived since the times of Theodosius. In general, those regions (except England) which had formed a part of the Roman empire remained Roman Catholic in their belief. On the other hand, northern Germany, a part of Switzerland, England, Scotland, and the Scandinavian countries sooner or later rejected the headship of the pope and many of the institutions and doctrines of the medieval Church, and organized new religious institutions. The Protestants, as those who seceded from the Church of Rome were called, by no means agreed among themselves what particular system should replace the old one. They were at one, however, in ceasing to obey the pope and in proposing to revert to the early Church as their model and accepting the Bible as their sole guide.1 To revolt against the Church was to inaugurate a fundamental revolution in many of the habits and customs of the people. It was not merely a change of religious belief, for the Church permeated every occupation and dominated every social interest. For centuries it had directed and largely controlled education, high and low. Each and every important act in the home, in the guild, in the town, was accompanied by religious ceremonies. The clergy of the Roman Catholic Church had hitherto written most of the books; they sat in 1 The Catholic Church, on the other hand, held that certain important teachings, institutions, and ceremonies, although not expressly mentioned in the Bible, were nevertheless sanctioned by "tradition." That is, they had been handed down orally from Christ and his apostles as a sacred heritage to the Church, and like the Bible were to be received as from God. See Readings, Chapter XXIV. the government assemblies, acted as the rulers' most trusted ministers, constituted, in short, outside of Italy, the only really educated class. Their rôle and the rôle of the Church were incomparably more important than that of any church which exists to-day. religion. Just as the medieval Church was by no means an exclu- The wars of sively religious institution, so the Protestant revolt was by no means simply a religious change, but a social and political one as well. The conflicts which the attempt to overthrow this institution, or rather social order, brought about were necessarily terrific. They lasted for more than two centuries and left no interest, public or private, social or individual, earthly or heavenly, unaffected. Nation rose against nation, kingdom against kingdom; households were divided among themselves; wars and commotion, wrath and desolation, treachery and cruelty filled the states of western Europe. Our present object is to learn how this successful revolt came about, what was its real nature, and why the results were what they were. In order to do this, it is necessary to turn to the Germany in which Luther lived and see how the nation had been prepared to sympathize with his attack on the Church. empire. 134. Until the close of the war of 1914 Germany meant to The German us the German empire, one of the four largest of the European states. It was a compact federation made up of twentytwo monarchies and three little city republics. Each member of the union managed its local affairs quite independent of any other member, but left all questions of national importance to be settled by the central government at Berlin. This federation was, however, of very recent date, being scarcely more than thirty years old. In the time of Charles V there was no such Germany as this, but only what the French called "the Germanies"; i.e., two or three hundred states, which differed greatly from one another The Gerthe sixteenth manies' of century. The seven electors and the other greater Ger in size and character. One had a duke, another a count at its head, while some were ruled over by archbishops, bishops, or abbots. There were many cities, like Nuremberg, Augsburg, Frankfort, and Cologne, which were just as independent as the great duchies of Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Saxony. Lastly there were the knights, whose possessions might consist of no more than a single strong castle with a wretched village lying at its foot. Their trifling territories must, however, be called states; for some of the knights were at that time as sovereign and independent as the elector of Brandenburg, who was one day to become the king of Prussia, and long after, the emperor of Germany. As for the emperor, he no longer had any power to control his vassals. He could boast of unlimited pretensions and a man princes. great past, but he had neither money nor soldiers. At the time of Luther's birth the poverty-stricken Frederick III might have been seen picking up a free meal at a monastery, or riding behind a slow but economical ox team. The real power in Germany lay in the hands of the more important vassals. First and foremost among these were the seven electors, so called because, since the thirteenth century, they had enjoyed the right to elect the emperor. Three of them were archbishops — kings in all but name of considerable territories on the Rhine, namely, of the electorates of Mayence, Treves, and Cologne.1 Near them, to the south, was the region ruled over by the elector of the Palatinate; to the northeast were the territories of the electors of Brandenburg and of Saxony; the king of Bohemia made the seventh of the group. Beside these states, the dominions of other rulers scarcely less important than the electors appear on the map. Some of these territories, like Würtemberg, Bavaria, Hesse, and Baden, are familiar to us to-day as members of the former German empire, but 1 For the origin of these and of the other ecclesiastical states of Germany, see above, p. 156. |